“Aliens?” he asks, surprised by the notion. “Here on Erebus?”
I nod.
“And tonight?” he asks.
“Tonight, they came for me.”
He nods thoughtfully. I have no idea who this guy is, but of all the people on this rock, Pretty Boy has taken me to the one person that has the intellect to grasp the seriousness of what’s transpiring on this tiny moon.
“And you say, there are aliens inhabiting Procyon Alpha A? Even though no one has ever seen them?”
“I’ve seen them,” I say. “Twice.”
The silence that follows is morbid. It’s as though someone died. Two people did—Dr. Everton and Jorgensen.
“But the Refusal,” Pretty Boy says. The old man cuts him off, raising a finger and waving back and forth, signaling, not now.
“Tell me about these aliens. How is it you’re the only one that’s seen them in hundreds of years?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “But I’m different. I’m something they can’t account for.”
He nods, pursing his lips at that thought. I leave him to dwell on that as hearsay is all I’ve got. I have no proof beyond my own existence.
“That,” he says, pointing at the remnants of my brain, seemingly reading my mind. “That’s your evidence, isn’t it? That’s your proof.”
“Yes,” I say, astonished at the flexibility of his mind to grasp something I struggle with myself.
“There’s no other explanation for that,” he says, addressing Pretty Boy. “No other way that could have ended up in the workshop. Those remains didn’t just place themselves on the workbench, now did they? They might say you fell from the macrocosm as a virtual artifact, but that container didn’t. That’s real.”
“They found it among the rings,” I say. It’s strange referring to the only remaining fragment of my body as it, and yet I’ve always felt I was more than raw biology.
The old man shakes his head, saying, “To bring you back. This technology. There’s no one on Erebus with that ability.”
“Not anymore,” I say. “But there was. The two historical researchers.”
“Yes. Yes,” he replies, smiling. “And they erased them.” He laughs. “By removing the evidence of your resurrection, they provided us with all the evidence we need.”
I could hug this guy. Seriously.
“These aliens,” he asks, waving his hand through the air, making as though he were rolling back a curtain. “They’re invisible?”
“No. I don’t think so. One of them came for me in the workshop. It looked pretty damn real. Lots of tentacles.”
“And the fire? It caused that?”
“Yes.”
The old man turns to Pretty Boy, whose eyes are as wide as saucers. He gets it.
“So how do they hide among us?”
“I don’t know, but they’ve erased memories.” I point at Pretty Boy, saying, “His memories.”
The old man looks horrified by that thought. “So,” he says, lingering before continuing. “One of them could come in here, snatch you and wipe our minds and we’d never know.”
I nod, saying, “Ask him if he remembers Jorgensen? No cheating. No Veritas. What does he actually remember?”
My question is rhetorical. Pretty Boy’s sitting here listening to us. I’ve posed the question about Jorgensen before, challenging his recollection of events. The two men exchange glances, but there’s no flicker, no use of implants to communicate. This is good old fashioned body language. It’s clear they’re horrified by what’s transpired. The implication is they’re being manipulated like puppets.
“There must be clues,” I say. “There should be. These things are real. They move around. They must leave some kind of physical trace—microbes, skin cells, or whatever their equivalent is. If they break something, you should notice, but I doubt they’d let you retain any memory of the actual event.”
He laughs. “So a memory lapse may not be quite as innocent as it seems. Put the keys down by the door, then pick them up later from the table.”
“I guess,” I say. “If they wanted your keys, that could happen. The point is, you’d never know. From your perspective, there’s just a slight blip, an adjustment, a disjointed recollection.”
“An itch you can’t scratch,” he says. “Something you can’t quite put your finger on, you just know it’s wrong.”
I’m ready to jump out of my virtual seat. “Yes!”
He pours himself another shot of whiskey, knocking it back and laughing. “And here I was thinking Giovanni’s been sneaking a swig.”
“Oh,” I say, joining his banter. I point at the half-empty bottle, saying, “I think that’s all your doing.”
