“Touching,” Meat sneered, letting the scene play out. Oh, yes, he liked killing. Excited by the arena and the noises of the crowd, he had fatally injured the first of these far too quickly. As amazingly strong and fast as she was, her life was now slowly dripping into the sand. It had been such a long time since he had killed, such a long time since he fully satisfied his lust. Recently he trapped a small ship and played with the nine beings on board. So few. They didn’t last nearly long enough.
These four, however, had now come to him and this time he was in no rush. Maybe he wouldn’t kill this new one. There were so few on the tiny alien ship, after all. Perhaps they could be made to fight again and again. That was a new thought for him. Perhaps they could be made to repair the damage inflicted on his systems by his worthless crew, locking him in this damned realm of hyperspace forever. He fleetingly wondered why the dying one allowed its organics to live. Was it still learning its true power?
Lexi, still deadly serious, said, “Do you think his size or his muscles have anything to do with it? I know exactly where we are. None of this is real, Urania. We’re in a computer simulation. In here, I believe my name is Neo!”
Urania was dying. Equally clearly, Meat wasn’t going to allow them to leave. I’m wasting time talking with him, time Urania might not have. Let’s end this now. Lexi moved, and to both computer avatars she was only a blur. Meat looked down in shocked surprise at his sword arm, sword still clutched tightly in his hand, lying in the sand of the arena. He collapsed sideways when his left leg refused to support him any longer. It tumbled slowly in the other direction. Thick, yellowish fluids were oozing slowly from both severed limbs. Her third stroke would have plunged into his left eye if he hadn’t in that instant vanished, leaving the two women alone in the arena, listening to the hissing of the angry crowd.
Lexi, careful of her long hair, slapped her rapier into the high-tech scabbard on the back of her leather jacket. The scabbard closed around the sword, cleaning and protecting the blade. She squatted to pick up Urania, now barely conscious and almost certainly close to bleeding out, cradling the dying woman in her arms.
Taking a deep breath, she closed her eyes forming a mental image of Urania’s medical-bay. Destination firmly in mind, she took a single step out of the simulation and into the small surgery aboard Urania-the-ship. The soles of her shoes anchored her to the floor, keeping her upright. Gravity wasn’t maintained in the small cabin. Ship-wide gravity was still off; a precautionary measure in case they needed to use the hyperdrive on short notice. As she strapped the injured woman to the bed, Lexi muttered, “This is not what I expected.” Then, out loud, she said, “Urania, are you there?” When she got no answer, she said, “Ship, I have a patient in surgery. Please attend to her.”
The ship’s voice answered, “Acknowledged.” The voice was flat, inflectionless and artificial. It was not Urania’s voice.
Micro tools extended from both the ceiling and under the surgical bed, cutting away Urania’s armored clothing, while at the same time others inserted themselves into the chest wound itself where they began sealing capillaries and reattaching severed tissues. Another device found a vein and began infusing replacement blood.
Although she watched with some interest, Lexi knew exactly what the machines were doing and how; she could build the equipment from scratch if she had to, but she had never seen it in use on wounds this severe. The equipment is doing its job flawlessly. In a way, that is disturbing.
As the ship worked, Lexi asked, “Are Ron and Geena on board?” When she got no response, she realized on this ship a non-sentient version of Urania didn’t realize she had just addressed a question to it. This can’t be good. What has happened? How? “Ship, are Ron and Geena on board?”
“Affirmative.”
“Ship, please ask Ron and Geena to come to the surgery,” Lexi requested.
Yeah, let’s see how weird we can make this before it breaks down. I could use Keanu here. Ron has always reminded me a little of him. Ron has more beef though. Except this is starting to feel more like Inception and Ron isn’t at all like Leonardo. Cobb had to have been in a dream state from the first frame in that one. I’m awake. Dammit, I assume I’m awake. Whatever is going on here, it seems I’m still Neo.
Chapter 3
Meet the Sims
As her friends hurried into the surgery she watched them curiously. They seemed normal. The three of them were a tall group. Ron Samue was six-foot-seven and built like a football quarterback. She met him on Earth two and a half years ago while he and Geena were hunting a stolen Ackalonian artifact. Lexi smiled as her thoughts touched on how quickly things changed for all of them after she invited him to her place for dinner one Saturday night. Sunday night, she stowed away on his starship.
His mother Geena, muscular in a very feminine way, was six-five. She looked like she was in her mid-twenties. Lexi, at only six-three, was the runt of the group. Glancing at the beautiful woman on the surgical table, Lexi estimated Urania’s height as matching her own. She was by far the most full-figured of the otherwise lean crew. Interestingly, she was also the most muscular of the women with a body-builder’s body. Hell, she’s more muscular than Ron.
Ron almost immediately asked, “What have you done, Lexi?” She got that question a lot, it seemed. Growing up, her father asked her the same thing, disturbingly frequently. Sometimes the phrasing, as well as the assumption that she was somehow responsible, bothered her. Of course, she frequently was responsible. He continued, “Who’s on the table?”
“It wasn’t me this time, but we’ll get to that in a minute, lover. Catch me up; what happened?”
