Terminus Cycle

by Dave Walsh

  There were still doubts swarming his mind as Kara’s father proudly showed off some of his antique books from Earth, detailing each one, when it was printed, how much it cost him and how much it was worth. After twenty minutes or so, Jonah knew that he was in the clear, that the book story had worked. But he also knew how incredibly lucky he was to have come up with that because he was dangerously close to being exposed.

  He still found his breathing to be labored until they were out the door that night, with Kara saying goodbye to her parents and them thanking Jonah for coming out. Jonah returned the goodwill, and Jim gave him a knowing nod of approval as they walked arm in arm back to the C-Deck.

  Jonah felt happy to be alive as well as irritated that he couldn’t shake her off. He had a drive full of information and wanted nothing more than to quickly dive into it.

  “They really liked you,” she said. She looked up at him as they walked into her quarters. “I’m shocked -- they usually hate my boyfriends.”

  “Yeah, they seemed to like me,” he replied as he scratched the back of his head and eyeballed the door.

  “So,” she said. “Should I get into something more comfortable?”

  “Uh,” he said, letting out a cough that wouldn’t have fooled anyone. “You know, I haven’t been feeling all that great, Kara. I think I’m gonna go back to my quarters and just pass out, all right?”

  “Oh,” she muttered, visibly crestfallen. “Okay.”

  “I had a great night, though.” He leaned in and planted a kiss on her, running his fingers through her hair and smiling as he backed out of the door. “Goodnight,” he said as the door slid shut, and he found himself sprinting to Professor Cox’s.

  * * *

  “Are you aware of what time it is? On Ministry Day?” Professor Cox was in his robe, standing in the doorway and rubbing his eyes.

  “I know, but...”

  “Just come in already,” he said as he let out a loud yawn. “Something has you worked up.”

  “This.” Jonah slammed the crysdrive down on the table with a proud smile on his face, the light reflecting off of the crystal.

  “Yes,” Professor Cox said, adjusting his glasses. “That is indeed a crysdrive, very impressive. This is why you woke me up?”

  “No,” Jonah said impatiently, picking it up and holding it in front of Professor Cox’s face. “It's what's on it that I want you to see.”

  “What could you possibly have on there that couldn’t wait, Jonah?”

  “I just got back from Kara’s parents' house,” he said.

  “Oh.” Professor Cox nodded absently before catching himself and slowly looking up at Jonah, his eyes lighting up. “Oh!”

  “Yeah,” Jonah said proudly. “His whole holoscreen is downloaded onto here. This little crysdrive contains Ministry secrets; it has the answers that we're looking for!”

  “Well,” the professor said as he started waving his hands. “It might, Jonah. It might. Let’s not get our hopes up yet.”

  “C’mon, Doc! I risked my life for this!”

  “I know, and it was a job well done! But you need to understand.” He picked up the crysdrive and began inspecting it. “This is treason, Jonah. No, this is high treason! We could be tossed out of the airlock for this, so we need to tread lightly.”

  “I know, Doc.” Jonah understood what he had done. “Trust me -- I almost had a heart attack getting this damned thing.”

  “Well,” he said, sitting down at his desk, spinning in the chair and slipping the crysdrive into the side of one of his older holoscanners. “Let’s see what’s on this.”

  “Why are you using that old one, doc?”

  “It's off of the network,” he explained as he pulled up an old, dusty keyboard and began slamming away. “There is no way that I’m going to look at this on the network. There has to be some unique identifiers in the official documents on there, and this thing will never go on the network again.”

  “Oh, right,” Jonah agreed as he licked his lips anxiously. “That makes perfect sense. C’mon, though, Doc. I gotta know what's on this.”

  “Ha!” The professor burst out laughing. “You’ll need to be patient, Jonah. This is thousands and thousands of files that we have to analyze; this is going to take a while.”

  “Oh, right,” Jonah muttered, finally starting to calm down. He hadn’t thought of the sheer amount of data they’d have to go through to find anything of value. “I forgot about that.”

