“Well, did you get it—Hey! I thought you said you were out!”
He jumped out of his chair at the sound of her voice. “Auntie, I was just—I found a—oof!” Tarzi broke off his fumbling apology to catch the carton of smokes Mags tossed to him.
“Never mind all that, Captain Black Lung! What does the book say?”
Tarzi took a puff, held it deeply, and exhaled twin tendrils of grey smoke from his nostrils. “It says it only works one time, so let’s hope it’s never been used before. It tells me exactly how to turn it on. It runs through a cycle automatically, and shuts down when it’s over. Which is all well and good, I suppose. Except—”
“Can it save Patches?”
“I don’t know. The energy conversions are off the chart. The equations for power conversion shouldn’t even be possible. It’s like—instead of stepping up voltage, like a transformer, they actually step up power.”
“That’s impossible,” said Mags. “You can’t increase the overall power in a system without doing more work, over time. It runs against everything we know about thermody—”
Beep beep beep! Beep beep beep!
“What the hell is that beeping? Oh, my god—Patches!” She ran into the next room with Tarzi right on her heels. They had wheeled the stasis unit into the room with the machines. Everything seemed fine, until Mags saw the timer.
“Oh no! The bloody timer is down to two minutes!”
“I thought it said we had five hours?”
“It did! Damn this old junk!” Mags kicked the machines with her boot. “Come on! We’ve got to get Patches into that other machine and turn it on. Now!”
“But Auntie, we don’t have any idea what will happen. There’s no way the machine could possibly do what it does! We can’t—”
“Damn it, Tarzi! We know what will happen in ninety seconds if we don’t use it. Patches dies!” She pulled her cat’s limp body from the unit. “We’re out of choices, Tarzi. Do it!”
She laid Patches in the bottom of the shatterproof glass tube of the strange machine. “Oh, my little kitty,” she said softly. “My poor little kitty.”
Tarzi flipped switches and pulled levers. Lights came on, and the console hummed fiercely. “Mags,” he shouted over the rumble. “See that little mask? It’s supposed to fit a human. You’ve got to fit it onto her face somehow. It’s the only way she can breathe when that chamber fills up!”
“Fills up? Fills up with what?” She adjusted the mask to Patches’ face, fitting the tiny plastic tube into her cat’s mouth and pulling the straps tight. She ran her finger along the edge, making sure it fit snugly on Patches’ fuzzy face.
“Auntie,” he said. “I only wish I knew. Now close that chamber and step back!” He flipped a series of switches. “I mean it! Stand back!” He grabbed one final lever. “This is it!” With all his might, he pulled the lever down.
It slammed into place, and the entire moon plunged into darkness.
★ ○•♥•○ ★
10,000 Years Ago.
Science Officer Baston held his greatest triumph up to the light and smiled. He felt a calm, quiet joy on this, the last night of his life. He had already recorded a final statement. Soon, they would arrive to kill him.
Baston had achieved three truly great things in his life. First, he devised a new set of equations for understanding electromagnetic force. Certain applications proved practical in the military sector. Though this brought funding for his research, many on the Science Board dismissed his equations as utterly ignorant of basic principles of thermodynamics. Still, he continued.
Baston’s second great triumph brought him to tonight’s unfortunate circumstance. He modeled an incredible machine for drawing power from the magnetic field of a planetoid. When activated, the machine generated a field in the core of the planet. Manipulation of this field would induce the reversal of the planet’s magnetic poles.
Baston’s equations treated the force of this reversal like a river turning a water wheel. The reversal would turn the crank, so to speak, and provide an unimaginable amount of power in return.
When the Science Board realized what Baston had modeled, they ordered him to desist. Reversing the magnetic poles in the planet-sized moon they called home would destroy everything. Mountains would crash down. Continents would tear free, adrift on seas that surged into waves as tall as the sky. Volcanos would rip the moon asunder as the atmosphere burned off in a stinking cacophony of sulfur.
