Dark Space- The Complete Series

by Jasper T. Scott

When Alara went to bed, Ethan lay beside her, holding her close and waiting to feel her convulsive sobs subside as her body relaxed in sleep. As soon as he heard her breathing slow to a steady rhythm, he quietly slipped out of bed and got dressed. He went to the garage and climbed into their air car. Firing up the grav lifts, he raced out into the endless night.

  The city went by in a blur, lights racing around him in shining threads. Ethan flew straight to Admiral Vee's apartment, and woke her with a comm call from outside the shielded entrance to her garage.

  "Ethan?" she said, blinking bleary turquoise eyes at him through the car's vidcomm.

  Turquoise. Ethan's mind flashed back to the dream he'd had the night before, and he shuddered. During his own Choosing Ceremony, Omnius had warned him he would cheat on his wife, and ever since then, that fear had been burned into his brain as a recurring nightmare. It's just stress, he told himself. He would never cheat on Alara with Valari—or anyone else.

  "Vee, I need to talk with you," he said.

  "It's the middle of the night."

  "It's urgent."

  She sighed and the vidcomm she held shifted focus as she climbed out of bed. Her bedsheets fell away to reveal that she was completely naked.

  Ethan grimaced and looked away, feeling guilty for the accidental glimpse of her. "Put some clothes on, would you?" he said, still not looking at the display.

  Valari's laughter trilled through the comm. "You surprised me in the middle of the night. If you don't like what you see, then you should have called at a decent hour."

  "Have some modesty," Ethan growled, peripherally noting that Valari had reoriented the comm to look at her face rather than her naked body.

  "Have a care," she replied, scowling. "I'll meet you at the door."

  The screen went blank, and the blue wall of shields blocking the entrance to the admiral's garage flickered out. Ethan cruised inside and set his car down on the nearest empty landing pad.

  When he met Valari at the door, she was no longer naked, but still scowling.

  "It's about Trinity," he explained.

  "I'm listening," Vee replied, making no move to let him in.

  "She's going through The Choosing. Today was her first day. I think Omnius is going to convince her to go to Etheria."

  "He will if he can."

  "No, I mean, I think it won't take much convincing. Her mother has been filling her head full of ideas that life will be better and safer for us there."

  Vee snorted and shook her head. "And this is the woman you're so devoted to? She's betraying you with your own daughter."

  "Never mind that. What I want is for you to make sure that Trinity doesn't go to Etheria."

  "What makes you think I can do something about it? We're talking about The Choosing, Ethan. That's Omnius's show, not mine. I'm the leader of the Resistance against him, remember? How could I possibly influence your daughter while she's in Omnius's care?"

  That sucked the air out of Ethan's lungs. He stood there, his mouth open for a reply, but having nothing left to say. He was back to feeling helpless again. "Never mind. I just thought that maybe..." He shook his head and flashed a mirthless smile. "I'm sorry I woke you." He was halfway back to his car when he heard Vee's footsteps behind him.

  "Wait," she said.

  He turned to see her approaching, her flowing red gown clinging to her as she walked and giving a teasing view of her naked body underneath. He pretended not to notice.

  She stopped too close for comfort and touched his arm, her hand trailing down until it found his. She smiled and squeezed his hand. "Let me see what I can do. It's possible I might be able to get a message to her the day that she has to make her choice."

  Ethan felt his heart leap inside his chest. "You could do that?"

  "It's possible."

  Ethan couldn't help the grin that sprang to his lips. "That's good enough! If you can do that, I'll be in your debt."

  Admiral Vee squeezed his hand once more. "Go get some sleep. You look terrible."

  "So do you," Ethan replied.

  "Liar," she replied, grinning suggestively at him.

  He shrugged. "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder."

  "Then it must be a privilege to be held by such a discerning gaze as yours," Vee replied. "It's a pity that privilege is wasted on your treacherous wife."

  Ethan frowned. "You can't blame her. She's just scared for her daughter."

  Vee crossed her arms over her chest. "What about her husband? She would leave the Null Zone so as not to lose her daughter, but would she stay to keep you?"

  Those words struck too close to Ethan's heart for comfort. He flashed the admiral a wan smile and retreated to the safety of his air car. "Let me know when you're ready for my message," he said before closing the door on the pilot's side and sealing himself in.

  Vee nodded, and Ethan gunned the thrusters on the way out, as if he could somehow escape the memory of her cutting remarks.

  What would Alara do?

  What if it really did come to a choice between their daughter or him? Who would she pick?

  Suddenly Ethan realized that The Choosing wasn't just about whether or not they chose to serve Omnius—it was about choosing between the people they loved, the ones they'd lose and the ones they'd keep.

  Chapter 21

  "Death is not the end," Therius said. "And this is the proof."

  Farah shook her head, her eyes locked on the recording projected above the holo table. Four real-time brain scans were shown there, the top two were labeled Before Transfer and the bottom two After Transfer. The ones on the left had the sub-heading Actual while the ones on the right lay under the sub-heading Predicted. Brain activity was shaded red for high activity, yellow for medium, and blue for low, making it easy to compare the scans. Farah noticed that the Before Transfer scans were completely different in terms of the Actual and Predicted activity, while both the After Transfer scans were identical.

