Salvation (Technopia Book 4)

by Greg Chase

  “So you might not die, but the people on Earth will?”

  He shook his head. “No, the explosion should do me in, but the time wave that accompanies it will be the reason I’ve lived to be so old. The difference is the people on Earth won’t get the slow wave, which is why they’ve experienced normal life expectancies.”

  She took the pen and drew some wavy lines that grew in intensity as they approached Earth. “So you just get a longer life, but their souls, be they human or Tobe, get thrust hard back in time. What would that do to them if they’re going to die anyway from the blast?”

  “My speculation is all those stories of paranormal activity, which seem to be on the rise, are really those lost souls that have been blown back from the future. The condemned Tobes and people you’ll be unable to save become the ghosts, demons, and angels we’ve imagined throughout time.”

  “But if backward-moving time gets stronger as it moves into the past, why didn’t people from thousands of years ago have their souls ripped from their bodies—why is it just the people currently on Earth?”

  “People living during the explosion will have a different experience to those from the past. Think of it like a wave on the ocean versus that same wave hitting the shore, but in reverse. There’s more energy moving in the deep ocean, but it’s not as noticeable. We’d be closer to the shore. With me so near the moon as it collapses, I might even be thought of as sitting on sand while the water comes up to reach me. Those on Earth would be hit by the wave as it crests, crashing with all its intensity. What happens to people and their souls isn’t what interests me most, though. Do you remember that book you and your sister found in your father’s office when you were kids?”

  It wasn’t something she was likely to forget. “Sara said Dad called it a type of bible the Tobes had created in his honor. They’d pulled together all of humanity’s ideas about…”

  Dr. Shot watched her for a moment as the ideas solidified in her mind. “God. And if I’m not mistaken, you and your sister called Iam forth from that book.”

  Memories were coming together like clouds creating lightning. “I once asked him if he was God. He said not yet. As he often said he couldn’t tell us certain things, I figured he meant the time wasn’t right for him to answer the question.”

  “It’s all speculation though not just on my part. I’ve met that old Tobe. He’s even more out-there in his thinking than me. His idea regarding his existence was that, at the time, there were three of him: the one I was talking to, whom the Tobes had created when they wrote their bible, the one who was moving back in time after the blast, and the very old one who’d been around since the beginning of mankind. But as he couldn’t introduce me to his other two selves, we had to accept that it was all still just theory.”

  Emily stood to start pacing the room. It helped her think. “But if this does create God, what about everything else that’s in that book?”

  “I call them messages in bottles—prophecies sent back to quiet freethinkers who might be on that same energy wavelength as our friend.”

  As she looked out the bridge view screen to the planet so abused by mankind, she wondered if any of it mattered. “And what happens down there—after the apocalypse?”

  “Well, that’s the big question. Assuming the atmosphere doesn’t get ripped away from the planet, what would life be like?”

  Emily wasn’t interested in hearing yet another version of insects taking over as the dominant species or places like New York being reclaimed by the environment. “I meant, what will happen to the four billion people I can’t save if by some miracle they don’t die?”

  Dr. Shot moved in beside her to contemplate the dying Earth. “You mean will their souls get ripped from their bodies to create a modern version of the old zombie-apocalypse horror movies? I don’t know. Even if that were to happen, I’d envision Homo sapiens reverting to a species of monkey rather than some flesh-eating monster.”

  “Ellie thinks it’s already happened. I think she’s sat in on too many of your conversations with Joshua. She says a lot of rich people lost their souls long ago. She sees people who are all about themselves with no awareness of those around them—like a precivilized version of our ape selves.”

  “Far be it for me to outthink a technological being. What it all boils down to is this: I don’t want to see what’s on the other side of this destruction.”

