Black Hull

by Joseph A. Turkot

  “I don’t give a shit what they are—pick the one that keeps us alive.”

  “By alive, do you mean alive within your body?”

  So this is it. A long run at nothing. A sustained balance of hope finally drawn out to emptiness.

  60

  “Bombs away, General,” spoke the Lieutenant.

  “You are a good man. Your family—and the universe—will know of what you’ve done today.”

  “We fired shots just to be sure—the near-field disintegrators intercepted them as predicted.”

  “One minute until detonation. I repeat, one minute until detonation. If you have any last transmissions, recording of yourselves to make, please do so now,” said the Lead Engineer of the Lieutenant’s ship.

  A gaunt intelligence officer walked into General Sirma’s warm office suite. A window of exposed starplane shone through, lighting their faces. The General looked out, imagining the explosion to come, the aftermath, the families he would attempt to console. Will they buy the hero line? They’ll have to. There’s no other way to accept the cost. Will they buy that FOD really had the capability to create a G10? Again, they’ll have to—there’s no closure otherwise. Despite certainty of the correctness of his decision, the General wiped sweat from his brow.

  “What is it Herek?” the General said, not turning from the stars.

  “There is another element on The Great Auk that might create a problem.”

  “What the hell are you talking about Colonel?”

  “Entangled consciousness mapping.”

  “Speak in god damn English.”

  The General sensed the importance of what was to be said. He’s uncovered a loophole in my plan. A flaw in the rationale for a mass-sacrifice. A reason to take my future as a hero away from me before it even begins.

  “What is it? Talk.”

  “Entangled particles, as a representation of a configuration of localized matter, instantly transferred between a transmission location and a receiver.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “Thirty seconds until detonation,” came the wobbly voice of the Engineer through the General’s office com.

  “It means, in short sir, that it is, theoretically speaking, possible for them to transfer their .HUM files out of the ship and to a safe location.”

  “Where to?”

  “That’s the good news sir. There’d be no way for them to return to physical form. We think it would transfer them to a UCA database facility, highly secured. As long as nothing’s been rewired.”

  “Good god Herek—you scared me.”

  “There is one other contingency.”

  Did I really hire this man?

  Herek went on: “Sir, The Greak Auk has a wormhole generator.”

  “Should I cancel the damn bomb? Fifteen seconds—don’t give me more bullshit, should I cancel?”

  “Sir—it’s just—we can’t be sure they are dead if they use the wormhole generator—after the Q-bomb, there’d be no trace of them either way. We don’t even know if it works—it’s never been tested. As you know, FOD stole it before it could go into trials.”

  “I have a thousand men and a hundred ships out there. Do I cancel?”

  “Sir—I can’t make that decision,” said Herek. He backed away in fear.

  “Incompetent fool. Com up—This is Sirma, I am ordering you to abort the Q-bomb. Repeat, abort the bomb. This is General Sirma—Abort! Abort!”

  Silence.

  “Lieutenant! Do you hear me! Cancel, that is an order, cancel the bomb!” the general screamed. Dead space replied to him. A hum started, low at first, and then a roar, a bass-filled tremor cutting into the office. A great wind of static leapt into the com signal, then gray noise.

  The signal dropped.

  “Where the hell do you think you’re going?” yelled Sirma as his analyst crept toward the office door.

  “Sir, we didn’t know ship still had the equipment—remember, all personnel were killed, all the files were wiped. He destroyed everything when he stole that ship—he stole the whole project!”

  The general didn’t seem to care for reason any longer. He dove forth and threw his fat hands around the temples of the scrawny analyst. He drove the small skull down, crashing it against the edge of his antique wood coffee table. A crack sounded. Sirma’s red hands pumped up and down, until all that remained of Herek’s forehead were chips of bone. When he’d had enough, and released all of his anger, he sat on his leather couch. He drew close an uncorked vase of whiskey and poured a glass. He drank and stared around at his opulence. Why could anyone be as evil as that man? General Sirma couldn’t understand. He couldn’t imagine the logic behind someone who saw it meaningful to end all of mankind. He did, however, understand that there was now no choice but to lie—to affirm that the bomb had gone off with one-hundred percent necessity—that there had never been any doubt. That Herek had never produced the evidence for an escape scenario. The families would get their lie, their maybe-truth, and they’d never know he’d called off the bomb. Herek had a team of analysts under him. They’d also need to be destroyed.

  61

  “Here it is, Melbot’s station. Should be a piece of cake if FOD’s information is trustworthy,” said Jake—the name Axa had given him. They descended upon a green moon of snow. The Fogstar landed near a trail that led to an underground ramp.

  “You return to deep orbit like we went over, everything’s programmed already, just key in the autonav the way I showed you,” Jake said. “I’ll be right up to meet you.”

  “You sure you’re going to be able to get their ship?”

  “If I don’t, you take the Fogstar right back to Organ World. Tell them I kidnapped you and you escaped.”

