Target Rich Environment

by Larry Correia

  Except that hypersleep isn’t really sleep, and there’s nothing hyper about it. That’s just creative marketing. I used to be able to appreciate that sort of thing. Your body isn’t sleeping, it’s artificially shut down until it is one faint electrical impulse away from death. Space travelers are placed into a chemical coma and frozen. Everybody knows this, but nobody who has to go through it likes to dwell on it. After all, it was statistically extremely safe—the advertisements said so—and when you get decanted you are ready to experience life on an exciting new world.

  The first humans who traveled between gates are all dead now. Back then we didn’t understand that entering REM sleep while your body was in null space was a one way ticket to crazy town. We still don’t know why it happens, we just know that it does. So now they practically turn you into a corpse, freeze your brain, and artificially pump nanobots through your arteries, all to keep your mind safely blank while you’re flying through the space between the walls.

  By extremely safe, they mean that hypersleep accidents are one in a billion. Those are excellent odds.

  I should have stayed on Calhoun and played the lottery.

  Dr. Riady studied the holo. The survivor’s vitals were decent. Not bad considering what he must have gone through, though it appeared that he hadn’t been in the best physical health to begin with. She brought up another screen. Long term poor dental hygiene, skeletal degradation, muscle mass, and cardiovascular consistent with a sedentary lifestyle, and the active scans were showing that he was going through severe withdrawal symptoms from the psychotropic cocktail he’d been on for the last fifteen years.

  “How did you survive?” she muttered. Atlas had a small defense force, mostly made up of veterans of the Zealand Conflict, now retired from the military. Those were genetically modified, nano-enhanced super soldiers who’d fought through one of the worst guerilla wars in history, yet somehow they were missing, and an unemployed, mentally ill couch potato had lived. “Why you and not them?”

  When she went back to the first display, she found Leland Chang staring directly into the monitor. “I know modesty is an outdated concept, but may I have some clothing?”

  “Oh, my apologies, Mr. Chang. I’ll have a servitor bring you some. We didn’t intend to make you uncomfortable.”

  “Thank you . . . And who are you?”

  “I’m Dr. Riady, medical officer of the Alert.” He seemed rather lucid, probably due to the stimulants she’d administered. Dr. Riady decided to push forward before he descended into another incoherent funk. “I know you’ve been through a lot, but I have some questions.”

  “Why?” Chang went back to staring at his hands. “You won’t believe me anyway.”

  “I have to believe you. I’ve seen your medical history. I know you have no imagination to speak of, so I doubt you’d be able to lie to me very convincingly anyway.”

  “That’s a cruel way to put it.”

  “But factually true.” She didn’t mention that the room’s biometric scanners also made an excellent lie detector of sorts. “Let me level with you, Mr. Chang. Our captain is extremely concerned, and I have no doubt that when we’re able to send a burst back to Command, they will be even more so.”

  Chang looked up, suddenly desperate. “Don’t send a message. You can’t cycle the gate.”

  “Why?”

  “It might spread.”

  “What might spread?”

  “The truth.”

  One in a billion . . . Sounds like a lot until you realize just how many humans are traversing the stars. Keziah’s Disorder, they call it, named after the first poor sucker who came out of hypersleep screaming about ambivalent squid gods and bleeding from his ears, mind all buggered up from daring to dream in null space.

  You see, the dead aren’t supposed to dream. It violates the rules.

  The greatest medical minds of the galaxy were fascinated by Keziah. Dreaming in hypersleep had done something to his brain. It turns out that your organs begin failing after only a few months without REM sleep, so he was crazy and dying. The scientists jumped on this one. First off, dreaming while in hypersleep was technically impossible. Second, doctors love that technically impossible shit. And third, the space lines really wanted this thing cured before the news scared off too many potential colonists. Drugs forced Keziah’s brain through all the stages of sleep and saved his physical body. The doctors gave each other awards. Colonists kept on paying for temporary death.

  But the treatment couldn’t make Keziah dream. Since science had never found a mammal that didn’t dream, they couldn’t realize just how important that process actually was, how every single bit of goodness in life was attached to it.

  A year later Keziah stepped in front of a train.

  Forty years after that, I was trapped in a metal tube, hurtling through space, dead but dreaming.

  “Can you draw the graffiti symbols you saw for me, Mr. Chang?”

  “I can try.” One of the servitors in the quarantine room hovered over and handed her patient a stylus. Chang took it and began writing. “My memory is fine, but I can tell you now that I won’t be able to convey everything. I had a friend who said their writing had nuance . . . I doubt I’ll be able to do it justice.”

  “Because of your condition?”

  “Something like that.”

  Dr. Riady tapped her finger on the projection. “Enlarge.” She’d never seen anything like the strange letters before. They looked like gibberish to her. Making sure the intercom was off, she addressed the Alert’s AI. “Emma, can you read that?”

  “The symbols are similar to those recorded by the Dark Side Dig archeological teams. I will translate. Processing.”

  Chang’s hand-drawn symbols floated before her. Gradually the strange runes twisted into familiar words.

