by P A Vasey
I think, therefore I am.
I considered the very fact that I was thinking, presumably meant that I was still alive, an actual living entity.
But was I, in fact, alive?
Adam had died coming through this portal. Had I died as well? Was this what he experienced? I looked around, and at first the blackness appeared flawless and absolute, but then the twinkling of stars became apparent, like pins being pushed through a backlit velvet cushion. Billions and billions of pinpricks of light appeared, and then gas clouds and nebulae. The torturous, tattered band of the Milky Way was absent and none of the constellations were familiar.
In front of me, my arms and my hands seemed to emerge from no-where. I willed them to move and they did, and they seemed normal, with veins and tendons and nails. I abstractedly noted that I was still wearing my sweatshirt. I went to clasp my hands together, but they disappeared into each other, like hologram images, ghost hands, insubstantial and transparent. I reached up to touch my face but again I could feel nothing.
Looking down, I saw a silvery sandy beach, with ripples of water from tidal currents. Ahead the waves crashed as if they had real power, white and foamy but they died in just a few yards, nowhere near me. My feet were buried into the sand up to my ankles, but surreally I could still see them under the surface. I scrunched my toes, waiting to feel the softness of the sand, the dampness from the retreating tide - but there was nothing…
My vision faded in and out, like a television losing reception.
Was I a ghost?
Hanging in the sky I saw a giant star, ten times the diameter of the sun. A blazing yellow incandescent globe, with what looked like an appendage oozing out from it being sucked into a smaller, white companion. Beyond, there was a moving rim of pure night, a curtain of darkness, relentlessly extinguishing billions of stars from my view.
What was happening?
Then a voice – Holland’s voice - echoed around the inside of my head.
Where am I?
A milky cloud appeared in front of me, like a fog bank on a cold autumnal morning. It assumed the shape of a human being, wispy puffs of gas forming and elongating into arms and legs. I don’t know how, but I knew it was Holland. I could hear his voice in my head again, and it was now definitely his voice. Distant, yet near. The wispy form was semi-solidifying, but remained insubstantial and seemed to be drifting on a slight breeze. I could just make out a head, moving and turning and looking around, and the shape of two eyes and a mouth. The head turned to face me, but it’s gaze looked through me and beyond me. He didn’t seem able to see me, or sense my presence.
I sensed Holland’s incredulity and amazement as he gazed on the celestial event occurring above us. Then I was in his mind, listening to his thoughts and watching as his scientific brain was trying to process what we were seeing - the death of a binary star system. The primary yellow G-type star was having material pulled into a secondary white dwarf star due to the latter’s greater gravity well. When the core of the white dwarf reached a critical density, the fusion of carbon and oxygen would be unconstrained and result in the ejection of matter and energy into interstellar space.
A supernova.
I figured that it would be happening soon. Just behind the stars, the rim of blackness inexorably rolled into view having passed behind them. I stared with awe at the feat of interstellar engineering that was taking place. The black sphere - or whatever was being constructed - was almost one light-hour in diameter, ten times the distance from our sun to the surface of the Earth. It was consuming the sky in front of the stars at an unimaginable rate.
As I turned to follow the celestial curtain, a huge gas giant planet with multiple rings dipping below the far off horizon appeared, it’s flaring turquoise hues melting into the sky and ocean like a divine painting. I realised that I was on the giant’s moon. There was a multi-coloured cone of reflected light tracking outwards along the water to the horizon, where it merged with the planet, it’s atmosphere furrowed with undulating inky blue and black lines from clouds and violent weather systems. The shadow of it’s flimsy rings cast dark bands across the surface, and another moon could be seen traversing just above the equator, a mottled green and black sphere a thousandth the size of the planet.
