Timewalker

by Luke Norris

  “It comes and it draws up to the side. It’s somewhere on the ship.”

  “We must find it!”

  “But we can’t!” Lego insisted. “We don’t have access!”

  “Well, why don’t we go outside?”

  This left Lego silent in consternation.

  “So we don’t know how to go outside. Maybe we could find a way. Do we have tools for fixing things that break?” Oliver asked.

  “Follow me Cougar!” Lego and Toro zipped away down the aisle.

  It was then that he discovered that there was room upon room, cavity upon cavity and that the beds were actually located on the outer side of the ship. The ship was rotating as it rocketed through space. The rotation was only slight but gave enough centrifugal force to create a false sense of gravity.

  The equipment rooms were above Oliver and the beds, toward the center of the ship. They were located in a central shaft which was weightless. The gravitational force was only at the edges–enough to keep all the bodies resting on their beds.

  As they lifted Oliver and took him up towards the center, he realized they were using magnetism and other forces to keep them from hitting the floor. As he floated to the center of the ship he had to be pulled along, aided by Toro.

  “Look at all this stuff!” Oliver exclaimed. These storerooms were huge treasure troves! He examined an oil painting that was larger than himself. Beside it was a strange sculpture made from unidentifiable material. “Some of this is priceless!” He saw what looked like some cheap furniture. “A lot of it junk. My god, there’s all sorts of stuff here, and it’s not all from Earth.” He ran his finger along a rigid translucent object, “from planets that were pillaged before Earth Lego?”

  “Yes.”

  “These are the things they’re taking? Statues and art? This looks like it could be a storeroom at the Louvre museum.” These artifacts had been carefully stacked in, that was for sure.

  In another storeroom was cutting equipment, joining equipment, and many tools that he had never seen before. There was also a whole host of little robotoids, similar to Lego and Toro, resting, waiting to be commanded. Waiting to arise in an emergency.

  All these were once brilliant people, Oliver thought, have been stolen, ripped out of their bodies and put into that small artificial environment so that their minds would become a computer that drives a little slave, operating for one sole purpose, to work the machine of their captors.

  It seemed unusual that they would have such advanced technology and yet resort to such barbarism, take people and turn them into what was really a complex computer. Was the complexity of the human mind so intricate and advanced that it was still beyond the level of man’s ability to create?

  “Lego we need all these robots activated!” Oliver declared. “They need to understand what’s happening, and if possible all speaking the same language.” He ran a hand across one of the bots that had a similar cylindrical shape to Toro. “Do you think you can remove their shackles? We could be a formidable attack force.” Complex military tactics started flooding Oliver’s thoughts. Where were these coming from?

  Slowly Lego began the process of releasing the chemical and the electronic shackles that bound the minds held within. It was not always successful. Many of the machines went mad, lost control, or simply failed to work. Sadly, more than half of all the robotoids that were liberated stopped functioning, and the human that once was simply died.

  Those poor bastards, Oliver thought, if I had woken in that state, I’d have gone mad. Hell, I nearly lost it, and I’m still in one piece.

  But despite the odds, some survived, understood their peril, and were able to come to terms with their plight.

  “We need to get out of the confines of this part of the ship!” Oliver told them. “If we can somehow get outside, and see how big the ship is, maybe we’ll locate the bridge where the crew are. It’s something to work towards at least.” Oliver ran his hand along the smooth walls. “We have to puncture this hull!”

  Some of the other robotoids were also brilliant, engineers in a previous life, perfect minds for defeating the structure of such an advanced ship. Every single waking moment became dedicated to this task.

  Oliver found his strength returning, but despite regular sleep to maintain health, the environment was still cold in the ship.

  “I have to get clothes Lego!” Oliver said as he sifted through the booty looking for cloth, or something he could adapt. “I’m cold in this giant refrigerator, it's not healthy. I need to be warmer.” Eventually, he patched together clothes if you could call it that. A mixture of odd garments. Cloth and soft plastic held together with solid graphite carapace shoulder plates. He found a giant mirror with an ornate golden frame and looked at himself. I look like a character from Mad-Max!

  He tried to think of his helpers as robots, something other than what they really were, to deal with the reality of what they were going through.

  I'm in much the same position, he thought, they were in a metal casing keeping them prisoners, I was encased in a chemical prison. All those men on the beds are merely being held until they could be employed as slaves. Held with chemical controls so they’ll do the bidding of their masters. Once they’re damaged, they’ll be cast aside, never to be thought of again.

  The sense of resolve that had grown inside Oliver’s heart was also evident in the robots’ relentless efforts. They were ingenious, the way they broke down the complexity of what they were doing to small achievable tasks during the frequent war room discussions.

  Oliver found himself contemplating thoughts that must have been somehow artificially impressed upon him. Attitudes and concepts that were innate, but not indigenous. They felt imposed. Military concepts. Sophisticated methods for dealing with leadership, and attitudes for overcoming.

  And so it was that Oliver started to think the way he had been programmed. Except his enemy were the ones who had programmed him.

  We have to find out how big this ship is, how complex? We need more knowledge. If we can figure out which was the front and the rear, then perhaps we can discover where the crew were hidden. Fifty percent of the battle is knowing where your enemy is.

