by G J Ogden
“You’re doing great, Taylor, just keep it going,” said Sonner from behind him. He had been concentrating so intensely that he’d almost forgotten she was there.
He checked the distances displayed through the pilot’s viewport, continually making minor course corrections, which became more frequent as the tunnel narrowed further. The dorsal alarm bleeped urgently, and a warning flashed up in his viewport, as the larger Nimrod in tow scuffed the rock of the tunnel. Taylor swore, but then overcompensated and sent the Nimrod scraping against the opposite wall instead. Come on, get a grip! he urged, as he teased both ships back into the center of the tunnel. The collision alarm rang again, and Taylor had to improvise; his trajectory through the tunnel had been thrown off by the impacts and associated corrections, and he was now headed directly for a cluster of jagged rocks that were jutting down from the top of the cave. He heard the sharp intake of breath from Sonner behind him as the collision alarm grew to a wail, but his steady simulant hands allowed him to steer the Corvette beneath the razor-sharp rocks and safely out into the hazy atmosphere of the moon. A few tense seconds later the Nimrod-class cruiser emerged too, still dutifully in tow, albeit slightly scraped and dented. He glanced behind and saw that Sonner’s sickly pale skin had been supplemented with a new shade of green and he stifled a chuckle.
“No sweat,” he said, noticing the beads of sweat on Sonner’s brow. The lack of nerves in his simulant body meant that tense, nail-biting maneuvers, like piloting a huge space cruiser through a narrow rock tunnel, were a lot easier to perform. He had the steadiness of hand that a surgeon would kill for. Sonner, however, looked like a literal nervous wreck.
“I’m glad you think so,” said Sonner as Taylor switched from thrusters to main engines and began the burn out of the moon’s thin atmosphere and towards the fourth planet.
They continued to chat idly as the two ships surged towards their destination, but as the unremarkable planet grew close, they returned to the matter at hand, like the professionals they were. Taylor maneuvered the Corvette into orbit on the far side of the fourth planet, while Sonner prepared to remote pilot the Nimrod-class cruiser to its ultimate destruction on the surface.
“We’re in position...” said Taylor, switching the main viewport to a display of the second ship. For some reason the sight of it made him feel a sense of melancholy. The vessel was not crewed, and so no-one would die, but the ship itself still had an identity, and it would still be sacrificed. To Taylor, it wasn’t just a hulk of metal; it had been built to provide hope, a second chance to defeat the Hedalt and claim back Earth. That it would not get its opportunity to fight seemed sad and unjust, but though it would not be a participant in the war to come, if there was to be one, its demise still served a noble purpose. It would lead the Hedalt, should they come in search of their missing ship, away from the secret base that contained the very last hope for humanity to survive. It was a sacrifice, but a worthy one.
Sonner cleared her throat and announced the countdown. “Initiating crash program in three... two... one... initiate.”
The thrusters on the Nimrod-class cruiser fired, angling its nose down towards the planet, and then the main engines lit up and burned brightly, propelling it rapidly out of sight.
“Enabling the Hedalt transceiver… now,” Sonner added, once the ship was irrevocably committed to its suicidal trajectory.
Taylor adjusted the display on the viewport, tracking the ship and automatically increasing the magnification so that it remained clearly visible as it plummeted through the atmosphere, before crashing into the surface in a thick plume of brown-orange dust. The signal from the transceiver remained detectable, however, like an aircraft’s black box from a time long-since passed.
“The signal is weak, but if a Hedalt ship does enter the system, it’s likely they will find it,” said Taylor, monitoring the transmission.
“Let’s hope that’s all they find,” said Sonner.
Taylor nodded in agreement and then swiveled around to face the Commander. “So, where to now?”
“I’ve sent you the co-ordinates for the first of the other two Contingency bases,” said Sonner. “We start there.”
Taylor heard his console bleep and glanced back to see the co-ordinates flash up on his screen. He swiveled the chair back and began to program the new coordinates into the jump computer. “It will take some time to plot this course and compute the series of jumps we need to make to get there,” he called out.
