The Parabiont Invasion Book 3

by Y. J. Gendron

“Tranquilizer,” Kalxin said, as explanation.

  Beatrice nodded, unsure about what to think.

  There was a brusque shove of the curtain and Asalak reappeared, holding an aluminum tray in his hands. The sight of the tools sent a shiver down Beatrice’s spine. The tools were so clinical, so surgical in design and function that she couldn’t help but be terrified.

  It was stupid, but she couldn’t help herself.

  He deposited the tray at the gurney’s head.

  “Beatrice, bring that bottle to me.”

  She glanced at the corner of the room where he pointed. There were boxes stacked along the far wall. The one on top was already open, filled with green bottles. “Yes, the antiseptic.” He confirmed, as if answering her unspoken question.

  She grabbed the 32oz bottle and handed it to him again. “No, you open it. Pour some unto my hands then on Foxy’s wound. Right here.” He indicated an area near the dog’s hind leg.

  Fumbling with the cap, she managed to do what he asked. “Very well,” she heard him say.

  Kalxin turned to a large box in another stack . “Gloves.”

  Beatrice reached over and ripped the tape from the box. She grabbed the first available bag. There was a white sticker with the letters XL on the packaging. She held them in the air for Kalxin to see. “Are there any large ones in there?” He asked.

  She rummaged through the box. But they were all the same size, and all of them purple.

  “That one!” Asalak called, pointing at the box at the bottom of the pile. Beatrice dropped the gloves back in the box then squatted down to seize the other box. Tearing the box open, she tossed a bag of blue gloves to Asalak. A moment later, Kalxin had them on and was now ready to operate.

  He grabbed a scalpel. “Beatrice, you can wait outside if you want. This will take some time.”

  She looked him in the eye.

  “Not a chance.”

  He nodded. “Can you keep an eye on her breathing?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good.” He exhaled softly. “Then let’s begin.”

  And on those words, he cut Foxy’s abdomen open.

  12 Synchronicity

  Eklan woke up with the dream still vivid in his mind. He had dreamt of a place. A place of beauty where the natural world bordered on the divine. This place was bathed in a golden glow, with the sun taking position above tranquil seas over which decorative clouds glided by, solely for their aesthetic properties. The sea was a refuge for archipelagos of islands, loosely assembled together to form a sprawling land mass. Each island was sun-kissed and blessed with seasonal temperatures all-year long, the white-sanded beaches and luxurious greenery never changing as Time went on its way.

  He had found himself on one of these islands. Strolling through the diverse flora, he was amazed by the luxuriousness of it all, by the richness of its variety. Life, here, was plentiful and even abundant, alive with possibilities and future promises.

  Hunkering down to poke at the ground, he watched with contentment as tiny creatures went about their business. They were a busy species, building and erecting spires that loomed high over the ground, hundredfold taller than their own size. What possessed them to build such structures? And why? Was it linked somehow to the building blocks of their genetic material, or was it something similar to instinct?

  He had no idea.

  It was one of Life’s mysteries.

  Staring at the pale pink sky as the sun went down, he saw the first pinpoints of light appear. But contrary to what he’d anticipated, the pinpoints moved with careful deliberation, crossing the sky from West to East, coming to rest directly above his head. The lights glittered as they settled into place, forming a circular cluster, like an eye looking down from space.

  The cluster blinked.

  And the sky turned bright white.

  “Eklan.” A voice said in his head. “You have a task waiting.”

  He sat up at once.

  Early morning light streamed inside his room, pushing away the shadows of the moonless night. He was in his bed, like he should be, except that he had no memory of actually going to sleep. He couldn’t recall washing his teeth or stripping off his clothes, or even what the previous evening had been about.

  But he had obviously carried out his routine, or he wouldn’t be in his room.

  Unless someone had done it for him.

  He shrugged the discomfort away and got dressed. His clothes waited for him in the closet, the hangers all neatly aligned the way he liked. After donning the gray cargo pants and the black vest over a white t-shirt, he made his way to the Cube. For some reason, he felt compelled to check out his work in progress, foregoing his body’s cravings for replenishment.

  It was particularly quiet as he strolled out of the common area and crossed the hallway that led to the big room. There were a few soldiers going about their daily chores, but they ignored him as he walked by, some of them stifling yawns as they either began or ended their shifts.

  Four minutes later, he arrived at the Cube. He stared at the main door with a mix of puzzlement and hesitation. His hand went to the back of his neck. He felt a small protuberance on the skin and he wondered if a bug or spider had bit him during the night.

  He put his palm to the security panel and waited for the confirmation. The light changed to green and he heard the door pop open with a soft hiss. He made his way inside the brightly lit room, feeling at ease at once. The illumination mimicked Ukun’s own natural light, making it easier for him to concentrate and to think. The object of his attention stood a few feet away, awaiting further work.

  The disruptor was a powerful device, unique in itself. There was nothing quite like it on this planet, at least that’s what he believed.

  But you never really knew.