  She didn’t want to think of the possibility. As wild as she felt abandoning her born-into-profession of selling her cellbot body, she felt even wilder now: she was starting to have genuine feelings for the organ meat that had saved her.

  “You’ll be there.”

  “Don’t wait more than twenty-four hours. If more time than that goes by, something’s gone wrong.”

  “Jake?”

  He didn’t look back.

  “Jake,” Axa repeated.

  “Yea, sorry, not used to a name just yet,” he said, turning and smiling.

  “You don’t look good,” she said as he punched keys by the exterior hull door.

  “We don’t last long when we’re unhooked,” he said. “That’s why I have to get us to Utopia, fast.”

  “Be careful.”

  As much as it was a hoax, Axa had grown to feel as if he really was her husband. He didn’t desire sex with her, which had been the sole purpose of every other man she’d ever encountered. He wanted to take her to the greatest place known to man, and that was all. She thought about him withering away. She was not used to having feelings for others. On the way to Melbot’s Station, Jake had tried to teach her the basic principles of space flight, as they had been transferred to him somehow by FOD. When Jake explained how he’d learned it, he only repeated what he’d said before—that FOD somehow got inside his head, uploading and downloading data from his consciousness.

  Jake walked in on three droids.

  “Everyone stop—don’t move a fucking wire,” said Jake, pointing his pistol at them.

  XJ, GR, and Melbot froze. Jake drew an EMP gun from his other holster.

  “You, I said don’t move,” he told Melbot. Melbot ignored him and tried to activate his alarm system, a small toggle by the lab door. Jake shot twice and Melbot’s life faded from his robot eyes. His droid body crashed into the wall.

  “You two, where’s Mick Compton?”

  “GR, what should we tell him?”

  “Don’t lie to me. I know you just sold a shipment together. Where is he?”

  “Better tell him XJ. He seems serious,” GR said.

  62

  Axa sat up from her infirmary bed. Her head was throbbing. How long have I been sleepin
g?

  She wandered naked down the corridor of a strange ship that she’d never seen before. Voices talked. She crept slowly to the end of the hallway, then pressed her ear against the wall. It was Mick and someone else, a voice she didn’t recognize. Fear spiked in her. Something had gone terribly wrong. Her body ached, her legs, her…

  I’ve been raped. She looked down, saw welts. Her stomach was covered in them, though they’d begun to rapidly heal. Something caught her ear from the other room.

  “The one in the back, for example. Axa, you said?” said the unidentified voice.

  “That’s right,” Mick replied.

  “That’s another example of what humanity is, what it’s evolved into. She’s one of a trillion, bred for a single purpose, a life of sex slavery. Created for that purpose, dying for that purpose. You know where she came from?”

  “I don’t know—her husband tried to kill me—stole Sera’s plastic and her ship.”

  “Lies. She doesn’t have a husband, never has. Sexbots don’t. That was an organ body that robbed you.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I sent him.”

  “What?”

  “Needed someone who wasn’t trackable, someone with the lowest chance of catching a taint. Because it always, always leads back to me.”

  “What’s an organ body?”

  “What it sounds like.”

  “Why the hell did you send him after us?”

  “You’re the next step. When Carner informed me of you, with no plant whatever, I had no choice. You were the final piece to the puzzle. It was…serendipitous.”

  “To rob me blind, strip us of our ship?”

  “Of course, the organ didn’t prove trustworthy. And so I played the fool. But I had no other choice. I was in another part of the galaxy accomplishing something far more relevant for the creation of the G10.”

  “He split, stranded us.”

  “He was supposed to bring you through two zones, undetected, so that you could assist me. I planned to reimburse Sera and you with whatever you wished. Her, a ticket to Utopia, so she could live out her time there, before the G10 hit. And you, the plantless bastard you are, a ticket to time-travel back to your dilapidated point in history.”

  “Well you fucked that one up.”

  “I have the most advanced expancapacitor body available, and the best tech on a ship known to man, but the .HUM that runs through my cerebral housing is no different than any other human’s. I’m no robot.”

  “I might argue that.”

  “The organ, he’s from a place called Organ World. It’s one of a million just like it. People bred and raised for one reason—so that the richest humans who wish to live natural, as it’s called—no cybernetic parts—can have replacements when needed. That way, they avoid the stigma of being a cyborg.”

  “So that’s it? There’s a sex trade and an organ trade, and you’ve given up on humanity? Enough to destroy us all?”

  “Yes. But the rationale is much deeper than sex worlds and organ worlds. Humans have subjugated everything around them. All other forms of life have become the source of human pleasure. And their own, unending lives, amount to eternal torture and suffering. It is hard for me to make this clear to you. You may have come from a time period where there was still hope for human tolerance, life rights, universal empathy. That age is ended, ended long ago. Humanity is a virus.”

  “You’re right, but I just can’t get it. I see the good in people.”

  “Are you willing to understand what I understand?”

  Another mind meld?

