Earth Cry

by Nick Cook

  ‘Clear!’ Jack shouted from the darkness.

  A burning jolt of pain shot through my body.

  What the fuck?

  I felt a dull pressing sensation in my chest as a single tone hummed out.

  ‘Clear!’ Jack yelled again.

  Another burning blaze of pain surged through my body and the single tone was replaced by a beeping noise.

  ‘Oh, thank Christ,’ Mike said from somewhere nearby.

  ‘Lauren, can you hear me?’ Jack asked.

  Of course I can…

  But grogginess pulled at my thoughts like the strands of a web. I couldn’t open my mouth to speak. I started to slip away again from the pain, back into oblivion.

  ‘Lauren, you need to open your eyes.’

  What?

  ‘Don’t you dare die on me!’

  Then, like a dam wall had broken, a memory came rushing back in.

  I’d deliberately driven the truck off the road…seen Mike driving past me…had hit those trees…the missile had struck the mountain road…then I’d crashed.

  It was like stone scratching over my eyes as I opened them. I could see a bright cluster of lights straight above me. The tang of disinfectant filled my nose. Either side of the table I was lying on, three figures stood. Jack and Mike on one side, both wearing surgical masks. On the other was a young-looking Aunt Lucy, her pretty brown eyes pinched with concern as she gazed at me, no mask covering her mouth.

  As my senses slowly rebooted, I took in the white room. It was filled with displays that showed my vital stats, including my heart rate. I was in an operating theatre.

  ‘How…’ I coughed, the rest of my words stuck in my throat.

  Jack leant in close to me and I could see the tears in his eyes.

  I swallowed and tried again. ‘How did you manage to get me to a hospital in time? And how come Lucy is here?’

  ‘You managed to transport all of us here,’ Jack said.

  My gaze travelled to my aunt. ‘You mean this is actually E8?’

  She nodded and gestured at the room. ‘You can thank Jack for all of this. Little sunflower, you were dying when you got here. But Jack told me exactly what he needed to save you. I conjured up this kitted-out operating theatre according to his specification.’

  ‘I was dying?’ I asked.

  ‘Actually, your heart had stopped, so technically you did die there for a moment,’ Jack said. ‘Luckily, and no small thanks to Lucy magicking up all the right kit here, I was able to bring you back. It was touch and go, though.’

  So I’d been dead… My gaze shot down to my stomach, expecting to see the large slab of glass sticking out of it. Instead, there was only a large bandage covering the wound.

  I looked back at Jack. ‘You operated on me?’

  He nodded. ‘With Lucy’s and Mike’s help. I wouldn’t have been able to manage it alone – it was too big a procedure.’

  ‘I’m not sure I did much to help,’ Mike said. ‘I nearly passed out several times. Lucy did all the heavy lifting alongside Jack.’

  Lucy beamed down at me.

  ‘Thank you so much, all of you,’ I said. ‘But, Lucy, how come you’re here if the micro mind hasn’t fully rebooted?’

  ‘That’s a good point. You’re right – my other micro mind still has some time to run. However, some of its low-level AI matrix systems had already come online, including the one that links it to me. Through that link and utilising the waking micro mind sensors, I was able to detect what was happening to you. I bootstrapped my systems into the micro mind with a temporary coding patch. Through that, you were able to activate it with the Empyrean Key before you lost consciousness. You didn’t exactly give me a lot of time to work with, but I managed to create a communications bridgehead through which I was able to transport you here.’

  ‘To be honest, I’m surprised to be alive,’ I said.

  Jack nodded. ‘I think anyone in your situation would be. But I’ll warn you now that it will take several months for you to make a full recovery. You’ve suffered a serious abdominal trauma.’

  I tried to sit up. ‘But we need to get back to the micro mind before Alvarez seizes it again.’

  Jack pushed me back to the table gently and shook his head.

  ‘You can relax about rushing back to the micro mind,’ Mike said. ‘Remember that Lucy can control how much time passes back in our world whilst we’re here. Isn’t that right, Lucy?’

  ‘Absolutely. I can more or less return you within a matter of seconds from the moment you left it. Certainly you can stay here as long as you need to fully recover without endangering my other micro mind.’

