From the Dreams of Morpheus: Five Tales of Fantasy and Science Fiction
Steven Ford
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2009 Steven Ford
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A Special Hell
I decree that the fifty-eighth year of my life begins today. The golden rays of Tau Ceti once again have found their way to the line I etched in the sandstone so long ago. Warmer days have come and Ceti Prime has completed another circuit of its star. A Ceti year is shorter than an Earth year by 36 days, but I have compensated accordingly. What year it is on Earth is beyond my reckoning…or my interest. Happy birthday to me.
As soon as I drive the cold stiffness from my bones, I will work my way down to the grotto where the Blessed Mother promised that I would find sustenance every morning. She has never failed me in all these years. And after consuming what She has provided, I will pray my ragged Rosary and mediate on the mysteries. The Rosary always brings me comfort.
For now, I drink in the peace of the brilliant dawn. As Ceti rises, the sand crabs—at least creatures that approximate sand crabs--will begin their chorus. Their staccato clicks will fill the canyon and provoke the dust stingers to take flight. Once the crabs creep from their burrows, they will visit me, as they always do. The crabs are curious and intelligent. In my first year of exile, we reached an understanding. They will not rob from my food supply and I will not roll boulders into their hive. The crabs have respected our treaty ever since.
There is so little I can recall these days. My past is irrevocably fading. When Mary first appeared to me in my twentieth year, She announced that I was condemned to this place for the murder of a family. I buried my face in the pink sand and wept in shame at Her feet. Thank God I had been spared the hideous memory of what I had done. I am eternally grateful to the Blessed Mother for wiping that nightmare from my mind.
Thankfully, I can still remember the moment when She placed her radiant hand on my shoulder. The pain of being connected to such sinless purity nearly shattered my soul. I shrank away with a scream. “Do not be afraid,” She said. “There is hope yet. You are abandoned by humanity, but not by me.”
She fulfills her promise to feed and nourish me, but it has been at least 10 Ceti years since I have looked upon Her Blessed Face or heard Her soothing voice. I have gone gray in Her service and the relentless wind has scoured my features. It would be wonderful to glimpse Her beauty again, unfaded by time. The visage I see in my grotto pool is that of an aging man, well beyond the summer of his life and slouching into autumn.
After my Rosary I believe I will climb to the top of the mesa. As I was falling asleep last night I heard the rumble of the triadons. They are migrating north and it is always a treat to see them. Their long necks wave like a field of impossibly tall grass and their scales flash in myriad colors. I can see their wide mouths inhaling clouds of dust stingers, continuously feeding from air. It will be a week before the last stragglers of the herd pass the mesa and vanish over the horizon.
God is wonderful in His works.
Kathy gazed at the dusty teradisc and tried to read its label in the gathering darkness. A simple voice command would have brought up the office lights, but she didn’t want to break the mood. Sleet pecked incessantly at the window while a Bach concerto floated overhead.
The door annunciator chimed. “Come,” she called out.
Rafe shook the water and ice from his beige longcoat as he swept into the room. “It is your partner bearing good news and an invitation to dinner!” Rafe fell into his favorite chair and allowed his coat to spill over the arms.
“I’ll take the news first.”
“Judge Hammond has excused himself from the Burnback case. Lunacon will definitely settle. They won’t want to pursue another trial.”
Kathy shrugged as she continued to stare at the disc. “That’s just as well. I don’t think I could have spent another day in that courtroom. Just working through the pretrial motions was agonizing in itself. Have you told the Burnbacks?”
“No,” Rafe replied with a yawn. “I’ll ring them up this evening. They’ll be happy to know that they’ve just become billionaires.”
“Hmm . . . at the cost of their daughter’s life. What else were you going to tell me?”
“Dinner,” Rafe said, leaning forward. “Dinner at the Iron Chef.”
“I don’t have a craving for Japanese today.”
“Would you prefer a diet of teradiscs?”
“What?”
“You’ve hardly looked at me since I came in. What is so fascinating about that disc?”
“Oh!” Kathy managed a slight smile. “This is from my mother’s collection. I found it this afternoon while I was cleaning out some old files.” Kathy held the disc closer and squinted. “Case number 6354—People vs. Jon Alter. November 23, 2081.”
Rafe stood and leaned over her desk for a closer look. “That’s the case that put your mother in the spotlight—the first Exile sentencing.”
Kathy sighed. “She should never have agreed to defend him. The prosecution had a mountain of DNA evidence. This was just six months after the 8th Amendment was rescinded and Justice had kicked off their Exile program. They were looking to make an example and Jon Alter handed it to them on a platter.”
“Exile beats capital punishment,” Rafe offered.
“Does it?” Kathy asked. “My mother thought it was horribly cruel. What if an exile is innocent? It’s unthinkable.”
Rafe plucked the disc from her fingers and flipped it like a coin. “And others would argue that decapitating two children and their mother is unthinkable.”
“Careful with that!” Kathy snapped as she caught the disc in mid-flight. “They don’t make storage like this any more. I’m trying to find a holo decoder that can play it.”
“For historical interest?”
“Not really,” Kathy replied as she gently tucked the disc into an envelope. “It would be nice to see my mother in action again, at the top of her game. I was just a child during the trial, but I remember the toll it took on Mom. Every evening she would come through the door looking as if someone had just beaten the hell out of her. I’d awaken in the middle of the night and still see the light shining under the door of her study. I don’t know when she slept. Something troubled her deeply about that case. Just a week before Mom passed away she suddenly asked if there was new information about the Alter trial. Can you imagine?”
Rafe stood with his hands thrust into his pockets. “There is no new information. The case closed 40 years ago. As they used to say in the twentieth century, ‘Jon Alter has left the building.’”
“Still,” Kathy began as she pulled on her coat, “I want to go over this case myself. Something to do in my spare time. How does Mexican suit you, Rafe?”
“It gives me heartburn.”
“Mexican it is. Just keep your bowels quiet during my closing arguments tomorrow.”
“Lights out. Security in 30” Kathy said as she opened the door.
“Good evening, Miss Stanson,” the system responded. “Security activation in 30 seconds.”
Only dust stingers fill the sky today. I have been praying for rain as I watch my herbs whither. The food Our Lady provides is the stuff of life itself, but—and I say this with all due respect—it lacks taste. My Cetian herbs add so much more flavor.
