“Get—me—out of here.”
He nods, grinning like a clown.
“Come.”
I don’t think Pretty Boy realizes I’m bound to that little box. From what Jorgensen explained, the projector adjusts with motion between floors. It zeroes in on the closest horizontal surface. The concept of standing on the ground is an illusion. I could walk quite happily on an invisible floor three feet above the floor if the unit was calibrated for that. Although my feet feel as though they’re set on the ground, they’re not. My virtual shoes struggled to account for a slight slope.
“This. Way.”
Pretty Boy waves, encouraging me on. I’m not going to bother trying to point out what to me seems obvious. He’s got the projector. All I can do is follow. If I were to stand still, I’d rebound in front of him each time he reached the limits of the hologram.
We wind our way between buildings, tracing alleys and back streets into the lower levels of the colony. A glimmer of light catches the curve of the dome stretching over the city. Dawn is breaking.
Pretty Boy leads me into the shadows, taking me down a narrow walkway into a market. The stalls are closed. A street vendor cooks skewers of meat over a small grill. Flames lick at thin strips of meat too small to be chicken. Looks like rat. The chef is middle-aged with dark straggly hair, dirty clothes, and grimy fingers. This place is not a cleanroom. We’re leaving one world, entering another. Social inequality is still raw in the far future. Is that really a surprise? Thousands of years have passed and greed continues to define humanity, separating us into classes. The chef barely notices as we pass.
Several stalls are preparing to open. Sellers set up racks of clothing. Dresses shimmer in blues and reds, changing hues as we walk past, glistening in the colors of the rainbow. A young girl holds up a jacket. The smart material adjusts itself to suit my complexion. Suddenly, I’m looking at soft sandy browns and yellows.
“Buy you? You buy you?”
I shake my head as we walk on. The jacket changes color again, trying to sell itself to the next person. There’s talking, yelling, jostling, but none of it in alarm. If anything, being out here is more unsettling than being stuck in the sterile cleanroom with its vast ceilings and echoing silence.
“You bad?” Pretty Boy asks, pushing through the crowd and clearing the way for me. I follow in his wake without running into anyone, or as it were, running through them.
“Yeah. Me bad.”
I’m not sure what Pretty Boy is getting at, but anything that gets him to lead me away from the upper levels of this society is a good thing. Whatever hold the aliens have over this colony, it’s clear human technology is no help. These creatures have existed undetected for thousands of years. I suspect my absolute dependence on technology could be my downfall. Tracing my electronic signature is probably quite simple in this era. I need to get off-grid.
“Pretty Boy. Me very bad.”
He laughs.
Pretty Boy leads me into a darkened cavern on the edge of what looks like an abandoned industrial area. It’s disconcerting to see naked rock. How the hell are they preventing the atmosphere from leaking through the porous regolith? Given this is a small moon, there’s a near-perfect vacuum beyond the dome. I’m surprised to see caves without any coating on the walls. How do they stop depressurization? In my time, the Tranquility Luna base was constructed in lava tubes. We had almost an inch of white plastic lining the cave and support structures surrounding any fissures or stress points.
Lights on the ceiling guide our way. A steel grate runs along the rock. Thick steel doors hide subterranean caves leading off to each side. Although the design is foreign to me, the intent is obvious—these are airlocks. This must be the original site of the colony. They put down roots here and built the city above. Now, these caves are used by the lower class as their rulers treat them like shit. Some things never change.
“In here.”
After winding through a labyrinth of interconnecting tunnels, Pretty Boy leads me into an airlock. Only one of the doors is in use. The inner door is already open and looks as though it hasn’t been closed in a very long time. Thick cables run over the rim, snaking as they wind their way further into the cave.
The airlock has become a coat-rack of sorts. Scrappy spacesuits hang on hooks. Muddy boots sit in a row. For there to be mud, there must be liquid water within the tunnels, something I find surprising on a moon this size. Several worn spacesuits lie crumpled in the corner. The top layer of one of the suits has perished. The outer material has peeled back, exposing thermal insulation.