  Lego and the others were smart, but could they really design a suit, and develop some form of breathing apparatus? All the problems of spacewalking would have to be solved.

  2. Space walk

  Oliver constantly tried on components of the space suit, as it was being made. Meanwhile, the other bots worked on a way to get through the outer walls of the ship. It had to be in such a way that it wouldn’t alert the ship’s mother computer. Lego had been able to put blinds up, so it was unaware what was taking place. Would they be able to prevent it from detecting them if the ship’s structural integrity was being compromised?

  “Oliver! The solution we have arrived upon is to build an airlock around a viewing platform.” Lego relayed the progress from the others. “It is a small round window in the side of the ship, the one point that enables us to look out to space. The ship has very few such windows that we have ever seen. By creating an airlock with a sealing door on it, we can turn the window into a second opening that we would be able to access. It is complex and involved, but the ship has enough equipment and material to build it. It is simply a matter of time.”

  It was impossible to tell how much time had past. Months? Surely not a year? How long had it been? Lego explained that usually the drivers, like Oliver, could be woken immediately by the ship’s computer, ready to be deployed for duty instantly. They were not able to do this with Oliver. He had been woken in secret and weaned off the chemicals.

  A lot of the technology was far beyond anything that Oliver had ever seen. Glue that set like welded steel. Plastics that were extremely light yet robust. Electrical light emitting devices. Cutting equipment. Things that almost seemed to be magic by the way they worked. But for all the wonders there was no solid food.

  It was too risky to send the robots outside. Would their
shells be built to withstand the extreme conditions of deep space? It was an unknown. No, Oliver was the one who would have to go, but it meant resolving the issue of how to create enough breathable atmosphere. He had to be able to move around for a reasonable period of time.

  Toro had used canisters and found a way to compress the air and put it in them, and a method to vent the used air.

  All these problems took time. Lego, Toro and the others, had never had this technology or been shown how to do it. Yet, they had to resolve it.

  “Cougar! We will tether you here.” Lego indicated to the side of the makeshift airlock. The time had finally come to make the spacewalk. “You will need to be tethered because the rotational motion of the vessel could fling you away out into space.”

  The ship was rotating as it shot through space, revolving on its axis like a bullet from a rifle.

  Toro hovered beside Oliver, and Lego spoke for him. “We have deconstructed some machines that had magnets, Toro then used the magnets to make boots. They will not work on the plastics and some material, but he is convinced they will grip to the surface. You will have to be careful where you stand.”

  This time it’s for real. Oliver thought as he donned the suit. Time to test if I can actually go into a no atmosphere environment. He could feel the tension from the team. There were in excess of fifteen robotoid individuals who were assisting in the project gathered.

  Oliver passed through the first airlock, and then into the second. Here it was his job to damage the window. Either break it or blow it open. He placed two small charges against the glass and then he moved back in through the first airlock.

  The charges wouldn’t cause a massive explosion, but they would damage the surface of the incredibly tough glass. Finally, on the fifth attempt, after the glass had been weakening and grazed, it blew the glass all out, and it drifted away into space.

  Now, if Oliver opened the airlock, the air in that segment just before the window would be vacated. He would be in space. He reached for the release handle.

  Oliver was suddenly acutely aware that the bots had never made a spacesuit before. They had also never made an airlock before. After all, they were civilians, geniuses, but that didn’t make them space experts!

  Is this spacesuit that they have cobbled together going to be airtight? Am I going to immediately pop, and freeze to death in the temperatures of deep space?

  His hands were shaking. All the unknowns were firing a million times a second, crowding his facilities. Calm down, Oliver!

  He placed his hand on the lever and pushed it down it one committed motion. The air around him vented out the small window in an instant, taking some remaining shards of window glass with it.

  He was holding his breath. He opened his eyes and glanced at the inside of his helm.

  “The suit is holding,” he reported, relieved. “I’m enlarging the hole now.” He stepped forward examining the wall around the broken window.

  He placed the cutting tool Toro gave him against the hull. The strange thing was it made no noise, and it didn’t vibrate. The damage caused to the window from the blast had made a hole large enough for him to put his hand through, but not large enough for his body.

  The cutting tool started to remove the shards. They moved sluggishly away from the ship. Watching the lethargic moving glass, it was hard to believe that the ship was traveling at incredibly high speeds across the galaxy. Finally, he had cut enough to be able to go climb through, without damaging the suit and get access to the outside of the ship.

  He tethered himself with the tough nylon rope the robots had provided. He couldn’t see Lego or the others, the airlock casing was opaque, made of a similar plastic material that they’d built up to surround the window.

  Oliver pushed his head through the hole, then slowly he let himself out. He stood on a huge surface. Massive. Much bigger than he expected. Clearly, the room they were contained in was only a portion of the vessel. There were probably many such rooms. He had no way of gauging the distance. It must be hundreds of meters, perhaps Kilometers in each direction. The nylon tether won’t be long enough.

  His heavy breathing was intermittently steaming the visor and interfering with visibility. Relax Oliver! The suit is holding. He told himself. But as he looked up his breath caught at what he saw.

