Mythik Imagination #1

by Jon Mac

  “I knew that guy was bad news.”

  “Yeah. It’s worse than you think, though. He shot you from inside your head. It’s called a mindspike. I had to look that up. Apparently it’s a pretty new thing. It’s all the rage on the lower nets.”

  I tried not to get distracted by a spiral galaxy peaking from behind her left ear. “You’re losing me . . .”

  “Nevermind; just pay attention. This is part of the process. Your killer is still lurking up there somewhere. You’re lucky he didn’t recognize you on the street and that I was able to find you as soon as I did.”

  “He’s in my brain, too?” Good Lord, the insanity never ends. At this point, I was thinking I might prefer the eternal coma to all this.

  “Yes, he’s been turning out the lights, so to speak. He’s essentially in control of all your basic functions and is shutting them down. He’s trying to finish the job the mindspike started.”

  “So, am I like a secret agent or something? Why did he do this to me?”

  She shrugged. “I’m pretty sure it’s all been a mistake. You’re a computer programmer. Nothing special. You pay your taxes, and you always abide by the law. You’re relatively poor. I haven’t been able to find any reason why anybody would do this to you. Your killer is far too professional for this to be random. He must have had bad data. It really is a tragedy. I think he realized his mistake, but by then it was too late. Then he just tried to finish you off to cover up his blunder. And now all that’s really left of you are two figments.”

  “Wait. Now, you’re saying I’m a figment, too?”

  “Kind of. You’re more like a compressed version of yourself. The data is all there, but all the immediately unessential parts are packed away where they can’t be harmed, but also can’t be used.”

  “ ‘The immediately unessential parts,’ ” I repeated dumbly.

  “Yes. Those boots for example, and your crazy ideas on where the steering wheel should go were all corrupt data. Anyway, I had to create that elevator to nowhere to get you away from your killer before he could track you down or use some other part of your subconscious to betray you.”

  “So are we safe now?”

  “Not yet. There’s one last step, but you’re not going to like it.”

  “I hate to break it to you, Figment, but it’s been a pretty bad night ever since I got in your car.”

  “While we’ve been talking, your data has been repairing itself since being freed from the emotion of the amygdala, and I’ve been cleaning up most of the killer’s damage. I don’t think he’s ever faced a figment as good as me before.”

  “Well that’s good news for—”

  Then she pulled out a gun. I don’t know where she’d been hiding it. I guess maybe she conjured it up with her magical figment powers.

  “Hey, I thought you were supposed to be on my side.”

  “I am. I told you that you wouldn’t like the last step. We need to shock your system into waking up. The killer is about to track us down. We’re out of time.”

  She pointed the gun at me. I couldn’t believe this. “You’re going to bring me back from the dead by killing me?”

  “No. I’m going to free the imperfect version of you from your own dying mind. Then the real you will wake up and hopefully be your normal complete healthy self, as if nothing had ever happened. Ironic, isn’t it?”

  “Are you sure this going to work?”

  “I don’t know. Nobody has ever done it before.”

  She pulled the trigger. I didn’t hear anything, but the infinite galaxies of my amygdala winked out of existence. Everything turned black.

  THE END

  GHOSTS OF THE FUTURE

  June 3, 1943

  11:55 PM

  Somewhere Over Occupied France

  The B-17 Flying Fortress slowly lost altitude. As it skimmed through the low clouds over moonlit, midnight France, the first engine died with little fanfare. The second engine did it with more flair as it sputtered and coughed a few times, then seemed to recover. But it was just a trick of the fuel system. With one last backfire, the eleven-and-a-half-foot propeller stopped spinning. What little fuel remained was now diverted between the last two engines, so that gained them a couple extra minutes of life.

  3000 feet below, the forested hillsides waited in quiet moonshadows for the inevitable crash. The interior of the plane was nearly lifeless. In the cockpit, nobody was at the controls. There was blood on the empty seats and the hatchway to the modified main cabin was in ruins. The only sign of life was in the interior where the radio station would have been in a normal B-17. It had been completely cleared of the usual equipment of a long-range heavy bomber. This plane’s last mission was as a transport, not a high-altitude messenger of death. Spread out on the cabin’s floor was the entire crew of six commandos. Most had died quickly and violently. Only one of them was alive.

