The Primus Labyrinth

by Scott Overton

  Several voices were raised in disagreement, but Kierkegaard’s voice carried the quiet authority that always served him well.

  “As Dr. Tyson correctly asserted, we have no instrumentation to confirm the number of devices in a particular location. However, another full scan could confirm one of two possibilities: there are none left, or there is at least one left. We would be remiss if we did not try to get that confirmation, and so I ask you, Dr. Bridges, to prepare for that process. . . when we can schedule it. Unfortunately it will have to wait.” His last words made them stare in surprise. “I’ve tried to prevent it, but the patient will be beyond our influence for a few days. Apparently she must take a trip.”

  There were gasps of breath and then stunned silence.

  “But this is life or death!” Lucy Tamiko spoke for all of them.

  “I am fully aware of that,” their leader responded. “And so are the people who make such decisions. Clearly, it’s political and of great importance. Don’t forget that we’re only part of a very high-stakes negotiation. Indeed, I would call it a game of brinksmanship. I don’t envy those who’ve had to make this call, and I will not second-guess them.”

  “How long have we got in the meantime?” Tyson asked.

  “She will be in range of our VR equipment until midday tomorrow. She will not be available for any other procedures until she returns. In fact, she has already left the clinic.”

  “Well that answers the question in my mind,” Mallory spoke for the first time, slumping onto the edge of a desk, “which is how we’re going to get Primus to the next target site. I guess we’re not.”

  “We have been dealt a setback, Dr. Mallory, but you would be wrong to assume that we will sit on our hands and do nothing. Primus is still capable of moving from one place to another. It will simply have to do so under its own steam.” Kierkegaard seemed to enjoy the stir his words created. “In fact, I think that’s how we’ll operate from now on. Physical removal of Primus from a critical blood vessel deep within the body is too intrusive, and too dangerous to the patient. It’s nothing short of surgery. We couldn’t keep doing that much longer, and now our hand has been forced.”

  “I’m not sure we can navigate with any accuracy throughout the entire body.” Tamiko’s voice was uncharacteristically timid, her face pale.

  Kierkegaard reached out to grasp her shoulder. “I believe you and Mr. Hunter will surprise yourselves in that department. I am. . . confident.” Again he looked at Bridges. The doctor gave a slight incline of his head.

  “I’m sorry to have to ask this of all of you,” the leader of the team concluded, “but we can succeed. I know we can. You are the best and the brightest. Now it's time to shine.” From anyone else, the words would have been hollow pep talk. From Kierkegaard, they were a true reflection of the soul from which they had come.

  The team members moved to their tasks with new urgency, and new determination. They were at the mercy of unfeeling reality, a force they could not break.

  But that didn’t mean they couldn’t do their damnedest to bend it.

  Finding bombs is easier than finding routes to bypass the kidney. Can’t risk Primus being filtered with the blood. A nasty image comes to mind of the ship being passed into a bile duct, and pissed away. The only alternative is to find an anastomosis or capillary network linking the renal artery with the renal vein. A lot harder than just chugging up a lymphatic vessel along the outside of the renal artery itself.

  Hours later, ship’s time, it’s done. Now along the renal vein to the inferior vena cava, back to the heart, a side trip to the lungs, the heart again for a boost of speed, and on to the left kidney. A voyage of many potential pitfalls. Have to make all of the correct turns at high speed without a lot of warning. Otherwise the ship will be headed off to an arm, or the stomach, or the brain. Detours too daunting to consider.

  The heart is the biggest problem. The first pass will automatically send the ship toward the lungs, along with a surge of depleted blood in need of oxygen. No steering required for that—there’s nowhere else to go. But the second time through . . . lots of offshoots and tributaries on the other side. With that extreme burst of speed on the way out, it’ll be easy to miss the right one and end up who knows where?

  So much for trying to evade the turbulence within the heart. That was a comforting delusion: just unplug, wait out the worst of it, and go back in. Except it won’t work.

  The odds of Primus shooting out of the heart's left ventricle and hitting on the right course without her pilot are no more than a roll of the dice. Can’t afford that. Which means the pilot has to stay onboard for the whole ride after all. The plunging, the spinning, the pounding . . . the maelstrom of all maelstroms. The likelihood of more haptic feedback, making the very molecules of the soul shudder.

  Oh, yes, and stay conscious please. There’s a good boy.

  No problem. Piece of cake.

  For now, the ship is riding the current of the renal vein, soon to be sucked into the inferior vena cava. No steering needed for a while.

  It’s time to experiment.

  Time to hit the kill switch.

  Nausea. . . . Blackness, but only because the headset view screen was off. There was the muffled sound of hushed voices. He couldn’t make out words because Gage and Tamiko were trying to be quiet and not disturb him. But it was the lab all right. The real world. Even the feel of the chair and the smell of the air were different.

  Try again?

  Nausea. Getting shorter each time though. Is the brain adapting?

  Look around. Everything just as it was. No, the ship is moving faster. Must be in the inferior vena cava then. A few brief seconds in the outside world translates into long minutes inside. Still enough time to do some more testing before the going gets tricky.

