by Chris Turner
Yul shook his head. “I’m sure you can double it, Mr. Hresh, but for the record, 10k is what he paid me and it’s a moot point when my head is on the block.”
“Come, Mr. Vrean, let’s be realists. You are human like any other. Everyone has a price. Mathias bought you cheaply. I can offer you more, and what do you do? Quibble, try to do a morality check on me. Have you never been swayed by the highest bidder?”
Yul’s lip twitched as a brief memory stirred: the time he had betrayed Bedraltr, the smuggler on Maven for certain privileged information. He was still fleeing from that cock-up. Of course, Hresh probably knew all of that with his computer wizardry.
“Spare us the violins, Hresh,” Cloye piped up. “What do you want? How do we get off this planet?”
“You’re welcome to leave at any time,” said Hresh. “There’s the door. But the atmosphere outside is unbreathable, like most of the uncharted worlds in these sectors. When I came here over a year ago, this was an uninhabited wasteland. Perfect for my needs. Now it’s a fully operational research facility—out of sight and mind of opportunistic eyes.”
The man’s words seemed to enter Yul’s brain but not penetrate there. His eyes drifted to the glass case with the pulsing balls, jumping around randomly as if by magic. Yul stared transfixed. There was untethered power there which chilled him.
Hresh gestured at his prized experiment and put on a boyish grin. “Your expression tells it all, Vrean. This is the first positive proof I’ve had in months that the Biogron can interface with life to drive an avatar.” His words were excited, his cheeks fevered. “Those objects you see flying about are andorphs, a lifeform native to Sigren, one of the remote planets in the Dim Zone. I did some research on historic missions to the outer realms and discovered some puffballs, or subspecies, that were reported to roll of their own accord across the sands, classified neither plant nor animal. Probably a wives’ tale of some kind, spun by a drunken explorer, but I hunted them down all the same to satiate my curiosity. To my joy, I discovered they actually exist.”
Yul shrugged. “So what? I don’t see how puffballs are going to help you build cyborgs.”
“I can sympathize with that sentiment,” said Hresh, peaking fingers on his nose. “At first glance, they seemed no more than roving planetary epiphytes, things that could self nourish from the soil and air, yet could manage to survive the harsh climates where other organisms died. We gathered numerous specimens for their compact size and ability to counter predators. Most impressive was the fact that they required neither brain nor central nervous system. The organism is miraculous in that sense. It has a hive-mind mentality that can rally its peers to protect itself against threats. Thus the difficulty in interfacing a complex brain to a machine is voided, a problem for which modern science may never find a solution.”
Yul shook his head. “That makes no sense to me. Mechnobots? Living freaks melded together in some Frankensteinian soup? Why not just hook up an earthworm?”
Hresh gave an exasperated sigh. “It can’t be just any random organism! All you people do is criticize! So linear of thought, so myopic. The scientific mind is based on curiosity and imagination, Vrean. The search for the unknown, the impossible. Unfortunately it seems not many are gifted with those talents. My Biogron makes the leap, can pick up the resonant frequency of an organism’s actions and synthesize that signature into useful energy, without electrodes, implants or the like. This initial discovery led to others in harnessing a controllable intelligence. I proposed the idea of an Imagron, a vessel that could contain and utilize the motive force of any given lifeform and use it for constructive ends. Channelled in my controlled environment, the implication is staggering, in fields too numerous to name. Imagine an avatar able to solve problems and construct things that challenge even humans. Things that we tell it to, unbreachable collapsible bridges, colony ships and shielded star highways. Who knows? Even curtail the depravities of the Zikri and Mentera. Hypothetically beyond our means of science today, but possible in the near future. I did find some short cuts to cut the gap down by an estimated one hundred years.”
He motioned to a lab tech to add more solution to an intravenous line that connected to the Biogron. “Mathias practically screamed at me to speed up my work, trying to get more inside information.” The scientist gave a throaty chuckle. “I had him by the neck and he knew it. I gave him a cursory sweep of the concept, the rest remained locked in my brain. He begged me for details, promised me all the resources I needed to finish the project, however long that might be. I quizzed him about his plans, and with that Machiavellian gleam in his eye, he dropped hints regarding a use of my innovation that caused my hackles to rise. My suspicions were confirmed. We did not share the same vision.”
