by Aaron Bunce
“A little…help!” Lex gasped as she lurched into view from the left. Erik pushed her back, clawing and snapping at her like an animal.
Jacoby jumped forward but slipped and nearly fell as he approached. The deck was covered with bloody footprints, large spatters and smears tracing a trail all the way back to the pressure door behind him.
What had Erik done to her?
He caught the two just as Erik wrenched Lex around and her knees buckled. Jacoby caught his right wrist and broke his hold on the redhead’s neck. She gasped and coughed, but didn’t fall away. Instead, she pushed forward and reengaged. Lex glanced at her wrist.
“She’s so close now! So close! I feel her inside me!” Erik wailed, the skin on his face moving more than was natural. His skin was bubbling, wrinkling, and moving.
“What in the hell? Where is the Navcom?” Lana gasped. Jacoby heard Anna answer after almost falling into the bloody mess.
Soraya waded forward and helped them push Erik back to the wall, their combined weight and strength pinning him into place.
“Shane…Emiko,” Lex grunted. In the back. Go help them. They need you.”
“Tick-Tock!” Erik wheezed.
“But you need me here…”
“Help them. They need you more. Jacoby and I will take care of him,” Lex snapped, and Soraya jumped back without further argument.
Erik yanked his hand free from Jacoby’s grasp, the torn skin loose and impossibly slick with gore. He clawed at Lex’s face, but Jacoby caught the arm and slammed it against the wall. His fingers twitched, the tendons bunching up beneath the skin.
“What is happening to him?”
“I thought Poole…could answer…that one,” Lex grunted.
Something was happening to the young man; a strange disfigurement Jacoby could see plainly in his eyes and hear on his voice. But it wasn’t like the people on Hyde, that much was clear.
“I found his set up. It is wired directly into the pulse engine and the aft sensor trunk. It’s wired through a spare door panel, this is good. Very good. Oh, wait. I don’t…uh, this doesn’t make any sense. I don’t think I can. Huh!” Lana yelled, her voice fading into gibberish.
“You can or can’t?” Lex yelled back.
“Um. No. The language is all…well, it’s not English, whatever it is. I can’t read any of his menus. I can’t…all the directories are in a weird…they’re not words, but more like hieroglyphics. I don’t know what they mean!” Lana yelled back.
“I told you, Lex. She can’t do it!” Erik wheezed, his eyes bulging.
“Then use the NavCom, like Anna said. Find that! If you can’t use his setup, find another way,” Jacoby yelled.
“I, uh. How?”
Lex glanced at her left wrist, at a watch Jacoby hadn’t noticed before. He watched the screen glow to life, a number rapidly counting down.
-1:13:34
“My god,” he gasped.
“Whatever you’re going to do, haul ass. You’ve got an hour and thirteen minutes. Then we’re heating up fast!”
“What? An hour? We can’t. I can’t. Jesus…we’re going to die–”
“I found it!” Anna yelled, interrupting Lana’s despair. “I found it. All of it is still in the box. The NavCom. Lana, let’s go.”
Erik laughed, tears and drool leaking from his eyes and mouth. Jacoby watched as Anna appeared behind them, hefting a large box in one hand and dragging Lana behind her with the other.
“You’re going to die. Burn up. But not me. She will protect me. I am a part of her now and she will never let another piece of herself go. Ever…again,” Erik spat, the long cut on his arm tearing wide.
“Take care of him, Coby. I’ve got this!” And Anna was gone, back through the maintenance passage.
“Poole! Where are you! We need you,” Jacoby yelled. Erik continued to fight, snarling and shouting at them. He was getting stronger, too.
“Uh, Jacky-Boy. I’m trying.”
He turned to find Poole standing a dozen paces behind them, leaning and struggling towards them, as if fighting against a violent and invisible wind. Erik’s glowing form stood between them. Only now it looked less like the technician. Its arms and legs were stretched, back curved forward, and his head had grown. Poole managed a few steps forward but slid back, the glowing watching passively.
