It was one of tragedy and sadness: Immediately after she’d sent her devastating note, flaunting the fact of his unborn daughter, she’d had a change of heart, deciding to return to him.
Having moved to a frontier dwelling out past the boundary zones, telling no one where she’d gone, she had not known of his search for her. Jessica had felt so alone when Freddie told her he was going to space; the boundary zone seemed like a logical place to feel those feelings.
She was surprised to find that she was pregnant, and at first it had made her even madder than before. This, she said, was what had sparked the letter. After she’d sent it, though, the guilt over doing such a thing fostered her decision to come back to him.
Out in NEZ, the volcanic-like country provided her with many meditative walks. On one of her walks she had been rehearsing in her head for the reunion she imagined. Then it happened.
At this point in her story, Jessica went quiet, leaving Fred to listen instead to the whispering falls. After a moment he panicked, thinking she’d drifted away. “JESSIE,” he hollered into the hibernation suit helmet. “Sì, Freddie, I am here,” came the reply, and he was able to breathe again.
“What happened when you were walking, Jess?” Fred wanted her to keep talking; her voice was healing him on the deepest level imaginable.
“Well, my dear Freddie, can you not guess? How is it you think I am here with you now?”
Something did not compute for the scientist; a conflict that he was unwilling to wrap his brain around. “I do not know, Jessie; I am just so happy we are together again. Uniti.”
She was silent for a time. Calmed by her assurance, he did not panic; she was with him. “Freddie, my love, we are not really together. I am not exactly with you in the way you would like; the way I too would like.”
Suddenly, he wanted to ask no more questions, he wanted no more information. But she continued, “You see, love, I fell through a thin crust of rock on that last day, before I was to return to you… It was a long way down, Freddie.”
“No…” he resisted the information.
“Yes, mio amore, I did not survive that fall. Sono morto.”
“No…, Jessie…, no…”
“It’s alright, my sweet love, I am fine now.”
“Oh Jessie.” Tears welled out of his eyes, rolling down his face to be re-collected and recycled by the hibernation suit. And then it struck him harder: “Il bambina, Jess, il bambina…”
A haunting note of deep sadness crept into her already ghostly voice. “Yes; I lost her that day. We lost her.”
Fred’s tears turned to sobs. “Mia figlia…”
Jessica’s voice was hushed now, letting him grieve. His grief was a good thing: it was an unchaining of his soul; something so long held inside, pent up. It was important for what was to come. As emotion subsided, Jessica took an initiative that only she and her ghostly community could take.
Freddie, we have work to do.
CHAPTER 42
EVENT: DAY 14, 0200 UT
She swore aloud.
Zhyanka was helping her granddaughter with her Algebra when a certain tone sounded discreetly in her ear. The child turned, looking at her with a puzzled expression. The twelve-year old did not understand or speak the ancient language of Russia. What little Anna Lee did understand, though, was that something had upset Momaw.
Momaw was the name that Anna Lee, at age two, had coined for her grandmother. As a toddler, her delicate mouth had not been able to form the title, Grandma. Even Zhyanka’s own daughter had adopted the loving eponym, completely dropping mother from the vocabulary.
Zhyanka adored it. In these later years, after having lived the life of a hard-edged scientist, competing in that world, it was a rebirth. She was happily beyond following rigid expectations; finished with formulaic methods of discovery and presentation; done with those hard-edged men and women. Rid of the military.
Her lovely granddaughter gave the gift of seeing Zhyanka in a way that even her daughter’s love could not emulate.
Zhyanka herself could look in the mirror at her own reflection—a slight frame that belied her character strength; an intensely expressive, square-jawed, round, lined face, now framed by silver-white hair—and even she could not see what young Anna Lee saw. Momaw.
The softening of her heart, which the girl’s love created for her, was rudely brought up short by the tone in her ear as it sounded again. She refrained from using any further explicative, instead saying to the girl in her deeper, Russian inflected voice, “My Little Flower, it is nothing to do with you. Only a summons in my ear from my former employer.”
“BUMP, Momaw?”
“Da, my Flower.” She smiled warmly, the child’s use of the slang bringing a better humor. “It is BUMP.”
“Okay, I can practice solving the problems. Could you check me later?”
“Of course, my ditya.”
Anna Lee slipped a bit from her mature posture, as she whined. “Momaw. I’m not a child,” sounding ever-like the child Zhyanka would always see her as.
“Yes, but of course you are not. But you are still my Flower, no?”
“Oh yeah, I like that name. I wish it was my name.”
“If it vas your name, then it would not be my name for you, yes?”
The little brunette-haired girl looked down, bringing a hand to her mouth in a pose of trying to work out just what that might mean.
“You think on that, and do math, I will take care of my business.”
Anna turned her large brown eyes back to Zhyanka and nodded maturely. The tone sounded once again in Zhyanka’s ear.
* * *
“I am unavailable,” she tried to insist. She’d finally managed to get an actual person on vidiphone. Unfortunately, the man wasn’t much of an upgrade from the previous AI personality.
“Your orders are clear, Lieutenant Tasimov, report at ten-hundred hours tomorrow.”
