“Yes, yes, precisely!” Natty was already headed off to follow up on his latest ideas in his lab.
“I thought we were supposed to work together!”
“Well, of course when I get stuck I’ll get back to you. Besides, it’s probably best you work on the same problem from your end; it’s a certainty you hold as much of the answer as I do, considering our respective specialties.”
She didn’t know why she was trying to keep him from going through those sliding doors, as if it wasn’t inevitable. “So what’s the whole point of jumping through the star gates then if you’ve already solved the problem the star gates were built to solve?”
Natty stopped dead in his tracks. “Something tells me that even working apart and working together on this problem—oscillating between the two extremes—it could take us until the end of time to solve, or at least to the end of our lifetimes. And we just don’t have that luxury.
“The clues for the problems we can’t see our way past—that’s what’s on the other sides of those gates. And I don’t think that’s by chance. For a civilization to enter Singularity State—it needs to be able to make this connection with the quantum realm—the great super-computer in the sky, otherwise our thinking can only get so close to the speed of light; it can never get all the way there. We can build bigger and faster computers and upload ourselves to them, but like Icarus who flew too close to the sun, we may only get burned that way. It’s another paradox, don’t you see? You can only get to the sun by already being inside it. The gates—they were built for a civilization already living inside the sun—speaking metaphorically.”
“But if we could do that, why then, once again, do we need the gates? We would already be a match for the master races that came before us.” She had raised her voice yet again, using it so as to force him to brake once more before the sliding doors.
“Because, my dear, minds in Singularity continue to evolve. And the ones that reached Singularity State first have millions, if not billions of years on us. It truly boggles the mind. Let’s hope those star gates point to some shortcuts, and, if I’m right, and they do, even if we pull all this off, we’re still not dead in the water.”
And with that last pronouncement Natty was gone, slipping through the sliding doors. She wondered now why she had tried to stop him. Now that she understood better what he was driving at, she realized this project—unlike the sham one of the nun librarian—really would bring them together like nothing else. He’d finally found the one problem that he couldn’t solve without her, nor she without him. This was exactly how they’d been forced to work together in the Amazon, and it had been the one medicine at all able to heal the wounds they’d inflicted upon one another.
Ironically, as much as she wanted to set aside the problem now of the nun librarian, she realized that it was the perfect stepping stone to the kind of project Laney and Natty were both contemplating. They wished to conjure a sentient lifeform that could easily reach into the minds of countless synthetic lifeforms aboard the Nautilus every bit as evolved as humans and know how best to interact with them and how best to get the most out of them. To do that, the librarian would have to be “touched” with the psychic gift Natty and Laney were determined to impart to her.
Like it or not, once the ship had slipped through the rabbit hole of the star gate, the librarian was the key to surviving wonderland—and all the mad hatters they were likely to encounter there. She was Alice in this drama, and they needed her to impart her gift to the others of the crew.
As soon as Natty realized as much, he’d be back in Laney’s arms again with his half of the problem solved, as anxious to procure the nun’s appearance as Laney now was.
EIGHTEEN
ABOARD THE NAUTILUS
“I suppose this’ll do until I can decide on a weapon,” Thor said, staring at himself in the full length mirror mounted on his bedroom door. He was decked out with every firearm and blade he thought he might like to try out, slung over his shoulders, strapped to his limbs, attached to his waist. “It’s important to have a weapon that’s associated with me, it’s just part of the whole superhero thing, you know, and it’s not like I wrote the rules on that one. The question is which one? I guess there’s only one way to find out. In the heat of battle, I’m sure it’ll just come to me.”
Thor panned his head to the computer printer at the sight of the latest weapon to materialize and sighed. “Kokos!”
Kokos, impersonating the voice of Thor’s father perfectly, said, “Enough with the colorful options already, lady.” The over-the-shoulder rocket launcher, which from the perspective of Thor’s and Kokos’s diminutive statures may as well have been a cannon, dematerialized back into the fog of possibilities. Frog Doll resumed his normal voice to address Thor instead of the Nautilus’s chief supersentience, “I can’t decide if she actually enjoys enabling us…”
“That’d be a first.”
