“Sleep is vital for you right now. I'm going to give you a small dosage. Just enough to help you along.” She pressed an air needle just above the left elbow.
“Would you find Daniel?” Lara whispered as she struggled to keep her eyes open. Within seconds, her head tilted gently to one side and the eyes did, at last, close.
The sleep that she had so desperately sought now swept over in a rush.
She felt at peace.
Finally.
Peace.
Sleep.
And then, out of the blanket of desolate darkness, came images. She felt herself resisting them, but knew it wasn’t possible. And she succumbed to them.
Dreams.
..
..
These are stars that prick through the darkness, traffic lights along a road that has no end.
I could stay here.
None of these stars is identical. Most are bright white, but none of them is the same size. Few, in fact, seem to be near. But others are yellow, even orange. I can almost see the red ones.
Are they twinkling for me?
I want to stay here.
But wait!
Now there is a rip between the stars, a long crooked streak of light tearing through the core of space. The stars closest to this rip are shimmering, shaking, and the rip is growing larger.
I see a hand.
It's tearing open the rip even more, and the stars are thrown back, many of them bobbing as if on the sea. Quickly now, I am losing sight of the stars. The glare is overwhelming the pricks of light from these distant beacons.
“Who are you?”
Daniel is pushing back the curtain, stepping from the shower. His body is drenched, and he grabs for a towel and shovels it through his hair.
And now he is dry, and he is asking me to join him.
“Where have you been?” He says.
“Reading. Just like you suggested.”
“Good. I want you to be a strong captain.”
“I want to be respected, Daniel.”
“You are.”
“Not always.”
“More than you believe.”
I reach out and place one hand upon his chest. The skin is warm and tight, and I can feel his heartbeat.
“What did you learn today?” He says.
“I reviewed the bylaws of supervision of immediate subordinates. I didn't realize the captain had so much authority.”
Daniel's chest is much larger now, and my hand plays with the contours of his muscles. He leans forward, opens his mouth wide and kisses me.
“And what intrigued you most about the handling of immediate subordinates?”
“Like you?”
“Just like me.”
“Well, I discovered that the captain of a vessel has the unilateral right to reassign or suspend any associate officer who so much as implies that he may not follow an order to the letter.”
“That seems harsh, doesn't it?”
“Yes, but I'm also allowed to tell the officer to report to the captain's quarters and provide me with intercourse until he agrees totally with my order.”
Daniel is smiling now. “That's a sound idea,” he says. “Remember, I've always said you couldn't totally gain the respect of the crew unless they knew you intimately.”
He wears a beard now. It is thin, well-groomed, politely outlining his chin and mouth. His cheekbones are depressed, his eyes recessed.
I kiss him.
“What would you like to hear?” He says, and I think ... I think ...
“Zephirion,” I say. “Noel Zephirion.. One of his works from the end of the Neoteric movement.”
“Post-Depression?”
“Oh, yes. Definitely. His music was much more romantic during those years.”
Daniel kisses me, and then from somewhere I hear the accord of French horns and violins. The harmony of love.
We're together now – he has removed the sheets from my bed, and he lays flat upon one mattress, and I fall on top of him. He is a thicker, harder man.
“Do you believe in the union?” He says, and I close my eyes.
“I believe in Zephirion. I believe in love.”
“Do you believe in the union?”
“With you? Yes.”
I am rolling now, and he is briefly on top of me, and again, the reverse.
Someone is watching us – I can tell.
“Do you believe in the union?”
“With you? Yes.”
I open my eyes, and he is tense. I can tell.
“Would you like a massage?” I ask.
“That would be wonderful.”
His wide, drooping red eyes blink once, and now his brown mushroom head retreats beneath a green, wrinkled cone.
I hear a squish.
His two tentacles are flailing about, getting in my way, so I brush them aside. I hate it when they are this wet. I will massage his feet first.
I crawl down the bed to the base of his stump and push back his food sac. It is bloated, and it gurgles as I press up on it.
The bristles at the base of his stump are wilted, a deep green. He is very tired.
“Will you always believe in the union?” I hear him say in muffled tones.
“Your feet are sour,” I tell him.
There is no movement. No sound.
Where are my arms?
“Will you always believe in the union?”
“Your feet are sour.”
We float, this bed and you and I. We float amid the stars.
There are so many stars.
All different shapes. Some are white, some are yellow, even orange. I can almost see the red ones.
No movement. No sound.
But now there is a voice, yet not from this bed. Someone else is with us.
“I remember you so well,” the voice utters.
My head turns quickly, and there he is! Sitting among the stars. His legs are crossed, but there is no chair.
He is naked.
“Hello, Daniel,” I say.
No movement. No sound. He stares at me, and I wait.
Finally, he speaks again.
“Do you remember me? We met on Erachnus-Ceti?”
“Where?”
“I am Sh'hun. We met on Erachnus-Ceti. It has been 15 years. Do you remember me?”
“Yes. But you look like Daniel.”
“Did you believe in the union?”