I’ve cultivated my delicate plants from cuttings I harvested during my journeys to the Black Valley in my first years here. I had no means to gauge their toxicity except by trial and error. I still recall one variety that offered a taste almost identical to saffron, but as I chewed a leaf my lips and tongue swelled to painful size. I could not eat or drink for several days. Another plant with a gorgeous flower enticed me to mix it with a bowl of hot gruel—and I paid for my haste with vomiting for most of a day.
I water my herbs as much as possible, but Ceti sucks the moisture into the powdery sand. This morning I held a dying plant in my hand and cried to heaven, “Lord, why? Have I not been a faithful servant? Have I fallen yet again from your grace?”
In a moment of weakness I took a sharpened stick into the savannah and crouched among the grasses, waiting for an unwary triadon to come my way. Triadon flesh, greasy as it was, would surely be preferable to tasteless mush. A tender infant triadon, hardly a meter tall, was within my grasp, but at the moment I raised my spear, my arm went numb and pain seared my chest. At the same instant, the mother triadon took notice of her baby, and came thundering toward me. I fell onto my face, calling out for the Blessed Virgin. The huge creature stopped not six meters from me, regarded me with her lidless black eyes and then lumbered away with her offspring in tow.
It
was nearly dark before the pain subsided and I found the strength to
walk. “Oh my God,” I shouted to the twilight, “I am heartily
sorry for having offended Thee, and I detest all my sins, because I
dread the loss of heaven, and the pains of hell; but most of all
because they offend Thee, my God, Who are all good and deserving of
all my love.
I firmly resolve, with the help of Thy grace to
confess my sins, to do penance and to amend my life.” Only the rush
of the wind replied, but perhaps that was His whispered response. I
had strayed from the path that He and Our Mother had set for me. He
could have allowed the triadon to rip me to pieces, but instead I was
spared with far less punishment than I deserved.
Perhaps if I fast and meditate, He will lift his punishment and restore my herbs. I am a man damned by my own fault, in my thoughts and in my words, in what I have done, and in what I have failed to do. But will Blessed Mary, ever virgin, pray for me?
“Kathy!”
Kathy Stanson turned to see Rafe bounding through the crowded hallway. “Hold the lift!”
She allowed the doors to slide halfway shut, enjoying the panicked look on Rafe’s face, then jabbed the OPEN button at the last moment. Rafe slid across the threshold, spilling papers and folders as he went.
“You did that on purpose!”
Kathy laughed. “I’m in a lousy mood. I needed a diversion. Where to?”
“Authorization Rafe Mackie,” he said as he scooped up the last folder. “Judicial level.”
“Thank you” the lift responded. “Judicial level. And you, Miss?”
“Authorization Kathy Stanson. Cafeteria.”
“Cafeteria, Miss Stanson. Thank you.” The lift jerked slightly, then accelerated.
“On your way to see Judge Altobello?” Kathy asked.
“How did you know?”
“Attorney Barrett mentioned that Altobello was getting testy with you this morning. Something about repeatedly leading a witness,” Kathy smirked.
Rafe shook his head and grinned. “I don’t want to discuss it. Too painful. How’s your research going with the Alter case?”
“The man did the crime,” she replied. “Snuffed a mother and two children. It was my mother’s contention, though, that Alter was insane and incompetent to stand trial. Despite all evidence to the contrary, three psychiatrists miraculously declared him sane. They claimed his brain scans showed normal functioning. Something was very wrong and Mom knew it. She just couldn’t prove it.
“In the end my mother believed that the court falsely convicted and exiled a psychotic rather than sending him off for neural reintegration. Do you know why that was allowed to happen?”
Rafe shrugged.
“Because the husband and father was Javier Gonzales. He was Homeland Security’s top investigator back then. A very influential man.”
Rafe’s eyes widened. “Of course! With capital punishment outlawed, Gonzales would never have the satisfaction of seeing Alter dead. So, he wanted the worst possible punishment short of death. Gonzales certainly wasn’t going to allow the government to press Alter’s RESET button and send him into society with new personality and a blank memory.”
“Yep. Gonzales pulled all the right strings and had the three-judge panel declare Alter sane and convict him of murder one. That made him a prime candidate for Exile. The story is a little stranger still. Did you know Gonzales also had one of his children Life Scanned?”
“You’re kidding? When?”
“Gonzales showed up at the apartment while EMTs were still working on the youngest victim, a 5-year-old boy. Before the child was completely brain dead, Gonzalez demanded that his son’s memory and high-level neural patterns be scanned and stored at TransLife.”
Rafe shook he head and glanced at the floor display. “After 50 years they still haven’t transplanted those ‘souls’, as they call them, into computers or anything else. A friend of mine is doing research with the TransLife quantum mainframe. He made a breakthrough that allowed him to display visual cortex and auditory data. The idea seems ghoulish to me. He’s a shoe-in for a Nobel, though.”
“Arriving at Judicial level,” the lift announced.
“Wait!” Kathy called out. “Suspend lift. My authorization.”
“Movement halted. Awaiting commands.”
“Kathy!”
Kathy put her hand over her mouth and began to pace. “Your friend can access the memories of anyone stored at TransLife?”
“With permission of next of kin, yes.” Rafe’s eyes narrowed. “Where are you going with this?”
“I’m thinking that I want to see that boy’s last moments.”
“What’s the point?”
“Maybe it will give me a little piece of evidence that was never available to my mother. There were no eye witnesses to the murder, except possibly for that boy.”
“And where you are going to find next of kin?”
“Javier Gonzales. He’s still alive.”
Rafe exploded with laughter. “You’re going to get his permission to reopen the case of his murdered family? To do what? Retrieve Jon Alter from the exile Gonzalez sent him to in the first place? That’s nuts!”
Kathy didn’t smile. “Gonzales had a rough ride in the years following the murder. He was demoted several times and eventually took a bullet during a terrorist raid in Manhattan. He’s been on disability ever since. A few months ago he was charged with a sensitivity violation for referring to a Muslim as a ‘towel head.’ This is his sixth racial-ethnic sensitivity felony in as many years. Unless someone intervenes, Gonzalez could be looking at prison time under the 2024 Hate Speech Act.”
“And that intervention would come from you?”
“It could,” Kathy shrugged.
“Can I please go to my floor now? I’m running late.”
“Only if you have your quantum-computing friend ring me at the office this week. I want talk to him.”
