by Tobias Wade
“It’s the Quasi Crystal…” Amore said, a dreadful low weariness in her voice. “The Quasi Crystal doesn’t want us to land yet, even though it PROMISED us that we would have been finished with this nonsense ages ago.”
“I’m not sure if I can help this time,” Draith said. “Until I can find a grand unified theory beneath the Quasi Crystal and the laws of physics, I will not be able to answer what is going on. I will meditate on increasing my mental capacity again. Using photon gates for computation instead of chemical signals should allow me to figure it out.”
The crew of the Galactic Express fell into a tense silence while Draith walked to the corner of the room and plopped down cross-legged upon the floor.
“Is everyone, erm, exactly okay with him doing that?” Sali asked. “What about you, Amore? Why do you look so uncomfortable? Is there something you don’t want Draith to figure out?”
“Mind your own business,” Amore snapped. “I’m going to lie down for a while too. Harris is in charge, don’t disturb me. I’ll get up when I’m ready.”
Amore strode from the room, slightly tripping as her weary feat stumbled over one another. The filth from walking barefoot had conspired with the sweat of the jungle to rob much of her charm. Her hair was frazzled and tangled, her makeup smeared, and a fair bit of her dress was torn where the buggers had gotten hold of her. None of that was her fault though. Surely Elden was to blame for not bringing her things. But then again, if Elden was being honest with himself, he knew it was ridiculous to think that way. Elden had also seen Draith create the new engine with his own eyes, which meant he’d just caught Amore lying about the Divine Crystal teleporting them here. Not to mention the fact that they had yet to have that conversation she’d promised about whether Draith was really going to be their child!
“Do you want to talk about Amore?” Sali asked.
Elden jumped. He realized that he had been quietly fuming and chomping his jaw as he’d continued to stare out the door she’d closed behind her.
“I think…” Elden mused, gazing across the familiar stars. It was hard to feel angry at anything with a view like that. “When we were all kneeling before the Quasi Crystal, and the Grand Shaman asked us to make a wish… I think I made a mistake. The jungle wasn’t even all that bad.”
“Even when the buggers were after us?”
They all involuntarily turned to Draith who sat quietly in the corner, his inner workings utterly incomprehensible from the outside.
“It’s not fair to hold that against him now,” Ramnus said. “He didn’t know any better.”
“I think he’s inspirational,” Elden agreed. “How does one begin to take up a hobby like calculations?”
“What’s the point of even trying?” Sali asked, her uneasy eyes never quite leaving the boy. “You’re never going to catch up with him. The smarter he gets, the smarter he will figure out how to make himself. It never ends. He’s been altering himself for less than twenty-four hours, and he already knows more about physics than I do.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself, Sali,” Elden said. “You already know more than I ever will.”
“It’s not my ego talking,” she asserted. “I uploaded everything humans have ever published on the topic, and the wormhole engine still felt like magic to me. Doesn’t that frighten you?”
“What’s the point when there are so many other, closer things to be frightened of all the time?” Elden asked.
“I’m not frightened. He seems like he has a kind soul,” Ramnus said. “I’m happy for him, just like I’m happy for all the scientists at Morolox who did things I couldn’t comprehend.”
“What if he decides he’d be happier without us? It wouldn’t have occurred to me that empty space was being created in front of the ship. He doesn’t think like we do.”
“That’s a bit hypocritical, don’t you think?” Elden asked. “Being a Cyber is all about improving yourself. You’re just jealous that he’s better and faster, and doesn’t need a screwdriver. Draith is going to see Pria from a whole new perspective.” They all stared at Draith, watching his head slowly expand before their eyes. The skin of his face moved unevenly, as if the bones in his skull were separating and reconnecting to make more room.
"Can you even imagine what life could be like with him fixing the place up?”
“I can’t stop imagining it,” Sali said somberly. “Hey kid, while you’re at it, see if you can’t do something about those yellow eyes before we land. Nobody is going to be your friend with lookers like that.”
“I know. Humans can be cruel sometimes,” off handedly. “Someone ought to do something about that.”
“Ought is a funny word…” Sali worried aloud.
“It’s nobody’s fault,” Draith continued. “Poor things have so many wires crossed, it’s a wonder they can get up in the morning.”
“Have you tried brushing your teeth in rum?” Harris Johnson asked, standing from his chair to stretch.
“Shouldn’t you be flying the ship, Captain?” Sali asked witheringly.
“What’s the point? We aren’t getting anywhere. I just thought I’d lie down and have a nap…”
“You should stay,” Ramnus said. “Draith will figure it out soon.”
“Well let me know when soon gets here then. Hey, where do you suppose Amore went to lie down?”
“Because you don’t want to disturb her?” Elden asked hopefully.
“Whatever helps you sleep at night, kid.” Harris slapped him on the shoulder as he passed by.
Elden spluttered sadly to himself, turning away to admire the stars. He lost himself in a trance looking inward, and again none of it seemed quite real. Why should a fool like him even bother trying to explain that to the others though? Amore was imbued with divine power, Harris an experienced Captain, Sali had sophisticated machinery in her brain, and Draith was an alien being of absurd power. Why waste time distracting them with the silly theory that they were still asleep? It would be best if he just let them figure things out while Elden did the only thing he was ever good for: not getting in the way.
