Ducking under a low-hanging lighting cable, they arrived at the closed door. Marcus recalled something that should have been obvious to him.
“That’s just a wooden door,” Marcus frowned at it, then mimed a steering-wheel sized circle in the air, “It’s not one of them heavy-duty ones, with the… you know.”
“I know,” Nathan said, “but say it anyway.”
“How’s it holding back the seawater,” Marcus quickly back-calculated, “after three and a half months?”
“Like I said, we don’t know how he did it,” Nathan shook his head, “Touch the door.”
Marcus was hesitant but briefly tapped the wooden door with his fingertips.
“It’s cold,” he now touched the door with the flat of his hand, “I mean, it’s really cold.”
“It’s frozen,” Nathan confirmed, “We think the seawater in the Arrivals Lounge must be frozen solid in there. And if that’s not weird enough…”
Marcus watched as Nathan removed the paperclip from the photocopies and gently tossed it towards the door. The metal clip hit the door and then snapped flat to the wooden surface.
“Now, when I was still in school,” Nathan pointed, “wood wasn’t magnetic.”
Marcus moved to within a few inches of the paperclip. As he watched, miniature ice crystals were beginning to form on the shiny metal.
DISPLACEMENT
13th April 2014
In the quiet sub control room, they all simply stared out at the anomaly through the bubble window, each caught in their own thoughts.
A sudden and loud warning alarm broke the silence.
“Spike!” Lucy shouted, “Temperature drop, fifty degrees!”
Mat dashed away in the direction of helm control, but Tristan couldn’t draw his eyes away from the sphere. He was aware of Lucy shouting that the temperature was still dropping, but he continued to stare.
The sphere beyond the window was expanding.
Through the cacophony of alarm noise, he forced himself to take in the details.
His assumption that the sphere was growing was based on the fact that the icy surface had expanded beyond the edges of the window frame. A normal enough assumption; things getting bigger take up more space. Except that wasn’t happening here.
The icy surface beyond the window had remained the same distance away the whole time. The curvature of the sphere was simply flattening out, becoming more like a wall of ice that extended in all directions.
“Helm’s not responding!” Mat’s voice reached him.
“Temperature… shit! Negative two-twenty!” Lucy yelled.
Tristan could still see liquid seawater between the ice anomaly and the Sea-Bass.
“Pav!” he shouted, “Cut the alarm!”
The alarm fell silent, leaving only the slight background hum of the sub’s life-support systems and the occasional metallic creak.
“The sensors can’t interpret the environment out there,” he spoke quickly, “Don’t panic, just watch!”
He hadn’t taken his eyes off the view the entire time. The ice wall beyond the window now started to bend inward. A few seconds later the view resembled looking into a deep bowl; the ice effectively wrapping around them. He felt a twisting sensation and found himself pushing his hand through the air in front of him. An action that Mat had apparently copied.
“Do you feel that?” said Mat, “It’s like the air’s… thick…”
A quiet, low-frequency and wind-like howl began to fill the control room. The concave appearance of the ice was unwrapping again, moving back towards the semblance of an infinite wall. The pitch of the sound began to climb, as did its volume.
The surface of the flat ice wall began to fold away from them and the sound became more tone-like in quality. As the ice moved back towards its previous curvature, the side of the icy sphere came back into view and Tristan felt the twisting sensation subside. The tone continued to rise in frequency until the sphere became its previous size, at which point he suddenly realised what the sound had been.
Stretched over a far longer period of time than usual, the high-pitched sonar ping finally completed its original transmission and echoed around the quiet control room.
“Mat,” said Tristan, quietly, “Nice and easy. Take us up.”
“Like you have to tell me twice…” Mat grabbed the helm controls and flicked the manoeuvring jets back on.
Tristan felt the sub shift under his feet as they began a steady ascent.
“Pav, we were recording instruments the whole time, right?”
“Yep, there’s enough here to keep us busy for weeks,” said Pavna, “Enough to prove our point. Can we go home now?”
“It’s not even been an hour,” Tristan smiled, “But, sure.”
“Yeah, about that…” Lucy’s hands were moving swiftly over the display surface, “Live sonar isn’t matching our Topography Overlay, we can’t tell which direction ‘home’ is.”
“Can you check position against our Breadcrumbs?” said Tristan.
“Already did,” Lucy frowned, “The sonar trace of the local seabed doesn’t match anything in our recent navigation history. We must have drifted.”
“I’ll reset the pattern comparator,” said Pavna, “but it could take us a while to pinpoint where we are.”
“OK,” Tristan nodded, “As soon as you get a fix, let me know?”
“I’ve got a fix,” Mat called out, “I know where we are.”
“Funny guy,” Pavna’s expression was deadpan, “Now, will you let us get on?”
Tristan knew from Mat’s expression he wasn’t joking.
“OK, Mat, how can you know that?”
“I can read,” he said, pointing to his controls.
Tristan moved over to join him.
“I brought the mano-jets back online,” Mat pointed towards the screen in front of him, “and of course the docking cameras came on too. Normally I only see these things back at the Arc, but…”
Looking at the camera feed from directly under the Sea-Bass, Tristan now saw what Mat had been looking at.
