Old Ironsides

by Dean Crawford

  Nathan staggered to one side, felt his legs go from beneath him and then everything faded to darkness once more.

  ***

  VII

  ‘The counsellor will be here in just a minute.’

  Nathan sat on the floor in one corner of the room, his back to the wall and a look on his face that ensured neither of the two doctors would come too close. He had decided that he didn’t like the bed, which was understandable seeing as it wasn’t damned well there, and he wasn’t sure what to make of the men who had just claimed to have saved his life.

  Neither of them wanted to talk to him either, in all fairness. Both seemed concerned about his state of mind and had stated themselves unwilling to push the boundaries of what he would be able to “take” any further. When Nathan had recovered consciousness and threatened to remove the other side of Jean’s face if he didn’t start explaining right the hell now what had happened, they had sealed themselves behind a transparent wall of some kind that Nathan could not break through: the shredded knuckles of his right fist and a smear of blood that seemed suspended in mid-air between Nathan and the nervous doctors bore testimony to the ferocity of his attack.

  The door behind them to the room, which he had since noticed had no windows, suddenly vanished as though in a puff of smoke as a woman walked through. Tall, attractive, with long brown hair and dressed in warm hues of blue and green that matched her eyes and flickered in iridium hues as the light altered around them, she strode inside the room and the door behind her suddenly materialized again. Nathan got a brief glimpse of a corridor outside, white panelled just like the room he was in.

  ‘What happened here?’

  Nathan could not hear her voice, but he could see her lips move enough to know what she had said and he could see the look of concern, outrage perhaps, on her face. Jean and the weirdly lit doctor did some explaining that involved a lot of gesturing and pleading expressions, and then the woman gave a series of fairly terse orders that sent both men, or whatever the hell they were, scurrying off. Well, Jean scurried off, the door briefly disappearing for him to pass through. The other guy, the blue one, simply vanished as though a projector had been switched off.

  The woman turned and looked at Nathan for a long moment, and then she strolled across to a panel on one wall and spoke to it. Nathan saw the bloody smear in mid-air suddenly fall to the floor to stain the tiles instead. He looked up, got to his feet by automatic reflex as the woman moved to stand a few feet from him.

  ‘Mister Ironside, my name is Doctor Helena Sears. I’m truly, deeply sorry for how you’ve been treated. I’m afraid that your doctors were extremely excited to have succeeded in saving you, and wanted to be here when you awoke. They meant you no harm.’

  Nathan stared at her for a moment, his brain feeling foggy and vague, thoughts struggling to make themselves heard.

  ‘They said I’ve been out for four hundred years.’

  Helena nodded. ‘I’m afraid that is true. It will take a great deal of getting used to, Nathan. May I call you Nathan?’

  Nathan merely nodded. Having been desperate for answers, now he found himself unable to think of anything to say.

  Helena moved to one side and perched on the edge of the bed. The blue border glowed a little brighter as she sat down, the light catching Nathan’s eye.

  ‘You must have many questions,’ Helena said, noting the direction of his gaze. ‘A lot has changed since you were last awake.’

  ‘No shit,’ Nathan uttered, finally finding his voice again.

  ‘Would you like some advice?’

  ‘Have you been in deep freeze for four hundred years too?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then what advice can you possibly give?’

  Helena smiled. ‘The kind that comes from being a psychologist, Nathan, and having hundreds of years of psychological study to draw knowledge from. The best thing you can do right now is sit down and ask questions. It’s not the lack of knowledge that’s making you angry, it’s the fact that your life has been taken from you and yet you are still alive.’

  Somehow, somewhere deep inside of him, Nathan knew that she was right and that his anger was not directed at the two doctors, that he knew that they were telling him the truth and that they probably had indeed spent the last two years bringing him back to life. He knew that his anger, although he could not yet admit it to himself, was that he might as well have been dead and that there was nothing that he could do about it.

  He had been resurrected. The word in his mind sounded almost blasphemous, as though he had no right to the claim. Four hundred years had gone by. Four centuries.

  ‘Come,’ Helena said, ‘sit here on the gravity pad and I’ll tell you everything I know.’

  Nathan stared at her for a long moment and then, as obedient as a little puppy, he loped over and slumped down onto the bed.

  ‘Good,’ Helena said as she turned to him. ‘So, ask away.’

  Nathan stared at the ceiling for a long time before he spoke.

  ‘Why has it taken so long to find a cure?’ he asked.

  ‘Ah,’ Helena said, and pursed her lips for a moment before replying. ‘That’s a little tricky to answer.’

  ‘You said I could ask you anything.’

  Helena inclined her head. ‘I did. The cure to the illness that resulted in your death, so to speak, was found three hundred years ago.’

  Nathan stared at her, felt the old anger rise again. ‘Three hundred years ago? Then what the hell has everybody been waiting for?!’

  Helena raised a placating hand. ‘The cure for your illness was something that was required for the entire population of our planet, Nathan,’ she explained. ‘Your body contained the first known example of a pristine alien virus and it was considered at the time essential that it remained deep-frozen, as much for safety as anything else.’ Helena sighed. ‘Over a century had already passed when that happened – it would not have made any difference to your family whether you were awoken then or now, as they were already long gone.’