  "This is why The Choosing exists," Farah breathed.

  "What is thisss?" High Matriarch Shara asked.

  Therius explained for her benefit. She had never been to Avilon, so she didn't even know what The Choosing was.

  Farah shook her head, aghast. She'd always wondered why Omnius made people choose. The excuses made a limited amount of sense—it was a way to remind people of the cost of human freedom, and to illustrate how much better off they were with Omnius ruling them. But Omnius didn't have to resurrect them all in new bodies in order to make them immortal. He could have retroactively altered the bodies they were born with.

  The real reason for The Choosing was that Omnius couldn't predict what people would do unless he resurrected them first. "This still doesn't prove there is an afterlife," Farah said. "It just proves that Omnius is messing with our DNA."

  Therius shook his head. "If he was responsible for whatever makes people predictable after transfer, then why would he study people to determine the cause?" Therius pointed to the top of the recording, which read, Case #5.46[...]E+13.

  Farah mentally translated that notation. "There have been 54.6 trillion cases studied?"

  "At the time of this recording, yes."

  Therius keyed another command into the holo table, and another set of brain scans appeared. The heading read Lazarus Experiment #1.25[...]E+6.

  "Here you can see the brain scans of a Lifelink transfer from a mortal to a clone whose body and brain were exactly duplicated from the original."

  This time Farah saw eight scans, four along the top for Patient One - Donor, and four more at the bottom for Patient Two - Recipient. The After Transfer scans were grayed out for both patients.

  "The patients are asleep and dreaming at this point," Therius said. "The recipient, the clone, has never been awoken before, and the Lifelink transfer has not yet taken place."

  Therius tapped a few more commands into the holo table's controls, and a second holo recording appeared beside the first. This one showed two women lying on matching hover
gurneys with pristine white blankets covering them. Avilonians in luminous white robes walked between them, configuring equipment and monitoring holo displays. A familiar heads-up display overlaid the recording, and it bobbed around in a way that was consistent with someone walking. Farah realized the recording had been taken from the Augmented Reality Contacts of one of the technicians in the room.

  Someone walked up to that technician. Farah recognized him as Grand Overseer Vladin Thardris.

  "Make the transfer, Therius," Vladin said.

  The recording bobbed with a nod. "Yes, Master."

  Therius. Farah's gaze darted to the Union leader, and he flashed a small, secretive smile before nodding to the recording, indicating that she should keep watching.

  Wordlessly, Farah turned back and watched. ARC dialogs appeared and disappeared as the Therius in the recording sent mental commands to the equipment in the room.

  Suddenly one of the two women sat up with a gasp, her eyes wide and terrified. Her head began jerking at the end of her neck as she tried to look everywhere at once. She swung her legs off the side of the gurney, and a pair of Celestials rushed to her side, helping her down.

  At that point, Therius paused the recordings. "Now look," he said.

  Farah focused on the brain scans. The After Resurrection scans had come alive with shaded patterns. The recipient's Actual and Predicted scans showed identical shading, while the donor's Actual and Predicted scans remained distinct from one another.

  "The identical clone is utterly predictable, while the donor remains an enigma. What is different about them? Brain structure, DNA, and memory were all controlled to be exactly the same. These are two perfectly identical women. We would expect them to behave exactly the same way, and be either equally predictable or equally unpredictable, but that is not the case."

  Therius keyed another command into the holo table, and the recording switched to a different place and time. Now there were two separate recordings divided by a vertical line. On the left was the heading Original while on the right was the heading Clone. In the middle was a questionnaire with Yes or No questions.

  1. You are almost never late for appointments

  Farah watched one woman circle Yes while the other circled No.

  2. You enjoy having many acquaintances.

  Both circled Yes.

  And so it went with the two women answering differently at least a third of the time.

  "They don't know about each other, and they don't know what they're being tested for," Therius explained. He pressed another key on the holo table and a second questionnaire appeared with the heading Predicted Results. Farah scanned the displays and saw that Omnius had predicted how both women would answer, but only the clone had answered the way he predicted.

  The question of whether or not people were still the same after transfer had been answered with a definitive no. This woman was not the same as her clone. Something was subtly different, something that even altered her personality.

  Farah wondered what that meant for her. She was a clone transfer. Had she actually died during the invasion? What did that make her now? A biological bot? She felt like a stranger in her own skin. A wave of nausea swept over her, raising goosebumps on her arms.

  "I don't understand," High Matriarch Shara said. "What does thiss matter?"

  Therius paused the recording and turned to regard the Gor. "This is proof that we are more than just flesh and blood, and it answers the question of whether or not there is a life after death."

  Farah shook her head and forced her gorge back down. "Actually, I'm with the Gor on this. All this proves is that people really do die when they transfer, and that there is something about us Omnius can't copy using Lifelink implants."

  Therius's blue eyes lit up. "Exactly! What do you think that something is, Captain Hale?" Farah shrugged, and Therius's smile broadened. "We searched hard for the missing link, but after more than a million experiments, we never found it."

