by Peter Riva
“So, what’s this thing for?” I pointed to the snake, still attached to my forehead. “Surely Regus cannot see anything here.”
“True, but something can instruct Regus to look, and that’s what has happened—what is still happening. Everything we say and do here is being monitored, of that I am certain. What tiny, infinitesimal information can be gleaned is beyond your or my reason of perceived need or calculation of consequence simply because whatever the Vast Pattern is, it is, by definition, greater than we can perceive it to be and therefore greater than we can think it might be. It is beyond our imagination. To something as omnipresent as the Vast Pattern when you consider the scope of the multi-universe, there is no chance you or I can calculate the response, if, what if parameters the Vast Pattern is involved with..”
It was so much to think about.
“But Simon, that DNA snake as you call it, cannot be disconnected. Even when your body was taken back inside the ship and disconnected and reconnected, the DNA snake remained. Whatever it is doing, beyond accessing me through you, I cannot determine.”
“Is the ship safe? How long?” I meant how long have I been unconscious.
“The ship is safe and underway. I monitored a decision that was made to travel to Angelica, to risk all. Arrival is expected in three months. You have been comatose for a little over three years.”
My god, that was a shock. “Three years? But Earth’s schedule, Gaia’s schedule …”
“Yes, Simon, that deadline passed. Solar activity was suddenly stopped the moment you passed out. I am unable to determine how and exactly why. It was not because it was presented as a peace offering. Gaia is unsure and without instruction. Regus is, as I have explained, incapable of solo-thought. The cessation of Earth’s demise was deliberate, but who, what, or how is unknown.”
I was floating inside the passageway, Regus itself. Okay, I could acclimatize to that. I had known this trip, this plunge, could be fatal. So be it, if I only saved Earth, it was worth it. But what was worrying me was planet fall for the ship and if the Vast Pattern, or whatever it was, would allow bioforms alien to that new word to infect the bioforms that could already be there. It was one thing for humans to take the risk for themselves, armed as they were with medicines, DNA splicing, and a host of other human medical safeguards—but it was an entirely different matter for them to make an enemy of a new Gaia or Regus’s plans and programs—let alone the Great Attractor’s universal design. “Apollo, does whatever this is …” I motioned to the snake, “Know the ship has departed?”
“I can only say that Regus is unaware. I have been studying the programs and interactions you see before you over the past years, and I am confident it is all input and almost no output. But some output does occur once every millisecond, by Earth time, and is focused toward another portal, another dimension. I suspect the one you entered. And keeping a careful watch, I was able to detect a spike of code activity in the passageway patterns you see before you, directed, well, coded toward the center of the Pisces’ galaxy. A data stream in the patterns ceased shortly afterward. There was definitely a signal going out and then one coming in. I was able to decode that returning signal to confirm the energy signature equivalent to a supernova being turned off. One that could have been seen on Earth in one hundred years or so.”
Something turned off a supernova? The strength of the forces at play here were almost beyond imagination.
Almost, not quite. It made sense to me. If the threat to our solar system with increased solar activity had been stopped, it made sense that a balance had to take place on the other side of the Great Attractor. I gleaned that from my rather rudimentary understanding of Dr. Tully’s reflective diagram of the supergalaxies mirroring each other.
“Apollo, could our sun have become a supernova? Was that the outcome you predicted before?”
“Yes Simon, while you were sleeping,” cute use of that term, I thought, “I recalibrated the rapidity of the solar eruptions and concluded that solar flares were merely the indication of rapid solar collapse which would have ended in a supernova.”
“Okay, so, as things stand, Regus doesn’t know anything.” I pondered a moment, formulating a plan. “Apollo, if I issue the command to plunge back to that empty place, will you lose all communication?”
“Yes.”
“Can you stand that?”
“Of course, but Regus’ commands may be confused. Wait while I determine if there are fail-safes in place. Translating octal, especially disappearing and reappearing octal across dimensions, requires computing time. One moment …”
And he was gone. I took the time to “feel” the snake. It was pulsating, tickled a little. So my sense of touch was working fine. Doc Todd would have a field day with that sensory data. I gave it a little tug and immediately the pain was intense, so I stopped. I decided to release a mirror image, my little program, and instantly it appeared looking straight at me. Raise the right hand and it raised the left. The mirror had no DNA snake though. I wondered if I could swap places.
Apollo came back in my head, “Simon, there is no failsafe in place. I did not think there would be. Your presence is clearly a unique experience for all the systems here and I am ninety-seven point eight percent positive they have not encountered anything approaching your intrusion before. You may proceed. But would you mind sharing your plan? I can tell you have created a mirror image. You always seem to have a plan, my friend. I just hope you remain on the Path.”
“The Path? Oh, yes old friend, the Path it is. I think if I manage to get back to that other dimension, this thing will have no connection. And that should elicit repair or communication or perhaps attaching itself onto the mirror me. Either way, what I want to try and do is simple: Show I am alive and self-determining. If everything here consists of pure functions, if and what if programming, then an analog anomaly must be different and, therefore, interesting. Let’s see what the Vast Pattern makes of me. Self-determining me.”