  Try again?

  Nausea . . . the eyes covered, the skin warm on the back, the pressure of the foot-rest on the back of the heel. Reality again, with the capital ‘R’. Why? What was he doing that was different from earlier in the day? Trapped in the vortex of the renal artery, he had hit the kill switch, but hadn’t escaped. Why then and not now? Was the effect dependent on the length of time spent inside? If so, he’d just spent a long time traveling through the network of vessels between the artery and the vein. What else was different? What else could be different? Or had it simply been a quirk in the VR system that nobody had detected? Was his theory completely wrong?

  And would that be such a very bad thing?

  Nausea. Turbulence! Primus has had time to reach the heart—and pass through it. Yes, the buffeting is easing off, carried automatically from the right ventricle of the heart into the pulmonary artery. The artery will split soon, one branch to either lung, but that doesn’t matter. It’s after the second trip through the heart that the steering will have to be done. Still some time until then. But for what?

  The experiment isn’t working. Either the theory’s wrong or the method. Is it even worth trying again?

  Yes, and for two reasons—if it’s possible to become trapped in this reality, then it’s better to know ahead of time, and figure out how to avoid it. Maybe there is a time limit, beyond which there’s no going back. Maybe the first time was just on the borderline—a narrow escape.

  Or reason number two:

  Maybe this reality is as valid as the other one, and there’s no need for fancy technology to travel between them, only the will to do so.

  It’s a thought to blow the mind. Tantalizing and terrifying at the same time.

  Hang on.

  The will. That’s it.

  The first time it happened was the first emergency use of the kill switch, deciding to escape from innerspace.

  But not really wanting to.

  There had been a rational choice to escape the turbulence, but the mission wasn’t complete, the patient was still in danger. The reasoning mind had said, Go.!

  But the unreasonable will had said . . .
Stay!

  What is reality? And how many realities are there?

  Concentrate then. Concentrate on staying, on wanting to stay. Concentrate.

  And press the switch . . . .

  God, oh God, it’s like a ripple in the fabric of the World.

  24

  Tamiko turned her head and saw Hunter slumped in the chair.

  “Kenneth! Kenneth, look!” she rasped urgently, still trying to obey the edict of silence. “He just suddenly went limp. His hands aren’t even on the controls.”

  Gage stepped to the side of the chair, then bent over with his ear near the visor front. After a moment, and a glance at the instrument panel, he straightened.

  “Well, he’s still breathing,” he said in a stage whisper. “And his vital signs are all OK on the monitors. Blood pressure and heart rate a little high, but then it’s probably quite a ride in there. Straight out of the heart at high speed and. . . coming up on the lungs right about now. Everything looks all right. What are you worried about?”

  Tamiko shook her head slightly. “I’ve never seen him go like this before. Relaxed, yes, but always in control. Now he looks like he’s just along for the ride.”

  Gage thought for a moment, then consulted the monitor screens again.

  “There’s nothing for him to do for now. Not until he’s just about to come out of the left ventricle into the aorta. So if he is dozing, or daydreaming or something, the turbulence of the heart will wake him up. If not, we’ll do something to get his attention.” He smiled at the prospect. “In the meantime, Devon clearly wants us to leave him alone. So we leave him alone.”

  Tamiko nodded and began to return to her work, but a last glance at the pilot made the hairs rise on the back of her neck. His right arm was rising slowly as if to shield his eyes from something. Something she could not even imagine.

  The ripple that began in the center rapidly sweeps outward across the entire field of vision, leaving in its wake . . . .

  Clarity. Cohesion. Congruity.

  And understanding.

  The earlier missions have only hinted at this—have only offered enticing glimpses: sharper edges, more authentic perspectives . . .

  But this . . . . This is a whole new sense of being.

  The colors. They’re magnificent. True and pure. Alive!

  Before now, there were only pale, dried-out, powder-painted cutouts.

  Look. Dark purple-brown blood cells blooming like a rose in time-lapse photography, the bright volcanic red beginning at the core then spreading quickly over the whole.

  Oxygenation. The miracle of life-giving breath, revitalizing the depleted red cells to carry the fuel of existence throughout the body. Incredible. Hundreds of them . . . thousands . . . spread across the entire cavernous blood vessel, visible five . . . no, ten times farther away than they could have been seen before. Legions of Life’s soldiers—no longer threatening, vagabond missiles, but troops orderly marching to the call of a cosmic rhythm.

  It has happened. There can be no doubt. The meddlesome computer has departed, and reality remains.

  Inner space, unblurred, unaltered, unveiled. It was there all the time. Why has it only become attainable now?

  Don’t know. Bridges might have an answer.

  But perhaps the answer is simply that truth has its own time.

  Time. How long has it been? Got to get a grip. The ship is still hurtling along at the speed of the current. There’s no more oxygenation happening—the surrounding blood cells are all a cheerful red. So the lungs are being left behind. Onward into the pulmonary vein and back to the left auricle of the heart. Soon, very soon.