Rafe shook his head. “Done.”
“Resume travel. My authorization,” Kathy said.
“Arriving at the Judicial level,” the lift responded. The elevator shuddered to a halt and the doors whisked open.
“You are an irrational harpy,” Rafe muttered as he entered the hallway.
“No, I am an attorney—and a good one. When Altobello is screaming at you, just say ‘Thank you sir, may I have another?’ You’ll be fine.”
My God, why have you forsaken me? My herbs are all dead; the crabs have taken the stalks for their hive nests. They were such simple things, Lord. A little pleasure in my meager existence. Why were they taken from me?
Tonight I gaze at the stars and I can see the pinpoint glint of Sol in the blackness. The sight of it fills me with an emptiness beyond understanding. Oh, God, why could you not let the day of my birth perish? It would be better for me to have never existed. At least in oblivion the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest.
I am old and I am indeed weary, Lord. My existence has been an unending journey of pain. The visitations of the Blessed Mother made the unbearable bearable, but now I fear that even She has forgotten me.
Today a crab scuttled into my cave. At first I was overjoyed for the companionship, but the creature suddenly sprayed me with a foul liquid and sores have now appeared all over my body. I refuse to curse you for my suffering, but can you not deliver me at long last? Strike me, Lord, with the fury you showed that day in the savannah. But this time, seize my heart completely and stop its beating.
I have nothing to do but rest under this alien sky. Oh Lord, if a man dies, will he live again? All the days of my appointed time will I wait, until my change comes.
Kathy stepped off the Greenwood maglev in a pouring rain. She dashed across the street to a gray concrete apartment building and shook the water from her umbrella when she reached the shelter of the main entrance.
“I’m here to see Javier Gonzalez,” she said.
“Please stand by,” the autogreeter replied. Kathy listened to the rain and waited.
“Yes? Who is it?”
“Kathy Stanson. We spoke on the telephone.” There was a long silence, followed by what sounded like a sigh.
“Come in.”
The armored door slid aside to reveal a hallway starkly illuminated by a single LED fixture in the ceiling. “Third door on the right.”
The face that appeared in the doorway was unrecognizable from the one Kathy had seen in her mother’s logs. The robust investigator of 30 was now a frail skeleton of a man at 70. Javier Gonzales still possessed the piercing stare that had locked onto Jon Alter and remained throughout the trial. Now these same eyes regarded her with a mixture of amusement and contempt.
“Miss Stanson. Won’t you sit down?”
Kathy walked into the gloomy living room and seated herself on a threadbare couch. She drew a shallow breath across her lips, trying to avoid the stench of body odor and stale beer. Gonzales lowered himself into a chair opposite her, then scooted it closer.
“The better to see you, my dear.” His sagging chest rose and fell beneath a graying T-shirt. “You look so official in your perky little black suit. That’s hyperfabric, isn’t it? Don’t you ever adjust its color to something more festive?”
“I’m not here to discuss my wardrobe.”
“Of course not,” Gonzales replied with a brittle smile. “You want me to give you access to the memories of my little Miguel. I’m sorry to demand a personal visit, but it seems like the least you could do. You’re asking me to let you peer into the lost soul of my Miguel so that you can succeed where your mother failed. Is that not so?”
“No. I am asking you for access so that I can know, for my own satisfaction, that justice was truly done.”
Gonzales smiled again, revealing a mouth utterly devoid of teeth. “And when you have your satisfaction, will you release the animal that murdered my family? Perhaps a convenient mind wipe so that he can spend his remaining days with a clear conscience? I can’t allow that, Miss Stanson. Jon Alter has spent the last 40 years in a special hell and I want him to remain there.”
“He may have been insane.”
“Yes, or so your mother believed,” Gonzales said as he fumbled for a cigarette. Kathy watched in astonishment as he struck a match and inhaled deeply. “What’s the matter? You’ve never seen a cig before?”
“No.”
“Are you going to report me to the authorities? Possession of tobacco carries an automatic 5-year sentence, does it not?”
“Tobacco addiction is your problem, not mine,” Kathy said as she leaned slightly to avoid an approaching cloud of smoke. “However, there is still the matter of your upcoming trial for the hate speech violation.”
“Oh, yes. I rarely get out of this gulag, but the one day I chose to go to the park I made the mistake of flapping my gums too loosely. The Multicultural Police are sharp. They have technology I wouldn’t have dreamed of when I was with Homeland Security. I don’t know where the monitor was hidden, but they heard me mumbling and had me in restraints within 10 minutes. Thing is, I despise Muslims. Always have. I just didn’t know when to keep my mouth shut.”
“I know the prosecutor assigned to your trial. She owes me a favor.”
Gonzales chuckled and coughed. “So that’s how it is? I give you access, you make an under-the-table deal with her to drop charges?”
Kathy ground her teeth together. “Something like that.”
“I don’t want to spend my last years in a Multicultural Re-Education Camp, that’s true, but…you cannot release that butcher.” Gonzales brushed away a tear that had suddenly appeared. “How could your mother defend him? How can you?”
“I’m not defending what he did, but the man may have been insane. If my mother could have proven that in open court, Jon Alter would have been re-integrated. He would have been freed from his nightmare and allowed to live a normal life.”
“And what about my nightmare? I have been living with my own for the last 40 years.”
Kathy met his stare and shook her head. “You are sane. You have choices. Perhaps Jon Alter didn’t.”
Gonzales did not attempt to stop the tears that streaked across his pale cheeks. “I want a mind wipe.”
“No, Javier.”
“Wipe me and you can access Miguel.”
“Neural re-integration is only for incurable insanity. You know that.”
“I also know the law. I can give you power of attorney. You can have me declared mentally incompetent.”
“That would be unethical.”
“Don’t talk to me about ethics,” Gonzales sneered. “The ethics of our legal system are very flexible. They allowed me to make sure that Jon Alter wound up basking on Ceti Prime.”
“What about Miguel? If he is ever restored, you’ll never know. You won’t even remember that he existed.”
“I know,” Gonzales replied with a hard swallow. “They will never restore him in my lifetime. That hope is gone.”
Kathy stood and clutched her umbrella. “E-mail the TransLife consent and the power of attorney request. I’ll process both as soon as I can. If all goes well, an agent from the Re-Integration Bureau will be in touch.”
Gonzales stared at the floor and only nodded.
“I’ll see myself out,” Kathy said.