“Or if she just refuses to commit the necessary mind power to more closely monitor her minions.”
Thor marched toward the sliding double doors that granted entry to his family’s suite. It was like walking through quicksand. “Okay, maybe we’ll just test out a few of these weapons today,” he said, his voice showing the strain. He was staggering and in serious jeopardy of tipping over. He started tossing the heavier pieces so he could continue to walk upright without breaking his back. “Hey, it’s like a cure for asthma!” he said, starting to breathe easier.
Finally he was at and through the sliding doors. He hung a “Do Not Disturb” sign he’d made on the doors once they sealed again behind him. “The last thing I need is the parents finding out what I’m up to.” He readjusted his belt which didn’t want to sit right with all the weapons hanging off it and moseyed on down the hall.
“All right, which one of you action-figure dolls wants to play with me?” Thor said, ogling the illuminated display cases, each one featuring a different humanoid, presumably adapted to a different type of world, in cryogenic freeze. They looked just like the dolls that he could get at Toys U Won’t Believe back home, only bigger. “Better make this walk short and choose fast, Thor, before you capsize under the sheer weight of all your enthusiasm,” he said feeling the strain again in the middle of his promenade down the hall.
The beanbag doll sitting on his shoulder, which he’d forgotten about—he was about the one thing Thor couldn’t feel weighing down on him—picked now to speak up. It was a Kermit-the-Frog-type creature, only with more warts, and shark’s teeth. “You sure about this? These guys give me spastic leg syndrome.” Kokos’s legs were indeed spasming as if someone had seated him in an electric chair.
“That’s a sign of a vitamin deficiency, nimrod, only I forget which one. I guess I have to adjust the mix in your frog food bowl.”
“Okay, let me say it this way, these things give me the creeps.”
“Well, duh, they’re supposed to be scary. How else am I going to hold on to my superhero status when fighting them off?”
“Since when did you become a superhero? Was I under the bed for that one?”
“Yeah, I think so.” Thor refused to allow himself to be distracted from scrutinizing the various display-case candidates to choose from for a worthy nemesis, so he fielded Kokos’s questions absently.
“I told you to stick me on the pillow next to you, but oh no. And now we have to waste all this time catching up on one another’s lives. Let me tell you about some of the things I found under that bed.” Kokos shook from the shiver running up his spine. “You think it’s scary out here.”
Ignoring him, Thor said, “Yeah, this is the one.” He was pointing at the scariest one yet of the lot.
“The Skeletor chick? Isn’t Skeletor supposed to be a guy?”
“Maybe this is the transgender version.” Thor checked for a penis to go with the tits but it wasn’t like he was up to speed on alien anatomy. He couldn’t deny the head looked more skeletal than ever with that chalk white skin stretched acr
oss it. The shiny black flexible body armor didn’t exactly play down the lack of color in the face. “Okay, how do you open this toy box?” Thor asked, feeling around the edges. Not finding any obvious catch, he stepped back. “Open Sesame!”
“From Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves? That old movie? That’ll never work.” Kokos scolded. He was such an annoying know-it-all sometimes.
Kokos pre-verbalized in DeWitt’s voice the “Open Sesame,” so as not to steal Thor’s thunder. The panel slipped up on the toy box.
“Ha! I heard this ship was pretty smart,” Thor said. “It must know I want to play with one of the dolls.”
Thor was already reaching for his weapons. “Now, which one of these things to start off with?” A few seconds later he looked up at the popsicle of a ready-made villain. It had done little more than raise itself off the floor in all this time.
“Hey, could we pick up the pace here?” Thor said, unstrapping one of the rifles from his shoulder and aiming it at Chalk Face.
Chalk Face stirred to life a bit more, took a menacing step toward him. Then another. She brought her hand up to her face to shake off the cobwebs. Once her eyes could focus again, she took one look at Thor, roared, and backhanded him across the hall to the display case on the other side. Half of Thor’s weapons were shaken loose by the impact. “Hand to hand combat! Excellent idea, being as it allows me to dump all this stuff which is giving me a backache.” Thor proceeded to strip off the last of his weapons.