I was getting lost in beauty of this alien vista when Holland’s thoughts and emotions re-appeared. I experienced his transit through the wormhole, and to my horror, I could feel the moment his physical body had died. The pain that once burned like fire faded away to an icy numbness. Holland had been ripped apart by unimaginable gravitational forces and frozen in the absolute zero of space. I wondered whether he was now aware that he had no corporeal existence, and was a free-floating mind of interconnected thoughts and emotions.
But what was I?
Blackness encroached the edges of my vision again, and the only thing I could hear was my own heartbeat and my ragged, shallow breathing. Then came a palpable sense of dread. The perception of a dark and terrible presence surrounding me and drawing closer. Anxiety permeated my mind like water through a sponge, and I was unable to shake the urge to look around and behind. There was evil here, hiding. Like a snake in the grass, covered by leaves, watching and waiting.
I could sense multiple alien consciousnesses, and the feeling of being suffocated as if a rubber mask were placed over my nose and mouth. I felt the aliens drifting away, their thoughts becoming indistinct and distant. Holland’s wraith-like form came into existence in front of me, but more transparent and glassy.
“Holland. Can you hear me?” I ventured, softly but there was no reply, no feeling that he was aware of me. I sensed confusion and puzzlement from him, and he was subconsciously starting to cower, to mentally crawl into himself.
An unpleasant and intimidating awareness started to pervade my mind and I felt the aliens approaching again. I shivered, as an ancient evil surrounded me and wrapped me in icy sheets. I thought I could hear a low rumble of laughter. A taunting sound, arrogant and disdainful.
I realised what Holland’s journey through the wormhole and into the alien’s galaxy had achieved. The magnitude of the miscalculation he’d made. A mistake that in his hubris may have condemned humanity to destruction.
The aliens had accessed his memories, and had acquired the data on the Trinity Deus nuclear device. Adam didn’t need to send the Lindstrom files through via the SETI transmitter, if that had even been possible.
There was a flickering to my left, and I turned to look at the ocean. In the light of the setting giant I saw a figure slowly rise out of the water as if on an elevator platform. I recognised it as a copy of Adam Benedict. Its eyes were closed, and it was naked, dripping with moisture and unguent. Another identical figure started to break the surface a few yards away, followed by another and then another, until the ocean was obscured almost to the horizon, with hundreds of thousands of human figures.
The Adam Benedict/machines were now lifting into the sky, one by one, and accelerating steadily and silently until they were all out of sight. The ripples in the water faded and soon there was no evidence that they’d ever been there. The sky was darkening and the rapidly approaching star-encompassing barrier, now occupying half the sky, was heading towards the gas giant. I put my hand up automatically to shield it from the light of the sun but it was even more transparent, glasslike and fading as I watched it. My thoughts were also becoming evanescent, and my vision was growing dimmer.
I heard Holland again, talking animatedly at the alien.
What about me?
His ghostly figure became less human-shaped and started to fragment. I could feel his pain, his despair. His horror and the terrifying realisation that he was going to die alone millions of light years from Earth.
I tried to reach out to him, to let him know I was there, that even at the end he wasn’t alone and that I was here too. Another human being. But then, like a light bulb being extinguished, there was sudden and absolute blackness.
-
&nbs
p; The pain began. A constricting band of pressure around my temples, which worsened as I opened my eyes. I was lying prone on a rock floor. Above me some fifty yards or so was the edge of the opening of the crater and a glimpse of a cobalt blue cloudless sky. Shafts of light played on the opposite rock wall, which was festooned with metal carabineers and pitons, a couple of ropes and a cavern ladder testament to Adam’s and Gabriel’s recent descent. Dust motes lazily and haphazardly floated on light beams, making their way down to the cavern floor.
I winced, and brought myself up onto my elbows, and when that seemed fairly easy, proceeded to sit up. Gingerly, I felt for any lumps on the back of my head, and then along my arms and legs, breathing a sigh of relief as nothing appeared to be broken or obviously damaged. I twisted my spine from side to side, and when I’d ascertained that this movement didn’t produce any significant additional pain, I struggled to my feet. My vision blurred for a second and the cavern seemed to spin, causing me to reach out for a non-existent wall. I shook my head to clear it, which produced another surge of pain through my eyeballs, making me squeeze my eyelids closed and grasp my head in both hands.
