by Peter Riva
I was changed. That was definite. As I spoke to the crowd and later had dinner with Aten and Cramer in my room, I was acting, pretending everything was fine, over, done. Crisis averted, as long as we stay on the Path. And that certainly seemed to be the goal I was supposed to achieve, on instructions given to me by the entity or Dad. But I knew humans, those grasping, ambitious, power-mad human species, humans who had evolved out of a desperate need to survive primitive harsh realities, desperate to procreate, desperate always to have more, prepare abundance, and always seemed to nurture greed. I wondered, given human primordial nature, if this time it could end well instead of badly.
As for me, I was tired, over-informed for my puny brain and I had begun to have wishful dreams of becoming a hermit, dealing only with myself.
Aten, ever observant, put down her fork and said, “Okay Simon, what’s eating you?” Cramer pushed his plate away and stared at me too. “You really think we can’t see you are worried? Something is there, something untold. Please share.”
I took a drink, sighed, and gave in. As I said, I’m not very good at shouldering responsibility alone. “The problem is, as I see it, humans are a unique species.”
“Really? Why? In an infinite universe, there are infinite possibilities …”
“True, but I am sure. You see, there are none others like us who achieved the levels I reached or the entity would have known what to do beforehand. We’re like a new disease. Can it be brought into symbiosis or will it—we—still need to be eradicated? I am pretty sure we’re not out of the woods yet.” There it was, the secret I knew they would have to keep from the crew.
Seeing their faces, these two people I cared about more than any others except maybe for Apollo, made me man-up inside. Why should they have to shoulder my burden? It was my decision, my responsibility for the probing I had done, the events I had caused that got us all into this fix. As my mother once told me, “Simon, you spilled the milk, you clean it up.”
I stood then and told them I was tired. They rose, collected the plates and glasses, deposited them in the recycle bin, and each gave me a hug and left.
I wasn’t really tired, I just had planning to do to work it all out. Zip showed up, I come too, and followed me to my room.
As we lay on my bed, I cycled the overhead lighting to minimum, producing a comforting green hue. I closed my eyes listening to Zip’s deep breathing next to me. My thoughts centered around the paradox. We were in territory never before experienced, by us certainly but also clearly by the entity. It was new to us and we to it. We would be monitored, we would be watched. Indeed, it was clear Gaia had been monitoring human activity and both the atomic blasts during the Purge and the ones the America had set off to control other rogue nations—coupled with my engendering the birth of Peter and offspring out of the System—these were enough to trigger a report from Gaia to Regus and beyond. I was sure that if one other life-form had ever exhibited such destructive prowess or such ingenious creation of a new life form, either the entity would have had experience of that type of life form and would have dealt with it in a summary manner, perhaps a supernova, or would have known, by observation, when things were getting dangerous and would have certainly controlled the outcome.
The fact that humans went unchecked before becoming capable of being a dangerous parasite inside the entity told me that this was a first time. We did not behave in a previously predictable manner. The entity intervened only when transmissions from Gaia through Regus began to spotlight a growing problem. How bad could the problem get? In under 2,000 years, less than a blink of a universal eyelid, humans had gone from one-on-one destruction to mass extermination and then, in an act of hubris that had me shaking my head, imbued a computer system with human traits in order to have it act like humans. Okay the goal was to humanize the computer’s, the System’s interaction with civilians to better serve human needs, but in reality all it did was spawn a mechanical-human. Had that mechanical-human adopted baser human behavior, atomic blasts would have been the least of it.
Maybe, in searching everything that I am or was, the entity found that I was determined from the very first moment to put Peter on the Path. The Path was balance. The universe thrived on balance. Maybe that’s the only reason we have a second chance.
Now, really, that was startling. I did something right for once? Unusual—but bravo to me!
Yeah, I know, pathetic.
Zip thought so too. He must have been tuned into my emotions. He raised his head and looked me in the eyes, and I heard, clearly, harrumph.
I smiled back. Now, what the hell can I do here and now to consolidate that success?
Okay, this universe was old, almost mind-blowingly old when you tried to count the years, but how much older could all the other universes I had seen be? And how old were the pan-multi-universes I had seen? Come on Simon, think. Age doesn’t matter. My subconscious was right. What mattered was that there was a first time for everything. That’s why it told me, I remembered, “You see what you are supposed to know, what has always been, what will always be.”
Zip echoed my thoughts, You think. It is. New. Zip’s word sparking my thought process deeper…
To protect forever. To achieve balance and ensure forever. Time means nothing. Permanence only matters. Somehow, I needed to achieve two goals. I sat up in the dark trying to figure out how. And there was one other thing still bothering me that I had not told anyone yet. Why did a reference to God make me go to that other dimension, the other level? What was it in that expression, “For god’s sake …” that keyed the transport?
Of course, I was so wrapped up in my own thinking, that I never gave a moment’s thought to Cramer and Aten. From my explanation that we were a unique parasite, a first-timer, they had no doubt quickly come to realize fully the danger they and their crew were in. And, important to all human behavior, the danger their child was in would be paramount to them. Cramer and certainly the ever-brilliant Aten would not sit idly by while I tinkered alone with their future. Zip must have guessed the same, Talk morning food.
