Butcher Block Green

by Eric Kramer

<> your LEG, DROPSHIP <>

  //STOP PLAYBACK//

  “Wrong one, Jon. Wrong memory. He either can’t hear us or can’t control playback. I need to try again.”

  “What did you see?”

  “Battle. In orbit around Haepko. You’re right. The battleship never made it. I watched it explode… I mean implode. I think the gravity drive blew. At least that’s what Gan said. Their dropship was caught in the battleship’s microsingularity and was pulled in. But why weren’t they crushed?”

  “I dunno. Remember the talk about singularities being the mouths of wormholes? Things can move from point A to point B through one.”

  “That’s junk science. Untestable, because everything sent through a singularity has been destroyed.”

  “I don’t think so, Lilli. All we can say about stuff that goes into a singularity is that it has disappeared.”

  “Yeah, that’s because it gets crushed before it can even get close to the event horizon.”

  “Okay, but here we are, with a six-thousand-year-old ship, six hundred light years from where it’s supposed to be, that dates like it’s only half a millennia old!”

  “All right, let me reinterface. Nothing’s going to be solved by us arguing.”

  “Okay, sending you. Ready, interfacing….”

  “Jon, did you hear…”

  //BEGIN PLAYBACK//

  “HEY! YOU IN THERE! GAN! CAN YOU HEAR ME!”

  Yes! Yes, I can! COME ON YOU USELESS MACHINE!

  ::initiate::

  ::failure::

  ::initiate.comm:

  ::failure::

  “Um, I don’t think yelling at it will help.”

  Oh, come on! I’m in here! I’m STILL ALIVE!

  “Actually, I think it will. The imager acts like he’s in there, right? Like on the replay, I experience it like normal cortical mapping? Thoughts and everything? That means he’s listening now.”

  YES! GREAT! I CAN HEAR YOU!

  “And if we interface you’ll be able to, uh, hear him thinking his response. Worth a shot, no?”

  “That’s … kind of brilliant. All right. Gan, if that’s you in there … how did you get here? Are you able to communicate in some way with us?”

  I don’t know. I was attacking Haepko. The battleship exploded. We found ourselves here. I found myself here. LISTEN TO ME. You’re in grave danger. There’s a … a Quuin, right next to you. You need to get out of here RIGHT NOW. No! Wait! GET OFF THE SAND. STAND ON THE BATTLESUIT. I can’t think straight. But take me with you. Please. I’ve been alone here for centur—

  “How long should we wait…”

  “Shut up!”

  I’ve been here for centuries. Interfaced my consciousness to the suit, but the hexed thing gave out on the way to the station, so if you can just…

  “Okay, that’s enough. Let’s re-interface.”

  “…waitwaitwait…GET OFF THE SAND! I CAN HEAR IT!! THE QUUIN!!! GET OFF!! IT’S BY THE HEAVIER ONE OF YOU!!!”

  “How do you know you’ll be dumped in the right time?”

  “Who knows. I’m hoping he’s controlling it somehow—Gan—if you can hear me and can control your cortical playback, please drop me in to when we realized you’re in there!”

  ….I can’t, but you can! All you have to do is…

  //STOP PLAYBACK//

  “Jon! GET OFF THE SAND! NOW!”

  <>

  “Wha… Wait, what are you doing? Get down!”

  “COME UP HERE NOW! I heard him. He spoke to us! We’re in danger, but we’re safe if we stay up here. He said something was next to you.”

  “Okay, okay, okay.”

  <>

  “What did he say was next to me?”

  “I don’t know, but he sounded terrified. He wants us to take him with us, Jon. I have to go back in. Right when you pulled me back, he was trying to tell me how to access the interface at whatever timeframe I want. Listen, I have a crazy idea. He’s an old school graft, right? I mean, He’s engineered to graft to ship’s systems. Somehow he transferred his consciousness over to this suit. If he can do that, he can tolerate the inverse, too. So what if we take a body clone, and try to dump him into it?”

  “I don’t know…”

  “We have to call the ship here, anyways. I’m not touching that sand until I understand what’s going on.”

