by Lee Bond
“Is that even a thing?” Garth demanded. “That last part. It sounds made up.”
The duty officer took a deep breath. “It is a ‘thing’, and it is very serious. Can’t have the wrong sort of people on this planet.” He pointed a finger at the bus-napper. “Once we find out who you are, we’re going to charge you and prosecute you for all those crimes and anything else we can discover.”
“Hey, don’t put me in lockup, okay?” Garth let the policemen shift him down the hallway. “I’m not looking to get involved here. Guys in lockup are all ‘I’m a big bad criminal and I want your seat and get out of my face and what are you in here for’. Just drop me in an interrogation room and everything’ll be cool. Sound like a plan?”
“Shut your face.”
Lockup
“You ever hear of a thing called ‘Historical Services?” Garth, leaning up against the bars of the communal prison cell, looked at his captive audience. “Steve? Steve. Historical Services? Ever hear of it?”
“My … my name isn’t Steve. It’s Seteven.” Seteven, head between the bars, did his best to stop drooling bloody spittle on the floor. The police didn’t like it when people spat. It was a fineable offense.
Seteven –who found himself thinking of himself as Steve against his will- didn’t know what’d happened. One minute he’d been amusing himself bothering the new guy by following him around the cell doing the usual ‘that’s my spot, too’ gag. The next minute, he was watching as the new guy started bending the bars of the cell, making a gap big enough for head. After that, it was hazy, but he suspected that the new guy was responsible for bending the bars back into shape after his head had been jammed through the hole.
“Close enough for horseshoes and war, Steve. Historical Services. Know it?”
“What’s a horseshoes?” Steve asked, trying to pull the bars apart. Steve wasn’t a slouch when it came to upper body strength, oh no; he worked out four days a week. It helped when you were stronger than the people who owed you money. They didn’t budge. The new guy, who’d introduced himself as Garth Nickels, had bent them like they were made of paper.
“I’ll take that as a ‘no’, Steve.” Garth sighed. In all his travels, he’d run across less than a dozen people who knew what function Historical Services performed for the Trinity AI and of that number, not one of them had been … interrogated for a full solar year by one of their representatives. “I’m going to tell you a story. Jump in with questions, comments, that sort of thing. It’ll be fun. Oh. Uh. Before we get started, anything I tell you is triple-dog-dare-you secret. If you tell anyone what I say, Trinity will send some Enforcers over and they’ll fuck your shit up pretty bad. Are we cool?”
“You … y-you don’t have to tell me anything, sir, that’s fine. I’ll just … I’ll just sit –stand- here and wait quietly.” Steve let another stretch of bloody spittle fall from his mouth. He was beginning to think he’d made a big mistake.
“Ahhh.” Garth clapped Steve on the back. “Where’s the fun in that? Anyway, Historical Services is a group of people who work for The Trinity AI directly. Their job is to fly around Trinityspace looking for ancient relics. Sort of like Indiana Jones, except with spaceships and laser guns. Only they’re not looking to take the stuff they find back to museums so everyone can ooh and ahh. They’re looking for this stuff because ninety percent of the time, it seems that the things you guys leave lying around is detrimental to the very fabric of the universe. I hear tell they find junk like thousand foot tall robots capable of eating planets and giant mutated bugs that can fly through space and nanotech manufactories and they disappear them. For Human Safety.”
“That sounds nice.” Steve whispered. He wasn’t sure, but it felt like the bars were closing in, getting tighter. “So their job is to protect us.”
Garth nodded assiduously. “Totally. A lot of the deadly dangerous crap they destroy comes from the middle parts of a Dark Age. It seems that when The Trinity AI is busy trying to bootstrap It’s domain back from the dawn of time, everyone gets it into their heads that they want to try and build black hole cannons and time travel. Most of the time that kind of stupid gets itself dead, but sometimes not. So yes, Historical Services adjutants protect you all from yourselves. Do you know what else they do when they don’t have anything better to do?”