“This is outrageous. I am retired military. I haf no military obligation beyond my own discretion. I need not to respond to this order in any way.” Her Russian accent was more pronounced in her anger, though she kept from slipping into a stream of Russian curses.
The man’s gaze unfocused for a fraction of a second before he said, “You’ve been reinstated. Full military pay. Full military duty.”
“Hang da pay, you yagadeetsee. You can take your orders and stick them there.”
“Madam, I do not speak that language, but I can see the translation here. Your cursing will not change anything. If you are not at the Station at ten-hundred hours, then you will be subject to arrest.”
His cool arrogance was enraging. She took several deep breaths. “Who is commanding officer?”
Another quick ocular drift, then a squint. “Uh, a General Hanson.”
The name meant nothing to her. “Transfer me to him,” she demanded.
“It is late on the Station, Lieutenant.” Not quite a flat refusal.
She mustered her most threatening tone, laying the accent on heavily. “You will transfer me. I am who suffers greater inconvenience.”
It was enough. “One moment please…” His image was replaced by a visual of Dock Toroid Alpha, as seen from the earth-side of the station. Fully sunlit at this hour, it sailed through space on its earth-moored tethers, like a rock in a sling. The backdrop of stars moved slowly past, visible as well through its doughnut-hole center. Its beauty was lost on her; for Zhyanka, it emanated coldness like a Siberian waste. She shivered.
In contrast, heat radiated from the blood that had rushed to Zhyanka’s face, and she took the momentary privacy to compose herself, running cool hands over her forehead and down her cheeks.
Instead of the general, the same bland-faced operator returned. “I’m sorry, the general is unavailable. Would you like to leave a message?” The man’s tone was one of numb
ing boredom.
“I do not believe.”
“Very well, have a good night…”
“Do not dare disconnect this line. I will speak to general’s CO.” She inflected her request with an intense energy.
“Oh, I don’t know about that. Admiral Swan, the Station Commander, would be his CO. I can’t just connect you.”
She was losing what was left of her patience with this peon. “If you cannot, you will transfer me to someone who can.”
“Please hold…” As his face once again disappeared, she began to feel that it might be hopeless. She’d taken her retirement option because she was tired of the politics, tired of the der mo, the bullshit.
It hadn’t been a difficult decision to make. Anna Lee needed more time than her mother had to give. Zhyanka was available. A much more rewarding past-time than her science career had turned into.
Once upon a time it had been a dream job. She’d been up to the jostle and jockeying for credit and position. She had seen it as a challenge from the start. But then, it never changed. The years went by with amazing discoveries—what-a-time-to-be-alive discoveries, but the shadow of small-mindedness was ever-present.
Zhyanka Tasimov made her mark. Her name was in and on prestigious papers and books, here and there. It just wasn’t enough to make it worth the struggle any longer. So she quit.
Her colleagues laughed at first, thinking it a joke. As they realized her seriousness, they pretended to be sorry. She saw right through them. Working with them for so many years, she knew they wanted the field to themselves. More than they valued any other colleague or friendship, they valued unshared credit.
They could have it.
“How may I direct your call?” The disturbingly real, yet unreal face of the androgynous AI avatar reformed in the projection. Apparently she had intimidated the former operator.
She groaned and said, “Connect me to Admiral Swan.”
The AI did not hesitate or issue a vacant gaze, it made no attempt to be any more personable than the live operator. “Admiral Swan will be unavailable until ten-hundred hours, tomorrow.”
How very unhelpful. In frustration and disgust, Zhyanka terminated the connection to the station and plucked her credit chip out of her daughter’s phone.
“Call Samantha Tasimov,” she spoke to the device. Her daughter had taken her mother’s maiden name as a matter of pride, when she separated from Anna Lee’s father.
The connection clicked and Samantha’s face hovered. “Yes, Momaw, what is it? I’m on my way into a meeting.”
Zhyanka was careful of her accent, she did not want her daughter to see that BUMP had upset her. “Yes Samya, well, I have been summoned to Toroid station. What sitter do I call?”
“I’ll handle it when I get home, Momaw. When do you leave?”
“Now, I am afraid. So sorry dear, I had no notice of this myself.” Her inflection slipped as she confessed, “I am furious. Somevun’s ear ees going to bleed.”
They worked things out and Zhyanka packed a case quickly. As she was ready to leave, the sitter arrived. Zhyanka kissed Anna Lee goodbye. “Be good, my Little Flower.”
It was everything she could do make the various connections to get up to DTA by the assigned time.
CHAPTER 43
EVENT: DAY 12, 1100 UT
“I’ve come to you many times since I died.”
Fred listened to Jessica and wondered why he’d never sensed her presence. Maybe she could not get through the haze of pain that had shrouded my life?
While the cold, hard facts of his reality did not line up well with the esoteric one that she unveiled, he happily suspended disbelief.
He had been somehow altered by his run-in with the force that had possessed him, and she had been able to find a way into his consciousness. Jessie said that she sensed that she could be with him without worrying that the bond would be broken, or dissolved.
Fred was filled with deep relief when she said so. Sobering from his nightmare, enough to realize the miracle of this connection, he had begun to worry that it would abruptly end. Like waking from the best dream he’d ever had.
