The Archytas

by Kinsella, Luke

  She walked for a further ten minutes, and noticed that the net above her had become closer, lower. She could make out its shape, interwoven hexagons of silver netting. Perhaps to keep the people who escape contained, or perhaps there was a more sinister motive.

  It made Grace think, had she really escaped from that city she had been trapped inside her whole life? Was there yet another wall, another challenge, another bridge to cross? Maybe there was an endless ocean after all, or perhaps there was something else.

  It was as Grace finally got to the point where the netted fence was in reach of her touch, that she saw something. About a metre before the metal became attached to the very ground she walked on, something shimmered on the dirt. A skeleton.

  60

  “We once thought that the universe was like a single bubble. Ever expanding from this very point. We thought that the bubble could burst in a second; a single moment could end time for us all. Our guess was that everything would return to this point, the point where we found the Universe Prism. When we examine the universe further, we theorise that it is not just one bubble, but also a series of bubbles, a cluster. Connected to each other, expanding and contracting, spreading in every direction, like a foam of sorts. The area of each bubble is insurmountable, impossible in size. All of our time as a species, we have been inside just one of these massive bubbles of space, but now we believe that there are others. We believe that the Universe Prism we found was at the very centre of this bubble, and that there are other bubbles with other...”

  “Sorry, Professor Magnus, this will have to wait,” said Commander Ragin, with urgency.

  “But I’m getting to the good bit,” replied Magnus.

  “It will have to wait,” reiterated Ragin.

  Twenty or so professors on board the eight ships were each putting forward their scientific theory as to the meaning and their understanding of the object they had found in space, the reason for the pigeons and bodies, the reason for the energy. They were taking it in turn to present their hypotheses to all of the senior members, and listening to each other as they spoke. But, something had caused concern, and Ragin had promptly stopped the speech for reasons that Yudar already knew.

  “Three minutes ago, an object launched from the Archytas, we thought at first that a missile had accidently fired, but it was in fact a small vessel. Parkins, Yudar, what do you know?”

  Yudar spoke first, “Nothing, I am standing here watching this professor talking about bubbles. This is the first I have learnt of this information.”

  “You didn’t see anything leaving the ship?” asked Ragin.

  “Nothing,” replied Yudar.

  “Nothing,” confirmed Parkins.

  “Have you sent something after it, a sub-tracker or smart-scout?”

  “Yes,” replied Ragin.

  “Then what is the problem?” asked Yudar.

  “Yes, why did you interrupt my speech, I was getting to the part about...” said Professor Magnus, before being cut short once again.

  “Please wait, Magnus, I need to speak with Commander Parkins and Chief Engineer Yudar in private. Everyone else please wait.”

  61

  Carter was sitting in his ship, being propelled through a minefield of floating pigeons. Yudar had explained to him that the path might be clear, but Carter was beginning to worry.

  His mind drifted back to the moment where he saw himself, that dead him lying on the table. Had they copied him? Had they cloned him? He wondered how it was possible that there was more than one of him. As objects appeared in his visor only to disappear a second later, Carter wrestled with the idea of another him existing. He considered if the other Carter had the same memories as him, and if so, was he really himself anymore? He wondered if he was in fact the copy. His whole life might never have existed until he woke up that morning. He could not be sure if anything he experienced or remembered actually happened to him. It scared him to think that all of it could well have been the copied memories of someone else.

  Carter needed to clear his mind. He looked at the control panel, considered pressing the button that would activate quantum stasis, and put him into a timeless state until he arrived at whatever destination he was heading for.

  Carter glanced out into the blackness of space. Having passed most of the space debris and floating birds, the speed in which he was travelling was no longer apparent in their absence. It was at this point that Carter realised just how dark space was, distant objects appeared in brief flashes of light, before vanishing behind him as he passed at speeds he could not grasp. It was the first time he had been in such a small craft, surrounded by an entire universe of nothingness. It was as if space was sitting right in his face. He enjoyed the experience, something he had not had the opportunity to appreciate during his long lifespan.

  He waited for a while, staring out, contemplating, before his mind became completely empty, and he finally thought of nothing. Black space filled his view, complete darkness, the occasional glimpse of objects, shrouded by the obscurity of everything around him.

  Carter reached his hand forward and hovered his fingers over the button marked with an ‘S’. He took one last look at space as he pushed the button to activate quantum stasis.

  Glimpses came and went, before darkness crept into his eyes as he began to cease to exist in time, slowly covered by a thick dark veil, as all things faded to a different kind of black, one painted by the harrowing shadow of non-existence.

  62

  Grace was staring at the bones on the ground. They were not of an animal, but of a person like her.

  A feeling passed through Grace, one of anxiety. She connected the dots in her head. A boy, turning a machine in an abandoned house, boys with the same face, crops harvested by identical beings, and all to supply people inside a city within walls, and now, human remains. She realised that something more sinister was happening, something beyond her comprehension.

  She looked at the bones, small, perhaps a boy, perhaps one of the same boys. A fence spreading from the ground and across the sky behind her, connecting to the city. Whoever this was, she thought, must have been trying to escape.