  “Yeah,” the professor said as he searched through folders. “I mean, most of this stuff is just personal garbage. I mean, look.” He popped open a folder and opened up a photo. It was one of Kara's family in their immaculate backyard. “This is less-than-damning information about a government cover-up, Jonah.”

  “Right.” He knew that it wouldn’t all be damning, but he could hardly wait to find the juicy stuff, if there was any. It was nagging him in the back of his mind that Jim seemed like a genuine guy to him, but he had to remind himself that Jim was the enemy. “I know, I know. There's going to be a lot of stuff like that on there.”

  Jonah walked across the room to make a pot of coffee as the professor continued his quest to sift through all of the information.

  The minutes melted into hours, and the hours begin flying by as the morning rapidly approached. Both were tired and had been taking turns manning the computer, each sifting through information, files and mostly garbage. He was the Minister of Finance, after all, so most of the information was simply about the ship’s financial situation, not about the truth of their mission.

  They were both growing tired tired when Jonah finally uncovered something that he thought seemed moderately useful: the time and dates of their Ministry meetings. Apparently they were held every Wednesday in the Ministry Hall, and Jonah imagined that there was nothing off-limits in those meetings. The professor was quick to point out that their government was bloated and surely not everyone could be trusted with such information.

  “Well, fuck this, then,” Jonah said as he slammed his fist against the wall. “This guy is just as boring as we thought he was. This is all utterly worthless, and I risked my ass for nothing!”

  “Calm down, Jonah,” Professor Cox said, trying to soothe him. “We haven’t gone through everything yet. You never know what we might uncover, Jonah.”

  “All right, well, it’s my turn again, I guess,” Jonah muttered under his breath as he shuffled to the keyboard and let out a loud yawn. “You haven’t found anything of note at all, have you?”

  “Nothing of note, really,” Professor Cox said as he adjusted his glasses. “I did find this video of the Minister of Finance and the missus in bed together.” He laughed, and Jonah quickly came up behind him and leaned in to watch the video.

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” Jonah stared at the screen in disbelief. “That’s not his wife, man.”

  “Oh?” Professor Cox shook his head. “Well, that is a shame, I guess.”

  “Jim seemed like such a nice guy, considering his position and all, too.” Jonah laughed out loud, his eyes fixed on the video. “Yeah, that definitely isn’t Kara’s mom, that's for sure. I mean --”

  “Oh!” the professor suddenly shouted, sending Jonah jumping back. “Jonah!”

  “What?” Jonah moved in again. “Warn me next time.”

  “I know this woman!” He pointed his finger at the screen, pausing it when the woman in the video was on her hands and knees, her back arched and her head thrown back. “I know her, Jonah.”

  “So?” Jonah found the connection to be pointless, especially considering how strange Professor Cox was around other people. “So you know the woman the Minister of Finance is fucking. Big deal.”

  “Jonah.” He paused, turning back to the screen and zooming in, enhancing the image and putting it in the center of the screen. “Look again,” he said, clearly holding something back. “Look closely.”

  “Is that...” Jonah trailed off as he looked down at the screen, blinkin
g rapidly to make sure that he was seeing what he thought that he was seeing. “Is that...”

  “Captain O’Neil’s wife, yes.” The professor leaned back in his chair, resting his elbow on his stomach and placing his hand on his chin. “Jeanette. We went to school together.”

  “Are you fucking kidding me?”

  “What?” The professor shrugged. “I had a good education, Jonah. You know that.”

  “No!” Jonah pointed at the screen. “This is it, Doc! This is how I can get what I want out of the Minister.”

  “Oh Jonah,” he said as he slowly turned to face Jonah, only for Jonah to greet him with a grin. “You don’t mean to do what I think you mean to do, do you?”

  “Blackmail him?” Jonah nodded. “Precisely what I have in mind.”