  He took his seat at the desk and slipped on the cerebral cortex interface he had designed himself. It was a netting of tiny electronic parts, all built to exact specifications. He had created the interface to aid in the extensive programming required by the device. It was much easier for him to think a command than use the clumsy finger-dependent interface known as a keyboard.

  Way easier, and faster.

  The interface positioned, he activated the connection that linked his brain to the machine’s. A blinking cursor appeared in his mind. It was a strange thing to think one needed a password when one was linked in such a way with a machine, but Colonel Graves had insisted in taking every precaution, thus the use of anachronistic security measures.

  He pressed a button on an old analog tape-driven recorder. There was a hiss from the diminutive speaker. Eklan eased forward on his seat, brow furrowed in concentration.

  “Synchronicity,” a youthful female voice said.

  Eklan did not know who authored the tape but was nevertheless impressed by the variety at play. Every day the word was different, so no two passwords were ever the same. The words ran the gamut from alphabetical to zoological, but they were always interesting, at least to his ears, though his human colleagues had complained with quite a few groans when subdermatoglyphic was selected.

  He repeated the word in his head, and then, to comply to Graves’ security lock, typed each letter on a special keypad attached to the mainframe computer.

  There was an audible confirmation and the blinking cursor vanished. At once, he was linked to the machine’s outer core, to where the interface permitted him to interact with the programming and modify it as he pleased. This secondary core was where all the work was done. It was separate from the inner one, from where the machine processed the commands and acted upon them. The thinking core was isolated from the rest of the machine, and even from the interface itself. It was built in such a way to assure complete and total integrity. Only the destruction of the entire building could affect it, though even that possibility was being addressed.

  He composed the first command.

  And like for the previous days, he felt exhilarated by the action.

  They were creating an
intelligence, building it as it was layer by layer, instruction by instruction, command by command.

  But it wasn’t an easy task.

  It needed to be both indued with knowledge and the capacity to evolve.

  And therein lay the challenge.

  To create an artificial mind that would adapt to war’s changing conditions, and most importantly, learn from its mistakes.

  Closing his eyes to better think, he concentrated on the problems that needed to be solved. Asalak had worked on the inner core’s framework, building it up with security in mind, but also with the freedom to experiment. He knew that time was precious. They had to be ready before the Snyl stormed into the Solar System, before it was too late to do anything about it.

  The disruptor was dependent on the Artificial Intelligence.

  And the AI was dependent on them.

  A simple equation for an infinitely complex problem.

  Yet they didn’t have much of a choice.

  The fate of everyone on Earth hung in the balance of what they were attempting to create.

  He examined Asalak’s code for a few milliseconds then optimized it to the best of his abilities. He cycled the command in the testing core and satisfied by the result, went on to the next challenge.

  Here, the code was different, more chaotic. It was human designed, put there to regulate the hardware side of things. He skimmed over it, not bothering to check its value or usefulness. If the humans had felt it was needed, then it must be.

  The hours went by and Eklan kept working, his mind attuned perfectly to the interface. He created scores of intelligent agents, that roamed the AI’s inner core for bugs and defects. They were his own private army, deployed by his own neuronal network to seek and identify what didn’t work, what needed to be fixed. It made the debugging task easier to perform, relegating to the wayside much of the tediousness involved in the necessary process.

  They were getting closer to a breakthrough. He could sense it as his army came back from the core with fewer and fewer issues. He patched up the discrepancies and after a last check of the system, broke the connection.

  Reclining back on his chair, he removed the interface, letting the wires tumble unto the table. He massaged his scalp with his forefingers, rubbing away the itchiness that always accompanied overly long sessions. His gut made an odd sound and he realized he hadn’t eaten breakfast. Staring at the wall clock, he was amazed to see it was past nineteen-hundred hours. Had he worked for twelve hours straight?

  Impossible.

  Both Asalak and Kalxin usually came in early to help, with Colonel Graves and Captain Henderson joining them soon after to enquire about progress.

  It made no sense that he had been working inside the Cube for an entire day without having visitors.

  Impossible.

  Yet, where had all the hours went?

  Feeling worried at once, he pushed his chair away from the console and got to his feet. He felt a twinge of vertigo but it vanished with his first step. He made his way to the door and palmed the security panel. The door refused to open. Taken aback because this had never happened before, he tried again, pushing his palm against the device.

  Again, the door refused to comply.

  He was locked inside.

  Another impossibility.

  The security system was powered by two independent sources. If one came to fail, the other would take over. It was redundant for the same reason the Cube was separated from the rest of the facility: to assure it couldn’t be compromised.

  But for some reason the door refused him.

  He knew that one of the power source was located behind the hangars, outside the building. The solar array, set up on a steel mast that rose 150 feet in the air, was entirely dedicated to the Cube’s security features, and it could produce more wattage in an hour than what the panel consumed in a month.

  It should be impossible for the door not to open.

  Wrapping his mind around the problem, he walked back to the console. There was no way for him to contact anyone outside the Cube. It had been designed that way for security reasons but now those same reasons were keeping him isolated from the rest of the crew.

  He stared at the row of monitors facing him. The data scrolling up and down on the displays were visual representations of his day’s work, confirming that he had indeed spent the entire day working in the Cube.