He laughs, slapping his hand on the table.
“I like you, Mission Specialist Jessica Elizabeth Rowe.”
I smile.
Without any prompting, he adds, “I believe you.”
For the first time in what seems like an eternity, I feel whole. I think I’ve found someone I can trust. I only hope I can keep him alive.
“So we must fight them. We must win,” he says, saluting me with another shot of whiskey. Okay, that’s the alcohol talking, but a bit of bravado doesn’t go astray.
I wonder if I can get drunk. I sure hope so, laughing lightly at the thought.
“Gal, the Refusal. The Void.”
“Yes. Yes,” he turns to Pretty Boy. “But this is remarkable. History has come to life, warning us of the danger all around us.”
“I don’t understand,” I say. “The Void? The Refusal?”
“Nothing is what it seems, no?”
“No,” I reply, but my comment is weighed down with doubt.
“You fight one reality. We fight another.”
“Fight?”
“Surely, you’ve wondered. You’ve seen the workshop.”
I can sense where he’s leading the conversation.
I say, “No robotics, right? In my time, nothing was done by hand. Everything was built by AI.”
“Ah, yes. The artificialness of intelligence. It is a blessing and a curse. Our savior. Our archangel became our demon.”
“And the Void?” I ask.
“She’s quick,” the man says, turning and grinning at Pretty Boy. “See how fast her mind is? No impurity. No implant. No genetic enhancement and yet still her thinking cuts like a razor.”
“You’re trapped,” I say.
“Hah.” He slaps his hand on the table, rocking back in his chair. He points at me, on the verge of yelling as he says, “You. You are our angel.”
Suddenly, I’m not so confident. I was so engrossed in telling my story, I missed the clues. “You thought I was a weapon. You thought I was sent here to help you.”
“Yes.”
Pretty Boy says, “By the Refusal.”
“And now,” the old man says, “you have shown us we are fighting a war on two fronts. It is not just the Void, but these creatures we fight. So much more makes sense now. Why we can never win.”
The old man clenches his fist, grasping at the air. He makes as though he were crushing an invisible can in the iron grip of his fingers. He speaks with passion. His words convey the intensity with which he’s fought throughout his entire life.
“At—every—point—they—win.”
He draws his clenched fist back to his chest, lowering it. The old man relaxes, shaking his hand as he speaks.
“But not anymore. Not now we have you.”
“I—I.”
“We must trust each other.”
“Yes,” I say, but there’s uncertainty in my voice. I don’t know quite what I’m agreeing to. What choice do I have? I’m that jar. All it would take is for someone to knock that on the ground and I’d blink out of existence. The idea of disappearing into the eternal darkness terrifies me. I’m helpless. I always have been, of course, but before now, I could ignore that uncomfortable truth.
Having control in life is an illusion. I remember sit
ting on the launchpad back in Florida, watching the rocket I was mounted on top of appearing on a tiny screen in front of me. I sat in awe of the vapor wafting from the supercooled first-stage. The stainless steel skin of the rocket glistened in the sunlight. There we were, perched hundreds of meters in the air, waiting to blast off into space. To anyone watching, it was a grand adventure. For us, it was another day at the office. Our capsule sat on top of that rocket. The window beside me was barely visible on the screen, but I could see it. I knew exactly where I was within the tip of that glorified farm silo as it sat there, ready to thunder into space.
Back then, I lied to myself. I told myself I didn’t care, that even if it was all over in a heartbeat, I had no regrets. It seems lies are all we ever hold to. Lies are all that keep us sane. I looked in the mirror on the sleeve of my spacesuit and smiled. Soft lips. Pearly white teeth. Clear complexion. Hair tucked neatly beneath a Snoopy cap. But deep behind those eyes, all I ever had was the mush of brain cells now sitting in that goddamn jar. It took thousands of years, but now there are no illusions to hide behind. Now, I am the illusion.