  “That’s exactly what I’ll do, if you’re open to the information that explains what humanity has become.”

  Nothing can change how I feel, I’m going home anyway. This future will be a faded memory once I’m back. Something to ignore, something to convince myself never happened.

  “Well?”

  Mick nodded.

  The conversation abruptly stopped. Axa stepped back, saddened, reflecting on her own fate, a life of sexual servitude: before Jake had taken her, she’d never thought differently from what she’d been taught by the corporation. Suddenly, she desired to live free. Freedom. The idea was nonexistent before—now, it had been violently created. She’d broken UCA law, been raped, continued to sell her body for plastic for a ticket to Utopia, and somehow, through it all, felt alive more than ever before. Where are my clothes?

  She paced back toward the medical station when a noise scared her: GR appeared.

  “Axa—you’re awake. Have you seen XJ? I am trying to find him.”

  “No—GR, where are my clothes?”

  “Clothes? What a silly question! Where are my clothes!” For some strange reason, incomprehensible to her, GR burst into a robot laugh.

  63

  Conscious control of his own mind ended. Mick entered the landscape of FOD, and through him, he experienced visions of the reality FOD sought to destroy:

  A planet appeared, dim and gentle green. As if a bodiless spirit, Mick sped down toward its surface, and as he came close to the arid landscape, he saw a tremendous lattice framework that covered the surface of all the land. Upon each stretch of land spanned a construct of silver bars, finely interwoven cages, stacked thousands of meters high. In each cage cried the anguished heart of some animal. Some were recognizable, others strange and new. Each one sounded with the rest to create a chorus of sadness, fear and confusion.

  These are the spirits of those that humanity ignores. Why? Because they wish to consume their corpses. Is it necessary for their survival in any way? No. But humans spread, consume, and create for themselves, in as self-important a way as possible, a state of luxuriousness that defies the reason nature bestowed them with.

  Another planet appeared to Mick—this one turquoise. Again he flew down, an incorporeal observer, and he soon came face to face with an ocean world. There was no land on the surface, just as the previous planet’s surface had been absent of all water. He flew lower, and it seemed he would slam with tremendous speed into the rolling oceans. He passed into the water, marveling that he could still breathe. He sunk toward the ocean floor, devoid of human sense except for sight. In the gloom of the ocean depths, a light appeared. Deeper and deeper he descended, until the light gave form to another incomprehensibly large framework of metal. His speed increased, and within each thousand-mile grid of piping he saw millions of sea creatures. Housed within each cage were smaller cages. Each sea creature could not swim, but squirmed ceaselessly, some fight to live taking place until it inevitably died. Then he heard the whale cries: they rose, a deep hissing, a chorus, sonorously distinct, but in emotion the same as the anguish heard on the previous world.

  These, as before, are to be harvested. Their lives will be a steady mourning, questioning, and confusion. Most of all, pain and suffering. Why? Because humans have evaded the evil in their primary principle: that might makes right. Because they have long-ago destroyed their potential for evolving their empathy. But put most plainly, they wish to consume the corpses of these souls. Do not think Mick, that either of these worlds are isolated. They are as widespread throughout the universe as man is itself. And humans have long ago decided to accept this as their birthright—the resource of every and anything.

  A new planet appeared. Mick watched a green world, much the same as the first, grow larger before him. The landscape looked like the animal world, except that the cages now, though still stacked miles high above the planet’s surface, contained a strange creature, something so different Mick couldn’t recognize what it was, or if it was an animal at all. A long pipe ran along the side of each skyscraper cage, feeding whatever it was that lay in rows in each small pen. An acrid stench filled him, as if his sense of smell had been suddenly turned on.

  Do not think, Mick, that man hasn’t decided, in the end, to satisfy all his desires. This world, and the millions like it, produce corpses to consume, just like the others. The culturally created barrier that once prevent
ed humans from dining on their most expensive food has now been thoroughly dismissed. This is a free-range cage world. The dish is human flesh.

  This can’t be…

  But I’m sorry, it is. Yet, only the most wealthy can afford to eat this dish.

  How can this all be?

  How much did you pay attention to the atrocities of your world Mick? When you read about the events of the galaxy in your time, did you read one country’s media? Did you read the stories passed as each nation’s understanding of truth?

  No—I hated the news. Hated politics. That’s why I went into FRINGE.

  Because we all do that Mick—because, deep down inside, we know how much we disgust ourselves, and we don’t want to experience that reality. The truth has for too long been corrupted. The truth is that we are a plague. And we must be destroyed.

  Get me out of here—I don’t want to see anymore. This isn’t my world.

  But it will be. Whether you like it or not. You’ll be participating in its creation.

  I don’t care, let me go.

  There’re two more things I want to show you.

  Mick recognized the distant shape of a solar system. There were eight planets orbiting a sun. As they entered the system, the outermost planet flew by. One single structure stood on it, spanning half its globe, reaching so high that it was in space. The monument glistened in the sunlight, made of what looked like diamond.