Mind's Horizon

by Eric Malikyte

  "Sorry," Hugo said. "I was just trying to—"

  "Go help Mathias bring the rest of the supplies in," Nico said. "Now."

  Hugo sulked away like a sad puppy. She could almost imagine his tail tucked between his legs.

  Nico put his arm around her, but his embrace was hollow. He was only doing this for her; she knew he didn't give a damn about what happened to Eddy.

  She felt like she was standing beside herself, watching things from the outside. Tears burned trenches down her chapped cheeks.

  She remembered the first time she met Eddy.

  Ira and Nico had been living in an underground bunker for several months. He'd found a way to get heat pumping into the place so they could take off their gear. Ira had been asleep at her computer, where she'd been watching the infrared readouts of the surrounding area. It was easy to become paranoid in their isolation; there were hungry predators out in the world.

  It had been the ping from the sensors that woke her up. At first, she'd thought it was another mountain lion. It was large enough on the sensors, and it had wandered into their food storage area. She woke Nico up, and they grabbed their rifles.

  Nico had nearly killed Eddy in that first meeting. He was pigging out on some rations, and had the insignia of the Revolutionists ironed into his coat. That set Nico off instantly. The bullet burrowed into the wall, barely missing its target. They got into a short fistfight after that, which Nico won with an intense precision she'd never seen prior.

  At first she didn't really understand why Nico had tossed him in a makeshift prison cell, but Nico had once been a soldier who served the Feds. He had to be sure Eddy wasn't holding onto any resentment toward his fallen government.

  Eddy had been happy to comply, but she could tell there was still a bit of resentment toward Nico. She was the one who’d convinced Nico to let him out—and that had been the birth of their group. Lena and Hugo, and even Mathias, would be found later, but she’d never really accepted them like she accepted him. She'd stifled other feelings she had for him, because Nico would never approve of her fucking a Revolutionist.

  Now Eddy could be dying.

  She'd never get to say those things, and she wasn't sure she would, even if he pulled through. Ira found herself clutching at the tiles on the ground, crying like a hysterical fool. Nico stood, stoic, next to her, arms crossed.

  Why was she such a coward?

  She wiped her tears.

  "He survived on his own before he met us," Nico said. "And he'll survive this."

  "You're just saying that so I'll stop crying."

  "Maybe."

  Ira sat up. Nico didn't change his posture. Lena opened the doors to the infirmary, stepped out, sulked against the glass, and removed her surgical mask.

  "I've done everything I can," she said. "I think he'll pull through, but he lost a lot of blood. You said a cat did this?"

  Nico nodded, sternly. "Yes."

  "Odd that there's only one cut across the throat," Lena said. "You would think there would be smaller ones accompanying the main—"

  "Are you suggesting he cut his own throat?" Nico said. "I saw the animal myself."

  "No, I'm not, it's just..." Lena stopped. "It's nothing."

  Ira stood up, letting her eyes scan over Eddy's unconscious body through the glass. If he was breathing, it was so slight that her eyes couldn't tell the difference. There were stitches across his throat and a massive bandage on his shoulder.

  "Can I see him?" Ira said.

  Lena nodded. "Just be quick about it. He needs to rest."

  Ira found herself standing next to him, holding his hand. He felt so cold, so weak.

  "Get better fast," she said quietly.

  When she emerged from the med bay, Lena and Nico were talking.

  "Make sure to keep track of his vitals," Nico said. "And report back to me if there's any change, for better or worse. But for now, we need to secure the rest of the supplies and get back to our assigned tasks to fortify this place."

  "Can you please stop talking about him like his life doesn't matter?" Ira said. "He's a person, he's my friend, and he might not make it."

  "He isn't dead yet," Lena said. "And Nico's right, we need to make sure none of us end up like him."

  Ira turned and stormed out. What the hell was the point of surviving if they all lost what made them human?

  She found herself in her room, screaming into a pillow that smelled like dust.