And because I didn’t really want time to think about it, I left. First, I retreated to the storeroom, careful not to exit fully. Snake stayed with me. I waited for the immunosuppressant programs. As soon as they appeared, which I found odd because mirror me came along too, I gave the god command. Back in the passageway with the mirror me, I immediately gave the god command one more time and was into the deadly heat where the snake disappeared causing me great pain, before I landed, if that’s the right word, back into the nothingness. The pain and the snake were gone. And the mirror me was left behind.
“Hello? Is anybody there?”
This time there was no ribosome greeting, no DNA super double helix. What appeared was my sweet, darling Angie, arms and legs spread out, slowly revolving.
30
NO, IT IS NOT HER, REALLY
It doesn’t matter what you think you know, it doesn’t matter what you rationalize or attempt to block out—the reality staring me in the face was my Angie, or a damn good copy. It didn’t move limbs or body, it didn’t speak, it didn’t do anything. The form slowly revolved, like the ribosome had done, up and down, spinning, every portion of Angie’s body was presented. The really odd thing was that her clothing changed, her skin color changed a bit, her hair was long, then short, then ponytailed. One moment she was nude—that was disconcerting—and then dressed in the jumpsuit she wore the last time I saw her alive when we were in our External Tank home.
It was then that I realized that whatever power this was, they were replaying my own memories, in sequence for all the times I saw Angie, from that first day in the Calhoun Rat Studies complex till her passing. This was a message for me. So I said thank you and meant it.
That produced a second form, my son Freddie, and went through all stages of his life. Then my father and mother, Cramer, my old pal Mary, Sheila, a host of other people including my ex-wife, which I could have done without, and then the doctors on board, Zip, Abadine, Maryann, and crew.
Looking at my ex-wife I wondered, What d
id I see in her? As soon as I thought that, her image disappeared.
Interesting. Kindly censorship.
Then came images I recognized intimately. I saw the insides of the System on that first day when Peter became aware. Then, finally, I saw Aten as an infant through Aten grown up at eighteen. And then a toddler appeared, a young girl all on her own—the last apparition.
Now, I did not recognize the child, I have to say. But if this being was projecting what was in my head, surely it must be a child I had seen sometime, somewhere. My instinct was to know the child better, so I motioned for the child apparition to approach and it did. None of the other tumbling forms slowed their slow spinning or disappeared, but the child drifted over, stable now, and I reached out a hand.
As my fingers touched, and I was sure I had that sensation of touch, I saw a projection before my eyes. As Apollo had done before, I saw inside the ship. I saw Cramer and Aten leaning over a body on a hospital bed with a dome on and I saw the child there, sitting on the bed next to the recumbent figure, holding its hand.
The figure lying there was me.
The child’s mouth was moving. She was saying something. I could not discern what it was. Here I was, holding the image of the child’s hand in this dimension and the real child was holding my lifeless hand back in my dimension. Somehow, it was very comforting and I squeezed the image’s hand slightly.
The vision before me changed. The little toddler girl looked at Cramer and said something, clearly very excited. Aten was weeping.
Thought to myself, Aten cries easily, poor Ra.
Cramer mouthed something, and the little girl looked back at my lifeless form and squeezed my hand.
I felt that. Damn, but I felt it. So I squeezed back. She was clearly gleeful.
Cramer grabbed my hand and squeezed. I felt nothing. I didn’t know how much time I had here—I hoped the little girl would hold my hand again as I was still holding the apparition’s hand. She did and I felt pressure again.
Time to try something different.
I wondered if I could tap a finger, a real finger—I did it here and she saw it move there. Okay, let’s see if the ex-military jock Cramer can remember his Morse code. A finger tap for a dot and a squeeze for a dash. . I repeated I am fine three times until Cramer got it. He grabbed the doc’s tablet and entered the dots and dashes. I could see him telling Aten and everyone. They were all quite happy.
Nice to be loved.
Okay then. Aten will know I can program in my head, let’s see if this can get more complicated. Using the two signals, I made binary code of a simple phrase, starting with the one I had just gotten through. At first, Cramer was tapping the tablet quickly, trying to keep up, puzzled by the Morse code. I paused my binary code after I am fine then repeated it twice more. Aten took the tablet and smiled, immediately seeing the binary code, a tap for a zero and a squeeze for a one.
Okay then, people, here it comes—I started over again with I am fine, familiarity helping them and finished the message.
01001001 00100000 01100001 01101101 00100000 01100110 01101001 01101110 01100101 00100000 01001001 00100000 01100001 01101101 00100000 01101000 01100101 01110010 01100101 00100000 01100001 01101110 01101111 01110100 01101000 01100101 01110010 00100000 01100100 01101001 01101101 01100101 01101110 01110011 01101001 01101111 01101110 00100000 01110111 01100001 01101001 01110100 00100000 01100110 01101111 01110010 00100000 01101101 01100101
I am fine I am here another dimension wait for me.