  Despite Lucy’s reassurance, my mind instantly filled with a dozen objections. ‘But I’ll go stir-crazy just lying here for months. I’ll have way too much time to think about the future of our world that’s hanging in the balance.’

  ‘Actually, I can help you with that too,’ Lucy said. ‘I can also control how time passes in E8. All I need to do is this…’ She snapped her fingers and a bright light pulsed around the operating theatre.

  The next moment, I found myself lying on a sunlounger on a tropical beach. Blue sea gently lapped the shore and palm trees stretched away either side of me. And I felt fantastic, not an ache anywhere. My brain struggled to process the transformation in my physical condition. The hospital gown I’d been wearing was gone and I had on a white T-shirt and shorts. My legs even had a slight tan to them. Mike and Jack sat opposite me holding cocktail glasses with umbrellas poking out. The shocked looks on their faces reflected how I was feeling. Beyond them, I could see Lucy in a swimsuit walking out of the surf. She strode up the beach towards us like that famous scene from the James Bond movie Dr. No.

  What the hell? I pulled up my T-shirt. There was no vast hole in my stomach – only a faint scar line that had almost faded.

  Jack and Mike stared at it too. ‘But that’s impossible,’ Jack said.

  Lucy neared us, drying her hair with a towel that had just appeared out of thin air. She looked great, maybe too great – Mike’s eyes were all over her like a horny teenager. She grinned at him as she dropped into the empty lounger beside me.

  Oh, she so knew what she was doing, pushing Mike’s buttons.

  With a shimmer in the air, another umbrella cocktail materialised before her on the table.

  Jack gestured to my stomach. ‘How, Lucy?’

  She gave him a grin. ‘I put you all into what your species think of suspended animation. However, your bodies were still functioning, albeit at a greatly reduced rate, and I made sure you were maintained with nutrients and the rest. That allowed Lauren’s body to heal. So what seemed like a mere second for you was actually six months of R & R.’

  My gaze tightened on her. ‘Please tell me that “the rest” didn’t involve bedpans?’

  Lucy laughed, took a sip of her cocktail and pulled a face. ‘Less limes next time. The less you know, the better. Let’s just say a few tubes were involved.’

  ‘Oh, that paints such a lovely mental image,’ Mike said.

  ‘You might not like that part of it, but this is seriously incredible,’ Jack said. ‘The number of patients I could have saved if we had this tech in our world.’

  Mike rubbed the back of his neck. ‘All I know is I feel as though I’ve just had the best night’s sleep ever.’

  Lucy nodded. ‘In a sense you have – a very deep six-month nap.’

  This was quite the mental leap. One moment I’d died and now I was alive. Just as I’d thought had happened to Mike.

  I raised my chin at him. ‘Now we get to you being alive. We thought you’d been wiped out by that bloody missile strike.’

  ‘I nearly was,’ he replied. ‘If I hadn’t thrown a flash bang, I would have been a smouldering hole in the ground.’

  ‘Oh, fast thinking, buddy,’ Jack said. ‘It blinded the Reaper’s laser-guidance system?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘But we saw charred flesh!’

>   ‘I think that was a mountain goat that wasn’t quite so lucky.’

  A laugh bubbled up in my throat. ‘Oh, the poor thing.’

  ‘I know, just minding its own business and then, bam, goodnight.’ Mike shook his head. ‘Without radio contact, I had no way of letting you know I was alive. So I kept to the jungle, pursuing my original mission and managed to slip past Alvarez’s mercs. I managed to make contact with Niki, who is on his way with a full security team to support us. I was slowly working my way down the mountain when you screamed past in your truck, the missile closing in on you. I took off in pursuit and used my last flash bang to confuse the missile.’

  ‘I thought I saw a smaller flash before the explosion – your flash bang, right?’

  Mike nodded. ‘It was just as well. A moment later it would have taken you and the truck out for sure.’

  ‘So much for my stupid plan then. It seems I owe you my life, Mike.’

  He shrugged. ‘Hey, it’s part of the job description and what we do for each other.’

