The Rift Rider

by Mark Oliver

  Charlie had eaten nothing. The red man's words had robbed him of his appetite. He had drunk plenty though. Right now, he felt it was only the alcohol in his system keeping him sane. In the matter of an hour, the pathfinder had turned his whole world upside down.

  Charlie eyed the last remaining bottle, grabbed it and poured another shot.

  Chapter 20

  His whole life, Charlie had lived with the knowledge that his parents had abandoned him at the age of one. They had taken him to Bristol’s Castle Park and walked out without him, leaving him to whatever fate the Universe saw fit. There followed eight years in a dilapidated Somerset children's home run by misers and filled with modern day ragamuffins.

  After that came ten years of, sometimes kindly and oftentimes brutal, foster care, spent in crummy market towns across the country. Finally at the age of eighteen and with grades that surprised himself as much as his teachers, Charlie left care for the halls of residence of Swansea university and for a better life.

  Over the years, he had spent countless nights staring up at cracked ceilings, wondering about his parents. Why had they abandoned him? Was it pure cold-heartedness that had made them do it, basic fecklessness or some desperate fear?

  And finally he had the answer. And it was far more complicated and meaningful and incredible than he had ever imagined.

  His father was Doctor Heilo Krest, the very same scientist Bei had told him about on the journey from Het City, the one turen silver who had dared to turn his back on the Corporation. His mother, Sunna Tru, was a servant girl working in the Krest family home.

  She was only twelve when she began her work at the house. Heilo was thirteen. It was love at first sight.

  But the purity of the silvers was the cornerstone of Corporation rule. Their laws banned any love affair between silver and regular turen. So they kept their love a secret.

  It took Heilo eight years to ace his way through school, university and the Corporation elite training. In the day he studied and Sunna worked. But at night, when the rest of the family had gone to sleep, they snuck out of their beds. The house was large with many hidden corners for them to explore. There locked away from the world and its laws, they shared hushed conversations that as time went on turned into silent embraces.

  When Heilo began his work as the youngest ever head of the Corporation's intergalactic travel research facility, he left the family home. Sunna left too. By now they could not bare to be apart for even day. Heilo found a home for her beyond the Corporation zone wall, close enough for him to visit in the dark of night.

  Heilo spent his days in the Corporation laboratories and his nights in Sunna's loving arms. The first few months were bliss.

  But in time the experience of living beyond the zone wall took its toll on Sunna. She saw what it was to live outside of the Corporation. The poverty overwhelmed her. The daily humiliations and brutality dished out by Corporation security forces or the Monarch gangs prowling the ghettos sickened her. She became politicalized.

  Heilo saw the change in her. It scared him. But soon he began to see the world through her eyes and what he saw disgusted him.

  His whole life, Heilo had been sheltered from the reality of life beyond the zone walls. He grew up believing the Corporation did good for all of turenkind. He was a silver, one of the elite. It was his duty to take the Corporation forward, to strengthen its control of the planet so that it could make the world a better place. For that was the Corporation's purpose. Those that opposed the Corporation were terrorist fiends wishing to drag the planet back into war and misery. For the greater good, the Corporation had to wipe them out.

  But Sunna made him see this for the lie it was. She was right. Things had to change.

  And then disaster struck. Sunna grew pregnant.

  Heilo cursed his recklessness. If the authorities discovered Sunna in possession of a half silver child, the consequences would be dire. They would link her to Heilo and the pair of them would suffer the most terrible of fates.

  The Corporation abhorred the idea of their pure silvers mixing with regulars. They would make an example of Heilo and Sunna, torturing them for weeks, before executing them in the most savage way possible as the holo cameras rolled, their grisly deaths a warning to all of the consequences of inter-racial copulation.

  They had no choice but to flee to Poklawi. Only on that distant alien planet, did they have any hope of survival.

  By then, Heilo, sickened by the Corporation's actions and his own complicity in them, had already begun covertly assisting the Turen resistance. He kept them informed about Corporation plans, leaked scientific advances and supplied them with as much medical and arms technology he could smuggle through the zone walls.

  He used his contacts to arrange their voyage to Poklawi. The Resistance knew what an opportunity it was. They had the Corporation's most gifted scientist pleading for their help. They made him promise that in return for their help, he would do whatever they ask, build whatever they needed.

  Heilo readily agreed.

  They assigned him their best pathfinder, a robundee by the name of Brother Yojim. Unlike most pathfinders, content to restrict their help to the safe shuttling of émigrés to Poklawi, Yojim took a keen interest in the resistance. He had fought in several resistance battles and raids, casting aside his pacifist's beliefs until the Corporation had fallen to its knees.

  Heilo, Sunna and Yojim met three times to organise the escape plan. There could be no room for error. The prospect of taking the Corporations brightest star, his regular lover and their mixed race child to Poklawi thrilled the robundee. After decades of Corporation subjugation, the couple and their child were a sign of hope for a better future. One he hoped would inspire more turen, regular and silver alike, to join the fight against the Corporation.