Steve started praying. He hadn’t done it in a long, long time, but the words of his lapsed faith came screaming back as if he’d never stopped going to church. He mumbled the prayers, hoping against hope that whatever it was that Historical Services did, it had nothing to do with Garth Nickels.
Garth grinned. “I can tell you’re excited to hear this, so let me paint the picture. Tynedale/Fujihara … you know them, right? I mean, I know you guys are all Voss_Uderhell over here on Tenerek, but you know Tynedale/Fujihara. Everyone knows them. Anyways. Just over eleven years ago, this particular Conglomerate was busy hollowing out an old almost-planet by the name of Pluto way out there in the original System of Man. Don’t be ashamed if you’ve never heard of it. So all these miners and whatnot are whanging away gutting Pluto for some reason. No one ever told me why they were doing it, when all of a sudden BAM!”
Steve flinched as Garth hit the bars with an open palm. He wasn’t going to cry. “Bam?” he whispered.
“Bam.” Garth agreed cordially. “This mother-huge drill slams into a ship, Steve. A ship, in the middle of a planet. Ask the obvious question.”
Steve didn’t want to do anything of the sort. “Why didn’t they know it was there to begin with?”
“You, friend, are a genius.” Garth scratched the back of his neck. “They didn’t know it was there because it was invisible. Tynedale/Fujihara is a really seriously huge Conglomerate, right? Number two in all of Trinityspace, mostly. They obviously scanned the planet all the way through a whole bunch of times, right? I mean, they’re not going to get halfway done before they start looking for stuff that might slow them down, are they? These big ‘gloms live and die by their profit margins, so when they undertake a huge mining operation like this one, they’re going to do their due diligence. Guess what happened next?”
“His… Historical Services?”
Garth looked sideways at Steve. “Are you sure you’re a criminal? You seem to be pretty smart.”
“I am a criminal, sir. I promise.”
Laughter erupted out of Garth’s mouth. “You might not want to say that too loudly, man. We’re in a prison cell here. Don’t admit to anything you don’t need to.”
Steve, who was now looking forward to actual jail time if for no other reason than it might prolong his life for a few extra days once the Enforcers started looking for him, shrugged. He was a captive audience and against better judgment, he was curious to see where his cellmate fit into this disjointed tale of ancient ships and big Conglomerates. Steve couldn’t think of anything to say, at least nothing that would get Garth to stay quiet, so … he just stood there, head stuck forever between the bars.
“Now Steve, one of the big things Historical Services does, when they’re not busy crushing ancient and deadly secrets, is fundamental to the continuation of the Human species.” Garth put a hand up to his mouth and stage-whispered, “At least, that’s what they say. Trinity doesn’t give a rat’s ass.”
Woodenly, Steve asked, “What’s a ratsass?”
“You’re saying it wrong … what? No. Forget it. The thing these adjutants do, Steve, is they try to discover where it all went wrong. These guys want to understand how these Dark Ages operate.” Garth was enjoying himself, though admittedly it was at the expense of other people; technically the things he was talking about were very seriously top secret, but realistically, not one of the people he’d blabbed systemic secrets to were going to run out into the streets. Once upon a time Jerry Seinfeld had driven for a Tenerekian senator. No worries that the bus driver would tell anyone anything remotely worrisome.
The same could be said for Steve, only for drastically different reasons;
criminals on Tenerek were notoriously close-lipped. They had to be, with how often the political climate changed in the system. Friends and allies could become enemies and worse with each new political voted into office.
Short of bribing everyone in the known Universe to be quiet, there was no better system to start his … his quest. Even Trinity would be hard pressed to get the stoic Tenerekians to give up what they knew.
Something clicked in Steve’s head. “Are you going to talk about The Dark Ages?” he asked woefully.
“Already covered that, pal.” Garth clapped a friendly hand on Steve’s shoulder. The relief the criminal felt was a living thing. “Anyways. Invisible ships, Historical Adjutants, The Dark Ages and me.”
“Please don’t ask what those three things have in common.” Steve struggled to pull his head out through the bars and failed spectacularly. He was beginning to regret all that time in the gym. His neck was almost as big as the gap between each bar, let alone his ears.
