by Wayne Hill
“The dictionary definition of alien applies here —” Caroline puts on some gold-rimmed spectacles and reads from another screen — “‘differing in nature or character; typically to the point of incompatibility.’ I get a strange feeling when looking at these ... creatures? They swirl and shimmer in the dark, like oil on water. They take nebulous forms and then they vanish. Sometimes they appear as translucent machinery, sometimes energy bursts. They are truly mesmerising. I’ve watched the recordings of them for hours on end — just like our cousin Paulo did with his beloved tropical fish. They are like motile, shimmering codes. Each code is a unique marvel. I’ve nicknamed them D.E.H.A.S’s — Dream-Extracted, Hidden, Ancient, Secrets. A little pretentious, perhaps, but why not? I feel something so complex, and alien should have a more exotic name. I study them calmly — with seeming disinterest — when, inside, I’m screaming: WHAT ARE YOU?
“You may ask ‘where do they come from?’ Good question, sis. Well, Supernova, this should blow your mind. I hypothesise that at the centre of the human limbic system is a gateway to another dimension. I suspect that these D.E.H.A.S. are manifestations, in our reality, of beings from an alternate dimension. They are so alien and beautiful. I wish you could see them, Em.
“I can only wonder at how much they affect us. Are they a large part of what we consider ‘consciousness?’ If they are part of our conscious selves — and, by extension, all living organisms — and we hear them in our dreams, and they guide us in our day-to-day activities, do they control us? Directly? Indirectly? And, If the answer to any of these questions is yes, then these ghost-fish — these living codes from another dimension — could very well be what our ancestors referred to as angels and demons, or even (without too much of a stretch) gods. Maybe they are the gods that helped the Egyptians build the pyramids and gave the ancient Sumerians their farming machinery. Perhaps they helped us create the internal combustion engine, the Mona Lisa and the scientific method? If I follow this trail of thought too far, I not only cut myself on Occam’s razor, but perhaps decapitate myself. But we scientists question more than most, and every answer we find leads to an infinitude of further questions. And because we live on those questions, life is never dull. There is always something to study, always questions to ask and to answer.
“The implications of this discovery though, Em. It is ... huge. Massive. Our study would subsume all other thoughts and discoveries under its aegis. There is a chance that every mental health disorder — every invention and intention (good or evil) that humanity has ever had — have been the result of the (direct or indirect) actions of the D.E.H.A.S. They could be the origin of Shakespearean comedies and Tomás de Torquemada, the Holocaust and Bach’s music, Da Vinci’s art, Little Boy and Einstein’s musings. The mysterious internal voices that have been condemned for so much, and inspired so many, will — if mine and Professor Matheson’s work is a success — soon have a face, or faces.
“There you have it. The reason for my seven-year round-trip. Professor Alexander Matheson said that I am the missing part of the most significant scientific breakthrough of the eleven thousandth century — although, I think that is a severe understatement. I have not been this excited by my work in years...” Here Caroline trails off and winces, as if her memory has fed her something distasteful. “That is not everything I need to tell you though, Em.” She runs a hand over her face. “I couldn't tell you until I was on Poseidon five, for reasons I’d rather not get into. Look, I know that, after Mother and Father’s ... funeral, you said you never wanted to know which prison planet their murderers had been sent to, but I know. The truth is, they got exiled to Earth. I need to tell you this now not only because I am light years away from you and a complete coward but because I think insanity would surely seek me out if I didn’t. I keep getting a Bucky-sludge feeling just knowing that they could still be alive and near me, just outside the walls of the Drumcroon facility where I will soon be working. Statistically, though, it’s doubtful they will still be alive. It’s been too long and, frankly, neither of them looked that outdoorsy.
“The stories I’ve heard about Earth, from those on board The Poseidon, are nightmarish.” Caroline looks away from the camera and shudders before continuing. “I doubt they survived a day on that wasteland island, let alone ten years. You know what, though, Em, a part of me hopes they did survive. I hope they survived, and I hope they still survive to this day. I also hope they are in immense pain every damn second of every damn day.