  Sergeant William Nale had regained consciousness to the sound of the third engine’s last gasps for life. To his trained ear, that sound instantly worried him. But not as much as the view that greeted his waking eyes. He quickly sprang into action. It took only a few seconds bordering on panic to confirm he was the only living member of Operation Zephyr. He checked his Vertex wristwatch. It was three minutes past the drop time. That explained the dying engines. Even as he had that thought, the last engine began to bark and misfire.

  The operation was timed to the last second. Any deviation invited disaster. They had all known that going in. But this—this was insane. Nale quickly counted the bodies of his teammates and their equipment. Everybody was there, but they were covered in blood and not breathing.

  His weapon had been fired. There were a few bullet holes in both the fore and aft parts of the plane’s fuselage. But whatever had killed his fellow commandos wasn’t a gun. Some looked like they had been thrown down by a great force. Others seemed to have just collapsed. They all had bled from their eyes and ears.

  He had no idea what had happened. The last thing he could remember, they’d been 20 minutes away from the drop zone. It had been that quiet time, when everybody knows they are close and nobody talks. That time when all that could be done had been done, and all anybody could do was wait.

  The intermittent drone of the last remaining engine filled his ears now. It was straining, and he could feel the tilt of the deck as the big bomber’s angle of descent grew steeper. He only had a few seconds left. He numbly moved up to the cockpit and pulled the lever to open the modified bomb bay. The rush of cold air blasted into the cabin, and his ears popped with the pressure change. He checked his parachute and took a quick look around, memorizing every detail of his dead teammates. Wait. Where was the package?

  He checked again to make sure, but there was no sign of it. It had been chained to the Captain’s wrist. The chain was still there, but the package was gone. Suddenly, the last engine went silent. There was only the sound of the wind. He had no choice. He had to jump now—or never.

  * * *

  Approximately Six Hours Earlier

  June 3, 1943

  6:02 PM

  Ipswich Air Field, England

  The entire mission had been a crap-shoot from the start. Nobody understood that more than Brigadier General Roger Clarke. But orders had come from on high. With only two days of proper training, Operation Zephyr had been pushed up in priority. Way up. As in "tonight’s the night." They were down a team member because Corporal O’Reilly had twisted an ankle. It would have been no problem if they had gone by the original two-week timetable. But those were the breaks, he thought, as he stared at the mission profile on his desk. A big man with an even bigger job, his stern face was was framed by dark hair that seemed to become increasingly grayer by the day. Today would certainly add to it.

  Clarke checked the time and made his way down to the briefing room. Nothing about this mission had gone according to plan so far. As he entered the room, he returned the salute of Lieutenant Colonel Martin. Martin’s nickname was "The Ter
rier." When he latched on to something he didn’t give it up. He eyed the General nervously.

  “They can’t be serious, sir,” he said. “It’s nearly a full moon, for God's sake.”

  “They can and they are. It’s tonight, or it doesn’t happen at all.”

  “Well that’s not much of a choice.”

  “Indeed. I’m not any happier about sending the men out there than you are, Martin.”

  The Colonel kept his thoughts to himself as the commandos began filing in. They took their seats on folding chairs in front of an easel containing a map of occupied France. There were only six men now that O’Reilly was out. These were the top men available at such short notice. The team leader, Captain Sloan, took his position in front of the other five men as they curiously studied the map. He set a small, brown, box-shaped package on the table next to the map. A small chain snaked from the package, ending in one handcuff. The Colonel and the General watched quietly.

  “All right, chaps, we don’t have much time, so I’ll make this quick,” Sloan said, tapping a pointer at the map. “Intelligence says the Nazis will be moving the target tomorrow. That means we’ve got to move quickly. Since our transport isn’t ready yet, our crack mechanics have fixed up a right pretty B-17 for us. A return trip has been deemed, um, too risky, so she’ll be sacrificed for the cause. Evans here will be the pilot, so you better hope he doesn’t have a sudden heart attack up there.”

