by J. Benjamin
Kiara looked. The creature’s hypnotizing green eyes lit up like searchlights on a watchtower.
“See the boost button? See the eye facing us? You can see where I am going with this,” Matt said.
“Let’s send this sonofabitch back twenty thousand leagues,” Kiara replied.
“That’s right, Jules Verne. Now punch it,” Matt said.
Kiara accelerated at full throttle toward the squid’s mantle. She could taste the saltwater mist as it flew in her face but it did not distract her from her objective. The squid clearly saw Kiara approaching. It tilted on its side and in doing so, exposed a massive, gaping beak that looked strong enough to crush both of them in a single bite.
“Matt, hold on!” Kiara shouted. “When I say jump, you jump.” As the hovercraft raced closer to the squid’s jaws, its eye stood out like the center of a dart board. Kiara crouched in anticipation of her next move.
“Jump!” Kiara commanded. Matt immediately dove off the hovercraft and into the water. In one fell swoop, Kiara jumped and yanked the hovercraft upward. She immediately cork-screwed the craft to avoid the creature’s beak, hit the boost button, and jumped off just as the hovercraft shot into the creature’s eye at maximum velocity. Kiara saw Matt and swam back to him.
They turned around. The squid roared and flailed its massive tentacles in the air. Within seconds, it slowly descended into the water and swam away.
“I think we won,” Matt said.
* * *
Leon dodged another hit from the bird leader. This time, he shoved his left hand into the ground to grab a large chunk of sand. Leon took the sand, jumped, and flung the sand into the bird’s eyes. The bird leader jumped back and squawked loudly as its wings slung out, dropping its staff.
Wasting no time, Leon grabbed the wooden staff and swung it back at the bird creature that threatened him just moments ago. “Try hitting me now!” Leon shouted. “Come on!”
The birds flinched and moved back a step. The leader looked curiously at Leon. Suddenly, the bird leader knelt to the ground.
It squawked, this time in a more reserved volume. The other birds also took to their knees and knelt at Leon’s presence. They all screamed in unison, bowing their heads to Leon.
“All I had to do was steal your stick, eh? That was easy.” Leon said. The birds stood up and in an instant, vanished in a cloud of smoke. The burning structure of a squid also disappeared. Instead, a rectangular white light resembling an open door appeared in its place.
Before Leon could even move, a monotone voice spoke to him.
Congratulations! You have successfully stood up to the birds and won their respect. You might be wondering why this is even remotely relevant to your training. Should there come a day when you come into contact with unknowns or other entities that make no sense, you have to be prepared to defend yourself. This completes stage two of your training. You may proceed to the exit.
“And good riddance!” Leon said. He walked into the bright white light.
* * *
A grated platform ascended from the ocean where the squid had been. Kiara and Matt seized onto it and pulled themselves out of the water.
“I don’t think I want to eat calamari ever again,” Kiara said. “Even if it is cloned from the finest bionic farm.”
“Same,” Matt said. However, he and Kiara froze when another voice spoke to them.
Congratulations! With the power of teamwork, you took down one of nature’s deadliest beasts. You made the wise decision to send one gammanaut to the desert and two to the sea. In the real world, this squid would have easily overpowered any single person and ended their life. Teamwork is the absolute most critical component of surviving the dream net when you are in unfamiliar territory. This completes stage two of your training. You may proceed to the exit.
“Adios pendejo,” Kiara said to the ocean as they left the environment.
14
Kiara opened her eyes. She laid in a bright white room that looked similar to the dream net training area she had entered at Guion Bluford Spaceport. Except this room had beds and medical monitoring equipment. She was in a medical bay.
“I’m back,” Kiara said to an empty room. She was still wearing the same jumpsuit she wore during the training exercise. Kiara was surprised not to see Matt or Leon, figuring they likely woke before her.
Knock. Knock.
“Hello, Dr. Lacroix. Are you in there?” A voice said from the other side of the door.
“Yup,” Kiara replied.” How did I do?”