“I’m sorry, it just seems easier for you to hear it this way, rather than me telling you in person.” A small smile plays on her thin lips. “It’s certainly easier for me, Supernova ... They are prepping the CryoPods even as we speak. You were right after all, Em: Ice Queen it is! I am quite literally about to be frozen. I love you so very much, Emma. Never forget that. I’m so scared. I don’t want to be frozen. I’m going to be a part of the greatest scientific work ever completed. Our work will be studied for millennia and we shall make unsurpassed advancements for the USA. I’m not boasting, Em, honest I’m not. I’ve just got to keep saying these things to myself and it will all be fine. I’m such a scaredy cat. You were always the brave one. You are the only person I trust to keep this secret. It’s essential to me we share in this experience, no matter what the outcome may be. As my sibling, you share almost 50% of DNA with me — do you know how close that makes us? No one thinks more like me than you do. No one in existence can even come close to knowing you like I know you. You are always going to be part of me — so no sadness, little sister. I’ll be with you forever.
Caroline looks down at the small, flashing screen on her wristband. “I’m being summoned to the CryoPods by the ship’s computer. My one-year position at the Drumcroon facility should gain us enough Credits to have any future we want, Em. We can go and live in any dome community on any planet, moon or asteroid you want. My next video-post to you will be after I wake from CryoSleep in three years’ time, on our ancestral home-world. Captain McCollough says it will be winter on Earth when we arrive. So — there you go! — what more proof is needed that I am, indeed, the Ice Queen?”
Caroline smiles a wan smile. “Dream me a three-year dream, little sister — we are about to become the same age!” The recording blinks off.
———-End of message———-
Log Number 3 (10,808 AD)
Dr Caroline Brogan appears on the Clear View screen. She is clutching a black journal and smiling. Despite the rare application of makeup, she is less pale, and her hair is curled into stylish ringlets. The dark mascara circling her eyes make her green irises stand out like emeralds.
“Hello, my not-so-little sister... I’ve had time now to contemplate the past few weeks of my stay here at the Drumcroon Facility. It’s been such an experience. As always, I miss you. Due to relativistic space travel, we are now equal in age, but I’m sure neither my brains nor your beauty have diminished during my long sleep. How strange that three years vanished in, what seemed to me, a night.
“Once my year on prison planet Earth ends and I return to Gliese, I will be your younger sister. By more than three years. I wonder who you are with now, romantically? Anyway, I hope he’s better than the last two or three. You were always the popular one. Men tended to ignore me, unless it was the end of the night and alcohol had suspended their discernment. You were always the pretty one, too, providing you hadn’t been over-indulging and forgetting your Bucky-sludge facials. Wow! my skin feels fantastic after becoming the Ice Maiden —” Caroline absently brushes a fingertip across her powdered jawline — “I can’t stop stroking my cheek.”
“Listen to this. Please ignore the mildly poetic and flowery writing: it’s from my journal, you lucky Bucky. I wanted to keep you close — you are with me here every day, really you are.” She scans through several pages with a furtive smile, and a slight blush, before finding the start and clearing her throat. “‘The approach to our old world stirred up in me tangled emotions. My first impression of
our long-lost ancestral world is that Earth, although smaller, is a far more luminescent planet than Gliese. Images and memory plates of Earth do not do it justice. We circled the planet, from dark-side to light-side and back, before landing. I felt the light in me lessen as we slowly approached the lonely-looking Island. As the Poseidon skirted over the waves, it started making unsettling juddering and popping noises. I would have been worried — the thought occurred that perhaps seawater had gotten into, and was interfering with, the engines — but the Captain and crew seemed unconcerned, so I hid my anxiety.
