He finally let out the trapped air in his lungs. “The Truman probes. That’s why we’re out here. I need to chase down every last one of them that he released on the cosmos before I can fully contain the threat he posed in the Amazon.”
“I thought we were out here because the Nautilus’s probes had gotten a fix on an artifact you believe to be a star gate.”
“Yes, yes, but I’m merely hoping to use it to close the distance between us and the Truman probes, to get ahead of them before they can do any damage I can’t undo.”
“And all that malarkey about the gate leading to other gates, in a breadcrumb trail that leads straight to the baddest of all bad-ass civilizations out there that is coming for us to make sure we never access Singularity state?”
“Oh, rest assured we, or another team cloned from us, will be chasing down that theory to see if it’s worth a damn.”
“What’s so important about the Truman probes? You designed them. You ought to know what they’re capable of.”
“Yeah, well, that was before a supersentience decided to make some upgrades. Techa only knows what they’re good for now. You have to think that Truman figured I’d go after them. So he made sure that however many I chased down, I couldn’t get to all of them in time. That means that just one of those things is likely to wreak havoc on a cosmic scale.”
“This is you we’re talking about, Natty. A mind that can tunnel through this universe to the next one if need be. Hell, if that thing we’re closing in on now isn’t a star gate, leave it to you to build one yourself.”
“That’s what has me so worried. Truman would have factored in for that. There’s only one way to stop someone like me—I mean really stop me. You have to make sure I couldn’t tunnel myself into another universe even as this one collapsed all around us, and that I couldn’t take all of humanity with me, with the aid of that artifact on the moon. Don’t forget, he knew about the artifact too. He had to assume that I might get it to work in time to save us from whatever is headed Earth’s way.”
“Your current thinking was that it was meant to relocate the earth to another part of the cosmos, so it could buy Earth and its space military time to regroup, to fight off another round of far superior invaders, to learn just enough about them from the engagement to continue to duck and run; so that with each encounter, we learned a little bit more, came up to speed a little better, until we could actually turn the tide of the fight.” She had crawled up the artifact the whole time she was talking, and now she laid with her back against its upper surface, her arm hanging over the side, as if never more comfortable than in its arms—as opposed to his.
“And if I’m right, the one surefire way to thwart that technology, even if we can learn to implement it properly, is to collapse the multiverse; collapsing just one universe won’t be enough. One way or another, I’ll always find a way out for us into another time line, even if it’s out of the fire into the frying pan.”
She sighed. “Maybe. Or maybe I’m just getting so accustomed to your mad ideas I can no longer tell that to the rest of the world the mad hatter is simply mad as opposed to simply adorable.”
“Adorable?” He realized he sounded overeager.
“It’s now or never, lover boy. Unless you think you haven’t made a lot more progress with your thinking than you expected to before I walked into the room.”
He smiled. Why, yes, he was feeling very full of himself right now after a rather prodigious session of mind-blowing revelations. And with his second chakra plugged into his seventh, the rapid burst of ideas had gotten him good and stiff. That stiffness in his groin mocked the limberness with which he now scaled the monolith to get to her. Forget the lurid irony of their making out on top of an artifact that could well spell doom or salvation for the human race. The verdict was still out on that, as much as it was out on whether Natty and his posse saved humanity or ended them prematurely with their penchant for meddling in affairs that were well beyond them.
Even now the Nautilus hurtled through space and time like the juggernaut it was. But what it would meet up with ultimately might make it well appear like a children’s plastic ship tossed in the waves of a bathtub.
EIGHT
ABOARD THE NAUTILUS
Corin shouted from the next room. “Thor! Get your father’s lazy ass out of bed.”
“Language, mom! I’m like ten,” Thor shouted back.
“You’re more mature than your old man, so I’m sure you can handle it.”
Thor shook his head slowly, threw his comic book down on his bed, and hiked it across the living room on his way to his father’s and mother’s bedroom in their family’s private chambers upon the Nautilus. En route, he passed his mother ironing his father’s Omega Forces fatigues. He reprised his head shake of earlier. “I swear the more things change…”
Once he got into the master bedroom he took a look at his father floating in the Samadhi tank and smiled. He pranced over to the aquarium, scooped out some fish with the net, and carried them over and dumped them in the Samadhi tank.
The piranha nipping at his father’s ass had him flailing and jumping out of the tank and screaming in no time. “Hey, Dad! You never told me you were auditioning for the opera.”
“You are so dead, young man.” DeWitt rushed over and grabbed him by his arm. “When I’m done whacking your butt you will think a Saturn Nine rocket blasted off from it.”
“What’s the point of having nanite upgrades if you can’t have a little fun with them? Though I can’t imagine the nanites are any more pleased about having to stitch up your hairy ass.”
The said whacking had already commenced.
“I’m Thor, the Thunder God. Cease and desist at once before I put the hammer down. Seriously, Dad, Thor is what you name your dog. It’s not what you name a kid. Just how drunk were you and mom when you came up with that name anyway?”
“For that added subordination, you can count on another twenty whacks, young man.” His father scrunched up his face in a look of bewilderment. “Besides, didn’t we rename you Ivan after we sobered up? After the parakeet that couldn’t stop whistling Russian tunes?”
