Hollow World

by Michael J. Sullivan

“What were they talking about?”

  “I really didn’t hear much. Something about a Hive Project and the future. That’s about all I remember.”

  “See,” Cha said with a superior tone that irritated Ellis. He had no idea what Cha meant by the single word. It sounded like a continuation of a previous argument, but all he knew was that he didn’t like it. He also decided he didn’t like Cha’s tattoo. Ellis never cared for tattoos, they always made people look cheap—human graffiti—but he made exceptions for statements of honor like military insignias, the name of a loved one, or a quote from the Bible. But Cha’s was just strange swirls, like some Aztec art.

  “I’m going to sit down, is that okay?” He was going to sit down even if it wasn’t. Ellis was feeling nauseous in addition to dizzy, and he let himself slide down the wall to the grass.

  Pax nodded. “Nothing at all, Cha?”

  “Sorry.”

  “Concrete! I can’t report another anonymous. It’ll just make things worse.”

  “There’s nothing here.”

  Pax looked angry, but Cha only shrugged.

  “Can’t you run tests?” Ellis asked. “You still have forensic sciences, right?”

  They both looked at him, confused.

  “You know, fingerprints and DNA samples.” He was about to say hair samples but caught himself.

  “Those won’t help, Ellis Rogers,” Pax told him. “We all have the same.”

  “Same what? DNA? Fingerprints? You can’t all—oh.” Not androids then—genetic engineering. Ellis finally understood the Darwin reference. So maybe he was a Darwin, at least in the strictest sense. Is everyone here born in a test tube?

  “Without the chip we can’t identify the victim,” Cha said.

  “Really?” Ellis asked. “So you all have chips in your shoulders to tell each other apart? C’mon, there has to be another way. I mean, what happens when those things stop working? Don’t they ever fail?”

  “Not really.”

  “In a case like that we could verify identity just by asking questions,” Pax explained. “Or run a neural scan. But being dead, those won’t work.”

  “But you must have had this problem before.”

  The two shook their heads. “Until recently, it’s never happened.”

  “Seriously?” Ellis was amazed.

  “What do we do now?” Cha asked.

  “Like I have all the experience with dead bodies,” Pax replied, staring at the corpse with an expression that mirrored how Ellis was feeling.

  “You’ve at least seen one before,” Cha said.

  “Contact the ISP. They’ll want to look it over.”

  “You two are homicide cops, and this is only the second dead body either of you has seen?” Ellis asked.

  “First I’ve seen,” Cha corrected.

  “What’s a homicide cop?” Pax asked.

  “Police that deal with murders.”

  With widening eyes, Pax pointed a finger at Ellis. “That’s right! You’re from the past! Way in the past. You know all about this—this sort of thing…about murders, right?”

  “Not really. I wasn’t a cop. I used to design cars—parts of them anyway—worked on energy and alternate fuel. This village was a museum that was built by the Henry Ford Motor Company, and I—”

  “Still is a museum,” Pax corrected.

  “Okay, well—see, I used to work for another car company, trying to improve the capacity of batteries. I wasn’t a detective or anything.”

  “But they had murders then, yes?”

  “I lived in Detroit—they had plenty.”

  “And you know that they used DNA and fingerprints to find the killers.”

  “Everyone knows that.”

  “Maybe everyone in 2014 knows about such things—not so much these days.” Pax took another step closer, until they were only an arm’s length apart.

  Nice eyes, Ellis thought, something innocent and childlike about them.

  “We don’t have this sort of thing anymore,” Pax said.

  “Murders?”

  “Death,” Pax replied.

  Ellis just stared, certain he wasn’t getting everything. He was still trying to understand what Pax meant by him being from way in the past. How long ago was way? Then it sounded like Pax had said there was no more death. “What did you say?”

  “Listen,” Pax began in a softened tone. “I’m sorry about all this. You’ve just been through a traumatic experience. You’re tired and not feeling well. You’re clearly a pioneer, a great scientist of some sort who’s accomplished something astounding. You’re a new Charles Lindbergh or Network Azo, and trust me, I’ll see you’re taken care of. Your very existence is amazing—”

  “Impossible actually,” Cha added with disdain.