“Whoa, hold up there, not so fast!” said Sonner, and then she pushed herself unsteadily out of the command chair. She hung over it for a moment, hands still attached to the arms, looking like she was about to fall back into it again. “It will require several jumps through the Fabric, before we can blind jump into what could potentially now be hostile space,” Sonner continued, as she finally managed to stand unaided. “If the Hedalt have already found the other bases, I’m in no condition to go into battle. Hell, I feel like I could fall to pieces at any moment.”
Taylor frowned, but withheld the urge to tell Sonner that she looked that way too. Instead he asked, “So what do we do now?”
“Now I go to bed, in the new quarters I’ve had built, courtesy of my little drone friends,” said Sonner, “and, short of the ship breaking apart, a black hole opening up, or a fleet of Hedalt Corvettes jumping on top of us, I don’t want to be woken for at least eight hours.”
“And what the hell am I supposed to do for eight hours? Play tiddlywinks?”
“I suggest you get some sleep too. Your brain will need to rest, just the same as mine does.”
Taylor held up his hands palms facing outward. “Woah, woah, you’re not putting my head in that hole in the wall.”
Sonner laughed, “Don’t worry, I’ll get one of the drones to do a hatchet job on the interface in your quarters, so that you can sleep on the table, with your head still on.”
“Sounds cosy…” said Taylor, folding his arms across his chest.
“I’ll sort you a proper bed out later, I promise, so it’ll just be this one time,” Sonner said as she ambled unsteadily towards the exit, looking as if she was ready to collapse. But as the door slid open she stopped, rested against the frame, and looked back at Taylor. “I know this is a crazy situation, and maybe it’s crazier for us to go back out there, looking for trouble. But, you know what, I don’t even feel afraid, and that’s the most insane part of all this.”
“I think that’s just the fatigue talking,” said Taylor. “Right now, I doubt you’d feel it if you walked straight into that door.”
“No, that’s not it, Taylor,” Sonner continued, suddenly serious. Taylor couldn’t help but notice she’d used his name, without his rank. “I just feel that somehow this was meant to be, you know? Like us meeting, and what happened to you, wasn’t an accident.”
“I’ve only been truly alive for less than a day, Commander,” Taylor replied, “I honestly don’t know what to believe.”
Sonner smiled, “Then believe in me,” she said, before stepping over the threshold of the door, “The chair is yours, Captain Taylor Ray. I’ll message you when your own bed has been turned down.”
“Be sure to leave a little chocolate on the pillow,” Taylor called back, and he heard Sonner chuckle, before the door slid shut again and the bridge was plunged into silence.
Taylor rigged the ship for automatic running, before leaving the pilot’s station and walking over to his old command chair. Dropping into the padded seat, it felt comfortingly familiar. He relaxed against the backrest and stared out at the lifeless planet and stars shining back at him through the main viewport. This was his home now; in fact the ship was the only home he’d ever truly known. Earth was a memory of another life; one that he had never lived. He thought of his crew and tried to picture their faces, though even so soon after their deaths he found it difficult to faithfully recall what any of them looked like. Despite his body being artificial, his mind was real, and as fallible as any human’
s. Perhaps he did need to sleep, as Sonner had suggested, but he was also afraid of what he might see in his dreams, and how he would feel when he woke and was again confronted with what he was. I guess there’s only one way to find out.
Taylor continued to stargaze until the panel in the command chair bleeped and he saw that a personal message had arrived from Sonner. ‘Your bed has been prepared, Your Majesty. I couldn’t find any chocolates. Sorry. See you in eight hours.’
Taylor snorted a laugh and then pushed himself out of the command chair. He took a last look at the dusty brown planet on the viewport, which was now home to a crashed Nimrod-class cruiser, and then headed back to his quarters. The strange contraption that had looked like an operating-table now had a series of additional wires crudely attached to it and leading into the head-shaped compartment above, making it look even more like a hideous torture device than before. There was a datapad resting on it and Taylor picked it up. On it was a simple hand-written message.
‘Just lie down and shut your eyes, that’s all there is to it. Don’t let the bed bugs byte.’
