Written in Light

by Jeff Young

  “Over what?”

  Bulldog stopped and turned, pointing their weapon at the ground. “Over whether you or I should live, over whether or not people should be pointing guns at each other, over whether or not this particular ball of rock belongs to them or us, or over whether or not we should be fighting at all.” The last bit of the sentence drifted off, and they turned to the right, walking into a canyon.

  Kendricks looked at the heat dancing off the sergeant’s back. They seemed awfully opinionated for a fighter, but perhaps soldiers could only vent to a civilian. As they walked along, Kendricks’s thoughts returned to the RES. He hadn’t told Bulldog the truth. RES stood for Recombinant Extraterrestrial Substance, and it had come out of a tank discovered in an alien vessel found among the floating ice balls of the Oort Cloud. He was the first one to figure out how to make it work. The stuff wasn’t nanotechnology. It recreated things at the sub-quantum level by converting energy into matter and built upward. It seemed to find and manipulate elements so that when assembled, the result was indistinguishable from the original, almost as if it reached from one world into the next and stole what it made.

  Bulldog motioned them to a stop. The sergeant unclipped a directional grenade and motioned Kendricks backward. Bulldog launched it at a mound of boulders stacked against the side of the canyon with a flick of their wrist. Another explosion followed the grenade’s detonation bringing down debris across the most level part of the path. Another trap, an active war zone, or a training area? Kendricks only knew that he would be meeting some of the soldiers whose lives were improved by the RES-suit. From Bulldog’s attitude, he could see that the propaganda department influenced his invitation.

  Kendricks looked up, noticing an odd pattern of dark objects just visible overhead. The HUD highlighted them with a green underscore and obediently zoomed in on one with no prompting. The “W” shape of the wing and tail assembly marked it as a UAV drone. He looked at the drone cluster’s dispersal pattern, and suddenly the image of the bottom of the RES tank came to mind. Kendricks remembered standing underneath the curving bulk and looking upward at the same type of pattern made up of injector taps set into the surface of the tank. The scientists were gradually able to determine that each tap contained the instructions for recreating a particular thing. The RES, when they broke into a tap, appeared quite willing to reproduce whatever was introduced to it but made exact duplicates. If you put in a slice of apple, you got just a slice of apple. It took a little longer to find the key to making the RES truly productive. This allowed it to produce a whole instead of just a partial by inferring the nature of a complete object. Therein lay the more magical aspect of the RES. The scientists could, by trial and error, find their way through the programming aspects of the RES, but as to how it actually worked, a whole division still labored away at that. It made Kendricks’s job more difficult. It took two years to learn how to convince the RES to make more RES. Obviously, certain safety measures were designed into it to prevent runaway replication.

  Bulldog’s image on the HUD now bore a green underscore as well. In fact, when Kendricks turned the gun toward either them or the drones, the little blue circular targeting light went away. Actually, he couldn’t point the gun at either, or the suit’s armature would lock up. Gun, Kendricks thought, when did I get a gun? Was it in his hand all along? He moved the heavy weapon back and forth in front of him. The suit easily adjusted to its bulk and tracked its motion. Schematics ran briefly in the corner of his vision, the gun’s location on the outside of the suit, the ammunition feed from here, the power came from—he shook his head, and the images went away. Then he noticed the green dots of the drones begin to wink out one by one as the sunlight went from blinding to dim.

  “Shit storm,” Bulldog cursed and took off at a run. Apparently, whatever coming this time was so bad they didn’t even worry about their charge. Not that it mattered, Kendricks realized as his suit took off after the sergeant’s without his prompting. That it felt perfectly natural bothered Kendricks again. Could the psych-program be getting into his internal tera-drives? He ducked around a sharp turn toward a dark hole following Bulldog’s heels. Due to his work on the RES project, his memory was massively upgraded with implants. Inside his head, a switching system worked to allow him to access that information and then drop back to normal memory. Bulldog dove into the meter-wide hole, and Kendricks stopped to look back, having to fight briefly with the armature of the suit. A sky full of fire descended on them.