There was no sign of the wormhole. The ladders tracking down the walls were twisted but intact, and I could see a few people pulling themselves up from where they had fallen onto the floor of the cavern, helping each other to stand. The lights and cameras and recording equipment were strewn around the floor, scattered like toys in a nursery, broken and eviscerated pieces of plastic and metal.
I saw Hubert limping towards me from one of the staircases. His hair was covered in dust and there was blood coming out of an ear. A bruise was starting to appear on his cheek.
“Kate? Are you OK?”
“I think so.” Amazingly, I was.
“Unbelievable, wasn’t it,” he exclaimed. “Holland got sucked up into that thing like dust up a vacuum cleaner. You were lucky you didn’t get dragged in as well.”
I shook my head and got another surge of pain. “I did get dragged in. I was there. At the other end.”
Hubert’s eyebrows furrowed and he looked at me strangely. “Kate, you didn’t go anywhere. You were just lying behind the rock. It looked to me like you blacked out.”
“But I saw everything.” I said.
“I don’t see how,” he said. “The edge of that thing seemed to stop right above you. I could see you all the time.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Airborne
I stripped down and stepped into the narrow cubicle, turned the water on high and let it beat over my head in hot, steamy rivulets. I closed my eyes letting the heat soak into my skin as my legs threatened to buckle. I scrubbed lightly and was just starting to feel clean when the water supply shut off. My skin was tingling all over and I leaned back against the cool shower glass, staring at my reflection in the mirror. There were cuts and purple-yellow bruises all over my chest and arms, and bags under my eyes, but otherwise I looked not too bad for someone who’d travelled god knows how many light years to the other side of the universe and back.
The towel was thick and perfumed and I wrapped myself in it and slumped on the floor of the shower. There was a residual drip-drip of water from the faucet, and the soporific low hum of the Gulfstream’s engines. I wanted to sleep, and wondered whether I could just drop off here and how long it would take Hubert or Stillman before they broke down the door to get me. I pulled myself to my feet and tried not to slip as I stepped out of the cubicle. There was a pile of clothes neatly arranged on the toilet seat, courtesy of Stillman. I pulled on sweatpants by Lululemon and a t-shirt and jogging top by Nike, followed by my own trainers. The clothes were a bit bright, and I thought they were some of Stillman’s own, but they fit and looked good, certainly better than the jeans and sweatshirt I’d been living in.
I was in the process of tying my wet hair up, when there was a knock on the door and without waiting for a reply, Stillman poked her head round. She looked me up and down, nodding approval.
“Not bad, you look better in those than me,” she said with a smile.
I returned the smile. “I don’t think so, but thanks. I feel a bit more human now.”
She stole a look behind her, back into the corridor of the jet. “Ready for your debrief?”
I sighed. No sleep then, not even a power nap. I followed her through to the main cabin, where Hubert and the two NASA scientists I recognised from the Golf Club were sitting. Hubert was looking at me concernedly, whereas the scientists were focussed on their laptops. He waved me into one of the leather recliners, where there was a drink waiting. I sank into the chair and lifted the glass to my nose. Kraken. I nodded approvingly at Hubert.
“How you feeling?” he asked, his eyes kind.
I took a sip of the Kraken, letting the rum trickle down my throat. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, letting it out slowly, seeing if it would relax me. It didn’t. “To be honest, not sure,” I said. “Not everyday you travel through a wormhole and back.”
One of the scientists looked up sharply. He was a thin, young African-American with an Afro straight out of Shaft. His fingers were still flying over his keyboard as he shook his head and gave me a strange look. “No, you definitely didn’t go through,” he said.
