The Paths Between Worlds

by Paul Antony Jones

  Chou was right, though; we had no weapons capable of harming Silas. Running away really was our only recourse at this point.

  “I don’t believe it will come to that,” Chou said, all business again. “Now, earlier you said Silas gave you a message…”

  “Mmm hmm,” I said. “Right after it first woke up.”

  I’ve always had a pretty good memory but, now, as I recalled the moment, I found I was able to remember Silas’ words exactly: “Candidate 13, humanity is in peril,” I recited. “The plan has been compromised by an external entity. This interference has introduced multiple patterns of disorder; the effects on the outcome have moved beyond predictability. Agents of chaos will be unleashed in an attempt to stop what I require of you. You must travel to the collector immediately and locate Candidate 1. They must know that the field is collapsing, and the void follows behind.”

  A long silence followed.

  “There was nothing more than that?” Chou asked.

  “No,” I said, “that was everything. When you and Freuchen woke up, the robot stopped talking and went through his… I don’t know, I guess you’d call it a start-up process? Like booting up a computer.” I paused, unsure whether I should say what I felt but decided I should. “It felt like the message was recorded. It just didn’t feel spontaneous to me.”

  “We will ask Silas what he knows of it tomorrow,” Chou said. “But if what you say is correct it seems obvious that the message was meant for you, Meredith. That suggests whoever left it knew you would be the one to find Silas and gave him the message specifically for you. It must be the Architect Silas spoke of. Do you know who Candidate 1 might be?”

  I shrugged. “Not a clue. You?”

  Chou shook her head. “No, but whoever it is, they must be key to all of this. If we assume that the originator of this message is the Architect, then we can also assume that the ‘plan’ is the reason we were brought here and what was supposed to have taken place after our arrival.”

  “And I think we’ve already met a couple of the ‘agents of chaos,’” I said.

  “The two men who murdered your friend and almost killed Chou?” Freuchen asked.

  “Exactly,” I said. “But what about the last line? What do you think ‘the field is collapsing, and the void follows behind’ could mean?”

  Chou considered the question. “I do not know,” she said finally.

  “I guess that’s one we’ll need to ask this Candidate 1 when we find them. But why would the Architect leave such a short, cryptic message? Why not just give the exact details of who and where Candidate 1 is and how to find them?”

  Freuchen said, “Perhaps the Architect could not risk that information falling into the hands of one of these agents of chaos? Vun thing appears clear: this message is a varning. And if ve’re correct, and the two men who killed Phillip ver agents of this unknown entity, then it means your location is known, and more vill surely follow.”

  “Well, thanks for that, Peter,” I said. “That makes me feel so much better.”

  Freuchen continued, “Ve should make Edvard avare of the situation as quickly as possible. It vould not be right for him not to know.”

  Freuchen didn’t have to say it, but the implication was clear: our friends’ lives are in danger because of your presence, Meredith.

  I nodded my agreement. “We’ll do it as soon as we get back to the garrison. The last thing I would ever want is to put their lives at risk.”

  Freuchen snored quietly next to the fire, one arm raised, his wrist limp as he dreamed of wrestling polar bears or whatever occupied his slumbering mind. Chou could have been asleep or awake, there was no way for me to tell. She rested on her side facing the fire, perfectly still.

  I lay awake, my mind leaping from thought to thought like a needle skipping across a record: Who is the Architect? Where was Candidate 1? Who was Candidate 1? What was the void? How was I supposed to get off this island? And last but not least, Why choose me? Why out of everyone on this island had I been singled out?

  Round and around my thoughts spun, feeding a growing sense of restless anxiety that kept me firmly in the waking world. If our assumptions about the message were correct, then I had to find a way off this island as quickly as possible. But where was I supposed to go? The only other land was the distant coastline visible from the beach. But I had no way to reach it or any idea if that was even where I was supposed to start looking for this Candidate 1.

