Tabula Rasa

by Filip Forsberg

  “There is something happening that we don’t understand. The data on it were supposed to be only that. Data. Nothing else.” she paused, unsure of how she should continue. Backmann looked at her, waiting for her to continue. When she did not do it Richard helped.

  “What’s happening to it sounds impossible, but it seems that the information stored on the holocube alters it.”

  Backmann stared blankly at both Elisabeth and Richard.

  “What do you mean alters it?”

  Richard shrugged.

  “Exactly what I’m saying. When Julius used the Skydisc was it like a key inserted in a lock. They fit together and it seems that the information itself that is stored on the holocube gives it the possibility to change the physical composition of it. Usually, a holocube is just a holocube. Or in any case, it usually is. In our case it is not like that though. It seemed that it changes into something that we don’t understand. We can’t connect it to a computer and read the information.” He paused, “It changes constantly.”

  Backmann looked doubtfully at them.

  “You can’t be serious.”

  *

  Tabula Rasa, Madagascar

  2048-12-31

  No, no, no. No more. No more. I can’t. Please. I promise. I’m sorry. I can’t, no more. She is dead. There is nothing more I can do. Yes, I know, I held her when she died. I held her body when she took her last breath. I know how it feels. I know how it feels and I can’t, no more. Please. Please stop. She is gone. Chantelle too. I lost them both. I know. Both of them. First one of them and then the other. I know. I should’ve done something but I couldn’t do more. I didn’t know what to do or how I could save her. I couldn’t. Couldn’t. All the toxins they pumped her full with and said that it was her only chance. Her begging eyes that looked at me. Praying for something. Do you understand? She asked me for something. I could see it in her eyes. The pain was too strong. She couldn’t no more. She knew. She knew already you see. That it was meaningless, that it wouldn’t help. But I couldn’t. I had to. Chantelle forced me. It was her fault. She made me do it. Forced me to agree to give Kristina more toxins. Even if we all knew it was pointless. Do you understand? Do you understand how it feels to be forced to give your child poison? Do you understand how it feels when I nod to the doctor who stands outside the room to come in with a syringe with toxins to your child, and injects it into her when you hold her in your arms? When her eyes ask you, no, not ask you, begs you, yes that’s the right word, begs you not to do it. When Chantelle is sitting beside and nodding and crying at the same time. I don’t want to. But I have to. Have to for Chantelle says that's the only chance Kristina has. I know. I should have said no. Should have stopped it. But I was weak. Couldn’t resist. No more. No more! I’m sorry!

  Jonathan twitched and sat straight up. He gasped. His pulse was racing and he raised his trembling hands to his face. Sharp blasts that sounded like gunshots echoed in his head.

  A violent nausea rushed up inside him and he was close to vomiting. His eyes were moist with tears and his forehead was wet with sweat. With shaky fingers he rubbed his face and tried to collect himself. The memories of him running on the beach rushed back and his confusion slowly passed. One of the guards had a black container that Jonathan faintly remembered that the guard had hold up against him, after that incident he remembered nothing. He must have been transported to Tabula Rasa and was somewhere in its dark depth. He surveyed the room where he was. It was small and circular, barely three meters in diameter. The windowless walls seemed to be of smooth, black metal and without any joints except where a thin, faint line marked the door. The walls tilted inward and joined together at the top like a pointed igloo. Near the top of the igloo a small but strong string of lights spread a sharp, clinical light in the strange room.

  He was on a narrow bed that was placed in front of the door and he swung his legs down to the ground. His body ached, partly of the harsh treatment the guards had given him and the lack of Oxycodone.

  He cursed himself that he had been so arrogant that he thought he could escape the pursuers. Slowly, he took a few deep breaths and tried to focus on the air that moved in and out of his body. Slowly, he calmed down and he regained some control. He sat silent for a while. He glanced up against a clock on the wall, a few minutes over two. He stood, walked to the door and felt the handle. Locked. He tested his mobile phone lying on the nightstand. Only local network from Tabula Rasa.

  Jonathan sat down on the floor with his legs crossed. He focused. Focused on his breathing. The meditation helped and the calm came over him. His therapist had suggested meditation as a way to control the chaos that existed within him after Kristina had passed away. He breathed deeply. Let the exhalation take its time. Let it slowly disappear out through the nose.

  * * *

  He lay in bed and stared at the vaulted ceiling. The soft bed was relatively comfortable but he knew it would not help. He knew he would not go back to sleep, but he could at least lie down and doze off a bit. Some rest was better than none. The nausea had diminished and he suspected that it had to do with what gas they had given him.

  An angry signal sounded in the room and then became silent. Jonathan sat up. A clicking sound was heard, and to his surprise, a small section of the wall next to the door slid to the side and a small hologram screen slid out. He stared at it and slowly the holographical image built up in front of the screen.

  “Good morning, Jonathan. My name is John Vendrick III.”

  Jonathan grinned.