  Shards of cascading rock sliced through the air to slam into the dry surroundings. Apparently, Bulldog had identified the assault they were facing, rather than commenting on their luck. Bulldog’s gauntlet grabbed his heels, and bodily dragged Kendricks into the hole, letting his helm carom off the top edge of the pipe. Crouched low and scuttling after the sergeant, Kendricks wondered if the rocks were dropped all the way from orbit or lower. Most seemed to be burning up, so he guessed higher.

  “Orbital launched airburst weaponry,” Bulldog stated as they continued to crawl through the tunnel. “And we do need to keep moving. The temperature outside is going to go up a bit.”

  Kendricks didn’t even attempt an argument. He thought briefly about his original preconception of how this visit would go. Lines of young recruits with crewcuts standing at attention as he filed by. Shaking their hands and patting them on the back. Their grins broadening as they recognized him as the man that made sure they made it home each time. No, staring down the hole at the grip soles on Bulldog’s boots as they vanished into the depths ahead of him had no part of that reverie.

  The temperature must be rising because Bulldog continued to move along at a good clip. Finally, they came to a halt, and Kendricks heard the sound of metal on metal. Bulldog pulled their way past a large baffle into a circular concrete tunnel, and Kendricks followed. Once on the other side, Bulldog pushed back past Kendricks to shut and toggle the baffle closed.

  Passing by Kendricks again, Bulldog clapped him on the shoulder. “Up and at ‘em, now we go down.” After moving forward several meters, they disappeared over the edge of a large circular gap. Kendricks crawled after them and stuck his head out over the brink. Bulldog descended ahead, using the metal rungs sunk into the side of the silo-shaped opening. Thrusting an arm through the ladder, they beckoned Kendricks on. “It’s only an airshaft, the easiest access to the bunker when the opposition decides to show their hand.”

  With that, the other continued downward. Kendricks lowered himself over the edge and followed. The musculature of the suit did all the work. He swung down over and over in what felt like an unending descent. Then his boots hit the floor, jarring him to a halt. More tunnels fanned out in several directions. Bulldog cranked open the seal on a round door.

  Kendricks looked at the airlock door and remembered walking into the RES chamber for the first time. All the many possible recipes that had waited to be injected into the RES studded the tank’s exterior. The scientists had debated about launching one of the sequences to see what might be created. A scan of the tank had found an anomaly at the center that made them hesitate. A very small piece of neutronium floated in the very center of the tank. Other views of the tank indicated a mechanism that would introduce the super-dense material to the liquid RES in the tank. So, they had worked delicately, fully aware that any move could set off a chain reaction that would crush everything into one small glowing remnant.

  With that memory fresh in his mind, Kendricks stepped into the corridor, noticing long strings of lights tacked to the walls. A series of round tanks nearby were all too familiar—RES tanks. What the hell are they doing out here? he wondered. Bulldog marched straight by without giving him an opportunity to ask questions. Here and there, people encased in RES-suits moved purposely about. When they passed them, the others would stop, turn, hesitate, then slowly turn back to work. The visions that Kendrick had of any kind of welcome rapidly faded away.

  The arching roof of the underground bunker disappeared into
the distance. Bulldog selected a doorway and stepped through into an airlock. Kendricks waited patiently as the lights went from red to green, indicating the completion of the cycle. Then he followed the sergeant into a decontamination chamber. After a quick cycle that removed most of the dust they accumulated in their crawl, they moved down a rough-hewn hallway. Bulldog marched down to the end and opened the last door on the right, waving Kendricks inside.

  “Have a seat, Doctor,” offered the sergeant, who then walked along the table in the room’s center. Kendricks sank onto a padded bench. Bulldog stopped at the end of the table in front of a large display screen and reached up for the togs of the RES-suit’s helmet. When the helm came off and clattered to the table, Kendricks expected anything but a woman’s face staring back at him. The HUD still labeled her in green, but the moniker “Bulldog” now read “Dr. Catherine Brenstrum” with an image that matched her face right down to the large bruise across her cheek. She allowed herself to drop into the chair at the head of the table. “So, Doctor, would it surprise you to know that under mission briefings, we labeled this one asset acquisition?”