“We will let you know in ten minutes. Get suited up and meet us in room i707.”
“i707. Got it,” Kiara answered back. To Kiara’s surprise, she saw a set of her clothes already assembled for her next to the bed. Kiara removed her jumpsuit and changed into civilian clothes. She then took her smart lens and placed it on her right eye.
She left the room and proceeded down the arched hallway. She was definitely in the main research building. She had to be on the ninth or tenth floor. There was a snowstorm outside. Kiara looked at the room numbers.
i721, i720… They were moving in descending order. Kiara stepped up her pace. i710, i709, i708…
“i707. Here we are,” Kiara said. There was a closed metal door. Kiara knocked twice.
“Door is open,” the voice on the other side said. Kiara pushed the door open and entered the room.
Room i707 was dark, with just a single ceiling light. The room was small and void except for a small table and a man sitting in the darkened area of the tiny room.
“Dr. Lacroix,” the man said. “Welcome. I hope your rest was a comfortable one.”
“Didn’t feel as long as I thought it would,” Kiara said. “One second I’m fighting a squid, and the next, I wake up.”
“Oh, but you were asleep for several hours,” the man replied. “You wouldn’t know it, because from the time you completed the training sequence and up to now, your mind was recalibrating to being back in your body.”
“I see. Well, I feel rested,” Kiara said.
“Good, very good,” he said in his monotone voice. Kiara wasn’t sure what he was up to but saw that he was reviewing a set of papers in his hands. “So, let’s have a chat about your experience. What were your thoughts?”
“Well, I gotta hand it to your team. Those were some very challenging cases. Still, nothing that I felt we couldn’t overcome.”
“That’s very good to hear, Dr. Lacroix,” the man in the shadows said. “The lightning room is relatively easy. Most dream-net trainees figure it out relatively quickly. Some take longer than others. Your team was definitely on the faster side, so good work.”
“Thank you,” Kiara replied. “And what about the squid?”
“Oh, that thing? Believe it or not, we have a large percentage of candidates who never even realize that they’re standing on a globe. Many of them just keep walking along the beach and give up. Among those who do confront the squid, not all of them manage to defeat it. It’s a good thing that it’s all a simulation. In the real world, their deaths would be far more gruesome.”
“You’re not kidding,” Kiara said. “But it was all teamwork. I didn’t do it alone.”
“Indeed,” the man said. “Your teammates seem to feel the same exact way. Captain Ashford especially credits you for the wave-runner. Now you know why so many people fail. Not everyone is as quick on their toes.” He took his papers and shoved them into a manila folder and set them aside.
“So, tell me, Dr. Lacroix, what are you hoping to get out of this?”
“Out of what?” she asked. “Out of the exercise?”
“Out of the whole thing. What pushed someone with your pedigree to move forward on something so ambitious?”
“Umm…” Kiara was surprised by the question. She took a moment to consider her answer.
“It’s not a hard question.”
“I mean, I guess you could say I wanted to help do my part to advance humanity. Help advance science.
That is, after all, what I am about. My career and all.”
The man paused as if he was surprised by her answer. Kiara waited for a response.
“Interesting,” he said. “Very well, then.”
“So, what’s next?” Kiara asked.
“Well, you passed the tests. It’s off to the Sagan you go.”
***
By the time Kiara arrived at the vehicle assembly building, the oversized garage door was open. A freshly-constructed GSF Sidewinder waited to be rolled out onto the tarmac. A man in a blue spacesuit stood next to the signature GSF spaceplane. His attention was focused on the left ion engine. She could see it was Matt.
“Hey, stranger,” Kiara called out.
“Kiara!” Matt called back. He stopped inspecting the engine and ran over to her. “Ready to do this?”
“About as ready as I’ll ever be,” she replied. “You know how to fly one of these bad boys?”
“You could say I’ve taken a few courses. Truth be told though, there’s not much to it. These things are now mostly autopilot.”
“Autopilot? Where’s the fun in that?”
