by J Battle
Without a sound, the ship was hovering above their heads.
Inside, they found Jack and Number Four. There was no warm greeting, just an exchange of nods as Number One took his place next to Number Four.
‘I need a shower,’ said Debois, shaking the dust from his drooping hair.
‘Before you do, I want to thank you for risking your life to get Number One.’
‘That’s very kind of you, Jack.’ Debois had walked to his couch and rested one buttock against it. He decided not to mention his exciting meeting with Number Five.
’But I have to say I don’t feel that I actually achieved anything. It was Number Three who saved the day in the end, at the cost of his life.’
Jack activated the stasis field he’d fitted to the couch.
Debois froze, one hand held slightly away from his body, his lips pursed as he phrased the next elegant sentence.
Despite the initial reluctance Jack had felt, this really was a necessary precaution. Their task was complete; they had Numbers One and Four on-board, Number Six was destroyed, Number Seven was on Turquoise, Number Two was holding his position, and Number Three was in bits, and he wasn’t going to raise the question of Number Five.
It was time to return to Earth and receive his just reward.
And this was the very time when the treacherous plan that Debois must have prepared would have been put into action. But not now. Debois would remain in stasis until the deal was done and Jack was back on Earth in his new frail human body with his wife and son. They were nearly there; he could almost feel the soft breeze on his pale skin.
Chapter 64
Jack was standing with his face towards the forward bulkhead, his attention focused on the ship’s sensors as they entered real space. Behind him, Numbers One and Four were standing silently against the rear bulkhead. Silent, but Jack could sense their tension.
Debois was also wonderfully silent as he was caught in the perfect moment of his stasis.
They were safely in real space, with no obvious threat. Although, it seemed, they had arrived quite close to the stricken earth ship.
Jack was about to query this with the ship’s AI, when he heard a noise behind him. He spun, ready to deal with any threat. He was prepared for anything. Anything, other than the smile on the face of Debois.
‘What?’
‘Hello, Jack. Pleased to see me?’
‘How did you break the stasis?’
‘I didn’t, that would have been impossible, even for one as gifted as myself. You know that. But, of course, I had assistance. The ship’s AI released me.’
‘But…. Why?’
‘There are things you have to know, Jack. Now that we’re home. There are explanations that you are not going to like, and the AI agreed that I should help you through it. Those people skills I have, you see?’
‘Go on.’
‘Trust me, Jack. It’s not all bad. But some of it is.’
‘Go on.’
‘First, I think we should nip across to my ship. There’s a something there you might find interesting.’
‘You expect me to play this stupid game with you?’
‘Humour me, Jack. It will all work out in the end. You know you can trust me.’
Whilst they’d talked, the ship had moved to within a few metres of the Earth ship.
Suited up, Debois led Jack across the short distance between the ships. The hatch was already open and they soon cycled through the airlock. Inside the ship the corridors were wide, high and white, gleaming with the polish of too much spare time.
There was no-one there to greet them; Jack guessed the crew was making itself scarce under instruction. They walked down to the loading bay. The artificial gravity was a bit lumpy for Jack’s tastes, but he wasn’t really paying attention. He was keen to see what Debois had to show him.
They found eight large rectangular containers, taking up more than half the space. From the audible hum emanating from the first one, Jack decided they must be stasis chambers.
Debois threw a switch on the side of the first chamber and stepped back. The door slid open and out strode Number Six, his fists raised and ready for action.
When he saw Jack, he lowered his fists. Whatever passed between the two in their silent communication was never recorded.
Jack turned to Debois.
‘Our little lie,’ said Debois. ‘We found him and managed to subdue him, with a great deal of trouble I must admit. Then we brought him here to wait for you.’
‘But why tell me he was dead? What did you hope to gain from deceiving me?’
‘It was part of the plan we’d conceived. We were just manipulating you, Jack. We didn’t want you to know that we were really on your side, that we were not your enemies, no matter how it seemed. We wanted you to hare off, angry with Earth, and do exactly what you did. Well, not exactly. We were hoping for something a bit more decisive with Number Two, and that you wouldn’t leave Number Seven behind. And of course we didn’t anticipate what you’ve done with Five Little Fish.’
‘But I don’t understand why you’d do this.’
‘You will, Jack. Soon. Let’s go back to your ship. We’ll bring Number Six with us. Then you’ll all be together.’