Aten and Cramer were hugging. Doc Todd was dancing around behind them. I knew they got it. The identity and any connection I might have to the little girl still puzzled me until I saw Cramer bend down and hug her. They had a child! It was my friends’ child and children are much more attuned to otherness, different wavelengths—open-minded.
I realized I loved that child. It was the child of my two closest friends. I loved them. I loved their child. So basic. So, why did the word pop into my head, primitive?
Now, before me, the apparition crowd in this void began to disperse leaving only me and the little girl holding hands in the nothingness. She did not want to let go, and as I found it so comforting, neither did I.
Where do we go from here? I thought.
With that, the girl turned and, still holding my hand, pulled me past the disappearing crowd toward an open slit in the nothingness beyond, through which I could see stars, galaxies, and supergalaxies so vast yet so miniscule because there were so many in such a small opening. As she waved her free hand over her head and around down back to her feet, the slit opened to encompass the space we were in, and I was floating in the midst of a universe. The immensity of the stars, galaxies, supergalaxies was overwhelming. I could see two supergalaxies combining, colliding at a Great Attractor, looking like two fireworks sliding toward each other. The girl was studying my face, then moved her hand back around and the slit contracted and closed.
Turning, she waved her hand and another slit opened, and I saw a bright light so intense I knew it would blind me if I had had physical eyes. Around the bright light were rings of alternating colors, expanding spheres, vast and powerful energy flux, all expanding at an incredible rate. I was smiling. It was wonderful. She waved her hand again and the slit closed.
I knew I had just seen a Big Bang. Which universe, where it was, didn’t matter. I had seen a Big Bang, of that I was sure. And it unnerved me completely all the while I was overjoyed. How close to creation can one get? Surely, this was beyond my capabilities to fathom, let alone explain what I had seen to anyone else.
Please pause, I asked. She waited. I took a metaphysical breath. Okay, I’m ready …
She moved her hand across the nothingness again, and in a tiny slit I could see the ship, Angie’s glistening skin, in safe orbit around a planet, green and blue beneath, oceans and land, polar caps, and two moons. All the soup-fixin’s for development and maintenance of life. The ship was in very high orbit, and I surmised Aten and the nav crew had preserved consumables by allowing a slow deterioration of orbit until de-orbit through the atmosphere would be natural.
They had made it. I was genuinely pleased. It was heartwarming.
The girl closed the slit and we drifted for a while. Hard to tell how far or where, but I did have the sensation of being pulled. She waved her free hand and a small slit, maybe five feet high and two wide, appeared through which all I could see was blue, bright blue. I stared closely into the slit and saw rays of light coming upward. I could not see where they came from. It was water. I almost could touch it. Suddenly, the blue disappeared and black moved across the slit, it had small gray and black circular objects. I recoiled. The circles looked like they were stuck onto whatever it was. Unexpectedly, an eye appeared, a great big eye, looking straight at me. Then it moved off, followed by more gray and black circle things until a tail appeared. A whale. Oh, my god, it’s a whale.
You know, after seeing the Big Bang, I really should not have been so moved to see a whale. Of course, I allowed myself the joy of being surprised because it was not like any whale I had ever seen before. It could have been small, big, prehistoric, or alien. I didn’t know. I had no perspective. What I knew was that seeing something real, something alive, seeing it here in this dimension, floored me.
Now, I don’t want to give the impression these slits were like vids. They were real, of that I was certain. And that’s why, when the next slit was opened showing a valley and grass I began to wonder if what was being shown was a way for me to exit. The girl motioned me toward the slit. The problem was, I was not physically here. I was here, true enough, at least my consciousness was, had been for more than three years apparently, but there was no way I could survive if I entered one of these slits.
I cannot go. I have to stay or go back the way I came.
The child looked at me and changed shape. I wasn’t expecting Dad.
31
DAD’S THEORY, ONLY ON A PANDIMENSIONAL SCALE
When I was a child of ei
ght, my father told me that everything was related, not relative, but related to my actions and desires. I recall him telling me and remember exactly what he said. Basically, the gist was that the man you saw on the street would, when you stopped watching him, vanish and re-appear when you next needed him. You think you travel by plane (back then) but God, somehow, was manipulating your reality for you; you sat down, noise and effects happened, you got up and the scenery had been changed, presto, you were in Paris. But not. There was no “there” over there. It was all here. Everything you saw was related to what you saw before. There were clues, if you looked for them, to God’s theater as he called it. For years as a kid I searched and studied, often thinking he was possibly right, a face in a crowd here, a dress there, a somehow familiar landscape and always déjà vu.
Then, one day, I was stranded on that fateful expedition on the asteroid and knew what it was like to be truly alone, nobody, no God, nothing. Me. An asteroid. Nothingness. Void. Dad had lied. Well, not lied, he’d made up a far too convincing fairy tale. Or was it? Looking through these slits, what I saw could, very possibly, have been a theatrical backdrop, puppetry by God. Was it possible that there was nothing real, that all reality was a created illusion for the purpose of—what? What purpose could that be?
I needed to discuss this with someone. I needed Apollo. But how to get back there?