Taylor smiled, appreciating Sonner’s nerdy sense of humor, and set the datapad down.
“Okay, here goes nothing…” Taylor said, as he gingerly laid himself down on the table. He felt neither comfortable nor uncomfortable, and with a final, slow and utterly unnecessary exhalation of breath, he shut his silver eyes.
TWENTY
The deep space corridor stretched out in front of Taylor, as it had done the last time he’d appeared inside, surrounded by an unending sea of stars. It was peaceful and meditative, and he imagined that Casey would enjoy spending hours simply gazing out at the cosmos, but after several minutes of absolutely nothing happening, he began to have some reservations. Simulants have pretty uninspiring dreams… he thought, hoping that this wouldn’t be the extent of his experiences while ‘asleep’. He also hoped that simulants didn’t experience the passage of time in this curious dream state in a one-to-one ratio with normal time, otherwise he was in for an incredibly dull eight hours.
He waited for what he guessed was probably another ten or fifteen minutes, and when nothing happened, he decided to walk along the corridor and see if he could find the starlight door again. Sure enough, the shining silver doorway soon appeared in front of him, but this time there was something different about it. As he got closer, he realized what it was – the door was open. He stopped and peered through the glowing silver frame, but on the other side there appeared to be nothing more than the same deep space corridor, as if he was looking into a mirror.
“Hello?” he shouted through the opening, “Is anyone there?”
There was no answer, and he felt foolish. Of course there’s no-one there… Taylor scolded himself. What was I expecting to happen? To be greeted by a simulant butler?
Cautiously, he stepped through the opening, and as soon as he’d cleared the threshold the scene immediately changed. He was still surrounded by deep space, but in addition to the stars and galaxies there were also thousands of bright cubes of light, extending as far as he could see. They reminded him of the antique puzzle cubes that people used to play on Earth, except the little squares were hollow, rather than filled with color. The longer he peered out into space the more of these cubes started to appear, in the same way that staring up at the sky at night gradually reveals more stars. But unlike the stars, which were scattered in a chaotic pattern all around him, the organization of the wireframed cubes was not random. They formed an almost perfect grid, like a three-dimensional patchwork that extended throughout the galaxy. It was strangely beautiful, but also disorientating, and Taylor began to feel nauseous, reminding him of how he was again exposed to the full-range of physical feelings while inside the corridor.
He focused his eyes directly ahead, which seemed to settle his queasiness, and then walked forward a few more paces. As he moved, the arrangement of cubes seemed to shift around him, as if they were much closer than they appeared. He looked behind and the starlight door was still there, though unlike the cubes, its position had not changed relative to his, as if it had followed him, or Taylor had not actually moved at all.
“You would have loved to see this, Satomi,” he said out loud, and the words just ebbed away into nothing. “Your scientific mind would have a field day trying to work out what this all represents!” Suddenly, the image of Satomi, dead in the room where Sonner had interrogated him, leapt to the front of his mind, and grief struck him like a hammer. He was utterly unprepared for the raw physicality of the pain and buckled to one knee, forcing his eyes shut in an attempt to press the memory out of his mind. But on top of the pain he was also angry – angry that he could only picture her as a lifeless simulant, not as the woman he knew. He didn’t want to remember her that way. He wanted to remember her understated smile and her warm, comforting eyes. He wanted to remember how she always made him feel good about himself, simply by being there when he needed her. He wanted her back. I promise, I will find you if I can, Satomi. I’ll make it right for you, and the others too.
Taylor opened his eyes and almost fell over; he was still in the same, ethereal corridor, but instead of deep space he was now suspended inside the lava tube. Looking down he could just make out the Contingency base, where he’d discovered Sonner, and where Casey, Blake and Satomi had been lost. He thought again of Satomi and he was suddenly accelerating towards the base at a speed that even a Nimrod-class cruiser couldn’t hope to match, until he flowed through the walls of the base and back into the interrogation room, in front of Satomi’s dead simulant frame.
“What the hell is going on?” he shouted into the room, but the words just receded into nothing. He knew he couldn’t possibly be back on the base, yet it all appeared vividly lifelike, including the bodies of his crew.
