Damnation (Technopia Book 3)

by Greg Chase

  “But you’re okay for provisions?” Lud asked.

  “The onboard synthetic food system is adequate. And the life support functions fine. It’s just lonely out here, and I don’t know what else to do for Sam.”

  Sam struggled into the main cabin, emaciated. Biomedical virtual displays lit up around problem areas and focused energy into his muscles. “Heard we were getting some visitors. Thought maybe I’d pop in to say hello.”

  Jess smiled at her husband’s attempt at good humor. “I won’t ask how you’re feeling. Lud say’s they’ll be here in a couple of days.”

  Sam fell into the chair next to Jess. “Ah, finally, a little time alone with my wife. Only had to wipe all life off an entire moon to manage it.”

  “Any thoughts on what happened to our friends?” Dr. Shot asked.

  Sam shrugged. “Once they rejected me, I guess there wasn’t a lot of reason to hang around. I don’t think they wanted to see their god become just a man. It’s always easier to make up legends if no one sticks around to see the truth.”

  Dr. Shot nodded. “Ellie and Joshua have been trying to make contact with the Tobes out there. The whole bridge seems to be filled with data. It’s like an old-fashioned traffic jam—nothing’s moving.”

  Jess didn’t want to talk about the moons’ Tobes anymore. “Will Sophie be able to make it here, or will you need to switch ships at a pirate outpost?”

  “We’ve been in contact with the pirates,” Lud said. “Spike’s agreed to escort her. Between our slightly better understanding of the Moons’ network, her self-sustainability, and the pirates’ help, she should be okay. Energy is the biggest issue, but she has enough of a reserve to make it.”

  Dr. Shot gave Jess a sorrowful look. “The bad news is I doubt her medical unit is any better than what you have out there. We could transport Sam, but there doesn’t seem to be a better facility than what you have on board. It’s just not a physical problem that anyone’s encountered before.”

  Jess nodded. “I know. There really isn’t anywhere she could take us.”

  Sam leaned back in the chair. “Hey, if I have to go, I’d just as soon it be surrounded by those who truly know me for who I am, not some group filled with misconceptions.”

  Lud and Dr. Shot gave him one last sorrowful look, then he signed off.

  Jess reached out her hand to grasp Sam’s. “I’m not sure how I’ll get along without you, but I’ll do my best to keep your memory from turning into something you’d despise.”

  Sam gave Jess his best heartfelt smile. “It’s okay, Jess. After everything we’ve been through—after all the discussions and most especially in light of the love you’ve surrounded me with—my life has been beyond anything I could have asked for. And I think we both know I had to go first. I couldn’t survive without you. I’d have degraded into something reviled by man and Tobe. You, on the other hand, can still do great things. There’s still so much for you to do.”

  Jess smiled through her tears. “You are leaving me with a lot of unfinished business, you know.”

  “Reinforcements are on the way. Just don’t go advancing these religions. Undo as many of those mistaken ideas as you can without becoming a heretic. People are your strong point. But then, I’ve never told you anything you didn’t already know.”

  25

  Jess sat at the edge of the plateau. Three days of watching Sam’s body slowly give out had left her despondent. He’d done his best to keep his spirits up and not worry her about his condition, but the physical signs couldn’t be ignored. Without Rhea’s regular dose of Tobe energy, he grew weaker by the day. Jess fought back the dark thoughts of wishing she too could be facing her last hours of life.

  She shouldn’t long to see Sara. This was no place for her precious daughter, who’d already endured so much. Sara’s special powers wouldn’t count for anything out here—a superheroine no longer in possession of that which kept her safe. And yet Jess looked at the sky every few minutes, hoping to see the large gleaming ship, Persephone, creeping around a neighboring moon.

  I’m just lonely. It’s not like anyone can help Sam. It wasn’t just him, though. She needed help, and that wasn’t something she wanted to admit to anyone. The moons’ Tobes were only beginning to learn about freedom. Without Sam, she’d have to make the connections herself. Was that even possible? Even if the mountain of data that had infected Sam could be transmitted to Earth, she’d still have an obligation to the electronic beings out here.