Still, Baston continued. When he ignored the Board’s order to desist, they ordered his arrest.
He studied the object he held to the light. From one angle, he saw a solid rectangle, like a card. When he turned it slightly, he saw a lattice of triangles and squares which all shared sides but never seemed to complete. As he turned it again, he beheld a polyhedron made of every other possible polyhedron, fit together like blocks. As he held it nearer or farther from his face, the shapes shifted like a kaleidoscope.
Baston had already burned the pages he ripped out of his notes on the machines. They described the reason he continued his work. Baston had modeled more than just the mechanism of power. He had created a transformer to convert the power into a form the human body could absorb. Baston believed this would transform a human to the level of a god, and he had so wanted to be a god.
The power conversion, however, required his third and final great achievement. The core of that transformer required a physical object a mere four dimensions could not adequately describe. Describing the physical core took nine mathematical dimensions.
Baston manufactured, in secret, the only set of tools that could create physical objects from such complicated specifications. If he had the sympathy of the Science Board, perhaps Baston could have ushered in an era of profound advancement with his impossible equipment. But, he did not.
The sound of footsteps in the hall broke Baston’s reverie. He walked to the control panel of his machine, opened a door, and fit the multi-dimensional core into place. Only he would ever witness its strange, geometric beauty.
Baston knew he could get into the chamber, slip on the mask, and dare the transformation before the people outside broke in. But who would pull the lever? He did not have time to rig something with a cable or a rope. He had no time at all.
A boot kicked in the door, sending it flying off its hinges and crashing into the back wall. An armored figure stepped into the room. “There he is!”
Drawing his pistol, Baston turned his body sideways to present a thin profile. He squeezed the trigger. A spray of bullets lifted him off his feet and smashed him into the wall.
The enormous bureaucracy of the Science Board ordered all of Baston’s equipment and research destroyed on the third following day. But two days later, a virus broke out on the moon. It killed every last man, woman, and child in less than thirty-seven hours.
Their architecture would outlive them, a ghost town the size of a moon. Baston’s curious machines sat untouched, intact but abandoned, for many, many years.
Until now.
★ ○•♥•○ ★
WHOOOM. WHOOOM. WHOOOM. Zzzzzzzzt.
“Tarzi! What did you do?” They stood in total darkness.
“I don’t know! I just—”
WHOOOM. WHOOOM. WHOOOM. Ka-THUNK!
Magnetic force ripped through the entire moon in an instant. Mags and Tarzi shouted, finding themselves hurled against the wall. The floor rose up to punch them in the face. “Gah!”
“Ow! What the—” Before Mags could finish her sentence, a bright blue light with a white core burst from the chamber holding Patches.
She floated up from where Mags had placed her, now suspended in a bubbling, frothing light. Wild tendrils of blue energy coalesced around her. They grew to fill the room. A swirling miasma of black orbs outlined the brilliant energies. They spilled into the hallway.
Mags and Tarzi crouched, wide-eyed. All the hair on their bodies stood on end. A static crackle moved along their exposed skin. Pat
ches’ body shook violently in the chamber.
“Patches!” Mags screamed.
The calico’s legs flailed in all directions through the glowing blue liquid. She convulsed, grew rigid, and convulsed again.
Mags threw out her hand and yelled, “Patches! No!” She ran to the chamber. She pounded her fists on the glass. “No!” Tears poured down her face. She struck the glass again and again. “Tarzi! Turn it off!”
“I can’t!” Another earthquake struck the station. It sent the two of them to the floor again. “The moon is tearing itself apart!” The blue tendrils and their strange bubbling blackness seethed throughout the room. Tarzi beheld Patches in the center of it all. Suddenly, her eyes flung open. “Oh, my god!”
“Patches!” Mags sprang up from the floor. She ran for the chamber and tore the door open. Pulling off the oxygen mask, she took the calico in her arms.
Patches nuzzled against her and licked her cheek over and over.
“Patches, you little fucker!” She wiped away tears with one hand. “You made me cry.” She held Patches closer. They rubbed their noses together and purred.