Cracks run through a white helmet made from what looks like fiberglass. Shock-lines splinter outward in a radial pattern. Someone was hit on the back of the head. Hard. I can’t imagine they lived through that. The glass visor is scratched but intact. I hate to think anyone uses any of this junk. I certainly wouldn’t trust my life to this crap—not that I’m technically alive.
“Savage,” Pretty Boy says.
Savage? He points at an oxy-acetylene torch hanging on the wall of the airlock. I recognize the design. Thin pipes lead from two separate canisters, joining at a regulator in the head. The nozzle is set at a right angle for safety. It’s a cutting torch. This could be from my dad’s auto workshop or the external tool kit on the Intrepid. At a guess, compression techniques have improved, allowing the small cylinders to store more gas, but the principle of a gas torch is timeless. Even in my day, these things were hotter than molten lava. A good torch could reach temperatures bordering on those found on the surface of a dwarf star.
“Salvage,” I say, realizing what Pretty Boy means. He’s taking me to a chop-shop—this millennia’s equivalent of a junkyard dealer. Wonderful.
Moments ago, I would have given anything to flee the city. Now, I’m not so keen. We’ve turned off the main route and entered some kind of underworld. Within twenty feet of the dysfunctional airlock, the tunnel opens up into a cave, twisting deeper. Lights line the walls. Dust coats framed pictures. These were relics by my day. Who would have static, printed images when memories can be displayed as immersive holograms? I bend forward, leaning close to one, wanting to get a good look at it. If I could, I’d pick it up and blow away the dust.
“Tis precious,” Pretty Boy says. He looks nervous about me getting so close, but he must know I could never touch it, let alone damage it, and why would I? What’s so important about this picture?
“Hah!”
I shake my head, on the verge of breaking into laughter. I know what this is. For these guys, this would be something akin to the Mona Lisa, but it’s a printed advertisement. They probably don’t even have ads anymore. The color has faded, but it’s been touched up. Perhaps it’s been restored like the paintings of Michelangelo.
The photo is of a pretty brunette in a red polka dot dress. She’s holding a tray at shoulder height, with her hand twisted around so her palm’s flat, supporting the tray from beneath. Her hair is backlit. The brilliance of the sun causes loose strands blowing in the wind to appear almost golden. She’s fit, trim, with a full bust beneath her tight-fitting dress. With dark eyebrows and lush, red lipstick, she appears sensuous, almost inviting. The background is out of focus, drawing attention to her. Three brown bottles sit precariously on the tray as it angles to one side over her shoulder. To most, the placement of the bottles appears haphazard, but they’ve been set with care. The logo on each bottle faces the camera. The banner across the bottom reads, Coca Cola: It’s the real thing.
Pretty Boy notices my interest in it and grins, saying, “Real Coke.”
“Yeah,” I say, astonished that out of all the things to survive from my culture it would be a soft drink. I doubt these guys even know what a coke from my era tastes like. Then again, the version they sold while I was growing up was nothing like the original. For all I know, it could have reverted to its roots by now and once again contain actual cocaine. Perhaps no longer in trace amounts.
I remember seeing nostalgic ad
vertising images like this growing up. Originals were worth a fortune, reaching into the tens of millions of dollars. Fakes abounded. In this age, it must be akin to the cave paintings in Lascaux. It sure beats charcoal depictions of someone hunting deer with a spear.
Funny, but in my imagination, I can place myself behind the lens of the camera. I can imagine the warmth of the day, the run of shots, the smiles, and laughter. She knew what she was doing. She was modeling for a soft drink. But could she have ever imagined these prints lasting for thousands of years? Could she have ever dreamed someone would take her image to the stars?
“Beautiful, huh?” a voice says from behind me.
I turn as an old man walks up to us. It’s only then I realize this is the first time I’ve seen anyone on this small world beyond their 30s. I assumed they had some kind of genetic engineering that kept everyone youthful. For all I know, Pretty Boy is hundreds of years old. In my time, this guy would be easily 90. He’s still young for the age, with the average life expectancy in the Western world hovering around 160. There was only so much that could be done to tweak a cell’s telomeres and defy death.