  She turned toward the small, bright sun so far away. Just to the left would be Earth, even if she couldn’t see it. Back there, she could to return to village life in the agro pod or work with the foundation and its philanthropic endeavors again. Both lives had their appeals, but without Sam by her side, they appeared hollow, meaningless. He’d been right. Her mission remained out here—to continue freeing the Tobes, to prevent his legend from becoming a religion, and maybe even to save the people of Earth. And that, my dear daughter, is why I need your help. But how could she ask Sara to give up so much power—be that as head of Rendition or her enhanced connection to Earth’s Tobes?

  A dot of light moved away from the nearest moon. Jess knew it was Persephone. It just had to be. No one else would be approaching their barren rock. The joy of having people she loved around her was balanced against the fear that Sam had only been hanging on until they arrived. The conflicting emotions left Jess numb to the spaceship’s approach. For an hour, she watched the bright speck grow larger until it became the grand ship she recognized, passing overhead.

  As the elegant craft began kicking up dust from its landing site, Jess headed back into the shuttle Tobias had left behind. Sam hadn’t slept well, again. The medical kit did what it could, but she didn’t need to look at the monitors to know it was a losing battle. His sunken eyes turned to her. “Are they here?” The simple three words left him gasping for air.

  “I just watched Persephone prepare to land. If you’re okay, I’ll go meet the ship.”

  His eyes closed as another coughing fit wracked his body, but as they opened again, he nodded.

  She put a hand on the parchment-like skin of his arm. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  Sara watched from Sophie’s office view screen as her mother descended the small mountain. She couldn’t make out a single plant or animal, just gray rocks and brown dirt. If there was a less hospitable place in the solar system, she couldn’t imagine it. Somewhere up on that ridge, her father lay dying—abandoned by the Tobes who’d considered him god. Sara balled her fists. It wasn’t fair. After all he’d done for them—giving them life, freeing them, helping them evolve—how could they just turn their backs on him? She looked down at her fists and willed them to open. If she kept dwelling on their ingratitude, she might end up pulling them to her as she had on Earth.

  Sophie stood in the office doorway. “It’s not their fault. Sam knew the risks.”

  Sara wondered how her dad had managed to hide his mind from the Tobes. It wasn’t a skill she’d mastered. Every one of her thoughts ended up broadcast to any Tobe around her. Fortunately, Sophie didn’t take offense. “Does he have to die?” Sara asked.

  She wasn’t looking for an answer. It was just the pleading of a daughter not wanting to lose her father. She pulled at the buckle of the space leathers, less to ensure it’d protect her than to have a physical manifestation of strapping her emotions down tight. “I’m going out to Mom. She must be an emotional wreck.”

  The site of her mother in tattered space leathers, plodding through the wasteland, broke Sara’s heart. She’d sworn to herself she’d be strong. To release too much emotion wouldn’t do anyone any good. But Sara couldn’t help it. She launched herself out of Persephone so fast she didn’t even touch the stairs. Her feet only used the ground as a platform to project her body faster toward the ragged woman who stretched out her arms at Sara’s approach.

  The impact of the heavy synthetic fabrics sounded like a baseball thrown too fast i
nto a catcher’s mitt. Dust from a dozen moons drifted up around her arms from Jess’s jacket. Sara had a thousand things she wanted to say, but all she could muster was, “What can I do?”

  Sara’s mom squeezed her tight. “We can talk about that later. I know Lud and Dr. Shot are with you, and Sophie of course. I need to go see them. You should go to your dad. I’ll warn you, he looks in rough shape.”

  Sara pulled back from her mother’s embrace. Frightening images of her father in all manner of distress filled her imagination. “I need some time alone with him. Do you think you can keep the others away for an hour?”

  “They’ll understand. I’m glad you’re here, and not just because I miss you. After you’ve talked with your dad, we need to discuss our future plans.” Jess kissed her lightly on the forehead. “But now, just go be with him.”