  9

  Mathias and Hugo finished bringing the supplies into the new shelter. Mathias dragged the sled that had held Eddy's body off to the side. Some of Eddy's blood had managed to get onto the supplies on the sled. Mathias picked up one of the boxes. The blood was still fresh.

  That's when it hit him.

  "What are you doing?" Hugo asked.

  Hugo wouldn't understand. He was a fool.

  "Hello?" Hugo said. "You gonna answer me?"

  Mathias set the box down, turned around, and began moving other boxes and supplies into the storage chamber.

  "I was just thinking about how fragile we all are," Mathias said.

  "Yeah, B," Hugo said. "But Lena said she might be able to save him."

  "Not what I mean," Mathias said. "Eddy was quite capable as a survivalist, and still he ended up in the infirmary. Any one of us could be next."

  "I'm just glad it wasn't me who got bit," Hugo said, "you know?"

  Mathias nodded. "This ice age is going to kill us all."

  "Don't talk like that."

  "I'm serious."

  Hugo wouldn't look him in the eye.

  It occurred to Mathias that the others, with their limited understanding, found the experiments conducted in their new home to be grotesque. They, in their ignorance, would never agree to be test subjects, no matter how much he explained the benefits of following through.

  He couldn't stop thinking about the experiment logs. He wanted to know more about what had gone on here. Maybe the reason the inhabitants of this facility were gone was because they’d succeeded in finding the mind's horizon? Maybe they’d escaped this hell?

  He toyed with the small diary he'd found. During the course of the day, he'd managed to steal a few moments to read parts of it. He simply hadn't been able to contain himself. It had belonged to one of the technicians, and complained about Weber's worsening mental state. That he was rambling about communing with aliens and spending hours in his chambers at the top of the facility, doing God knows what.

  Maybe his nightmares weren't nightmares at all, but something else entirely? A window into a larger world, perhaps?

  He'd have to do his research, which meant reading and watching every experiment log he could get his hands on.

  "Tell me something, Hugo," Mathias said. "If you had the chance to escape this frozen hell, would you take it?"

  "That ain't happenin' yo," Hugo said. "The scientists said the whole Earth gonna get covered in ice, fuckin' space cloud did us in."

  "Yes, I'm well aware of the space cloud. Although, to call it a space-cloud is to grossly simplify the science of what is happening to the Earth and the Solar System at large. It's true that passing through the spiral arm of the Milky Way has had a significant dimming effect on the sun, but the Earth has also been bombarded by cosmic rays left over by past stars that have long since gone supernova. This has caused cloud cover to increase exponentially, causing more and more cooling to occur."

  "Yeah..."

  "But what if there were a way to escape this Earth, to travel to a new one. A place where the ice age had never happened?"

  Hugo blinked, probably processing the idea. "Hell yeah, B."

  "That's what I thought..."

  Mathias wasn't much for making friends, but Ira was the gatekeeper of crucial information. Fortunately, it was likely that she would be needing a new friend to console her on her recent loss.

  "I certainly hope poor Eddy pulls through," Mathias said.

  "Yeah," Hugo said.

  CH
APTER TEN

  It was late. The others were in their newly claimed rooms, sleeping soundly on cots provided by the dead. The fluorescent lighting in Weber's personal chamber buzzed uncomfortably overhead.

  Mathias had awoken in the middle of the night again. This time his nightmare had been more intense.

  Mathias had found himself in the middle of that strange red canyon again, beneath the heat of the black comet.

  The masked thing was waiting for him.

  "You again," Mathias said.

  The masked figure raised one of its arms—but they weren't arms at all, but large, disproportionate appendages covered in dark green scales, and segmented in multiple areas, bending and twisting into two massive fingers.

  Those fingers were beckoning him to follow.

  He did as he was bid.