  And the idea of walking away from my new friends and the security I’d found with them to set out on my own was deeply frightening, terrifying even. Less than a week ago, I had been a strung-out junkie intent on ending her life. And now, by some ludicrous cosmic rolling of dice, I was at the heart of a mystery that was so utterly crazy I had to stop myself from laughing at the absurdity of it.

  And yet…

  Beneath the feelings of helplessness and fear, a part of me I had not known existed had awakened, a growing desire to turn my face toward the unknown, to square my shoulders to the darkness and say ‘Bring it’ to whatever lurked within the shadows.

  I have never thought of myself as brave, but I knew that was going to have to change. I was going to have to find that courage within me, and I was going to have to find it fast.

  Fifteen

  Early the next morning, good to Chou’s word, we began clearing away the rocks and debris that trapped Silas. The back-spill of boulders and gravel behind the robot proved the most difficult to deal with… and the most dangerous. Each time we removed one of the larger boulders, an avalanche of smaller ones slipped down from the scree above. More than once we had to jump away to avoid being crushed by a rogue rock we inadvertently dislodged and brought tumbling in our direction. And, of course, when we'd set off from the garrison the previous morning, we hadn’t exactly anticipated having to dig a robot out of the side of a mountain, so we had no shovels or other tools with us, which meant we had to rely on our bare hands. My nails were soon little more than a shredded mess, my hands cross-marked with cuts and grazes. Then, as the hours of lifting passed, we added blisters that split and bled to our growing list of wounds. But by noon, we had managed to clear away three-quarters of the rock that had trapped Silas. Two hours later, only a few smaller rocks in the fifty to sixty-pound range remained along with one large boulder that even Chou and Freuchen’s combined strength couldn’t budge.

  “We need something for leverage,” Chou said, after the three of us, panting and dripping with sweat, had tried for the umpteenth time to roll the boulder away.

  “I can fix that,” Freuchen said. He walked over to a young Fir tree, a quarter the size of the others; spat into both palms of his dirt-and blood-streaked hands and took a mighty swing at the tree’s trunk with his ax. Five similar swings later and the tree toppled to the ground. Freuchen quickly stripped all the smaller branches from a length of the trunk then separated that denuded section from the rest of the felled tree, creating a respectably straight eight-foot-long pole. He hefted the cleaned pole in both hands and carried it back to us. “Leverage,” he said, his eyes twinkling.

  I got on my knees and used my hands to dig out a hole beneath the boulder large enough for the tip of the pole to fit snugly into, then, together, the three of us took hold of it.

  “On the count of three,” Freuchen said. “Ready… and three!”

  Grunting and snarling, we levered the boulder off Silas and cheered in unison as it rolled away, gaining speed as it bowled down the incline before crashing violently into a tree and coming to a halt in a shower of leaves. We yelled whoops of satisfaction, and I raised my hand to high-five Chou and Freuchen. They both looked at me quizzically. Freuchen raised his hand mimicking my own, and I slapped it hard. We made our way back to the fire, ate some of our provisions and chatted about our lives before our arrival on this weird other-world. The shadows grew longer, as we waited impatiently for darkness and that night’s coming aurora.

  I volunteered for first watch, but despite
the fatigue of the day, none of us slept, the idea of actually getting some answers too exhilarating, I think.

  When the aurora finally lit up the night sky, I watched the cuts and grazes I’d collected while we’d worked at freeing Silas heal over, and the tension in my muscles vanished.

  “Are we ready?” I said, turning to face my companions when darkness returned.

  As one, the three of us got to our feet and walked over to where Silas, free of his rock prison, now sat slumped on the ground and waited for him to wake up. For a minute or so, nothing happened.

  “Do you think it is broken?” Freuchen whispered. As if he had uttered magic words, Silas’ eye-bar floated free of its fixture. A second later, the two sparks of blue light that would become his eyes appeared.