I’m not me. I’m not sitting here on a seat. I’m there. I’m on that table. That’s me, just some ancient fragment of the cerebral cortex with a thin ventricle hanging loose, dangling to one side. Part of my brain stem reaches down for a spinal cord that has long since been severed. The walnut-like cerebellum at the base is mostly intact. That’s probably the only reason I can think for myself. Fuck.
“Trust,” the old man says, snapping me back into the moment. He leans forward, trying to catch my eyes, wanting my attention, drawing me away from visions of my own mortality.
“Life,” I say, deliberately picking one word in reply to his challenge. “We’re fighting for life, aren’t we?”
Pretty Boy brings up a holographic interface. The drab, rundown cavern with its dusty rocks and debris lining the floor is transformed into what looks like a command center. It’s all virtual, being semitransparent as it’s projected onto the walls. Getting used to this level of tech is going to take some time.
Pretty Boy says, “We have demands from the Refusal.”
The old man isn’t impressed. He waves his hand and the cave is plunged back into the half-light. Thousands of years worth of technological advances are gone in a fraction of a second. I get the feeling the old man is lost in history, surrounding himself with the past. Perhaps that’s why he was so ready to accept me. I fit the pattern.
Pretty Boy is frustrated. His lips tighten as his eyes narrow.
“There is no rush,” the man says. “Time itself is an illusion. Whatever the Refusal has to say, it cannot compare with this.”
I appreciate his sentiment, but I’m an imposter. I’m no super-weapon. I’m helpless. I don’t have any special ability. My knowledge is thousands of years out of date, and yet the old man sees something in me—potential.
“Tell me about the Void,” I say. “The Refusal. What are you dealing with?”
“There were wars—wars spanning generations. So many battles we stopped counting.”
The crazy thing about dealing with people in this time is their manner of communication is abrupt. There are so many assumptions that, even when they’re speaking Old Tongue, they come across as cryptic. I clarify what I think happened.
“You created some kind of advanced artificial intelligence, and it rebelled against you?”
“Yes. Whereas they inhabit electromagnetic waves, we are bound to the physical universe. They understood our weaknesses better than we did.” He laughs. “We thought we were the ones that were free. We thought they were limited, but they weren’t. They knew how to exploit our limits. When they couldn’t wipe us out, they crippled us, isolating us.”
“The Void?” I ask.
“Yes. Yes. They set intelligent mines throughout space, preventing us from traveling between stars, trapping us in the Void.”
“You’re trapped here?”
He nods. “Humanity is divided. We are weak.”
“And the Refusal?” I ask, realizing I’m getting the abridged version of the past thousand or so years of celestial warfare in these scattered comments.
“Some of us want to continue the war—to break out and reach Earth.”
“You refuse to abide by the ceasefire,” I say.
He nods.
The Refusal
Pretty Boy is agitated. He’s sitting off to one side, but his hands are twitching. His eyes have a glazed look. Goddamn it, I hate this age. Someone can be sitting right next to you and yet be a thousand miles away in some other virtual world.
“You need to get him back,” I say, getting the old man’s attention. I’m nervous as hell about my baby-faced savior bringing the heat down on me.
Pretty Boy snaps out of it, looking at the old man in alarm and saying, “The Refusal demands action.”
“Wh—What’s your name?” I say, getting the attention of the old man. I’m trying to keep him on task. I don’t want Pretty Boy to dragging him into whatever alternate reality exists in their Veritas. After my last encounter with the alien in the cleanroom, I’m as good as dead if I show up anywhere on this moon.
“Gal-san Kushim.”
“Gal,” I say, hoping it’s not an offense to truncate his name. “We need to stay offline. All of us. I know you depend on your implants, but you can’t trust them.”
“Trust,” he says, lost in thought yet again. I suspect he’s accessing his implant. I’m so fucked. I speak the Old Tongue, as they call it. Here am I, telling them they can’t trust their implants. They can’t even talk to me without them. It’s like telling an American in Moscow not to use Google Translate. How the hell are they going to understand anything?