“Welcome back to the land of the living, Patches! Yes!” Tarzi pumped his fist in the air. A tremor ran through the station. “Girls, we gotta get out of here! To the ship!”
Tarzi ran through the door to the outside with Mags and Patches right behind him. Patches kicked away from Mags, squirming out of her arms to run on the ground.
“Look, Tarzi! Her limp is gone!”
“What do you know? Even that little tip of her ear grew back. What the hell?” Something crashed. “Come on!”
Mags took off after him.
Patches ran, too, then stopped. She sniffed the corner of a wrecked building and squatted.
“Patches!” Mags called from the doorway of the ship. “Now is not the time for potty breaks!”
Just then, the building erupted in a hail of cinder blocks and metal. A stream of lava burst through the chaos. It caught Patches full in the face and swallowed her up. Thick sprays of lava flowed across the path they had just taken. The ground burst into flame.
Mags fell to her knees in the doorway. “Oh, Patches. No. Not after all this.” Tears welled up.
Tarzi placed his hand on her shoulder. “Mags,” he began.
But a bolt of calico lightning stopped him. Patches sprinted straight at them, shooting out of the flames in a white and coffee-colored blur. Not a hair on her head was burnt.
In seconds, she sped past them and into the belly of the Queen Anne. She faced them, cocking her head as if to say, “Are we leaving, or what?”
“Tarzi, how did she—didn’t you see that lava hit her?” Mags looked from Tarzi to Patches and back again. “What is going on?”
“I don’t know, but we aren’t sitting here talking about it while the moon falls apart! Come on!” He jumped into his seat.
Mags took up her spot at the console. She brought the Queen Anne up from the surface of the dying moon. New volcanoes obliterated the station. The whole side of the moon caught fire. When they got to a safe distance, they stopped to watch it burn.
“Tarzi,” she whispered. “It’s like—we killed a whole planet.”
“You’re right.” The blaze below them shone in his eyes. “It’s like the machine sucked the life right out of it. And somehow, that machine turned it into energy for Patches.”
The calico cat leapt onto his lap. She kneaded his leg. She turned around a few times trying to get perfectly comfortable then plopped down.
“I guess that’s why the equations made no sense,” he continued. “All the missing power in them, it was going to come from the planet itself. No wonder it could only be used one time. And you know what, Patches?” He scratched the side of her face. “I’d rather have you than some ugly old moon any day.”
Patches squinted and purred. This time, she had not crawled away from the fire in fear. She had run right through it. This time, she had gone swimming not in a river but in some other strange, blue liquid. It, too, had carried her far away from harm. Patches knew, somehow, that she never again needed to fear anything.
She did, however, have a serious craving for beef jerky.
6
The Weight of the Universe
It gave me an inner joy, an open-mindedness, a gratefulness, open eyes, and an internal sensitivity for the miracles of creation.
—Albert Hofmann; 100th Birthday Symposium Speech, 2006.
PART ONE: RAINBOWS AND ROLLER SKATES
August 2029.
“Here’s what I find interesting about Theodosius Dobzhansky.” Tarzi kicked his shoes off and lay in his bunk on his stomach, flipping through Mags’ paperback copy of Mankind Evolving. He preferred the intimacy of paper in his hands, though no books had been printed on paper in years—not legally, anyway.
“As far back as 1962, he wrote about two seemingly opposed views. On the one hand, he advocated management of the human gene pool to direct our own evolution. Eliminating genes that only led to death or painfully severe maladaptation, and so on. On the other hand, he—Auntie, are you even listening?”
Mags looked up from her tablet. She sprawled casually in her favorite cushioned chair. The mild glow from the tablet reflected on her tinted glasses and white bangs. “Of course I am, dear. Dobzhansky, gene pool, got it.” She chuckled to herself. “Okay, go on.”
“Okay. So, on the other hand, he warns against the danger of cloning or creating some refined stock of a ‘master’ breed of human, precisely because evolution requires a high level of variance in the gene pool. The obvious question is—”
Mags laughed out loud.