  This rare joke from the Captain brought the expected nervous chuckles. Lieutenant Evans gave a royal wave. The General couldn’t help but smile, even though this whole business made him sick inside.

  The Captain continued, “Now I realize we haven’t had time to properly prepare for this mission, so we’ll need to ad-lib a bit, especially since Corporal O’Reilly won’t be dancing with us. We’re latching on to the tail end of an already scheduled bombing raid, which, luckily for us, should provide a diversion to enable us to branch off and go about our business right under the enemy’s nose. Our drop zone is here,” he tapped the map. “It’s about 20 kilometers south of . . .”

  General Clarke became lost in his own thoughts as Captain Sloan briefed the team. Clarke had done the same routine dozens of times. No matter how well planned, something unexpected always happened. But Sloan and the others really had no idea. This time it wasn’t the weather or even the unexpected intelligence intercepts that were screwing up this mission before it even began. The problem was the Ghosts.

  Sloan finished the briefing. “. . . and finally, I’ll be carrying our little surprise for the enemy.” He picked up the chain from the package and cuffed it around his wrist with a very final-sounding click! He looked at each of the men. There were no questions. “All right then. Check your gear, lads. We leave in 20 minutes.”

  As the team began to leave, Clarke caught the eye of Colonel Martin and gave a slight nod. Martin tapped one of the men, Sergeant Nale, on the shoulder and motioned to Clarke. Nale looked at the General curiously and slowly walked toward him. Then the Colonel slapped Captain Sloan on the back for good luck and began asking him some questions as he diverted the team leader out of the room. The General closed the door and locked it once everybody else was gone. Nale and Clarke were alone.

  Nale was uneasy. “Sir?”

  Clarke didn’t beat around the bush. It wasn’t his style, and there wasn’t much time for that anyway. “I’m afraid I have some bad news. There’s a spy on the team.”

  This was the last thing Nale had expected. “What? That’s impossible. Sir, I mean—”

  “I know. It seems damn hard to believe. But our sources on this have always been one hundred percent accurate.”

  Nale rubbed his chin. “Are we scrubbing the mission, sir?”

  “No. We can’t do that. It’s too important. And, we don’t know who the spy is.”

  “I see, sir.”

  “Yes, I think you do. For all I know, you could be the spy. But our sources seem to think that you are the least likely suspect.”

  Nale looked him in the eye. “I don’t know what to say, sir.”

  “Don’t say anything. You are going to be our spy-catcher, Nale.” The General held out a small green pill to the Sergeant. “Here. Swallow this.”

  Clarke dropped the pill in Nale’s palm. “Just swallow it now. No water needed.”

  Nale gulped it down. Clarke nodded. “Good lad.”

  “But, what am I supposed to do, sir?”

  “You’ll know when the time comes. Now you better go. I don’t want the one man on this mission I trust to miss the plane.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Oh, and I don’t need to say, this little tête-à-tête of ours never happened.”

  “Of course, sir.”

  Nale saluted and the General saw the confused soldier out the door. The Colonel was waiting outside. After Nale left, the two senior officers closed the door and sat down in front of the briefing map.

  “How did it go?” the Colonel asked.

  Clarke shook his head. “The damned weirdest thing I’ve ever had to do. You should have seen his face.”

  “I don’t envy him. I can’t imagine what he’ll think when it happens.”

  The General stared at the map of France. “If it happens. The Ghosts better be right on this.”

  The Colonel chose his words carefully. “They’ve never been wrong so far.”

  Clarke wished he could agree with that statement.