  Pax went on without pause. “You should be welcomed with a parade, and a party, and I’m certain a great many people will wish to speak with you. I know you have all sorts of questions, but you need to believe me when I tell you I’m not a cop. I’m an arbitrator. I deal with general disputes between people—help them settle their differences with the least amount of bad feelings. And I help people who have experienced painful events in their lives. I was called here to see if I could help these students deal with the trauma of witnessing a dead and brutalized body. But this…is there anything else you could tell us?”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Right now you’re the foremost living expert.”

  Ellis had never been the foremost anything. And whether he really was or not, he liked that Pax thought he might be. “I don’t know what I can offer. I don’t know anything about how things work here. All I know comes from reading crime thrillers and watching TV.” He said this even as he moved toward the body, crawling now, as standing was too much effort to consider. Cha quickly stepped back, but not as frantically as before.

  The corpse looked like the bystanders, who were still shifting around to get a better look at him, except the dead person was covered in blood, cuts, and puncture wounds. Looking down, Ellis felt his dizziness rise a couple of notches. He also had a headache. He’d never seen a brutalized body before. All the dead people he’d been near were thick with makeup and tucked neatly in boxes surrounded by flower arrangements. Luckily, with the exception of the blood, which had already mostly dried, it wasn’t a very gruesome scene. No guts hanging out, no bones showing—just the mutilated shoulder, which wasn’t as bad as he had expected. The killer had dug in like a doctor to retrieve a bit of shrapnel. He knew he wasn’t going to puke, which surprised him, because his stomach had been churning for some time. He tried to focus and apply what he knew from the novels of Patricia Cornwell, Jonathan Kellerman, and the occasional episode of Law & Order or CSI. “Looks like he was stabbed to death and the killer didn’t seem to know what he was doing.”

  “Why’s that?” Cha asked this time.

  “Well, unless you’ve moved things around since my time, the best places to kill a person, according to most of the crime novels, would be a slice across the throat to cut the carotid artery, an upward stab under the ribs to the heart, or a stab to the base of the skull. This person was just jabbing anywhere, straight in and out. See all the puncture marks on the stomach? All of them have small openings, like he was just going for the soft spots. There was no twisting of a blade or attempt to open the wounds wide. And the victim didn’t fight back…just defended. See the cut on the arm there? Probably from trying to ward off the knife. And see the blood pool? That wound caught a larger artery there, and I bet that caused the bleed out. These others might have damaged intestines, and maybe eventually done the trick, but not nearly as fast. Might have been saved if not for that arm cut.”

  “Does that make sense?” Pax asked Cha.

  Cha nodded, and Ellis thought there might be reluctance there, but “Aztec Tattoo” got points for being honest.

  “So the killer isn’t an expert.”

  “I wouldn’t think anyone alive these days is an expert,”
Cha said. “So you haven’t narrowed anything.”

  “Is there more you can tell us?” Pax asked.

  Ellis got up on his knees. “Yeah—this fella’s eyes were bad. He wore glasses.”

  “What did you say?”

  “He or she—ah, I mean—well, I don’t really know what to…never mind. This person wore glasses. See the pinch marks along the bridge of the nose, and the little half-moons on the cheeks? Glasses do that.”

  Pax looked at Cha. Both were puzzled.

  “Hang on.” Ellis set down his pack, unzipped a side pocket, pulled out his reading glasses, and set them on his nose. “See. Glasses. I take them off and you can see the divots left—the little impressions.”

  “I understand what you’re saying, Ellis Rogers,” Pax explained, “but no one wears glasses.”

  Cha had found the courage to inch closer to peer down at the body. “I hadn’t noticed that. Something did pinch the nose, and there’s a crease along the forehead too.”

  “Like a hat,” Ellis said, and pointed at Pax. “Some people still wear those, at least.”

  Pax offered him a smile, and he responded with one of his own.

  “So where are the glasses and hat?”

  Pax and Cha looked around but found nothing.

  “Killer might have taken them—but no, I don’t remember anything in his hands—oh!”

  “What?” Pax asked.

