by Alex Lang
With anyone else she would have insisted on the hospital. But, as she’d come to learn over the years, Ronan generally knew best. “OK. Come with me.”
Ten minutes later she had the live feed of his brain imaging in front of her. She sifted her way through the 3D map, looking for these mysterious anomalies. What was he expecting her to find? A tumour? A clot? A bleed?
“Anything?” he asked.
“Nothing. No damage at all. Wait. What the hell? That doesn’t look right.”
“What do you see?”
“These neuron patterns here in the hindbrain look almost … random.” She turned to Ronan. “Is this what you mean? This corruption?”
“Is it spreading?”
She turned back and zoomed in. It took only a few moments to see it. She watched as more and more of the connections between the neurons realigned themselves. They switched from normal, organic arrangements into broken, disjointed fragments.
“It is,” she said. “Advancing rapidly. Do you want to tell me what the hell is going on here,
Ronan? Frankly, it’s incredible you’re even walking and talking.”
Ronan nodded but didn’t reply.
“Ronan? What has happened? What is this?”
With great effort, as if having to drag up ancient memories, he began to tell her the day’s
events.
When he’d finished she was silent for a moment. If she hadn’t seen his scan she wouldn’t have believed it. “Ronan,” she said finally, “I’m so sorry.”
He shook his head. “No. You don’t understand. This is an incredible opportunity.”
“What?”
“Whoever these people are, however they’ve done this, we need this technology. They’re years ahead of us.”
“It must be experimental,” said Kay. “For all we know it only works one in a hundred times. One in a thousand. You’re incredibly lucky just to be here.”
“Yes, but think what we could do if we had this capability. If we could reliably edit people’s images. We could cure diseases, do anything. We have to pursue this.”
“Always the idealist, Ronan. You can’t go ahead with this; you’re going to get yourself killed. Somehow we have to stop the encryption of your neural matrix. Restore you somehow.”
He shook his head. “The thing is, I’ve already instructed the bank to transfer the money.”
“What?” she said again. She was beginning to doubt his sanity now. Was this the corruption in his brain speaking? “Ronan, this is madness.”
“No, Kay. Listen to me. Listen while I can still think straight. OK, perhaps they’ll talk their half billion and run. And then I am in serious trouble. But there’s a chance they’ll do what they said: intervene again to fix me so they can get the rest of their money, yes?”
“There’s a chance,” she said. “There’s also a chance they’ll zap your brain completely to cover their tracks.”
“No. It will look too obvious. They’re clever. Who knows how often they’ve done this? We need to stop them. You need to stop them.”
“Me?”
“You’ll know where I am in the jump network. You can track me among all the billions of images?”
She shrugged.
“Sure, that we can do.”
“And when they intervene-if they do-you’ll be able to see it, yes? They must be using a hacked jump node. You’ll be able to get a physical address. We’ll be able to get to them.”
She studied him for a moment. He was serious. He really meant to do this. “Ronan,” she said, “this is a whole series of ifs and slim chances. It’s not going to actually work.”
He smiled through the pain. He actually smiled. “Maybe. Or we’ll put a stop to a bunch of evil hackers and acquire technology ShivaTech could work wonders with.”
“If by some miracle it works and they do wipe out your memories of all this, you’re going to be pretty confused when you emerge from the jump network. You won’t have a clue what’s going on.”
“I’ll manage.”
She shook her head. “I don’t like it. I don’t like it one bit.”
“Then it’s a good job I’m the boss. Consider all of that an order.”
“Ronan, you haven’t given me an actual order in thirty years.”
“Then I’m asking. Please, Kay. If it goes wrong it hardly matters at this stage, does it?”
She studied him for a moment more, then relented with a sigh.
“Oh, and Kay?”
“Yes?”
“Please hurry. My head feels like it’s going to damn well explode.”
***
Ronan now lay on the hard floor of the station concourse. He couldn’t make sense of anything. The same fragments of thought kept circling around in his brain. Somehow he had lost an hour of his life. And one billion rupees. And now, it seemed, he was losing his mind too. He was finding it harder and harder to recall names, details, places. The pain in his head was a vast weight, crushing his memories beneath it.