  "So Omnius doesn't know everything after all. I'm not surprised by that."

  "No, he doesn't, but what would you call something that defies physical explanation and makes one person fundamentally different from another?"

  Farah saw where Therius was going with that. "I'm guessing you would call it a soul."

  "Yet you don't believe that. This is compelling evidence that we are not just data recorded in a biological computer. If we were, then Omnius would find both mortal humans and immortal clones to be equally predictable. Instead, he was forced to create the Null Zone and The Choosing just to give him an excuse to separate unpredictable people from predictable ones."

  Farah frowned. "He doesn't have to do that. He could just force everyone to resurrect at whatever age makes the most sense and then call it a day. He's already resurrected the majority of the people living on Avilon, so he just has to worry about the children."

  "You would think so, but in practice that's not how it works. Plenty of Etherians and Celestials grow tired of Omnius's control over their lives and choose to become Nulls. Do you know what all of those people have in common?"

  "They saw through Omnius's lies?"

  "No, they all did one or more things that Omnius didn't predict."

  "You're saying their... souls came back?"

  Therius held her gaze for a long, solemn moment, seeming not to notice her sarcasm. "Yes."

  Farah grunted. "If clones are becoming unpredictable over time, that could mean that exposure to environmental factors is the missing element."

  "If exposure to environment factors makes people unpredictable, then we should be able to isolate a physical cause, but Omnius was unable to find one in over a million experiments."

  "There was a time when we couldn't isolate subatomic particles. Just because we can't see something doesn't mean it isn't there," Farah said.

  Therius sighed and waved away the holo recordings. "I told you that you wouldn't believe me."

  Farah turned to look at High Matriarch Shara. The Gor still looked confused. Her slitted eyes had narrowed to slivers, as if none of what they were talking about made any sense to her. By contrast, the Sythians were impassive, unimpressed. Shallah gave no reaction when Farah looked at him, but Queen Tavia unfolded her wings and refolded them restlessly.

  "What about Gors and Sythians?" Farah asked, turning back to Therius. "Are they also unpredictable?"

  "Shallah wouldn't have been able to rebel against Omnius if he weren't at least somewhat unpredictable. Likewise, the Gors shouldn't have been able to rebel against Shallah. Despite Omnius's desire to predict and control us, our souls are all still free of his predictions. Omnius's original directive was to predict what his creators would do before they did it, and he's still trying desperately to accomplish that."

  "But he must have found something after more than a million experiments. What was his conclusion?"

  "He believes it's the uncertainty principle. The quantum fabric of the universe is essentially unpredictable. Unpredictable variables add up over time to create irregularities in an otherwise ordered system. Two separate instances of the same person, no matter how similar, are different because they exist at different points in space time, and they will be exposed to unique quantum factors that will alter their behavior."

  "That makes sense," Farah said.

  "No, it doesn't. That only explains why two identical clones with identical memories will act differently—not why one will be predictable and the other will not. The predictable clone is exposed to the same random quantum variables and should be just as unpredictable as the original person."

  Farah sighed. "Maybe quantum differences build up over time. Clones are grown in tanks at an accelerated pace. Most of them have only been alive for a month by the time Omnius wakes them up. That's not the same as actually living for twenty-something years. And that explains why clones become unpredictable again over time."

  "We're going to have to agree to disagree," Therius said. "You have your doubts, and I h
ave my faith. Both are equally impossible to prove. It's a mystery."

  Farah smiled thinly. "And it's going to remain one unless this Etherus of yours comes here from his universe, sits down with us, and explains it all."

  "Even if that were to happen, you would not believe him."

  "If he showed me proof I would."

  "Earlier you asked for evidence. Now you want proof, so which is it?"

  "My mistake. I meant proof."

  "I see," Therius replied, clasping his hands on the table and nodding. "That is the difference between faith and reason. For every question that reason answers, it raises another. The only way to permanently answer it is to become God and know everything, and I don't think He wants to share His throne with all of us." There was a spark of amusement in Therius's eyes that annoyed Farah.

  She glared back at him. "We've wasted enough time trying to answer the unanswerable. We need to get back to the problem at hand—defeating Omnius."

  "I agree," Therius replied. He turned to the High Matriarch. "Shara, please inform the other matriarchs of what they will be facing on the surface of Avilon. Have your ground teams and pilots begin using the simulators aboard the Sythians' Behemoth Cruisers to train for their missions. I've already assigned battalions and battle groups to objectives, so all you need to do is check with Shallah to find who needs to use which simulators."

  Shara turned to look at Shallah, and she hissed something at him in her language. Shallah hissed back. The exchange went on for a while, leaving Farah to wonder what they were talking about.

  "Enough!" Therius boomed, slapping the table with his palms. "We call ourselves the Union for a reason. We stand united against a common enemy, and that means we need to trust each other." Turning to Shara, he said, "If you cannot trust Shallah enough to use the simulators aboard his warships, your people will be unprepared when they reach Avilon, and they will be slaughtered. Then all of this will have been for nothing."

  "We train in the jungles and on the fields," she replied. "We hunt; we kill; we are ready."

  "There are no fields or jungles on Avilon. How will you prepare for that?"