Yul frowned and was going to ask him how those ‘visions’ differed, but Hresh was oblivious. “When his pleas grew to threats, I knew I had no option but to disappear, especially when blackmail entered the equation. I am a smarter man by far. That’s why I am here now. On Remus, deep in the Dim Zone, creating revolutionary things, miraculous things, while Mathias and his lapdogs are struggling to find what they will never find...”
Yul chewed his lip. He was in danger and Hresh was a threat. He and Cloye could have easily been killed by the Zikri bots in the obstacle course. It would not pay for him to be on Hresh’s payroll. It could be them next plunged into the Biogron. Hresh, though, would not be easy to outwit.
Yul winced. That he had let Cloye gull him into exploring this restricted complex had been stupid. Better to humour the man. There might be a way out...
The corners of Hresh’s lips quivered in a smile. “I see where your devious mind is going. I advise against it. You will fail badly at whatever scheme you’re cooking up.”
Yul drew a soft breath. “What do you want? We are at an impasse here.”
“I want everything!” croaked Hresh. “It is you who are at an impasse.”
Cloye began to scratch at her shoulder. The assassin was sweating profusely now. Cold drops of liquid beaded her brow and dripped down her olive-coloured cheeks.
The security leader took the movement as a sign of aggression and he moved over to frisk her for a possibly concealed weapon.
The man’s eyes widened when he caught sight of something animated near the base of her throat. He grabbed at her hair and tore the fabric loose from her left shoulder. “What’s this?” He gazed over at Hresh. “Sir, you’d better take a look at this.” He thrust back the woman’s head, exposing her bare neck to reveal a bright orange, leech-like frond that had coiled about her collar bone.
Yul hastened forward, his face paling.
Hresh stepped over, annoyed at the interruption to his train of thought. His eyes rounded at what he saw. Beckoning one of his assistants to bring tongs, he peered more closely. A man in a white lab coat hastened over with an assortment of instruments to extract the creature. But the more he tugged, the more Cloye wailed, the creature clinging tenaciously to her flesh.
“What the hell is it?” cried the perspiring technician.
Cloye whimpered. “I d-don’t know. It wasn’t there before.”
Yul gazed in alarm. His jaw dropped. The girl was infected by one of the pods! Shit, he had kissed her! It must have grown in the time they had flown to Remus and stalked Hresh’s complex. “You said you were down in Mathias’s lab? Something about a moth?”
“Y-yes. Mathias showed me the tank in the lab, said to be on the lookout for similar ones in Hresh’s compounds. The place was all helter-skelter as if a fire had gone through.”
Yul swore. “The thing must have latched onto you down there. How?”
“I don’t know!”
Hresh stroked his chin, his eyes faraway. “Remarkable. Transmitted by airborne spores?”
“No, from the moth!” growled Yul.
Cloye writhed, pulling at the thing, but it only wound tighter. “Get it off me!” she cried. The plant ring coiled more securely about her shoulder.
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br /> “Calm down, relax,” reassured Yul. He looked anything but reassured. “The plant just wants a place of stasis. It doesn’t want to harm its host.”
“I don’t care what it wants! Get it the fuck off!”
“What’s this about a moth?” Hresh moved in, regarding Cloye intently.
Yul cringed. He recalled the creature back in the Orb’s tank room and could relate to Cloye’s horror. “I curse the day Mathias sent us out to collect specimens on Xeses,” he mumbled.
Hresh gazed at him, examining the thing closer. “There appear to be small nodules growing from its tips.”
“They’re pods,” grunted Yul.
“They demand study.”
“Screw the studies!” cried Yul. “Get it off her.” He looked about desperately. If Cloye were down in Mathias’s lab and got infected, what did that say about him? He pawed fingers over his body, but felt nothing. Hresh moved in, staring at him. “What’s this about a damn moth, I say?”
Seeing Yul’s look of dismay, Cloye cried, “I told you, Mathias brought me down to show me what kind of tech to watch out for.”