Figures milled around him, their faces occasionally looming over him to ask him questions he couldn’t hear. His wife was there, the anxiety clear on her face. For some reason he couldn’t recall her name. That was bad. Paramedics buzzed around, shining lights in his eyes, giving him oxygen, checking his blood pressure. There were also soldiers. Lots of soldiers. Some stood in a ring around him, their black boots filling his vision when he opened his eyes. A group of them had just charged off for the jump gates on some suddenly-urgent mission. He didn’t know why.
None of it made sense. Ronan groaned and closed his eyes.
***
“Can you see them? Have you got the trace?”
The IndPol officer stood over Kay. It was hard to concentrate with him standing there. These things required focus, concentration, not some armed grunt breathing down her neck.
Her hands moved through the display, sifting through the almost limitless threads, each representing a single person’s journey through the jump network. She would only get one shot at this. They had to be careful. If the hackers saw they were being traced they would be gone and that would be the end of Ronan.
“There. That’s them. This gate here.”
“You’re sure?”
“Of course I’m sure. That’s why I said it.”
“OK,” said the soldier. “We’re jumping there now.”
“And I’m coming with you,” said Kay.
“Sorry. No. This is a dangerous military operation. We can’t be worrying about civilians.”
“And I’m sorry, but I am coming,” said Kay. “It’s vital we recover the technology these people have. You do your job and we’ll do ours, understood?”
The IndPol officer looked like he was about to argue, then backed down. Turning away, he began to bellow out orders to his troops.
***
Someone was touching his cheek, trying to rouse him. Ronan flicked open his eyes. He expected to see Sageeta but another woman’s face was there. A woman he recognized.
“Kay? What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be at work in London. I’m not paying you to just galavant around the world.”
“Long story. I’ll explain later. Right now I’m going to scan your brain for anomalies.”
“You’re going to do what?”
“Just be quiet. This is the first time I’ve done this in a public jump station. Turn your head to the side then don’t move.”
Ronan did as he was told. He’d found that was best with Kay. Through a forest of soldiers” boots he could see the jump node he’d emerged from en route from Capetown. More of the soldiers were surrounding it. He watched as a squad of them emerged, escorting some prisoners. Two women and a man. One of the women-young, a bright red bindi on her forehead-turned to look directly at him. She scowled. Ronan couldn’t understand why. He’d never seen her before in his life.
He could hear Kay and Sageeta murmuring to each other, something about the readings on the brain scanner.
“W
ell,” he said. “Would you two like to tell me what is happening?”
“There’s good news and bad news,” said Kay.
“What’s the bad?”
“You’re the same stubborn old man you were this morning,” said his wife.
“OK. And the good?”
“Your brain is clear of anomalies,” said Kay. “The decryption as you jumped worked. You’re in the clear. And with IndPol’s help we’re recovering the technology they were using. It looks pretty incredible.”
“And the money,” said Sageeta. “We got that back, too.”
“Technology?” said Ronan. “What technology? As usual I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Ronan levered himself up onto his elbows. The room wasn’t spinning now. He thought he could probably stand. The pain in his head had subsided to a dull throb.
He looked back over at the gates. Damned jump network. They always made him sick. This was definitely the last time he used them.
Colonization
IT IS A PHYSICAL LAW THAT NO object can travel through space faster than the speed of light. However, space itself can and often does. This presents the celestial traveler with a conundrum. For if the space he inhabits is expanding faster than the speed of light, then the proportion of space he occupies-compared to the entire cosmos-lessens. In other words, he will shrink.
Now I am not certain, but I believe that may explain what has happened to me and my beloved. Let me elucidate.
I met Alice five years ago at a sidewalk cafe in New York City. It was a tranquil Sunday in early October, around noon. The air was crisp and cool; cumulus clouds dotted the sky. Alice was eating alone. She held a steaming beverage in her left hand and on a small white plate I spied a chocolate-covered donut.
I noticed she was not wearing a wedding band and I asked if I could join her. She smiled.
We made our introductions. Alice looked to be in her mid-twenties. She had long, straight black hair, lovely pale-green eyes. She was wearing a yellow blouse, cashmere cardigan with bold red buttons, a bright-red wraparound skirt, black sandals. She told me she taught astrophysics at Columbia University. I was impressed.