  “You’ll show your hand, Jonah,” the professor said. He was shaking his head, springing from his seat, pacing back and forth with his fingers scratching his chin. “You’ll be admitting that you committed high treason, Jonah. High treason, an airlockable offense!”

  “Imagine what Captain O’Neil would say to seeing one of his Ministers in bed with his wife, Doc,” Jonah said. “Old Jim here would be thrown out of the airlock along with her for this.”

  “Sure,” he said as he stared back at Jonah apprehensively. “Along with the both of us.”

  010. The Sequence

  Captain O’Neil

  Ministry meetings were always difficult for Peter. They were frustrating, fickle and usually ended with the major decisions being made by him alone after everyone else grew tired of the bickering. Omega grew closer, and the situation was getting more and more tense for those in command. Most of the Ministry members had little to no clue of the complexities of the situation and were instead squabbling with each other, wrapped up in the logistics of populating their new playground.

  This meant planning survey teams, finding the best way to distribute the population and setting into motion plans for temporary structures and then a great city for everyone to live in. Sections of the ship were designed to detach from the main ship body and be piloted into a resting point on land, but the only catch was that they couldn't possibly be moved when planted on land or shot back into space. When they hit land, they were there for good.

  “I think that the quickest and safest way is to wait on the ship until we're certain,” Minister Kieran Tate of the B-Block snarled. “We’ve all been cooped up here our whole lives, but rushing into things isn’t going to help anything.”

  “You expect these people to be calm when there is a planet -- our new home -- outside of their windows?” Minister Charles Ford of the C-Block said. “We’ve been here long enough, this whole mission was a risk, and the whole point was to populate a new world.”

  “You are willing to risk the entire mission!” Tate slammed his fist onto the table, turning away in disgust. “Typical C-Block,” he said, turning back toward the table. “Fine. Send your people then. We’ll need menial labor.”

  “Menial labor?” Ford began to boil, outrage swelling inside of him. “Your cavalier attitude toward my Block is as disgusting as ever, Minister Tate. The Omega Destiny does not function without the C-Block, plain and simple. We are all going to have to work together if we are to survive.”

  “Oh, bullshit,” Tate laughed, trying his best to cover his face. “The A-Block isn’t going to be crushing stone in quarries, nor will anyone from B-Block unless they volunteer for such...”

  “Gentlemen.” O’Neil’s voice cut through like a precision knife, forcing both men back into their seats. “I understand the desire to go either way -- to rush onto the planet or to wait and monitor things. The reality here is that we are going to send down a portion of the population -- those with the right skills -- to begin populating the planet. We’ll be keeping a close eye on the situation and undoubtedly there will be many who want to immediately relocate to the planet’s surface.”

  He cleared his throat, taking a sip from his mug. His words hung in the air as the Ministers fidgeted, awaiting his response. “But unless they’ve been prepped for life on the surface, it will not happen. We’ve been following the plan, correct?”

  Both men nodded.

  “Then the first population team will go in -- as planned -- and begin their work on the planet. As soon as there is a stable settlement, we’ll begin the trips to the surface for those who are curious, while still integrating the second population team. Remember,” he said as he took another deliberate sip from his tea. “There are ten population teams, with us estimating it will take well over a year before we’ll be 80% relocated. The plan dictates that the process will take up to two years before everything is settled.”

  “I understand the plan.” Tate was losing his temper again. “But wouldn’t it make more sense to wait a year and monitor the conditions of the planet before we just go in? We don’t know what kind of conditions we’ll face down there and...”

  The door to the chamber slid open. Officer Dumas stood at the doorway, saluting before slipping in and whispering into the ear of Captain O’Neil. O’Neil nodded, dismissing Dumas who quickly strode out of the room, turning to salute before the doors whizzed shut. A few glances were exchanged between Ministers.

  “Gentlemen.” O’Neil picked himself up out of his chair, adjusting his shirt and picking up his mug. “I have pressing business to attend to right now. I apologize for having to cut this meeting short, but if you have further issues to discuss, just submit an official request, and we’ll meet privately to discuss matters. Thank you.”

