by Oliver Smith
Three months.
That’s all it took to wipe out everyone on the planet. Everyone except me, of course.
Thanks to that prick Belsham and the bastards at VIRSOFT, the virus didn’t kill me. With no organic heart or lungs to damage, the worst I suffered was a low grade fever and vomiting while those around me died in the billions.
I was the only one, you see. The prototype. I was only one ever fitted with this artificial system, forcing me to live on in a world full of death.
I paused in writing this to look out the window at the overgrown, gray world outside, a relic of a species now extinct. A world in which nature is finally recovering from the destruction we’ve wrought.
And I see her.
The girl on the lawn. The one who haunts me.
I didn’t start to see her until after that first year. By then I’d gotten used to the smell of the dead, and had existed in a kind of limbo, wandering from place to place, trying to figure out exactly what the hell I was supposed to do. For a while I looked for survivors, but the more I looked all I found was death. My travels had took me all over America, traveling by car when I could, on foot when I had to, all in the hope of finding something. By the time I reached San Francisco, my mind was made up. I was going to finish the job I started. I walked across the Golden Gate Bridge, past rusty, dust covered cars. I half wondered about the people who owned them, what kind of lives they might have led before they were taken from them. Rather than sad, it made me jealous.
I looked down over the edge of the bridge, two hundred feet of fresh air between me and the water and the bliss of death I craved. I climbed over the edge, shaking with fear despite my determination, knowing I was literally one step away from peace.
That was the first time I saw her. The girl with the black hair.
She was on the rail next to me, staring. Pale skin, wide blue eyes, raven hair. She was wearing a one piece white dress, fluttering in the breeze. I was so shocked to see another human being that for a few seconds I forgot to breathe. I asked if she was real, or at least I think I did. I might have just thought it.
She smiled at me.
I don’t know how long I stood there. All I know is my knees were trembling and it wasn’t from fear of the fall. I looked away from her at the oblivion below be.
You can’t do this.
I turned my head back towards her. She hadn’t moved, and was still watching me with that curious look on her face. I imagined I could see a half smile. I was less sure she had even spoken at all.
“Me?” I croaked.
She didn’t respond, and just stared at me, as if waiting for something. It crossed my mind that she was an illusion, a phantom created by a brain devoid of interaction for such a long time. I turned back to look at the water below, wondering if it would hurt, wondering if I would die straight away. It was time. My mind was made up. I took a deep breath and put a foot out in front of me.
She grabbed me.
I hadn’t heard her move, but somehow she had closed the distance to me and was holding my upper arm. Her fingers were cold, her grip like a vice. I could smell her; soap and coconut, the first non-death smell I could remember since the world died. She still didn’t speak, and she didn’t have to. I looked into her eyes, lost in the sheer depth and knowledge shining inside them. I tried to pull free, but couldn’t move.
No.
It wasn’t spoken, but it came from her all the same, somehow delivered into my head.
Not this way.
Something happened then. I still don’t know what it was, I just know I couldn’t look into those eyes anymore. I turned away and squeezed my own eyes closed, and the next thing I remember I was back on the bridge, sitting on the ground and leaning against one of those skeletal shells, hot tears stinging my eyes.
Of the girl, there was no sign.
Scrambling to my feet, I ran back to the edge, looking for her. Somehow I knew she hadn’t jumped, so I set out to look for her, scared and excited in equal measure. For three days I searched, shouting at the top of my lungs and hearing only the rolling echo of my own voice in reply.
What cruelty. To give me a glimpse of companionship then snatch it away. It made the solitude worse than ever, and increased my determination to end my pitiful existence. Finding a gun wasn’t too hard. They littered the street. I took one from a police officer I came across, his corpse dry and withered, slumped over in his patrol car. I had left San Francisco by this time, and was in Lafayette. I found a nice place out in the Reliez valley with beautiful views of the trees and open country. It was a beautiful place to die. Remembering my earlier failure, I was determined to do it right this time. Gun to the roof of the mouth, pointing up towards the brain. One thing was for sure—there was no danger of anyone hearing the shot and saving me like last time. This time I would make sure it was done right. I flicked off the safety, and took one last look at the view.
The girl was there, not ten feet away. She was wearing the same clothes, and had the same wide eyed expression on her face. Fear, like a hot, physical thing, knotted my stomach.
Those eyes.
I was scared to look but powerless not to. I fumbled and dropped the gun in the dirt at my feet. I bent and picked it up, and when I looked back the girl was gone.
It may sound stupid to you if you ever read this, but the fear instantly morphed into an intense and anguished sadness that she had teased her presence and left me yet again. I turned the gun towards my face, looking into the black depths of the barrel, knowing that just a few pounds of pressure on the trigger was all that stood between me and peace. The wind ruffled my hair, and brought with it the smell of soap and coconut, telling me she was back.
I turned to my left and there she was, sitting on the rock beside me, knees tucked up under her chin, delicate bare feet on the stone. She wasn’t looking at me, but straight ahead out over the valley, her porcelain doll-like face framed beautifully in sunlight.
No.