“That’s some accomplishment for one so young,” I said. It was probably obvious that I was awe-struck. “How old are you, anyway?”
She blushed.
“Twenty-six.”
I told her I was twenty-four, a former graduate student at Columbia who’d been majoring in linguistics, but dropped out when it became apparent I was making little progress.
“Don’t give up,” she said. “You never know what’s around the corner.”
“It wasn’t the field for me.”
“When I was younger I wanted to be a ballerina, but my feet couldn’t stand the strain.
Astrophysics is the same thing only on a larger scale. Why, now I can pirouette amongst the stars!”
I laughed.
“Tell me what you think of that book,” she continued, pointing at the hardback I held in my right hand. On the Origins of the Universe was my current reading material.
“I’m not sure,” I said. “It’s fascinating, to say the least. But there’s much I find confusing.”
“Such as?”
“The big questions. How did the universe arise? How will it end? After it ends, what will be where it was? Just thinking about it makes me dizzy. If there’s one thing that really bothers me, though, it’s when the author talks about the expansion of space. What is it expanding into?”
Alice laughed. “Nothing, silly. Space is all there is.”
“That’s another thing I don’t understand.”
“Think of it this way. Space is everywhere. As it expands, it’s not anywhere it wasn’t already.”
She paused, undoubtedly noticing my discomfort. “And it’s not really expanding, anyway. It’s stretching.”
I frowned. “What’s the difference?”
“Expanding implies movement from here to there, which, as I said, isn’t what happens.
Stretching is an increase in distance between two points. After a suitable period of time, the distance between A and B isn’t C, it’s two times C.”
We talked for over an hour. I learned she was unmarried, had taught at Columbia for a year, had a brother named Zeke and a sister, Cindy. She’d graduated with a Ph. D. in astrophysics from Stanford only the year before. Her specialty, she said, was the physics of black holes.
“I have one, as a matter of fact,” she dead-panned. “In my apartment on West 145th Street.”
***
As we climbed the stairs to her fourth-floor apartment, Alice talked about her family. Her parents lived in Ely, Minnesota, where she was born and raised. They were owners of Slatkin’s
Canoe Outfitters, a rental agency that had served northern Minnesota for thirty years. Her eyes glazed over as she spoke of midnight paddles across Great Bear lake, the stars twinkling against the jet-black background of space. It was then, she said, that she fell in love with the heavens, learned how to navigate via the stars, and decided to devote her life to astronomy.
I was mesmerized by her iridescent, black hair, hour-glass figure, hips that gently swayed as she mounted the stairs, and my heart was thumping wildly when she slowly opened the door to apartment 403.
She flicked on the light in the foyer.
I saw a black leather couch along one wall. An end table next to the couch. A dark-brown ottoman occupying the middle of the room. But it was the aquarium nestled up against one of the side walls that captured my attention. It must have been at least fifty gallons and was filled with fish, exotic plants, and aquatic sculptures.
“My pride and joy,” Alice said when she noticed me gazing at the tank. I counted a half-dozen fish, brilliant orange, with translucent black fins, bright red eyes, and light-blue lines that crisscrossed their bellies. I knew something about fish, yet I’d never encountered this species.
“What kind of fish are these?” I asked.
“Speculated Wild African Goldfish,” she said, a species I’d never heard of. Then she asked if I’d like something to drink.
“Iced tea, if you have any.”
She disappeared into the kitchen. I heard the sound of a refrigerator door opening and drinks being poured.
The walls of the living room were painted dark-blue. The floors were carpeted, a thick, ultra-soft material. A bay window behind the couch overlooked a park across the street.
I turned my attention back to the fish tank. The goldfish had disappeared and I found myself staring into the languid, gold eyes of a Mexican axolotl. The creature was ghostly-looking: white with red gills, two short, fat front legs with four digits each and two thin, long rear legs with five. Its pupiless, unlidded eyes stared at me uncomprehendingly.
“Admiring my salamander?” Alice said as she strode back into the room, drinks in hand. “I acquired it about a month ago. It’s charming, wouldn’t you say?”
That wasn’t the word I would have used to describe the creature, but I nodded in agreement.