“There is really something…fighting hard to keep me…from him.”
“Come on, what are you waiting for. We can’t hold him forever—” Lex yelled, only to have Erik wrench his hand free from her grasp and shove her violently backwards. The redhead cursed impressively as she lost her balance and tumbled back onto her rear.
Jacoby shoved Erik back and grabbed for his other hand, only to have him bend around his reach.
“Your eyes are covered. You have no idea what is really happening here. You are small. A pebble. Insignificant,” the tech growled and snapped forward, punching Jacoby square in the chin. The force knocked him back a step, popping his neck and jaw.
“Jacky!” Poole yelled and strained. Erik’s astral double turned and looked right at him, a strange and distant glow burning in its eyes.
His anger reared up inside, igniting an immediate fire in his muscles. The golden hue rippled in quickly and covered his vision. It wasn’t the punch. He’d taken plenty of those. It was the words—insignificant and small.
“My father used to call me that,” he whispered and wiped blood off his lip.
“Insignificant.”
Jacoby grabbed Lex’s hand and helped her off the ground.
“Poole, you said his astral form was stripped away from his physical one, right?” Jacoby asked. Erik watched them, panting menacingly.
“Yes. Likely inducing mania. But I can’t get to him, Jacky. The presence affecting him…it is too strong!”
Jacoby nodded at Lex and acted on a hunch. He just had to hope she would understand. Launching himself forward, he slammed Erik against the wall with his bulk and wrangled his right arm away from his body. Lex followed suit, throwing her strength against his left.
“If you can’t come to him, then we’ll bring him to you.”
“Fool. Insignificant fool!” Erik yelled and fought to break free.
“Jacky…I don’t think you understand–”
“Just listen,” Jacoby interrupted. “Latch onto his Astral form. Grab ahold of that and don’t let go, whatever you do.” Then he turned to Lex. “I think it’s time we helped Erik pull himself together, don’t you?”
“Damn straight.”
Jacoby wrenched Erik away from the wall and he immediately started to flail and scream, blood and spit spattering his face. They spun, Lex successfully locking his right arm behind his back. Jacoby followed suit, and together hefted the technician clean off the ground.
“No, I. No, I. No, I!” he wailed, thrashing like a caught fish.
Working together, Jacoby and Lex carried him towards Poole, his arms now wrapped securely around the glowing figure’s midsection. Erik’s astral double didn’t seem to notice the contact, or if he did, wasn’t bothered by it.
They wrenched him closer another step, the resistance increasing tenfold. Poole cried out then, his legs kicking off the ground and floating behind him, again caught up in what looked like a gale-force wind.
“I don’t know…how long I can…hold on, Jacky-Boy! Hurry! And for the record…this time it isn’t me!”
“Come on, Lex. Everything you’ve got!”
“Blood and steel, baby,” she grunted, planted her feet, and strained.
Their feet slapped forward, and then again, Erik hanging like a boulder between them and only gaining weight by the second. Jacoby channeled every ounce of strength he could muster into his legs and pushed. The force repelling them increased, the like poles of an impossibly strong magnet, but he refused to bend under the strain.
The young tech’s astral form loomed above them, seemingly growing larger as they drew closer. Then it opened its arms.
>
“I hope that’s a good sign,” Lex yelled, and with one final push, they all came together.
1 Hour until Entry
“An hour. A freaking hour. That’ll never work. We’ll never make it. We’re going to burn up. I don’t want to die like this. I don’t want to die…” Lana moaned. So, Anna let go of her hand, threw it, actually.
The Betty shuddered and groaned. There was a subtle vibration building in the beams and decking she hadn’t noticed before, and in response, the ship seemed to hum.
“We’re not going to die. Come on, Lana. I need your help with this,” Anna yelled, running around the pilot seats and dropping the box down before the central console.