  “Hello Silas,” Chou said, as the blue dots expanded.

  “Welcome children of Earth. Do not be afraid. I know that you are confused and have many questions. I am here to help you assimilate into your new surroundings…” Silas stopped. “I am sorry, there appears to be a problem. System diagnostics indicate significant degradation of multiple modules. Memory system corruption detected, main power is at zero percent. Battery backup at seven percent—”

  I interrupted, “Silas, it’s okay, we’ve been through this with you last night, remember?”

  The robot’s eye-bar moved in my direction. “I am Standard Instructional—”

  “Silas, stop,” said Chou. “Do you remember us?”

  “You are candidate 20078, Weston Chou. Your friends are Candidate 13, Meredith Gale and Candidate 207891, Peter Freuchen.”

  “Yes, but do you remember meeting us last night?” Chou continued, her voice hesitant.

  “I am sorry, but that would be impossible. Today is transference day, and we could not have met…” Silas’ words tapered off again and his eye-bar began to move left and right, up and down as he cast his electronic gaze over the trees and rubble strewn ground. “This is not my assigned reception location. I apologize for the inconvenience, but I appear to be suffering from an undiagnosed malfunction. I will shortly return to conservation mode but please...”

  As Silas continued to run through the same lines he’d spoken to us the previous night, Chou turned to face me, a look of abject dejection on her face. “I think its memory problems might be a bit more complicated than we first thought.”

  “Oh, that’s just great,” I sighed. “That’s just freaking great.”

  “Silas, stop,” Chou demanded, as the robot continued the same speech it had given the night before. When he did as she asked, Chou added, “We know this is confusing for you, but your memory has been damaged. We spoke last night, so we know you only have a short amount of time before your systems begin to shut down again; what we need to know from you is how can we help you so that you can help us?”

  “Yes,” Freuchen said. “It is time for us to sit crooked and talk straight.”

  “If you could locate a repair—”

  I took a step toward the robot. “There is no repair station. There is no neural net. None of the other SILAS units have survived on this island that we are aware of. Nothing has gone according to the Architect’s plan. There is only you, Silas. We don’t have time to explain everything to you. What we do need to know is if there is any other way to keep you powered up before your backup battery is depleted?”

  As if he was waiting for someone to admit that what I had just said was a joke, Silas’ eye-bar dipped on the left side, giving the impression of an eyebrow raised in disbelief.

  “I have a photoelectric charging system built into my outer skin,” Silas said after no one contradicted me. His eye-bar moved to look up at the forest canopy. “It will prove sufficient to keep my main systems active. There is insufficient sunlight here. Please direct me to the nearest open area.”

  “The beach,” Freuchen said. “Ve should get him to the beach.”

  “I don’t think he’ll make it that far,” Chou said. “Not at night. His backup batteries are only going to last him twenty minutes at most. Then we’ll have to wait until tomorrow’s aurora, and we’ll be a day later back to the garrison than we said we would be.”

  “Maybe we should just get him into the clearing near the tower,” I said. “At least there’s open sky. Maybe it will be enough to keep him charged long enough to get to the beach.”

  Chou nodded. “Yes, it’s worth a try.” She turned back to Silas. “Silas, will you follow us please?”

  “Of course,” said Silas. The robot slowly extended both of his legs until they were directly out in front of him, his joints grating and creaking like stressed metal. At the same time, he flexed both of his arms, like someone at a gym warming up before hitting the weight machines. He did this several times, each time the grating sound grew less and less until, finally, he pushed himself to his feet.

  We walked back to the tower, an unobstructed view of the star-speckled sky above us, the robot, looming over us.

  “This will do,” I said. “Silas, wait here, please.”

  The robot obeyed.

  “What should we ask him?” I said, thinking back to the previous night and all of the questions that had gone left unsaid.

  Chou shook her head. “I don’t think we should ask him anything tonight. We need him to conserve as much energy as possible to get him to the beach tomorrow morning. If we ask questions, it will use up his energy reserves.”