“‘The craft skipped merrily towards the white landmass; winter snow limned the home of our forefathers. The moonlit scene was more beautiful than I could ever imagine. Moonlight made the small land mass glisten like a precious gemstone in the glinting darkness of the ocean. Recollections of human history from this ancient place rose in my mind like white horses on the waves of my consciousness. I thought of the amazing inventions created here; the struggle for mortal, and moral, existence, and the amazing adaptability of life. And now this world is just endless water as far as the eye can see. Except for this small solitary island. Prison planet Earth — a tiny speck amidst fathomless depths — mirrors Humanity’s place in the universe. So small. So powerless. I feel tremendous sadness for all the lives lost to wars that were fought over territory and property that does not now exist. Oh! the futility of violence. Wars are always lost; there can be no winners. History should be cried over and learned from.
“‘The sea, in its way, is also like humanity: tranquil and soothing until provoked and then savage and destructive. Oceans and human history have a perverted parallelism. What does this sea now cover? What lies beneath this dark water? No amount of poetry or prayer could raise the lost books, the lost history, ancestry, the ruined monuments of great minds submerged by time and tides. I find it upsetting that this solitary island is all that survives; that the entire story of our evolution, both biological and cultural, is hidden beneath the tidal darkness of this beautiful world.
“‘Seventy miles out from the coast, we chanced upon occasional crafts in the water. The closer we got to the island, that greater the number of boats we saw on Earth’s solitary ocean. An armada of irregularly shaped crafts greet us a few hundred meters out from the cliffs. Some were of a grand scale, with many decks. We paused for a few moments and admired the elegance of the crafts: startlingly detailed boats carved from wood. Hundreds of man-hours must have gone into making them. As lights in the boats below started to flicker on, Captain McCullough told us we had better leave before the wrong people woke up. I feel that he despises this place. Whenever he looks at the prisoner’s boats, he smokes a lot and scowls. During our interactions, the Captain has mentioned — many times — nuking the entire colony from space. At these times, I could never tell if he was joking or not, so I just smiled and agreed.
“‘As we reach land, and soar over mighty cliffs, glowing lights radiate from several cave entrances. We silently flit over the frosted island, metres above hauntingly highlighted and snow-encumbered evergreens, heading towards the Drumcroon facility. Large settlements and campfires dot the land. Some homes are built into the tall trees. These seem to have some electrical power, as lights are visible in the tree houses. It sickens me to admit it, but this land looks beautiful. This prison — the same one the Believers’ court sent our mother and father’s killers to — isn’t the hell we wished for. It certainly isn’t what these criminals deserve. It looks like some NTB-generated paradise — a magical Narnia for thieves, rapists, and murderers. I will, no doubt, know more about it ‘in the light of day’. If this land turns out to be a holiday camp for perverts, I doubt I will have the strength to control my rage. Luckily, I will have to spend a few days in quarantine for tests and gravitational adaptation — which I’m hoping isn’t as boring as it sounds.
“‘I’m desperate to meet Professor Matheson, though I still have some reservations. I’ve heard of his eccentricities — who hasn’t! — but what if he is too eccentric? You know, what if he has a box under his bed containing a selection of human noses that he tries on at night and laughs at in the mirror. What if his breath smells? Or what if he has those old-man white globules at the corners of his mouth, just as High Priest Ramsey sported?’” Caroline breaks off from her reading, taking off her schoolmarmish spectacles to lean into the camera with a worried frown on her brow and whisper: “These messages go against protocol, Em, so I beg you — don’t let anyone else see them.” She leans back and smiles. “I know you won’t.” Popping her glasses back on she returns to her journal.
“‘The quarantine process — for all off-worlders — is slow, and, after only the second day, I was sure this adventure was a massive mistake. Finally, I met the Professor, and his charisma pleasantly surprised me.
“‘Professor Aldous Matheson is as charming as he is handsome. With wide shoulders and rugged features, the only thing unusual and haunting about him are his eyes. They’re deep-set, blue and somewhat troubled — they turn downwards at the sides. His eyes look so distant, so lost, even when he smiles. He’s only ten years older than me — about mid-forties — and at six foot two inches tall, he’s a towering figure. Despite his height, it’s his broadness and bearing that makes him appear imposing. He was clean-shaven for the first few days but this fastidiousness of toilet was a façade, no doubt for the purpose of first-impressions. Now he has an unruly beard and rarely makes time to bathe. His body odour is strong, but not overpowering, nor altogether unpleasant. It may disgust you, Em, but I’ve grown quite fond of his shabbiness. The Professor looks wilder each day, although he always remains polite and gallant — a true gentleman. What can I say? — I like him. Which is somewhat surprising. He did, after all, threaten to ruin my career.