Today the spring storms have come sweeping down from the mountains. The rain mocks me; it arrives far too late. Instead, I am left shivering in my cave. The wood and grass is too sodden to light. Mist swirls around the entrance and reaches into my bones with its damp talons.
The rain and the rumble of distant thunder spark memories long abandoned. For a brief time I remembered sitting in my grandparent’s porch swing, watching a summer shower and luxuriating in that peculiar smell of rain on pavement. I held my Bible to my chest and prayed for an angel to appear and take me to Heaven. The lightning flashed, my grandfather bellowed his drunken summons and the angel never came.
The sores still plague me, and in my pain I cannot sleep. Perhaps I am truly abandoned at last. God has fenced up my way that I cannot pass, and he has set darkness in my paths. There is nothing for me to do but wait for what I pray will be deliverance. Only my cowardly fear prevents me from dashing out of my cave and hurling myself off the cliffs. Despite my despair, despite everything that has happened, I still guard a fading ember of hope.
“Where is the quantum mainframe?” Kathy asked as she swiveled her chair to face the holo projector.
“The computer itself is about 50 meters beneath our feet,” Alan Beckwith replied. “I have to go down the shaft and look at it every morning. If there is no one there to observe it, the probability matrix would collapse and the mainframe would wink out of existence.”
Kathy frowned.
“It’s a joke,” Alan said. “A quantum joke.”
“I don’t get it.”
Alan stuffed his dreadlocks under a knit cap and eased into the chair next to Kathy. She marveled at his long, delicate fingers as they danced across the keyboard.
“I found the file for Miguel Gonzales this morning. That was the easy part,” Alan said without looking up. “Getting something useful was a big prob. Looks like he was essentially a corpse when they scanned him. Neural activity was nearly zero. It was pointless.”
“Not if you’re his father.”
Alan shrugged. “There are over a million minds in storage here at TransLife. Just between you and me, none of them are coming back. It must have seemed like a good idea at the time. There…we’re ready.”
The starburst TransLife symbol appeared on the screen.
“Schrodinger,” Alan said as he rocked back in his chair.
“Yes, Alan?”
“You call the computer ‘Schrodinger’?” Kathy asked.
“It’s another quantum joke you won’t get,” Alan replied with slight frown.
“Schrodinger, display the file Miguel Gonzales. Audio too, please.”
The image that appeared was only two dimensional, which was shocking in itself. Worse yet, it looked like a awful copy of an ancient television program. Kathy could only see shifting patterns of black, white and gray. Suddenly a face emerged. She suppressed a gasp. It was Jon Alter, a very young Jon Alter. The expression on his boyish face was one of absolute terror.
“Satan!” he screamed as he approached Miguel. “You will not have me! I won’t let you! You’ve tormented my soul since before I was born and it will end here.”
The image shifted and refocused on the machete that Alter waved above his head. Abruptly the figure of Jon Alter seemed to grow to enormous height.
“Miguel is cowering,” Alan said. “Looking up.”
“Mommy!” a tiny voice cried. “Help meeeeeeeeeeee!”
There was a brilliant burst of light, then nothing. “Oh!” Kathy moaned.
“End of file,” Alan chirped.
Kathy stood and shivered as if waking from a dream. “Unbelievable. There really are some things we should never see.”
She gripped the back of the chair and waited for a wave of nausea to pass. “Jon Alter wasn’t a rational man. Who could watch that recording and believe otherwise? This was the smoking gun my mother could never find.”
“Several sandwiches short of a picnic, I’d say. Where is he now?”
Kathy gathered her briefcase and walked quickly toward the door. “On the second planet of the Tau Ceti system.”
“What?”
“I need to see a judge,” she said as the door closed behind her.
Kathy had loathed the sight of the Bureau of Exile building from the outside, and she liked it even less on the inside. The polished black granite gave it the air of a mausoleum. Voices echoed from distant offices and footsteps clattered down hallways. Kathy shivered as she shifted her weight from one leg to the other, a judicial warrant clutched in her hand.
Dr Ryan appeared as if out of nowhere. His soft-soled shoes had masked his approach. “Kathy Stanson?”
“Yes,” Kathy replied as she extended her hand. Ryan shook it firmly, a broad smile lifting the ends of his white handlebar mustache.
“I can see your mother’s face in your features—except for your red hair, of course.”
“Those are my father’s genes at work,” Kathy replied. “My mother came here often, didn’t she?”
“Yes, right up until she finally had to go to the nursing home. Your mother was devoted to checking on the status of Mr Alter.”
Kathy handed the warrant to Dr Ryan. He glanced at the paper and nodded. “This would have made your mother very proud. Follow me, please.”
The lift plunged 20 stories below street level. Kathy and Dr Ryan shared an awkward silence as it descended. “Forty years in Exile is a very long time,” Dr Ryan said abruptly. “It changes people in profound ways. In my private moments I allow myself to think that capital punishment would be preferable.”
“I tend to agree,” Kathy replied.
The lift opened to a long hallway. The rows of featureless black doors reminded Kathy even more of a tomb. The only sound was the hum of unseen circuits. Dr Ryan walked to the nearest door and waited for the retinal scan. The door rumbled open and he motioned Kathy inside.
In the middle of the darkened room, perched on a stainless-steel dais, was a clear Lexan tube nearly three meters in length. A cable bundle as thick as a human arm snaked away from one end of the tube. Smaller tubes and cables entered at what seemed like haphazard angles. Dr Ryan took Kathy’s hand and gently coaxed her forward. “This,” he said quietly, “is Jon Alter.”
Kathy gaped at the sight of the figure in the tube, but said nothing. For years she had seen holos of Exile prisoners in their chambers, but the reality was still shocking. Jon Alter—a 58-year-old Jon Alter—lay wrapped in a white mesh suit. A thick brown liquid oozed through a tube that disappeared into his abdomen. His head was encased in a bulky helmet that left only a portion of his face still visible. Although his eyes were closed, his lips twitched spasmodically.
“For 40 years he has lived alone on Ceti Prime,” Kathy whispered. “Forty years.”
“Astonishing, isn’t it? Dr Ryan said. “We reserve the mercy of re-integration for the criminally insane, but if you kill someone with rational thoughts in your head, mere imprisonment isn’t good enough. Our laws have placed such people beyond mercy. A couple of hundred years ago the French sent their worst prisoners to Devil’s Island. We send our worst to virtual hells of our own creation like the Kupier Belt outposts…or Ceti Prime.”