He tossed the book aside. “Fine. What is so funny?!”
“Sorry, Tarzi. It’s Patches’ fault.”
Patches looked up from her spot on the corner of Mags’ bunk. “Mew.” She went back to slowly typing with one claw on a tablet of her own.
“She’s texting me ideas for her sacred oath of the pumas or something. They’re awesome. Listen to this one.”
“Wait a minute. Are you telling me Patches can talk?”
“Ha! Patches has always talked. You just don’t understand cat! But check this out. Catch.” She tossed her tablet to him.
He scanned a few lines of messages from the sender marked PATCHS. “Pumas fite to the deth,” he read. “Pumas petrol our terf together.” He furrowed his eyebrows. “Petrol? Pumas petrol—what?”
“Hey!” Mags sprang out of her chair. She swiped her tablet away. “Don’t criticize her spelling!”
She went to Patches and scratched her behind the ears. “P-E-t-r-o-l is a kind of fossil fuel, darling. P-A-t-r-o-l is what you mean.”
Patches purred. She nuzzled Mag’s hand with her face.
“Will you come off it? Patches isn’t bloody texting you. She’s a cat!”
“Wanna bet? Here.” She handed him the tablet again. “Patches, send this unbeliever a message, will you?”
“Mew.”
“No, it’s not a quiz. Just say something!”
Patches moved her paw over the tablet’s screen. She clicked five times, then three more.
Tarzi stared as the words appeared on his screen.
PATCHS: meow
A second later came the next line.
PATCHS: jk
“Bloody hell!”
“See? Hahahahaha!” Mags reveled in the look of disbelief on her nephew’s face. “When have I ever lied to you?”
“Do I need to remind you,” he said, “about April Fool’s Day?”
She pulled her socks up one at a time. Her new set of black and white striped thigh-highs made her happy. “Look, that wasn’t lying. That was just—pranking!”
Tarzi typed something on the screen. He hit “Send.”
Patches heard her tablet chime. She purred at a silly selfie from Tarzi. Its caption read, “Pumas rock FTW.”
Patches happily pawed the “Like” button. Then she curled up to take a nap.
�
��So, Mags, can I ask you a personal question?”
“Oh god, this is gonna be good. What’s on your mind, Captain Inquisitive?”
“It’s just—you seem pretty human, you know?”
“Gee, thanks, dear. It’s part of my image.” She lit a stolen cigarette. “Tarzi, is this about my tail?”
“Busted.” He sighed.
“You are so easy to read sometimes.” She leaned back against the console and curled her tail around her right wrist. She pet it lightly, taking care not to singe the fur.
“Hey, I mean it’s cool and all, it’s not like—”
She leaned forward, eyeing him mischievously. “Are you saying you like my tail, young man?”
“Hahaha. Yeah, I guess. But I mean, how do you get something like that? Are you part cat, or—oh, bollocks. I don’t even know how that would work!” He fished in his jacket pocket.
Mags held out her pack to him. “Before your imagination runs wild, dear, I am going to tell you a little secret. No one knows what the fuck I am!” She shook her curls into place. “You see, Mama was human, and so was my dad. Neither of them had tails. And frankly, it was not always the funnest thing in the world being the only girl in town with a tail.”
She took a drag and stared at the stars. “See, the eggheads never figured out just what I am. They had their theories, but—I had them working on other things, and it just never got sorted.”
“You’re saying you hired scientists to figure out what you are?”
She laughed. “Not exactly. I hired them to create anti-gravity! The genetics was a bit of a sideline. Listen, do you have any idea who really invented the GravGens? Or do you just know the official version?”
He met her gaze over the rims of her tinted glasses. “Mags, if you invented the GravGens, what the hell are we doing ripping off warehouses and selling fags to the poor blighters in the Belt? You should be bloody rich and retired by now!”
Meteor Mags: Omnibus Edition Page 12