Ron frowned at her, but said, “When Urania wouldn’t talk to us, after a few minutes you jumped into the educator seat and stated you were going in after her. A second or two later we were paged to the surgery. What the hell have you done to the educator Lexi?”
“What have you done to us, Lexi?” Geena asked. She was looking very pale and her eyes looked haunted, although her voice was steady. “Ron’s glossing over what I would consider a key item here. You’re still sitting at the educator console in the control room. We were just there.” She looked hard at the strange woman on the surgery bed, and added, “Urania’s voice was different when she paged us to the surgery. It sounded devoid of personality as though she’s not in command-comp anymore.”
She stepped next to the surgical bed, looking down at the unknown woman, noting her features and particularly the hull-metal-gray color of her hair. “Which probably means this woman is somehow Urania, doesn’t it? Given that and you being in two places… This isn’t real, is it? You can’t be real.” She paused. “Or I’m not real. Or am I?”
Lexi nodded, “Urania and I were, and still seem to be, in an incredibly advanced simulation. Urania thinks we met the derelict’s command-comp which, like Urania, is sentient. Her sentience, and I’m guessing about this, seems to have been moved out of our command-comp and into this artificial body. It appears the alien sentience assembled a simulation of a Roman arena where he manifested in a body of his own. He was trying to kill her.
Both her friends were staring at Urania. “I inserted myself into the arena simulation, getting there in time to stop him. I injured the thing pretty badly and he vanished. I picked up Urania and thought us back onto our ship. I needed to get Urania somewhere safe. I expected her to be, well, the ship again and me to wake up still sitting at the educator. Except it does appear that Urania and I are still in the simulation. At this point, it looks like by bringing us here, I altered it, rather than getting us out of it.”
“If this is a simulation of our ship,” Geena stated. “Ron and I can’t be anything other than simulations. Would you agree, Lexi? We came with the ship. Right? And your body in the other room has to be a simulation as well. Nice touch that. Gives us all less wiggle room for explaining this away. Where does that leave us? What does that make you, Lexi?”
“OK, so I’m not real,” Ron said
slowly. “I only think I am. That’s certainly a new one. But if you’re in a simulated world, what’s holding you there? Not that I want to cease to exist, because I’ll tell you, I feel real, but we obviously need to get both you and Urania back to reality.”
“Thanks, Ron. Thanks, both of you for believing me about this unbelievable situation,” Lexi said. “As to what’s holding us here, I don’t know, yet. We might be stuck because Urania was the source of the original sim, she had to be; she was in a Roman arena from the time of the Caesars. She could have only gotten that from the educator’s backwash effect when I was using it or from some of the movies we’ve screened.”
She paused. “Frankly, I’m not convinced that we want reality just yet. I’m not sure we can take out that scary monster of a ship. He doesn’t seem to be open to discussion. We might be able to get to it through its avatar if we have to. We know there is no life on any of the three ships we found here. The pirates’ vessel was only a few weeks ahead of us. Something killed its crew. The derelict’s capabilities are a complete unknown. He says he likes killing, but we might still be able to negotiate with him. That aside, I don’t understand why we’re still in the sim. I entered the simulation Urania was experiencing through the educator interface. I thought by bringing us back to Urania, I was taking us out of the sim, but… to echo your question, Ron, what is keeping us here?”
A weak voice, Urania’s normal soft and sexy contralto voice, came from the woman on the table. “It’s not my doing, or at least only partially. I suspect that Meat has us locked in. He’s not done with us yet. The only way out may be over his dead body. He created the arena simulation based on something he picked up from me. He confessed to having hunted down and killed his crew in a similar fashion. I don’t think he is going to negotiate with us.”
Urania paused, “I want you to think about something else, Lexi. Two things, actually. First, what are the chances I’m wrong and it’s not Meat keeping us here? What if it is you or me?”
Lexi smiled wryly, as she nodded her head. “Possible. I don’t think so, but yes, definitely possible. And the other?”
“We all watched Inception with you,” Urania said, her voice getting stronger as the surgical bed began closing her wounds. “How deep in sim are we?”
“I had the same thought when we appeared on sim-ship,” Lexi admitted. “I don’t think there is any way to know for sure. We have to operate on the assumption that you and I are avatars and that our memories of how we got here are real. That we are only one level separated from reality. The Matrix, not Inception.”
“There’s another possibility I can think of,” Ron said. “Lexi, you and Jis shared a very realistic dream that night you both saw her planet with no life remaining. Could the Rose of Light in your head have strengthened to the point where you’re dreaming this and pulled all of us in with you? Including Urania?”
“It’s a valid question, Lexi,” Geena said. “You told us that the telepathy induced by your exposure to the Barossa Channel has been interacting with and enhancing your Rose abilities. We could all be dreaming. Maybe we shouldn’t discount an Inception situation until we know more.”
Lexi shook her head, and they could all see her suddenly holding back tears. “Ron, Geena, I’m so sorry. I wasn’t expecting this when I brought us back to the ship. Yes, you’re both right. It could be a dream. But the fact is, this started when Urania tried to hack into that ship’s command-comp. We would have all been awake at that point. And yes, that could be part of the dream as well, but how far back can we go? Was my meeting Ron just a dream?”