She didn’t want to look out the fore windscreen but couldn’t help it. The moon’s gravity pulled her eyes in and almost seized her heart. Titan was the horizon. It wasn’t blue green anymore, either, but appeared almost orange, with what looked like white landmasses broken by dark, blue bodies of ice or water.
Anna’s stomach jumped up, telling her their destination wasn’t ahead of them anymore, but below. In every way that it mattered, they were now falling.
She lifted the NavCom out of the box and stuck it unceremoniously into its nesting spot, then leaned in and forced the power plug into its port.
“Boot, damn you. Boot,” she whispered, watching for the lights to turn on and intermittently looking up at Titan’s sprawling mass. Nothing happened for a long moment, and the panic almost unhinged her.
“Lana, I need you up here now! It’s not booting up!”
Maybe it won’t boot if there are no feeds? Or maybe it’s in a fault because NOTHING is plugged into it and it can’t communicate with ANYTHING!
“It’s no use…” Lana sobbed, moving through the darkness behind her. But Anna brushed her away.
“If you’re not going to help, then shut the hell up!”
A single green light flared on the NavCom’s white case. It flashed for several seconds and then turned blue.
“There’s no time, Anna. Even if you can communicate with it, how are we supposed to get everything rerouted and hooked back up in time?”
“I already told you. It has the protocols. It can help us identify the critical systems…only the critical ones.”
Anna slapped her palm on the navigational computer’s case and closed her eyes. She felt it grow warm beneath her palm, the electrical impulses firing through her flesh, into the receptors, and then up her arm. The small computer came alive as she forced her thoughts back into that special compartment in her mind.
Her mental control room materialized–the dark, spongy floor, brushed metal walls, and towering monoliths of glowing server towers. The half-moon workstation lifted clear of the floor, appearing in response to her need.
Anna ran forward and tapped the keyboard. The host of monitors came alive, their screens filling with light and data. But where was the other her, Poole’s malfunctioning program?
“Where are you?” she screamed and turned, searching the manifestation of her digital mind. Her voice echoed endlessly into the digital expanse as she turned frantically.
The thought of Poole’s runaway program reminded her of the file it had been protecting, specifically the message transmitted from Titan. She immediately formulated a search and the three-dimensional file appeared in the air before her. A strange vibration bled off the glowing file, as if the words trapped within were trying to connect with her.
“Boot complete. A registry scan shows multiple, critical errors.”
Anna spun and found the dark-haired version of herself standing just a few paces away.
“What is that?”
Anna immediately built up a hardened box around the file, and then another, coding dozens of logic-based locks into each armored layer. Then she ripped it through the floor, dropping it into an altogether separate partition, with another layer of locks imbedded in it.
Confident in the security, Anna spun to find the program watching her intently.
“We need your help.”
“Help?” her counterpart echoed, as if silently researching what the word meant. “Define your query? Error. I am detecting a gap in memory. Problem identified–a power fault. Attempting to restore from backup.”
“Wait. Stop!” Anna said, stepping forward. This rebooted version of the program seemed a bit more rational than she remembered. The last thing she needed was for it to somehow restore itself to a previous version. One corrupted by that strange electronic message.
“Action stopped. How can I help you?”
Anna paused and blinked, the response surprising her. “I, uh. We’ve encountered technical difficulties. We are a little over an hour from breeching Titan’s atmosphere and need to reconnect the navigational computer to the ship’s systems. We need to correct course.”
Her counterpart blinked. “Would you like for me to reconnect navigational systems to the driver unit?”
“Yes. Do that,” she said and almost whooped with joy.
“Collating incoming sensor feeds. Spooling reactor power feed. Cycling pulse engine drive motors for atmospheric entry protocol.” The software version of Anna gestured at her half-moon workstation, the monitors quickly filling with data. She saw gauges indicating hull temperature, thruster fuel levels, pulse engine metrics, wind speed sensors, and so much more.