“I don’t want to see this again, take me away!” he yelled, as if he was issuing an order to whomever or whatever was controlling his transitions, but nothing happened. Maybe I fell off that damned table and banged my head again, like in the hangar… Taylor thought. Since he hadn’t been able to will himself out of the room, he decided to leave the old fashioned way instead, and walked towards the door, but as he reached for the handle the scene changed again, and he was accelerated onto the deck of the hangar, directly in front of a collapsed and partially melted pile of containers. This is where I fell… he realized. He looked around the hangar and it appeared exactly as it had done just before he and Sonner had left, including the Nimrod-class cruiser that they’d taken in tow and crashed into the planet. If that ship is still here then this must be a memory… Taylor mused, But I also can’t physically be here either, can I? Then he had a more sobering thought. How do I get back?
He remembered that everything had changed after he had stepped through the starlight door and pictured it again in his mind. Suddenly, his body rushed upwards, out of the hangar, through the thick rock that surrounded the lava tube and up into space, eventually moving so quickly that the starlight around him was just a blur of white lines. Then he was back in the corridor, surrounded by the matrix of wireframed puzzle cubes that seemed to divide up the galaxy around him. He dropped to his knees, dizzy from the extreme rate of travel, and gasping for breath as if he’d just run a hundred meter sprint.
After a few seconds the disorientation passed and he was able to stand again. He looked around, noting that instead of being in deep space he was now in a star system with a red sun, and was hanging above a dusty brown planet. He spotted something glinting nearby, reflecting the soft crimson glow of the star, and was again staggered by what he saw. It’s the Corvette. It’s my ship! He looked more closely at the scorpion-like shape of the Hedalt cruiser, noting the patches of repair work to the hull that had been conducted during its time on the Continency base. Then he realized something. If this is my ship after we left, then this can’t be a memory. This must be right now. He was paralyzed by questions. Was this corridor simply allowing him to explore inside his own memories, he wond
ered. But he immediately discounted this option, since he couldn’t possibly have a memory of his ship seen from his current viewpoint. But if these are not memories, then what are they? he asked himself. The answer that suggested itself seemed almost too fantastical to believe. Am I actually travelling to these places in my mind? It sounded ridiculous, but at the same time plausible. He was currently connected to the simulant apparatus in his quarters, which Sonner had mentioned provided a link to the other members of his crew. But perhaps the link extended further than this; perhaps his simulant-frame was wired directly into the CoreNet, and into the very Fabric itself. The CoreNet couldn’t penetrate inside the Contingency base, which would explain why he only saw it as he remembered it before leaving, but outside of its volcanic shield, the CoreNet was everywhere. There was only one way to test to the theory, he realized, and that was to attempt to travel somewhere else; somewhere distant, but familiar. A suggestion immediately popped into his head – Earth. He had no idea what Earth looked like now, so if he was only exploring his memories, he’d see the planet as he remembered it, populated by billions of human beings and with Earth Fleet ships and outposts buzzing around it like bees.
“Why not? Earth is as good a place to start as any…” Taylor said out loud, and no sooner had the words escaped his lips, he was rushing through space towards one of the wireframed cubes at an incredible speed. The stars shifted all around him and soon he was inside the cube, hurtling towards its center, but he wasn’t slowing down. He felt like screaming as an object at the center of the cube grew larger and larger, until it became clear that it was a planet. But the planet was not Earth. Then he rapidly changed direction and continued moving on a tangent to the first cube, speeding through space towards another one, getting faster and faster, until he changed direction again, towards a third. Breaking through the third cube’s glowing framework, he changed direction again and again and again, so fast and so frequently that he started to black out. But, before his eyes darkened completely, the acceleration stopped as suddenly as it had begun. When the fog in his mind had cleared, Taylor discovered that he was on his hands and knees on the translucent floor of the deep space corridor. He was surprised to find that he was breathing heavily again, feeling the burn in his lungs. It didn’t seem to matter that his body was merely a mental projection of his physical form; inside this place of thought and energy, everything felt real.