“Who are you?”
“I am Sh'hun. I left Erachnus-Ceti and came with you.”
“To complete the union?”
No movement. No sound. He stares past me, and I look to the bed.
I do not feel my heart. This is not Daniel on the bed.
His food sac gurgles again.
I want to scream.
Scream!
He's bleeding!
Scream!
..
..
Lara awoke and flung herself out of bed. She stumbled around in the dark momentarily and struggled to catch up with her breathing. Her knee buckled as she collided with something, and she did, finally, scream.
“Damn, damn, damn! Computer, give me half lighting!”
A soft banana glow settled in, and Lara stepped gingerly to her bed, sat down.
She rubbed her aching knee with one hand and placed the other hand over her heart. The beat was rapid, but she could sense it returning to a rational pace.
“What am I doing?” She said, and in that instant she remembered seeing Daniel sitting among the stars. The nausea rose swiftly, and she felt her stomach on the move.
“Ohmigod! Daniel!” She cupped one hand over her mouth and raced out of her quarters.
She dashed awkwardly along the corridor through the habitation sector, and her knee cried out in pain. At corridor's end, a long deep viewport distracted Lara, and she stopped. Through the glass she saw cottony swirls of clouds sitting at
op a field of blue.
Earth.
This planet might as well have been Centauri III for all she cared at the moment.
“At least the Fyal responded when we called to them.” She followed her words with a harsh, mocking laugh. “Even if they did try to take everything away from us.”
She leaned on the viewport, rested her head against the glass and whipped the hair from her face.
She swallowed hard.
“We said this would be the greatest day, and the start of the rest of our lives, didn't we?” She whispered as she stared down upon the Earth. “We could have been married in just a couple of months, and there are some really beautiful spots in Oregon to raise a family. Just beautiful. I think it would have been just what you'd like. Just exactly what you'd like.”
She licked her dry lips, tried to wipe away the swell of tears. She proceeded to map out in her mind the marriage of Daniel Loche and Lara Singer, the birth of their first child, the first day of school, the second child, and finally, the grandchildren. All those descendants to tell the stories of the two great explorers who found another world and another civilization.
Suddenly, the pain rose up faster than she could withstand, and Lara began to sob. She crumpled to the floor beneath the viewport and laid on her side.
And she cried until the pain set her chest on fire.
23
A
gain, the voice echoed throughout Second Sunrise. “Countdown to Sprint launch at 20 minutes.”
Rather than head directly into the hub of operations, Adam Smith turned toward the habitation ring. He realized that all he could do in the command pod for the next 15 minutes or thereabout was to simply look important. Rand, he was certain, would have a firm grip on the final duties before launch. Instead, he thought of Janise's parting words, and he realized that for a short while, he had a more important place to be.
His personal quarters were spartan despite 19 years in one space. He rarely ventured outside the mountain in those two often-frustrating decades. A couple of shelves of books, a sturdy bed, soft lighting and a small table were all he ever required. Arilynn was another matter entirely.
He stepped into her adjoining room, walking into the brilliant pink light that bathed her personal retreat for the four years since she first lost control of her mind.
The walls were papered in thousands of computer schematics, innocuous phonetic symbols and rambling lists drawn by Arilynn Smith. In one corner of the room, decorated with cushions, two swivels, a vanity and a double bed, a stack of poster-size pads of paper stood two meters high. Paper was an expensive commodity, for sure, but after Arilynn fell victim to MassGrid delirium, it became part of Second Sunrise's regular list of smuggled goods.
She was sitting on the bed, dressed as she was every day in a nondescript beige bodysuit, her legs crossed and the ever-present poster pad propped up in her lap, braced by her legs. She was a tall, thin woman – just like her mother. Sea blue eyes were in a trance as her left hand moved wildly across the surface of the pad. Her tongue emerged sporadically to wet her lips. Occasionally, her right hand would flex, then scratch her entirely bald head.
Arilynn was 28 years old, but at this moment, her father saw her as the spunky and occasionally cranky toddler who kept life in perspective during the difficult years following the demise of ASTROcom and the rise of the ECs.
He sat down upon the edge of the bed. She glanced up for less than a second, then returned to her visual fixture upon the poster pad.
“Ari? I have a message for you. It's from Janise. Ari?”
She did not immediately respond, and he pressed thumb and forefinger against the bridge of his nose and into the corners of his eyes. He sighed, knowing full well that Ari was very aware of his presence and of his words, but that it might take a few moments for her disjointed mind to process it all.
Some days were better than others, and occasionally they managed productive conversations. On other occasions, she was trapped in the embrace of these never-ending images upon paper and made time for a few cursory words.
Arilynn fell into none of the centuries-old diagnoses that came with mental disorders. MassGrid delirium was something unlike anything that had come before it. Unlike many illnesses where the brain's synaptic links broke down, thus crippling the ability for cognitive thought and reason, MGD took the completely opposite route of sending the human mind into overdrive.