  “I think it’s fine, Lilli. We’ve been here what, two hours now? Nothing’s happened.”

  “Yeah, but I interfaced in twenty-five minutes ago. So whatever was standing next to you may have already done something.”

  “Wait … why me?”

  “He said it was next to the heavier one. Sorry, bud, but you’re overweight. I’m calling the ship. It’s too hot to hump it back anyways. We should have flown.”

  “Listen, Lilli, I think this is getting to you. You’ve been exposed to memories of a conscious ship folding and whatever that singularity did. Even though it’s been filtered through our ship’s scrubbers, I think it’s starting to mess with you. I’m getting down. You should too. It’s not safe up here. This metal can fry a steak.”

  “Sorry, Jon, but I can’t agree. This is bad. Stay up here with me. I think we’re in real danger. I’m going to reinterface, see if I can figure out how to control the playback.”

  “Fine. I’ll have the ship work on the clone while you’re gone.”

  “Make it two clones. Redundancy is good. We can run a sim before we do the actual transfer. Make sure they’re cross-compatible with the battlesuit’s EEG.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know. Interface already.”

  “Hey, you want to know something weird? He mentioned a station he was trying to get to.”

  “There is no station here.”

  “I know. Weird, right? Okay, I’m ready.”

  “Go.”

  //BEGIN PLAYBACK//

  I checked my timer as I ate my last food ration. Saowalak had been out there, trying to rewire the dropship’s access panel for at least thirty-six hours now. Trying to get inside. Trying to finish eating me.

  There was no more room for attempting to understand things out anymore. How we got here, what happened to the Rama. Concrete facts included: I was bleeding to death, the dropship was growing unresponsive, and I was out of food. Yet somehow Saowalak was still out there, more vigorous than ever.

  I called it Saowalak, but I knew he was gone. Something else was there.

  I had watched it all. Watched how the thing had come out of the sand, cracked his suit like a bug. He’d been incautious, left a port open. Somehow, the thing had recognized the weakness. Pulled him out. Fed.

  My friend, my navigator; his brain containing the only possible way out of here.

  But then he had come back, four days ago. He kept referring to himself as “Quuin,” told me he’d escaped, but couldn’t elaborate from what. I ran scans, and he came back as nothing. That should have raised red flags, but almost a week without sleep had exhausted me. Not thinking it through, I let him into the ship, and he immediately tore my arm off with his bare hands. If the dropship hadn’t expulsed him, overriding my override, I’d be dead.

  Still, the thing—the Quuin—had managed to destroy the food supplies. In its short time inside, it had also sabotaged the neural core—for all intents and purposes killing the ship. So, it was down to one option. There was some kind of station about eight hundred clicks to the east of our crash zone. I had no idea who ran it, why it was there, or if it even was a station at all.

  I finished my bar. There was nothing else do but leave.

  I pressed my remaining fingers into the weapons systems, felt them split. The display sprang up in front of me. I configured a battlesuit, pulling in the few microsynthesizers that had survived the journey. Grafted in the dropship’s neurocortex. It made the suit unwieldy, but, assuming I was fortunate, the cortex might be able to plot a course home, if I could reconstruct Saowalak’s neural handshake.

 
Here, I hesitated. Weapons, weapons. Heat seemed to work best. Projectiles did nothing. I loaded a thermal launcher, radiator panel, and a couple fission bombs. After a moment, I added a plasma lance, although I hadn’t tested that one’s effectiveness.

  Okay, that should be good.

  I pressed execute, and the acceleration gel molded itself to my body, pushing into the stump of my arm. I felt tendrils of the gel shove into my bicep, tapping into my brachial plexus. It hurt like crazy, but at least I’d have bimanual control of the battlesuit. I initiated another subroutine, and the dropship cockpit blossomed outward into plated fragments. Articulated pieces hissed out of manufacturing pods, weaving around the cockpit and locking into place around me. Layer upon layer, it built up until a vague egg shape encased me.

  The acceleration gel prevented the shock from crushing me as the dropship ejected the battlesuit, discharging me through her belly. Two weapons arms, two manipulators, and two legs slammed on as I fell, spinning, landing upright on the sand below.

