Revenant

by Raymond Bayly

  He didn’t know if that was because the gremlins chose not to show themselves,

  or if the doctors just weren’t smart enough to notice.

  So, he had played along and agreed that they were not, in fact, real and that he had stopped seeing them.

  He knew they were still there, waiting for him.

  He narrowed his eyes and stared at the grates on the vent.

  Even as he stared now, Davi thought he could see the mischievous eyes of one of those damnable creatures now.

  Forcing his gaze from the vent, he put his slippers on and tied the string of his sweatpants as he strode over to the sink in the corner of the bland room. Davi began to vigorously brush his teeth as more prime numbers flashed across the screen in his mind.

  After reaching 6 more figures, he stopped and squinted into the mirror.

  In its reflection, Davi could see the electric light of the TV flickering to life behind him.

  “What the hell?” he whispered as he stared at the coalesce colors that played against the white cinderblock wall.

  With a mouth still filled with toothpaste, Davi walked over to the TV and glanced up nervously at the AC vent.

  When he saw that it was void of any mischievous creatures, his eyes refocused on the TV.

  Toothpaste dribbled down his chin as he stared at the screen in amazement.

  Flashing on the screen before him were schematics for what looked like a spaceship,

  including measurements, and, even more amazingly, equations he did not recognize.

  To his surprise, when he focused on these equations, he was stumped.

  Without looking away, he felt for the edge of the bed behind him and sat down.

  His mouth moved as he silently read out the equations.

  He frantically tried to solve each before the next slide appeared, and like a hammer hitting a nail, drove a new problem into his mind.

  Each schematic was more detailed than the last, and each set of equations more foreign to him than those before it.

  Davi was dumbfounded.

  Never before, in his life, had Davi found himself unable to rattle off the solution to any and every math problem set in front of him.

  Yet, here he stood, lost in complete awe of his first real challenge.

  That was one of the reasons he had been recruited to MIT. He was an engineering prodigy and could run advanced calculations without breaking a sweat or even needing scratch paper.

  The schematics started to flash even faster on the screen before him. This newest set looked to be some kind of engine.

  He recognized some of the theories that the equations used and surmised the engine was gravity based.

  “This is not possible,” he whispered to himself.

  He pinched his forearm hard enough for tears to blur his vision.

  Relief flooded through him that this was not a delusion, and he quickly blinked the tears away. This was actually happening!

  He was witnessing science that was far beyond that of modern theories and technology.

  As the schematics flipped faster and faster,

  Davi shot up onto his feet and began to beat the top of the TV in frustration.

  “Stop! Come on, I can’t keep up!”

  he yelled at the small box.

  The television suddenly shut off.

  Shit, did I break it? Davi thought frantically,

  looking through the clear plastic to ensure all the leads were still connected and that any visible circuit board looked undamaged.

  In a near-hysterical panic, he hit the top of the TV two more times.

  “SHIT! SHIT! SHIT!”

  he yelled at the quiet box.

  He paced in front of the TV, frantically trying to figure out if he could fix it.

  He had no tools and no way to pull it out of the plastic case this ridiculous institution had locked it up in.

  His hands balled into fists so hard that his knuckles turned white and small amounts of blood dribbled from his palms onto the floor.

  He didn’t even notice as he desperately tried to figure out something…

  to bring the box back to life.

  Where had it come from?

  Who sent it?

  Who could pull something like this off?

  His mind raced in a frenzied search for answers, but none were forthcoming.

  In his frustration, he let out a “mewl,” like a scolded kitten.

  Then, in a small bout of anger, he kicked the dresser. It thumped violently against the concrete wall and flung its meager adornment across the floor.

  Davi was about to kick the dresser again when a calm female voice emanated from the TV.

  “Did you like the schematics, Davi?”

  The screen came back on to display a different kind of engine schematic; this one showed a depiction of the craft opening up a rift in space.

  Davi sat down on the bed again and stared at the screen with bulging eyes.

  That was a faster than light drive. He was sure of it. “Yes, they are amazing. Who are you, and what are these?” The reverence was palpable in his voice. “These are the systems of the ship I am currently on,” the voice said.

  “I know you are thinking that you are having another episode, but I assure you, you are not. This is really happening, and we are really talking.” Davi shook his head. This was impossible;

  these systems could not exist.

  Yet, the math was there.

  The problems were so advanced,

  so against the grain of physics as he understood it, Davi knew it had to be real.

  His mind was going over every calculation of these incredible theories that would tip the scientific community on its ear.

  His mind retraced everything he saw,

  committing it to memory in case it disappeared from the screen again.

  “I need to see these systems. Please! I have never seen anything like them. You must allow me the ability to study them. I beg you, I need to understand!”

  A tear escaped his eye.

  He did not want her to disappear.

  He had to know what this was.