It seems age still humbles us, although his age is probably measured in centuries. The aging gentleman’s hair is dark on top. The sides are grey, almost silver. Wrinkles line his cheeks. They’re subtle but undeniable. His skin has a rough texture. Exposure to UV will do that. To think that once people sunbathed, deliberately damaging their skin to somehow ‘look beautiful’ seems crazy now. By my time, it was recognized as foolish, but still, some young people persisted in getting a tan. As a species, we sure have been dumb. This guy reminds me of my uncle. He’s lived a hard life.
“It’s like you, isn’t it?” he says in a soft voice. “Caught out of time.”
“Ah, yeah,” I say, taken by surprise. I’m still trying to process everything in this cave and figure out where Pretty Boy has brought me. I feel as though I’ve fallen into yet another world, although this time, I walked here.
“You speak the Old Tongue,” I say.
He nods but doesn’t address the issue. “Giovanni told me about you—how you fell into our world.”
I turn to Pretty Boy in alarm, wondering how much his memories have been altered. How do the aliens in this system have such broad access to humanity? How can they alter our computer files and even our minds? Jorgensen had no idea about Dr. Everton even though she’d worked with him for years. How can such deep memories be whitewashed? They would have had to erase her from everyone she ever came in contact with, not just those in the cleanroom. How is that possible? Are they manipulating human brain implants?
“What did Pretty Boy tell you?” I ask, unable to call him by his actual name. Giovanni doesn’t seem to fit his persona. To me, he’ll always be Pretty Boy. Best I can tell from the grin on his face, he doesn’t care.
“He said you were an oddity. A surprise.”
“Did he ask you about Jorgensen?”
The old man’s eyelids flicker. He’s accessing his neural net.
“Don’t,” I say, holding out my hands, wanting to touch him but knowing I can’t. My fingers graze the hair on the back of his forearm, sending out tiny sparks as I speak with grim determination. “Please. Don’t—access—the Veritas.”
For me, it’s intriguing to see how seriously he takes my concern. He comes to a halt as our eyes meet. The physical act of reaching for him even though we both know I could never touch him conveys the gravity of my concern.
“Okay,” he says, backing away from what’s little more than a phantom apparition from his perspective. He pauses, following up with. “Why?”
“Because Jorgensen doesn’t exist. He did. But not anymore.”
His eyes narrow. That got his attention.
“Don’t look for him,” I say. “If you do, they’ll know where I am.”
“They?”
He may ask that out of curiosity, but the lump he swallows in his throat suggests he has his suspicions. I get the feeling this guy is used to being in charge, but right about now, he feels like a bomb disposal tech picking between the red and the blue wire.
“They’ll kill you,” I say, and I can see it in his eyes. There’s no question—no doubt.
“See?” Pretty Boy says, putting the projector and the cranial skull cap on the edge of the table. “Crazy mad.”
“Not crazy. Not mad,” I say, ignoring Pretty Boy. I keep my eyes focused on the old man, speaking with slow deliberation. “Right now, I’m the only one on this rock you can trust.”
Trust
“Who are you?” the old man asks.
Before I answer, I gesture to Pretty Boy, asking, “Does he understand? He can’t use the Veritas. It will lead them here.”
The old man turns to Pretty Boy. His eyelids flicker. Pretty Boy drops his gaze, lowering his head as though he’s been scolded.
Damn it! They’re ignoring me. They’re leaving a goddamn electronic fingerprint the likes of which the aliens in this system have already used to track me down.
As much as I hate the implications of being hunted, I am left feeling unsettled at how this is happening. The alien creatures I’ve seen have been brute beasts. Regardless of whether it was while I was being dissected in orbit or resting in the cleanroom on Erebus, these creatures have never shown any interest in technology. They seem entirely organic rather than hybrids like us humans. We wield our intellect through machines. Computers, spaceships, spacesuits—it doesn’t matter—they’re extensions of our thinking and reasoning. Technology is the realization of our scientific understanding. The Veritas is ours, and yet these aliens can infiltrate this moon with impunity.