Chalk Face was still lumbering about in slow motion, swinging blindly with the arms and roaring menacingly. “Don’t look now, but I think this one is more like the Frankenstein monster. D.U.M.B.—with a capital D.”
“Yeah, I was kind of hoping for a worthier adversary,” Thor said. “But, hey, this way I get to practice my ninja moves.”
Thor charged and did a flying drop kick against Chalk Face—a move borrowed from Cassandra, having read enough of her comics that his father created for him, allegedly toned down, though Thor couldn’t see how. Thor rebounded off of Chalk Face’s chest on to his feet after doing a backwards somersault in midair—another signature Cassandra move. “Fancy moves, huh? Try and keep up, you walking skull and crossbones.” Thor forward somersaulted at him this time, scissoring his legs around Chalk Face’s neck and then, arching his back again to flip Chalk Face.
Chalk Face went flying back into the empty cavity of the display case she’d crawled out of. When she got up this time, she looked a little more alive, but no less dumb. She lumbered out and grabbed Thor by the neck, lifting him off the ground with one hand, and crushed his neck.
That was it. Lights out.
Thor woke up to Kokos playing referee, counting out, “Five…Six…Seven…Eight.” By “Nine” Thor had managed to clamber to his feet again. “She broke my neck! I can’t believe she broke my neck!”
“Dude, she didn’t just break it, she crushed it. You literally were a pencil neck there for a few seconds. Nice nextgen nano, by the way,” the Frog Doll said, admiring the nanite rebuild. “Where do I get some?”
Thor ignored Kokos, raising his voice at Chalk Face. “How am I supposed to practice fighting if you keep killing me, Skull Face? Geez, you’re slow. To review, we’re in hand-to-hand combat mode now.”
Chalk Face backhanded him again. This time Thor went sliding down the hall far enough to score a touchdown—if they were on a football field. The Frog Doll that had managed to stay planted on Thor’s shoulders up until now, was trying to play dead somewhere downfield. “Well, at least Chalk Face finally got the hand-to-hand combat thing down pat,” Thor remarked.
Thor peeled himself off the floor, noted the distance he was to his adversary, and sighed. “Yeah, I’m thinking hand-to-hand combat is out if just one backhand from that girl can send me halfway across the ship. Face it, Thor, you’ll get more play sticking with weapons.” He crouched down and picked up one of the firearms that had gotten knocked free of him earlier. It was the only one that had managed to sail this far away. “We’ll consider this providence.”
Thor tried to aim the weapon. “Christ, it’s too far away even to shoot.” He ran toward his enemy. He slid the final few yards into her as if he were crossing home base at Wrigley Field. And he fired.
The bolt of lightning seemed to finish drawing the creature out of its somnolence. The face took on heightened intelligence—and menace. She aimed her wrist band at Thor and fired the darts along its circumference at him.
Thor found himself tacked to the glass of one of the display cases on the opposite side of the hall. “On the plus side, I’m digging the attitude,” Thor said, wincing and pulling one of the darts out of him. It was just big enough to pierce his body, wedge into the glass pane a couple of inches, and still leave him room to grip the back end so he could pull it out of him. He threw the dart on the floor unceremoniously, hearing it clang with a certain satisfaction. “On the minus side, where’s all the snarky banter?”
“Get out of here, little one, before I call Pest Control.”
“Yeah! Yeah! Like that.” Thor turned to see that it was Cassandra addressing him, and she looked p.i.s.s.e.d. “Oh shit! We’re out of here.” Luckily for him Cassandra had her eyes on Skull Face. She was no doubt prioritizing her fury and Thor was glad to be second down on the list.
Thor ran back for Kokos when Kokos couldn’t take a hint. He was no longer playing dead; he was staring transfixed at Cassandra. Thor grabbed the frog doll by one of the arms. And ran. “Are you crazy?” Kokos said. “You don’t run away from a chick that looks like that.” Kokos still couldn’t peel his eyes off of Cassandra. “That’s it, I’m spiking your Kool-Aid with puberty hormones from now on. I’ll never be caught in a situation like this again!”