  “I know who you are.”

  Jonathan`s pulse increased. Several seconds passed. John's face was gentle and indulgent, like an adult talking to a naughty child.

  “I understand that it is you who have been here at Tabula Rasa and helped someone that have stolen from me” a long artistic pause, “and I want what was stolen from me.” His voice was dressed in steel.

  Jonathan`s racing pulse fell as he took a couple deep breaths, he fixed his eyes on John.

  “I understand. But fact is that you won’t be getting it back. You will neither get the holocube or my friends back. They are safe now with us.”

  John smirked.

  “Safe? Don’t you know who I am? I am John Vendrick III. And if I want to see them dead, I’ll snap my fingers and they will die within twenty-four hours. There is nowhere on earth they can hide from me. And don’t forget, you're a prisoner here on Tabula Rasa, you will not get anywhere.” His voice dripped with contempt.

  The anger raged in Jonathan.

  “Are you threatening me?” he breathed through his teeth and struggled to keep calm, “You will know that we will spread the discovery about the sphere and everyone will know that you already have contact with it. Everyone will find out what you have been up to.”

  John hissed.

  “What we’re up to? You can dream about what we are doing here. We are in the middle of the greatest discovery in the history of mankind and it was me who discovered it. Me. Not you or somebody else. Me. And it doesn’t matter anyway. Others has also discovered the spheres and it was just on the news.”

  Jonathan stared skeptically at John when he continued.

  “The sphere is bigger than both of us. And now when the discovery is on the news you can’t do anything. The world can’t handle that we are not alone. There will be panic in the streets and complete chaos in the financial markets. Can you imagine what a full-blown chaos is on its way now?”

  The contempt grew inside Jonathan.

  “And who are you to decide that? What gives you the right to be one who decides for everybody else? It is everybody’s right to know the truth. They can handle it themselves.”

  John laughed.

  “You're either very naive or very stupid” he paused, “or perhaps both. This is not something that ordinary people can handle. Not by a long shot. The vast majority of people in the world are only interested in the most basic human urges. Eat, work, sleep, have sex and be entertained. There is nothi
ng else for them. That's all.”

  Jonathan heard how John’s voice dripped with arrogance.

  “That's all. People want work that gives them purpose, a reason to get up in the morning. It doesn’t matter much what kind of work it is. The importance is that it gives an illusion of purpose, of meaning.” John paused a couple of seconds before he continued.

  “They also want to eat good food, get stuffed on all different kinds of dishes and drink themselves into oblivion. Complete gluttony. A gluttony without precedence that make that all so called developed countries diseases explodes. Nobody can control their intake of food and beverages which leads to that all mankind quickly marching in to obesity’s Promised Land.” He paused again, “And you know that I'm right. There is nothing that I say that is untrue. And besides work and food, people also want to have sex, an eternal copulation where nobody can control their lusts anymore. And to round off, everybody also wants to be constantly entertained with one pointless reality show after another.”

  Jonathan listened while John waved out the wrath.

  “Everyone is as weak as you, Jonathan, who creates a nice family but then does not manage to keep it, but lets his child die and his wife leave him.” He laughed hoarsely, “And to top it all, you're so weak that you have to rely on pills to get through the days.”

  The red-hot anger surged up within Jonathan, and he had to restrain himself to the limit to not explode

  “You freak. You think that I'm weak? I've felt more love in life than you've ever done or will do.”

  John looked blankly at Jonathan.

  “You poor thing. You pathetic little man. It takes an extraordinary man to take the next step and I'll make sure it will be a new future for mankind.” He paused for a short while before he hissed with flaming eyes.

  “I'll send someone to pick you up so we can meet in person.”

  *

  Space

  2048-12-31

  Contact. The spheres who was in the vicinity of the solar system had established full contact. One after one had they woken up after spending millions of years in a kind of hibernation. It was a hibernation that gave them the opportunity to survive the oceans of time without getting hurt. They had many purposes and one of the purposes for which they were created for, was to regularly scan the area that they were in after life. Especially intelligent life. If life was found, a scan was started to determine what kind of life it was. Through eons of time, the spheres had found millions of life forms on countless planets around the universe, but only a few times the spheres had recorded intelligent life.

  In the beginning they had been ninety spheres that were in the part called the Milky Way. One of them had come too close to the sun and during an unusually powerful solar flare it had become mortally damaged. The damaged sphere had struggled to get away but had met its destiny in the suns burning inferno. Another had gotten caught by Jupiter’s strong gravitation and had been sucked down into the storming planets inner and been crushed in the violent atmosphere.

  The spheres had been created a long time ago. In another time and another place. In a universe that existed before this. That universe was born in a way similar to the one that existed now but even if the births were similar, their development was not the same. A grain of incredibly concentrated energy had poured out its interior and in a few microseconds had the grain expanded into a vast universe.