“‘I did confront him about that, and he replied, ‘Having read your publications on the limbic system and dream extraction, I knew I needed your genius. You are the only scientist I could have worked alongside. Our atoms must come from the same star.’ I think he feels for me as I do for him, but he’s far too much of a gentleman to say anything.
“‘While work continues at an unnervingly fast rate, the subtle but lovely exchanges we share each day titillate me. Sometimes, as unprofessional as it is, I have to ask him to repeat what he’s said because I’ve been lost in his face — each line of his brow, the small scar on his left temple, the grey patches in his beard — and haven’t heard what he has said to me. Pathetic, I know. I could witter on about this wonderful mess of a man all day but let me tell you about some of the other curious characters here.
“‘It’s an odd thing to discover somewhere cleaner than your bedroom, yet I’ve found such a place. The Drumcroon Facility was constructed hundreds of years ago from an ancient stone called marble and it is cleaned by Guardians with rags to an astonishing shine. The Guardians are obsessive in their ways and live quite ascetic lives. I find it curious that they can feel fulfilled when every aspect of their lives follows such a physically harsh and dull routine.
“‘The Guardians do not adhere to the Earth’s 24-hour day. Their days are 36 hours long, and they sleep for only four of those hours. Guardians meditate in four groups of 20 during their small resting periods — which occur randomly, or so it seems. I have observed many of their strange rituals. The oddest one is their meditative state. They sit cross-legged in a square formation and more Guardians form little circles inside those squares.
“‘All Guardians wear white robes — called kirshis — except for the Lead Guardian. Fortune Salem — a very tall and slender, yet muscular, man — is the Head Guardian here on Earth. Salem always wears a black patchwork robe with a broad red sash at his waist, and he never sits in the meditation groups. So far, I have not found out why this is.
“‘Guardian Salem believes there is interconnectivity between the Guardians and the universe. Salem has explained this to me as being like the coral creatures that are found stretching across certain shallow portions of
the ocean here on Earth: everything is one giant, superorganism split into smaller, functional units. They believe all life forms, through dreams and meditation, can link together — find their hidden interconnectedness. Using their meditation process, they contact what they call the infinite and radiant Mandala.
“‘Although some Guardians do carry prototype-7 assault rifles, which I fear contradicts their pseudo-pacifistic philosophy somewhat, they are effective in restraining the prisoners without using projectile weaponry.
“‘Shuttle transport ships lower a metal container full of undesirables once a month. Sometimes twice, depending on requirement. When the alarm sounds, the dome’s huge retractable roof opens and the prisoners’ metal containment module starts its journey from the shuttle down into the facility’s circular, marble reception room. Then the shuttle returns to its main craft, hovering eighty kilometres or so above prison planet Earth.
“‘I sometimes imagine I am looking down on the building from the prison shuttle. I guess that would be an aesthetically pleasing sight: the black cube of the container inside a white circle of the reception chamber nested in the off-white rectangle of the facility.
“‘When the Guardians are ready to begin their assessments, they release the prisoners from their container. Prisoners usually squint at the harshness of the light reflecting from the polished white marble surfaces. It must be shocking in comparison to the dark box they have been encased in for over two hours.
“‘I went to see new prisoners arriving two weeks ago. It is a moment now locked in my memory, forever trapped ... just like these undesirables.
“‘One prisoner must have ripped free some part of the transport container — and, in the cube’s confines, set about the other convicts — because, when Fortune Salem opened the capsule, a demented ogre of a fellow ran out brandishing an axe-shaped slither of metal dripping with dark blood. The injured people’s screams, coming from the belly the transport container, would have been more shocking if it wasn’t for the charging man’s leonine roar drowning them out.