  “The killer—I just remembered—was missing two fingers. Right hand, I think.”

  “So, whoever did it was interested in the Hive Project, had likely never killed before, and is missing two fingers. And the victim wore glasses and a hat.”

  Ellis shrugged. “I told you I wouldn’t be much help.” He was feeling worse and reconsidering whether he might vomit after all.

  “Actually, that’s much more than we knew five minutes ago. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome. And speaking of time and knowing things, what year is it?”

  “Oh right.” Pax looked embarrassed. “This is the year 4078.”

  “Forty seventy-eight? That’s…that’s more than two thousand…” Ellis wavered, and Pax reached out, grabbing his shoulders.

  “I’m sorry,” Pax offered. “I didn’t realize it would be such a shock.”

  “No—no—well, yes, it is, but really I—I’m not feeling very well. I think I need to lie down.” He settled to the grass, lying on his back.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Cha asked.

  “I told you I have a respiratory problem,” he said, looking up at the sky. “It’s called idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. No one in my time knew what caused it or how to cure it, and in my case it’s terminal.”

  Cha drew closer than ever before and studied him. “Are you feeling better right now?”

  “Lying down, yeah. A little bit.”

  “Stand up.”

  “I’d rather not.”

  “Do it anyway,” Cha insisted.

  Ellis looked at Pax, who nodded. “Cha is a very good physician.”

  Ellis pushed up and staggered, as the world swam more than before.

  “Okay, okay, sit down,” Cha told him and gave up his security distance to touch Ellis on the neck. “Your skin is hot and dry. When was the last time you had something to drink?”

  “Early this morning, I guess—a couple swallows.”

  “And did you say you traveled down out of the forests? Five or six miles, right? That’s what you said.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And then passed out in the sun here?”

  “Uh-huh.” He nodded.

  “You may have a respiratory illness, but right now you’re suffering from sunstroke and dehydration.”

  “Really?”

  “Trust me, I see a lot of it. People come to the surface and don’t realize the difference a real sun makes.”

  “A real sun?”

  Cha ignored him and turned to Pax. “We need to get the Darwin out of the sun, into a cool place, and reintroduce fluids and electrolytes.” Cha pulled Ellis’s canteen from around his neck, unscrewed the cap, and smelled.

  “It’s just water,” Ellis explained.

  “Then drink,” Cha ordered.

  “I’m actually feeling nauseous now.”

  “Of course you are, and soon you’ll start to have trouble breathing if we don’t fix you. Now sip. No big gulps, just sips.”

  Pax stood up and drew something out of the frock coat.

  “Where are you going?” Cha asked.

  “My place. You call the ISP and wait for them.”

  “You sure? You don’t know anything about this Darwin.”

  “Are you offering to take Ellis Rogers home with you instead?”

  “Forget I said anything.”

  A burst of light and a hum, and Ellis saw another portal appear. Through it he could see a room with a bed, pillows, and blankets.

  “Grab him,” Cha said, and they lifted Ellis by the arms. The world spun, far worse than before. He heard a ringing, and, as he was half dragged into the opening, darkness came again.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  TIMES THEY ARE A CHANGIN’

  Ellis woke up sporting a hangover without the benefit of a binge. He’d been awake for some time but resisted the temptation to get out of bed. He had no real idea what had happened or where he was but appreciated the time alone after having ridden the tornado to Oz. How long had he been asleep? How long had it been since he’d left the doctor’s office? Only a matter of hours in one sense but more than two thousand years in another.

  Two thousand! How is that possible? Hoffmann was off by a factor of ten! Had he dropped a zero somewhere? The whole thing was hard to believe despite having achieved his intent. This must be the feeling that gave expressions of wonderment to Olympic athletes when they took the gold, the look of shock on Academy Award winners even as they took out the speech they had carefully prepared. Some part of them never really believed it was possible until after it happened, and even then such miracles were hard to accept. He’d done it; he’d traveled through time—but Hoffmann was way off on the number of years.