Thor sighed dramatically and let his head loll back. “I swear, dealing with your learning curve sometimes is more of a challenge than the Old Farmer’s Almanac.”
“Why is this hurting my hand more than it’s hurting you?” DeWitt said, thwacking away.
“You really want me to show you? Fine. Like I can contain myself anyway.” Thor shot off the ground, driving his father into the ceiling hard enough he heard some vertebrae pop. He then flew them through the wall—the metal-composite wall. But, hey, dad was nano-reinforced, too, right—with the cocktail that could withstand busting through all-metal walls? Or was that another comic he was confusing with his dad’s life?” His dad’s screaming sounded real enough, but he was good at getting into character; he was the best bedtime-story reader ever.
They had landed in the living room where mom was ironing. “Take it outside, you two.”
“Ah, mom, we’re aboard the Nautilus in deep space.”
“All the better. You two could stand to decompress. God knows your father is full of hot air.” She swiped the iron across his Omega Forces patch without missing a beat.
“I just don’t think she grasps the whole vacuum-of-space idea, Dad. What do you think?” Thor hurtled him into one of the dormant utility droids mom was supposed to be using so she didn’t have to iron, or lift a finger to do anything for that matter. If he lived to be a hundred, Thor would never quite grasp the set-in-their-ways older generation. The utility droid, its settings screwed up from the impact, proceeded promptly to deal with the “roach infestation” accordingly. It grabbed a long-arm metal spade and proceeded to beat dad to death with it.
“I suppose even a superhero needs minions to carry on for him when the whole ordeal becomes a tired scene.” Thor brushed his hands against one another, washing himself of the entire affair.
He
yelled at his mom, “Hey, Mom!” But every time he raised his voice the summons was drowned out by his dad’s screaming from getting hammered to death. Once, twice, three times in a row and Thor was now officially exasperated. “Mom!” This time his voice cracked the ceiling and the walls, the viewport and the floor. There were so many fissures, even the self-mending ship was struggling to restore order. His mother, meanwhile, had been blasted back by the gale force winds coming from Thor’s mouth against the metal-glass viewport giving a fine rendition of neighboring stars. They were flitting by faster than streakers on a 1970s public park afternoon.
Both parents stared at him aghast, when his mother finally sank back to the floor as the cabin re-pressurized to something approaching normal. “Our kid has real superpowers?” DeWitt sounded nonplused more than shocked; well, shocked too.
“Do either of you keep up with current events? Hello, we’re breathing nanite infested air. There are enough nanite cocktails infecting us to manifest your wildest heart’s desires, well, mostly. It seems to be having trouble keeping up with my wish list. So I’ve volunteered to stress-test the entire ecosystem of microscopic robots. Someone has to. Not like you two can even be bothered to take advantage of the bounty.”
“That’s what’s allowing you to fly around like Superman and soar through solid metal walls?” DeWitt asked petulantly.
“Like Thor, Dad, not Superman. I have to live up to my namesake. Besides, who would give themselves a kryptonite vulnerability? Or use a pair of glasses to disguise themselves? Talk to me about a comic book character that was meant to be abandoned by anyone past the age of six, and we can talk about Superman. The rest of the time, you will please show more respect when in the presence of a Thunder God.
“I…” Thor never got to finish the sentence. The word stuck in his mouth. And the next thing he knew he was ironing the clothes at the ironing board, which had ratcheted itself down to accommodate his four-foot-ten-inches height. It was one of the utility droids shaped into an ironing board—just Thor’s luck it was all too easily hacked.
His mother peeled herself off the floor and straightened her hair. “You know, he’s right about one thing. When in Rome…” She sauntered out of the room and into the shower.
DeWitt pranced up to Thor to give a mock inspection of his ironing, judging it from every angle on the ironing board. “Not bad, son. The attention to detail is exquisite. You should consider a future in laundromats.”
Thor commenced to let him have a piece of his mind, but the words never got past his lips. Apparently mother’s gag order was still in effect. How could she possibly have learned to use the nanites in the atmosphere to her advantage so fast? How did his own nanites permit a takeover like this? What sorry-ass AI would permit such shoddy handiwork with the algorithms? He would get to the bottom of this. The last laugh would be his. After all, they were one generation back from him. They didn’t stand a chance when it came to making the most of the tech toys aboard this ship.
He turned his gaze on the stars, whereupon he saw it. He pointed and shouted but all he could do was make gagging noises. That’ll show them for disciplining him.
***
“We’re approaching the first star gate,” announced the Nautilus’s chief AI—to which the ship’s other artificial intelligences were mere adjuncts. The chief AI had a seductive female voice that caused Crumley to roll over in bed and hug his spare pillow tightly; caressing and making love to that voice—or rather the femme fatale he imagined attached to it. The voice was just too loaded with guardedness to do anything less than convey one calculating—read slippery and dangerous—supersentience.
Even in his dreams the women in Crumley’s life were all hoping to catch him with his guard down to slip the proverbial knife in his back.