“It doesn’t make any sense,” Draith spoke at last. “I can see everything, all the way down to the fundamental pattern which gives rise to us both. I can see the smallest vibration in space, and understand how it becomes tangled with itself to form the smallest particle of matter. And yet I cannot find a force is this universe capable of producing the power of the Quasi Crystal. There is no way to engineer our way around magic. Perhaps our new friends can tell us more about where they came from.”
The vessel hadn’t come from anywhere. It hadn’t chased them, it hadn’t caught them, it was simply sailing toward them dead on, completely unapologetic about its own impossibility. Where once was empty space now gleamed the sleek flank of a silver craft. Written on the side of the space ship were the words: “Your Tax Dollars At Work”, the official slogan of the Humanist Defense Agency.
“Surrender or be destroyed!” blared the speakers on the Galactic Express.
“That doesn’t sound like the sort of thing the law enforcement would say,” Sali said incredulously.
“The previous warning was your last warning. This current message that sounds like a warning is not, in fact, a warning, as that has already been received. This is instead a declaration that said warnings have been appropriately issued, and notarized, and filed within the administration of necessary defense action—”
“Just fire already!” Malberry’s voice snapped. Only two people recognized that voice. Sali didn’t know why a Senator would be on board a Defense vessel, but it wasn’t high on her list of priorities at the moment. The other was Amore, who was currently far too busy simulating what the whole simulation should have been designed for in the first place.
Twin beams of brilliant blue did their level best to blast the Galactic Express to smithereens. There wasn’t much time to react. Fortunately, it wasn’t the speed of the laser that Draith was racing against, but rather th
e second and a half it took between the word “fire” and the actual pressing of the button. Draith’s new cerebral photon gates made this amount of time seem dreadfully excessive, and gave him the chance to catch up on all of the sitcoms of the twentieth century before dealing with the laser.
Suddenly—or so it seemed to everyone with old fashioned brains—great shimmering walls of blue energy rose around the Galactic Express on all sides. The laser beams exploded across the shell like fireworks in a shower of harmless sparks.
“Are we having fun yet?” Draith asked, an obscure reference from a television show which everyone still understood as it had remained popular for well over a thousand years.
“We’ve got shields?” Elden gaped. “That would have been nice to know when Draith was attacking us in the first place!”
“We didn’t. But we ought to, so I made it happen,” Draith replied. “All you had to do was to alter the fundamental code to excite the electromagnetic field around the ship.”
The Humanist Vessel was operating under Malberry’s direct supervision. Malberry believed the laws of physics were good enough for keeping everyone else in order, but that didn’t mean those laws had to apply the same to him. That is why he didn’t bother to approach the Galactic Express, preferring to cheat by docking his ship directly alongside them without bothering with all that intervening space.
The doors blew inward without warning. At least a dozen Masks stormed through, blasters wildly pointing in every direction. A few pointless blue lasers melted holes in the walls as they went, because it’s extremely difficult not to randomly fire your weapon in all directions when you believe you’re in virtual reality anyway.
“Now where did they come from?” Sali cried.
An additional two Masks marched Amore and Harris into the room, both of whom were quite conspicuously naked. Amore clutched her jumpsuit in front of her with one hand while Harris looked rather proud of himself.
“How did you do that? Do you have your own magical aliens?” Ramnus asked.
“Not a magical alien. They are the Quasi Crystal!” Amore didn’t seem to be addressing the Masks, and was instead furious at the universe at large. She did struggle in their grip though, kicking and thrashing until the Mask got fed up with her and threw her to the floor without even the courtesy of tossing her dress after her.
“You’ve gone too far this time! You hear that, Malberry!” Amore shrieked. “How dare you treat me this way! I hate you, and I’m not playing your stupid game anymore. If you don’t unplug me from the simulation right now—”
There wasn’t a second and a half warning this time when the blaster went off. Amore crumbled into a heap on the ground, the final injury added to all those insults.
“Amore!” Elden wailed, his treacherous heart deciding that this would be the perfect moment to decide that he loved her after all.
“By the decree of the Senate, you are all sentenced to death!” bellowed Malberry’s voice through the speakers. “No one is clean! Purge them all!”
“A… simulation?” Draith puzzled. “Why yes, that would explain the discrepancy.”
A brilliant light flashed, and then Malberry’s screen went black. Amore was taken offline as her connection had been severed. The sound of continued blaster shots sounded from the dark screen for several seconds before these too fell silent.
“Well how about that,” Malberry said breathlessly, wiping his brow with the back of his hand. “That wasn’t so hard, now was it? Somebody reset the router, and let’s see if we’re back online.”
A Way Out
The lights in the D14 prison block flickered. The prisoners bucked in their beds, heaving as electricity coursed through their bodies. Stamping black boots dashed every which way as the Masks urgently tried to do something important, despite nobody being able to agree what that was in such an unprecedented situation.