  Moving Leviathan close enough to Earth so the Tobes could manifest aboard her was a risk, but Emily refused to let them go without saying good-bye. Joshua was the first to go. Emily held him tight, perhaps for the last time. No one was sure how the lens that surrounded her body and allowed physical contact with the Tobes of Earth would work away from her home planet. If this was the last time she could hug him, she intended to make the most of it. His body slowly transformed from the slightly aged, stressed man in his thirties to the young man she remembered. As she reluctantly pulled away, she felt his stomach tighten up, changing from fat to muscle. He was once again a twenty-something-year-old. She patted his now firm chest. “Keep an eye on Sara. She might need to be brought down a peg or two, but be gentle.”

  His smiling eyes held glittery images of the twins as young girls. “I’ll do my best to remind her she’s not the god she thinks she is.”

  “How many of you are going?”

  His hands were warm as they held hers. “We have two thousand one hundred forty-seven of us transitioning to Taygete. Another five thousand seven hundred twelve are headed to Praxidike.”

  The numbers were larger than she’d expected. In the years that she’d worked with Joshua, she’d tried to get him to be less precise, but at that moment she wanted to know about every single Tobe who was heading into harm’s way among the Moons of Jupiter and away from Earth’s Armageddon. “And each of you will have a counterpart from the Moons of Jupiter?”

  “We’ve been over this many times, Emily.”

  “Humor me. I don’t know when I’ll see you again. Maybe it’s a human response to impending separation, but I want to know you’ll be okay.”

  He squeezed her hands. “Yes, we’ll each have a counterpart. The two moons are under Rendition control, which is to say—from a corporate standpoint—under Sara’s command. You don’t need to worry about me. I’m taking the safest route. It’s just a simple little jump. Ed’s taking the real risk.”

  She pulled him back into her arms. “Yes, but he’s not leaving yet. You are.”

  The last thing she felt of the Tobe she considered more a brother than an assistant was his soft kiss on her forehead as he faded into the ether of space. All around the world, nearly eight thousand of his kind would be making similar good-byes to the people they’d been so intimately attached to.

  If there was only some way to know if it worked. But with Rendition little more than an empty, towering structure among all the others in what had been the bustling modern city of New York, she’d have to wait.

  Joshua had barely faded from her arms when Lud came bursting into her office on Leviathan’s bridge. “They’re fucking breaking ranks.” He pushed past her to bring up a section of the fleet on the main view screen.

  From among the neatly organized vessels, a small group had broken formation. At first it reminded her of an old-fashioned shuttle race. But as others joined the breakaway, it looked more like a dam that had been breached. “Lev, contact the Tobe captains. Slow those ships down.”

  Lev appeared on a side view screen as a ball of string desperately trying to lasso the ill-behaved spaceships. “Most of the ones that are leaving don’t have Tobes in control of the ships. And those that do have been put under human command.”

  Emily fumed at the view screen. Every ship was supposed to look to her for instructions. “Get the names of the ships and send the information out to every possible place they might think to relocate. If they won’t obey my orders, they’re going to find it tough finding a place to offload. I don’t want our treaties threatened because a h
andful of rogue ships thought it was okay to do as they saw fit. And send that message out to the rest of the fleet: any ship that breaks away won’t have my protection or access to my contracts among the terraformed worlds of the solar system.”

  As the edict went out, a handful of the fast-moving craft turned around to resume their position with the fleet. An uncomfortable number, however, paid no attention.

  “Do you want to go after them?” Lev asked as she switched the vision of herself from a ball of string to a cowgirl on a horse, swinging her lariat overhead.

  Emily still had the rest of the spaceships to consider. “No, they’ve made their choice. Let Mars in particular know they aren’t part of my contingent. Any traitors they see fit to welcome won’t be a part of our agreement.”

  Lud lowered his massive frame into the captain’s chair. Emily had tremendous respect for the man. Family legend had it that Lud had helped her father when they’d first repaired Leviathan out along the Kuiper Belt. Then he’d helped build and run Rendition. So many times, he’d been the one everyone leaned on. “Have you found a place you like on Leviathan? Because I’m sure Grandpa Doc can set you up with the village in the agro pod. It’s not as luxurious as some of the more traditional living spaces, but it is the village.” Having made the offer, she felt like a little girl asking the mature father figure if he wanted to play house with her dolls.

