Reality: The Struggle for Sternessence

by Daniel A. Liut

  “There! The master terminal.” Duncan moved towards it.

  O’sihn nodded as he quickly checked his watch.

  Without wasting time, Duncan began working on the terminal. He typed loudly and persistently, filling the room with the clicking of an old-fashioned keyboard.71

  “What’s wrong?” O’sihn asked.

  “I don’t know. I can’t get through.”

  The captain moved cautiously towards Duncan, keeping his gun aimed at their captives. “It is locked, all right,” O’sihn complained, looking briefly at the monitor. “Unlock the system,” he ordered, walking towards the prisoners.

  One of them smiled.

  “The game is over,” O’sihn said, aiming his gun at him.

  “The game is over, indeed,” the technician replied, and chuckled.

  Duncan rushed towards the man and put a gun to his head. “This is not a game, pal. You unlock the system now . . . and I mean now!” He bit his lip as he pressed his gun against the man.

  “Enough.” O’sihn looked at Duncan with a grave expression.

  Duncan turned around, confused.

  “This is not our way. Strap them,” the captain said, keeping his eyes on the three men.

  “But—”

  “Don’t waste time.”

  Grudgingly, Duncan took some strapping tape from his backpack and proceeded to immobilize the technicians’ wrists and ankles.

  “You will not get away with this,” one of the aliens said, as Duncan strapped him up.

  “You’ll be equalized,” added the man who had first shot at them. “All of you.”

  Duncan looked at him silently.

  “Okay, inside there,” O’sihn ordered, pointing his gun at the three men. Leaping on their tied-up feet, the technicians moved into an adjacent room. “I will seal the room to preserve your environmental conditions, so that you will not suffer any harm when the atmosphere is reset to its native state.”

  “And I suppose, Captain,” said the same technician that had first spoken, “that you—and your assistant—will accomplish that feat all by yourselves.”

  “The atmosphere will be reconfigured,” O’sihn said.

  “Captain,” the same man continued, “you will never manage to unlock the master computer, especially with the very limited time that you have. This building will be secured in a matter of minutes. You know all this. It is better for you—”

  O’sihn locked the room and sealed it. Patting Duncan’s shoulder, he ran towards the master terminal.

  34.

  “Drop your weapons,” said a soldier holding a gun. He had humanoid traits, blended with not quite human ones. He was wider than a man, especially around his chest, although very thin around his waist. His eyes, which had no eyelids, were entirely blue.

  Using the bio-scanner she carried on one of her wrists, Laida assessed the extent of the ambush. About a hundred enemy troopers were waiting hidden in the foliage.

  “To the ground!” Laida yelled through her speaker, and activated the explosives planted around the building.

  Only five out of the forty devices detonated, moderately damaging the edifice but setting fire to the vegetation around it. Soon, the surrounding forest turned into a crested sea of uncontrolled fire.72 Evidently, the enemy had detected and deactivated most of their explosives.

  Taking advantage of the confusion, four of the Realitian commandos escaped, but Laida had been too close to one of the detonations. Dizzy and sick, she was now struggling to get back on her feet.

  As she did, three soldiers rushed from the jungle and seized her before she could run away. Out of the smoke, a fourth humanoid emerged, and behind him another, both of them males.

  “Well, well, well, what do we have here?” said the fourth soldier, standing in front of Laida.

  Laida recognized the uniforms. She was dealing with Kervian forces.

  “Let’s tie her up and throw her to the fire,” someone else said.

  The commanding officer turned and glared. “How am I gonna teach you manners?” Shaking his head, he turned to Laida, and started strolling around her. “Throwing a living animal to the fire . . .” Brusquely, the officer drew a gun from his combat armor and aimed it directly at Laida. He kept the weapon steady for a couple of seconds. Then he withdrew it, holding it against his chest with both hands.

  “What’s wrong, honey, don’t you like us?” The officer laughed sarcastically and fired a shot at Laida.