  The heart. The maelstrom. Can it be faced like this? In the full experience of nano-reality? Is it survivable?

  Only moments left to decide. Where does the real danger lie? There will be turbulence, certainly, but no haptic feedback. No computer-generated insanity of sensory overload. Perhaps only the powerful acceleration the body’s own living cells undergo every minute, every hour, every day.

  The alternative is to re-engage processing by the computer—if it’s still possible. How do you will away enchantment like this?

  Or another choice—abandon the ship. Leave Primus without a mind present to command it, to be thrown at random into a vast maze.

  No. That’s not an option.

  Bring it on, then. Let the ultimate test begin.

  “Is he awake?” Gage rasped. “Primus is about to enter the heart again.”

  “He’s awake. He’s gripping the handsets. . . taking control again. Something’s different, but I can’t tell what. It’s too late to do anything about it anyway. I only hope he remembers the right course to steer.”

  Gage made a noise. “We’ll be lucky if he can even stay conscious.”

  With a worried frown Tamiko turned to concentrate all of her attention on the monitor.

  Instant insanity

  Endless crosscurrents, up-wellings, backdrafts, undertows. . . the Primus tossed chaotically through a froth of liquid mayhem, and yet. . . .

  Bearable. Survivable.

  The G-forces change with the rapidity of thought, yet the vibration isn’t brutal after all. The ship doesn’t fight the current, but becomes part of it. Spiraling, plunging. . . swooping like a bird diving for prey, then riding thermals into the heavens.

  An incredible ride. The sensations are all there to drink in—dizzying, but exhilarating. Not a torment to be endured, but a revelation.

  If only the VR monitors could capture the vast expanses of taut muscle, stretched in webbed strands lost in the distance, the spinning disks performing their inspired ballet, the whorls of color transforming the view from moment to moment, making it endlessly new.

  But the monitors cannot see it. There is only the mind’s eye to behold such perfect anarchy.

  No, not anarchy. There is an order, an order driven by chemical interactions, nerve impulses, genetic coding and, ultimately, an underlying machinery beyond comprehension.

  No time left for sightseeing. The gaping maw ahead must be the entrance to the aorta, so expansive in comparison to Primus that the VR view would not have been able to take in more than a fraction of it. The flanking walls would have been much too far away to see, invisible through the murk of insufficient data. There would have been no navigating here at all. Only blind blundering into the unknown, trusting to chance.

  The turbulence dies out quickly in the giant aorta as it funnels oxygen-enriched blood outward to all the needy tissues of the body. It will divide soon, and the ship needs to be in the right alignment to avoid being diverted into the wrong channel.

  Passing blades of tissue, colossal and curved, like the petals of a titanic flower—the semi-lunar valves, ready to sweep closed behind the outgoing wave, to prevent blood being sucked back into the powerful heart.

  That means the coronary arteries should be visible, right and left. What did Tamiko say? The right should come first, and the left is slightly smaller. There’s one directly overhead. Where’s the other? Down below, just ahead.

  Peeling off into a steep dive, like a fighter jet breaking formation. Got to stay clear of the fierce suction from that gaping chasm above. Then pull up and climb again to escape its counterpart.

  With the aorta curving and arching over the lung before leading downward toward the abdomen, the key is to keep from being drawn off anywhere else. Like that yawning tunnel up ahead, with a Latin name too long to remember. The wrong way. That one branches off into the right carotid artery—the left carotid should be coming up soon. Worth remembering what they look like, though. It’s a good bet that a trip to the brain will wind up on the itinerary before all is said and done.

  Better stick close to the underside curve of the aorta, far away from the left carotid—there it is—and the left subclavian just beyond. Don’t want to go that way either. Just around the arch and onward for a nice straight ride down the abdominal aorta. One m
ore turnoff to avoid. . . .

  There. The ship’s in the clear.

  Now there’s time. Time to think. Try to understand what just happened.

  If it can be understood.

  The curtain has risen on a secret no human being was meant to see.

  25

  Kierkegaard looked at Bridges across the desk.

  “What do you make of that?” he asked.

  The doctor looked again at the monitor screen, as if to reassure himself of what they’d just witnessed.

  “I couldn’t distinguish any detail at all,” he said. “Yet Hunter avoided all the traps and steered the right course like a commuter driving home from work.”

  “You think he’s seeing more than we are?” The answer was a shrug. “Is it possible that, as an experienced submersible pilot, using the haptic interface, he could sense the movement of the currents and navigate that way? By the seat of his pants?”

  “I don’t know what to tell you, Devon. This is certainly beyond any expectations I had. Don’t forget how he found that bomb the other day, after going so far off course.”

  “I haven’t forgotten,” Kierkegaard said. “It was the first spark of hope in this whole damned mess.” He clenched his hands together and his eyes narrowed. “I just want to know how he’s doing it. There’s something he isn’t telling us.”

  “Hunter is a bit of a maverick, an unknown quantity—we knew that going into this,” Bridges reminded him. “In fact, we counted on it. As I told you then, if we pull the harness too tight we may just drive away that special gift of his.”