“Freddie, we are hoping we can take some kind of action against the thing that is haunting you.” Jessica had convinced Fred to open up a bit about his terrifying experience. It had not been easy. Aside from the natural resistance to reliving the events, he had already repressed them so utterly that recollection was difficult.
“Jessie, no, this thing is pericoloso. I am afraid of losing you again. It could kill you.” Fred didn’t realize what he’d just said.
She didn’t respond immediately, then stated the obvious. “Freddie, Amore, I am dead, sweetheart.”
“Oh. Yeah.” Fred didn’t address her point beyond his brief acknowledgement.
She continued. “Anyway, Freddie, we think we can have some sort of impact on these things, maybe, with your help…”
He interrupted. “Things? There are more than one?” Fred could feel the goose bumps rise on his body, hidden inside the suit.
“Afraid so. We are not sure how many, though. They come and go. Appear and disappear. Like fantasmi.”
The irony was lost on Fred. “But they are not ghosts, Jessie, they are deadly.”
“Yes, dear, they are. Some think they may be dangerous to us as well…”
Fred broke in, “You keep saying ‘us’ and ‘we,’ who are you talking about?”
“Well,” she started to answer, when a new voice made itself heard in his head. It also was a familiar one. A man’s voice.
“Hello, Federico.”
“Uncle Angelo?” Disbelieving, he did not mistake the voice. “What are you doing here?” On Eighre Masc, Fred had not found new friends within the whispering voices of the Ghost Falls—he had found old friends, family. They were helping to bring him back from the precipitous edge of insanity. It was a mixed blessing since the conversation centered on the thing he’d been doing his best to avoid.
Jessica was trying to enlist his help to create a plan to deal with these entities. And he really didn’t want to talk about it. It was like rubbing dirt into a raw wound.
“Well, my boy, that’s a hard question to answer, considering that I’m not exactly here after all.” He chuckled, and his words were tinted with laughter, light-hearted, as if he had not a care in the universe, despite the topic of discussion.
“What do you mean…? Oh. Right. Uh, when did you… I mean, I saw you when I was in the hospital… how are you?” he asked weakly. His uncle just chuckled again with the good humor that Fred remembered from his childhood.
“Freddie,” said Jessica, asserting her need to explain more, “as I was saying, we don’t know how dangerous these things might be to those of us not occupying a body, but the military has put humanity in great jeopardy. The creature, or whatever you want to call it, is being used to somehow move the military’s ships through space. It’s a real mess. From the way you have described the sensations you had while it was in control of your body, the one that attacked you appears to have acted in a sentient way. That particular behavior supports some theories of sentience.
“Some of us over here are victims of the military trials that went on when these things were first discovered. In that group, there is one new member of the dead, too. Her name is Samantha Geoff.
“She went through the same thing that you went through, my love, but she was unfortunate enough to end up in the military’s hands in the aftermath. You think you have it bad. They messed her up so severely that she still does not talk, comatoso; even on this side, where she is free of the torture.
“She is not the only person to end this way. So far, you are nearly the only person to have been given a chance to recover from the possession event. Some of the scientists were beginning to think that insanity was an unavoidable consequence. With your response, though,
they now feel that the military’s treatment methods have actually assured the resulting insanity and death.
“In any case, all BUMP’s ships are powered by these. Even yours, which is made by the military, had one of those things trapped inside.”
“Mi fa cagare!” A jolt went through his nerves as she revealed this to him, at the idea that one of these things had ridden shotgun with him all along. “Wait, you said ‘had’? Past tense?”
Jessica politely ignored his inelegant outburst. “Yes. This is what I am trying to tell you. The thing that attacked you acted to free two of its own from the confinement that had been holding them and controlling their effects. That behavior, in the minds of our scientists, has irrefutably reclassified the phenomenon as a reasoning being, instead of just a semi-predictable force.
The salty pirate bitch that was killed as you escaped, she witnessed the actions of the entity. She found herself all at once free of its influence… when her head was cut off.” Jessica said the last with a tone of clear disgust. “Even in her newly acquired, incorporeal form she felt threatened. She said that the creature seemed to be chasing her retreating consciousness as she was ripped from her body. She claims that it returned to the ships after momentarily pursuing her, and did something that allowed two more of the creatures to appear. She did not stick around after that. They did not come after her.”
“What about the rest of those pirates that got… sucked out?” It was the best way that Fred could think to describe what he’d been forced to watch. His stomach knotted at the recollection.
“None of those types of victims, when they died completely, have ever shown up on this side. It really may be that their souls are being devoured. The military has regrown some of the fetuses, but there is no way to know what the spiritual component is to these people. I mean, whether they have a Soul or not.
“For good first-hand accounts, we have only the three: yours, the pirate bitch’s, and the third was a scientist from the early experiments. He has… sort of disappeared. The only true survivor of an attack is the person that is left after the things have… fed—just the hosts, like you and the girl. The fetuses live for a short time afterward. Longer if they are in a survival suit of some kind. Otherwise the carnage is complete.”
Parallel Extinction (Extinction Encounters Book 1) Page 23