  Atoms and molecules had formed and then lumped together into large gas clouds that drifted through the universe. As the gas clouds became bigger and bigger, they had begun to contract and started to rotate. After millions of years had passed, the large gas clouds had contracted so much that the gas ignited and nuclear fusion occurred. Stars were lit. After more eons of time had passed, tiny life forms emerged and intelligent lives had emerged and developed. Through the millions of years had it developed into entire civilizations that filled the planet that they lived on.

  As the shortage of space had become acute, they had been forced out to the planets that were closest in the solar system and as the millenniums passed, they spread further and further out. And finally it happened. It got in touch with other intelligent creatures from a different solar system than their own. The scientific development had made quantum leaps when the intelligent races who came more and more into contact with each other.

  Countless wars were fought and ended and the technological development was so advanced that it was almost perceived as godliness. As the civilizations fought against each other, they came into a new phase. After an infinite number of deaths, somehow reached an idea that they were involved in a game that had no winners. The only chance to win was not to play. So, instead of war, battle and death, a new era of peace and cooperation began.

  In principle, they achieved immortality through advanced medicine that could regenerate their bodies an infinite number of times. But even if they had de facto immortality, their universe had not. As millions of years passed, they did not age anymore, but their universe did. Clearly bright stars consumed their fuel and ended their lives as either a dwarf or in a cataclysmic explosion that generated life to new stars. But there were not as many stars in the sky that shined as the time passed.

  Slowly they burned out and new ones were lit but the amount was always less than before. And the space structure stretched out more and more and when this process increased faster for every million years that passed was it the final stage that accelerated against them in terrifying pace.

  Their universe was dying. It was a fact that they could not deny anymore. They began more advanced experiments to halt the inevitable development.

  They succeeded with unbelievably advanced discoveries and had an outstanding understanding of their universe, but in one area they consistently failed. Time. It was that factor they could not influence or do anything with whatever experiments they performed or what discoveries they made. Time was always there. Adamant. It always went forward. Inevitably. Always forward. Relentless.

  Eventually, they realized that it was a fight that they would lose. They would die and there was nothing these immortal gods could do about it. But they had a chance. A chance to pass on their almost endless source of knowledge. If they could pass on their knowledge, their lives would not have been in vain. With a fanatical energy that only the condemned may have.

  They knew their universe would be torn apart by the invisible forces that pulled it from afar. But how this tearing apart would happen they did not know. They had a number of different theories. Some of them basically assumed that it was the space-time itself that would begin to dissolve and that once that process had started, it would immediately propagate through the universe. In principle, their universe would be there one second to not exist in the next.

  Other theories suggested that there was a point in the universe that would break and from this point the tearing would spread like rings in the water or like a filled balloon that bursts. It was these theories they focused on and they started constructing intelligent machines that would search where in the universe the next Big bang would occur. Millions and millions of sites were searched and scanned by a number of different criteria’s that could be a sign that the space in that area was especially vulnerable and in the end they found several candidates scattered throughout the universe.

  They invented a living machine with outstanding features. They created living, intelligent spheres that might have a chance to survive a new Big Bang and thus transfer information and knowledge from one universe to another. They were made of organic material, but they were also machines that were constructed of a relatively newly discovered particle. A particle that had a characteristic that would be decisive for the survival of the spheres.

  The particle itself could transform itself into radiation and back to solid. It did not make the spheres immortal. They were still vulnerable when they were in solid form but if they could make it in time to transform their body to radiation they could have a chance to survive a Big Bang. Most of them wou
ld certainly perish in the violent forces that were triggered, but if only one fraction survived, they would have earned their purpose.

  Further eons of time passed. They had put so much of their energy on developing the intelligent spheres that when the stars went out for good, they had no more energy to run their civilization. They existed now in a completely dark universe, and they began to die out. First slowly, then faster until they died in unimaginable numbers. As the living creatures died, the machines took over the search completely. Ages of time passed while the machines went to a large number of areas where the new Big Bang would happen.

  Finally, it happened. A small tear occurred and the universe that existed began to dissolve. At first slowly, then faster and faster. The forces that tore at it was furious. And then it came. The new universe. The new Big bang. Let there be light!

  *

  Headquarter outside Paris, France.

  2048-12-31

  The scene in front of them was so unusual that none of them could describe it accurately. The holocube was spinning in slow-motion in front of them in the air. Its shiny sides reflected the light as it looked like a disco ball that rotated around its own axis. It had been placed on a small round study table where strong magnets created a magnetic field that it was in. The door opened and Richard came in with his arm in a sling. He carefully closed the door behind him and walked towards her daughter and stood behind her.

  They stood silently around the table. A dull throbbing rhythm sounded in the room. Elisabeth looked in awe at the holocube and a warm feeling spread through her chest. Rhythmic waves washed up in her and retreated again, like water lapping against a beach. Slowly they were broken against the edge of the beach to retreat and then repeat the cycle. It was hypnotizing and she began to lose grip of time.