  “You’re right,” I said, even though the questions I had were ready to spill from me.

  Silas said, “Weston is correct. If I enter standby mode soon, I will conserve ninety-eight percent of my available power.”

  “It’s the best course of action,” Chou said.

  Both Freuchen and I agreed.

  “Silas, shut down until we reactivate you.”

  “Shutting down. Good night.” And with that, the robot’s eyes dimmed and went out.

  Sixteen

  We spent the rest of the night camped at the base of the tower. At some point, I’d fallen asleep and awakened to the sound of birds chirruping in the tangled wreckage at the top of the tower. The sun was still too low in the sky to illuminate much of the clearing, instead, sending shadow emissaries creeping ahead of itself, gradually shrinking harbingers of early morning’s approach.

  The robot was in the exact same position we had left him.

  “Silas, wake up.” No sooner had I said the words than the two blue spots of electronic light sparked into life on the robot’s eye-bar. I half-expected to have to go through the same welcome speech, but his battery-backup appeared to have held.

  “Good morning,” the robot said, rising to his full height.

  Silas looked around. “Oh, the habitat!” he said, surprised when he saw the ruined tower behind him.

  “You mentioned the tower… the habitat, as you call it, when we spoke with you the first night we found you. What was it?” Chou asked.

  “A residence for this island’s candidates. A home for all of you. I built it in preparation for your arrival.”

  “You built it?” Freuchen said, obviously impressed.

  “Yes, with the help of another SILAS unit.”

  “Do you think there is anything of use to us in there?” Freuchen said, nodding at the tower.

  “I do not believe so. The habitat was just that: a place for you to rest, shelter. It was to be furnished and stocked at a later date.”

  “Silas, do you know why we were brought here?” I asked.

  “Here?” the robot said.

  “To this planet.”

  “I apologize, but the information is lost to me.”

  “That’s okay,” I said. “Silas, the night we found you, when you first woke up, you relayed a message to me. Was the message from the Architect?”

  Silas’ eye-bar swiveled in my direction. “I’m sorry, Meredith, but I have no recollection of relaying any message to you.”

  I quickly repeated the message back to him: “Candidate 13, humanity is in
peril. The plan has been compromised by an external entity. This interference has introduced multiple patterns of disorder; the effects on the outcome have moved beyond predictability. Agents of chaos will be unleashed in an attempt to stop what I require of you. You must travel to the collector immediately and locate Candidate 1. They must know that the field is collapsing, and the void follows behind.”

  Chou asked, “Who is the ‘external entity’? And what did you mean by the ‘void’? Can you tell me?”

  Silas’ eye-bar tilted quizzically. “I have no information or memory of ever relaying that information to you, Meredith. Perhaps this is a product of my memory failure?”

  “Okay,” I said, “can you at least tell me who Candidate 1 is? Or who the Collector is? Where I can find them? And what does this collector… collect, exactly?” Visions of bad horror movie villains sprang unbidden into my mind.

  “I… there appears to be a block on that information.”

  “You mean you’ve forgotten who it is? When we met, you knew who I was, who Chou and Freuchen were? Why would you forget who they are?”

  “No, I have not forgotten the information, that part of my memory appears to be fully intact. Access to information relating to the first five candidates appears to have been placed behind a barrier that I am unable to breach.”

  “You mean, it’s password protected?” I said.

  “In a manner of speaking, yes. I know the information is there, I just do not have the authorization to access it.”

  I tried not to let my growing frustration show, and while Silas may have been correct about having forgotten the message he had related to me, it just didn’t feel right. I mean, how could whoever had sent the message know it was going to be me who would be the one to find Silas? And why would the first words out of his mouth have been a message for me, only to then deny having any memory of it? It just didn’t make sense. But at least now I knew that the robot had some answers. How I was supposed to access that information was a whole other question.