  “Translation complete, however I estimate with only 87% accuracy.”

  From His dark house in the mighty city beneath the sands beneath the winds, He offers freedom to the living children of the pillars of heaven. The day has come to heed the call of dreams.

  When you’re paranoid and prone to sudden fits of violent rage, you don’t collect many friends.

  Thomerson was one of the few people who still came to visit me. It was probably because he felt guilty. He was a linguist, and we’d worked together deciphering the Calhoun pyramid. He’d been the one to recommend me for the Dark Side Dig contract. We’d even made the trip together. I believe his was far more pleasant.

  He sat on the edge of the couch, like he was scared he’d get his pants dirty. My settlement from the space line had paid for the apartment, my treatments, and anything else I might conceivably want for the rest of my life, if I could be bothered to want anything, but I wasn’t much for decorating. Or cleaning . . . Or much else really.

  “You should open your windows more, Leland. You’ve got a marvelous view here.”

  I humored him. “Fine.” The covers automatically lifted. My apartment building was suspended from the side of the main chasm. It kept us out of the wind, and we could see most of the undercity from here, as well as a long sliver of howling red sky.

  “When’s the last time you went outside?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. A few weeks.”

  “I could arrange a day pass to the Dig for you.” Thomerson was fat, so his leaning forward conspiratorially just looked awkward. “I can even get you into the Temple. It’s pretty exciting stuff. They think it might even finally answer the big question.”

  “What killed off all the Atlanteans?”

  “I wish you wouldn’t call them that. It makes them sound like a joke.”

  “I don’t make jokes.”

  “I know. Never mind. But listen, Leland, this is big. All this time we’ve been trying to reconstruct how they actually lived. There’s been glimmers of a religious philosophy here and there in their art, but nothing like this. They’re calling it the Temple, cathedral, whatever, but it really is.”

  Fifte
en years ago, that would have been incredibly exciting. “And?”

  “This isn’t just their religion, but this is their version of a doomsday cult. This is the newest construction we’ve ever found. It dates to the end. They were on their way out and they knew it. You know how hard their alphabet is to translate, so much nuance . . .” Thomerson sighed wistfully. “But this reeks of desperation. We never knew if they had an afterlife myth like most of humanity’s various cultures, but they did! They were looking for a way out, just like primitive man.”

  “Fascinating,” I lied.

  “I know, right? We’ve seen that they had a god figure, we’ve seen it over and over again, but this is the first time that we’ve found an opposite. Obviously human social mores don’t translate, but consider it a devil figure if you will. They knew their species was going extinct so they were making a proverbial deal with their devil.”

  The only reason that I hadn’t killed myself yet was because part of me was terrified that what I’d seen in null space was real, and I was too afraid to find out for sure. “I’ll pass on the day trip.”

  “They were as frightened by the mysteries of death as primitive man. The carvings said that this devil came to their entire species, appearing in their dreams and making them an offer . . .”

  Even winged cucumbers had dreams . . . “Wonderful . . . It’s getting late. Maybe you should—”

  But Thomerson wasn’t listening. He was still talking, staring off into space. Almost like he’d forgotten I was there at all. “They took his offer . . . Imagine that? An offer that an entire civilization couldn’t refuse. They were a rather metaphysical lot, believing in spirit worlds nearly as much as they believed in the real world. They still believed in magic, and perhaps that’s why their science lagged behind . . . Regardless, they accepted the devil’s deal. The word they used translates to the Great Becoming . . . and upon his will the world became undone.”

  “What?”

  Thomerson stood up suddenly and then shuddered, like he’d begun to swoon. Flushed, he placed one fat hand on his fat cheek. “I’m sorry. I was feeling a bit dizzy. Forgive me, Leland. I’ve not been sleeping well.”

  I escorted him to the door. “Yeah, I’ve heard on the feeds that’s been a problem out there lately. Something about the background noise keeping people awake at the Dig.”

  He collected his hat and cloak. “Yes. There’s been some accidents. Tired workers and whatnot.”

  “Well, be careful then.” I steered him out, then closed the door behind him. “Full secure.” The locks sealed. My paranoia temporarily mollified, I walked back into my apartment. “Close view.” The covers began dropping.

  But not before I noticed something black and hairy, pressed against the bottom of the glass, watching me. At first I thought it was a monkey, with a face like an ugly baby, but it had the shimmering wings of a fly, and in the brief moment our gaze met, its mouth moved like it was trying to say something, with a mouth filled with all too human teeth, and then it was covered.

  I rubbed my eyes. “Open view.”

  The monkey-fly-man-baby was gone.

  I went into the bathroom and took another pill.

  “Come inside, Doctor. I just got word Drop Team 2 just entered the lower levels of the city. I’m waiting for their report.”

  She entered the captain’s chamber and saluted. “The survivor’s been speaking freely, Sir.”

  “So what’s the verdict?” Captain Hartono didn’t need to ask; he could already tell by her haggard expression that she hadn’t gotten anything good, but he needed it spoken out loud so her recommendation could be recorded by the ship’s AI. If the Atlas event was the opening act of a new war or first contact with an unknown species, then Hartono was going to cover his ass as best as possible in case it all went sideways and Command needed somebody to hang.