There was no doubt the virus now inhabited every computing device that had been connected with the network. Phones were spontaneously making calls, watches were displaying yellow eyes to watch their owners, and even electrical pacemakers altered the heart beat to match the music nobody turned on. The basic code of their software was being rewritten everywhere at once for an ineffable purpose, which is much too hard to lay blame on, so generally speaking people blamed the government instead.
“Where is she? Where is my daughter?” Gamber Halzey demanded.
“Wait ma’am, your security clear—” the Mask at the door protested meekly.
“No clearances are necessary while the government is shut down,” Hallum insisted, escorting Gamber briskly through the checkpoint.
“The government isn’t shut down, is it? I thought it was just the network?” The other Mask was befuddled.
“What’s the difference?” asked the first. “We couldn’t even scan their card even if they did have clearance.”
“Oh that makes sense. Although we could just, sort of, look at the card, right?”
“Oh yeah, sure, I suppose. But say we do check, and then we can’t report what we found into the system. We could get in trouble for knowing something that we didn’t report.”
“Fair point, fair point. Best not to look at all, you’re saying. That way we won’t be lying when we report nothing.”
“Right.”
“Although…”
By this point Hallum and Gamber were already inside. There wasn’t much point in discussing the matter further, so the two Masks decided to take a break and see if they didn’t receive new instructions when the network came back on.
“Gamber, what a pleasant surprise!” Malberry cawed from the inner chamber. He wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand, running it through his hair in what could only be called an improvement. His broad grin flopped in displeasure as he spotted Senator Hallum over her shoulder. “Oh. You again. I wasn’t expecting company, which is apparently too much to expect from a secure facility. We’re having a bit of a technical issue with the network right now, so perhaps the three of us should go out to lunch while—”
“My daughter is not a technical issue. Where is she, where is my darling?” Gamber peered down at one of the prisoners for several long seconds before deciding the broad-shouldered woman was not, in fact, her daughter. Gamber straightened stiffly, strutting through the computing towers while sizzling sparks rained down from above.
“Just scheduled maintenance, that’s all—”
“No exploding heads, I hope,” Gamber interrupted severely.
“Certainly not anyone important. Not since I took charge anyway…”
“What did I tell you about attacking Draith?” Hallum scolded. “At least Amore was using specially designed software to cut off Draith’s administrative control. What’s a blaster supposed to do?”
“Never known a blaster not to do the trick before,” Malberry replied uncomfortably. “I tried to do what you said and keep them away from Pria, but they seemed to be figuring out a way around it so I had to do something…”
“My baby, my little baby, can you hear momma? Let’s get you out of this nasty machine,” Gamber cooed.
“Gamber, no!” Hallum intervened just in time, grasping her wrist before she unplugged Sali. “Not while Draith is still in control. That’s how we get the janitors forming a union.”
Sali groaned on the bed, her fingers splayed and trembling as waves of electricity continued to course through her body.
“What’s going on in the simulation?” Hallum asked. “You must stop fighting with Draith. Whoever is controlling the Masks needs to stand down this instant!”
“Er, well you see,” Malberry muttered, shifting his weight from one foot to the other despite the bitter protest of the tiles beneath him.
Gamber was on the verge of performing an act that someone with less money would have certainly been arrested for, but this time it was Malberry who intervened.
“The new extermination squad we uploaded aren’t avatars. We plugged them in per
sonally to provide maximum control when they fought Draith,” Malberry explained. “The simulation is still running, but the virus seems to have locked us out of the whole program. Honestly, Gamber, if you come back a little later, I’m sure we’ll have all this sorted…”
“I explicitly ordered you not to destroy Draith!” Gamber admonished.
“I am a Senator, madam!” Malberry said with the pretense of offense. “I do not receive orders from anyone. And don’t bother threatening me, because I don’t need your money anymore!”
“Of course you do, you fool. Or would you rather I spend it telling everyone on Pria that it was your fault they started censoring those nudey noir flicks?”
“I would never! Not on my life, I swear!” Malberry pleaded.
“Can you put five billion marks behind that defense? Get me in contact with the simulation this instant!”
“But we’ve been trying and I don’t know!” Malberry wailed. “Maybe we should just cut power to the whole building.”
“And risk her head exploding? Unacceptable,” Gamber stated, returning to kneel beside her daughter. “Where exactly is the hyperdrive connected to her cyber components?”
“The copper wiring extends over their entire cortex,” Hallum explained. “We didn’t connect directly to the cyber parts, because we wanted a method that allowed for non-cyber integration as well.”
“Oh, well that simplifies things, doesn’t it?” Gamber said, apparently relieved. “We can still leave her brain plugged into the machine, and simply cut out the infected components. I don’t know how you people keep your jobs, missing an easy solution like that.”
The lights flickered menacingly.
“Cut… out? Like with a knife?” Malberry spluttered.
“Or a saw, I don’t care. Just make sure Draith is removed safely. Oh my poor darling, momma is going to get you out of there.”
“Don’t you care if your daughter’s brain is… unrecoverable…?” Hallum asked uncomfortably.
“I’ve given the girl plenty of chances,” Gamber said matter-of-factly. “I’ve uploaded all the knowledge and processing she would ever need, and she’s never shown the least inventive potential. Cut Draith out, and we’ll all be better off.”
