Project Starfighter (39 page)

Sid and Phoebe only shrugged, and
Chris swore. What a waste of time. He had built himself up for
nothing. Their one major chance. It was like opening a giant gift
box, only to find it stuffed to bursting with packing peanuts, and a
baked potato at the bottom of it. In fact, this was worse, as there
wasn’t even a potato to be had. What an utter, utter waste of time.
He felt like punching something.

“Computer,” he said, knowing the
Dodger
’s systems would still be in control and could service
him from here. “Bring all level one systems on-line; basically,
anything that doesn’t count towards engines, shields,
communications, or defensive or offensive measures. We’ll dig
through this lot later,” he said to Sid. “Right now, I can’t be
bothered.”

Deflated, he started out of the
cockpit area as the light level restored, freezing at the same
instant that Phoebe gasped. Standing in the middle of the craft,
appearing a little baffled, was a man dressed in a white suit. He
started as he turned and saw the three emerging from the cockpit
area, and began to back away.

“Where the hell did he come from?”
Sid asked.

“Who cares?” Chris cried,
breaking into a run. “Get him!” As he charged he saw that the
man’s initial shock was already gone, and that he was now holding
his ground. Most likely because he knew there was nowhere for him to
go. Still, Chris intended to make sure. He dived as he drew close,
intending to knock the man off his feet ...

... and missed.

Chris grunted as he slammed heavily
down onto the floor. He counted himself lucky that he hadn’t broken
anything during the impact. He had instinctively braced himself with
his hands, and could quite easily have fractured his wrists. It
didn’t prevent him from cracking his forehead on the floor,
however. Vision a little blurry, stars in his eyes, he nevertheless
pulled himself up quickly, turning to look at the white-suited man.
Chris stared. How had he missed? Surely he had not actually gone
straight through the man
, had he?

Sid approached next, walking,
instead of running. He swished a hand through the air where the man
was, watching as it passed straight through. He did it again another
couple of times. “A hologram?” he asked.

“No,” Phoebe breathed. “That’s
an avatar; that’s his conscious representation.”

“Yes, well done, Lexx,” the man
said. “You’re clearly just as smart as your sister.”

“Ursula? You know where my sister
is? What have you done with her?” Phoebe cried.

“She’s safe enough,” the man
said, with a flippant dismissal. “For now, anyway.” He then
folded his arms and turned to the man who had attempted to tackle
him. “Let me guess – you’re Chris Bainfield.”

“That’s right,” Chris growled.
“And you are?”

“Erik Overlook, Vice President of
the Wade-Ellen Asset Protection Corporation, Number One of the Upper
Circle, and second only to the CEO.”

“Don’t try to impress me with
your titles,” Chris spat. He couldn’t give a damn about any of
this man’s supposedly grand status. “All we need from you right
now is information.”

Overlook smiled, clearly now a lot
less daunted than he had been at first. “Information? You’ll be
lucky.”

“You’ll talk,” Chris said,
glowering.

“And how, exactly, do you expect
to achieve that? You can’t even touch me.” Overlook ran his hands
over his crease-free suit, and straightened his cuffs.

True. It was just a projection.
“Phoebe?” Chris asked.

“No,” Phoebe said, shaking her
head. “He’s not an AI, or even a machine.”

Overlook smiled smugly. “An ‘A’
for effort, Mr Bainfield, but an ‘F’ for progress. Now, I suggest
you surrender yourselves and give up this futile little crusade of
yours before you end more lives unnecessarily. You must know that we
will catch you, eventually. Don’t think that your psionic friend
can bail you out of every little encounter. The longer you try to
run, the more terrible the punishment will be.”

“You’re hardly in the position
to be making demands,” Chris said.

“I think you’ll find that I am.
As I said, you can’t hurt me. There is no way to get any
information out of me, and soon enough I will be rescued.” He
smiled smugly.

Chris racked his brain for a moment
before he smiled himself. “Well,
we
can’t hurt you. But I
think I know someone who
can
...”

~

“Okay,
okay, I’ll talk! I’ll talk!”

Chris was quite impressed with
Overlook’s resilience. Athena had been working the man over for a
good twenty minutes now. She would ask him a question, and then, when
he refused to supply the answer, give him an electric shock, using a
cattle prod. From where she had acquired the device, Chris wasn’t
sure. Perhaps it was something to do with how she was able to project
that image of her Greek Goddess persona. As Overlook had started to
crack, she had pulled him to the floor and crammed her foot against
his neck, pressing down hard. Though Overlook must have known that
Chris and Athena would not go as far as to actually kill him, his own
survival instinct had told him not to risk it.

“You’re quite a handful,”
Overlook said, getting shakily to his feet and stumbling to one of
the transport’s seats. How he was able to sit in it, but not be
affected by other physical things, Chris wasn’t sure. Maybe it was
some sort of selective projection system. He was, after all, able to
stand on the floor.

Overlook considered Athena for a
time, as he rubbed his neck. “I don’t recognise you as any of the
aides. Who are you, and how did you manage to access the
Corporation’s persona mainframe?”

“My name is Athena,” she told
him. “Although, you might know me better as the sentient Firefly.”

Overlook gaped for a moment.
“Figures,” he said. “You turn your back on the corporation that
created you, and decide to start aiding criminals and terrorists.”

“We’re not terrorists,” Chris
said. “We’re freedom fighters.”

“Tom-ay-to, tom-ah-to,” Overlook
answered.

“Enough time-wasting,” Chris
said. “I want to know a few things: where exactly in the Zetaman
Facility Ursula Lexx is being held, what the level of security is,
and how we can get in and out. I also want to know what happened to
the six hundred-odd crew that used to serve on the
Dodger
. And
finally, what WEAPCO is all about. How can a company that employs
just six thousand people lay claim to such a large portion of the
galaxy?”

