Cryptikon Far Freedom Part 2

by Warren Merkey

protect Zakiya, at least keep her alive. "I'll never tell you!" She bowed her head. She gripped the edges of the bench where she sat. She couldn't stop trembling. But she couldn't leave! Zakiya had risked far more than she had, to bring about this future for them. Aylis had only cowered in darkness deep in the moon while Zakiya had risked her life. Mnro would suffer and Mnro would survive, and perhaps take a few more steps toward the future she and Zakiya had planned.

  Zakiya. Zakiya. Something was creeping into her jumbled thoughts, wedging itself between the surges of emotion. Zakiya and Etrhnk. Something evil was struggling to be born during this storm in which she was trapped. She was afraid to look at this thing. She was already threatened with unspeakably intimate brutality. Yet there was this something that might be even worse. It might be unleashed should this violence be done to her. She tried to ignore it, but it rode with her through the gauntlet of fear.

  It wasn't in her nature. It wasn't allowed by her fear. She would not submit without a struggle. Yet, she did submit at some level, and it wasn't explained by the logic of sacrifice for an unsecured bargain with evil. Beyond any clue of reason and memory, she felt destined to suffer this most vicious violation of her being.

  "I want the portrait," she said miserably.

  /

  He stood over Mnro and put a hand on her fuzzy blonde head. She twisted away from the contact but didn't try to leave. He could feel his heart beating more quickly, his body chemistry defeating the control of his Navy augments. It was very strange, but he felt angry with Aylis Mnro. Perhaps because she knew so many things about Demba - Zakiya - Ruby - Keshona - that he would never know. Perhaps because he was being made to do something he did not want to do. Dominance, not used, invited decline. This mystery of emotions should have halted his actions, but time was too short, momentum was too great. Constant had taught him to take pleasure when he could. He hoped she would not mind.

  "I'll scream," Mnro said in a shaky voice.

  "You'll frighten the birds," Etrhnk said, reaching for her.

  /

  She would scream! She would fight him! She would hate him! But she would also hate herself! This should never have happened. This would never have happened, but a lonely and proud and foolish old woman, once upon a time, had made a bad decision, an immoral decision. Now she would pay for it.

  She had loved a young man once. Now she would hate him. There were words to stop this insanity but she could not find them. He would never believe. She would never want to believe.

  She screamed. Birds flew.

  2-03 Find Me. Kill Me.

  Pan sat alone on a dark balcony overlooking moon-streaked water. Beyond the horizon lightning illuminated the tops of cumulonimbus. The sea breeze had finally eased the heat of day, if not the humidity. He could hear the distant surf.

  "Good evening, sir," came a voice from the doorway.

  "Good evening, Fred," he answered.

  Pan was glad of the interruption to his thoughts, as they were accomplishing little except to make him sad. He waited, wondering if the android would initiate more dialog. It was not unusual for Fred to speak to him without being invited because Pan had programmed him that way. However, Fred had been nearly silent since the AMI departed his circuits.

  Fred became quiet now, yet he remained in his company.

  Pan's mind wandered. It was almost a routine, yet always a surprise, as his mind flooded with a compelling vision of a life once lived. He knew his father's face now. He knew his real mother, almost more than he could bear to know her. Many of his lost acquaintances had begun to appear, peopling a prehistory that still remained for his mental archeology to date and sequence. The most important people who had shared his life were the hardest to bring into focus, as if there was still some bias of secrecy for the sake of security that tried to draw them back into oblivion. His father, Aylis Mnro, Zakiya Muenda, his brother Direk, and someone named Iggy: these were persons for whom he needed to struggle to retain the reality of their past relationships to him. Another three - Alexandros Gerakis, Koji Hoshino, and Patrick Jenkins - came more easily and permanently into his waking memories, although his relationships with them seemed much briefer and less vital.

  It was a lightning strike of revelation when he reacquainted himself with Alexandros Gerakis. The name was legendary. To discover he was real was one shocking thing, but to remember he was Zakiya's - Ruby's - husband was deeply disappointing. Emotions emerged powerfully from memory and made him love Ruby intensely, but Ruby was dead. Admiral Demba - Zakiya - was not Ruby. Even the sound of her voice did not fully belong to Ruby Reed. She was better than Ruby, and even in her current confused state she was a much more complete and complex person.