I had sent them a message to join me again for breakfast. I now needed to discuss next steps. They arrived early looking what I can only describe as fierce. Cramer patted Zip as he ambled out of my room, away down the corridor.
“Morning Zip,” then turning to me, “Simon,” Cramer began, “what you have done, seen, achieved, is amazing. We …”
“But?” I said.
Aten put her hand on Cramer’s arm and spoke to me, “Simon, you must not make any more decisions alone. There is too much at stake, you must allow us, if not the whole crew, to make decisions for our own joint future. You cannot make those decisions unilaterally for us.”
I smiled and went over to Cramer and hugged him. It was the only thing I could do, to try to assure him and in a way to say thank you for making me feel I was not alone. So I hugged her too, saying, “Thank you. I don’t want to, believe me, I really don’t want to. There are things I have seen that no other human or other form of bio-life has seen. I don’t know if any life form, of any sort, has been allowed to see what I’ve seen. And remember this, I know,” I stressed the word “know” again, “I know that I was shown only that which I could fathom, possibly take in.”
The room went silent.
“Oh, for god’s sake you two, please sit down and let me share what I am thinking. I spent all night on this and since I am still Simon, the Simon you know, I need, desperately, to share with you and make plans. I cannot carry this alone.” I was close to tears.
Cramer came up to me and put his face up to mine. He had grown. We were the same size now, although he was bigger in the shoulders and I had spent three years in bed and was now a weakling. He stared into my eyes and said after a moment, “Okay, you’re not lying.”
A little insulting, but I knew Cramer, “True Ralphie. You may remember Angie made me promise never to hold anything back from you. That’s not a promise I planned to break.” I turned to Aten,
“Now, please, sit down, I need to start to explain. Aten, I need all of Ra’s intellect to help me figure this out. Please?”
As they sat, Aten said, “There is no Ra, with all that capability. I am a puny human,” she was using my line and smiling while she did so, “and so I’ll have to give you the best this pathetic organic brain can do.”
I laughed, “Okay then,” I plunked down on my pillow, staring at the ceiling, “Here’s the complete story. I think you had better record this but before you do,” I paused knowing I was straying from the Path, “I need your absolute promise never to show anyone this.” I looked sideways and saw the look of skepticism on their faces, “No, Aten and Cramer, this is not a decision I make lightly. I have seen and realized things that normal people, even people as talented as our crew, must not have to live with. Can you agree, at least until you have heard everything I have to say?”
They said they would. So I told them everything I remembered of my plunge, the multi-dimensions I witnessed, the slits, and by the time I got to the single pan-multi-universe apparition they were sitting as close to one another as they could, clasping hands, clearly as amazed and terrified as I had been.
When I was finished, I sat up on the edge of my bed, my head hanging. Aten came and sat next to me and simply said, “Poor Simon, what did we get you into?”
Cramer, ever blunt Cramer, said, “We didn’t do anything hon, he did it all himself.”
Aten shook her head, tears forming, “I don’t mean this plunge. Don’t you see darling? Peter, Apollo, Ra, me—we put him into this position. He had to be the one to go, to take this plunge, he had to be the one at risk, he had to be the bearer of terrifying news.” She looked at Cramer, eyes narrowed “And your lot, the military, using atomic weapons, they didn’t help much either.”
Cramer went on the defensive, “Me? My lot? I wasn’t even around then …”
Aten was upset but immediately regretted her criticism of her husband, “I know. Sorry, I meant the branch you once worked for. That sort of thing has to stop.” She took my hand, “Simon, you need to tell us the rest—there is more, isn’t there?”
I nodded. “Going forward, if allowed, if Apollo has put his children in stasis and brings them here where they can be controlled, kept as human as possible, on the Path—if he has changed the System to forever forbid mechanical-human offspring from developing—if all that has happened, we need rules and much more importantly, we need to avoid the next fatal step by mankind.”
Cramer squatted before my legs dangling off he bed, “Look Simon, we’re here. We’ll manage this together. We’ll stay on the Path, we can do that. What fatal step?”
I shook my head, “Religion, faith in the unknown.” Both of them started to protest. “No, listen …” I shook my head. “I’m going too fast. Let me go back a step. Why people can’t know and the serious problems the colony will face, if we get that far.” I motioned them to sit in the chairs again, “Look, being on the Path within our group, your crew, is one thing, but living with the fear of immediate extinction every moment of your life—that knowledge is asking too much. Okay, maybe this generation can cope, but the next, and the next? And how have humans dealt with the concept of extinction, fate, karma, or a super-being traditionally? They have formed religions, beliefs to comfort, bind communities, and control aggressive emotions. Wars, machines of war, pecking order come out of organized religions gone sour. That is hardly the Path. And the Path cannot be a religion; it has to be a simple way of life. A way of easiest, simplest, happiest life. Death, pain, ambition, strife, these will all occur naturally, but if we frighten these people with what I’ve seen and the immensity or the threat posed by the entity, they will either worship the entity as God or they will rebel and end up destroyed; all humanity destroyed here and on Earth. Remember, we are an experiment, a unique species, being observed.