  Riady stopped in front of his desk. “I’m afraid I can’t make sense of the survivor’s story . . .”

  “And?”

  She gave him a look that said do I have to?

  Hartono addressed the Alert’s AI. “Emma, stop recording. This is now a private conversation.”

  “Yes, Captain.” The AI gave the audible response for Riady’s benefit. “Recording stopped.”

  Riady was a veteran and had been a combat medic during the bloody Zealand Conflict. Being genetically modified, she was as close to human physical perfection as possible, and had been decorated for valor against the vicious alien Martor. So, frankly, it unnerved Hartono to see her frightened.

  “Have a seat.” He nodded and a chair rose up through the floor. “What is it, Doctor?”

  Riady sat uncomfortably. “Chang is talking, but . . .” She rubbed her face in her hands and sighed. “I sort of wish he wasn’t.”

  “Send me the transcripts.”

  She blinked. “Done.”

  They took him a moment to process. “This description can’t be right. There are no residual signatures showing any ships coming into the system. We’ve checked the whole city, but there’s not a bit of DNA down there that doesn’t belong to a colonist of record. It couldn’t have been alien.”

  “That’s the thing, Captain . . . I don’t think it was alien.”

  Hartono’s eyes narrowed. “I’m not liking your other option.”

  There was a flash transmission behind one of his eyes. A drop team had found something on the bottom level. Open live feed. Public.

  The hologram appeared on his desk between them, obviously being reconstructed in three dimensions from multiple helmet cams. It was a mangled body, or perhaps bodies . . . It was hard to tell. Hartono willed the hologram to rotate slowly. “What is that thing?”

  The AI answered, having only needed a fraction of a second to review every cataloged organism in the universe. “The physical structures match no known entity.”

  “I want samples,” Hartono said.

  The drop team had already taken one. A strand of DNA appeared floating in the holo, listed as a partial match.

  Martin, Eliza J.—Atlas Colonist.

  Chamberlain, Harold R.—Atlas Colonist.

  Geist, Terron I.—Atlas Colonist.

  Names continued to scroll by. Dozens of them.

  Hartono killed the feed. Riady had unconsciously reached into her uniform, pulled out a small silver crucifix, and was fingering it nervously. He hadn’t known she was religious.

  “Emma, begin recording.”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  “Doctor Riady, what is your medical recommendation for the lone Atlas survivor?”

  “Since I’m unable to gain any meaningful intel through interviews with Leland Chang, I recommend that we perform a memory lift immediately. Let the record show that the medical officer is fully aware this procedure may prove fatal to the subject.”

  “Alert command concurs with this recommendation. Expedite.”

  While the gate was closed I was limited to Atlas local feeds. Considering it was the apocalypse, you’d have thought it would have been more obvious, but my fellow colonists simply blundered toward their inevitable Great Becoming. Nobody realized that the story about the alarming increase in sleep disorders was truly that important. The Atlas Sleep Clinic blamed it on the harmonics from the wind.

  I didn’t go out much, but I wasn’t a complete hermit. I knew most of my neighbors by name and was always as polite to them as social obligations demanded. There was a shopping mall beneath my building and I went there whenever my food dispenser told me it was nearly empty.

  I’d lost track of how many days it had been since I’d last been outside. The first thing I noticed was that Atlas City Public Works was slacking. Normally the corridors were tidy, but I saw litter, and even abandoned sacks of trash left in corners. I’d not read about any labor strikes. Then I recoiled as a large black bug landed on my lips. I swatted it away, and it buzzed off angrily. Odd. Insect pests had inevitably followed man across the stars, but normally they were kept under tight control in a seale
d colony. This wasn’t the wretched undercity.

  The usually busy market was remarkably dead. There were a few people standing listlessly on corners, as if unsure of what they were waiting for. I saw only a handful of shoppers, and they seemed almost furtive, keeping their heads down and shoving products into their carts, almost like they didn’t even care what they were hoarding. There was a teenager leaning next to my destination’s entrance, seemingly staring off into space, obliviously listening to music and watching a holo on the inside of his glasses. I went inside.

  “I’ve come for my order. I’m Leland Chang from the two hundred and sixteenth level.”

  The girl didn’t respond. She was focused on the screen in front of her. I thought this was a typical lazy employee, ignoring customers while she watched funny videos, but when I leaned over the counter the screen was blank. “Hello . . .” I waved my hand in front of the clerk’s face. “Hello.”

  She blinked rapidly. “Huh? Sorry. I’m really tired. I’ve not been sleeping good.”

  “I take pills for that.” The clerk handed me the compressed box of protein sludge. When food has no flavor, you simply purchase whatever keeps you alive. “Thank you.”

  When I walked back outside I noticed that the power light on the teenager’s glasses was off. He was engrossed in absolutely nothing. A large black fly was walking around, unnoticed, on his pimply face.

  The servitors had secured Leland Chang to the slab.

  “What’re you doing to me?” He sounded more resigned than afraid.