‘Doctor Barnes,’ she said, ‘you remember Colonel Max Elba?’
Scott nodded. He had a faint and nervous smile on his lacerated and self-mutilated face.
‘Well,’ she sighed with relief as Max genially shook hands with Barnes. ‘I’ll leave you to it, then. Call me, if you need anything.’
Colonel Elba waited until Yerma was out of sight and he nodded to a small wooden park bench.
‘Wanna sit down?’
‘I’d rather stand, thanks,’ said Scott, his head bowed and he looked at Max from a side angle as though he’d been clipped around the ear too many times. Max took a seat and breathed out as his backside landed, and he threw his arm over the backrest and looked around.
‘How do you like this place?’ he asked.
‘I find this place very strange,’ he stated. ‘I didn’t expect to come home to so much technology. I’m still getting used to the language shifts. I’m learning neo-English and Cosmonian tongues slowly. Language was always a specialty for me, syntax is a pattern like…like most things. Still learning what all these neologisms mean. But I appreciate most people speak to me in English.’
‘Good. Of course. Look, I know you’ve been through a lot lately,’ Max Elba digressed. ‘But I need some information.’
‘Lately?’ he laughed. ‘What do you mean lately? Lately for whom? For you? For me? Time is nothing but some distant memory now. Time doesn’t matter.’
‘What do you mean, time doesn’t matter?’
‘Time and matter, matter and time,’ he postulated, dipping his head nervously. ‘M-Malik Serat used to say that a lot. He bu-believed time was a dimension that existed as a reflection of material. He saw a relationship between radiation producing material and material in motion producing time. It all sounded a little counter-intuitive to me, but then he always did have a creative way of seeing things. Studying chaos can make even the most astute mu-minds think a little discordantly, even in abstract terms.’
‘Can you help us?’
‘With what?’ he asked worriedly.
‘We need you to explain to us what the chaos cipher is.’ He said, ‘there is an investor of the Erebus who still wants to know. Apparently, he told me to tell you that Malik has already provided many details, he would like to hear your side of the story.’
‘Mu-my side?’
‘Yeah.’
‘The chaos cipher is a blue-print.’
‘A blue-print for what?’
‘I can’t even imagine,’ Scott sniggered. ‘I know that there is more than one use for it. Penelope Hurt developed it with Malik. The code helped us to establish a breadcrumb trail out of a temporal maze. Penelope Hurt had the whole thing mapped out in her mind; she understood its shape in several dimensions. If we followed her calendar, the code would have stopped us from bumping into our future and past selves in the temporal Doppler.’
Max was listening earnestly, he’d been patterning a voice scan to Scott Barnes to play back later for his own research.
‘What’s a temporal Doppler?’
‘The effect is, quite simply, how time radiates through superluminal particles. I’m told you are very much aware of this phenomenon, today.’
Max shrugged, ‘I’m no expert on it.’
‘I’m told you use this process to build exotic materials like Obsiduranium for your velox drives. Gravito-magnetic charges? Ring any bells?’
‘I’m not an astro-engineer, Scott,’ Max Elba responded, unequivocally. ‘My specialties are in people management.’
‘In laymen’s terms,’ Scott started to explain. ‘Two entangled particles, one stationary, the other dropped into a black hole, behave and communicate with each other instantaneously. One can put space between them but their relationship is locked. We wanted to relay real time information this way, to extract the secrets of a black hole from beyond the event horizon. Initially, we suspected it was impossible and that our temporal anchor tests would only show how vast the gravitational differences are closer toward the event horizon. Because there’s a paradox, you see. Gravitational forces in a black hole cause time to move slower, yet the entangled particles communicate as a constant. Why? How?
‘What we found is that the gravity leaks through to the stationary particle, slowing things down dramatically around it. Once that radiation conducts through the quantics of a ship like the Erebus, through gravito-magnetic and electrogravonics, you’ve got yourself a Starnavis existing in several moments in time, split into confusing and random segments. Penelope called this a temporal Doppler. Essentially, imagine the Erebus is a labyrinth, only the space is constant, what you’re journeying through is time rendered to extreme differences. The ship is old and new, corroded and painted, it is present and absent all at once. There is only matter as its constant; time is obfuscated, corrupted by the communicators. So we marked the walls and observed how the matter vanished and reappeared. The chaos cipher was a calendar that we mapped in order to escape the time phenomenon and keep up with the present. But I fear Penelope Hurt understood the map in terms we cannot possibly keep up with. She, like Malik, was a five dimensional thinker. For her…why she didn’t even assume our perceptions on reality were to be taken literally.’
‘Who was she?’
‘For now,’ Scott nodded. ‘That is all I can tell you. As for who she was…it doesn’t matter. Who she became in the end was something quite different.’
‘What are the Orandoré staff seeing in the Erebus?’ asked Max. ‘Are those communicators still radiating this temporal Doppler?’
‘Yes,’ Scott nodded. ‘The Erebus is both docked at the station Orandoré and at the same time it still orbits the Charybdis. The whole thing is spaghettified superficially. Although, you can’t tell, the effect only takes place once the power is on. The second you turn on those quantics, you’re lost on that thing.’