  He had deliberately avoided harming her, but had chosen to destroy the gas regulator on her belt. Instinctively, she grasped her smashed regulator. It was beyond repair. Before long, Laida was holding her chest, gripping the lower portion of her helmet.

  “Come on, babe, take it off and give us a kiss, uh?” One of the troopers leered.

  “Yeah, and your space suit too!” yelled another.

  The soldiers laughed uproariously as they watched Laida fall down on her knees, coughing.

  “Ah . . . that’s fresh air. You oughta try it,” said a soldier, taking a deep breath.

  Soon the last remnants of breathable air inside Laida’s combat suit had been consumed. Her instinct to take off her helmet was becoming overpowering. She was now on the ground, coughing and gasping helplessly, surrounded by fire.

  At that point, a noiseless tremor started shattering the area.

  35.

  “The nothing nothingness that is forever.

  “The nothing nothingness that is forever.

  “The nothing nothingness that is forever.

  “The nothing nothingness that is forever.

  “The nothing nothingness that is forever.

  “The nothing nothingness that is forever.

  “The nothing nothingness that is forever.” The phrase was repeated over and over in bright green letters on a black display. O’sihn and Duncan had been trained to operate the master environmental computer for the mission. They had also brought along a password sorter, but the instrument was unable to disengage a program like the one that was locking the system.

  “What the heck is that supposed to mean, anyway?” Duncan scowled, after trying and retrying some prescribed procedures through the keyboard.

  “Nothing,” O’sihn said.

  “What?” Duncan turned around, irritated.

  “It’s an Equel formula, one of their beliefs.” O’sihn stared at the screen, his mind struggling to find some way around the enigma.

  “Beliefs?” Duncan asked.

  “The computer has been fed with its logum,” O’sihn said. “And has been set to solve it.”

  “How do you know that?”

  O’sihn pointed at the upper right corner of the screen. The words “Recursive L-solver73 active” were displayed in small red letters. “It’s attempting to solve the logum recursively, but it will proceed ad infinitum, trying to find a solution that, I’m afraid, does not exist.”

  “Let’s try to unlock it activating some other procedure,” Duncan suggested, “like an environmental emergency check. We know how to do that.”

  O’sihn shook his head. “The computer has deliberately been locked on by having it use all its processing power to solve the logum.”

  “So . . . we can do nothing?”

  O’sihn brought his right hand towards his forehead, unintentionally striking his helmet, and closed his eyes. “I will stay here trying to find a way to unlock this contraption. In the meantime, you will leave the building, fall back with the main group, and alert control of what has happened.”

  Duncan hesitated. “The main group is more than three miles away.”

  “This is not a recommendation, Dahncion.”

  “I can’t abandon you here.”

  “The chances of unlocking this computer are extremely slim. It’s not rational to gamble two lives to attempt the impossible.”

  “If it’s impossible, it’s not rational to risk any life,” Duncan retorted. “Let’s get out of here.”

  O’sihn walked to t
he elevator door and pushed the down button. “You are leaving this building.” But after three more tries, he realized that the situation was worse than he had thought. He ran to the main panels and started working frantically on the building controls.

  “What’s going on?” Duncan asked.

  “I’m afraid neither of us is going anywhere. The whole building is locked, and we are running out of time.”

  “Let’s get the technicians and force them to unlock the computer,” Duncan blurted.

  “I sealed the door to the room where we put them.” O’sihn explained. “We won’t be able to open it.”

  Duncan closed his eyes. “Let’s . . . let’s try unlocking the computer, then, somehow.”

  “I am fully open to suggestions,” O’sihn muttered.

  Duncan sighed, with clenched fists. “You should’ve let me have them unlock the computer.”

  O’sihn shook his head. “They would have died rather than unlock the system.”

  “Huh! I don’t know about that. They looked pretty panicky to me.”