Garth tilted his head to one side. “Are you cheating?” He looked around the room. “Nah, I’m fucking with you, Steve. I’m leading you down a rose-covered path. Or something. The ship Tynedale/Fujihara miners found buried deep inside Pluto was … is … a mystery, man, for great big motherhuge reasons. First, invisible, right? There’s no tech around today that can do that, and Trinity’s allegedly been trying for about a zillion years. Second, that collision with a kilometer-wide drill bit probably should’ve destroyed the ship and anything inside right away. I mean, it’s a drill bit designed to hollow out planets. What’s a ship compared to that? Third, fancy-dancy geological surveys determined that the ship dug it’s way inside Pluto thirty thousand years ago. Four, analysis of the ship design indicated in very strong terms that Man built the thing. Think about that! A ship, built by man, thirty thousand years ago, one capable of flying to Pluto when all the crappy evidence points to them barely being able to leave the planet! All that had the Historical Adjutant hotter than the sun, I can tell you. Now, I’ve got a bonus round question for you, buddy: what are ships for?”
Mind whirling with the various factors uttered by Garth, Steve wanted nothing more than to crawl through the bars, find his arresting officer and admit to all the crimes he’d ever perpetrated. At this point, he was willing to confess to stealing money from his grandmother if only it would get him away from Garth Nickels. The man wasn’t simply talking about things that people should never hear. If he was putting the pieces together properly, Steve was horrifyingly certain Garth himself was something you should never ever know about.
“C’mon, buddy! This is easy! What are ships for?”
Maybe he could just strangle himself on the bars until he passed out. Steve licked his lips and answered. “For carrying people.”
“Sweet.” Garth nodded. “Yes, for carrying people. And this ancient ship possessed of technology thousands of years in advance of anything currently available held within its bowels fifteen men and woman from the literal dawn of time. Fifteen men and women from hundreds of years before the first Dark Age, from before the First Great Exodus of Man, from before the rise of The Trinity AI, from before The Cordon, from … from before it all went wrong. The Adjutant in charge of determining the safety of the machinery and the identities of the … well, of the time-travelers … was a friendly guy named Kant Ingrams. Well, I say friendly, but really, he wasn’t. Friendly. At all. Actually, he was a massive dick. You’re probably thinking this has a happy ending, right? You’re thinking Kant Ingrams discovered, through casual interviews with the people and by reverse engineering the ship, answers to The Dark Ages and we won’t have anything to worry about ever again, right?”
“I’m thinking about screaming for help, actually.” Steve answered quite readily. “But since you ask, no, I don’t think anything like that.”
Garth nodded, refusing to dwell on his specific memories of his time with Kant. Even still, after ten solid years in Special Services and doing horrible things in the name of Trinity’s Plans, thinking about that thin, odious bastard got him righteously pissed off. “Yeah, nothing like that happened. See, we couldn’t remember anything important! Hell, we didn’t even know why we were in the ship in the first fucking place. And that motherfucker questioned us day in and day out forever. Kept us apart. Refused to let us talk to anyone but him. He asked us question after question after question, Steve. What city were we from? Who were our governmental leaders? Who were our enemies? How was the ship built? What technology was behind the metals? How did we survive thirty thousand years of slumber and why couldn’t they find any signs of the devices used to keep us asleep for that long?”
Garth paused for a moment, sadly aware that he’d started shout-whispering into Steve’s ear. He took a deep breath. “Guess what I remembered?”
“N-n-none of those things?”
“Got it in one, dude.” Garth took another deep breath. “I remember every television show I ever watched. And movies, too. And every single song recorded from, if you can believe this shit, from 1950 onward. Every book, every comic, every pointless little thing in the entire world back then.” He tapped his left temple. “I am a walking Pop Culture Encyclopedia for a race of humans that doesn’t even exist anymore. Not a single thing about enemies, rulers, nothing of ‘historical value’.”
“Wh-what about the others?” Steve asked. He was getting comfortable, now.