  They planned to leave Seenthee together at night, using a smuggler craft, built to evade the Corporation's sky-space search technology. But on the day of their escape, Heilo made an unexpected breakthrough in his research, one that had the power to change the destiny of the turen race forever.

  For years Heilo had argued that the mythical home of the rollers, known by the robundee as the Divide, was real. He posited that it was possible to tear a hole in the fabric separating the Universe from the Divide, pass through it, momentarily enter the Divide and re-emerge from it at some pre-destined point in the Universe.

  He determined to construct a machine that could tear this fabric apart. He called it the rift engine. It required atomic power to work so he fitted it inside an atom-engine spacecraft. His experiments with the prototype spacecraft took place inside a hangar gifted to him by the Corporation heads. They were as keen for him to succeed as he was. Little did they know, Heilo had vowed to steal this technology and hand it over to the resistance.

  Aware that he would be bumped off the moment they discovered his relationship with Sunna, Heilo kept his work a well-guarded secret, allowing his underlings only a partial knowledge of the workings of the rift engine. Whoever knew the secrets of the rift engine would be able to travel anywhere in the Universe in the blink of an eye. He refused to place such power in the corrupted hands of the Corporation.

  But despite his assertions that the theory worked and his pleas to the Universe that the rift engine be a success, his experiments had always ended in failure. In desperation he had built a second rift engine, attached it to a satellite and sent it hurtling out into the Wrake Pass. He believed there had to be a reason the rollers stayed within its stretches, never daring to leave.

  It proved a decisive move. For on that final day, just as Heilo was about to input a virus to wipe all of his findings, his computer flashed that it had received a message. The device had torn open a hole in the space fabric and the satellite had disappeared through it, sending the message the instant before it crossed over.

  If the experiment went to plan it should have remerged in Poklawi space. Unfortunately, as the distance lay out of communicative reach, he had no means
to ascertain this for sure. He would have to see it for himself when he got there.

  Now he knew the rift engine worked, Heilo had to change his plans. Instead of leaving Seenthee with Yojim he would grab Sunna, return to the lab and take the prototype spacecraft fitted with the original rift engine. He knew leaving the device to the Corporation hands would be disastrous.

  And so, he contacted Brother Yojim, told him about the rift engine and arranged to meet him on the edge of the Pass. The pathfinder would board their craft and lead them safely through the pass.

  But they never saw Brother Yojim again. A squad of shadow fighters intercepted the pathfinder as he made his way along the edge of the Wrake Pass. It was five heavily armed fighter craft against one single cannoned smuggler. The robundee had to abort the mission, fleeing into the safety of the Pass.

  By the time he got to the rendezvous coordinates, he was too late. Heilo and Sunna had vanished.

  It was only years later that Brother Yojim learned what had happened to them.

  The couple had arrived at the rendezvous point with time to spare. There they waited, little knowing a surveillance drone belonging to a nearby destroyer had noticed them. The destroyer signalled back to Seenthee with a description of the ship and they identified it as a Corporation craft stolen from their scientific research department. The destroyer set course for the stolen ship.

  Soon the ship approached firing range of the runaways.

  Out there in the darkness with the Corporation seconds away from seizing them, Heilo did what he had to do. He knew capture would mean a long death, brutal and public. So in a final act of desperation he activated the rift engine.

  And it worked. They slipped through the rift, escaping the Corporation in an instant.

  But this act of escapology came at a terrible price. When constructing the rift engine and prototype spacecraft, he had failed to account for the effect of the Divide on conscious matter. The Divide had different laws. Heilo and Sunna exploded the instant they passed through the rift, their life force and consciousness becoming one with the Divide.

  By all rights the unborn Charlie should have faded into oblivion with his parents. Only by pure luck, a school of rollers inside the Divide noticed the fluctuation in energy levels caused by the rift. Curious, they gathered at the source of this strange event.

  The rollers witnessed the breaking apart of the runaway craft and its passengers. They watched as the energy and consciousness that had once formed the loving couple poured into the Divide. With it came a flood of intensified, bodiless, enduring love. It seeped into the creatures, charging them, threatening to overwhelm them.

  At the centre of this current flowed something new. It was growing, attracting not only the energy dispersing around it, but also the energy that was the Divide itself. It drew more and more inside it as it grew.

  The rollers had never seen anything of its like before. The Divide was a realm of energy and consciousness. No conscious being reliant on form could survive it. Yet this time, something solid had survived the crossing. It had transformed into pure energy and its consciousness had stubbornly refused to fade away.

  It grew until it took the glowing form of a baby turen boy. This boy was Charlie.

  The rollers, stunned and brimming with excitement, gathered the child in their energy field. They flew deep into the Divide to where the oldest and wisest of their kind dwelled. They would surely know what to do with the child.

  These ancient beings inspected the child. They took its survival as symbol of the Divide's great compassion and power, pledging to raise it as one of their own.

  And so in the very heart of the Divide the child grew, soaking up the energy and wisdom that permeated throughout it. Unsure as to how to raise this alien creature, the rollers treated it much the way they treated their own young.

