Titan: A Science Fiction Horror Adventure (NecroVerse Book 3)

by Aaron Bunce

  Jacoby waited for her, but she seemed apprehensive to finish.

  “Be…?”

  “I was going to say be careful, but it’s Anna. This is just Anna. Don’t be hard on her, okay. There is a possibility she doesn’t know any more than we do about what’s going on.”

  There is a massive understatement, Jacoby thought, but instead of going into unnecessary detail, said, “I won’t. Don’t worry.”

  “Okay. I’ll be on the bridge once you two speak. Bring her there and we’ll go from there.”

  Lana pushed around him and out into the galley. Jacoby followed and paused as she turned right. Anna and Emiko weren’t around the table anymore, and as he moved further away from the bulkhead, discovered that she was on the bridge instead. Lana seemed to realize it too late, as she finally spotted her, abruptly stopped, turned back to him, and then seemed to realize how awkward it looked and continued in and to the right.

  “Hey, Coby, is everything all right? We heard people shouting.”

  “It’s Erik. He’s not taking things particularly well. I’m not sure if it is just the stress, but he pretty much said he wants nothing to do with us. Then again, if I were in his shoes, I’d probably stay clear of us, too!”

  “Us? All of us? Or do you mean, us-us?” she asked, pointing from her, to him, and to his head.

  “Us-us,” Jacoby confirmed.

  “Ah,” she laughed, quietly. “I don’t think most people would blame him. Do you think someone else should…?” she started to ask, but Jacoby jumped right in.

  “Hey, sorry to interrupt, but there is something I need to ask you first. We’ll get back to that,” he said, “but first. The facility on Titan? How do you know about it?”

  “Titan? What do you mean? Everything was in the computer. I just allowed the software to formulate travel paths based off the orbital cycle. It was all there. I just put it to work,” Anna replied, her eyes narrowing slightly but the smile remaining.

  “That is what I figured. But did you see specifically where the data was from? Or did it say who owned or operated the facility itself? I need you to really think back on this for me.”

  “I…well, um,” Anna said, her eyes rotating to the upper left and then moving to the right. “I can’t remember specifically. But why, Coby? Why does that matter? Those coordinates, that facility, is the closest due to orbital alignment. And they have FTL communications. It was a combination of the factors that we decided were most important, remember? The place where we need to go.”

  Jacoby started shaking his head before Anna even finished speaking. He could tell she wasn’t confident, but deeper than that, subtle blue lights were starting to fire off in her left eye. Was that because she was trying to remember? Or something to do with Poole’s tinkering?

  “I am asking because Lana pulled the data. There was no information on that facility in the Betty’s navigational computer. It is Russian Federation. Titan also isn’t the closest orbital body to us, either. There are several that were closer and would have been faster transit. I know you, Anna. I trust you. What does this mean to you? Do you know something about that facility that you maybe forgot to tell us?” Jacoby pressed, and as he did, Anna backed away. She met his eyes, looked away, shook her head, and tried to speak.

  “No, Coby. How could I…?”

  “It’s okay, we’re not blaming you for anything. We just find it strange, ya know? We’re headed to a place that we have no information about and it’s not even closest.”

  Anna nodded and a bit of the tension building in her shoulders seemed to ease.

  “The data for that location would have to be the navigational computer. I mean, that is where things like star charts, orbital speeds, and transportation lanes is stored. Routing is pretty much impossible without those things. But…I mean, I guess I don’t know. There were so many components to the equations, which is why need…the computer.”

  “So, it was all in the computer? In the Betty’s computer? Anna, please, we need to know. Try and concentrate. Think hard. Push everything aside and try to focus on specifically why you routed us to that facility.” Jacoby kept his voice calm, his posture neutral. He didn’t want Anna to think he was attacking her, or that anyone, well, save Erik, believed anything nefarious was going on.