  The masked creature guided Mathias through various lands, across the scorching desert of a world with a black sky, an endless forest full of carnivorous trees, where the sun appeared to be forever on a collision course with the planet, and finally, a world covered in ice, where the blue sun was almost indistinguishable from the sky's dim hue.

  There was a pyramid here, too. The creature's mask twisted into a grin and it pointed its green appendage to the pyramid.

  "What are you saying?" Mathias asked. "That these people faced a similar fate? That they found the mind's horizon and survived?"

  The nightmare had ended shortly afterward. The masked figure hadn't answered.

  Mathias looked around, his eyes burning from fatigue. The room was like the inside of a small pyramid. The walls each tilted to a point, leading to a massive image of that same intersecting triangular symbol he'd seen in the experiment chambers he'd woken up in before.

  Beneath the symbol was a single horizontal sensory deprivation tank composed of cold blue metal. Resting inside, yet again, that same symbol.

  There was a small writing desk near a twin-sized bed with salt-stained sheets.

  Mathias took a seat at the desk and picked up one of the notebooks that were scattered about the surface. He felt the weight in his hands, opened the notebook, ran his fingertips over the words that Weber had penned by hand. He began to read from it, not scanning, but reading each word, every sentence, as if they might contain some hidden secret, a key that might answer the questions that burned within him.

  The first page was far less confident than the Weber that he'd seen in that first log Ira had shown them all. Entry 1: Life is a strange thing. I'm starting this journal in an effort to make sense of my life before I die. The future is not as certain as I like to think, and even I may prove to lack the tenacity required to solve this immense puzzle. There is always the chance of failure. We've been here only a short time, and even so we hear reports of the world falling into chaos. The war turned from a simple civil war fought over the dispute of civil liberties to absolute anarchy, a war for resources, for warmth.

  The sides and loyalties are no longer clear. Now there are thousands of sides and agendas, and each of them can change in an instant if it means victory. When victory is the right to continue providing for your children, and staying warm in an ever-colder world, then what the hell should any man care about law and order?

  As it gets colder, it seems we lose more and more of that which makes us human. Or, is it that the cold returns us to our truest form?

  Mathias turned the page. Entry 2: Today we ran a test of the core systems; one of the tanks shorted out and didn't rise from its resting place the way it's supposed to. The nine tanks must all rise, even if there are not nine bodies available for the tanks. Together, they make a circuit, described throughout Messages from the Abyss. I doubt any of those that looked upon its pages ever realized it. Maybe they knew the cost was too great to obtain such knowledge. The circuit is the key, it's not the eye of the abyss, it's the bridge through it.

  "Messages from the Abyss?" Mathias felt a chill run down his spine as he said it.

  The urge to put the log entry down was strong. Like standing at a crossroads.

  His hands were shaking.

  He kept reading the entry.

  It is nearly complete.

  But, with that knowledge, with things coming close to an end, I fear what would happen if others discovered it. It might seem superficial, or even overkill, but it's incredibly important that we seal off the device so it's not readily accessible to any miscreant that stumbles upon this place after we're gone. Some things should be left behind—like human barbarism. There is a reason why human beings are regarded so lowly in that terrible grimoire. What was it that the author said? “I saw the abyss, and when that pulsing green eye—with its vast tentacles that spread throughout all time, all space, and all universes—when it regarded me, it seemed unamused at what I'd done.”

  It's exactly that reason that I've barred anyone from talking about it in their logs, revealing passwords, or hints to passwords. One would have to have an open book to my very life to be able to tell that, and fortunately, all those libraries have been buried in the ice.

  The final experiment is on a system isolated from the rest of the facility. So, I alone have authority over its operation.

  It's time for my next tank session. Hopefully our friends in the Betelgeuse constellation have more to show me than before.

  Mathias set the notebook down.

  He couldn't take his eyes off the sensory deprivation tank.

  For some reason, he felt a strong urge to rip his long johns off and climb inside.