  “Do you think your approach was compatible with what we talked about last night?” They had gone through the Royal Navy Officer’s Credo, in particular, the part that read: “With the conviction that the dignity of any person is as high a priority as the success of any mission.”

  “Kervians don’t take prisoners, Captain!” Duncan stated, raising his voice.

  “What you had in mind is not our way, the way of Reality.”

  Duncan looked back with a disapproving stance. “So why don’t we try reasoning with the freakin’ machine, then?”

  “Reasoning?”

  “Yeah, some of that Realitian common-sense philosophy of yours,” Duncan said acidly.

  O’sihn looked at him and laid his hands over the old keyboard. “You tell me what you want to try.”

  Duncan raised his eyes to the barren sky beyond the window in front of him. “Nothingness . . . well. Let’s try emptiness.”

  O’sihn clasped his fingers and entered the corresponding logum.

  The computer replied on the spot:

  “The emptiness that is forever.”

  “The nothing nothingness that is emptiness.”

  “Nothingness is emptiness.”

  “The proposed logum is a redundant solution.”

  O’sihn gave a terse smile while shaking his head. “What if we tried something silly, something trivial?”

  “A pebble?”

  “Like a pebble.” O’sihn turned back to the keyboard and entered a logum containing the concept.

  The computer responded:

  “The pebble that is forever.”

  “The nothing nothingness that is a pebble is forever.”

  “A pebble is something.”

  “The proposed logum does not satisfy the logoid.”

  “I know!” Duncan snapped his fingers. “Sternessence.”

  O’sihn nodded and typed its logum.

  The solver began to blink, indication that, at least, they had peeled off some logical layer.

  “I’m sure this is it,” Duncan said. “This is what Oyhtter gave us. It oughta be it.”

  After a full minute of a black screen, the computer was not giving any signs of life.

  “We really don’t have time for these games, Dahncion. We should start preparing our defense.”

  “Wait.” Duncan pointed at a cursor that began to blink on the left bottom corner. The screen became alive again. “Yes!”

  The computer responded:

  “Sternessence is love.”

  “Love is forever.”

  “The nothing nothingness that is love.”

  “Love is everything.”

  “The proposed logum contradicts the logoid.”

  O’sihn sighed. He looked at his watch, and then at his bio-scanner. It was not clear what was transpiring outside the building, but his instrument registered growing activity. This could mean that enemy forces were encircling the compound. On the other hand, it was clear that Laida had failed in her mission to destroy the nearby power station. Had she succeeded, a major power loss would have ensued in the area. In response, the building energy fence would have automatically been activated, thus keeping enemy troops from regaining control of the facility too soon.

  Duncan looked at O’sihn working in silence, trying logoid after logoid. But none of his attempts were shedding any light on how to unlock the system. The spark of optimism that had animated Duncan’s spirit just moments before was rapidly dissipating. In a few more minutes, the enemy would secure the whole area. In dealing with Kervian forces, their lives would most likely end right there, and quite likely with cruelty.

  Duncan reflected on all that and found it hard to believe. He looked back on his life, and he was afraid. A sense of emptiness, of having done nothing of relevance so far, was his dominant feeling. This, combined with the type of death that awaited him, was making Duncan fall into a cold state of depression that made him wonder about, and even regret, his decision to accept his mission to Reality.

  O’sihn kept staring at the screen with an intense stance, until he finally nodded.

  “Let’s give more serious thought to this nothingness nonsense.”

  “Checkmate nonsense,” added Duncan with defeated sarcasm.

  O’sihn had his eyes fixed on the monitor, with a serene expression. “Nothingness. If I remember something from the philosophy courses required at the Naval Academy, there is no such thing as a substantial nothing. There is no essential nothing. Nothingness must always be referred to something that is, or rather, to a lack of that something.”

  “How about lack of something?” Duncan muttered, looking at the terminal.

  “We must nail down the idea to one concept,” O’sihn replied.