  “Okay,” she breathed and closed her eyes, “just give me a minute to collect my thoughts. I can do this. There is just a lot to sort through. First, I put my hand on the navigational computer and then I think I said– ‘The math…orbital patterns, planetary velocity, solar flare predictions, and reactor tritium levels, pulse engine thrust output potentials, acceleration slopes, capacitor charge indicators, and stasis module operation protocols. I see it all. Can touch it all’.”

  “That sounds right,” Jacoby said, but knew deep down that was exactly what she said, down to the word. Did she have photo-quality recall now, too? Because that could be extremely dangerous, especially if he managed to say or do his typical stupid things.

  “Yes. The navigational GUI booted up and pulled in available routing guidance from Hyde. That is the information that SysOps would have already pushed in a data packet. There were…” she said scrunching up her face and closing her eyes, “two. Maybe three full routes already pre-loaded. They were rock pickups, though, and were useless for what we needed.”

  “We asked you if you could plot us a course, and you said no at first. We all kind of freaked out quietly, and then you came back with something like– ‘no, I can chart all the courses’,” Lana said, urging her on.

  “Yes, I remember…” Anna said, but seemed to struggle, her eyes narrowing and pain pulling at her features.

  Why were her memories painful? Was she still not fully recovered?

  “What’s wrong? Is everything okay?”

  “I’m fine, Coby. Things are just getting a little tight, like the data is slipping free from where it is stored in my head. I can sort through it, parse it out, but it’s hard to hold onto…kind of like holding slippering fish in your hands. But, man, this shit is weird. If I concentrate hard enough, I can literally see the data. This won’t get old anytime soon.”

  Jacoby looked to Lana, but her outward fear and uncertainty matched his own.

  “Is that normal? Is that how it typically feels? I’m right here with you. Just take your time. Don’t push yourself too hard.”

  “There is no normal…my brain wasn’t meant for this, remember? Maybe my operating system needs an update,” Anna said, trying to force a smile through the pain.

  “We’ll talk to Poole about that…”

  “Shit!” Anna gasped suddenly, the muscles in her neck and shoulders going rigid. Jacoby jumped up and was a step away by the time her eyes opened a sliver.

  “I found it. Damn, that was a needle in a haystack. Just my luck! To answer your question, yes. Titan is there. Yes. There it is. You were right, Coby. It was in my head this whole time. I’m sorry. I didn’t even realize that’s where it came from. I had just assumed…”

  “No, you’re okay, Anna. We don’t blame you. At least we figured it out before we got there,” Lana said, reassuringly. “What else can you tell us about that facility? And do you know why you routed us there?”

  “I’m trying to open the folder, but it is fighting me. There is a lot of data here, and I don’t think it wants me looking around,” Anna breathed, heavily through her nose.

  “It? What is ‘it’ and how do you know it doesn’t want you looking at that data?”

  “It’s hard to…articulate, Coby. It’s like I can feel the information more than see it, and it responds to me. Some data doesn’t initiate any feedback at all. Others…well, it feels like it resists me, forms this pressure, and tries to push me away. I found a folder with data on a military installation on Galileo, a registered private facility orbiting Venus, but I only see coordinates. Everything else is just scrambled about…shit, that’s why, it is encrypted, and I don’t have the key.”

  “Titan. Anna,
what do you know about it? Honey, talk to us,” Lana said.

  “The folder I was just looking at. It disappeared. All the folders that were there are just gone. There is only one left…”

  “What is it? What happened?” Jacoby whispered.

  “I got a glimpse inside before the folders reorganized. It is a text only file. Strange…that’s all that is in there.” Anna shook her head and scrunched up her forehead. The light was still there in her left eye, flitting around erratically, as if the structure were filled with tiny, flashing Christmas lights. Jacoby could see it through her lid and hated that he didn’t know what it meant.

  Was all this strain, risk, necessary?

  “Don’t push yourself, Anna. We don’t need to know everything at once. I think it’s enough to know that…” Jacoby started to say, but Anna went rigid again and hissed in pain.