  The twelve men at the table stood up and saluted as the captain walked through the doors.

  * * *

  “Report,” O’Neil said. He did his best to hide how uneasy the news was making him feel, carefully watching the rest of the bridge, the look of horror and panic amidst the crew.

  “Sir.” Communications Officer Hideo turned to O’Neil, gulping hard. “We’ve received another transmission.”

  “So I’ve been told,” he stated calmly, standing over the officer’s console and looking at his screen. “What is it?”

  “Well, sir,” he began. He gulped, turning back to his screen. “Remember the last time we received a signal?”

  “The Fibonacci numbers, right?”

  “Right,” he said. He took a deep breath. The captain seemed to be growing impatient with all of the tension in the room. “We had originally received the following sequence: 0, 0, 1, 2 and 3. Those are the first five numbers in the sequence.”

  “Okay,” he stated, feeling uneasy at the officer’s hesitation. “I understand that much, just like I understand that we sent back the next few numbers.”

  “Yeah,” the officer said. He looked genuinely horrified. “We sent back, along the same frequency, the next few numbers: 5, 8, 13, 21 and 34. The transmission that we just got back, well...”

  “Officer,” O’Neil sighed. “Just tell me. I’m growing impatient.” O’Neil could sense the officer’s nerves and the rest of the bridge’s, but someone had to be in command on that bridge, which was of course him.

  “Yes sir. It was the next five numbers. 55, 89, 144, 233 and 377.”

  “These numbers,” he said as he stared at the screen, trying to collect his thoughts. “Could they possibly mean something else?”

  “No, sir.” Hideo looked back up at O’Neil, pale as a ghost. “This is clearly the Fibonacci Sequence.”

  “It does seem to be far from random, doesn’t it?” O’Neil knew that Hideo was a careful man; he knew this because of Hideo’s relationship with Dumas, which they kept very quiet for official reasons.

  “Sir, this is very clearly a response to our reply. We’ve made first contact.”

  The words had cut through all of the usual chatter. The normally busy and loud bridge had altogether fallen silent, awaiting the response from Captain O’Neil. They had been briefed on first-contact protocols, but all science had pointed to them not finding any sort of intelligent life beyond humanity
within traveling distance.

  There were very few things that the message could mean other than the fact that they were heading to Omega and that the rumors were true: Humanity was going to be staring at a reflection of itself through a strange mirror. The thought sent a chill down his spine. They had been preparing for the worst, but what could be worse than heading somewhere that was not only the unknown but an unknown that included distant relatives?

  O’Neil looked around the room, his head still swimming. He noticed that the room was waiting for his next move. “Dumas,” he called out. “Go and find Dr. Brandis. Both of you meet me in my office.”

  “Yes, sir,” Dumas said as he saluted.

  “The rest of you.” O’Neil looked around, clearing his throat only to find it bone dry. “Until we know what this means, we continue moving forward. We are heading to Omega on schedule, and no rogue transmission is going to stop that. The planet will be visible within three days and only growing larger with each minute. That planet is a symbol of hope; it is why we are all here. Do not forget that. Now, back to work.”

  The door to his office shut behind him, and he took a deep breath, letting the news sink in for himself. His job was to give a rousing speech at a moment like that, to project authority and confidence even when his own head was spinning. Right then, it felt like the ship was spinning out of control and that his worst fears were coming to fruition.

  There was all of this documentation about the “possibilities” on Omega, but none of his predecessors had ever believed that any of it could possibly be true, nor did he.

  Now it was a reality. And it was his responsibility.

  He almost didn’t notice the door whirr open behind him. Then he heard Dumas clear his throat. “Sir, I brought Dr. Brandis although --”

  “Oh, great.” He turned around, composing himself and making brief eye contact with Sue before quickly turning to Dumas. “I appreciate you two coming here like this.”