  ‘Yes, it is.’ I reached across and squeezed his wrist. Then I swung my legs off the lounger and stood on the warm sand. I breathed in a deep breath of sea air. I felt great, fantastic even. Along with everything else, the utter exhaustion of a few moments ago was completely gone. It was as if I’d been on the best spa weekend ever – without any of the dodgy green juices they try to force-feed you.

  I turned to face the others. ‘I don’t know how I’ll repay any of you for what you did.’

  ‘Hey, you thanked us enough already by not dying,’ Jack said.

  I smiled at him and looked at the gently rolling surf. ‘Hey, what’s the water like, Lucy?’

  ‘Do you really need to ask? It’s utterly perfect of course.’

  ‘I wouldn’t expect anything less from you.’ I padded over the sand towards the sea as a warm breeze sighed over my skin. I breathed in the rich scent of ozone and let the sea gently lap over my feet as I reached the shoreline. A seagull skimmed over the water, sunlight dancing in diamonds across the spray.

  My thoughts started to untangle as I let the moment soak into my soul. Seconds ago, which had really been months, I’d crashed a truck. But I’d been transported to this. It was quite the mind-melt.

  The seagull turned on its wingtip and soared overhead, silhouetted against the sun.

  Jack came over to join me.

  ‘This is like an impossible dream,’ he said.

  ‘A slice of heaven, that’s for sure. But as wonderful as this is, we need to get back to our own reality to finish our mission.’

  ‘Cut our vacation short in other words.’

  ‘Hey, we have been here six months already.’

  ‘Yes, I guess we have.’ He tilted his head to the side as he looked at me, but didn’t say anything.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You look good, real good. The beach lifestyle suits you.’

  ‘It does most people, although just sunbathing bores me rigid. A good hike or snorkelling is more my thing.’

  ‘Yeah, mine too.’ He turned towards the sea to watch the seagull as it wheeled back.

  My gaze wandered over to him. The blond Viking here in paradise with Lauren Stelleck. A chick-flick fantasy right there. But this was all an illusion, and Jack had already made his feelings clear to me, pulling back whenever we got anywhere close to real intimacy.

  I pushed away the knot of sadness inside. No, saving our world was where my focus needed to be. ‘Come on, we have work to do.’

  He sighed. ‘Tell me about it.’

  Together we headed back over to the sunloungers where Mike was chatting to Lucy. We were too far away to hear their conversation, but their laughter drifted over to us.

  ‘They look like they get on well,’ Jack said to me.

  ‘Don’t they just? I’m not sure what Jodie would say if she could see them together right now.’

  ‘That’s Mike’s business, and it’s probably better she doesn’t hear about it from us. But will you look at her pulling him in? The guy doesn’t stand a chance.’

  ‘OK, now you’re starting to weird me out. The idea of Mike and my aunt… I mean, yuck.’

  ‘Keep telling yourself she’s just an AI and not your real aunt.’

  ‘I know, but even so…’

  Jack nodded. ‘Yeah, I get it. Weird and a bit creepy too.’

  ‘You’re not wrong.’

  Lucy and Mike stood up and came over to us. A touch of nausea rose in me as Lucy looped her arm through his. I was going to need some serious counselling if they got it on.

  ‘Cute,’ Jack said, trying to suppress a smile.

  ‘Oh, just shut up already,’ I said.

  Mike gazed at us both with a questioning expression. ‘Something up?’

  I quickly shook my head. ‘No, just talking about getting back and finishing the mission.’

  Lucy unhooked her arm from Mike’s. ‘In that case, I need to brief you about a developing situation back in your world. My core micro mind is currently situated in orbit directly over your position at Choquequirao. Even though I’ve not been able to help directly, I’ve been keeping an eye on you.’

  ‘You have?’ I asked.

  ‘Think of me as your friend in the sky – the opposite of the Reaper drone that’s been stalking you.’

  ‘Shame you haven’t been able to do anything about that,’ I said.

  ‘My systems are too degraded to launch the sort of sophisticated computer attack that the Sentinel AI you encountered, Lauren, could have managed. However, what I can do is give you information that might prove just as useful. It’s not only the Overseers who have been keeping an eye on you.’

