New Frontiers- The Complete Series

by Jasper T. Scott

  McAdams walked in wearing a smile and not much else. Her shimmering red night gown was a miniskirt at best. Her blue eyes glowed strangely in the dim light, as did her skin and hair, sparkling wherever the light hit. Some kind of makeup? he wondered.

  McAdams reached the bed and sat down beside him, regarding him with those glowing eyes of hers. She laid a hand on his thigh. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here when you woke up. I know how disorienting it can be when you’ve been immersed for so long.”

  Alexander’s brow furrowed. “Immersed…?” He turned to look around and saw floor-to-ceiling windows looking out on nothing but stars and sky. A carpet of eerily green clouds stretched out to the horizon just below his vantage point. Feeling suddenly dizzy, he looked away. “Where am I?”

  McAdams’ smile faded to a frown. “You don’t remember? Don’t worry. It will come back to you soon. Sometimes it takes a little while to retrieve your current memories. Just focus on your breathing for now.”

  “Current memories?” Alexander stood up from the bed. His legs shook, his knees threatening to buckle.

  “Alex, you shouldn’t get up yet…”

  Ignoring her, he walked around the foot of the bed to the window. When he reached the window, he realized that he couldn’t even see the ground. If he was in a skyscraper, he should have been able to see lights from the surrounding buildings. The fact that he couldn’t was puzzling. “How high up are we?” he asked.

  “Above sea level? About seven thousand feet,” Viviana explained.

  Alexander turned to her in shock. “There aren’t any buildings that tall on Earth…”

  “This isn’t Earth. You still don’t remember anything?”

  Besides Earth none of the planets in the Sol system had atmospheres like this one, and McAdams had mentioned sea level… The conclusion was inescapable. He was on a planet somewhere outside the solar system. Alexander felt his eyes grow round. His mouth felt like a desert. “What year is it?”

  McAdams got up from the bed and walked over to him very slowly. She stopped at arm’s length and reached up to cup his face in one hand, her strangely glowing eyes searching his. “It’s 1037 AB.”

  “AB?”

  “Anno Benevolentiae—the year of Benevolence.”

  Alexander’s head swam, and he had to lean against the wall so he wouldn’t fall over.

  “Something must have gone wrong with the memory retrieval process,” McAdams said. “I told you not to go so long without a break!”

  A searing pain struck Alexander behind his eyes, forcing them shut. A sudden rush of images flooded through his brain, filling him with awareness. The next thing he knew he was lying on the floor, blinking up at his wife. This time he remembered that they were married. That was a good sign. She looked terrified.

  “Are you okay?”

  He smiled tightly. “I’m fine. I remember now.”

  Viviana breathed a deep sigh. “Damn it, Alex! You really had me worried. I hope you found what you were looking for.”

  Alexander sat up with a troubled frown. He’d spent the past few days immersed in the historical records while he attempted to jog a group of suppressed memories he’d discovered lurking in his brain. The historical record was compiled from real human memories, and the particular record he’d chosen included many of his own memories from the same time period as the suppressed ones. He’d hoped that by reliving the events he might remember, but even now with all of that ancient history still fresh in his mind, no new memories surged forth to surprise him.

  “Alex?”

  “I didn’t find anything.”

  “Have you ever thought that maybe what you’re searching for doesn’t exist? You bumped your head near the end. Amnesia and suppressed memories look a lot alike.”

  “How do you know I bumped my head?”

  “I was there watching you. I wanted to know what you were seeing.”

  “Well, it’s not amnesia. I did bump my head and black out, but I didn’t wake up with any gaps in my memory.”

  Viviana scowled. “Well, I don’t know, but this obsession of yours isn’t healthy, and the fact that it took you so long to remember your real life again proves it.”

  “Maybe someone is trying to scare me off by messing with the wake-up sequence.”

  “Like who? Wait, let me guess—Benevolence? He’s done nothing but make life better for us. We are where we are today because of him.”

  “Or maybe that’s just what he wants to show us. It’s easy to show progress when it isn’t real.”

  “Let’s assume you’re right and we never got out of the correctional mindscape that Ben put us in. Explain something to me, then: why are you the only one with suppressed memories? If we were still in a mindscape, then I’d have missing memories, too. That would be proof. What you have is baseless suspicion. It’s almost as if you want to find out that your life isn’t real. Maybe you wish you had a different one—one with someone else.”

  “Vivie…”

  She turned and walked away.

  Alexander watched her go, a frown creasing his brow. How could he explain it to her? They had the perfect life—money, eternal youth, immortality, a whole galaxy full of endless wonders to see and experience together. They’d lived through more than ten generations together already, and they had yet to see even a tiny fraction of the known galaxy. They had dozens of children and hundreds of grandchildren. Their home here on Talos was a sprawling mansion in the clouds, and when they grew bored of living above the tropical paradise below, they could simply get one of their company’s transports to come and transport their home somewhere else.

  How could he question all of that? Why would he even want to?

  And what Viviana said was true, if they were still locked in the correctional mindscape that Benevolence had put them in after he took over the Adamantine, then she should have had suppressed memories, too.