  “Davi, I need a good engineer to help me. I need someone to help build things like these, amazing things. I need you, but it will require you to go away with me. Are you willing to do this?” the voice asked gently,

  Davi nodded his head vigorously.

  He didn’t care where he had to go to do it.

  He had to see these systems and had to look at their plans.

  He would not be able to rest until he understood those impossible calculations.

  “Yes. Yes, I will,” he breathed. The TV shut off.

  Davi looked around waiting to see if she would appear somewhere in the room,

  but the voice did not materialize into a person.

  The voice did not materialize into a person.

  Instead, a bright light filled the room,

  and a moment later,

  Davi was gone.

  CHAPTER

  NINE

  NINE

  Into the Mind’s Eye

  Shira felt like she was dreaming.

  She knew somehow, on an instinctual level, that she was not awake.

  Well, at least not in the traditional sense.

  She was standing!

  This shouldn’t be possible.

  Shira shifted her feet and could feel the cold metal beneath them.

  She scraped her right foot across the surface and felt the roughness play across the bottom of it. gasping involuntarily as she took a step.

  A strange voice chimed,

  “It must be agreeable to walk. From my observations, your people require that function to live a normal existence. Is this correct?”

  the disembodied voice asked.

  “Hello?” Shira asked,

  then rebuffed herself.

  This is a dream silly. Who do you think you’re talking to? She thought.

  “Is it true?” the gently female v
oice persisted

  “Um yes,” Shira responded hesitantly.

  “But, I am dreaming, right?” she asked the air,

  still looking around.

  “This is not a dream, although you are not really here either. This is a virtual reality interface I created to allow us to better communicate with each other. What you feel in your hands and feet are not real, only pure impulses I’ve sent to your brain to make it seem so. You are on board a spaceship. I have injected your body with nanites to prepare you for an augmentation process that will allow you to handle your time in space better.” Shira was amazed.

  She reached for the wall and felt the texture and coldness of it.

  “This is amazing,” she breathed.

  “Who are you?” Slowly, Shira moved around the room.

  “You may call me Morgan. I am an autonomous system, currently running the Nismel, the ship you are on. I have spent the last four decades studying your kind. I have to admit that your people are quite entertaining when they are not killing each other. It is important for you to understand what is going on before we move forward. One moment while I bring in another of your species.”

  Suddenly, an unassuming man was standing in the room.

  He glanced around.

  “Another cell,” he said glumly.

  “This is Davidovich Vasiliev,” introduced the voice. “Davidovich is an engineer and mathematician. He is what your people would call a genius.”

  Shira stepped forward and stuck her hand out toward the man.

  “Hi I’m Shira,” she said.

  Davidovich slowly extended his hand to grasp hers. “I am Davi. Do you have the schematics?” he asked hopefully.

  Shira smiled.

  “No, I don’t have any schematics,” she replied,

  a little confused by the question.

  Shira noted he was speaking English with a heavy Russian accent.

  She was speaking Hebrew, so how was it they could understand each other?

  This was unsettling, but the voice had said something about nanites.

  That must be what allowed them to communicate. Fascinating. Morgan spoke again.

  “There is one more, your captain, but for this conversation, I will leave him out. He can be disruptive and is currently undergoing augmentation. Unlike the both of you, I did not ask his permission to join this venture, as he was greatly needed and might have declined at first. He will require the two of you to help him grow into his role here. Each of you are crucial to this mission.” The disembodied voice stated.

  Shira shook her head.

  Augmentation, Ship,

  Hell, I am feeling a bit unsteady. She thought

  “The only question I need answering is: will I walk again?” The hope in her voice was quite evident. “Yes, Shira. You will have full functional use of your body, which will be enhanced with prosthetics, but not as you understand them. They will feel and move as if they were part of your natural body.” Morgan paused for a moment.

  “The reason you were both chosen was no accident. This ship needs a pilot, and you, Shira, are well trained and suited for that role. Davidovich, you are a brilliant engineer. You are needed to ensure the ship continues to function and to outfit the crew with necessary armaments. Can you both handle these responsibilities?” Morgan finished.

  Shira lowered her head.

  She could pilot just about anything, so that’s not what bothered her.

  The mental image she had of prosthetics were crude, but she had never heard of the kind Morgan mentioned with full nerve feeling and function.

  She thought back to her bed, and it only took a heartbeat to steel her resolve.

  “I’m in, walk me through it.”

  she looked at Davidovich expectantly

  “What about you, Davidovich?”

  “It’s Davi. No one calls me Davidovich. Okay, sounds neat, so I’m in. Can I have the schematics now?”

  No answer came, so he went back to looking at the wall and mumbling in Russian about gremlins, schematics, and math.

  Shira couldn’t make much out of his mutterings. Suddenly, the room was gone, and in its place, Shira and Davi saw infinite space.