  * * *

  June 3, 2023

  11:30 PM

  Ghost Station #12

  Abandoned Nike Nuclear Missile Base

  Mount Disappointment, California USA

  Cynthia Rodriguez hated typing. Her I/O headset was on the fritz again, so even a stupid keyboard was better than manually correcting the glitches the headset created. Her face had perpetual frown marks on her forehead that her short bangs couldn’t hide. She keyed in another sequence and hit the ENTER button just hard enough to express her annoyance at the necessity. She’d been working for hours, although to her it only seemed like the blink of an eye.

  The lab faded from her vision. Around her head, an info-cloud of a million stars seemed to blink until they coalesced into a multidimensional image of layered colors, fractal shapes, and rapidly changing numbers. At least this capability of the headset was still functioning properly. Every part of the 3D image meant something important. To the untrained eye, it seemed like nausea-inducing gibberish, but to her it was a piece of technical art that communicated more in one second than a thousand books and a year’s worth of reading ever could.

  Each fractal node, colorful starburst and numeral that flashed and pulsed around her head, told her something that she needed to know at that very instant. What she saw was an analog, a virtual reality at once more real and less real than her own reality. It was all relative, anyway, she often thought. She examined the flashing fractals in a seemingly abstract sequence and reorganized them. She drilled down from the general to the specific, making adjustments and notes as she went. What was really happening was her brain was being trained by the quantum computers about 1000 meters below her feet. This was the so-called Alpha-Theta phase of the program. Without it, her brain could be quite literally fried when she tried the real thing. She was a veteran Ghost and actually had more temporal experience than anybody else, but still needed this prep period for each trip.

  Her assistant, Thomas Dupree, stood next to her. He was short and skinny, and his glasses always seemed to be on the verge of slipping off his nose. All he saw was a gray cloud around her head that seemed to shimmer and pulse slightly.

  “Sorry to interrupt, boss,” he said gently. She was still startled.

  She didn’t say anything, but glared at him through the cloud. They both remembered the last time he’d interrupted her. That time, he’d tapped her on the shoulder, which had resulted in a dislocated wrist for him. The black cloud to the silver lining of temporal reflex training was the occasional “accidental” overreaction
. This time he was safely out of reach.

  She took off the headset, and the info-cloud winked out of existence. “What is it?”

  “It’s time,” he said.

  “Already?”

  “Well, you’ve been at it for over seven hours.”

  Time flies when you’re preparing to fly through time. She put away the headset and locked up the terminal.

  Dupree seemed uneasier than usual. “Mrs. Rose is going to oversee this one personally,” he said. “And somebody else is with her.”

  “Oh?”

  “From the Institute.”

  That figured. Just when they were about to try something with the least amount of success yet, some outsider would be watching.

  She bit her lip. “Well then, I guess we better make sure everything goes according to plan, right?”

  Dupree gave his usual shrug. “We should get to the project room,” he said. “The Zombie is ready.”

  * * *

  June 3, 1943

  11:44 PM

  Somewhere Over Occupied France

  Sergeant Nale was asleep. The pill he had swallowed over 5 hours earlier contained a time-release cocktail of substances that wouldn’t be officially invented for another 75 years. But the raw materials existed now, and the Ghosts had provided step-by-step instructions to General Clarke and his team. In addition to placing Nale into a type of coma, proteins and molecular structures in his brain were modified in a way that produced certain markers that were easily susceptible to a specific flavor of quantum entanglement.

  Simply put, Nale was now a Zombie. As his snores harmonized with the drone of the engines, Private Philip Barnes nudged one of the other commandos and tilted his head to Nale.

  “Check out Sleeping Beauty, here,” Barnes said.

  The other commando smiled and shrugged. “Good for him. I just wish—”

  His words were lost in what sounded like a small explosion in the cockpit. The body of Lieutenant Evans crashed through the hatchway and flew back into the main cabin area as the lights went out. In the shouts and confusion that followed, there was another loud electrical crackling sound and one of the commandos was illuminated by an unearthly green glow. He screamed and slammed into the fuselage, then slumped over limply. As the red-tinted emergency lights came on, the Zombie opened his eyes. It was Nale’s body, but it was now occupied by the Ghost, Cynthia Rodriguez.