As they moved back to his ship, Jack instructed all three replicants to switch to machine mode and be prepared for an attack. When they entered his ship’s airlock, he positioned himself behind Debois, less than a metre from his fragile flesh.
After they were through the air lock, they were joined by Numbers One and Four.
Debois paused, looking at Jack and the replicants. They appeared ready and capable of anything. This was probably the most dangerous moment in the whole mission.
He stared at Jack for a moment, wishing there was some way to gauge his feelings. How was he going to react? Debois had had a long time to think of a good way to handle this, but he’d never been able to find one.
‘Come with me,’ he said at last.
He led Jack down to the bay. Without a word, the replicants followed them.
He walked to the first pair of stasis chambers.
He hesitated for a second, then brushed the ice from the viewing plate of each chamber.
‘Clear Jack’s mind,’ he said quietly.
The AI obeyed.
Jack leant forward, over the chambers.
For a long moment he just stared at the view plate. Then he let out a low groan and grabbed the top of the first chamber and ripped it away from the base, exposing the emptiness within.
He leapt to the next and did the same. Then the third. They were all empty. No body for his wife. No body for his child. And no body for himself.
He turned to Debois, one hand held out in silent supplication.
‘They were never there Jack. It was just a figment of your AI’s damaged mind. It was damaged when you saved Earth from the Hardlampons, when you broke the siege. Your ship was ripped open. You barely survived. But the ship’s AI regrew your brain from the few remaining cells that could be saved. Your personal AI was lost for good. The ship’s AI also lost so much that was never possible to retrieve. It healed itself, as best it could. And what it couldn’t replace, it reinvented. That is why there are so many gaps. And how it fooled itself, and you, into thinking that you were still returning to Earth to live out the rest of you days with your beloved family.’
‘It was all a myth, a foolish wish fulfilment?’ Jack’s fists clenched as the anger grew inside him.
‘No, Jack. You misunderstand me. It wasn’t a myth. It was the truth. A brilliant, wonderful truth. But it’s already happened. You’ve already been through all this. You returned nearly two centuries ago. You saved Earth from The Hardlampons. And you were welcomed home as a hero. We cloned your body for you, and implanted your memories into its brain. You got your wish, Jack. We even traced the burial plot of your family, and cloned bodies for them. You got to have them back too, Jack. You really did.
’But I don’t think you�
��d ever actually worked out what would happen to the original you, to this person you’ve become.’
Jack was absolutely still. There was too much to take in; he wanted to smash something, anything to release his anger.
If Jack Russell was on Earth, then who was he. Only a remnant of the original? Worth no more than any of the replicants?
Worth less in fact, for surely their memories were complete. They were not left with the decimated shards that he had to survive with.
Number One walked towards him.
‘This is not the end, Jack. You are the original, and you have to decide what to do next. We will follow, and we will share our memories with you, so that you can become complete.’
‘What will we do now? What is left for us?’
‘This stage of our lives is over. Your greatest wish came true. Jack and Julie and Ben found each other again. That’s got to be the happy ending you were looking for. But it was never our destiny to end that way. We endured. We endure. We will endure. But in a different form.’
Number one paused for a moment to give Jack a chance to grasp what he was being told.
‘You know what happens next, don’t you?’ he continued.
After a moment that seemed an age, Jack nodded and turned to Debois.
‘I guess this is goodbye,’ he said, slowly, as if he was just feeling his way through the new reality that confronted him. ‘I should probably have been nicer to you.’
‘Don’t worry, Jack. I’m hard to insult. And you were never a people person, anyway.’
Chapter 65
Jack walked over to the large chamber. It wasn’t a stasis chamber, like the others. It wasn’t meant to hold a body in the perfect moment. But it did hold a containment field, the strongest ever created.
And it contained his new body; though body was hardly the word for it. There was no flesh, no matter, no moving parts, no history. Just pure, immeasurable, incandescent energy.
It had always been nothing more than an option for him, a beautiful idea to create, a folly. But his choices were limited and it was now his future. A future that also belonged to the replicants.
Somehow the regret slipped from him as he reached for the controls. One Jack had achieved his dream. But this Jack had another dream, and there was no value in delaying.
He turned back to Debois, the man who was no longer just a dangerous, irritating nuisance. A man who had revealed himself as a true friend.
‘If this hadn’t all worked out as you planned, what would you have done?’
Debois smiled.
‘There is no need to consider that now, Jack. Let’s stick with the happy ending.’
‘Go on, you can tell me, now that it no longer matters.