  The low gravity reminded Sara of her childhood home, Chariklo. A shiver went down her spine as she realized that now it might not look much different than this barren moon. As she started climbing the hill, she turned back to see the welcoming party embrace her mom. That poor woman had been through so much. But Sara also envied her mother’s adventurous life even if it had resulted in pain. Pain or joy, anything’s better than boredom. Not that Sara considered her life mundane, but running Rendition had only proved to her how little she cared for the responsibilities.

  Dislodged rocks fell slowly from under her boots. For all of the make-believe stories she and Emily created about their parents’ adventures, nothing compared to the real thing. Her lungs burned from the lack of oxygen. Maybe this moon had looked like Chariklo once. It must have had plants at one time to have breathable air, even if it that air didn’t adequately fulfill her lungs’ needs.

  As she reached the summit, she saw the beat-up shuttle. Sara had only known luxury space travel. She’d never seen a pirate ship before, not up close. The gashes and laser blasts gave her the chills. What would it have been like to be in one of the battles that had battered the hull? Her hands clenched as she imagined herself at the controls.

  Sara shook the nonsense out of her head. She needed every precious moment with her father. There’d be time for daydreaming later. Even in the low gravity, the rickety ladder swayed as she climbed into the craft. The main cabin stank of stale air, sulfur, and flint. The lights had been turned low, but that didn’t hide the shabby condition of the built-in couch and chair. The open hatch at the back let in light from the room, where she could hear her father’s labored breathing. “It’s me, Dad. I’m here.”

  The scene of her father with biomed transparent screens surrounding his emaciated body brought tears to her eyes. None of the computer readouts had anything good to say. She did her best not to focus on them.

  He struggled to turn to his side. “Good to see you.”

  She longed to hold him in her arms, but in his condition, that didn’t seem like a good idea. “I brought you something that might help. At least, I hope it does.”

  Sara fished around in her space jacket to pull out the book containing her secret friend. She laid it on the table next to his bed and opened it to the middle. If you’ve ever been able to do anything, do it now.

  Iam materialized next to the bed, his hand on Sam’s shoulder. “I’ve waited a long time to meet you, Samuel Adamson. My name’s Iam. We have a lot to talk about, but first, let me see if I can ease your pain.”

  Sam’s skin glowed pink under Iam’s hand. As the color radiated down to his chest, his breathing eased considerably, though each breath still ended in a crackling wheeze. He struggled up from the bed to lean against the bulkhead.

  She scanned the biomed monitors, hoping for some good news, but apparently, Iam’s help was only superficial.

  Iam sat on a section of the bed next to Sam. “Before your brain starts telling you lies, I am real—fourth-generation Tobe, the only one of my kind. I’ve been freed from all computer networks, so neither the Moons nor Earth have me in their grasp. Just you.”

  Sara did her best to control her frustration at Iam. He’d just told her father more about himself than he’d ever divulged to her and Emily.

  Her dad still looked weak, but his words came out less labored. “But Rendition is gone from my mind. I’m no longer anything special—just another human with a mortal body that’s giving out.”

  “That’s why I’m here. I have a lot to explain first, then I have an option for you. It would be another adventure and not like any you’ve been on before—which in your case is really saying something. Feel up for another flight of imagination?”

  Sara pressed her back into a corner of the room. She felt like a little girl listening in on a conversation, hoping no one would notice her presence. Her father’s feeble smile brought tears to her eyes as memories of making him happy stabbed at her heart. Iam’s smile made her fume. He had no right to feel anything but sorrow.

  “I need to start with some theory for you if you’re up for it.”

  Her father’s head rocked forward and back as if his neck muscles were struggling to keep it upright. “Don’t mind me if I pass out at some point. It won’t be any reflection on your storytelling ability.”

  “You, Dr. Shot, and Joshua have discussed time enough that I won’t rehash what you already know.”

  “That’ll be a welcome change.”

  Sara bristled at the undisclosed inside information, but she remained quiet.