  But even as a little girl, he’d never treated her like a child. “Thank you, that’s very considerate. Lydia’s checking out different options. I’ll let her know about your offer. She’s very fond of you. We both are. I’m sure it’ll be high on her list.”

  Emily found it hard not to think of Lud and his wife, Lydia, as parental figures. When everyone else was fawning over Sara and her potential, it’d been those two who’d taken her under their wings. “I guess there’s more important matters to deal with right now. I just wanted to make sure you’d be staying aboard.”

  “As president of the company, I go where you go. Whatever you choose to do with Rendition, I’d just as soon not have to resume my position. Maybe we can consider this move to Leviathan my retirement.”

  14

  This is it. Sara desperately wanted to hold Rhea’s hand, but to do so would mean helping her with the transfer, and Sara needed to know how it’d work for the other sixteen thousand Tobes, who’d be enduring the same deeply personal link between Earth and the Moons without any human aid.

  Standing on the grassy field where Sara had first landed on Taygete, Rhea wavered in the light, becoming translucent like a sheer drape blowing in the breeze of an open doorway. Sara balled her hands into fists to prevent herself from reaching out to the woman. It was the eyes that changed first. The familiar specks of glitter that Sara had noticed in her friends’ irises on Earth began sparklingly back from Rhea’s stare. Miniature reflections of Emily, whom Rhea wouldn’t have met, filled her eyes. Sara made out images of her sister as a young teenager when they’d landed on Earth. It seemed like a lifetime ago. How could it be less than a decade since they’d left Chariklo?

  She couldn’t afford to get lost in the memories. The eyes were Joshua’s, not Rhea’s. Like an out-of-phase view screen, the pair of light-hazel eyes separated from the dark-blue ones filled with glitter. It made Sara dizzy. She could only imagine how disorienting it must be for the two Tobes.

  Like two projectors forcing their holographic images over each other, Joshua appeared, then Rhea, then Joshua again until the friend she knew from Earth took a step forward out of the shared space. The two beings stared at their hands and limbs as the faint images grew in opacity until Sara could no longer make out the grassy field through their forms.

  Joshua took two deep, wheezing breaths before crumpling to the ground.

  Rhea fared somewhat better as she leaned down to put her hands on her knees. “He’ll be okay. Just give him a moment. And you thought that sex act you pulled on us was intense.”

  “It was that emotional?” Sara wasn’t sure how to help, but again, she had to witness the change without interfering to be sure the transfer would work for the rest of the Tobes involved.

  Rhea shivered slightly. “What you did pulled at our psyches. It was like a tremor compared to a moonquake. For a moment there, Joshua and I shared every part of our beings, every memory, every emotion. It takes a moment to regain the sense of self.”

  Joshua struggled to sit up. “So this is one of Jupiter’s moons. I had no idea leaving Earth would have this effect on me.”

  Sara bent down to look in his eyes. They were the familiar dark blue she remembered but had a look of awe. “How do you feel?”

  “Like I just flew five hundred million miles in the blink of an eye. It’s more disorienting than you might think.”

  At least it had worked that one time, but she had to know about the others. “Are you still in contact with the other Earth Tobes that made it out here? Any idea on how things went on Praxidike?”

  Joshua closed his eyes in what Sara knew was his telepathic connection to all of his kind. “Everyone made it to Taygete okay, though there were a couple of fights—nothing too unexpected. When a male and female share the same body, even if just for a moment, things can get a little confusing.”

  Sara snickered at the idea. What would it be like to have a penis even for just a moment? It wasn’t something she’d wanted to explore, but she could see how others might want to delay the separation so they could experience the feelings. But Taygete would be the easy transfer. “No word from Praxidike?”