Kathy stared at the helmet. It was covered with wires and connecting jacks. “Is he dreaming all this?”
“I suppose you could say that, but his induced reality is every bit as real as ours. His Ceti Prime experience was modeled from the data sent back by the Far Reach probe 50 years ago. Everything, right down to the flora and fauna, is exactly as Far Reach saw it when the probe crawled across the real Ceti Prime.”
“How…how does he experience it?”
“That headpiece,” Dr Ryan gestured, “is a transcranial magnetic stimulator, a TMS. It’s late 20th century technology refined tremendously for our use.” There was a note of pride in his voice.
“What is he holding in his hand?”
“The remains of a Rosary your mother brought during one of her visits. The string broke long ago and the beads have all slipped through, but he still has a death grip on the crucifix. The physiological stabilants maintain excellent skeletal integrity and muscle tone.”
“Does he ever speak?”
“Like our other Exiles, he moans and cries out from time to time, but that’s all. Your mother used to talk to him. She would spend hours sitting beside his chamber. She believed to her dying day that Mr Alter was the victim of a grave miscarriage of justice.”
Kathy swallowed against the sudden pressure in her throat. “When can we awaken him?”
Dr Ryan blanched and briefly glanced away. “That’s a serious problem, Kathy. Prisoners who’ve been in Exile as long as Alter suffer significant memory loss—especially as it concerns the trauma of the Exile immersion itself. When we stop the simulation, the reality they’ve come to accept vanishes in an instant. The effect of the transition on the psyche is incredible. The result is madness, and often death.”
Dr Ryan pointed to a cardiac monitor. “To make matters worse, Alter has developed severe coronary artery disease. I’m not sure he could survive the stress of re-animation.”
Kathy stepped closer to the chamber and gazed at Jon Alter’s heavily lined face. As she watched, the corners of his mouth turned down in an obvious grimace.
“Does he really suffer?” she asked.
“He must suffer occasional bouts of painful angina. He has also developed a nasty rash on his chest and forearms. I can’t say what he experiences emotionally.”
“And if we bring him back, he will die?”
“Yes, Kathy, I believe he will. It is your release warrant, though.”
Kathy ran fingers along the length of Jon Alter’s feeding tube. The machinery suddenly sounded far away. “Let’s do it,” she heard herself say.
“Maintenance,” Ryan called out.
“Yes doctor?” the disembodied voice replied.
“Suspend Ceti Prime simulation. My authorization. Doctor Harold Ryan.”
“Understood. Suspending now.”
Dr Ryan reached into the chamber and carefully removed the headpiece. Jon Alter’s bald skull fell to the mattress. His eyelids fluttered, then snapped open. “Hail Mary full of grace!” he screamed. His hands waved in the air.
Kathy quickly grabbed his wrists. “It’s all right, Jon. Relax.” He pulled his hands away and covered his eyes. He breath came in explosive gasps.
“You came back for me!”
Kathy glanced at Dr Ryan, who merely shook his head.
“Yes . . . yes, I came back for you,” she said softly.
Alter peeked between trembling fingers. “You are even more beautiful than I remember.”
“Warning,” the computer announced. “Tachycardia.”
“Have you come to take me to home to heaven with the angels?”
“Jon . . . I . . .”
“Systolic pressure below normal. Falling.”
“Yes,” Kathy blurted. “Let’s go home.”
“Warning. Cardiac arrhythmia. Counting down to shock.”
“Cancel!” Dr Ryan shouted. “My authorization.”
Jon’s hands fell away and he smiled through closing eyes. “Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners now…” The prayer ended with a long, ragged sigh.
Rafe met Kathy in the hallway as she was leaving for the night. “Heading home so soon?” he smirked. “It’s only eight o’clock.”
Kathy shook her head. “I’m not in the mood for you right now.”
Rafe staggered and clutched his chest in mock surprise. “I’m wounded! I think you’ve bitten through my aorta!”
Kathy laughed in spite of herself. “If I chewed into your chest cavity, you’d know it.”
“So true, mein frauline. Can I placate you with a quiet little Italian restaurant I’ve just discovered?”
“I shouldn’t,” Kathy said as she buttoned her coat. She hesitated at the last button and smiled. “On the other hand, I feel like I could dive head first into a plate of shrimp scampi.”
“Why not? Want to go back to my place afterward and watch history in the making? The Shackleton leaves orbit for Tau Ceti at 10 PM. Four hundred sleeping souls heading off into the Big Black for 24 years. This is high drama.”
“How about if we go back to your place and watch something else? Anything else.”
Rafe nodded as his smile vanished. “I understand. Still thinking about Jon Alter?”
“Yeah. I sure hope those colonists find Ceti Prime to be a better place than he did. But then again, we all have our own private hells, don’t we?”
Rafe took Kathy by the arm and began walking. “Yes, but some of us are eventually led to redemption, one way or the other.”
END
Hope Eternal
The infant had died in the loving embrace of its mother and father. After more than 60 years of desiccation and weathering, that much was still clear. The arid atmosphere had mummified all three bodies to form a grotesque sculpture in what must have been their sleeping room. As with all the other remains, there was no sign of suffering or violence.
Erin Kim traced a gloved hand along the infant’s withered face, brushing away the sand as she went. Rows of needle-sharp teeth gleamed white through its brown, pebbled lips. Bony nodules were visible along its forehead, precursors of the intricate horns worn by its parents.
She rose slowly to her feet and wiped the sweat from her face. One billion dead. An entire race extinguished in a single act of self-destruction. Even after a month on Pi Mensae Prime, Erin still couldn’t grasp the enormity of it.
Jason appeared in the doorway with two water bottles tucked into the waistband of his khaki shorts. He tossed one bottle to Erin and proceeded to open the other.
“I assume you heard the sonic boom?”
“Yep,” Erin said as she flicked off the cap. “Sounds like the Dalen have arrived at last.” She raised the bottle over her head and allowed the cool liquid to drizzle into her hair.
“You should follow my example,” Jason said as he gestured toward his bald scalp. “This is a lot more comfortable on a hot planet than your black mop.”
Erin shrugged. “As long as we’re swapping advice, you need more sunscreen. Your cheeks look like they’ve been slapped fifty times apiece, which is probably not a bad idea. And with that pale flesh under your goggles, you look like a raccoon.”