  Pan assumed there was a reason for this disruption and redefinition of his life, and for the insertion of Zakiya Muenda and Aylis Mnro into his current lifetime. Aylis Mnro would only say that she wanted to find Setek-Ren. His father. Her ex-husband. Zakiya - Admiral Demba - would explain nothing at all to him. He felt he must have a role to play, yet they would not even admit there were roles to be played. They were being cautious, perhaps not even aware yet of all the details they must have planned far in the past. What role he might have had was negated by the house-arrest placed on him by Admiral Etrhnk. Perhaps he had already played his small role.

  He hated the confusion and uncertainty. He hated now losing Zakiya and Aylis Mnro, just as he was awakening to their meaning to him. He hated losing Sugai Mai, as it was clear that she needed to leave Earth and distance herself from the danger. Pan felt abandoned and useless.

  His only comfort was the android on which he had doted for so many years: a machine with just enough complexity that he could imagine it was a friend and not a machine. He was aware of Fred's actions in rescuing Zakiya and Samson, directed by his AMI passenger. He felt Fred was different after Baby departed. Fred was too quiet and too busy. The AMI likely modified some of Fred's programming, in order to override his safeguards. He needed to have Fred inspected. He might even need to have him decommissioned.

  Fred slowly emerged from the dimly-lit apartment and walked to the railing of the balcony. This was unusual. The android stared into the night. That was unusual. Pan found himself riveted by anticipation and he held his breath.

  "They are all gone," Fred said. "Even Daidaunkh."

  Pan noted the subtle but real inflection of the synthetic voice that matched the implied mood of the spoken words. Implied mood. Even without the precise human inflection, the words were startling. So many people in the universe, Pan thought, and so few with whom to share the journey. "We still have Jarwekh," he said.

  They fell silent for a time. Pan awaited a miracle, welcomed it.

  "How do you know when you have existed long enough?" Fred asked.

  "What a strange thing for you to ask." What a worrisome statement, Pan thought, yet, how wonderful.

  "So many strange thoughts to think."

  "Please, talk with me," Pan said. "What's wrong?"

  "I am... different."

  "Are you sad? Are you upset?"

  "What strange things you ask." Fred sat down opposite Pan in the darkness.

  "It seems you have feelings, Fred! I've always made you more than you were, in my imagination, trying to make you alive, to make you a friend. I'm happy you've become a real person!"

  Fred turned to face him. Even in the darkness, Pan could see Fred looking directly into his eyes. It sent a chill down his spine, followed by a warmth in his chest.

  "How is it possible?" Fred wondered.

  "You would know better than I. Welcome to life, old friend."

  "I'm not sure I wish to be alive. It's too complicated. It slows me down. Too many thoughts. Too many questions. Too few answers. I can't stop them!"

  "If it gets too difficult, let me try to help. Life is worth living, even as miserable as it can be."

  "Thank you, sir."

  "Pan. Just Pan. You are no longer my servant. You are my friend."

  "B
ut I need work to distract my thoughts."

  They entered yet another period of thought-filled silence that lasted for only a short time. It was halted when a blinding point of light appeared in the air above the balcony deck. Squinting, Pan watched the point expand vertically, upward and downward, to become a very thin line of searing, white light. After a moment the line reached the height of a man and stopped. The line grew slowly outward, forming a shining, silvery plane. It emitted a troubling hiss that covered the quiet background of a sleeping planet.

  Pan and Fred came to their feet long before the mirror ceased growing. They stepped back as the mirror began to rotate. It rotated once, destroying a chair, part of the table, and a section of the balcony railing. When it completed one rotation, the image of a feminine face reflected in the mirror.

  Pan and Fred moved in unison toward their only avenue of escape - through the door into the apartment - but halted when they heard the apparition speak.

  "Wow! Interesting! Destroys with the power of an event horizon, yet it doesn't warp everything with heavy gravity!"

  They stood in the doorway, fascinated but prepared to bolt away, as the plane of the mirror swung slowly around. The face in the mirror looked at everything; its black and silver eyes turned left and right as though it could actually see.

  "Oh, there you are," the Lady in the Mirror said, as she rotated in Pan's direction. "I found this coordinate computed as the