“How is this possible…” she mumbled, her excitement falling as the first monitor flashed red. The whole point in using the NavCom at this point was to have it isolate what systems she absolutely needed.
[ERROR – No data feed detected. Check wiring harness.]
Red flashed to each monitor, the color sweeping right, tile by tile, until every single display filled with the same word. [ERROR]
“You expected this, Anna. Work through the problem. And do it fast!”
“Error. There seems to be…” the program said but froze.
Anna cursed and circled her counterpart. Her question, the query they needed answered more than anything else, hung on the tip of her tongue. Then, driven by desperation, she spun and made for the bank of monitors. She’d just touched the keyboard, just as the program started speaking again.
“Two hundred and thirty-seven faults present.”
“What systems do I need for atmospheric entry?” she yelled, throwing the question forth before anything else could happen.
“I do not understand the framework of the question. Life support procedure one dot four dot seven outlines all critical systems for safe space operation. I have located two hundred and fourteen more occurrences of the phrase ‘need’ and ‘systems’.”
“Out of those two hundred and thirty-seven faults, how many are critical to an atmospheric entry?”
“Atmospheric protocol requires all critical life support and flight systems to be active and in a no error state.”
“Shit! That doesn’t help me,” Anna screamed and stomped her foot. But caught herself and stopped, sucking in a cleansing breath. “No, you don’t get to lose your shit right now. Everyone is counting on you.”
She moved in closer, the program watching her with a maddeningly neutral expression. It was a computer, a program. It worked based off strict and concise language. She just needed to operate within that requirement.
“Computer. Do you have access to the Betty’s atmospheric entry protocol?”
Her counterpart nodded. “Yes.” Then she gestured over Anna’s shoulder to one of the monitors. The red [ERROR] disappeared, immediately replaced by the framework of streaming software code.
“Perfect. How many systems are tagged as critical within that protocol?”
“I will analyze the protocol now.”
“Excellent,” she said, and watched the code continue to scroll. It looked sizable. “What is your estimated time of completion? How many lines of code comprise this protocol?”
“My estimated time for completion is four–five–no, six hours and thirty-seven minutes. There are approximately…eight
een million, two hundred and ninety-seven thousand, eight hundred and three lines of code in the Betty’s orbital maneuvering and atmospheric entry protocols. Would you like me to begin the analysis?”
Anna’s stomach dropped.
“Would you like me to begin the analysis?”
“No…hold on.”
“I do not understand the command, ‘hold on’.”
“Stand by,” she snapped and promptly cast her mind back out of the digital space. The Betty’s dark bridge immediately materialized, Lana’s pinched and panic-stricken face hovering barely a foot away.
“And…? And…?” she asked, before Anna could think of what to say.
“The entry protocol is too big. Uh, too many lines of code. It will take hours to sort through and identify the systems we’d need.”
“Shit! This is it,” Lana sobbed, dropped her face into her hands, and melted to the floor.
“That doesn’t sound good,” someone said from the darkness to her left. Anna turned, her small work light revealing Soraya, gently strapping Emiko into one of the pilot’s seats. Shane was next to her, blood and angry red cuts marring almost every visible surface of skin. A peculiar twinge bit into her eyes, almost yanking them to the angry red marks.
“Don’t look right at them. There is something with the shape Erik cut into them. It does screwy stuff with your head,” Soraya warned, and straightened.
Anna yanked her eyes down to the deck.
“So, what are we doing? Did the computer work?” Soraya asked.
“No, it won’t work. Didn’t you hear her? There’s no way to scan through that much code in time. We’re dead.”
“I don’t understand. Why can’t we just use Erik’s setup to push up into a safe orbit? Then we’d have all the time we needed to figure out how to get down there safely.”
“Yeah…that sounds great. But we can’t read his setup! It’s in–I don’t know what they are–symbols, glyphs. And he isn’t exactly in the mood to translate them for us,” Lana snapped, angrily.