  Hi, Saowalak. Quuin. Whatever you are. I’m ready for you.

  He heard me fall and came running. I could sense the Quuin behind him somehow, a giant malignant shadow, just out of view.

  I engaged the suit, running straight at him out from underneath the dropship. Saowalak’s mouth was moving, talking. Curiosity got the better of me. I flipped acoustics on.

  Saowalak’s voice flooded into my brain.

  “I see you Gaan target arget arget ants ants. Command, I’m butcher block green…”

  I clicked off acoustics. Same babble as before. I scrambled forward, running towards him as I charged the radiator panel. At ten yards, I pulsed it. Heat spread out, turning everything in front of me to glass.

  Saowalak still was coming, but he was missing part of his face. And his sternum.

  Looks human underneath.

  I fired another pulse, three-second duration. When the heatwave cleared, I couldn’t see anything. I kept running. Power was dipping low, the photovoltaic skin of the battlesuit was barely keeping up. Couldn’t afford many more blasts like that.

  I modified the legs’ grip on the sand and saw a 10 MPH speed increase.

  Good.

  The battlesuit careened past the molten pit where Saowalak had stood and headed for the open desert.

  Endless sand dunes spread ahead of me. Somewhere out there lay my salvation. I had to believe it was there. The exhaustion was overwhelming. I refused to sleep, but set the autoroute and let the suit do the work.

  Ten miles out, the thing hit. I must have fallen asleep despite myself, or concussed when it knocked me down. I don’t remember it coming.

  I woke up to the suit face-down in a dune. I could hear a thousand maddening screeches on the suit’s skin, like a grinder made of cat’s teeth trying to bore through everywhere at once.

  I gripped the suit’s controls, trying to force it upright. No response. Tried again, transferring power. No response. Pulled up diagnostics. Everything checked green across the board.

  Okay. Okay. Think.

  My vision swam: I felt like puking. A ping on my display called my attention, and I pulled it in front of me, squinted.

  Hemoglobin down to three. Platelets down to four thousand.

  I’m bleeding to death, and I’m not clotting anymore. Wonderful. Think think think. THINK, Gan.

  The tearing sound coming from outside was getting to me. Or maybe it was lack of perfusion to my brain. Drugs could only take my body so far.

  Take my body so far … but what about my mind?

  I threw up.

  Not much time left. I accessed the dropship’s cortex, activating it. It sucked an enormous amount of power, but it didn’t matter anymore; the suit wasn’t taking me anywhere. I shut down everything except the photovoltaics and the ship’s brain. Slaved myself into it. Scripted a consciousness transfer, tapping into the route used to upgrade the ship’s AI.

  What if I just copy myself, and I still die here?

  I blacked out.

  <>

  //STOP PLAYBACK//

  “Jon? Jon, where are you!”

  “Down here, under the suit! Come on down. I found something.”

  “What are you doing down there? Never mind … Is the ship coming?”

  “Yeah, two minutes out. Clones are ready.”

  “You run the sim? How’d it check out?”

  “Fine, except that when we actually do the consciousness transfer, we need to have full access to that huge brain that’s slaved to the suit. Must have come from the dropship, huh? Wonder what he was doing with it.”

  “Never mind that now, Jon. I have to interface again, and I’m not waiting for the refractory period to be over. I need to hear from him.”

  <>

  “Listen, Gan. We’re transferring you over into a clone, okay? I know about the thing in the sand. I saw it. I saw Saowalak. We have weapons on our ship that will obliterate whatever it is that’s here with us. For now, I’m staying up here out of the sand, but you need to unlock the cortex so we can do the transfer. We can’t transfer your actual consciousness without full access. You have to trust me.”

  <>

  “There’s the ship. I have time for one more. I’m going to try to get as close to your present time as I can. Our ship says it can brute force an insertion into a specific timeframe. Jon, hook me back in.”

  <>

  “Jon? Hello??? Come on, man! Fine, I’ll do it myself.”