Jason smiled. “Touché.”
“How many Dalen came down? I heard they were sending an entire team.”
“No. Just one Dalen. Their chief of archeology.”
“That’s odd,” Erin muttered as she switched on her scanner. She held the scanner at arms length and waited as it probed the long-dead family, scanning their internal tissues and plotting the exact positions of the corpses. A chime signaled when the scan was complete.
“Have you ever met a Dalen?” Jason asked.
“Yes, once,” Erin replied as she studied the scanner display. There were no surprises. Each body carried remnants of a synthetic neurotoxin, the same one detected in all the other corpses on the planet. Their global distribution was efficient to the end.
“Dalens are an acquired taste,” Jason said as he recapped his bottle. “I met my first when I was a graduate student at Olympus Mons University. He or she, I was never really sure, reviewed my exobiology thesis. I got along with ‘it’ just fine…I think.”
Erin slipped the scanner into her pants pocket and took a long draw from the water bottle. “That’s the problem,” she said. “You never really know what Dalens think of you. They’re ciphers. They might despise humans for all we know.”
“If that was true, they would never have made contact and never given us Jump technology. We’d still be puttering around the inner Solar System and wondering if we were alone in the Universe.”
“That doesn’t mean I have to cuddle up to them.”
“No, but please don’t give this particular Dalen a hard time.”
Erin shook her head. “Don’t worry Jason. I’ll give him the grand tour. You can upload our files and he can go his merry way. The sooner the better.”
“I guess that’s the best I can hope for,” Jason replied with a crooked smile. His watch chimed loudly. “It’s show time.”
The sleek Dalen shuttle hovered just above the ancient village center. Clouds of pinkish sand billowed as the thrusters screamed, softened, then stopped. The craft settled with a dull thud. Erin watched as the “chief of archeology” emerged from an oversized airlock.
The Dalen’s six-legged gait was remarkably graceful, especially considering its massive size. Erin couldn’t help but stare at the bands of color that rippled across its black exoskeleton. Swaths of iridescent green pulsed in its thorax, just above a metallic multipocketed belt. In one of the pockets, she could see the outlines of a scanner not unlike her own. Dangling nearby was an electronic translator.
Four multi-jointed appendages unfolded from beneath the Dalen’s head as it approached. Each of these “arms” ended in six slender fingers.
Jason fumbled inside his shirt and switched on his translator pendant. Erin did the same.
The Dalen’s mouthparts began to twitch. At first there was only the sound of staccato clicks. Within seconds, the translator massaged them into a smoothly modulated approximation of a human voice. The enunciation was perfect, but sound was flat and emotionless. “We are pleased to be in your presence. We are Kila, of the progeny of Gorn.”
“I am Erin Kim, archeologist.”
“I am Jason Stockbridge, archeology team leader.”
“May we establish our familiarity?”
This was the part of the Dalen greeting that Erin dreaded the most. “Yes,” she replied with a weak smile.
“Certainly,” Jason answered.
Kila swiveled to face Erin, bowing forward with its compound eyes mere inches from her face. Feathery antennae first rested on the top of her head, then brushed across her neck, chest, abdomen and legs. Erin shuddered in spite of herself.
“Do we disturb you?” Kila asked.
“Yes, you do.”
Kila seemed to process Erin’s answer slowly. “Our sincere apologies,” it said at last.
The Dalen pivoted its upper body to Jason and performed the same ritual. “We would like to be briefed on your work,” Kila announced when it finished.
Jason stepped forward and smiled. “It would be my pleasure.”
“No doubt you are the most experienced human at this site, but we would prefer to communicate with Erin Kim, if that is not a problem.”
Erin shook her head. “I am really not--.”
“I’m sure she would be thrilled,” Jason interrupted. “Erin is quite knowledgeable. She was with the first team that arrived planetside.”
Erin forced a smile. “Jason flatters me. Perhaps the best person for you to speak with is Alex Natanov. He is with the team that’s exploring the large coastal city in the tropical zone. There is little here but desert and corpses.”
“Perhaps,” Kila replied, “But is this not the location of the transmitter they used to broadcast their message?”
“Yes, and we’ve explored it thoroughly. There isn’t much that would interest you.”
“That is a conclusion we would like to reach independently, your research notwithstanding.”
Erin flushed. She glanced at Jason and saw him clasp his hands as if in prayer. He silently mouthed the word “please.”
Erin flipped down her goggles and turned abruptly. “Follow me,” she said.
They walked through the dusty streets in silence. The Dalen seemed to skip effortlessly over the sand drifts. At times it would skitter ahead, scan something of interest, then wait for Erin to catch up.
They emerged from the village gate just in time to see the shimmering orange disc of Pi Mensae sinking into what appeared to be an enormous crater. The rim towered a hundred meters above them with walls of upthrust rock that curved to the south and disappeared out of sight. “They certainly fashioned a most impressive parabolic reflector,” Kila said suddenly. “The antenna is visible from orbit, but on the ground its true size is apparent.”
Erin nodded and kept her eyes fixed on the pathway.
By the time they reached the squat building at the base of the antenna wall, Erin was drenched in sweat. She stood by the doorway and drained her water bottle in one continuous swallow. “You can probably just fit through this doorway,” she said. “We think they used it to bring in the equipment.”
Erin stepped into the gloom and switched on the portable lights. The Dalen followed, sweeping the room carefully with its antennae. Erin sat on a nearby power module and watched. Minutes passed as the Dalen used its antennae to probe the controls and displays.
“What is your sense of this place?” Kila finally asked.
Erin took a shallow breath. “Nothing more than the obvious. It’s the transmitter control. Their broadcast was encoded and sent from here.”
“Indeed. We presume you have analyzed the equipment.”
“Yes. The technology is on par with 21st century Earth. We know that beneath this building they installed a high-power microwave amplifier. It’s a huge traveling-wave-tube design operating in the gigawatt range, complete with an elaborate liquid cooling system. One of our technicians determined that the feedpoint of the antenna is designed for precise resonance on 1420.40575 MHz.”
“I see. That is to be expected,” Kila replied while continuing to probe. “Radiation from the precession of interstellar hydrogen is clearly heard in microwave receivers at that frequency. If the intent is to broadcast a signal most likely to attract notice at interstellar distances, that frequency would be an optimum choice.”