“I would offer you a seat,” the elderly man says, gesturing to a table within the cavern. He pulls back an old 1950’s chair, the kind with chrome legs and an entirely impractical red plastic cushion decorated with glitter. Even in their day, these seats were horribly uncomfortable, but nostalgia softens expectations, if not butts.
“I brought my own,” I say, bringing up my keyboard and plonking a virtual chair beside the table. We sit and he pours himself a drink. It looks like whiskey. Certainly, the proportion swirling around the bottom of the glass is about right. The old man sniffs at the rim, sips once, and then knocks it all back. He weighs his next few words carefully.
“So you’re not AI.”
“I am not AI,” I reply, matching both his tempo and rhythm.
“Giovanni thought you were AI.”
“I’m Jessica Elizabeth Rowe. Mission Specialist on the Intrepid, sister ship to the Constellation.”
His eyes go wide. He shakes his head in stunned disbelief. I understand. This is a lot to take in. Hell, even I’m not sure about all that’s transpired to get me here. I can’t blame anyone for struggling to keep up. Pretty Boy falls silent. He perches himself on the side of the table. I hope he’s activated the Old Tongue translation unit Dr. Everton used so he can understand the importance of what I’m describing.
“Yeah, that Constellation,” I say. “I’m an astrobiologist. I departed Earth for Procyon Alpha A in the year 2132, although by your reckoning, that would be way back in the year 163.”
“Before. Before the—”
“Before the Constellation went nova,” I say, nodding. “Yes. About a decade earlier.”
His eyes light up. “Whoa. How did you get here? We were sure you were an artificial construct. We thought you were a super-weapon built off-world by the Refusal. But you’re not, are you? You’re real. How?”
“That’s me. There,” I say, pointing at the small canister on the side of the table.
“This?” It’s unsettling to have an utter stranger pick up my skull fragment.
“Please,” I say. The old man turns the case over in his hand, examining the dead organic matter sealed in a glass container. Thousands of tiny fiber-optic threads weave their way from my brain cells and ganglia into a cord that twists and curls within the liquid. It joins to a port on the side of the jar with
a blinking blue light. That light is the only evidence of any kind of activity. With a sense of reverence, the old man returns the canister to the exact spot where it sat on the table. His fingers linger as he releases the jar, revealing the machinations of his mind. He’s stunned—intrigued.
“This… This is remarkable.”
“What has Pretty Boy told you?” I ask.
“Giovanni said you materialized within the cleanroom. He said you began blabbering about the macrocosm in the Old Tongue. He told me you were entirely virtual—that you were the construct of artificial intelligence.”
“But I’m not, am I?”
“No.”
“If he really thought that, would he have brought this with him?”
“No,” the old man says, pointing at the canister. “That is not a virtual artifact.”
“No. It’s not.”
“So tell me,” he says. “What really happened?”
“That Pretty Boy thought I was AI and yet still brought the skull fragment tells you something important. Someone is changing the narrative. Someone is altering your reality.”
That gets the old man to sit back in his seat. His eyes narrow.
“Don’t,” I say, reiterating my previous admonition. “The Veritas is corrupt. It cannot help you. It will only help them.”
“Them?”
I don’t elaborate. At this point, I want him to trust me. I want to lead him to his own conclusion about my origins.
“There were two researchers,” I say. I’m loath to mention them by name as, beyond a slight flicker in his eyes, I have no way of knowing how much he’s relying on his neural implants. I can imagine scenarios where the Veritas is designed to work autonomously at a subconscious level. Like the virtual assistants I’m used to, it would try to be helpful by preempting issues. Right now, I need to remain off-grid.
I say, “One of them began looking into what I told them about the aliens in this system. The next day, she was gone. Two had become one. Then one became none. And now I’m here.”
Déjà Vu (First Contact) Page 12