  Dr. Brenstrum kicked her feet up onto the table and leaned back. “See, Doc, right now, you have absolutely no volition. You might want to take that helm and the rest of the RES-suit off, but you can’t. You are completely 100% under the influence of the psych program—my program. In fact, it feels wrong to even think about doing it. That, my friend, is the real genius of this. With the HUD, we control everything that you see and hear. Since the RES-suit keeps you at a distance in terms of touch and your spine is shunted off to deal with a catastrophic injury, you have no contact with the outside world.”

  “But that doesn’t affect how I think or react, or else I wouldn’t even be able to argue with you,” Kendricks replied.

  “Let’s just say there would be no point in our conversation unless you had some autonomy. Everything you know and consequently trust is fed to you, and the psych program takes complete and absolute advantage of it. Your emotions are modified through the chemicals added to your body through the suit. That’s no surprise; we’ve doped soldiers for decades. Consistently, following the pattern set by the psych program makes you feel good, feel right. So, you do, without a second thought.”

  “But why?”

  “Please, Kendricks, in their heart of hearts, only so many soldiers really want to go to war, and most of those are psychotic or overly patriotic. Both of which tend to get you killed off rather fast. But with the RES-suit, you don’t have that problem anymore. I’m not still in it because I love the damn thing. Too much of me is gone, or would just stop working without the cursed thing. You see, Doc, no matter how many times you knock me down, the RES will pick me right back up.”

  “So, the psych program is what keeps the soldiers going?”

  “Exactly. Now, Kendricks, let’s get to why you are here. You and I are the ones responsible for all of this. All those kids out there walking around half-dead and programmed to do whatever their superiors tell them to do without question—we are responsible for every last one of them. I’m here with my butt on the line. You tell me, you tell me right now what in God’s name makes this something we won’t burn in hell for.”

  Kendricks felt his shoulders slump. She must have given him some autonomy then. He reached up and let the suit carry through the rest of the motion of removing his helm. The heavy piece of composite metal thumped onto the tabletop. He blinked his eyes; he couldn’t seem to focus. Brenstrum was a fuzzy blob off to his right. He took a breath and began.

  “The sun is a fragile thing. Stars last so long that we don’t realize how delicate they are. Too much of one thing or another, heat, density, or gravity, and the balance is upset. I saw the RES tanks on the way in. I take it you found another ship in this system’s Oort Cloud?”

  “Yes, and thanks to your discoveries, we are able to produce more RES. But stick to the point. This is about why we should make more.”

  “As near as we can tell, there is a RES ship in every solar system we’ve come across. They must be Von Neumann machines replicating and then heading off to the next system. But that’s not their real purpose. RES requires energy to start its reaction. That’s one of the reasons you are here. The Sun radiates a lot of energy, inside even more is bouncing about, seeking an exit. The neutronium at the core of the tank, if fed into a runaway RES reaction, then dropped into the sun, could create a massive detonation. Something similar to a gamma-ray burst. Any one of these ships could cause a burst capable of sterilizing an area hundreds of light-years in diameter.”

  Brenstrum made no response; she tapped on the edge of the table with a finger, her head thrown back. Kendricks fought the urge to rub his eye with the bulky gauntlet. “Damn, what happened to my vision?” he asked tiredly.

  “Told you not to look at the sun.”

  Silence filled the room for a moment. Neither of them really knew what to say next. Kendricks settled for reaching for the helm and slamming it onto his shoulders once again. Apparently, he would have to wear it until the damage healed. His fingers snapped the toggles closed, and Brenstrum snapped into crystal clarity again. She leaned forward, slipping her feet down from the tabletop. He wondered if she really understood he never had a choice. That just like the psych program, there was fight and live, or don’t and watch everything on all the civilized worlds slowly die. The scientists never did run one of the RES programs for the bomb’s creators. They were too afraid of any fail-safes that might exist. Just like him, she’d done her duty, created something purposeful that could also be wielded like a weapon. Perhaps the faction outside bombing their bunker remained uninformed about the impending danger. It could be they just believed the soldiers had gone AWOL. Maybe they were safer in their ignorance.

  She picked up her helm, slid it under her arm, and stood up, “On your feet, soldier.” Her jaw clenched tight, and the determination missing from before settled over her features. “Now that we know the enemy, we’ve got a war to fight.”