“That’s Cassandra, you moron! The living legend. You don’t want to be around when she loses it.”
“You have comics back in your bedroom featuring her?”
“Duh. The stack is one of the columns holding up the ceiling.”
“To the bedroom! Run faster, you idiot!”
Thor started to sputter and stumble. He fell to the ground as his hand was going for his neck. “You know, maybe it’s just as well we held off playing with Chalk Face some more. Something tells me my nanites aren’t quite rated for this level of play.” He felt things getting dark on him yet again.
Kokos stared down at the prostrate Thor, felt for a pulse. There was none. “Great, just great. They’re going to blame me for this. It’s cover your ass time, pal.”
He grabbed Thor by the wrist and ran, dragging the limp meat sack behind him. He just had one goal in mind, getting to the next nearest display case. Arriving at his destination, he stopped dead in his tracks and uttered the fateful words. “Open Sesame!”
The panel slid up and Kokos threw Thor inside. “Close Sesame!” The panel came down on the already fast-freezing Thor.
***
Cassandra dodged the fire coming from the various weapons built into Chalk Face’s flexible body armor—again and again. Tired playing the one duck in this shooting gallery, she rebounded off a humanoid display case, back flipping her way toward the once formidable nano-warrior—before she had lost 99% of her brain power to the crystal on Solo’s staff. Cassandra unfolded from the ball she’d made with her body to complete the somersault and ended by kicking her opponent square in the chest. Chalk Face flew into her chamber and the panel slid down on her, flash-freezing her.
If the Nautilus was still pissed at Cassandra, at least the ship had the sense to prioritize containing this alien creature ahead of squeezing her nipples.
She headed after the kid to contain that problem once and for all.
Cassandra found him in a display case, flash-frozen, his frog doll standing up on two legs, its front paws against the glass, looking at him forlornly. “You have more sense than he does,” Cassandra said. “Don’t feel so sad. That walking biohazard was heading for the radioactive waste disposal unit if I got my hands on him first.”
She sauntered on without another word.
Kokos hammered his fist against the glass pane. “I can’t believe I created this Catch-22 for myself. You’re illiterate. You need Thor to read the Cassandra comics to you, you fool.” He sighed and glanced at her saunter as she walked away. “Maybe you can make do with just the visuals.” He sighed. “With one-liners like she spews? Not on your life.” He pounded his fist against the glass some more and bellowed.
NINETEEN
ABOARD THE NAUTILUS
“Shit!” Ariel exclaimed studying Starhawk who had turned to a pillar of salt for daring to look back at his own personal Sodom and Gomorrah. Before him hovered the alien, clam-shaped ship that had crash-landed on Eresdra, still tucked snugly within the Nautilus’s containment field inside an anonymous hangar. And on Starhawk’s display was what his scans had picked up from “the clam,” the viewing device wedged into an iron grip that wouldn’t yield. “What’s wrong with him?”
Satellite ran one of his scanners over Starhawk. “It’s some kind of catatonic state.”
“That can’t be good.”
“Actually, it could be very good. Maybe he felt whatever’s inside that ship required more of his attention than he could give by taking us on. So he provided himself a kind of quiet sanctuary for working out the problem.” Ariel glared at Satellite as if he were daft. “Okay, it’s a reach, but I believe in looking on the positive side of things.”
Ariel ran her hand through her short curly hair. “Let’s hope you’re right. Forget him for now. We’ve got work to do.”
Ariel went back to her duffle bag and started assembling her workstation right out of the components inside. The case she pulled out and set on the floor engaged with a push of a button, unfolding up and out into a tabletop monitor and computer with enough AI inside to rival a city full of this year’s Cray supercomputers back on Earth. The onboard computer printers were already sending out emissaries in the form of nanite probes in the direction of the hovering spacecraft still humming ominously.
The Star Gate Page 18
