Dark Matter

by S. W. Ahmed

  A time had come, however, when she had fallen out of grace with her sister. Stripped of her position and dishonored, she had been charged with treason and was to spend the rest of her life in a virtual prison. But after a couple of years of imprisonment under incredibly harsh conditions, she had found a way to break out of the virtual realm and out of the Virtual Translation Grid altogether. Since then, she had been a fugitive out here in the real world. As miserable as it was here, it was still better than the prison she had left behind.

  Unfortunately, she had no means at her disposal to go anywhere else. Going back into the Grid was not an option, for she would be imprisoned again right away. Leaving this planet and the Empire altogether was not an option either – there were no docked ships nearby, and she didn’t have the technical knowledge to build a ship by herself. Her area of expertise was defense, after all, not space travel.

  This was the reason for her interest in Sibular’s background. Enemy or not, it was clear that one of the best space travel engineers from the most technologically advanced society in the galaxy would be a useful asset for her to have in finding a way off this planet.

  “So would you care to tell me how you fell out of grace with the Empress?” Marc asked, puffing as he finally caught up with her. She had stopped in the middle of the street, as if to survey the landscape of ruins around her.

  She lifted her hand, motioning for him to be silent. “Hear that?”

  “Hear what?” He stood still and strained his ears, but he really couldn’t hear anything.

  “Drones. Approaching from that direction.” She pointed to her left.

  Sure enough, several seconds later, he saw three specks emerging from the dark clouds in the gray sky, heading towards them at high speed. “What do we do?” he asked nervously.

  Zorina seemed calm. “Nothing, don’t move at all. Not even to scratch your nose, not even when they come right near you. It’s our best hope of survival.”

  Marc did as he was told – he froze. As the drones came closer, he had to fight extra hard against his natural instinct to run and look for cover.

  The drones stopped right in front of Marc and Zorina, and began circling around them. The humming noise of their engines was deafening to Marc’s ears. But just as it seemed like they were about to fire, they turned and sped off into the distance.

  Waiting until the drones were out of sight, Zorina relaxed and said, “Okay, we can move now.”

  “Only too gladly,” he thought, thankful to have escaped death once again.

  They began walking again.

  “See those towers on top of that hill?” she said, pointing at the huge structures in the distance that he had seen earlier.

  “Yes, I was going to ask you about them. What are they?”

  “They are the Grid’s local transmission towers for Krasia. They transmit energy waves to all Volonans in the city connected to the Grid, waves that contain both the data about their individual worlds and the necessary nourishment to keep them alive and healthy.”

  He was amazed. “Must be some kind of waves! So these towers exist everywhere?”

  “Absolutely everywhere – around this planet, around all other inhabited planets and moons, all the way to the furthest corners of the Empire. Volonan ships traveling across space have their own local transmitters as well, even when they’re outside the Empire.”

  Several minutes later, she stopped again, this time at the entrance to what had probably once been a public square. Up ahead, he saw a structure, or at least what was left of it. Its base was still there, a gigantic hemisphere made of a bluish stone, with the flat side facing up. But laid out across the flat surface was nothing more than an untidy heap of colorful pebbles.

  “This is where I last saw your Mendoken friend, in front of this monument,” Zorina said. “I have to warn you, though. The sight isn’t pretty.”

  Marc strained his eyes to look around the monument. He was shocked to see a number of dead Mendoken bodies on the ground. As he slowly walked up to them, his shock soon turned to horror. There weren’t just a few bodies, there were hundreds of them, scattered all over the large square. There were flies in the air, buzzing around the rotting corpses, as well as vulture-like birds flying low in the sky. The stench was unbearable, far worse than the already horrid smell hanging everywhere in the air.

  His horror soon turned to anger. “This is mass murder!” he screamed. “Why would anybody do this?”

  She walked up behind him, her expression filled with sorrow. “This is where the imperial authorities must have brought all the Mendoken who survived the attack, including you. They probably hooked all of you into the Grid and left. Then they began monitoring your activities in your virtual worlds. But once they realized that most of these Mendoken weren’t of any use to them, they killed them all. All, that is, except for you and your friend. You must have wandered off from this area at some point while still in your virtual world, but your friend stayed behind.”

  “But why kill them?” he cried. “What crime could they possibly have committed against the Empire as helpless prisoners?”

  “The Empire never keeps foreign prisoners. For security reasons, to make sure no foreigner ever gets hold of our virtual technology.”

  He shook his head in disbelief. “This is terrible, it’s barbaric!”

  “I’m not trying to defend what’s happened here – I think it’s horrible too. But there are reasons why we’ve become so protective and suspicious of others over time.”

  Marc was about to retort, when he noticed a figure standing among all the dead bodies. “Sibular!” he yelled, running up to the figure.

  It was Sibular alright. His thin eye and wide mouth were clearly identifiable, and he was still wearing his brown hat.

  “He can’t hear you,” Zorina said, catching up with Marc. “His mind is far away.”

  Sure enough, Sibular looked dazed and sleepy, like all the Volonans with their minds in their virtual worlds.