  //BEGIN PLAYBACK//

  If you’re getting this, Lilli, I’ve unlocked the cortex. I’m ready for the transfer. STAY ON THE SUIT. Your companion Jon tried to attack you while you were last interfaced. I charged the skin, forced him off. The Quuin doesn’t like electricity either … figured that one out a while ago. The battlesuit will protect you, but I think when the Quuin consumed your friend, it damaged the suit somehow. Either way, it’s staying off. I’m not getting enough data, though. Audio alone won’t work for this. I need more. I’m trying something.

  ::video.start::

  ::success::

  Holy nova. I’ve been entering the wrong script all these eons.

  ::access.eyelet1::

  A heavy young man is staring at me, or, rather, at something that’s on me. The sand around him is pulsing, shifting. Behind him, an angular craft comes to a hover over us.

  Something pings my suit. The ship is calling me.

  I complete the recognition handshake, binding myself to the ship’s mainframe.

  The heavy young man moves closer, reaches out, micrometers from touching my skin. Hesitates. I realize his eyes fixate on Lilli, who’s on top of the suit, interfaced with my memory bank.

  Don’t.

  He touches the skin. I wait for a discharge, but nothing happens. He smiles. It is a strange expression: stretching with a robotic symmetry beyond what is comfortable as though the person smiling can’t sense the limits of the muscles. The corners of the mouth split, and blood trickles down.

  Nonononono.

  He starts climbing the suit. I dump all power into the skin, blasting electricity everywhere. The EMP’s flare whites out my sensors. When they come back, he is still climbing. He disappears out of view, and I know he’s reached her.

  NONONONONONONONO. Thinkthinkthinkthink. Come on, Gan!

  She’s accessing you right now. The cortex is open, she’s preparing transfer. Partition the cortex. MOVE, YOU IDIOT!

  My mind is weak from so much disuse, but the old augments—even though they’re now just virtual synthetics—kick into gear.

  <>

  Not much time. I find her in the memory imaging unit. I’m sure she’s totally unaware of what’s happening right now. Interfacing causes complete dissociation.

  Trace her back. There’s the link. Inject a packet, watch it take off. The connection broadens. Still too small for realtime consciousness transfer, but time’s something we�
�re out of.

  The connection winks, a millionth of a microsecond, but enough to let me know the connection is about to drop. The Quuin is killing her. Eating her, like it ate Saowalak.

  I don’t think about it anymore. I suck Lilli out of her brain, dumping her into the ship.

  Above there is a flurry of activity, then silence.

  A scraping sound, and the heavy man reappears on camera, this time looking directly into it.

  At me.

  His face is covered in blood. He turns his back, facing the ship. Watches it hovering for a moment.

  The ship starts moving, coming in for a landing. The heavy man walks away to meet it. Around him, the sand is at a full boil, popping and bursting everywhere.

  He’s leaving the planet. The God help me.

  I break the cortex’s partition.

  --Wha… where am … WHATISGOINGON? WHATHAPPENED?--

  I do a datadump, bringing her up to speed in the time it takes the ship to land. Easiest way to tell someone they’re dead.

  --It’s taking the ship! We’ll be trapped here! How can it even access the controls?--

  Neural mimic, Lilli. Your friend Jon was gone most of the time you were here. I think the Quuin refrained from consuming you out of hopes you’d expose me to it. But now it’s found something better. A whole ship, and a way off the planet.

  We both watch as he boards the craft. The ship’s engines flare. Preflight check.

  --No…--

  Listen, can you still access the clones through here? There’s two, remember? We can still get out of here.

  --I don’t know … how … how do I access the ship?--

  I graft a communications operator module onto her.

  The ship begins to lift.

  Hurry.

  --I got it. Hang on. Accessing the ship.--

  The ship pauses, a giant jewel dangling in midair.

  --I froze acceleration, but he’s overriding it. No matter, I’m in the genetics bay. Found the clones.--

  The ship lifts skyward again. Out of its belly, a small panel unfolds and rotates towards us.

  --Okay, ship’s painting us with a broadbeam connection. Here goes nothing, Gan. I primed and modded the clones. The Quuin is going to have a tough time consuming them. There’s also a weapons bay just down the hall and to the left from genetics. All kinds of nasty stuff in there. Guarantee, if we make it, we can wipe out whatever that thing is.