  “No-No-No,” she mouthed. “I need to know. I need to. The information is in there and for some reason, part of me is trying to hide it. This crap has messed up my brain since I found it and I think it’s time to find out why. This could be the answers we need, Coby. This could be the information we need to keep everyone…everywhere safe from what happened on Hyde. They might have known about it, maybe even planned it.”

  “Whoa! Wait a minute. We’re getting into some dangerous territory there. I know you’ve all gone through a lot, been changed by what happened, but let’s not make logical leaps that the information that the data doesn’t support,” Shane said.

  Jacoby knew Shane was just trying to be the leader, to keep people calm, and keep from straying into conspiracy territory, but he didn’t understand what they’d seen. He also couldn’t see it the way Anna could.

  Anna started mouthing something and her face relaxed a bit, and like all those frustrating times before, she seemed to start slipping away.

  “No. Anna. Can you hear me?” Frustrated by his own fear and inaction before, Jacoby moved right up to Anna and grasped her hand. His arm immediately cramped up, a subtle, but not pleasant jolt shooting up his arm and into his neck.

  Anna gasped.

  Kicking over rocks

  Anna didn’t know how she kept her wits about her so long this time, but chalked it up to frustration, anxiety, and a deep-seated need to finally exercise some freaking control over her own damned headspace.

  She’d rifled around through the data jammed into her head, but it felt like she was digging around the attic of a haunted house. Every folder led someplace else. And the deeper she went, the older and more forgotten everything looked and felt, just dusty relics that were more likely to contain springing, demented clowns than useful data. That was why she hated going to where the data was stored–the place where time seemed to have no meaning and her sense of self started to skew. Where she could pass a twenty-minute shower in what felt like a single heartbeat.

  Jacoby and the others were there, somewhere beyond the blank canvas, their voices strangely digitized and distant, as if compressed and transmitted over a long distance of frayed, crappy cabling. But still, it was her one comfort.

  The data fought her like it did before, inflating to push her from one data store to another, a creepy, unseen gale wind determined to only show her what it wanted her to see, or if she wasn’t careful, pin her in some dark corner where she would lose track of everything beyond her mind.

  But it was her mind, and when she put enough energy and focus into her thoughts, the invisible menace, whether it be some chunk of data, or maybe even a part of her own consciousness, would pull back into the tangled maze and leave her be.

  Was it afraid? Or was its power and influence over her simply another digital elusion? A lie her new form and function told the old her.

  Everything changed when she found the second folder matching her search criteria, however. [TITANRsrchCmmnd_Титан]

  But the folder felt different than the first. It seemed to vibrate, its edges blurring ever so slightly. She circled the glowing digital container and passed through something in the process–something invisible and so very tangible against her digital self. Everything shifted for a moment, strange prompts firing off around and through her. Anna almost lost herself to it, the light and chaos like a blinding flash of lightning. And yet, as quickly as it overcame her, it ended. The prompt…the word, resonated in the air around and all around her, yet she couldn’t rationalize it. Why? And what was it?

  The folder shifted and moved as she tried to access it, and then she saw them, nearly invisible threads radiating from the container, branching off into dozens, perhaps hundreds of directions. They contracted and pulled it deeper, sinking into subfolders and hidden directories, burrowing like a retreating animal. Anna followed, pulling sectors aside like weeds, unearthing the data again only to have it slip away yet deeper. All the while, that strange prompt resonated around her, a word she couldn’t seem to hear or form, that seemed connected to everything and nothing at once.

  She pried another folder open and felt her frustration mount, her thoughts, her voice–that ancillary part of her mind responding in kind to Jacoby and the others. It was hard to split her focus, her strength diminished to perform separate tasks that didn’t support or intertwine.

  Anna ripped one folder open and found it empty, backed out, and moved to another. Their names and shapes changed, the data taking on a deceitful, chameleon-like appearance to fool her.

  “This is my head. My head! Show it to me!” she raged and tore open another partition, accidentally damaging the underlying code and structure in the process. A twinge bit into her head, a headache forming almost instantly in response.