  “How come there are no guards anywhere?” Marc asked, surprised.

  “No need,” she said. “Once he’s attached to the Grid, he has no means of escape. And if he needs to be killed, the Grid takes care of it in the virtual realm. If his mind is shut down, his body dies soon after.”

  “But I got out of the Grid.”

  “And you’re one of the very few I’ve ever heard of that have. The imperial authorities would never have imagined that you could break out by yourself, so they wouldn’t have bothered guarding you either. Little did they know they were in for a surprise!” She stared at Marc. “There must be something unique about you humans.”

  “Yes, our so-called ‘imperfect nature’.”

  She smiled. “Imperfection? Far from it! It takes tremendous amounts of willpower and inner strength to break out of the Grid, far beyond those possessed by most of my people or even your Mendoken friends here!”

  Marc sneered. “Is that why we’re still shrouded in one of those silupsal filters?”

  “You are? Hmm.” She looked surprised, and seemed to think for a moment. “How old is your civilization?”

  “What does it matter? If being around for billions of years only leads to actions like this?” He pointed at the Mendoken bodies all around.

  “Well, we’re not necessarily any better or more civilized than you, you know, we’ve probably just been around a lot longer. At the end of the day, that’s really what silupsal filters are all about.”

  He fell quiet after that statement. “What about you?” he eventually asked her. “How did you get out of your virtual prison?”

  “Well, in my case, as a Volonan, I consciously knew that I was in a virtual world. And given my unique position among the imperial authorities, I had detailed knowledge of the Grid’s architectural limitations. I used it to my advantage to find a way out. But it still wasn’t easy, I can assure you. I’m not sure I’d be able to get out a second time, if I were once again connected.”

  “Th
en how will he get out?” Marc asked, staring at Sibular.

  Zorina looked pensive. “He won’t be able to by himself, that much I can tell you. The Mendoken may be our enemies, but in many ways they’re like us. Your friend here won’t want to leave his perfect surroundings of his own accord. The fact that he has no idea he’s connected to the Grid or how it works won’t help him either.”

  “So what can we do?”

  “There’s only one way. Going into his virtual world and convincing him to get out. And you’re the one who’s going to do it.”

  Marc was alarmed. “Why me? Won’t they find me if I reconnect to the Grid?”

  “Same is true for me, isn’t it? But given your track record, I’m pretty sure you’ll have a better shot than me at staying focused and remembering your goal once you’re in the Grid. Besides, Sibular already knows you. He has no idea who I am. Furthermore, you two were brought here at the same time and for the same reasons. His virtual world is likely very similar to the one you were in. Since you convinced yourself to get out of yours, you have a better chance of convincing him to do the same.”

  Marc thought about his own virtual world experience, still vivid in his memory. “But I was back on Earth. Why would Sibular…?”

  “Details such as location are not important, young human! It’s the bigger picture that is. If you two were the only prisoners from those Mendoken ships that were kept alive in the Grid, it could only have been for an important reason. They wanted some critical information from both of you, information that they figured out only the two of you had.”

  “What information?”

  “Based on what you’ve already told me, I think I might have a good idea.”

  He raised his eyebrows questioningly.

  “They wanted to find out how you could possibly have penetrated our border defenses,” she said. “In other words, they wanted to get their hands on your consar technology, so that they could retaliate in kind against the Mendoken.”

  He shook his head.

  “Oh, come on!” she exclaimed, looking irritated. “You still think that we already have it?”

  “Some proof that you don’t would be nice. I’ve already seen the proof that you do. Very dramatically too, I might add.”

  “Proof, eh?” she said, flapping her ears. “You don’t need proof. Just use your common sense. Tell me this – what is it you were doing in your virtual world? Other than living in harmony in the home of your dreams and making love to your mate, of course. That’s just the standard stuff to keep you happy and complacent.”

  He thought about it. “I was working as a professor, at a university on Earth,” he said. “I was famous, and successful.”

  “In what?” she asked right away.

  “In, uh, wormhole research.”

  “And what exactly are ‘wormholes’?”

  Marc could see what she was getting at. He and Sibular had probably known more about consar technology and its intricate details than any of the other Mendoken on board the three attacking ships.

  Zorina went on. “The imperial authorities let you live in your perfect virtual world, and lured you into working on your favorite topic of research. They observed you closely, hoping to learn about consar technology. Any one of the individuals you interacted with in your virtual world might have been an imperial spy, appearing to you as a loved one or a friend, while others may just have been figments of your imagination. Virtual worlds are usually composed of both real and imaginary characters, and to the untrained eye it’s impossible to tell one from the other.”

  Marc dreaded to think that the virtual Iman he had repeatedly made love to might actually have been a Volonan spy.

  “In any case,” she added, “tell me why the imperial authorities would go to such trouble, against all known prohibitions about keeping foreign prisoners, all to try to discover something they already know and have?”

  He was silent, trying to figure things out in his head. If not the Volona, then who could possibly have been behind the consar attacks on Mendoken territory? Something strange was afoot here, he just didn’t know what. He was suddenly reminded of his visions of death and destruction across the galaxy.