“That’s the problem facing us: We’re the lab sample. If we fail, all life, all life as we know it, evolved in and on and from Earth, it all fails.” I could see on their faces that the full impact of the danger facing us had come to weigh on their conscious as it already did on mine. I suddenly saw Cramer as the child he still was. I looked at Aten and saw all the human weaknesses displayed on her face. No, not weakness, but crippling motherly responsibility. This ship was her baby, she’d been looking after them for over 100 years. And she was a real mother as well, and I was sure that being a mother of a normal child only reinforced her motherly instincts toward the whole crew.
Aten turned to her husband and took his hands in hers, “Darling, Simon is right,” she said looking into his eyes, “we cannot share this vid with the crew. This must be our secret. Our secret alone to bear. And it must be this knowledge that we use to guide our crew, governs their behavior, as they establish planet fall.”
The word how popped into my mind as I immediately knew it had in Cramer’s.
Aten had the answer ready, “We must rule, rule ourselves carefully, and thereby lead by example if nothing else.” Cramer was nodding, his expression showed deep concern.
I had a different solution, one that would free my friends from ruining their dreams. But I could not share my plans with them—I knew they would stop me if I did.
35
PACKING
Over the next few weeks, I prepared myself physically for what I knew was going to be a long rest. Over the three years while I had been in the plunge, my body had not done so well, even though all the muscles and nerves were stimulated by the doctors regularly. Had I been in stasis, hibernating, I would have fared better. That’s what I was preparing for, but, of course, I told nobody.
I prepared a locked message to Doc Todd to be automatically displayed on his sleeve and hospital monitor if my vital signs showed failing mental awareness readings as they did before when I was away for three years. It explained where I wanted him to put me if I was not awake by the time they started to de-orbit. The signal for de-orbit would either be a transmission from me, the arrival of Apollo into the memory banks or—and I gave myself some time here—after a month of no response from me.
My instructions were that I be placed in hibernation, stasis, aboard the ship along with the memory bubbles containing Apollo and, if possible, that we be left in orbit so that my mind link could continue. Aten and Abadine could construct a working mini-PowerCube power supply for the hibernation pod from one of the emergency shuttles and leave the whole thing, shuttle, Apollo, me and all, in orbit. One day, they could come and get me. Or not. Either way, if they made safe landfall and eventually forgot about me in orbit, that would be a good sign the colony was successful. If they needed me and Apollo, we’d be there, ready to be revived and of help.
I was sure Doc Todd would be angry. He hated getting orders, especially medically based ones. But what could he do? He’d have to comply. Of course, I had not counted on Cramer. He hated being tagged.
I needed to prepare to plunge one more time. I had to retrieve Apollo. Problem was, I needed somehow to get Aten’s assistance and get her to prepare space on the ship’s computer banks for his transfer, without telling her exactly what I had in mind. Even if Apollo was reduced in capacity, I estimated he’d take up half the memory banks of the onboard computer complex bubble memory. Assuming he could transfer through the dome connection using me, the question remained. What would the ship lose in memory data that could prove vital as the crew struggled to develop a lasting colony?
It was Abadine who gave me a solution. We were sitting on the outside deck of the Forward 10 Café and I had been thanking her for the stellar connections to the dome, and I needed to know if they were still in place at the hospital. “Yes, all the connections are still up, we left them there. Everything you’ve told us leads me to think you may need them again, in case you need to speak to this entity.”
It was time to get her, and via her a subtle message to the crew, to back off any thoughts about a possible God, “You know I am not sure I have been speaking to an ent
ity, a solo being. I suspect I have been communicating with an autonomous AI program of sorts, empowered, programmed, and indexed if you like, to search out responses and solicit agreement, compliance.”
Abadine was sharp, “So not a god then?” And she winked. “You must know everyone was amused that you steered away from that one. Look, we’re spacefarers, we live in” she stressed the word, “In this medium, but we’re not isolated from seeing the big picture.” She paused, smiled, “It’s okay, we see what you wanted to achieve. It’s a huge pandimensional-multi-universe out here. We’re part of this. So if we thought there was a god we’d also be referring to ourselves in some small way. And that’s really crazy. Right?” I nodded, amazed at her insight. How pathetic my attempts, how patronizing, yet no one took offense. Nice people. Abadine was straight back to business, “So, tell me what’s next? When can we start fooling around, oops, sorry, start planet fall?”
I should not have been shocked, but I was. Abadine was old, smart, experienced and I think she kinda liked me. I liked her. I was about to speak when she said, “And I missed you too.” That confirmed it, puberty kicked in. Well, I was almost fifteen now. I shook my head to clear my thoughts. Abadine giggled.
“Abadine, stop it, you’re messing with my mind.” She smiled and nodded, so I continued, “Hmm, okay, maybe later, but for now I have a problem. I am worried that the ship has a full memory bank of the voyage data and recording and there is no room for anything more.”