‘Can Malik use the chaos cipher?’
‘No,’ Scott shook his head. ‘He didn’t understand it as well as she did.’ And Scott moved over and sat beside Elba. He stared at the paused birds up in the air and thought to himself. ‘The only other way you could get around that ship is if you perfectly knew your destiny. If your fate was written out in front of you, if the next hour was crystal clear in your memory.’
‘Why do you say that?’ he asked. ‘Could Penelope Hurt see the future?’
‘Of course, she could,’ Scott chuckled ironically. ‘All Chronomancers can.’
-60-
Convulsions and shivers got Malik Serat shaking like a leaf, and Beethoven’s Ode to Joy serenaded his misery. Beads of perspiration wept from his pours and saturated strands of hair clung to his pale grey skin. Out before him a large table of food had been arranged with silver cutlery and exquisite golden candle holders and boughs and wreaths nesting beneath ornate silver treys of fine crystal glass. There were bountiful platters of Cray fish and shrimp in succulent steaming cream sauces and roasted vegetables were next to construct around the table. Malik could smell the many savoury herbs and he leaned forward to analyse the detail. None of this he knew was real. The artifice wasn’t quite convincing. There was something spurious about the way the table’s settings received light from an inaccurate angle to where the dim sun was shining out in the cloudscapes where the large panoramic window of the sky city was. It was good, but not fully credible.
‘Aren’t you going to indulge?’ Vance asked, walking around the table’s supposed dimensions as not to disturb the illusion.
‘Indulge?’ Malik almost laughed sickly. ‘Indulge what? There’s nothing there to eat.’
‘Come come, Malik,’ he said sympathetically. ‘For us Eternals, nostalgia is the only way to satiate the human cravings for food. The Nexus can supply the illusion. You’d better get used to it. We do not waste up here. It is more economical not to eat real food, you see. The tablets and nanoctors do everything for us. And, I really wouldn’t want to see you reduced to having to defecate like those hardlander scum.’ And Vance grimace
d at the thought of it. ‘Indeed…when I think about the brutes that used to maul through their own faecal matter to examine their health. Quite vile, don’t you agree? Do you imagine staring at that mushy brown paste as it nests in cold water? Quite disgusting.’
Malik’s febrile gaze lifted from the table to find Vance again and he stared at his lank and venerable sibling.
‘You’ve never been human enough to imagine much.’
Vance deactivated the Nexus, and Malik’s illusion fell apart to the dank and mechanical reality of the Atominus Phalange. He was confined to a wheelchair, the neural functions of his legs interrupted by a steady stream of electrons perturbing his muscles. The wheelchair automatically began to drift forward, Malik had no control over this either. He had at some point unwittingly become Vance’s exclusive prisoner. And, as Ode to Joy reached its harmonious crescendo Vance stood simpering at Malik.
‘We’ve played games long enough,’ he said, deactivating the music at last. ‘The chaos cipher -’
‘Am I to assume your team are unable to crack the code?’ he asked. ‘Why not just venture to the Erebus? Switch on the superluminal communicators like I told you? Want your answers…experience is quite informative.’
‘I’m having trouble finding the volunteers,’ Vance confessed. ‘Seems the Erebus has many people afraid, the Orandoré personnel see it as somewhat of an omen. Not that it matters. The Orandoré Canaries are being recruited to map out temporal areas of the Erebus, but I’ve not made it clear what they are looking for.’
‘What are they looking for?’ asked Malik weakly.
‘They’re tracing your steps,’ said Vance, ‘analysing where you have been on the Erebus, watching how you slip through wormholes in time, jumping from moment to moment in seemingly random patterns so we can match it with the chaos cipher. The algorithms are undeniably too complex for me and many of my team to figure out alone. Fortunately, Adamoss is helping.’
‘But you will not crack the code,’ Malik forced a laugh.
‘Can you?’ asked Vance.
‘Only one person ever knew the code,’ said Malik. ‘And she is dead.’
‘That’s right. Penelope Hurt, am I correct?’ Vance deliberated, sauntering up the long stairway to the large vistas of the Nimbolantis storm clouds. ‘You and she worked closely. I believe you can navigate the chaos cipher.’
‘Much as I pleasure in taking credit for saving the Erebus with my genius,’ said Malik, ‘I’m afraid I was an ultimate failure. I was unable to plan as far ahead as she was.’
‘Doesn’t it make you feel inferior?’ he asked. ‘Is it not humiliating in the echelons of brilliance to rank below a woman?’
‘Stifling, perhaps,’ Malik confessed. ‘But I must admit she had me impressed.’
‘Adamoss will crack the code,’ said Vance confidently. ‘Adamoss designed the Atominii, turned our scientific theories into actualities for deep space travel. As a matter of fact Adamoss is quite literally the last invention mankind fathomed. He’ll crack the code…’
‘You don’t get it,’ Malik chuckled. ‘Adamoss may crack the code. But he’ll never see the future.’
Vance Serat squinted as something came in through his neurophase and he accessed the semi-qualian link with Filipe.