  Ellis had expected to jump forward about the same distance as the founding of the United States was back. Life would be very different, but not too alien, and he expected the world would still be fundamentally the same. Instead, he had jumped the same span of years dividing the time of Christ from the age of the Internet. He was the equivalent of a Roman citizen used to slaves, the luxury of horses, and the labor of carrying water—plopped down in the age of computers and fructose corn syrup. Faced with such a shift, Ellis was grateful for the chance to wade in slowly.

  Lying in a very comfortable bed, he could tell it didn’t have springs, like one of those space-age sponge beds he used to see advertised. He had pillows and sheets, not cotton though; these were softer. He spent little time pondering the bed covering given his surroundings. He’d seen 2001, Blade Runner, Logan’s Run, and Star Trek. He knew the future was supposed to be stark, cold, and clean—or grease-stained and grit-covered. Maybe it was, but this room wasn’t.

  He lay in a massive canopy bed nestled in a cathedral of carved wood and luscious drapes. The décor of the room was castle-Gothic, with walls half clad in dark, eight-panel oak and uppers decorated in vibrant murals of medieval ladies and men on horseback. Lions, swans, crowns, and lilies abounded—carved in wood or sculpted in plaster. Above loomed a ceiling painted to look like the sky, with puffy clouds and hilltops around the edges. Light streamed in through a series of peaked, two-story windows with crisscrossed latticework, which cast spears of radiance across the foot of the bed. A breeze fluttered the edges of curtains, and Ellis could hear birds and a distant trickle of water. He smelled flowers as well as something exotic, like cinnamon or nutmeg. Besides the distant birdsong and splashing of water, he occasionally caught a distant voice calling out or laughter rising from far off.

  When he finally touched the floor, he found wide-plank hardwood with thick Pers
ian-style rugs welcoming his bare feet. Naked, he kept the sheet around his waist. His pack was on the floor beside the bed, and his clothes were folded and resting on a soft chair. His knife, as well as the still-holstered pistol, remained on his belt.

  “Oh, good morning, Ellis Rogers! I thought you’d sleep the day away. Are you feeling better?”

  Ellis jumped. He didn’t see anyone but pulled the sheet tighter.

  “Who’s there?” he asked, peering out toward the open archway that led to another room.

  “I am Sexton Alva. Pax’s vox. They told me you might be disoriented and thoroughly grassed, so I needed to go easy on you. But honestly I find the whole matter utterly amazing!”

  This voice was different from all the others: decidedly female, but he couldn’t tell where she was and kept the sheet tight.

  “Where are you?”

  “What’s that, dear?”

  “Where are you? I can’t see—”

  “Oh, Pax wasn’t kidding. You are completely sonic. Fantastic! Of course you can’t see me. I told you. I’m Pax’s vox.”

  “What’s a vox?”

  “Ha! Utterly magnetic. Really it is—you have no idea. And the way you talk! You really are grassed—real grassed like with spears and bows and arrows and such. I don’t think I can explain what a vox is to you—no point of reference, really. You probably think I’m some sort of spirit. You worship rivers and rocks, right? Have a god for everything? You can just consider me the spirit of this house. But don’t worry. I’m a good spirit. Just call me Alva, honey.”

  Ellis continued to turn his head, trying to locate the source of the voice without luck. It seemed to come from everywhere at once. “I’m not from that far in the past.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I’m not from that long ago. We didn’t have spears and bows. We had cars and planes and computers and—”

  “Computers! Yes—that’s me.”

  “You’re a computer?”

  “No, but it is certainly better than a spirit, isn’t it? I’m about as much like a computer as an abacus is. I’m Pax’s caretaker. I keep the place running, keep everyone happy and safe. Tell them what to eat in the mornings, relay messages, arrange parties, water plants, entertain everyone, teach them, advise them, watch out for them—more Pax than Vin, of course. Pax is always eager to learn; Vin apparently knows everything already.” This last comment came with a heavy dose of sarcasm. “I’ve looked after Pax for centuries. Wonderful, wonderful person, and not at all crazy, you understand. You’ll do well to remember that if you stay here—or you’ll find too much pepper in your meals, and your bath will always be a tad too cold or too hot. I’m sorry. I don’t like making such vile threats, but when it comes to protecting Pax, I’m an animal.”