  Alexander sighed. He left the master bedroom and went down the hall. As he went, the lights came on automatically for him, rising to a dim, soothing radiance. Night cycle lighting. He walked past the other bedrooms and through the upstairs living room, glancing out the wall of windows to the upstairs sun deck as he went. The mirror smooth solar tiles shone bright in the light of Talos’s three moons.

  From the top of the stairs to the first floor he spotted his wife in the great room below. She was headed outside, her thermal shield already activated—a faint, glowing blue outline around her body.

  “Vivie!” he called, but she pulled the doors open and walked outside, giving no sign that she’d even heard him.

  Alexander hurried after her, activating his own thermal shield as he went. When he reached the first floor, he hurried through the main living area. Great room, dining room, and kitchen all flowed together in one big open space. A massive crystal chandelier in the shape of a spiral galaxy hung down over the great room. Each of the two thousand luminescent crystals represented a star, floating gracefully around the dazzling center of the galaxy.

  He reached the sliding doors to the terrace and mentally activated them. A cool breeze blew in as he stepped out. The leaves of tropical trees growing around the edges of their garden rustled in the wind. Were it not for the shield glowing faintly overhead, that wind would have knocked him over and uprooted those trees.

  A luminous blue swimming pool sat steaming in the middle of the garden. The warm water looked inviting. Even with his thermal shield, he was cold, wearing nothing but a pair of white shorts and matching T-shirt.

  Alexander spotted his wife on the other side of the pool, standing by the glass railings, staring out into the night. One of Talos’s moons sat just above the clouds, glaring at them like an emerald eye, and casting an eerie green glow across the wispy tops of the clouds.

  Alexander came up behind his wife and slid his arms around her waist. “I’m sorry.”

  “For what?” she asked, sounding unconvinced.

  “For questioning this. It’s just…”

>   She turned to him with a cool look and crossed her arms over her chest.

  “Haven’t you ever wondered what else is out there?” he asked.

  “Sure, but I don’t spend my life hunting for it. It’s like if you were to tell me you wanted to devote all of your time and resources to finding God.”

  Alex shook his head. “This is different. For one thing, Ben isn’t God.”

  “It’s not different. If we’re living in a simulation, the only way you’re going to find the one who’s responsible for creating it, is if he wants to be found.”

  “Unless I find a glitch or a seam. Some place where the simulation and reality meet. Like my missing memories.”

  “You still haven’t answered my question. Why don’t I have suppressed memories, too?”

  Alexander grimaced and looked away, out into the night. He didn’t have the heart to say it. “I don’t know,” he lied.

  “I’m going inside.”

  Alexander grabbed her wrist. “Wait.”

  Viviana’s eyes flashed. “Let me go.”

  “I’m going to stop searching,” he said. That was also a lie, but a necessary one. Viviana would never understand. Especially not if he was right about her.

  “You promise?”

  “I promise.” Alexander pulled her close and kissed her. After a moment, her lips softened against his. Her hands trailed down below his waist, dipping into his shorts. She made a meaningful tug and then backed away, biting her lower lip and giving him a smoldering look. Viviana pulled her gown over her head revealing she was naked underneath. Her body shimmered with reflected bands of light from the pool. Interference patterns created by ripples on the surface. She dropped her gown on the terrace and took two short steps to the edge of the pool before diving in. She broke the surface a second later and swam up to the near edge of the pool to rest her chin on folded arms there.

  Viviana smiled coyly up at him. “What are you waiting for?”

  Alexander stripped naked and dove in after her. The water enveloped him in a warm embrace. The sound of rustling leaves and fronds disappeared in a watery roar that quickly faded to silence. Then he broke the surface, too, and turned to find Viviana standing right in front of him. She threw her arms around his neck and kissed him. Then her legs came up around his waist. They fit together like the missing pieces of a puzzle. His head swam, intoxicated by the taste and smell of her. Floral scents mingled on the breeze, intoxicating him further.

  The moment was perfect.

  Too perfect.

  Later that night they lay naked in each other’s arms, wrapped in a thermal blanket on a reclining couch, staring up at the emerald moon and its two little brothers, one a traditional silver, the other a marbled blue dot.

  “What are you thinking about?” Viviana whispered in his ear.

  Between what they did in the pool, and the warmth of her body and the blanket, he was teetering on the brink of consciousness about to drift off into sweet oblivion. He mumbled a reply that not even he understood, and then conscious thought abandoned him.

  Memories flickered by in bright streaks of color and light. Voices echoed softly in his ears. Then the scene came into sharp focus, and he was back in the engine room on the Adamantine watching the open access panel where McAdams had just entered the central drive column of the ship.

  Awareness tip-toed around his thoughts, intangible as a ghost, floorboards creaking in his brain.

  Something was about to happen.

  Alexander remembered that at this point the deck had lurched suddenly under his feet and the railing had swept up to smack him in the forehead, knocking him out cold. But instead he heard a loud bang! and a brilliant flash of light blinded him. Black smoke belched out of the access panel where McAdams had gone, and flames licked the opening, charring the sides of the drive column. “McAdams!” he screamed, his ears ringing from the explosion. Then a secondary explosion blew a ragged hole in the side of the column, and the deck lurched under his feet. His knees buckled with the sudden acceleration, and the railing came sweeping up to greet him, just as he remembered.