Garth riffed off a shrug. “No clue. Kant never said what they did or didn’t remember. He wasn’t … chatty. Then he started in with questions about genetic manipulation, DNA alteration, cyborg implants, but again, I didn’t know shit. He got more and more frenzied, Steve. Dear old Kant Ingrams was losing his mind because he had –literally- the greatest mystery in the entire known history of the Universe in front of him and he wasn’t getting any answers at all. His own AI minds were telling him that we weren’t lying, that we had amnesia, amnesia no doubt caused by the prohibitively long time spent asleep. He argued that our very boringness, our absolute lack of anything strange or bizarre, coupled with our amnesia, meant that we were lying through our teeth and that we were, like, an advance guard of super-soldiers looking to conquer the Universe. I kept telling him I was more interested in recreating all the episodes of Lost in holographic video, but he didn’t believe me.”
Steve, who’d never heard of Historical Services or Kant Ingrams before, felt he nevertheless understood how being beaten at every turn over something so important could affect a man’s mood. The Dark Ages was something that affected everyone, and if there was a ‘cure’ out there, well, no price was too large. “This Ingrams person probably didn’t like that too much, did he?”
“Indeed, Steve,” Garth put his back against the bars, “he did not. Pressure from Tynedale/Fujihara,” the ex-SpecSer nodded at Steve’s chuckle over the Conglomerate’s growing rage, “to finish up, Trinity’s own admonitions that me and the rest of the crew were complete morons and a few other things drove the man … desperate. I won’t say balls-out insane or anything. I don’t think the guy ever raised his voice. But no, yeah, he went apeshit. Started talking about dissection and brain removal. You believe that? Guess what happened then?”
“Um.” They’d pretty much reached the end of Steve’s imaginative rope; held hostage by an official Trinity Services representative, no doubt in an extremely secure facility, should have ended with all fifteen of them drawn, quartered, dissected and put under microscopes.
That wasn’t the case, though. The grim truth he was in a holding cell with a man strong enough to bend metal bars as though they were warm dough. Something wasn’t adding up. Either Kant Ingrams had been right about the sleepers and a hidden agenda or Garth Nickels had been through some severely radical changes since finding his way free from Kant Ingrams.
Garth sighed. “The other fourteen people broke out, Steve. Simultaneously and without having ever spoken to one another for the entire year. When I say at the same time, I literally mean that. Fourteen doors to fourtee
n cells were pried off, popped open, or kicked in at precisely the same moment. Trinity Investigators were kind enough to tell me that much. Then, because I guess my cellmates were serious people who were also big fat liars, they proceeded to escape. Or, uh, almost. They destroyed 75% of the mining facility, killed or maimed pretty much everyone they could find and made a beeline right for the launch bays where all the shuttles were held.”
The story was too fantastic to believe. “What about you?”
“Me?” Garth held a hand to his chest. “I was in my cell doing pushups. No joke. And reliving the Monster Gods of Rock Tour in my head. There was this artist called Rob Zombie … dude … so awesome. So, so awesome. So there I am, push-upping and, uh, ‘listening’ to ‘Creatures of the Wheel’ and looking forward to ‘The Devil’s Rejects’ when BAM!”
Steve didn’t flinch as much when Garth hit the bars this time. He’d been waiting for it. “Bam?” he asked weakly, wondering why none of the guards had come around to pester them. It was something Tenerekian guards loved to do, but they hadn’t shown their ugly purple-clad asses in more than half an hour.
“Bam.” Garth replied. “Someone pulled my door off. Right off!”
“But … but … but …” Since he couldn’t get the words out, Steve tried to gesture at his current predicament.
“Oh, well, sure. Now it’s no big deal. But, dude, this was ten years ago. Ten years ago I was like, some guy. Whole different guy now. I’m way lots stronger now.”
“So you all escaped.” Personally speaking, the thought of fourteen other people even remotely similar to Garth Nickels roaming the depths of space looking to tell their stories to anyone who’d listen was perversely terrifying.