Suddenly the Dalen turned to face Erin. “But why do you think these creatures expended so much energy on such a project?”
Erin jumped to her feet. Kila cocked its bulbous head as if in bemusement. “I’m not entirely sure,” she said quickly. “LunaCom Labs has been trying to decipher the Mensae language since they began receiving the broadcast six months ago. I’ve made some progress here, but it raises more questions than answers.”
“Indeed,” Kila said as it moved closer. Erin stepped backward. “The matter of their language intrigues us. Tell us more.”
Erin sidestepped and pointed to a nearby switch panel. “Well, their transmission is mostly composed of a long stream of digital data. LunaCom says it probably missed a portion of the first stream, but now the information is repeating. They think the transmission contains the Mensae equivalent of an encyclopedia—the sum of all their knowledge. LunaCom offered to share a copy of the data with Dalen, but I guess you declined.”
“Yes. We have followed the LunaCom progress reports nonetheless.”
“Of course,” Erin replied with a brittle laugh. “Look, I’m just wasting your time with all—“
“No. Please resume. It is helpful to hear the progress from your perspective.”
Erin frowned and continued. “The digital information is interleaved with a number of analog images. There are pictures of Mensae of various ages and sexes. There are also pictographic symbols. The two symbols that keep repeating are two vertical lines intersected by a broad curving line near the top, and another that looks like two stylized Xs arranged vertically.”
“Yes, this is known to us also. We sense that you have come to an interesting interpretation, however. Continue.”
Erin pointed to a row of switches. “Well, I’ve seen variations of these symbols everywhere on the planet. Look at these switches. Can you see them?”
“Yes, we can see them.”
“Two vertical lines intersected by a line that curves, although not quite as sharply.”
“Are you suggesting a parallel meaning?”
“Well, yes” Erin said as she drew another hurried breath. “We’ve determined that these switches control the cooling pumps. If a switch is turned in the direction of the symbol, power to one of the pumps would be interrupted. The pump would stop functioning. I believe the symbol means ‘OFF’.”
“Off?”
“Yes. Or something like it. Off. Cease functioning. Stop.”
“That is a logical conclusion. And?”
Erin inched around the Dalen toward open doorway. She pointed to a solitary platform in the center of room. On the platform there was a gleaming metallic column topped with small panel and a switch similar to the others.
“That switch is marked with what seems to be a reverse configuration of the same symbol. See how the intersecting line appears along the bottom rather than the top?”
“Do you mean ‘ON’?”
“I think so, but I’m not certain.”
“We understand. Have you operated this switch?”
“Yes. Nothing happened. It’s connected to an independent power supply, along with what seems to be a low-frequency transmitter. We think power supply was damaged several years ago by a lightning strike.”
Kila stepped forward again. “Such a strange device. Can you suggest a purpose?”
“No, but we think that whatever this is, it was intentionally left functional. All the other power generation, everywhere on the planet, was shut down.”
“Fascinating. Perhaps we can help you re—“
Erin shook her head. “Kila, Pi Mensae is about to set and I didn’t bring a portalight. I think should return to the village.”
Kila regarded her for what seemed like several minutes. “Of course,” it said at last.
Erin bolted through the doorway and began walking without looking back. She could hear the Dalen following close behind. Its long shadow flickered across the dunes in the fading light. Erin quickened her pace and said nothing.
Erin sat atop the dune with her bare feet buried in warm sand. In the distance the great antenna was a black specter blotting out the twilight stars along the horizon. She closed her eyes and savored a cool breeze that gently ruffled her hair. The aroma spoke of profound dryness…and death.
Her meditation was interrupted by the sounds of Jason’s boots crunching their way up the slope. Jason reached the crest and bent over with his hands on his knees. “I need to get in better shape,” he gasped. “I’m getting too old for this.”
“That’s what you get for spending most of your life on Mars,” Erin replied.
“Are you waiting for Sol to rise?” he asked.
“Yeah. It’s hard to pick out among the other stars. I’m designing my own Mensae constellations based on my favorite foods. That’ll help.”
Jason chuckled as he sat beside her. “Speaking of food, Kila is taking its evening nourishment. That’s something I don’t care to watch.”
“I don’t blame you. Did Kila tell you that we spent some time poking around the transmitter building?”
“Uh-huh. I really appreciate it, Erin. I know it wasn’t easy.”
Erin shook her head. “I don’t dislike Kila, really. The Dalens seem harmless enough, but I can’t get past their . . . nonhumanness. When I look at Kila, all I see is an 8-foot-tall praying mantis. At least with the Mensae I can feel a kind of kinship.”
“Because they were humanoid?”
“Not just that. From everything I’ve seen, the Mensae were very much like us. The seemed to have human-like relationships. It’s reflected in their art.”
“But how do you explain why they would suddenly decide to exterminate themselves? And why did they feel the need to blast their suicide announcement throughout the galaxy? By any reasonable human standard, it’s madness.”
Erin rested her chin on her hands. “I don’t know. I can’t find a logic tree with a branch that leads anywhere sane. You know, my father killed himself when I was 12 years old. He had an inoperable brain tumor. With his strong religious faith, I assumed he would let life take its course and put everything in God’s hands. But one day he decided to step in front of a maglev train outside Worcester. My mother found a note at home that read ‘The substance of things hoped for, the evidence for things unseen. Eternal hope awaits.’ I never understood that, and I never forgave him. One day he was my father, sick as he was. The next day he was a corpse.”
“I’m sorry,” Jason replied.
“Don’t be. My mother carried on and raised me pretty well, I think. Hey, I made it into exoarcheology, didn’t I?”
“And here you sit, 60 light years from Earth. Very few humans can lay claim to that,” Jason said with a grin.
Erin nodded. “I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, but something about this place is getting to me, Jason.”
“Death on a planetary scale can be—“
“No, not the death. The senselessness of it.”
“Not every riddle has a solution. Just like your father. Just like the Dalen.”
Erin began to speak, but Jason was already getting to his feet.
“Look,” he began, “I’m going grab something to eat and then I’ll be watching a holo in the lab shelter. It’s a comedy, probably just what you need.”
“Maybe I’ll join you.”
“Don’t be long,” Jason called out as he made his descent.
Erin searched the western horizon and finally found a pinpoint of light creeping above the antenna feedpoint. Erin brought her heels together three times beneath the sand, “There’s no place like home,” she whispered.