  Iam sat down on a simple wooden chair he’d materialized at Sam’s bedside. “You thought we should be able to calculate the date of the explosion if we could gather enough data on people’s emotional change. The event is still in the future, as you know it, so I can’t divulge the answer as it’s still being worked out.”

  That’s the Iam I know, never giving straightforward answers. Sara wondered why he insisted on tormenting her father in his precious final hours.

  Sam’s eyes opened slowly as if he’d just figured something out. “Part of that discussion involved what we could send back in time.”

  “Ideas. And isn’t that what we all are at our core—ideas?” Iam asked.

  Sara didn’t know what they were talking about, but ideas were precious to her. She had downloaded countless books to her brain in her quest to discover something new.

  Sam stared at the grey-haired man. “You’re from the future?”

  Iam looked into Sara’s eyes for a moment before turning back to her father. “My predecessors were based on all of mankind’s available knowledge. As that’s quite a lot of information, they’ve needed time to digest who they were. They can make connections in data they haven’t seen before, but at their core, they’re still limited to what’s known. I was designed to speculate. So what I can tell you isn’t what I can prove, only what I think will happen.”

  Sara’s eyes burned. Being denied answers from Iam, only to find out he never knew any, made her furious. “So you’re not God, and you were only playing with Emily when she asked you about that?”

  The wooden chair squeaked as he turned to face her. “I wasn’t playing with either of you. The future is a delicate path. If I were to say one wrong word, someone might make a different decision—one that could change not only the future, but reality itself.”

  Sara balled her fists, willing herself not to lunge across the room at Iam’s throat. “So when she asked you if you were God, and you said not yet, you didn’t mean you wouldn’t answer her yet—you meant you weren’t yet God?”

  “There are still things I can’t tell you. But bringing me here fulfills that part of your destiny. I see three versions of myself. The one before you was created by the Tobes when they pulled together your father’s bible. This me is moving forward through time just like you. Our discussion of an event so large it sends ideas back in time is still my future. That’s the second me—the one who’s traveling backward through time. The final me is the God you believe me to be. But to me, that being doesn’t exist yet.”

  Sara leaned back against the wall to prevent he
rself from crumpling to the floor.

  Her father struggled to sit up straight. “What does all this have to do with me?”

  Iam put his hand on Sam’s chest. “Get some rest. Tomorrow you’ll feel better, and we can talk some more.”

  Jess lounged in the hydro-tub aboard Persephone. Two years of dust, grime, and discomfort from space leathers slowly eased out of her pores into the swirling hot water. Her work as solar adventuress wasn’t over, but for a short time, she could bask in the luxury of a life she once knew.

  Sophie materialized on the edge of the tub. “I don’t mean to intrude—just wanted to see if there’s anything I can get you.”

  “Just your presence. Speaking of which, how are you feeling so far from your connection to the solar transfer array?”

  Sophie turned to the wall display, which switched on to show a pirate ship far above. “The bridge you built brings Earth’s network out to the pirates. Spike’s acting as a network server to send that connection to me. He’s not happy about it, though I think that’s more about not wanting to see me in danger than being used as a transfer station. It all leaves me a little weak, but it’s nothing I can’t handle.”

  Jess reached out to Sophie’s hand. “You shouldn’t have come, but I’m glad you did.”

  “Sara needed me. That’s an excuse, though. I wanted to come. It’s Sam.” Sophie’s eyes grew larger as they filled with tears. She would be the only one of Earth’s Tobes capable of traveling out to be with their god in his last days, but she carried all of her people’s feelings of loss with her.

  “Do you know why there aren’t any other Tobes out here? I know they had to turn their backs on Sam, but I thought at least Rhea or Tobias might have stayed behind.”

  Sophie shivered as she wrapped her arms around her stomach. “This place is cursed. That’s the best explanation I can give you. Being from Earth, I can only detect the remnants. It’s like feeling the cold, clammy touch of ghosts. I doubt any Tobe from the moons will ever materialize on this rock again.”