Yul’s mouth sagged.
“Mathias sent you, you said—to this place Xeses?” Hresh asked matter-of-factly. “To search for plants?”
Yul nodded, not liking the breathless look in the man’s eyes.
Hresh seemed to ponder, as if a million variables coursed through that mind of his. “Mathias must have picked up on my idea long ago, a search for the perfect host. Did I jot it down in a journal? Pity.”
With an impatient lunge, he seized the assistant’s tongs and forcibly ripped the thing clean from Cloye’s shoulder. She screamed in agony, fell to her knees, an angry red welt where the suckers had been extracted, dragging the skin with them.
“What the hell did you do that for?” Yul cried, arching toward Hresh. “You hurt her.”
Hresh ignored him and moved toward the Biogron.
“Wait.” Yul lifted an arm to stop the man.
“Stay back!” cried Hresh. One of his security guards took hold of Yul. Yul brushed him aside and Hresh twisted away from Yul’s metal fingers as his men restrained the mercenary. Yul struggled to fight them while Cloye slung the torn flap of her assassin’s suit over her naked shoulder, glaring at the ogling men.
Hresh dropped the pod into a pressurized tube that ran from the table to the top of the glass case, the Biogron. He quickly resealed the pressurized cap, then flicked a switch on the machine. The pod was instantly sucked into the vacuum, floating in free space with the other puffballs. It dangled there for some moments before the white bouncing puffballs seemed to notice anything untoward and began to speed up.
“You see, Vrean,” chuckled Hresh, “electronic circuitry, third generation cyborgs, they have no intelligence. But the life force does! These bots are just buckets of bolts clambering around, running clever algorithms. Stiff as starched sheets. But life is an altogether different thing. The magic of consciousness... Every thinker, scientist, philosopher, spiritualist has pondered over that intangible mystery of the universe, the essence of the unknown. I took the search a step further. To tap the energy of the creatures in this box, through this box, and infuse the neural-net of a mechanical avatar with their wisdom, their intelligence!”
He strode over to a covered mass, flush to the nearby wall, that rose head height over anything else in the lab and pulled off a silver gleaming tarp.
Yul gazed at Cloye who stared back at him. Together they looked upon the metallic exoskeleton of some elder beast. Raised on its hind legs and shortened forelimbs, it glistened in the bright light. On its back, curled a metallic shield, some kind of spiked dome, spreading as a peacock might fan its tail. The avatar sported an armadillo-like look to it, with a head, though of plated steel, sporting a great horn like a triceratops.
Hresh smiled proudly. “What is it that causes the neuron to fire, Vrean, to make new pathways? We don’t know. We just observe it happening in the human brain and formulate clever theories about it. In the same way, we don’t know why one mass attracts another, like the orbiting planets pulled toward their sun. We call it gravity but it’s just a word. We can only observe it, not understand the ‘why’ of it.”
The puffballs swirled furiously in their contained environment, sensing an invasive force. They surrounded the foreign pod with brutal tenacity and fused to its surface like barnacles. Yul likened the scene to white blood cells swarming foreign particles to attack pathogens in the blood.
The pod flared and surged red. It formed spikes on its surface. The barbs punctured the invading grey masses which quivered and folded like cards and which bled out a white, syrupy liquid floating like smoke wisps in the vacuum.
“Most interesting!” Hresh mused in his erudite tone.
More came to replace their skewered brothers and the pod grew larger, shivering with wrath like a rattlesnake as if to warn its attackers to stay away. The puffballs paid no heed, swarming in numbers and the pod shivered and jerked every which way like a jelly bean in a deep-fryer. How, Yul had no clue. He saw no means of locomotion for the thing: no legs, cilia or jets of propulsion. He simply watched the spectacle through the filmy glass with an awed and chilled expression. Whatever it was, it shucked off each invader. The other puffballs, seemingly too programmed to get the dire message, melted when the pod oozed a thin vapour which withered their outer flesh, much as it had the men’s faces back in Mathias’s lab.
“Wondrous! Fascinating!” cried Hresh, clapping his hands. “It’s beyond belief.”