  Clang!

  Everything went dark.

  Time passed without measure, drops falling from a leaky faucet into the stagnant ocean below. There, reflected in the glassy smooth surface of that ocean, was a living, animated collage of memories. Moments he’d shared with his wife; so many babies born, planets they’d seen, homes they’d shared, laughter and tears without end… He watched the rise of civilization—both human and alien—as witnessed from the two windows in his skull.

  Those windows flew open, and he was back, lying under the glaring green eye of the moon, trying to make sense of his dream. He glanced sideways to find Viviana asleep on his chest, safe and sound. Her breath cast white puffs of condensation into the cool air, warming his skin.

  The dream. It felt so real. She’d died!

  A knot formed in his throat, and tears welled in his eyes, burning like acid as mere suspicion yielded to unfeeling truth. He knew why Viviana didn’t have the same missing memories that he did.

  It was because she was dead.

  The version of her that he’d known and loved for an entire millennia was just a clever copy, another part of the mindscape that he was trapped in. She was the comforting lie that Ben had used to distract him from the truth for so long.

  Alexander’s heart raced. His palms began to sweat, and his brain buzzed with adrenaline. He jumped up from the couch, naked, feeling hot and cold all over. Viviana woke up and blinked at him, confused by his sudden departure.

  “Alex…? What’s wrong?”

  He shook his head, shivering now. “You’re not real. None of this is real!” He was on the verge of a panic attack.

  “What are you talking about? I’m here right in front of you!”

  Alexander backed away from her, his legs shaking. From his newfound perspective it wasn’t his legs that were shaking, but the entire universe, the whole thing turning on its head. Lies rained out like confetti.

  “I remember,” he said. “I know what happened.”

  “Okay, sit down and tell me about it.”

  Breaths came fast and shallow. Horror danced around him with demonic glee. He imagined Benevolence laughing as he watched.

  Alexander continued backing away. He fetched up against the glass railing running around the garden. Feeling the cool edge of it under his palms, he gripped it tightly for support. He felt sick to his stomach.

  Viviana got up and strode quickly toward him.

  Alexander was so distraught that he barely noticed how naked she was.

  “Stay away from me,” he said.

  “Alexander, calm down! You’re having a panic attack. Think about it! You have all the symptoms.”

  He shook his head again, his teeth chattering from the cold.

  “Shortness of breath, racing heart, trembling! Feeling detached from the world around you, like this isn’t real, sweating, nausea… I’m right, aren’t I?”

  “Not another step!” he warned, half-lifting himself to spring over the railing and into the abyss. Viviana stopped, terror gleaming in her eyes. “I’ve felt detached from my surroundings for years,” he said. “Maybe I am having a panic attack, but I’m panicking because of what I finally remembered. You died in the engine room, Viviana. You warned me that something could blow if you tried to sabotage the engines, and it did. That’s why I hit my head. You weren’t really there to wake me up. Ben must have found me lying there and taken me straight to my correctional mindscape. I’ve been there ever since, haven’t I? He’s kept me there for over a thousand years, using you to distract me from the truth!”

  “You don’t have to do this. I can explain.”

  Alexander gave her a bitter smirk and shook his head.

  “Love is the only truth!” she blurted out.

  “Stealing lines from my ex-wife? You need to be more original, Ben.”

  “I’m not Ben!”

  “Goodbye,
Vivie.”

  “No!” Viviana screamed, lunging toward him.

  She was too far away to reach him in time. He launched himself clear over the railing and into the bottomless sky.

  Chapter 37

  Emerald-lit clouds rushed up to greet Alexander, as if the world had been turned upside down and the planet’s gravity had somehow been reversed.

  Then he fell through the protective shield around his home, and the wind snatched at him with violent, icy hands, pinning his eyelids open and searing his skin. Tears streamed from his eyes, but the wind flung them away. Alexander curled into a ball to keep warm, and he fell faster.

  Terror clawed in his stomach and doubts swirled. What if Viviana’s death really had been just a dream? What if his relentless search for the truth had manufactured a logical possibility in his sub-conscious, fooling him into thinking it was the missing memory he’d been searching for?

  As his body grew numb from the cold, Alexander uncurled and watched the clouds parting below him. A vast ocean appeared, shimmering with reflected moonlight. Tropical islands dotted the horizon. He saw more homes like his and Viviana’s hovering at different altitudes, their lights radiating golden hues into the night. Hovering close above the surface of the water were restaurants, hotels, and shopping centers—an entire floating city, the city of Clear Water.

  Another doubt scraped through Alexander’s brain, digging up fresh horror with spiteful claws. The jig was up. Why would Ben let him fall? Why not simply wake him up already?

  Maybe I’m still dreaming, he thought. I never woke up on the terrace. It’s just a dream… he told himself.

  But it felt too real to be a dream.

  Alexander could see people on the decks of the homes below pointing up at him and screaming. That was the last thought he had before the dark moonlit water blotted out everything else in sight.

  Smack!

  Chapter 38

  Silence.

  Darkness.