  A fear swept through her unlike she had experienced before, even sleeping on the streets amongst criminals and the homeless, even sleeping with strangers that could easily harm or murder her, she had never felt such a strong sense of terror.

  She considered returning to where she saw the boys, the harvesters, but decided against it. She looked around, meadows behind her, overgrown fields beyond the fence. She considered crossing over, finding a way through, seeing what was beyond the second wall.

  Grace instead began to listen. Focus on the sounds around her. She listened for any noise that indicated ocean, but was not sure what ocean sounded like. To her dismay, Grace heard nothing but the steady breeze of the wind. Unexpectedly, there was a sense that something was happening, a change. She turned around and faced the city walls. She saw in the sky small outlines of black, a cluster of movement, like a swarm of flies rapidly moving as one unit.

  Above her, on the other side of the fence, she saw birds. They too were flying in a group, perhaps seven or eight. They glided over her and headed toward the city walls. She watched as their shape lessened until they too became black specks, joining the others.

  Suddenly, all around her, in every direction she turned, more birds, hundreds. They were doing the same, moving together to form one mass of birds, a swarm of blackness, a hurricane of pigeons.

  High in the skies above the city, Grace saw a huge glowing ball of yellow light. It was moving slowly, leaving behind a radiating trail of afterglow. It was as if it had been dropped from the clouds, slowly drifting down toward the sea of blackness made up of a thousand birds.

  Tempted by whatever event was taking place, she slowly began to walk toward the area the birds were gathering.

  As the object neared, it became brighter but maintained its size. It drifted closer and closer, before suddenly and abrupt
ly, there was a sound other than the wind. The explosion rippled through the air, filling Grace’s ears with the deep sound of ruin.

  The object crashed into the fence, a plume of smoke, russet in hue fused with the dirt brown soil, parachute trapped, the mesh of fence a contorted mess. Above her, Grace could see the aftermath of the impairment. She dived to the floor and covered her head. The chains above her twisted and lowered, until finally stopping just out of reach, its contours now looking like a fishing net that had tried to swoop down to catch her, only to have failed, getting stuck somewhere along the way.

  She returned to her feet and saw a chaotic scramble of birds flying off in every direction, moving away from the object, spreading away like the ripples of a raindrop on the surface of a puddle.

  Grace ran toward where the object had made its dramatic impact. No longer apparent, no longer a bright light. Nothing but a buckled fence to guide her. As she ran, birds soared above her and away behind her. She kept on running, across meadows and fields. Crushing plants, trampling cornfields, until eventually she got close enough to see the object. A warped hunk of metal in the field before her.

  Grace waited a moment to catch her breath. She looked around to check if there were boys around, but saw no movement, just the charred blackness of fields, a scattering of broken wires, and hundreds of jagged wheels littering the ground.

  63

  “Why just the three of us?” asked Yudar.

  He was standing on the practically empty Command Deck of the Archytas. Commander Parkins was the only other person there, standing beside him. On screen, they could both see the glaring face of Commander Ragin.

  “Because it came from your ship,” said Ragin.

  “Where did it launch from? We can run a check,” said Parkins.

  “Room 2774.”

  “That’s Carter’s room,” said Parkins.

  “Carter is dead,” declared Yudar. “If you remember, we found him in space. We can go and check his room if you wish. Commander Ragin, can you wait a while?”

  “Sure, the smart-scout maintains its pursuit; we can follow whoever it is inevitably.”

  “It might be nobody,” said Yudar. “An accidental launch.”

  “But how could something launch from an individual room, especially when the ship is in lockdown?” asked Ragin.

  “The ship has some escape pods, some rooms, when I first built them, they were designed for officers. The Archytas does not have enough officers to fill the rooms. It could have just been a pigeon colliding with the side of the ship, it could have been anything.”

  “Okay, check the room and report back.”

  They left the Command Deck and headed through the network of corridors toward Room 2774.

  “Do you think Carter escaped?”

  “No,” said Yudar. “Listen, please proceed to 2774, I have something I need to do quickly, I will meet you there.”

  “But Ragin said we should hurry back,”

  “Do not worry about Ragin; I will only be a moment,”

  “You sure about that, Yudar?” asked Parkins.

  “Quite sure, trust me; I will be right behind you.”

  “Okay, do what you need to do.”

  “Great, thanks, and be careful.”

  64

  Carter opened his eyes. Things were a total blur. Shades of white had crept into every corner of his vision. He could make out no shapes. He blinked. Clarity began to return and he blinked again, repeatedly.

  He felt a cool breeze across the right side of his face. He turned his head and saw a figure, a shape. Dark in his absence of sight, another outline. He recalled Yudar’s note, something about a boy, the photograph. Was he standing there, looming over his wrecked craft?

  The last thing he had remembered was staring out into space, thinking about that other him. Those memories occurred for Carter just moments before the crash, and lingered in his thoughts. He remembered activating quantum stasis, but that moment was just seconds ago in his memory.

  “Hello,” said a voice. A woman.