  Rhea balled her fists and pulled her arms apart. It was a move Sara remembered from her father when he wanted to drag a Tobe out into the open—a move, she realized, he’d learned from her when she’d drawn in Earth’s Tobes to combat the Church that had kidnapped her. It seemed like a lifetime ago. Slowly, Arry took on substance.

  “That’s not fair.” Praxidike’s Reverend Mother hissed with all the venom Sara remembered from their first meeting.

  She had to defuse the situation before a conflict developed between the two tenuously connected religions. “That was my fault, Arry. I needed to know how the transfer went on your planet.”

  “Wimpy-ass Tobes think they can call me forth without so much as a lame request?”

  There was a good reason Sara had tried to keep these two apart. “Easy, Arry. Just tell me how things went, and you can get back to your people.”

  The reverend mother’s cape stopped flying around her body like an out-of-control thunderstorm. “It was nothing. You’d think Earth Tobes had never experienced sex before. I had more action fighting your blue wraith.”

  As was frequently the case, Sara suspected Arry was making light of something she chose not to deal with directly. In her previous life, Rhea had provided sexual entertainment on the pleasure moon. Between the two heads of Sara’s church, Rhea would have had far more experience. If she’d found the transfer emotionally draining, Arry would have had it twice as bad. “Just do me a favor—keep the Earth Tobes calm. Praxidike isn’t like anything they will have experienced. I’ll be on the first shuttle.”

  Given the choice, Sara would have met Lillian during her transfer via Arry. But arranging the solar system’s affairs to coincide with Sara’s timing wasn’t always possible. Henry and an Earth Tobe Sara didn’t recognize came walking hand in hand to her shuttle as it landed on Praxidike’s flaming desert. She hopped out of the craft onto the familiar landscape of burning dust. “How did you handle the transfer?”

  Henry waved his free hand at the twenty-something-year-old young man at his side. “This is Arnold. We’ve been inseparable since he arrived.”

  In a moment of panic, Sara looked down at their hands to make sure they hadn’t somehow been fused together. “But you are separate beings, right?”

  Arnold’s laugh sounded too boyish for Sara’s tastes. “Of course. All Henry meant was we’ve been enjoying each other’s company. It’s all so new to me out here, and he’d never met an Earth Tobe.�
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  Something about the young man’s voice sounded familiar. “Have we met before?”

  “You’ve met all of us. Joshua only used Rendition’s Tobes for this transfer. You pulled me into you during your destruction of the church wall.”

  It was as if she could taste his essence. Every member of that mass of Tobe life that had lent her power had become, for that moment, a part of her very being. “I never knew all your names, but now that you tell me, I do remember you.”

  His smile had an innocent quality that cut to her soul. “I was proud to have been there for you. And now I’m here for you again.”

  Sara nodded her appreciation but couldn’t miss Joshua’s not-so-subtle challenge to her perceived divinity. No one would know her better than someone who’d entered her during that confrontation. Matching Arnold up with Sara’s assistant was a direct attempt to show the boy her true nature. She needed to maintain her grasp on this shaky religion at least for a little while longer. “I hope I can count on you to follow Henry’s lead. Life out here isn’t like on Earth. We still have a lot of work to do.”

  His half smile gave her hope. “We’re all here to help. Just tell us what you need.”

  “To start with, your support, no matter how crazy my ideas might seem.”

  Arry stood in disbelief at the cave’s entrance. “You’ve lost your mind.”

  On Sara’s other side, Lillian peeked cautiously into the stinking opening between the two rocks. “I’ve never even heard of such a place. There are really Tobes in there?”

  “Tortured souls,” Arry said. “I wouldn’t call them technological beings—just the remnants after all logical thought has been removed.”

  Sara pointed through the pit of fiery lost souls. “The mainframe computer for the old Praxidike corporation is at the other end. It’s the easiest way to transfer Earth Tobes out here, but it’s also the most dangerous. I wanted you two here to give me some ideas about how we might deal with the tech-no-sanities so our Tobe refugees might pass unharmed.”