Embossed on the metallic surface of a large hatch were the words:
‘Glaucus Dock - USV3 Access.’
MILES BENTON
4th July 2076
The shiny floor tiles in the hallway of the Pittman Academy were without a scratch. Behind him the entrance doors were firmly bolted and the warm air was filled with the aroma of the school’s lunch preparations. Not that he ever needed the dining hall, Miles knew the smell was only there to provide an initial sense of comfort.
Outside the entrance doors, he was a mental passenger of the ego-morph; free to observe but not make the decisions. Inside these doors, he was free to view anything experienced by that alter-ego, or review his own fleeting moments of full consciousness.
The black and white floor tiles under his feet were arranged like a crossword puzzle, but only one entry had been filled in; ‘Assist Anna’. He glanced at the silver coin in his hand, its embossed surface shone back at him; he was safe here.
He walked along the empty corridor, glancing through the glazed door panel of a classroom. Frozen in tableau, he could see his first day; Dorothy Pittman writing on a blackboard with soft chalk, his childhood friend Maxwell raising an enthusiastic hand.
Miles continued his walk along the corridor.
The classrooms he passed were identical to each other, only their contents differed. The children within the rooms became progressively older until he reached the end of the corridor. Miles turned a corner and walked up a flight of wooden-tread stairs, at the top of which he entered a shorter corridor; this one containing identical copies of his dormitory room.
Sometimes the doors were open and he could see through to the window; streaming in the warm yellows of summer, or the colder greys of winter. As he proceeded further along, an increasing number of rooms were closed or replaced with sections of solid wall; by the time he reached the end, the environment looked like a high
-walled alley.
He pushed open the door in the end wall and entered a very short corridor with just one room off it. The door to this one room had a nameplate titled ‘R. Wild’ and the inset window was blacked-out. He paid the room no attention and pushed open the door at the opposite end of the corridor.
The sprawling, grey, open-plan office on the other side of that door appeared to contain hundreds of empty desks. Miles knew that every desk was his; the contents of each desk differed but he knew he didn’t need any of them right now.
The vast room took no time at all to cross and he found himself entering the elevator. The doors slid smoothly closed and he selected the floor he wished to visit. Physical distance had little meaning here; the time taken to reach the required floor was a reflection of mental preparation. When his preparation finished, the elevator chimed and the doors slid open. Miles stepped out of the elevator and into the zero-gravity environment of the International Space Station. The RTO module airlock lay immediately before him, beyond which he could see the lifeless body of Charles Lincoln suspended motionless in mid-air.
Miles had formed this specific memory recently, employing conscious cues to record the finer details for later analysis. Within any of these environments, time had an elasticity to it; with sufficient metathene he could isolate mere seconds and consider the event over a much longer period. However, he’d entered this sleep without such an advantage, answers may not reveal themselves so easily.
Miles looked again at the blood-drawn Exordi Nova symbol surrounding the latitude and longitude figures. The orientation of the symbol was the wrong way up, but in zero gravity Miles knew that was entirely subjective. The two sets of figures read:
‘53.17’
‘77.14’
The red, seven-segment LED displays seemed to stare back at him. His metathene-fuelled alter-ego would probably have made light work of identifying the coordinates but, despite their familiarity, the digits defied his analysis. Perhaps he needed to give the matter more time.
He turned to face his elevator. It was still incongruously intersecting the cylindrical ISS axis module, but the elevator was now the wrong way up. He immediately froze. In this environment, one of his own making, there was no redundant information. His subconscious had absorbed data and was now presenting it for interpretation.
Taking advantage of zero gravity, he manoeuvred himself to match the orientation of the elevator, then turned to face the RTO scene again.
Looking inside the RTO module, the body appeared upside-down. In contrast, the Exordi Nova symbol now appeared correctly oriented; the familiar broken ring symbol, punctuated by a dot in the upper-right gap.
The numbers at the centre of the circle were now upside-down, but force of habit was still trying to make him interpret the digits the right way up. He suddenly realised that his mind had already given him the correct method of interpreting the LED display.
The effect of inverting his point of view meant that each digit was directly readable not as a number, but as a letter. The display was not indicating a coordinate pair, it was simply delivering two words.
“Hill,” Miles read the blocky display, “Lies.”
With his last breath, Charles was implicating Valery Hill; he had intentionally used the Exordi Nova symbol as both an orientation guide and a method of drawing attention to the display. He’d purposefully entered a set of invalid geostationary guidance coordinates in the full knowledge that the digits would be duplicated by the ISS error logs. An action that would make it impossible for his assailant to erase. Miles had to admire the efficiency of the message; one word to accuse and implicate her, another word to condemn her protests.
Miles recalled these ‘calculator display’ symbiotograms from his own school days; numbers painstakingly arranged and transposed into letters for the amusement of others. Although he credited Charles with a high level of intelligence, it was unlikely that Charles could have achieved this feat under the stress of a rapidly depleting air supply. The readiness with which ‘Hill Lies’ must have leapt to mind, suggested that it was a phrase Charles was already familiar with. Miles knew that Charles and Valery had worked together for many years, it was possible that the phrase was a private joke between them. He made a note to try using the phrase in Valery’s presence later, whilst monitoring her response.