  “Well, lack of something is just nothing.”

  “We can’t feed the computer with nothing. It would give us a tautological error.”

  Duncan sighed, checking his watch nervously without actually looking at it. He sat down on a chair by the console, stretching his legs forward, until he let them sag loose without purpose. There was a clear sense of surrender in his posture, but there was a remnant in him, now mostly fed by the fear of the events to come, that moved him not to give up yet.

  “As you said yesterday, the way to fight all this nonsense is with some ‘common sense and reality’,” Duncan said, his arms dangling. “Well, common sense tells me that nothing is something that doesn’t exist, something that is not real—and that’s the only reality I can see.” Duncan paused. “So why don’t we go ahead and try unreality?”

  O’sihn raised an eyebrow and immediately entered the corresponding logum.

  The reply was instantaneous:

  “The unreality that is forever.”

  “The nothing nothingness that is unreality.”

  “Unreality is nothing.”

  “Unreality is nothingness.”

  “The nothing nothingness that is forever is unreal.”

  “The proposed logum satisfies the logoid.”

  36.

  One of the men pointed up to the northern sky, and the rest stopped their mockery of Laida abruptly. An incandescent blue shock wave, extending from east to west, was sweeping the forest from the ground all the way up to the grayish sky.

  All but one of the Kervians ran away, desperately seeking some shelter. Fully aware of the implications of the lethal shock wave, the commandant chose to spend his final moments kicking Laida, trying to open a rent in her suit. But he was soon blown away by the rushing wind.

  The helmet Laida was wearing was torn off, and she smashed into a large bush, which providentially cushioned her fall. Immediately, a gust of fresh air rushed into Laida’s choked lungs as the dim surrounding landscape started recovering its original multicolored splendor.

  Laida was soon on her feet. The threatening fire around her had completely vanished. She turned around and gazed with astonishment at the marvelous vision of g
rowing colors sprouting all around her.

  Worn out by the ordeal she had just gone through, Laida fell down on her knees, weeping and raising her eyes to the sky. From the speakers on her helmet lying on the ground, she readily recognized her husband’s voice on the main tactical channel.

  “. . . complete. I repeat, bioconversion system disengaged. Reconfiguration wave expanding as expected. Mission complete.”

  37.

  It was impressive how the once grayish world had turned, so quickly, into a paradise of color and light. Trees with green, blue, and phosphorescent branches; yellow ferns whose leaves were nibbled by all-transparent tiny hummingbird-like creatures; sapphire patches of grass covering a wet ground graced with hues of emerald. Iluminia was a world of exotic beauty. Even if storms never developed in its atmosphere, its skies were speckled with small dense clouds, which constantly bathed the ubiquitous forests below with a warm drizzle.

  Rainbows crystallized continually above the dense foliage, even after sunset. Father Rainbow provided enough light for their formation most days of the month. Irisiom, as the natives called it, was a large satellite with a surface that reflected much more light from the local sun than Earth’s moon does. Yet nights were clearly differentiated from days, and not only because the night rainbows were dimmer and lacking in color compared to the day rainbows. Every evening, after the local sun had set, the Earth-like blue sky turned into a glowing emerald green, mostly from the light reflected by Mother Rainbow, or Irisia—a well-developed ring of clean ice in equatorial orbit. Its resplendent spectrum prevented darkness from ever reaching the poles.

  A woman from a distant world was savoring the unique beauty. She was tired. It had been a particularly long day, and not merely because it took thirty-six hours for the planet to complete one sidereal revolution.

  Night was rapidly taking over, and thousands of tiny lights started flaring everywhere. Irisiom was in its new “moon” phase, and Irisia’s tender light let numerous stars74 show their glare in the firmament. As if in a mirror, myriads of uniquely bright glowworms—or jungle stars, as the locals called them—would gradually begin to display their nightly flickering love-calls throughout the woods.