I knew it was her, even though she hadn’t spoken.
“Why not?” I whispered.
She looked at me then, eyes full of sadness.
I can’t let you.
“Why? Who are you?” I asked, my words snatched away on the breeze.
She didn’t answer me, and I didn’t want to wait any longer. I knew if I waited I would be denied. I adjusted my grip on the gun and turned it towards my face.
She grabbed my wrist, her grip just as strong as on the bridge. I tried to struggle free, yet she seemed capable of restraining me with little effort.
“Let me go, I want to die,” I hissed at her.
She did look at me then, and all the fight went out of me. Words, her words, came into my mind, and with them I knew who she was, and why she was there.
I can’t let you break the bond.
Of course she couldn’t. Why would she? It made perfect sense. VIRSOFT had spent a small fortune fitting me with new innards. With a second attempt at suicide a very real option, it stood to reason they would build in a failsafe, something to stop me from destroying their prototype.
“You look so real,” I whispered.
She didn’t reply. Instead she gave a half smile and looked back out over the rolling valley.
I knew what she was, of course. She was a fiction. Something created by the chip at the base of my skull and projected into my desolate world. I could see her, I could smell her. She was in every way right there in the world with me. I could see the light dusting of freckles on her cheeks, the stray hairs blown by the breeze across her face, even the slight moistness of her lips. I tried an experiment then. Rather than speak my question to her, I thought it instead. Immediately, she responded, again without speaking.
No, I can’t do that. It’s my job to stop you.
I nodded, understanding exactly what her purpose was.
She was a program; a program designed to stop me whenever the urge to end my life came; a piece of self-preservation code in a dead society.
<
br /> “I don’t want this,” I said, then repeated my earlier request. “Please, just let me die.”
I watched her and waited. For a while she said nothing, then, just as I was about to repeat myself, she spoke—actually spoke words for the first time rather than in my head.
“You should be grateful,” she said, her voice soft and soothing, “you have been given a great gift.”
“What kind of gift?” I asked, tossing the useless gun into the dirt.
“The gift of life.”
“I don’t want life. Just look at the world for Christ’s sake,” I screamed, frustration finally boiling over.
But it was software, a computer program; it had no idea what had happened to the world. All it had been programmed to do was keep me alive until it was told otherwise by a creator who was dead. Instead, the girl reeled off the rest of the stock answer, and her words brought home the reality of the situation.
“You will live forever,” she said, turning those penetrating eyes on me. “My systems are designed to work indefinitely.”
“But I’ll age, the rest of me will age,” I pleaded, knowing as advanced as it was, the software didn’t understand. “What happens when I get old?”
“When the patient stability increases and the suicide risk reaches acceptable levels of eleven percent or less, my creator will change my programming.”
“He’s dead!” I shouted, my voice echoing throughout the valley. “Everyone is dead!”
She smiled and turned back to the view. I saw my future then, a withered, crippled old thing, brittle bones broken, muscles wasted away to nothing, but still alive, still breathing, all thanks to the computer in my head and the artificial systems keeping me going.
“I’ll find a way. I’ll find a way to end it,” I whispered.
No. I won’t ever let that happen.
It was then that I began to weep. I don’t know how long I sat there sobbing like a baby. All I know is that when I finished the girl had gone and I was alone again. Useless though it was, sometimes I would attempt to kill myself just so I could see her again. Always she would appear and stop me, always with that look in her eyes, always smelling like soap and coconut. Sometimes I would try to engage her in conversation, if only to break up the monotony of my existence. She never stays any longer than needed. As soon as the threat is gone, she goes with it.
I look up from this notepad and out of the window and she’s still there, standing on the lawn, watching me, waiting. She knows I’ve set up the noose and will attempt to hang myself just as soon as I’ve finished writing this. Of course, in my heart of hearts (What heart? Ha!) I know it won’t work. I know that when the time comes, I’ll smell her intoxicating scent, and feel that icy grip. Even so, I have to try. God help me, I have to try.
In closing—if, when you find this note, there is a corpse in the hall hanging from the staircase railing, then know I died happy. If not, then once again I have been foiled, and am destined to walk the earth in limbo until either my body or this Godforsaken computer in my head breaks down.
Pray for me.
Hyperreal
By DJ Tyrer
Captain James Campbell’s eyes snapped open in shock and he screamed.
Awakening from DSE was always traumatic. Deep Sleep Environment was the way in which the crews of long-range vessels could survive the extreme velocities necessary to reach the outer reaches of star systems and the tedium of the voyage. The crew and passengers would be placed in grav tanks filled with a gel-like liquid and their metabolism slowed in a form of hibernation. Being awakened necessitated a sudden jolt that brought you back into consciousness. Shocked awake, you were disorientated and felt as if you were drowning, and quite often suffered neurological effects similar to an epileptic attack. All in all, the experience was terrifying, even for experienced travelers.
Campbell remembered who he was and where he was.
“Sarah, you awake?”
He heard coughing, then Chief Officer Sarah Wang answered, “Aye, sir.” She was the Physicist and Navigator for Mentalis. While he was the in-system pilot, it was Sarah who was vital to what would follow.