  Carter tried to reply, but his throat was dry. A rasp escaped containing no words, only the muted silence of a thousand lifetimes without using his vocal chords.

  “Are you okay?” asked the woman.

  Carter shook his head, not so much to represent a negative response to the question, but instead to relieve a sudden pain in the back of his neck; stiffness accumulated over years in transit.

  “Can you walk? Are you hurt?”

  Again, Carter could not offer a reply; instead, he let out a deep sigh before placing both hands onto the arm rests of his seat. He pushed down and forced himself to his feet.

  He carefully climbed through the open door, and as he left the craft, he felt the crunch of wildlife beneath his shoes. Life, he thought, there was life here. He let out a thin smile, but quickly allowed it to dissipate as dizziness crept through him. His head swoon, balance shot.

  The woman extended her hand to his and helped him to stand. Carter was disorientated, swaying, and the strain of being on his feet for the first time took its toll.

  “Look,” the woman said, “we should head away from here, you crashed hard, there was a huge sound, a blinding light. They will come.”

  Carter stretched but did not acknowledge the woman. Instead, he reached down and picked a small leaf, coated by a fine layer of dew. He brought the leaf up to his mouth and licked. His throat partially refreshed, his mouth still dry but the tiny particles of moisture were enough to appease him.

  He stood back up and looked around to see the greens of nature, the yellows of corn, and the scattering of thick dark red vegetables with lush leaves, uprooted and teeming with temptation.

  In the distance, Carter saw the walls of the city, a city he had seen in his simulation dreams. He realised where he was.

  “Terra?” he said, managing to produce decipherable sounds for the first time since he crashed.

  “What?” asked the woman.

  Carter dropped his head again, almost like a bow. Before shaking his head left and right in a lowered position. It felt amazing for a second, but made him aware of a deeper pain in his shoulders and spine. He resumed a normal posture, and looked lost in deep thought for a moment. He was trying to remember what the letter had said, and then he remembered the silver box.

  “Come on, we have to go,” the woman said.

  Carter raised one finger, and pointed toward his crashed ship. The woman tilted her head slightly to the side; Carter recognised it as a look of confusion.

  He knelt down, and reached into the ship, picked up the box and returned outside. He looked at the woman and nodded.

  “Okay, we should go. I know a place,” she said, and began to lead him away, slowly, one step at a time. After a few paces, his memory of mobility returned, and he was walking freely, as if naturally, side by side with a woman from Terra and a box containing an invisible prism.

  65

  Yudar entered the room that contained the collected birds and bodies they had found floating in space. The room was quiet, dimly lit. With the ship still in lockdown, bodies and birds were no longer being collected, and at the moment when Yudar arrived, it was apparent to him that nobody else was there.

  He walked along rows of beds, translucent sheets stretched across bodies. Notes scrawled onto pads. Some of the corpses were completely exposed, incisions showing, body parts removed.

  There were pigeons in the room too, opened up, scattered remains on tables. Somebody had done many experiments, taking their mechanical innards apart, connecting them to batteries. The findings would be later analysed and discussed, but right now, his species were in the process of collecting data.

  Yudar searched the beds, carefully lifting the sheets to check faces. A woman, a man, both his own species, found lost and floating in space.

  After checking four bodies, it was the fifth that satisfied him. It was the body of Carter. The second to be found outside of the Archytas, the third Carte
r so far. He noted the lack of incisions and tampering, the body was fresh. He checked the notes attached to the bed, only minor observations had been noted, and nothing that seemed to be of any significance.

  Yudar took the pad and notes, concealing them, and left the corpse of Carter on the bed.

  He existed the room and returned to the corridors, before heading to Room 2774 to meet with Parkins.

  66

  Grace led Carter away from the crash site, and in the direction of the farm that she had stayed the previous evening.

  She was concerned about the man; he had said one word in a language she did not know. She was not sure if he was a threat, but she had nothing to lose. She still had her knife, and having had a fair share of encounters with bad people before, especially when working as a prostitute, she was always prepared for the worse.

  As they ambled across the meadows, Grace questioned where the man had come from; somewhere beyond the sky, somewhere else. She considered as to what was in the silver box he was carrying, wondering if it was a weapon or something that would be a threat to her.

  Occasionally the man would stop to sip water from a leaf, and each time he did, the sudden movement made Grace panic. She was consistently on her guard, aware of an imminent danger. Hands now in her pockets, fingers touching steel.

  They eventually arrived at the farmhouse.

  “This is where I am staying. I found this farm yesterday.”

  Carter looked the exterior of the building up and down; Grace saw a look of suspicion on his face.

  “I’ve seen this place somewhere before,” he said.

  “You speak!” she exclaimed.

  “I do.”

  Carter thought for a moment. It was his first time to meet a woman from Terra. There was something mystical about her. Some unusual energy he could feel radiating from her. “Your planet is beautiful,” he said, “I saw so many images of this world, but it is nothing like I expected.” He looked around once again, taking in the beauty of the nature, the tranquillity around him. The clean air, the stunning blue sky. “Picturesque,” he finally added.