“Neither of you are pilots by trade,” Leon said as he emerged from the hanger, already suited up. “So, autopilot it is.”
“Glad to see you made it out of the beach,” Matt said.
“That was no beach! It was more like Death Valley on steroids, but with a bunch of bird people and, ah, never mind. The less you know, the better. How was your adventure at sea?”
“The less you know, the better,” Kiara replied.
The GSF Sidewinder was an engineering masterpiece. As a single-stage-to-orbit spaceplane, it did not require the wasteful fuel boosters of generations past. Instead, the freshly-assembled orbiter rolled down the assembly line and to the edge of the vehicle assembly facility. With its twin hypersonic engines, elongated structure, and lightweight body, it was built to leave the atmosphere with ease.
Once inside the cockpit, there were two rows of four seats. Kiara, Matt, and Leon sat in the front. Strapped in and ready to go, Matt activated the craft’s controls and brought its systems to life, including multiple consoles above the windshield.
Nothing compared to what lay before the craft. The Sidewinder rolled onto the runway outside the assembly building. The Alaskan sunset was unlike any Kiara had ever seen. The sun crept toward the edge of the horizon. Even as the sky filled with stars, one could still see the towering peaks of the Alaskan range.
“You ready?” Matt asked.
“Ready when you are, Captain,” Leon replied.
“Ready,” Kiara said.
“Good. Liftoff sequence initiated.”
Apparently, the liftoff sequence went a lot faster than Kiara anticipated. Once the engines roared on, Kiara felt gripped to the back of her seat. It was as if a four-hundred-pound wrestler pinned her down. Where was the countdown? she wondered.
They were already airborne before she knew it. The horizon went from a tiny hue of orange to black quickly. Though Kiara wasn’t piloting the craft, she could see the altitude gauge on her smart lens. The distance between them and the ground jumped exponentially.
Kiara stopped paying attention to the readings because she was mesmerized by what was occurring outside. Bright ribbons of green and blue danced across the sky like a majestic orchestra. Kiara had never seen the Aurora Borealis this close before.
Her bliss was shattered by an alarm sound. Pilot or not, she knew that alert could not be a good thing.
“What’s going on?” Kiara asked.
“I don’t know,” Matt replied. “I’m getting an emergency warning.”
“We’re already five miles up!” Leon shouted.
“It’s coming from the left engine, it’s overheating and—” Matt’s abrupt silence paralyzed Kiara with terror. “Bomb! There’s a bomb onboard!”
“Bomb?” Leon shouted back. “Can you shut it down?”
“I… I can’t!”
It happened in the blink of an eye. A bright flash, an ear-shattering blast, and Kiara blasted off like a champagne cork. There was no time to register what happened. Her insides and field of vision spun in a violent whirlpool.
Somehow, Kiara was still in her bucket seat. With no time to think, she quickly ascertained her situation. Everything to the left of her had been blasted away. What remained was a fraction of the fuselage, herself, and two of the consoles. She could barely maintain a glimpse of the gaping hole which remained where her fellow gammanauts had been previously.
She saw the eject button on the piece of dashboard still intact. She reached for it and pressed it several times. It was useless.
Kiara couldn’t believe it. This is how her story was going to end, as a smoldering ruin over the Alaskan tundra. She would never live to see her full potential realized. At least she had some time to gather her final thoughts. Then it got Kiara thinking, as she tumbled upside-down and felt her body continue to shift with the gravity.
This is impossible. How am I still alive? Kiara thought to herself. Then it hit her, as she watched the world below become the world above. What was i707 flipped upside-down?
LOL!
“No. It’s impossible,” Kiara said at the revelation. “I’m still in the damn sequence!” Upon uttering those very words, the half-destroyed Sidewinder froze mid-air. Kiara no longer felt the stomach-lurching pull of gravity. As she observed the change to her environment, she mustered up the courage to undo her seatbelt.
She pulled herself out of her seat and walked on the remaining ceiling of the aircraft. The previously disaster-stricken section of the Sidewinder now felt like a movie set. The functioning systems of the spacecraft still hummed. Kiara looked over the gaping hole and saw that there was nothing there. It was a wall made to resemble the outside world.