Cloye snarled. “Let’s hear you say that when one of them is clamped on your body.”
Hresh appeared not to hear. He mumbled words to himself, as if in the grip of some poignant memory. “Mathias was solely in it for the money: how can we use the Biogron as a military weapon? How can we drive prices higher and sell it to the highest bidder? Whole armies exhibiting invincible forces! He made my blood turn cold. An entity such as this, with its adaptive intelligence, could go much further. What I propose could aid civilization as a whole on many levels beyond human imagination: to explore and inhabit new worlds without threat. To figure out new ways of designing and engineering systems, organizing our living environment and settlements in dynamic, futuristic ways.”
Yul scowled. Somehow he doubted that, considering what he saw before him—this sprawled mass of teeth, horn, sharp edges, and titanium steel. “What you crazies seem to forget, is how are you going to control such a thing?”
Hresh moved slowly back toward his glass case, studying the pod’s fight against the puffballs with renewed fervour. “We can introduce override controls, enhanced circuitry, monitoring algorithms.”
“The hell you can!” cried Yul. “What if it adapts beyond your plated playtoy’s restraints?”
Hresh laughed. “You think the thing’s cleverer than me?”
Now it was Yul’s turn to laugh outright. So thought Mathias and Dez when they were scrambling about trying to contain the butterfly when it hatched.
Hresh frowned moodily, stroking his thick black hair. “The thing is almost functional, but not quite. You see, it lacks motility, impetus. A sprawling spider, a freak, a primitive dinosaur, no more. My avatar has much potential but not a significant wellspring of intelligence to drive it. The puffshrooms, as I call them, don’t have enough life-power. They are intelligent, but certainly lack the depth needed for the capabilities I dream of. Look at them die now fighting against this one organism. Pah! I have sent my aide and senior researcher Leam out to collect more of them. But it may be futile. If I have a high enough concentration, maybe it’s the first step. But, my suspicion is that any number of them won’t be enough to power the entity for what I want.”
“You will never accomplish what you set out to do, Hresh,” warned Yul.
“Failing that,” mused Hresh, hearing nothing, “I will try human counterparts, as illegal as that may be. I’m open to volunteers—Are you up for it?” He laughed aloud. “No?�
�� He stared whimsically at Yul, who shuddered. He shot a suggestive glance at Cloye. “Perhaps your lady friend—”
Yul looked at him as if he were insane.
“Of course,” Hresh added, “the two of you could have an unfortunate accident in my lab. Then I wouldn’t have to ask you.”
Yul clenched his fists, ready to fight Hresh’s muscle-men with his bare hands if need be.
“Just jesting, friends! I have a macabre, if not flamboyant imagination that startles people at times. I would not coerce anyone into jumping into the Biogron. I’m not like Mathias.”
A distant boom like a ruptured oil drum came from somewhere overhead. Yul looked up as a massive light fixture fell and shattered a nearby worktable, sending glass and electrical equipment everywhere. A communicator beeped in the blond security officer’s hand and he passed it to Hresh.
Hresh listened scowling, annoyed at the interruption to his work. Yul, standing nearby caught the words: “Sir, looks like Zikri Orbs are in the air, but I can’t be sure. There are other ships out there too—they look like bloated aphid-shaped blimps.”
Hresh sneered. “Deal with it, Gustav. Use our automated defensive weaponry.” He closed the circuit. He turned back to the puffballs. “Ah, where was I?” He mumbled praise for the pod that now was clear of any foes. “Classic protection mechanism, ingenious.”
Yul blinked in amazement. “That’s all you can say, ‘ingenious’? Meanwhile bombs drop on your crib? The Zikri are here! Think, man. More will come. Or Mathias.”
“Let them come. Let Mathias come with all his starships!” Hresh waved a dismissive hand. “My ground forces will take care of them.”
“You will not ward off a fleet.”
“We’ve got surface-to-air cannon that can take out invaders. My supply ships come out of light drive for only a fleeting moment of vulnerability. If they’ve picked up tails, we blast them out of the sky. So far we’ve only needed to use it once. A freelance outfit out of Ujax, space bullies, no common sense in their heads.”