  “What I’m wondering is how far the imperial authorities got in their quest before you escaped,” Zorina said.

  Marc snapped out of his thoughts. “Probably not very far in my case. I was already rebelling against my virtual status before I had spent much time revealing the details of my research. But what I’m wondering is how far they’ve gotten with him.” He nodded his head towards Sibular.

  “Well, the longer we wait, the further they’ll get. Chances are they’ll kill your friend here as soon as they have all the information they’re looking for.” She paused. “You wanted proof, right? You’ll see for yourself what he’s up to, once you go into his virtual world. Then you’ll have your proof, I guarantee you.”

  Soon after, Marc was ready. He and Zorina lifted Sibular onto the base of the hemisphere, and laid him flat and face up on the surface. Marc then laid himself down facing the opposite direction, the tip of his head almost touching Sibular’s.

  As Marc had learned from Zorina, the way the Volona connected an individual to the Grid was through a small connector implanted at the top of the head. He had felt the top of his own head and had found a slight bump there. Sibular’s head also had one, beneath his hat. Sibular’s connector, of course, was still active. Marc’s was not – it had shut off the moment he had broken out of the Grid.

  There were only two ways to reactivate a connector that had been shut off. One was by direct reconnection to the Grid, which could only be done by imperial authorities with the relevant devices. The other way was to bring it into very close contact with another active connector. The latter way would allow an individual to join another’s virtual world and be a part of it. This technique had been used a lot in the past when the Volona had first been experimenting with virtual technology, but was hardly ever used anymore. Nowadays, every Volonan was already in his or her own virtual world, and privacy laws also prohibited one Volonan from directly entering another’s virtual world without that Volonan’s express consent.

  “Now remember, you can’t afford to spend too much time in the Grid, or the imperial authorities will detect you and imprison you once again before you know it,” Zorina said. “And this time, they’ll probably take more precautions to make sure you don’t break out again. Are you ready?”

  “Ready as I’ll ever be,” he said, closing his eyes.

  She lifted both Marc’s and Sibular’s heads, and gently pulled them towards each other until their tips touched.

  Marc felt the tip of his head suddenly turn cold, very cold. Like a thick liquid, the biting cold spread all over his head, and then down the neck to the rest of his body. The sensation was almost identical to the one he had felt when crossing from his virtual world to reality through the mirror earlier that day. Zorina had told him to stay absolutely calm and stationary during this phase, and that was exactly what he did. The cold liquid eventually drained out through his legs and feet, and only after it was all gone did he open his eyes.

  He found himself standing in the center of a huge circular hall. The domed ceiling was transparent, letting in the brilliant sunlight from above through the cloudless blue sky. The air was cool and dry, and above all, smelled good – a welcome change from the hot, humid air in the world he had just left behind. The hall was filled, not with humans or Volonans, but with Mendoken. Thousands and thousands of them, standing in rising rows against the wall, completely surrounding the arena in the center where he stood.

  But he wasn’t alone in the arena. Standing in between stacks of various types of equipment was the one Mendoken he was looking for. Sibular was the center of attention in the hall, presenting something to the crowd of spectators all around him. There was also a group of seven Mendoken standing in a line in the arena in front of Sibular, facing him and listening intently to his presentatio
n. Marc recognized the third one from the left as Osalya, the Imgoerin’s top aide. Which could only mean that the figure standing in the middle, with his black hat and shining armor, was the Imgoerin himself. This presentation was obviously very important.

  Marc tried to listen to the speech, but heard nothing other than the soft humming tone that the Mendoken used to communicate with each other. He walked slowly towards Sibular, trying to pay no attention to the crowd. None of this was real, he kept telling himself.

  But as he walked, he suddenly felt very drowsy. His thoughts began to wander, trying to make him lose focus. Zorina had warned him that this was going to happen, and that it would happen repeatedly. Once the Volonan authorities detected his presence, this was how they would try to imprison him again in the Grid.

  As soon as Marc felt the wave of sleepiness coming, he slapped and pinched himself a few times, just as Zorina had told him to do. This made him alert again, reminding him of where he was and that he was here for a specific mission. As he came closer to Sibular, he recognized the stacks of equipment. They were consar travel instruments, most of them Mendoken, but some of them also looking awfully similar to the instruments from his own lab at Cornell.

  “No doubt, this is the proof that Zorina wanted me to see,” he thought. Here was Sibular, living the Mendoken definition of a perfect, blissful life. He was doing the ultimate service to the entire Mendoken civilization – teaching his people how to defend themselves, with the very weapon they believed their archenemy had successfully been using against them. For a Mendoken like Sibular, there could be no greater accomplishment, no greater pride, than to selflessly benefit his people in so major a way.

  But what Sibular didn’t realize was that none of this was real. It was all a trick, a plot by the Volonan imperial authorities to learn his secret. They were watching him closely in his virtual world, recording every move he was making, every word he was uttering, and wouldn’t stop until they had the complete formula for consar travel.