  Anna’s words presented in a block-text and all caps formed a string of command prompt, part of her brain formulating and enacting a search protocol. She structured more code, and more upon that, creating bridges, latticework, and concrete-strong language. Anna formed a bunker, a hard space, where she could pull the data, and barring some oversight, keep it from fleeing.

  The structure all around her solidified, her mind pulling the data in with a simple but effective search query. A folder bubbled up out of the ether and she grabbed ahold while the floor gained substance, opening it before anything else could change. It popped, the sides falling outward and spilling its contents into the air before her.

  Anna sprung her trap, a series of massive, round doors swinging violently closed. The data wiggled and moved, the almost invisible threads once again seeking to pull them away, but here in her vault she had control.

  She started opening the storage contents–some files, some links to sub-directories visualized like three-dimensional representations of vintage folder icons, eerily similar to the ones from the computer in her father’s office when she was a little girl. It was her brain. Perhaps that’s why they looked so familiar. Or it was just another one of Poole’s strangely layered jokes.

  The data scattered as she pried opened the second folder, boxes circling and jetting in every direction like rats disturbed from a previously dark space. Anna turned left and then right, bending over to reach and grasp for data but stopped. They banged into the walls, ceiling, and floors, but eventually went still again.

  Glowing names and titles hung above each, setting them apart from the dark landscape of her mind, and she read enough to know she’d stumbled onto something significant. The threads thickened here, the odd resonance in the air getting thicker and louder.

  “Anna, open your eyes,” Jacoby said, but it took her a moment to process what he said and why. She’d obviously said something. But what she’d said wasn’t registering at that moment–it was another part of her communicating to the others.

  Another impulse fired and it all came together, the seemingly disconnected halves of her brain finally on the same page. It was disjointed, confusing, the primary reason why she didn’t like turning her attention inward, well, apart from the fact that she also lost time, or herself, in the process. Would anyone really want to be afraid of the contents of their own head
?

  Each of the small folders blinked out of existence, one after another, until only a handful remained. A glowing letter caught her eye, a capital letter ‘T’.

  [TITANRsrchCmmnd_Титан]

  She managed to scoop the cube-shaped file off the ground. It wriggled and flopped, the glowing container sliding against her hands. The sides popped open at her pull, the data filling the air before her. But it was wrong somehow, incomplete. Or insubstantial. It was bits of data–all rich format text and almost no structure. And yet, it buzzed with an undeniable energy.

  A dark shadow formed around the fortress-like vault in her mind, the mass of translucent threads going taught and nearly pulling the folder from her grasp. Anna forced her focus on the file, however, rooting it to the spot with every ounce of determination available. It dropped, hitting the ground before her with no audible noise.

  Anna circled it appraisingly. This file was different. She could see its contents, feel it. Glowing locks now covered its surface, a gravity pulling it to the ‘X’ axis of her digital mind. All the data that she’d chased through the confines of her mind, that she’d tried fruitlessly to view, was now inside, locked away.

  Distantly, she felt her lips move, a [2-ms] delay before her voice sounded in her head. “I got a glimpse inside before the folders reorganized. It is about Titan, Coby. It was text, maybe a message. I couldn’t quite read it. Now I’m trying to open it up. Just hold on a sec and let me work on it.”

  “Don’t push yourself, Anna,” Jacoby said, distantly, but she only partially heard him.

  I need to know, she thought and immediately moved towards the locked folder. The structure resisted as she tried to open it, the locks flashing red in the darkness. She pried her fingers into the first, the strength of her mind peeling it apart to reveal its compositional code.

  It wasn’t really a lock, she realized, but a barrier built upon a series of language-based requirements. Anna puzzled over it for several long moments–[4ms] but couldn’t seem to make sense of what it was missing or asking for. The questions were numerous, their languages extending beyond the differences in programming language, to syntax, linguistic base, and others she couldn’t recognize.