  Why did no one check up on me?

  He sat back in one of the chairs. Across from where he looked, the stack hummed with intense activity, processing the data he’d programmed. The humming hiccuped and paused as the cluster of machines digested the terabyte’s worth of instructions.

  Silence fell inside the Cube.

  Eklan felt at once compelled to try the door once again.

  He had no idea why but he got up from the chair and made his way to the door. The sound of his footsteps echoed in the hushed volume, bouncing against the four walls. He palmed the panel.

  The door popped open.

  He hesitated for two heartbeats then pushed his way outside.

  The plant’s open space was plunged into darkness. Angular shadows cut across the concrete floor in diagonal lines, creating a serrated effect in the poor light. A shrill sound came from the hallway’s corridor, the one that led out to the common areas. It was a clicking kind of noise that eclipsed all others, getting louder with each second. Alarmed by the noise, he took a step backward towards the Cube, his fingertips to the the door handle.

  A rushing cloud of dark limbs and multifaceted glowing eyes exploded out of the hallway, careening across the empty floor with swift and ferocious haste. His brain tried to rationalize the sighting.

  The creatures hurtling toward him were not supposed to be here.

  They couldn’t be.

  It was impossible.

  Wincing in pain as the horrendous shrieks reached his ears, he let instinct take over and did the only thing he could do.

  He slammed the door against the horror and locked himself inside the Cube.

  13 Recovery

  Beatrice stared out into the gloom. For a moment she wasn’t sure what time it was but it dawned on her that it must be the middle of the night. She got up from the semi-plush chair into which she’d fallen asleep, crushed by both worry and fatigue. The room was dark and she waited for her eyes to adjust. There was just the one chair in the room, along with a gurney that doubled as a bed. The room’s sole patient had a uniquely different characteristic than those resting elsewhere in the medical unit run by Captain Leyland.

  She was the only four-legged one.

  There was a soft wheezing sound from the animal lying under the rough-hewn blanket. Beatrice stepped over to the gurney. With care, she moved the covering away from the dog’s head.

  “There you go, Foxy.”

  The Sheltie lay still, still knocked out by Kalxin’s drugs. The operation had lasted less than an hour, but it had appeared way longer to Beatrice, interminable even. At first, all had gone well, better than what she’d hoped for. Kalxin had found the bullet without delay and had extracted it from Foxy’s belly with skill, encountering no issues whatsoever.

  But then things changed for the worst.

  As he finished stitching up the wound, Foxy’s breathing had changed, turning shallow and irregular. At once they gave her oxygen, pumping the precious gas into her lungs with a compact, hand-operated, booster. Beatrice stood aside, transfixed, as Kalxin and Asalak worked in tandem to get air inside her, the duo working as an experienced team, with nary a vocal command to disrupt the hushed silence of the room.

  They were going above and beyond the call of duty, doing everything in their power to save the patient under their care.

  And it had worked.

  After some time Foxy’s breathing had resumed, normal once again. Beatrice listened with rapt attention as the breaths worked their way into her lungs, the tempo slower than usual but nevertheless steady.

  She had kissed both of them
on the cheeks at that moment, overcome by both the strong emotions she felt, and by the Amilaki’s obvious and sincere solicitude. Both Kalxin and Asalak had raised eyebrows at her exuberant display of gratitude but she didn’t let their puzzlement damper her high spirits.

  Foxy was going to pull through.

  And that’s all that mattered.

  “You’re a good girl. You know that, don’t you?” She murmured into the Sheltie’s left ear, the one cocked up over the blanket. “You can’t possibly think of leaving me. What would I do without you?”

  Foxy raised her head from the mattress, searching for the source of the voice. Beatrice gently put a hand to the side of the dog’s head. “Shh, easy,” she whispered. The Sheltie’s soulful, golden-brown eyes, closed again. “There you go, girl. Sleep. Forget everything.”

  She stood by the gurney for a long moment, gazing at Foxy without really looking, enjoying the moment for what it was: a peaceful interlude in a frantic life.

  “Trish?”

  The voice, all in restraint, came from the other side of the curtain.

  Beatrice rose and and eased over to the entrance, to where the voice waited. She pushed aside the heavy fabric and gazed out.

  “It’s me. Asher.”

  Her heart stopped.

  The man staring at her with dark-brown eyes and a quick grin looked like the man she’d known before.

  The man she’d known as Asher Sullon.

  The man who was gone.

  The man now known as Eklan.

  He took a step forward and gripped her by the shoulders, burning his stare into her’s. She felt the heat of his hands through the material of her shirt.

  “I missed you so much,” he said, inching closer. His chest met her’s and she could feel his heartbeat intermingling with her own’s. There was an unaccustomed intensity in his stare, a kind of deep yearning that seemed to transcend the physicality of the contact. “I thought I had lost you forever.”

  She sensed his right right hand glide over to the side of her face. It was a soft caress but it seared her with as much potency as if she’d been marked with a red iron. She found the effect irresistible and she was drawn to it, like a moth to a light. She felt a sudden desire to do what she’d said to Foxy.