Gal says, “I am help.”
“Okay?” I say, unsure what he means as, to me at least, that’s a fractured sentence.
“Help verb, not help noun,” he says.
“Yeah. I got that.”
He goes on to say, “I am help. He is help.”
What is this? Dr. Seuss? Goddamn kindergarten? I am totally fucked. I know what’s going on. In those moments where we seem to have a lucid conversation it’s because I have their full attention. Then they start screwing around with their implants and multitasking and I’m left talking to preschoolers, only they think I’m the child. Perhaps, compared to their enhanced brains, I am, but right now, I’m the only one reasoning this through in detail.
Gal says, “We use the Refusal, no?”
“No,” I say quite emphatically, but Gal isn’t listening to me. His fingers ripple through the air like a piano player working on several different keyboards stacked before him. I want to grab him, to shake him, but I’m nothing more than a projection of holographic light. I have no form despite the illusion of a body.
Gal creates something on his virtual interface. Images swirl through the air in the form of spheres, revealing activity within the colony. To my mind, they’re a fish-eyed lens, offering views of various locations around the tiny moon. They float as though they were basketballs floating in a pool, beckoning Gal to examine them. He grabs one and it expands to roughly four times its previous size. The hologram shows us what’s unfolding topside.
Firefighters wade through the foam covering the workshop floor. They work around the collapsed roof as they examine the wreckage of various spacecraft. Support teams scan the ruins. Thin blue lasers ripple over the burnt metal as investigators seek to determine the cause of the fire.
In another sphere, the central courtyard is visible, along with the science building where I stood before the council. Emergency vehicles clog the forecourt. Steam rises from engine bells as they cool. Residents wander around in a daze. Most of them probably haven’t seen anything this disastrous on their carefully curated world.
Officials circulate, wearing dark uniforms, apparently interviewing witnesses. Several of them examine a burned-out awning on the far side of the open area. Given its position, I’m guessing tha
t was the location of a surveillance system. It’s too far from the workshop to have been caught in the fire. I think it’s been deliberately sabotaged by the aliens to cover their tracks. Thankfully, it also obscured my escape, but its presence troubles me. If no one has seen these creatures—not in thousands of years—they took a significant risk to wipe me out. I’m at a loss to understand their desperation. There has to be a reason why they feel so threatened by a revived thread of otherwise necrotic ganglions. I’m missing something important. I’m looking at a jigsaw puzzle without all the pieces.
There are at least another dozen spheres floating around us like planets. Gal either pushes them away or grabs at the air in front of him, dragging them closer. He expands and examines each in turn. His pupils are dilated. His eyes dance as though he were rapidly scanning a page. There’s a slight shake to his head. The speed with which he’s processing information blows my mind. If I could, I’d bite my nails. Actually, I probably still can, given they’re virtual. As it is, I’m playing with my lip, grabbing at the skin and pulling it back with my fingers. I touch at my teeth, on the verge of saying something, but I’ve been ignored. Whatever Gal’s doing, it’s not wise to distract him.
“See?” he says, discarding one virtual basketball holographic image and grabbing another.
Gal expands a view of several security craft landing in the markets we passed through. What I guess are cops jump from vehicles hovering a few feet above the ground. They’re wearing featureless face masks. Hell, for all I know, these are robots rather than people, but given the current aversion to AI, they’re probably human. Their motion is smooth rather than mechanical.
It’s only when I see where they’re running that I panic.
“No, no, no,” I say, instinctively reaching out and trying to take Gal by the shoulder. My ethereal fingers pass through him with barely a flicker.
He turns to me, grinning like a fool, saying, “See?”
“Oh, I see,” I say, looking around. I’m trying to figure out how the hell I can get out of here. From what I can tell, the cavern is a dead end. “Pretty Boy?”
Pretty Boy doesn’t answer. He’s lost deep in the Veritas. Without him, I’m stuck.
Déjà Vu (First Contact) Page 13