Before the delirium overwhelmed Arilynn, she was considered a migmaster, a woman capable of manipulating her way through MassGrid with the proficiency and cunning equal to or surpassing that of an actual MG designer. It was easily her greatest talent – and an enormous asset to Second Sunrise, to which she vowed lifelong loyalty in the name of her murdered mother.
She went places within MG that the best of Second Sunrise's techs could not begin to penetrate, let alone knew existed. She circumvented many security blocks and, although never able to penetrate the holy grail of their search – the PAC's microwebs – the data she acquired was vital in the black-market purchases of other technologies, including some of the armaments used in retrofitting the two Sprints about to launch.
The delirium came on without warning. A literal overload of information triggered a malfunction in the biochemical synapses connecting the stream chip to the brain. And like in all previous documented cases of MGD, a stunning surge of data poured through the link from across MassGrid at a rate far too fast for the human mind to comprehend. More significantly, the ability to shut down the link was lost.
The next 36 hours were the most painful in Arilynn's life – a nonstop migraine, partial blindness and the inability to control her urinary flow. Second Sunrise's lone doctor followed the only accepted procedure for dealing with this problem – she surgically removed the chip and kept Arilynn sedated for more than a week. The link was gone, but the damage was done.
All the data transferred into her mind in those horrible few hours re-emerged into her consciousness as a kingdom of barbarians trapped in a cage, battling for escape. They fought her, and they fought each other. She released data by drawing it. Arilynn, however, was no artist. She became enraged when the data that fought to be released did not appear properly on the canvas before her. She went into fits, pulling out her hair by the roots, bloodying her scalp. The remaining hair was shaved off for her protection, and in time, it simply ceased to grow back. The doctor later recommended installing the pink tint on the lighting in her quarters, reasoning it might help provide a degree of soothing.
“Ari?” He spoke to her again, and this time she smiled, looked up into her father's eyes. “Ari, your friend Janise wanted me to tell you that she loves you very much.”
“Thatnice,” she said, her words falling over each other, as they always did. “Janisesingme?”
“Yes. She'll sing to you when she comes to visit the next time. Soon, I promise.”
“Devilbox can'tgetright. Devilbox.”
She pointed to the pad, and Adam noticed her left hand stopped drawing. Her looked at her latest sketch, and he could make neither heads nor tails of it. Somehow, it could have resembled a dog bone, but it was too geometrically stilted. He was relieved, at least, that Ari didn't seem ready to throw a fit because this image, whatever it was, did not turn out like her mind was telling her.
“Do you know what this is?” He asked.
“Needcolorunderneath devilbox blue. Gotblue, gotblue that'sit, gotblue. Devilboxblue. Devil'sinbluebox.”
“You want it to be blue?”
“Devil'sinbluebox comingsoon watchout devil'sbluebox. devilbox.”
He put a caressing hand against her face. “Ari? Are you hungry? It's almost time to eat.”
“Butdevilboxblue watchout comingsoon. Eathungry devilbox butOK eathungry.”
“Good. Remember.” He made certain their eyes were locked upon each other as he spoke. “Remember, three bells is eathungry time.”
She smiled wid
e; she understood.
Within a year of the beginning of her MGD, she learned to eat meals, go to bed, and visit the women's latrine on a schedule.
“Daddy has to go now,” he whispered. “Be good and draw until eathungry time. I love you, Ari.”
“Lovedaddytoo.”
He started to back away, and then his daughter did something that he had not experienced in months, at least not when she was in this state. She leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek.
He stopped and stared in wonderment, and then as he felt those verboten tears begin to well up, Adam bent over and kissed Ari upon the forehead and walked quickly from the room.
He couldn't allow himself to cry. Not now. This was a moment where strength was essential, where he had to show the courage that had carried them to this moment.
“Countdown to Sprint launch at 13 minutes.”
24
T
he sun was setting on the Atlanta Federated District. Bryan Drenette didn’t notice.
He had smoked what he considered his last cigar down to a nub, the butt no more than an inch from his lips. He took a final drag, inhaled some of the smoke and allowed it to settle into his lungs until he felt appropriately dizzy. Then he tossed the cigar into a glass that had but scant drops of vodka.
His office was silent, and on any other evening, he would have found it so easy to fall back into this sofa and slip into a long, deep sleep. But he knew there was vital work to be done – the kind of effort that was going to make all the difference if Second Sunrise was to succeed tonight.
He took one look at his workstation and decided that if he was going to break a couple dozen Penetration Laws, then he was going to do it in relative comfort. He sat back against the sofa and pressed his Fountain.
“SS cross-link,” he whispered. “Initiate transfer of search protocol matrix to private link. Security authorization Delphi-19477771-Drenette-001. Access MG interface on priority layers 31 through 34. Disregard isolated security blocks through Mark 5 as permissible by authorization Delphi-22388884-Drenette-002. Deny cross-link for all duplication and recording nanites. Engage anti-nanite security quash. Authorization Delphi-45522229-Drenette05.”
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