  ‘Who else? A foreign government?’ I asked.

  ‘No. It’s actually a UFO I’ve detected in the immediate vicinity. It appears to have been monitoring the situation too.’

  ‘You’re shitting me?’ Jack said.

  ‘Not at all.’

  I stared at her.

  ‘It’s a class of vehicle that has been referred to as Tic Tac craft.’

  ‘Yes, I know about them from the UFO boards,’ I said. ‘It’s the craft made famous by the US Nimitz encounter.’ I nodded to Jack, remembering our conversation about them back at Eden.

  ‘The very same,’ Lucy replied.

  A thought struck me. ‘That might explain the flash of light I saw when we first arrived at Choquequirao. Jack said it couldn’t have been the Reaper as they usually fly too high to be spotted.’

  ‘I love how matter of fact you are about dropping an alien UFO into the conversation, Lucy,’ Mike said.

  ‘Oh, that’s so me,’ she replied with an elfin grin.

  She was so playing him. I tightened my gaze on Lucy. ‘But why has it turned up here? To help us? If so, it’s done a big fat lot of nothing so far.’

  ‘All I know about these shepherd species, as the Angelus referred to them, is that they come to observe your world, but have a policy of non-interference.’

  ‘How very Star Trek of them,’ I replied.

  Jack clicked his fingers. ‘But maybe if we made contact with them we could persuade them to protect us against the Kimprak?’

  ‘Now that’s a hell of an idea,’ I said. ‘Lucy, is that something you could help us with?’

  ‘Not with my current limited abilities, although it’s a possibility as I begin to recover the rest of my systems.’

  ‘That sounds promising,’ Mike said.

  ‘So have you any other bombshells to hit us with?’ Jack asked Lucy.

  ‘In the few minutes we’ve been away in our world’s time, Alvarez has made radio contact with his people and more reinforcements are on the way.’

  ‘OK, ideas, guys. What should we do when get back?’ I made a point of looking at Jack, who gave me a small smile. Yes, I would make sure I really listened to his and Mike’s ideas from now on.

  ‘I still think we should hide out somewhere and guard the micro mind until it has been repair
ed,’ Jack said.

  ‘Unfortunately, the Reaper is still monitoring your position,’ Lucy told us. ‘If I could disable it, I would have done so already. But its flight-control systems have been hardened against any sort of hacking attempt.’

  I was staring at her. A huge express train of an idea had just taken hold of me. ‘What if there was another way for you to help us?’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘You know you created a perfect copy of my Swiss army knife that I was able to take back with me into our world?’

  ‘Yes, what about it?’

  ‘And you can create anything we can imagine in E8, right?’

  ‘Pretty much, within certain constraints.’

  Jack stared at me. ‘Oh, I see where you’re going with this. You want Lucy to conjure up some sort of hard-core sci-fi weapon for us to take out the Reaper drone when we return.’

  Lucy shook her head. ‘My programming prevents me from giving your species more advanced weaponry than you currently have. Once again, it’s the Angelus version of that show that you mentioned, Star Trek, which I made a point of watching. They have something similar to its prime directive about not interfering with the natural development of other species except in extreme cases.’

  ‘But could you conjure up a missile we could use to take it down?’ I asked.

  ‘Nothing bigger than a shoulder-launched variety because of the limitations I mentioned. It can be no bigger than something that you are able to carry out of here, as creating a physical object takes a considerable amount of energy. To use a Star Trek analogy again, think of the Enterprise’s teleporters and how they were limited to objects not much larger than a person.’

  ‘But you could conjure up some weapons, right?’ Jack asked.

  Lucy beamed at us. ‘Oh goodness, yes.’ She clicked her fingers and the beach vanished. Now we were standing in a large glass room hanging in space. A nebula that I was certain was M42 hung beyond the glass. Thankfully we somehow had gravity and we were all standing on a solid floor rather than floating around like astronauts. But although the setting was extraordinary, it was what was inside that stole my breath away. Racks of shelves arranged like the inside of a supermarket ran the length of the room. The only thing missing was food and the checkouts. Instead of produce, the shelves were filled with weapons of every sort and size.