‘Vance, there is something extraordinary occurring around the orbit of Mars.’ He started, his face contorted with excitement as he spoke giddily. ‘You should see the reports and those rotten Martians are having a hell of a time. They’re requesting a full scale emergency assistance.’
*
Restfully, the Martian world had rolled below the onset glow of dual moons, as shipments of extracted rocks dragged from the asteroid belt were dumped onto the surface of Phobos and Deimos in an effort to increase their mass. Yet, the Martian’s automated towing units had stopped returning from the asteroid belt and a phenomenon of pure chaos was making itself known as the Xenotechs chased the Martian world. Colonies gazed up, the shrunken Martian humanoids craning their heads from the portholes of their habitation zones to analyse the incandescent and ethereal glow of death’s fearsome scythe cutting through the heavens on high. At once the wheeling centrifugal shuttles docking with the orbital elevator bared witness to the grave threat entering their orbital space, gravitating colony migrants took to the windows to see for themselves what bright mystery did approach.
They heeded no message or warning from the colonies and showed no signs of stopping, and station operators gazed on in horror as the three machines ploughed interminably forth towards the elevator docking station at thousands of miles per hour.
From a fiery spark on the red planet’s horizon to a raging ball of energy, the Xenotechs made their presence palpable for the frightened, screaming and helpless Martian colonies, and now set within their targets, they aimed to destroy them.
Like missiles they tore through the elevation station, and shattered the shuttles and centrifugal spindles into cosmic dust and a fire that spread like the coils of a luminous burning oil spill. The devastation was maximum, and all that was left of the orbital elevation platform descended out of orbit, its tension belt curling as it chased the counterweight through the caustic atmosphere, hundreds of thousands of tons of debris turning to fire and crashing down on the defenceless colony below. By the time a distress beacon had been initialised, the colony was well on its way to irreversible obliteration.
And the Xenotechs passed, leaving more carnage in their wake as they circled the inner well of the heliosphere, chasing down their next target.
Chasing down the planet Earth.
-61-
Through the intersecting bridges and highways where the neon lights of vehicles roamed, between the tall standing towers of habitation centres housing thousands of individuals, Syridan automatons and drones swooped into position. Intel fed back to the hidden combat centres as they surveyed the situation from clandestine locations around the world; the Commander and Chief regarded the data decisively, listening to various intelligence reports dictated by Adamoss.
The world leaders, associates and corporate elites, along with some anonymous Eternals, sat in the huge pentagonal room, the walls active with luminous displays of information concerning strategies, code-names for teams, territorial possession, enemy combatants and isolated areas. Their seats all back to back as they regarded the view-screens rather than each other, neurophased with the information in a digitally induced trance. They saw fires and explosions in the holographic projections, the remains of colonies strewn over the Martian rocks.
Adamoss was soon to join the meeting, but only in his augmented avatar. Most of his anatomical avatars were occupied with aid assistance, city maintenance, social services and defence. To account for the missing physical numbers his computational command was able to offer a digital rendering of himself through the Nexus where he continued to extend his services. Here, his anthropomorphized form looked much more convincingly human, his arms long and pale; his skin seamless and hairless, occasionally rippling with waves of light that pulsed from an origin, homogenous to a human heartbeat. It was a form he used only to communicate with humans since they responded better to him when he appeared as their equal.
Adamoss entered the room through a doorway that appeared as a strip of light in the northern part of the room. Like magic the door folded away and vanished once he was present.
‘Greetings conference attendees of meeting agenda Crisis State. I trust you are familiar with recent updates.’
As he walked around the pentagonal room, they all saw his augmented form through the Nexus, and those Eternals who preferred Quantic devices to neuro-ligatures viewed Adamoss with their ocular relays. Although augmented, his position was consistently relative to each viewer, as real as an actual person being present, with depth and distance. Adamoss was limited to hardland contacts; he was unable to pick up physical objects. But his virtual image interacted convincingly with real world environments, able to work mechanical devices that were sequ
enced with the Nexus.
Adamoss walked around people rather than through them, looked to who was addressing him, referred to objects and material items and was able to view them with the help of Nexus referencing, which used the visual experiences of neurophased people to map hardlands as well as surveillance cameras.
‘As you are all aware,’ Adamoss informed, ‘the chaos cipher has corrupted several of my hardland avatars from the Hephaestus One. They are no longer in my control, which is why I detailed a full combat efficiency report on all the Adamoss avatars, thus enabling any future contact with a corrupted Avatar vulnerable to our attacks should they be necessary.’
‘What about these things, are they coming here?’ asked the Commander and Chief.
‘Yes,’ said Adamoss. ‘There seems to be a pattern to their destruction. They are weakening Solar Alliance defences and approaching the planet. They know how and where to hit us.’
A forlorn and unsettled silence fell upon them, a submerging weight of uncertainty and dread.
‘What can we do, Adamoss?’ the President finally submitted.
The android’s augmented form began to pulse with information feeding back through the quasilands, torrents of strategies pulled from all networks of his artificial intelligence to creatively devise an answer.
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