  Out in the Universe, a whole year went by. But inside the Divide, much more time had passed. The child had grown and reached preadolescence. He had learned how to communicate with the rollers, how to listen to the endless stories pervading the whiteness, and how to traverse it with the speed of thought. He spent his time weaving in and out of the bright whiteness, chasing friends, singing roller songs, and basking in the wisdom of the Divide. But what he liked most of all was staring through the randomly occurring rifts, peeking out at the stars and worlds and creatures that lived in the Universe.

  The rollers could not believe how at home the child had become. It was as if by crossing into the Divide the being had changed into one of them.

  But then without warning, the boy grew sick. His energy faded to a pale shimmer and the rollers feared the worse. They realised that this child only half belonged to them and that without time in the physical realm he would die.

  The rollers needed a pathfinder. The robundee could receive the child in the Wrake Pass and take it to Poklawi, raising it there. But despite the recent increase in their communications, a pathfinder did not call. And it was beyond the power of the rollers to reach out to them.

  So the rollers set out across the Divide, looking for a rift opening onto a world with an environment similar enough to Seenthee's.

  The fates were kind and against all odds they found a rift. The planet was larger than Seenthee with a smaller star, only one moon, and a lower percentage of oxygen in the air. But it was close enough.

  The rollers had an intuition that on crossing through the rift, the child would take on physical form adapted to the planet's environmental conditions.

  They were right. The moment the child passed through, he became a solid boy-shaped lump of pinkness. He sucked in the foreign air and, enraged at this sudden change in environment, wailed, his little fists shaking. The rollers watched on, hidden behind the invisible rift, their energy fields flickering with worry, until to their collective relief they saw an alien man pick up screaming child and walk away.

  They had hoped that one day, the boy would remember his upbringing, activating his inherent ability to cross back into the Divide. They spent years waiting for his return. But he never came back. The rollers concluded his memories and abilities remained locked inside the dark recesses of his mind.

  The rollers missed the child terribly. To honour him they collected the memories of Heilo and Sunni, imprinted on the Divide the moment they crossed over. The rollers used them to create a song, an epic they would sing forever. It told of the couple's love, their sacrifice and the child they bore, a child like no other, a child of both the Universe and the divide, a child of light and form.

  Beyond the Divide, in the forever growing expanses of the Universe time passed ever onwards. On Earth, the boy grew to become a man. While On Seenthee, the Corporation pieced together what remained of Heilo Krest's research and in time began fresh experiments. Twenty or so years after Heilo's death, the Corporation finally managed to produce their own version of the rift engine, a cousin to Heilo's lost device. They took it out to the edge of the Pass and once again a rift was torn. Only this time it remained open for a fraction of the time and allowed nothing through it.

  Yet it was enough for the rift engine to hit a reset button in the Divide, demanding that which had been sent away so long ago to be returned to its rightful place in the Universe. Charlie was coming home whether he liked it or not.

  The rollers felt it but were powerless to stop it. However, they could stall it, letting Charlie return when they were ready. They needed someone to receive the returning child at the rift site, somebody they could trust. The rollers held council to choose their hero. The vote was unanimous. Brother Yojim.

  Through their communication with the robundee pathfinders, the rollers knew Brother Yojim believed the Corporation had killed Heilo, Sunna and their unborn child. Overcome with guilt for failing the young couple, he had become a recluse putting an end to his path finding days. He was sure to feel a heavy responsibility towards the child. That made him the perfect choice for the rollers.

  The rollers sent a message out to every Pathf
inder that contacted them; tell Brother Yojim his chance had come to make a mends for his failure.

  Brother Yojim got the message and, curious, took his battered craft out into the Pass. He sunk down into the ancient robundee meditation, his consciousness escaping its physical prison and crossing into the Divide. The rollers were there waiting for his call. He had never seen so many. They told him everything. It was the first time they had shared their story with anyone outside the Divide.

  When they asked him to take his ship to the site of the Corporation's experiments and wait for the child to reappear, he seized his chance of redemption. His task was to recover Charlie, and perform the necessary medical procedures to enable him to survive the alien conditions. Then when safe in Poklawi, with the roller's guidance, Yojim would help unlock the secrets buried deep within him. Only then would he be able to return home.

  That was the plan anyway.

  Chapter 21

  Charlie tapped his empty shot glass against the table. "That's some story."

  Awani reached over the table and placed her hand on his. "It's a lot to take in. Maybe you should call it a night."

  "No," he said. "We've got a lot more to talk about." He looked over at Bei, and added, "Haven't we?"

  Bei nodded, and poured himself another shot.

  Charlie turned his green eyes, onto Yojim. "I just need a bit of fresh air and a moment to get my head round what you've just told me. I'll be back."

  "I understand," Yojim said, standing up and placing a giant paw on Charlie's shoulder.

  Charlie grabbed the bottle of Robundee Lava, and said, "You better tell him what was on the memory chip." Then he went out on to the balcony. Nobody tried to stop him.