“We’re approaching the first star gate,” repeated the disembodied female voice that seemed to be everywhere and nowhere at once. “Omega Force please meet up in the war room.”
“War room? Someone’s singing your song, Crumley.” He snapped out of his waking dream to find himself only partly awake inside the Samadhi tank in his chamber. He flopped over the side, gasping for air, and crawled along the floor, like a fish with vestigial legs which didn’t work particularly well.
He made it to the viewport on all fours, before pulling himself up along the metal-glass wall to gaze at what lay beyond. “Fuck me.” With his fingers against the glass—it was like he could feel the energy pulsing off that thing, even in its dormant state.
The star gate was shaped like a pentagram. If he lived to a hundred, he was never making fun of wiccans again, or anyone who practiced any form of magic for any reason. Little did he know that whoever channeled that shape once upon a time that had caught on so readily with the psyches of so many people was like any other artist—their minds working like a radio receiver picking up strange signals from all over the cosmos. Artists weren’t called sensitives for nothing.
Crumley was feeling very put out right now. Ordinarily, in any jungle, it was his job as quartermaster to scout out the finds that could give his people the edge. He should have been the one to find this gate, he and no one else. Instead he was asleep, dreaming. “You’re getting old, Crumley, too old for this game if a ship’s AI can beat you to the thing most worth finding in the jungle of stars out here. That’s not like you.”
He threw on his camo fatigues as rapidly as he could. If he was the last person to show up at the war room, he wouldn’t be the only one thinking he might be getting too old for this gig.
***
A warning bell had sounded throughout the Nautilus. It reminded Ajax of the Red Alert warning on the Starship Enterprise. Only this was the equivalent of a DEFCON 5 alert—the lowest ranking in warning bells. If the star gate didn’t rate any higher, he was genuinely scared to know what warranted DEFCON 1 around this place.
Ajax couldn’t resist approaching the portal of his chamber, though he knew he was being ridiculous. Getting a few feet closer wasn’t going to improve the view.
He was transfixed by the star gate. Even alone in a room he couldn’t stop cracking wise to allay anxiety. It was just in his genes. “Why shouldn’t you let a man’s mind wander?” He sighed. “Because it’s way too little to be out all alone.” Maybe if you did more self-deprecating jokes in public they’d go easier on you, Ajax. Nah. Better they think you hate the world and everyone in it than you hate yourself.
***
After keying in the kind of surveys and sample studies she wanted to run on the planet below—the one closest to the star gate—Laney hit “Enter” and watched the Nautilus jettison probes toward the world purportedly occupied by a race of giants Natty was already referring to as the Nouveau Vikings. If she understood the situation right, the Nautilus, having discovered the star gate some time ago, had sent probes of its own already to investigate further. That’s when it had found signs of residual hi-tech activity coming from a planet now occupied by a far more primitive people. Natty was as interested in any clues those giants held with relation to the star gate as he was with the star gate itself.
Laney wasn’t waiting for the probes the Nautilus deployed on her behalf moments ago to get back to her with the data she asked for. She had plenty of intel to scrutinize based on the original probes the Nautilus sent out that had lured them here in the first place. With what she had in hand, she might already be able to anticipate the kinds of new nanites to synthesize that would keep Leon and his people alive upon beaming down to the planet below. She returned to the work she had begun on this matter.
Her fingers twitched at the thought of sending the results to the computer printers based on the work she’d done so far before making any additional quality checks and tweaks, but she held off. She couldn’t afford to jump the gun any more than she was already.
***
ALPHA UNIT’S SHARED BARRACKS ABOARD THE NAUTILUS
“Pay attention, people!” That was Patent’s voice sounding ahead of the ship’s ala
rms. The guy was worse than a rooster crowing at four in the morning—long before the sun was up. He was standing, his fists on his hips, his legs spread wide before the viewport, assessing what?
Shit, it’s the first star gate!
The damn thing looked like a pentagram hanging on a chain of stars around Lucifer’s neck. Ariel hopped down from her top bunk. The landing on the floor might well have given her shin splints, but she’d hacked enough of the nanite swarms in the atmosphere to cause the nanites below her feet to explode in anti-matter and matter collisions enough to break her fall.
She was Patent’s prodigy, his pride and joy, mostly because when he needed to pull a weapon out of his ass that was going to do what all the others wouldn’t, he knew he could always count on her to come through. The others weren’t quite as fast on the uptake under battlefield stress conditions, but she had grown up in a family of twelve—battlefield stress was her baseline from the moment she climbed out of the womb as child number twelve.
“Ariel!”
She ran up to Patent, who still hadn’t turned away from the port, until she was standing beside him. “You seeing what I’m seeing?” he asked.
She stared at the star gate barely restraining the “duh” she wanted to scream out. That’s when she noticed it. Cassandra was already out there, crawling around the outline of the star gate—the pentagram figure—exploring every crevice, every engraving, every age-related mark.
“That’s one bad-ass chick,” Ariel said, swallowing hard.
“That’s you in another few years, little girl, with more of my star tutelage, of course. I admit she has certain advantages over the rest of us that not everyone is so lucky to be born with. But you’ll make up the difference on attitude, little girl.”
The Star Gate Page 7