  John C. Lilly thought he was able to talk to alien beings inside a deprivation tank too, Mathias thought. Maybe he wasn't entirely crazy?

  And if there were other entities out there, maybe they would have some clue how he could activate this final experiment that Weber had talked about? Maybe they could help him escape this frozen hell?

  "You're a fool," he told himself, rubbing his eyes.

  He was sleep-deprived. That was all. All he needed to do was get some sleep, then he'd be back to his old rational self.

  His eyes drifted back to the desk. There were pill bottles scattered messily across the top. One was labeled LSD.

  But, what if?

  What if he could save everyone?

  Before he knew what he was doing, he'd swallowed a tablet and was rushing over to the tank, tossing his long johns to the floor.

  Mathias practically ripped the lid off the tank. He could see his own reflection in the saline solution. His eyes were red. He looked tired, crazed.

  "What am I doing?"

  And yet, he still climbed into the tank. Let himself sink into the lukewarm saline solution, letting it absorb him, erasing the boundaries of his flesh and the rest of the universe with a sweeping hand of warmth. He felt a strong need to reach out. To make contact.

  In college he’d written off all of John C. Lilly’s experiments with LSD and deprivation tanks as bunk.

  But, sitting in the solution. He wondered.

  His arm reached out—it felt strangely detached—and he pulled the cover over his face. He was already feeling effects from the LSD. The ground had already shattered beneath his feet, and he could see the southern hemisphere's constellations. He counted them off: Hydrus, Crux, Circinus, Mensa, and even Pictor. He'd often longed to see them, but had never had the chance to make a trip out below the equator. So much of his life had revolved around the West Coast of the United States, and he'd hardly ever questioned it. All that time spent educating himself, never enough money to take the lavish and expensive trips that his richer peers could afford.

  He wondered if he'd wasted his life.

  No, he thought. I won't go back to then; that's the way I came.

  He looked to the stars, to the cross-shaped constellation Crux, and decided that he'd go there.

  As quickly as he thought it, he was there, among the stars. There was no life around any of the stars that made up the constellation, at least, there hadn’t been for hundreds of millions of years. There had been worlds. Y
es. But they had been the victims of violent cosmic catastrophes similar to ones he'd had fever dreams about as a boy.

  There was a world, not much larger than Earth, that rested within the star's habitable zone. Its surface was twisted and malformed from the violent flares that its parent star expelled, like the tantrums of an angry father, beating his child into submission. Only, the child had been long dead, and the father, the star, was allowed to keep on living, and beating, desecrating the child's corpse with fire.

  He lingered for a time there, watching charred sands blow across the surface, the lava beds raging across blackened cliffs, but he quickly became bored with the sights.

  Mathias moved on.

  Three other worlds, each one more different than the last, all dead, and still he was restless.

  He was desperate to make contact with something. Anything. Then, he saw Betelgeuse creep into view.

  There, he thought.

  He could feel something there, in the constellation. And he remembered that Weber had mentioned it in his journal.

  It was as though something were reaching out to him, pulling him in.

  And before he realized what was happening, his body...no, that wasn't right...his essence...his essence was moving. Stars rushed by him as though he were traveling far beyond the speed of light, until he was orbiting around a glowing orange world, orbiting a blue star.

  There was a presence, floating before his essence. An orange cloud that shimmered like a nebula. It seemed to be studying him.

  Mathias tried to speak, but found that his words didn't work here.

  Images flashed before Mathias's mind: a race of plantlike beings, caring for their young beneath a blue sky with golden clouds. The beings congregate in large buildings and sing. At first, he thinks it's a church that he's seeing, but soon he realizes that there's a kind of energy buildup within the room.

  Then, he's seeing what they see. Inside their collective mind's eye. What they see has made the younger aliens scream.

  Mathias sees the alien world freezing over, he sees their host star dim, flicker, and then vanish, like a candle getting snuffed out.

  The images stopped coming. At first, Mathias was confused.