Miles turned away from Charles and entered his mind’s elevator. Here, the impression of gravity allowed him to plant both feet firmly on the floor. He selected another event to revisit; his most recent time with Anna Bergstrom in the Field generator module.
She’d highlighted the importance of certain equations that had arisen and also the need to delete them from her workstation. She’d isolated the relevant information and Miles had provided the appropriate clearance level to permanently erase the data. However, Anna had not explained why it was necessary. He hoped to revisit the conversation and see if he could gain any further insight.
Before the elevator could complete its transit, it slowed to a halt. Then gravity began to fade away. This wasn’t a new experience, it was simply the way Miles prepared to transition into consciousness. The elevator around him began to evaporate into darkness and he prepared to become the ego-morph’s passenger once more.
But something was different.
Instead of inhabiting a small blank space within his own mind, he felt his senses extending into the confines of his own body.
“Miles,” said the voice from a speaker near his ear, “Wake up.”
INDEPENDENT
DAY18 : 15FEB2073
Kate waited at the front of the queue to the infirmary. From here, she could see the central spiral staircase and several unfinished and exposed floor levels above and below her.
In its present state, sounds carried from various levels to mix with each other; the entire space an impressive echo chamber rivalling that of the Observation Deck. In fact, those who were overcome by the Observation Deck’s view would often congregate in and around this space to socialise. Kate could see this would one day become an important meeting place, she could even imagine vendors and comfortable seating areas where friends and family would gather.
She’d always had an ability to layer visual information. Even here, she could visualise the Node’s architectural plans and use them to see beyond the physical walls and floors. The irony was that if the floors actually had been completed before the Node’s departure, then this space would have simply been another set of inward-facing rooms and not nearly as impressive.
While she stared out at the view she returned her mind to layering information of a different sort. Her father’s Biomag memory card had contained no hidden code, no convenient recorded message and no table of contents that might help her order the information. Clearly he’d never intended anyone else to review the information. It was a collection of notes, simultaneous equations and images; one of which appeared to have been drawn on the dining table of the ill-fated Mark 3.
She thought back to the minutes before the Node’s departure. Above the noise of the Pittman Enterprises helicopter and the swelling crowd beyond the perimeter fence, Bradley Pittman had been boasting. He’d been telling her father that he knew all about the Mark 3 fire and how it had conveniently burned all the evidence. Perhaps the Mark 3 had been destroyed to conceal what her father had been working on with Anna.
When she considered her father’s most recent message, delivered at tremendous cost, his instruction had been to protect not destroy the information hidden within his Biomag. He’d protected the information by excluding it from the fire, now he was asking her to do the same.
Over the past few days, she’d been considering different methods of honouring his request. If the information was so dangerous, was it best to protect it by ensuring the information never saw the light of day? Or was it best to become a guiding hand to that knowledge; ensuring it was protected from abuse?
She reasoned that his message was quite specific. If his intentions had be
en for her to destroy the information, he could have saved three valuable letters by telling her ‘destroymemorycard’.
Pink hair interrupted Kate’s introspection. In the distance, Cassidy had just descended the spiral stairs with Danny Smith in tow.
When Kate had originally met Cassidy, Danny and Tyler in the basement levels of the Node, they’d wanted to take swift action against Dr. Barnes. But following her mother’s example of subverting systems from within, Kate persuaded them to take an alternative approach.
Cassidy had located a critical piece of video equipment during the decoding of the DRB slates, so Kate had used that reason to endorse Cassidy as a suitable civilian liaison officer. When Alfred Barnes hadn’t rejected her offer to help verify the Node’s personnel register, it had given them an advantage: with a slight amendment to the register, Danny could officially leave behind his status as a stowaway.
She watched as Cassidy moved away along a radial spur corridor in the direction of data processing. Danny followed a short distance behind, wearing a baseball cap that was tightly clamped to his head.
Danny had relayed the entire story of how he’d received the forehead mark and the abduction that had brought him here. The contents of the ‘Trilithon’ folder had proved equally disturbing. The folder independently confirmed her father’s warning that Bradley Pittman and Alfred Barnes had killed General Napier. It also gave greater authenticity to the other documents.
The pages outlining Archive’s attempts at a ‘Cortical Enhancement Program’ relayed that metathene could only activate the enhancement if the subject carried the appropriate genetic receptor for it. Although Danny’s mother was a carrier of the receptor, Napier had taken steps to ensure that Danny was never given metathene.
Kate had to wonder if her own recent developments were linked to having a unique receptivity to metathene; a trait possibly inherited from her parents.
“Next,” Caroline called from within the infirmary.
Kate steadied herself on her crutches and swung her weight forward through the open doorway. It was important to make the correct first impression, so she clumsily caught the tip of her left crutch on the doorframe then proceeded to overbalance. She let the crutch slip from her grasp and then fell forwards, throwing out her hand to grab the doorframe. As the crutch clattered to the floor, Caroline hurriedly approached.
Boundary (Field Book 3) Page 25