A shadow fell over her, obscuring the perimeter lights. Erin laughed. “Jason, I think you—“
“May we—,” a toneless voice began.
“Jesus!” Erin cried. She scrambled to her feet and instantly slipped on the loose sand. A six-fingered hand shot out of the darkness and firmly gripped her forearm, effortlessly pulling her upright.
“Our apologies,” Kila said as it released her. “We did not intend to frighten you.”
Erin shook the sand from her shirt and forced a laugh. “Humans frighten easily. It’s not a problem. I was just leaving.”
“Why do you come here?” Kila asked.
“To be by myself. To think.”
“Dalen never think by ourselves. Each Dalen contains the knowledge of all Dalen. In this sense, we are never by ourselves.”
“I guess that’s the advantage of a hive mentality, ” Erin said as she reached for her boots.
“You dislike us.” The bluntness of the statement caught Erin by surprise. She froze, clutching her boots at her side.
“Kila, there are things about Dalen I do not understand. That lack of understanding causes distrust. This is not the same as dislike.”
“If there is something you do not understand, why do you not ask?”
Erin opened her mouth, but said nothing.
“Yes?”
“Ah…okay. How about starting with the question of why you are here,” Erin said.
The Dalen seemed to mimic a human shrug. “To gain insight from your research. To understand what happened in this place.”
Erin frowned. “Everything I’ve transcribed has already been uploaded to your ship.”
“But we wish to understand more. There is something unique about the human personality in general and your personality in particular. It is entangled with this planet in a way we do not comprehend.”
“Really? Well, you know, Kila, there are things about this investigation that I don’t quite comprehend. For example, why didn’t the Dalen arrive here before us? Why are we the advance troops in this expedition? The Dalen homeworld is much closer than Earth. You should have received the Mensae signal well before we did.”
Kila’s mouthparts worked furiously. “Untranslatable,” the translator intoned.
“What?” Erin asked.
“The beam of electromagnetic energy projected from this antenna was quite narrow. Your lunar receiving station was fortunate to discover it. Dalen was not as fortunate.”
“But our Jump Probe at Sigma Draconis just reported the end of the transmission. That means the beam has been sweeping through the galaxy for at least 18 Earth years. It’s hard to imagine how superior Dalen technology could have missed it.”
Kila rose to its full height and folded its arms beneath its head. “We did not detect the signal.”
“Okay,” Erin replied as she began making her way down the slope. “I guess I am all out of questions for now.”
“Then you have a better understanding?” Kila asked.
“No, but that’s okay, too.”
Erin emerged from the mess tent, still chewing the stale remains of a cinnamon bagel. Pi Mensae was already well above the mountains and she walked directly into a shaft of its brilliant orange-yellow light as she crossed the square. Cursing softly, she lowered her goggles.
Jason came around the other side of the mess tent at a trot, carrying a tripod and a holo imager across his shoulders. “Howdy, ma’am! Ain’t it a beautiful morning?”
“Please shut up. I’m begging you.”
“Bad night?” Jason asked as he paused beside her.
“Uh-huh. Hardly slept. Where’s the bug?”
Jason sighed. “The Dalen Chief of Archeology is at the transmitter. He’s been there since dawn.”
“Sorry, Jason. I’ll go look in on him.”
Jason did a mock bow. “And a good day to you, Ms Kim.”
Erin shook her head and made an obscene gesture.
She was 10 meters from the transmitter building when she saw a dazzling burst of blue-white light accompanied by a loud pop. Erin rushed to the doorway, muttering under her breath. The air was heavy with the stench of ozone.
She cautiously peered into the room and found Kila astride the center platform, wildly juggling a tangle of wiring. “Untranslatable! Untranslatable!” Erin’s pendant barked.
“Are you okay?” she called.
“We are nominal. A minor setback, but we have identified the error.”
Erin edged closer. “Can I help?”
The Dalen stopped with its arms in mid-air.
“You may not. Your help is not required.” Even through the translator it sounded sharp.
Erin watched as the Dalen resumed its mad dance. One by one the wires seemed to untangle and fall away. Kila produced a silver tube from its belt and gently probed a dangling circuit. A ribbon of smoke curled to the ceiling.
“There,” Kila announced. “The correct connection has been made. You have arrived at an opportune time, Erin Kim.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. We have repaired the low-frequency transmitter power supply by substituting one of Dalen design. We believe the Mensae unit will function now. We believe that it generates a powerful local field of modulated energy within a frequency range of 2 to 10 hertz.”
“That’s remarkable,” Erin said as she approached the platform. “Have you discovered what it does?”
“Something . . . biological. The frequency range is one we have encountered before in biological systems.”
Erin paused with her hand on the miniature switch panel. “That sounds promising—and dangerous.”
“We were hoping that you would test it.”
“What?” Erin cried out with a laugh. “I don’t think so, Kila. This is clearly your project.” She stepped back, but the Dalen nudged her forward.
“Hey!”
“We cannot.”
“We cannot what? Risk our lives?” Erin turned and shoved Kila’s arms away.
“It is important for our knowledge, Erin Kim. It is absolutely critical.”
Erin narrowed her eyes and nodded. “If it is so important, then you test it.”
Kila lowered its head. Its arms hung motionless. “We…cannot. Great danger, we believe, to us. However, we must know the answer.”
“The answer to what?”
“The answer to…untranslatable…the answer to why. We believe our neural chemistry is too dissimilar for this device to connect with our consciousness. However, human neural networks should be…receptive.”
Erin felt her skin prickling. “You mean this is a some kind of neural transmitter?”
“Yes. When language cannot be quickly bridged, direct induction into the neural pathways would be effective. The Mensae must have understood this.”
Kila gestured to a dark vertical patch immediately to the right of the switch. “We believe that is a tuning control. The frequency of the transmitter can probably be changed to accommodate various brain patterns. The surface is sensitive to touch. ”
Erin gently traced the patch with her index finger. It felt smooth and cold. “So they expected visitors,” she whispered. “Non-Mensae visitors.”
At that moment a gust of wind stirred the sand at her feet. Erin licked her lips and wished she had remembered to bring her water bottle.
“You know, the sensible thing for me to do is to return to base and report everything to the Dalen/Terran Council. They’ll send another team to test this device, step by logical step. I’ll receive my accolades back on Earth and everyone will be happy.”