  Nathan shot her an incredulous look. ‘Thanks for making that decision for me.’

  ‘I wasn’t even born then,’ Helena reminded him. ‘The decision was made by people who have also been dead for hundreds of years. Times were very different back then, Nathan, in ways that you cannot possibly imagine.’

  ‘I don’t want to imagine,’ Nathan reminded her. ‘I want to know.’

  Helena nodded. ‘I know you do, but there is far too much to tell in one sitting and it’s best for you if we take this one step at a time. I’m not an expert on such matters and much of the data remains classified. However, the CSS has sent me the DataStream to parts of your file for the purpose of informing you of your past.’

  ‘The DataStream?’ Nathan asked.

  Helena reached up and tapped the back of her head. ‘Fluid data implant, called an ID, that’s a bit like having a second brain. Everybody has one. The chip contains a fluid that is in constant motion and stores data at the quantum level, the chip connected to the brain using neurotransmitters made from our own cells. The encryption is perfect because fluid dynamics are so complex that they cannot be accurately predicted: the flow within the implant is unique as it’s maintained by an individual’s own body heat. Only by opening a direct link between one chip and another can the flow data be shared and thus information sent from one chip to another: we call it the DataStream. CSS sent me your stream, effectively giving me the information directly into my brain.’

  Nathan struggled to digest what Helena was saying and touched the back of his head. ‘They send information directly into your brain?’

  ‘It’s been done for three centuries and is perfectly safe,’ Helena assured him. ‘But you don’t yet have an implant. Although they’re compulsory, you’re a special case and as such I decided to let you choose for yourself, when you’re ready, whether you wanted one fitted.’

  Nathan blinked. ‘I like my brain as it is, thanks.’

 
Helena smiled. ‘I suspected as much. Anyway, the stream sent to me revealed your history after you were pronounced dead and cryogenically stored, a remarkably complex process for such a primitive time.’

  ‘Primitive?’ Nathan echoed.

  ‘I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be derogatory, but I read history avidly and have done especially since I learned that I was being assigned your case. It must have been a very difficult time to be alive, the twenty first Century.’

  ‘It wasn’t so bad,’ Nathan murmured.

  ‘But the wars, the pollution, the crime and the over-population?’ Helena said quickly. ‘The threat of nuclear war, the prevalence of disease and poverty, the decline of natural species and the rise of information wars? How on earth did you cope with all of that?’

  Nathan stared into space for a moment before he replied.

  ‘There wasn’t much anybody could do about it, unless they were the President or something. We just got on with our lives.’

  Helena shuddered visibly, but then seemed to shrug it off.

  ‘Anyway, we’re here to talk about you. After you passed away, you were put into storage until doctors could figure out what had happened to you. It took a few years, but from your bloodwork they were finally able to diagnose the first ever recorded instance of a truly extra-terrestrial virus infecting a human being. It was a remarkable moment in human history.’

  ‘Not for me,’ Nathan replied. ‘I was on ice, remember?’

  ‘Yes,’ Helena said apologetically. ‘The scientists employed by Gerald Ironside…’

  ‘My father.’

  ‘… employed by your father were ridiculed by the larger scientific community, which refused to consider the results of their investigation, claiming them to be absurd. But as time went on and space exploration continued apace, further evidence of alien bacteria and other complex forms of life emerged, especially those on Mars.’

  ‘Martian bugs?’ Nathan asked.

  ‘Extremophiles,’ Helena said. ‘They exist across the galaxy, locked up in ancient meteorites and ice, and when they land on planets so they are released. They are, in essence, the origin of life. When giant stars die in supernova explosions, the material they release contains carbon grains, and particles of other chemical elements attach themselves to the tiny grains and react with each other, like test tubes in space.’

  ‘Life from the stars,’ Nathan whispered. ‘Panspermia, right?’

  ‘Excellent,’ Helena said with an appraising gaze. ‘The hypothesis, now a proven theory, that life emerges across the universe, that the conditions of our universe are capable of naturally and spontaneously producing life and spreading it around. Spectroscopic studies of supernovae have found the building blocks of life in their remnants, trapped in ice.’

  ‘So life didn’t start on earth?’

  ‘No,’ Helena said. ‘When the organic compounds produced are immersed in water, membranous cell structures appear spontaneously. All life on earth is based on cells such as these, biological material encased in a membrane. Life on Earth came from the stars, Nathan, and so did the virus that killed you.’

  ‘How did it kill me, and how did I get it?’

  ‘Your trip to Mount Harvard,’ Helena explained. ‘The storm you were exposed to became the deepest low pressure system recorded at that time, a near-hurricane strength cell with a low-pressure centre that it reached up into the stratosphere and allowed tiny alien organisms an avenue to descend to the surface. In your case, the camp on the mountainside.’

  Nathan remembered the bitter, frigid cold he had felt all those months - centuries, ago.

  ‘I breathed them in,’ he said softly.

  ‘Yes,’ Helena replied. ‘Your companion sadly died of hypothermia long before he could breathe the alien virus in, but you prevailed. It gave the virus a body in which to take hold and affected your lungs, brain and nervous system.’