“You finally figured it out,” a familiar monotone voice said. Kiara turned around and saw the silhouette from room i707, or the LOL! room, on both of the surviving consoles.
“You almost had me there for a minute,” Kiara replied. “Now tell me who you really are, and what do you want with me?”
“No problem. Perhaps this will jar your memory?” The silhouette moved forward and into the light, and Kiara saw his face for the first time. Kiara was in disbelief once she realized who she had been talking to this entire time.
“I can’t believe it. It’s you!”
One flash of lightning and Kiara was no longer in the Sidewinder.
***
“Starscraper!” Kiara shouted defiantly as they emerged in a new environment.
“Surprised to see me?” The sentient AI replied as he stood before Kiara. It was the first time Kiara had seen an iteration of him as a full-bodied person. Even stranger Kiara thought, that he chose to show up like he was off to a nightclub, in a blazer and slacks. Actually, that is precisely where Starscarper had taken her. The ground lit up like a checkerboard of multi-colored lights, and the AI looked like he was about to steal the dance floor from an imaginary audience.
“Val Alessi warned me about you. Had no idea you were literally getting into peoples’ heads now.”
“Val Alessi? Never heard of her. Perhaps in another iteration? I’m sure somebody wrote a book about it somewhere,” Starscraper said. “I think the better question is, what do you want? You see, when I asked you earlier, your answer was pretty vague.”
“Seriously?” Kiara said. “I told you. I’m going into the sequence because I want to help advance humankind in the right direction. Sounded like a rather powerful answer to me.”
“Oh, Dr. Lacroix. You think that generic answer is going to work with me?
“I’m not going to bare my soul to some faceless bureaucrat.”
“Well now you know I am not some faceless bureaucrat. So, tell me, Dr. Lacroix, why did you really sign up for this mission? What did a world-renowned exobiologist like you stand to gain from a life-or-death situation? Was it fame? You already have plenty of that.”
“Okay, fine
. I’ll tell you,” Kiara said. “I did it because being an exobiologist wasn’t enough. Don’t get me wrong, I love what I do for a living. I get to understand life at a much deeper level than probably anyone alive. Yes, even Leon. I could have just stuck with Europa and called it a day. Eventually, probably get married. Might even be eligible for a Nobel at some point.”
“Sounds kind of boring if you ask me,” Starscraper chimed in.
“Well, not exactly. It’s just not complete.”
“Not complete?”
“I mean, think about it. We just discovered the first alien civilization that isn’t a bunch of dead ring monoliths thousands of lightyears away. We might actually have a chance to not just study them, but communicate too. This is beyond anything someone in my field could ever dream of. This is the holy grail of universal truth.”
“Made you feel small?” Starscraper asked.
“I mean, before the gala, I would have been happy continuing my life as planned. But yeah, this hit me like a monkey wrench. It did make everything else in my life feel small and, frankly, insignificant,” Kiara explained. She saw Starscraper nod his head. “How was that? Am I good to go now?”
“Dr. Lacroix. By now, you probably realized there was a method to this third and final exercise. It was two-fold. First, we wanted to test your ability to discern reality from the simulation. So, we put you in as realistic a scenario as possible. Second, we wanted to see how you would fare when separated from your teammates. It’s definitely a possibility when you go on your mission. Clearly, you passed both parts of the final test with ease.”
“So, what about the baring my soul to you?”
“Oh that? Yeah, that was not part of the test at all,” Starscraper said.
“You mean, I just got personal with you and treated you like a shrink for absolutely no reason at all except to entertain you?”
“Pretty much,” Starscraper laughed. “It had no relevance to the mission whatsoever.”
“Jesus Christ, you’re an insufferable prick!” Kiara said.
“Yeah, I know. I get that one a lot. I’m sorry. This is why nobody likes me.”
“No, shit! Now how do I get the hell out of here?” Kiara demanded.