  Kendricks snapped upright to attention. He really had no choice. The small print of his name in the lower right of the HUD acquired a green underline. At long last, everything felt right in the world.

  Liar's Globe

  Today I stopped the supervolcano under Yellowstone from erupting. At least that’s what I think I saw. I recognized the very scenic waterfall before it launched into the air on a massive gout of magma and ash.

  I had just come down with another day of blue flu since Joey DiFrancesco tossed this round hunk of crystal into my hand and said, “Here you are, copper. You keep this, and I’ll come quietly,” changing my mundane world completely.

  ~*~

  It really was almost that easy. We’d stormed the bunker of the most successful hood in the city, and he surrendered to me. Just like that. Maybe a little bit more complicated, but not by much. Emaciated, barely able to move, he smelled as if he hadn’t washed in days. I’d swung low around a corner, and there he sat, laid back on a pile of trash bags like a king on a garbage throne. He laughed, squinted at me, and said, “I know you, boy. Your father was a good beat cop. Always said he’d get me. Well, he never did. Bet you have that same heroic streak in you, too, right? Well, here you are, copper. You keep this, and I’ll come quietly.” His rag-bandaged hand held up a fist-sized sphere of bluish crystal.

  “Drop it,” I said, following procedure. He let it slide from nerveless fingers to roll down the side of a full black bag to skitter across the uneven floor toward me. I left it behind and stepped in to cuff him. As I bent him down to kneel on the floor, flicking the cuffs around his wrists, he gasped, “Don’t forget your gift. It shows you things in the form of lies—whatever it shows you won’t happen.”

  Despite my misgivings, I found my hand closing around its cool surface. Something danced on its face briefly, and then I shoved it into my pocket, raising Joey up to his feet and pushing him ahead of me down the alley. “See something?” he giggled. “How do you
think I avoided you cops this long? Every time I saw you catching me, I knew I was safe.”

  I put my hand in the small of his back and pushed, just a little harder than I needed to, and he stumbled. Crazy bastard. Eventually, we came out to the flashing lights and strobes of cameras, and I got to be the hero for the first time.

  I rode the high for two days, face in all the papers, carried on the shoulders of my fellow officers, and smoking one of the chief’s good cigars. Then I got to be me again and pound the pavement. All the while, Joey’s gift sat on my nightstand table, waiting, quiet like a cancer, already changing things without a warning signal at all.

  It took Simmons falling in front of a train to wake me up. I’d seen a flash of it in the morning when I’d glanced at the globe in passing. I’d rubbed my eyes, and when I looked back, there was nothing. So, I’d gone ahead and got breakfast, deciding I hadn’t gotten enough sleep.

  He wasn’t really a bad guy, but nature made Simmons tall and gawky with too much elbow in tight places like a squad car or a stakeout. He’d chased a carjacker toward a railway bridge with me trailing behind and then slid down the embankment after the perp. Being Simmons, the slide turned into an all-out plunge when his quarry appeared out of the shadows to shove him onto the rails. Simmons barely missed the third rail and somehow kept rolling as the afternoon high-speed train flew through, kicking up litter and dust.

  I stood there staring at him. When I’d seen it in the morning—it looked like he hadn’t made it. Now I had to wonder. What had I seen?

  Another thought caught at me. When I’d first picked up the globe, I’d briefly seen an image of Joey DiFrancesco in a courtroom on the witness stand. I assumed I’d just glimpsed a little of my own desire for him while riding on the adrenaline high. A pattern began to come together slowly in my thoughts. After I got Simmons up and across the tracks, I realized our quarry made good their escape. We weren’t exactly happy to call it in, but Simmons said he was lucky that only his right ankle felt weak after the whole incident. I got him to the car and drove back to the station. When we walked in, the whole building buzzed with the news: Joey DiFrancesco was shot to death while being transported to court. I felt more stunned than Simmons because the truth began to dawn on me. What had DiFrancesco said? “Whatever it shows you won’t happen.” Had Joey avoided capture for so long by looking for images where he was caught and moving every time the globe showed him as free and safe?