Debois held his hands up before him.
‘You see these pretty bangles? The fetching cloud of glitter dust is held in place by a magnetic field. Your AI detected the field of course, but it didn’t spot that the obvious decorative magnetic field masked a field with a different purpose; a field that hid the emanations of a wormhole generator.’
‘That you would use to destroy us, if we didn’t follow orders?’
‘You never followed orders, Jack. But I was always confident that everything would work out in the end.’
‘Why would you be so confident? And how did you know exactly what I’d do?’
‘Let’s just say that we had some advice.’
There was a slight pause; in other circumstances a handshake or a hug might have been in order.
’Goodbye, Michelle.’
‘Goodbye, Jack.’
‘You’d better go back to your ship. There might be some local effects.’
‘Don’t worry about me, Jack. I want to watch.’
Jack opened the chamber.
There was no brilliant light, no fireworks or any sort of razzamatazz.
The quality of light in the bay changed, as if the photons were suddenly inadequate in their luminance. Debois head felt woolly, his hearing not quite right. He knew Jack was saying something, but the meaning was lost to him.
Then there was a surge of white light, and Jack was gone. Then another, and another, and another. And all of the replicants were gone.
Debois went over to the chamber. It felt cold to the touch. There was no longer a hum. He placed one hand inside but felt nothing. The hairs on his arm stood on end; the result of some residual static. Otherwise, the chamber was completely empty.
Jack had gone.
Chapter 66
Jack stretched out his hands. They went on forever. He looked at the universe. He could see it whole; one body in a sea of billions. He could taste the time that had gone and smell what was still to come. He wanted to hug this wonderful thing, but hugs were just a distant memory.
It was time for him to leave, to travel wherever he willed, at whatever speed suited him. Before he left, however, there were things to be done.
He brushed Five Little Fish from its collision course and directed it toward its nearest star.
He disabled the D-Bomb and sent it tumbling into the solar flames.
He called Number Two and all of his billions of companions to him, and relished the surge of new minds, all from the same raw material as his own.
He reached back to Number Seven and drew him to himself. They could continue to worship his physical body, but they could no longer have him.
He wasted a nano second watching an old man on Earth.
Then he was gone, on his long journey.
One day he would return.
When this universe was lost in its cold entropic sleep, when its clock had finally run down, then he would return and bear witness to its final moments.
And if he saw that it was right and proper, maybe he would bring his incandescence down in a glorious rain on the cold remnants of this old universe and roar out his challenge.
‘Let there be light!’
Epilogue
Debois walked along the narrow tree lined path. He was dressed in his most conservative clothes, with hardly any frills at all.
He paused at the little white gate for a moment. The roses were in bloom and their scent was rich and almost overpowering.
He plucked one and stuck it into his buttonhole. It was an archaic tradition, but that was Debois for you.
He opened the gate and smiled at the creak. Sometimes nothing changes. Next time, he’d bring some oil.
As he closed the gate behind him, he stopped.
The figure was on his knees, bent over, doing something complicated with a small dark green plant. Gardening was a mystery to Debois, though he did like the results.
‘Hello,’ he called, quietly.
The man turned and smiled up at him. With a grunt he climbed to his feet. His hair was a little more grey, and his pot belly was a little more generous, but he’d otherwise not changed in the years that Debois had been away.
‘Hello, Michelle,’ he said, holding his hand out for a shake in his quaint old fashioned way.
Debois accepted his hand.
‘Hello, Jack,’ he said.
‘How did it all go?’
‘Just as you said it would. Well, more or less.’
‘He’s gone then.’ He looked up into the clear sky as if there was some clue to be found. ’I have to wonder what it will be like for him, out there, disembodied, alone.’
‘It’s not such a drastic change for him really, when you think about it.’
‘It is good, though, isn’t it? It had to come to an end.’
Debois nodded. It was all over for him as well. He was the 43rd generation of clones that had been bred to deal with Jack. Now his purpose was fulfilled, what would the future hold for him?
Debois smiled to himself. He was sure that, for a man of his talents, the world was his oyster.
‘Come inside, Michelle,’ said Jack. ‘Julie has been baking again. You’ll love her cherry scones.’
****************
The End
***************
This Boxset Copyright © 2016 by J.Battle
ISBN-13:
978-1530272976
ISBN-10:
1530272971
As ever, thanks to Deirdre, for her support
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http://jpbattle.wix.com/battlewrite
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