I looked at Hubert, who gave a little shrug as if to say, ‘told you’. Stillman came back from the galley with a cup of something sweet smelling and hot. She sat down in the last recliner and swivelled to face me, saying nothing.
“I know what I saw,” I said, eventually. “And what I heard.”
The afro-sporting scientist stopped tapping on his keyboard and leaned forward. “Dr Morgan, we think you somehow got caught at the ‘event horizon’ of the wormhole. Rather than getting transported through like Dr Holland - which would have lead to your physical body being destroyed - you were quantum teleported.”
“Quantum teleported?”
Hubert leaned forwards. “Somehow, your mind but not your physical being was transmitted through the wormhole when it opened.”
Stillman added, “Kate, you were never physically there, but it seems that you could experience what went on at the other end.”
I thought about it. It kind of made sense. Neither Holland nor the aliens seemed to be aware of my presence. But I could see and hear everything they said. “How long was I unconscious?”
Hubert pursed his lips. “A minute, two max.”
“That’s not long enough,” I said, shaking my head. “What I saw and experienced took much longer than that.”
“Maybe the time-dilation effect?” interrupted the other scientist, a blonde Norwegian-looking woman, wearing big bright red spectacles that offset her humourless affect. She glanced at Hubert. “She could have been there any length of time. We haven’t been able to start processing the data from the recorders. Most were destroyed when the wormhole opened.”
Hubert reached over and touched my knee. His voice was soft. “Kate, what happened to Mike Holland?”
I took another drink from the Kraken, and then stole a glance out of the window at the clear blue sky and clouds hurtling past. It all seemed so surreal again. “He’s dead,” I began. “Like Adam, he didn’t survive the passage through the wormhole. His mind did though. He was trying to communicate with the aliens.”
“You saw them?” asked Afro.
“No, but I sensed many of them. Their minds were so different… cold, dispassionate, arrogant … alien minds.” I closed my eyes again. “Holland wanted to tell them how wonderful humanity was, how we were worth saving. They weren’t interested.”
“What was their world like?” asked Stillman.
“I don’t think we were on their world,” I said.
I told them about the moon, the gas giant in the sky, the incredible feats of astro-engineering that I saw including the syphoning of energy from a star, and the construction of what I now assumed was a Dyson sphere around it. “This was just another sun, just another planet, being harvested for energy to them,”
I said. “The fact that the wormhole opened there was probably by chance. And yet…”
I stopped, and looked around the cabin, seeing that all eyes were on me. I thought again about what I had seen. The planet was not random at all. The machine hosts were being made there. Statistically, what were the chances of the portal opening there as well? I described what I had seen, the hundreds of thousands of Adam Benedict-shaped machines that had been manufactured by the aliens.
“Why do they need these machine bodies?” asked the Norwegian.
Hubert scratched his emergent beard. “Perhaps an organic physical structure isn’t robust enough to travel through the wormhole? I mean, they sent Adam’s consciousness and one of their own back in a machine, so that makes sense doesn’t it?”
Stillman puckered her lips, “Do the aliens know Adam survived the return journey?”
“They know everything,” I bit out, acid in my mouth. “They were able to access all Holland’s thoughts. Everything he knows, they know.”
Hubert looked back, aghast. “The Lindstrom formula.”
I said nothing, my silence giving him his answer.
Stillman looked despondent. “Then we’re fucked,” she said.
“They’re coming,” I said. I downed the rest of my Kraken in one and looked out of the window again, watched us fly through a contrail. There was a little buffeting before the smooth air resumed.
Hubert made a show of looking at his watch. “We’ve got twenty hours or so before the wormhole opens again. We’ll just have to put our efforts into protecting the crater site. Secure it with all our available forces.”
I shook my head. “We’ve got no chance. A single machine host is one thing, but thousands coming through?”
Hubert’s eyes narrowed. “I think we need to find Adam. Talk with him. Kate, you said that he thought he could prevent this?”