  On Earth, in the isolated Canterbury foothills, Oliver had stared up at the stars. There was very little light noise that high up, the night sky from those peaks was spectacular. But now he was standing with the immense expanse of the heavens above him. Heart of the galaxy pulsing like a living organism. Greens and reds. It was breathtaking. Transcending.

  He hadn’t noticed the temperature. A good thing. Obviously, the heaters that Toro had put inside the spacesuit were keeping him warm. The visor on the front was bulky and awkward, and the helmet they’d constructed attached directly to the shoulder carapace so it couldn’t pivot. Nevertheless, it was ingenious what they had done. They had made a suit to go spacewalking, and it worked!

  The magnetic attachments, in his shoes, were holding him to the surface of the vessel. The tether, curled loosely inside the airlock unfurled as he walked, slowly pulling out with him.

  It was impossible to say which direction the ship was moving in, or what direction was the front. Is that even where the crew would be located? There was no point of reference for movement. Oliver knew they were probably traveling at some insane speed through the galaxy, but the stars were such colossal distances apart, they looked as if they were not moving at all.

  He chose one direction and started walking. He focused on keeping his breathing regulated, and feet steady. Fifty meters, sixty, seventy meters. Still no discernible difference around him, or the ships surface. He didn’t feel like he was getting closer to the end. How was he supposed to get any kind of perspective on such a monstrous object?

  Oliver had walked more than one hundred meters when suddenly his next step did not grip the surface. Had he inadvertently walked onto a section of the ship where the surface material was not magnetic? Oliver’s breath caught in his throat. Legs bicycle kicked empty space in an attempt to find the ground. He looked down awkwardly through his mask. To his horror, the surface of the ship was moving away. It was moving Rapidly. His heart raced as he frantically started retrieving the loose rope. He became acutely aware of the velocity and angle he was shooting away at. The hatch, where he had exited the ship, was shrinking to a small dot and rotating away from him.

  “Lego!” He called frantically. No response. Why would there be? I knew there would be no communication once I went outside.

  As he drifted further away from the surface, more of the ship came into view. He could see now it was a long cylinder, pencil shaped. Smooth uniform grey with almost no distinguishable features, apart from the hatch he and Lego had made, which was rotating with the vessel, and would be out of site any second now.

  Oliver’s thoughts were cut short as the nylon cable finally pulled taught. It yanked Oliver with such force that it rendered his limbs completely powerless. The centrifugal force at this distance from the surface was multiplied many times. His cheeks were forced back, and his vision started to tunnel. He was being swung around an alien spaceship like a medieval catapult. If he could just slowly pull his way in by the cord. Impossible. It was tighter than a harp string, like trying to lift an elephant. The creaking sound of straining rope grated in his helmet. The nylon cord surely couldn’t hold his magnified weight much longer.

  He was losing consciousness. He felt like he was in high g-force centrifuge for testing fighter pilots. As the blood was forced to the back of Oliver’s head, and darkness crept into the sides of his vision, his position twisted slightly so he could see along the ship’s length.

  This thing must be a kilometer long! he thought blurrily, as he gazed toward the end. What is that? Something bright. Must be the g-force effect creating some sort of light at the end of the tunnel? No, it was definitely there. A star! Notably bright
er, and big enough to resemble a distinct sphere. Is that Earth’s sun? Some other star we were heading to? It doesn’t really matter, nothing really matters. He felt a dreamy detachment. No! Stay conscious damn it! Oliver knew in some small way that this was the effect of the g-force on his brain, but it was just too strong. He couldn’t hold on. Slowly the blackness engulfed him, and he drifted into oblivion.

  “Cougar!” Lego’s robotic voice roused Oliver. “Cougar! Wake up, please.”

  Thoughts shuffled into place. He’d lost consciousness. But how he had gotten back to the hatch? The last thing he remembered was being a cosmic Yoyo, about to be flung into the depths of the galaxy. His helmet had been removed. He was inside the ship.

  “Lego? You pulled me back in.” Oliver looked at the familiar red orb hanging in the air beside him.

  “We need you Cougar,” Lego said.

  “But that means you entered the hatch and went into…” Oliver looked around, Toro and the others were also hovering. Listening, if you could call it that. “Lego, you could’ve been killed. We didn’t know if your shell would protect you in space.”

  Lego paused. “You are my friend.”

  “Thank you, Lego,” Oliver said sincerely. He was overcome by the feeling of comradery for his little friends.

  “Tell us what you saw Cougar!”

  “The ship is big!” Oliver replied as he removed pieces of the suit. God, he was exhausted. Now that he saw his bed, he realized how incredibly drained he was. “We’re going to need a longer tether. And Toro, some sections of the surface are not magnetic.” He gave a relieved laugh and threw a boot in Toro’s direction.

  “You will need help!” Lego said. “When we break into the quarters that hold the crew, they will potentially have robots that will repel you. Toro now thinks all our shells are sealed like mine and protected against the harsh environment of space.” Lego indicated with his little arm, “The temperatures in this cabin change as the people are woken and put to sleep, but do not affect us. I suspected my shell would hold when I entered the airlock. But it was a risk."