  Nathan rubbed his temples. ‘And they found a cure a century later.’

  Helena nodded and her voice became haunted.

  ‘The same advances in space travel that gave us the evidence of alien viruses in space also resulted in them being brought more effectively back to Earth as spacecraft found more efficient means of descending into our atmosphere. Better engines allowed craft to decelerate from orbital speed without generating the immense temperatures that were common on humankind’s earliest ventures into orbit, and thus the viruses and bacteria that usually attached themselves to spacecraft were able to survive the descent and replicate on Earth. About ninety years after your death, the population of Earth was decimated by a plague that took the lives of more than five billion people.’

  Nathan’s train of thought slammed to a halt and he looked across at Helena.

  ‘Five billion?’

  Helena nodded. ‘Half of all humankind died in less than a decade. It was a turning point in history, the moment where a catastrophe so devastating occurred that was sufficient to chart a new course in humanity’s survival. A cure was eventually found and something over four billion human beings survived the plague. The New World Order was instigated a few years afterward, and the rebuilding of civilization began.’

  Nathan sat in silence for a moment, concern etched into his features.

  ‘And that was three hundred years ago?’

  ‘Yes,’ Helena replied, and then she realized the true source of Nathan’s concern. ‘Your daughter passed away a few years before the plague, Nathan. She did not have to endure that catastrophe.’

  Nathan felt pain pinch at the corners of his eyes as he looked away again, stared into the middle distance.

  ‘What happened to my family?’

  Helena’s hand gently touched his arm as she replied, and handed him a small photograph of Angela and Amira that must have been preserved for him, for this moment.

  ‘Your wife Angela dedicated her life to supporting law enforcement charities and other philanthropic causes in your memory, using your father’s fortune to advance cooperation between the public and law enforcement. She became a champion of the personal state, as she called it, the public and the police working together to fight crime and taking responsibility for each other, having not just the police to look out for crime but tens of thousands of eyes in every town, millions in every city. Her work changed the face of law enforcement and still forms the foundation of what it is today. Your daughter Amira grew up to be a phenomenal physician in her own right and spent much of her time studying exotic viruses. She scoured the world’s wildest corners to develop cures for illnesses that many people had never heard of and cured thousands of people in her lifetime, millions perhaps. They both did great work, Nathan, became heroes to countless people and they did all of it in your name. You were never forgotten in all their lifetimes.’

  Nathan felt his throat constrict, his eyes blurring as an image appeared in his mind of his little Amira, deceased for more than three centuries, hugging him tightly about the neck.

  See you in a while, crocodile.

  Nathan’s head sank onto his hands as the grief finally came and his heart ached as he wept.

  ***

  VIII

  Brooklyn Spaceport,

  New York City

  The Global Express shuttle descended into Earth’s atmosphere with barely a shudder, the slender craft’s wings gradually altering shape from razor thin to gracefully tapered as Kaylin watched out of her window.

  The last time she had been lucky enough to visit the surface was when her parents had bought her a holiday as a child at a resort near San Diego on the coast of California. She could remember everything: the warmth of the sunshine, the stunning sight of an open ocean, the animals and birds and life everywhere. The whole place had seemed so wild and vigorous and alive that the memories had remained with her ever since, seared into her conscience for all time.

  Now she watched as the blackness of space merged gradually with the pure blue curve of the Earth. The vast, rippled and torn blankets of cloud across th
e ocean below loomed closer, towering pillars of white vapor soaring into the heights, and the sky above gradually turned a solid blue, the sun’s flaring yellow orb casting shadows beneath the drifting clouds far below.

  The shuttle banked gently and Kaylin watched in fascination as the coast of America appeared ahead beneath the clouds. Nested against the coastline she could see the glittering metal buildings of the city like a sparkling jewel encrusted into the dense forests that surrounded it.

  The shuttle slowed as it approached the city and Kaylin could see the occasional flare of light reflected from flying craft travelling this way and that through the skies above New York. A small number of towering skyscrapers soared up into the blue, silver and chrome flashing in the bright sunlight and endless glass reflecting the blue sky and white clouds. Five thousand feet tall, the buildings all overlooked the wilderness continent and the wild Atlantic Ocean in all their untamed glory.

  The shuttle turned and Kaylin watched as they gently touched down on a landing pad of Brooklyn Spaceport just before noon Local Surface Time, guided in by the pilot who settled the shuttle onto magnetic landing claws as the engine shut down and passengers began unstrapping from their seats and patiently filing for the exits.

  The air that filled Kaylin’s lungs as she stepped out of the interior of the shuttle onto the boarding ramp seemed like the first she had truly breathed in decades, tinged with the sweet scent of recent rain, of distant forests and of the ocean nearby that swirled in a heady aroma as she stepped onto the landing pad and closed her eyes.

  ‘Lieutenant Foxx?’

  Kaylin opened her eyes and saw a man in a sharp suit, the lapels of his jacket fashionably folding close to his right shoulder in the manner of the Central Security Services. He bore the discreet shoulder insignia of a Major, and his right eye glowed with the unnatural light of an optical implant that continuously fed data streams to him in real time.