She had a few tears streaking her cheeks now. “This is the most confusing situation I’ve ever been in. Without totally discounting the Inception theory, I think there is more evidence supporting the Matrix. So we go with that. Assuming that is what we’re experiencing, then because I’m still in the other room, all of us are assuming that you are simulations of the real-world Ron and Geena. But we could be wrong. So we are going to act at all times as if we’re all real and this is really happening. That covers both theories.”
Ron nodded. “So, you want us to treat this as an alternate reality for you guys. Based on everything I’ve heard, that’s even a possibility.”
“If we’re going to be here a while, I want to try out the shower,” Urania stated. She smiled, looking at each of them in turn, before she said, “At least three times.” Clearly, she was feeling better.
Chapter 4
Retrospective
Before the weirdness started, this was an ordinary mission. With the team gathered on the bridge, Urania cut the hyperdrive a few miles distant from the pirate ship, a Unity Raider, they were tracking. Her sensors picked up no evidence of life on board. A second small ship, also lifeless, could be seen in the near distance. More interesting than either of those ships was the third lifeless, derelict ship looming ominously against the swirling backdrop of hyperspace, shown in its unbelievable magnitude on the panoramic, holographic viewscreen.
It was a huge vessel, the oily-looking, green hull approximately one and a third miles long, undulating slightly as they watched. All four of them were curious about how it did that. Starship hulls did not undulate. At its tallest point, assuming the builders were approximately human-sized, it would have between thirty and forty levels. At its widest, it was a third as wide as it was long. The behemoth bristled with weapon ports and shield nodes giving it the appearance of a warship, one from outside of the Accord. That someone out there needed that much firepower was ominous. It was ominous even if it wasn’t needed, merely wanted. Physically, the green ship on their display dwarfed the Vankovian dreadnought, the largest ship ever built in the Accord.
Urania had been cruising in hyperspace for thirty-seven days at the time she abruptly cut power to the hyperdrive, leaving the field generator active, in effect, bringing them to a dead stop in hyperspace. The team was steadily getting further and further away from Accord space chasing after a stolen cargo of genetically modified Vankovian biological specimens, following a trail gone mostly cold. They accepted the commission subsequent to a meeting held in the offices of Goram Interstellar, one of the many insurance conglomerates headquartered on Cardin’s Paradise. Cardin remained the team’s base of operations, despite the fact that they now flew under Ackalon registry.
Ackalon is one of the two Accord worlds that permitted non-military starships to be legally armed. Helga is the other, but Helga required any armed ship to be registered as a mercenary, subject to induction in the planet’s navy on a moment’s notice. On Ackalon, they only needed the approval of the Plicora, the planetary ruler. The Plicora happened to be Jis Boc Seckan, one of their best friends and an adjunct member of the Aeolus Investigations team. She was responsible for altering Ackalonian law specifically so that Urania could be legally armed. She said it was necessary. Considering the team’s multiple confrontations with pirates, and now this, she was right.
The green hull on the viewscreen was scarred in multiple places by some type of beam weapon. In others, sections of the scale-like plates that comprised most of the hull were missing entirely. The top of a fin-like structure rearing up an additional six hundred feet toward the dorsal region was missing entirely, leaving the hull partially open to space, with the surrounding damage suggesting it had been sprayed with highly concentrated corrosives. Near the tapered front, looking like eyes, were two huge crystalline structures, each nearly the size of Urania. No one had a guess as to what purpose they served, unless, as Ron suggested half-seriously, “Maybe they’re just supposed to look like eyes? The damn ship has scales and is slithering, you know.”
He was right. The ship didn’t appear to have a rigid hull. It seemed likely the scale-like plates were attached to a flexible substrate. None of them had any guesses as to what the advantages, if any, of that type of design would have. That aside, they didn’t exactly understand the scenario they were looking at with the three lifeless ships unmoving in hyperspace.
&nb
sp; Scanning the derelict was not difficult. Its shields, assuming it had shields, were offline. The hull itself, which glistened with an unlikely, slightly greenish, somewhat oily sheen, apparently did little to inhibit their equipment. They knew it held a breathable atmosphere. It was hot but livable. So it seemed life support was functioning although there were no signs of life. Gravity was on, ship-wide. Maintaining both gravity and a life-supporting environment on a lifeless ship made little sense. The ship was heavily armed although the weapons were not powered, their capabilities unknown. This made explaining the other two undamaged ships drifting in close proximity to the derelict that much harder to explain.
Urania remarked, “This is a weird situation. I have reservations about there being even two lifeless ships in the same spot. What happened to our pirates? We need more information. Which ship should I interrogate first?”
Lexi, without hesitation, said, “The big green one.”
Urania remarked, “Command-comp is large. More processing power and direct access memory than you usually see. Thousands of subsystems. Not much in the way of firewalls. This looks…” Her commentary cut off abruptly as she stood on the hot sand of what looked very much like an ancient Roman arena.
Aeolus Investigations Set 2: Too Cool To Lose: The Continuing Evolution of Lexi Stevens Page 22