“Andrew, how about you?”
“Aye, sir.” Andrew Nkomo was the ship’s engineer. He shared responsibility with Sarah for the computer systems and was in charge of life-support, the engines and other systems.
“Rani?”
“Aye, sir.” Rani Patil was the medical officer, which, on this cruise, meant she was also acting as security officer.
There was a fifth member of the crew, if you preferred to think of her in that way, but she was still asleep. She was the reason for Rani’s dual role aboard Mentalis.
“Everyone to your stations.” He took hold of the toggle that opened the grav tank and yanked it. The hatch hissed open and he stepped out with unsteady feet.
“Sir.” Sarah was stepping out of her tank. Their tanks were on opposite sides of the bridge. Andrew’s was in the aft section and Rani’s was in the medical bay. By placing them where they worked, they could get started checking systems as soon as they awoke and their disorientation abated.
Wiping themselves clean of the gel, they sank into their seats and began the system check.
“Report in,” Campbell said into his mic.
“Ships computer operating normally, sir,” Sarah replied.
“Life-support, power and maneuver drives all functioning normally, sir,” came the voice of Andrew over the intercom.
“Hannah is a-okay and sedated,” Rani reported.
Hannah was the reason why Mentalis existed.
Until now, extrasolar travel had only been possible by travelling at extreme sub-light speeds. Continuous acceleration made the colonization of nearby star systems possible, but made exploration and trade effectively impossible. Hannah would change all that.
Humanity had been aware of the existence of psychics for almost a century and scientists had been experimenting on them for just as long. Recognizing the danger psychics could pose, the law required that all children be tested for psychic ability, and those who tested positive be handed over to the state. Hannah was one such psychic, raised in a laboratory, examined and assessed from childhood; property, not a person.
Hannah was one of those particularly rare psychics with the ability to teleport. A few had proven capable—albeit at great personal risk—of teleporting over interstellar distances. Unfortunately, even the strongest teleporters had difficulty transporting others or items across even the shortest of distances, let alone between solar systems. Yet it had been postulated that their natural ability could be boosted, even to the extent of transporting an entire ship.
Hence seventeen year old Hannah had been sedated and placed within a specialized grav tank that was as much a prison, a sort of human battery-cum-engine that would transport Mentalis from Earth’s solar system to that of Alpha Centauri.
“All stations,” said Campbell, “we will jump shortly. You have one hour for personal preparations. Then we will begin preliminaries.”
Everyone would need a chance to stretch their legs, get cleaned and dressed after their time in the tanks, maybe hydrate themselves a little. They wouldn’t eat until after the jump—it was expected that the experience might cause nausea. Campbell would use the hour to check the ship over; it was his personal idiosyncrasy, a means of reassuring himself more than anything.
Sucking on a foil sachet of juice as he went, Campbell toured the ship, checking every nook and cranny. Even if the computer system was guaranteed to detect the slow leak of a micrometeor penetration, he liked to be certain there were no such problems.
“James... James...” Someone, a woman, was whispering his voice.
“Sarah is that you? Rani?” No reply. He held his wrist comm to his mouth and called them both. They were both where they were supposed to be, not anywhere near life-support. He didn’t hear the voice again. Still a little disorientated from the DSE, he thought.
Despite its smal
l crew, Mentalis was quite large. Without the need to be aerodynamic, the ship had been built as a latticework and stretched for nearly two miles in length and a mile across. Somewhat conventionally, the bridge was at one end and the maneuver drives were at the other. The reactor was near the drives, isolating them from the limited risk of radiation. Engineering and life-support ran along the central sections of the lattice, while the medical bay was towards the middle of the ship. The final section, referred to as the jump drive, was located in a nodule atop a central spine.
Campbell walked every part of it.
His final destination was the jump drive, where Hannah was located. Her grav tank was modified, attached to equipment that would enhance and control her psychic potential. It struck Campbell as looking like an oversized coffin or a metallic mausoleum. If you cared to look through the view port at the girl’s agonized face in the green-tinted gel, you would see a spider-like network of metallic spines atop her shaven head, their ends piercing her skull, needle-like. It reminded him of some medieval torture device.
Campbell didn’t enjoy visiting this area, and he found it disturbing that Rani enjoyed her work with Hannah so much.
“How is she?” he asked.
“All life signs are stable and she’s still sedated. When we are ready to jump, I will stimulate her as per protocol.”
Essentially, that meant she would torture the unconscious girl to produce the desired effect, a stimulation of her flight response.
“Good.” He left as quickly as he could, returning to the bridge and taking his seat.
“Right, everybody begin the preliminaries for the jump.”
That entailed a further round of system checks and confirmations after which he issued the order to prepare for jump.
“Ten minutes till jump. Grav couches, everyone.”
Grav couches were used for lower-g maneuvers and had been deemed suitable for the jump. Of course nobody knew for certain what would actually occur during a jump, or how it would affect the human body and mind. They were, in essence, guinea pigs.
“Good luck, everybody. Five minutes till jump.”