  Shira had a moment of vertigo as she frantically looked for something to grab onto.

  “Please do not panic”, Morgan soothed.

  “You are not really in space, just the appearance of it.”

  Suddenly, the view moved, and they were watching planets fly by until Saturn appeared before them.

  Zooming in on the rings, a ship came into focus.

  The gun-metal grey vessel was long and cylindrical with two wings jutting out from its mid-section.

  The ventral side of the wings housed loaded missile tubes and cannon barrels.

  Shira’s eyes followed along the lines of the ship to a dorsal fin outfitted with engine ports to either side of it.

  “This is where we are right now. I shall explain how we got here.” Morgan said and began to fill in the new crew members in on the ship,

  the Empire,

  and the obvious fact that they were not alone in the Universe.

  When they were done, Shira spoke up.

  “So, let me get this straight…this ship was built by a government that is hell-bent on the subjugation of yours and other Galaxies, and if they get their hands on you, it will mean they will gain an advantage that will quite probably allow them to conquer them all entirely. And you want us,”

  she exclaimed, gesturing to Davi and herself,

  “to play keep-away with these people?

  If we don’t it could mean the fall of Earth and who knows how many other worlds,”

  Shira said,

  then she thought about what she had learned,

  and she didn’t know why she wasn’t more upset. She was in a spaceship…

  in space.

  The more she thought about it,

  the more her mind went to what Morgan had said about the Empire and what it had done…

  what they could do.

  Shira always had a strong sense of duty,

  a need to protect people,

  and this was falling into that category.

  They needed to act. They could not let the Empire gain this ship or any knowledge of Earth.

  She was all in!

  Fuck the whole alien thing,

  she was a protector, and this had protect written all over it!

  “What’s our next step?” Shira asked taking a step forward.

  There was a pregnant pause, and then Morgan asked,

  “Davi, do you also consent?”

  Davi nodded,

  “I’m in. This is important, and even I am not insane enough to leave this to someone else. Besides, there are schematics.” his face broke into a broad smile.

  “Then with both of your consent,

  I will begin the augmentation process.”

  With that, Shira’s world went dark.

  CHAPTER

  TEN

  TEN

  Bad Hair Day

  Blake awoke on the cold, dark, metal table, still feeling groggy.

  He looked around the small room and noticed little machines scurrying about.

  One of them was cleaning up large amounts of what looked like blood.

  Oh, this isn’t good, he thought and began to check himself over.

  Aside from a few bandages, everything seemed to be in place…

  until he looked to his left arm and saw metal.

  “Oh, what the fuck?” he exclaimed as he raised the arm to inspect it.

  Where previously there was pale flesh,

  Blake now saw a gleaming silver appendage of the same shape and dimensions of his previous arm. The odd thing was he could feel the table as he touched it, and the fingers responded as if they had naturally been his own.

  There were no sounds, nothing like machine parts moving when he shifted it;

  the motion felt fluid and natural.

  Where his
skin met the metal, it was seamless, almost like his skin had simply transformed.

  Loud banging, scraping, and clanging sounds interrupted the inspection of his new appendage. As he looked about, Blake realized the machines were only moving about performing their tasks,

  but his ability to hear ambient noise had been heightened drastically.

  A crash startled him.

  Shifting to see what it was, his sight suddenly trained in like a high-powered scope.

  He could see every circuit link and bolt that made up the machines that had just banged into a wall. When he relaxed his eyes, he could see normally. He tried doing the same with his ears,

  and to his relief, that normalized as well.

  So evidently, if he concentrated, he could focus on sights and sounds to isolate them.

  He tried it a couple of times and realized as long as he kept mildly vigilant, he could control it.

  Blake wondered what else had changed as he gripped the table with his right hand,

  intending to swing himself off.

  It crunched beneath him.

  Holy shit! What the hell did that thing do to me?

  He thought, looking down at the mangled metal. “Hey, Barbie, where the hell are you? You have some serious questions to answer,” Blake yelled, getting up from the table.

  “Oh, and WHERE THE FUCK IS MY ARM?” Blake shouted as he slammed his metal fist down onto the table.

  He stared, slack-jawed, as it crumpled and then collapsed alongside him.

  Blake stormed towards the door.

  The small machines scurried to get out of his way as the door slid open with a hiss,

  and he entered the hallway.

  I am going to pull out what’s left of that over-powered calculator and throw it out an airlock when I find it,

  he thought, stomping down the corridor and yelling for the voice.

  A set of doors opened and allowed him entry.

  As he checked inside them, he also noticed that every section had a hatch instead of a door.

  Must be a submarine or something.

  What kind of fucked up place is this?

  The voice had never said.

  He also didn’t recall the voice saying anything about replacing body parts.

  He would have most definitely remembered that. Oh, and by the way, which hand do I use to masturbate, because yeah, that’s going to suck from now on,

  he thought.