“Actually, I need to find out
something first,” Sid interrupted. “We know
who
you are,
but what I want to know is exactly
what
you are. You’re not
human, are you? Not anymore.”

“Smart guy,” Overlook said,
smiling. He got to his feet and started to pace. “A part of me is
still human, but most isn’t. What you see here, as you have found
out, is a projection, an avatar. I can travel instantly to any
persona-supporting computer system owned by the Corporation, whether
that be a starfighter, battleship, transport, or room in an office
block. I can move freely from one part of the galaxy to the other, if
I wish, assuming almost any form or appearance I choose.”

“So, why are you stuck here?”
Phoebe asked.

“The system broke down, stranding
him here,” Athena said. “Both the source and the destination need
to be in full working order, to allow the transfer to take place
successfully. Otherwise, it’s like a bridge going out. You can’t
make the crossing.”

Overlook nodded. “I was awaiting
the arrival of repair drones to fix the problem at my end when you
four showed up and terminated the ship’s core systems.”

“What happens if the bridge
collapses halfway through the transfer?” Phoebe asked.

“It can’t,” Overlook said.
“I’m either there or still here. It’s atomic; the transfer will
either complete fully or not at all.”

“Okay, I’m confused,” Chris
said. “Why don’t you just get them to unplug you from the machine
you’re hooked into, so you can return home? Like an emergency
ejection or something?”

Overlook stopped pacing. “Unplug
me?”

“Yes,” Chris said, glancing to
the other three. “Unplug you from the machine you’re wired into,
and bring you back home.”

Overlook looked incredulous. “You
seem to have misunderstood me, Mr Bainfield. I am not wired into any
such machine. This is me, this is all I am. I have no body, no true
physical form, not anymore. My consciousness is all that remains.”

“You’re ... it’s ...” Chris
was stunned, and found the words too hard to come by. Overlook had
transferred his entire consciousness into WEAPCO’s systems? He had
no physical form left? He could be anywhere, at any time, live
forever, and do almost anything? “You’ve turned yourself into a
god,” Chris said.

Overlook smiled. “Very good, Mr
Bainfield. And there was me thinking that I would have to explain
everything
to you.”

“And you’re not the only one,
either, are you?” Chris asked, his heart starting to thump hard in
his chest. “That’s why WEAPCO employs so few people. You don’t
need
anyone else. You’re all living in some virtual reality
or existence or whatever, where you can do as you please.” He
looked at Athena. “That’s where you got that shock prod from. You
can just ... pull it out of thin air. It’s the same thing with all
of them.” He nodded at Overlook.

Overlook put his hands together and
applauded Chris at that moment, while Sid and Phoebe only stood
quietly where they were.

“Stop patronizing me,” Chris
said in irritation.

Overlook only laughed and continued
clapping, until Athena threatened the man with the rod.

“Did you know this?” Sid asked
Athena.

“No,” Athena said. “I swear.”

“She’s telling the truth,”
Overlook said. “When she was created, we did not supply her with
all the information about the organisation.” He stared at the table
in front of him for a moment. Reached a hand out, waggled his
fingers. He then sat back, and swore lightly under his breath. He
looked as though he had been expecting something to happen.

“Are you really an organisation?”
Chris asked.

“No, not really.” Overlook said.
“The so-called ‘Wade-Ellen Asset Protection Corporation’ is
merely a front. What lies beneath is essentially a grand posthuman
society. In it, we can be anything and everything. We need not answer
to anyone, can live out all of our dreams, and are free from the
tyranny of concepts such as money and economy. And because we are not
dependent on mortal forms, such as bodies, we cannot actually die.
Some of us call it the Eternal Engine.”

“When was this Engine conceived?”
Sid asked.

“Around a hundred years ago, on
Earth,” Overlook said.

Chris frowned. “So, everyone else
on Earth just gets on with their lives as normal? Under the control
of WEAPCO, I mean?”

“Oh no, of course not,” Overlook
said. “We had them all killed decades ago.”

“But ... the other WEAPCO
employees?” Chris started. “We’ve seen them on TV, in
buildings, in cars and hovers.”

“The ‘WEAPCO employees’ are
nothing but avatars, like myself,” Overlook explained. “And to a
lesser extent, that thing over there.” He nodded at Athena. “Each
of them is merely one of our aides. The Lower Circle, as they are
sometimes referred to. They assume forms and identities, and project
themselves in the relevant spaces, to give the illusion of a
larger-than-life workforce. But no, none of them are real, and
haven’t been for many years. This is how we run the galaxy, by
transmitting our consciousnesses and avatars around all systems
connected to the Eternal Engine.”

Chris was stunned, unable to say a
word. He looked at Phoebe and Sid, who were both as taken aback. He
tried to ask more questions but found himself tongue-tied, his
thoughts failing to align.

“You ... but ... who ... what?”
he managed.

Overlook continued of his own
accord, “We, that is to say the higher society, determined that the
lower classes were basically surplus to requirement. And what do you
need workers for anyway, when you can use machines instead? If you
actually did some proper research, you would discover that it has
always been the upper classes that have supported the lower, not the
other way around. The Eternal Engine is ours, as is Sol. We created
WEAPCO to keep the lower classes of other star systems away from us,
and to remind them of their place in society.”

Sid suddenly bristled. “You
created a post-scarcity society and chose not to share it, while also
using it as a means to extend suffering and poverty to the rest of
the galaxy?!”

Overlook folded his arms, nodding.

“You bastard!” Sid cried. He
looked as though he would punch Overlook, if he were able. Overlook
simply shrugged, totally indifferent.

“But ... why?” Phoebe asked.

“Why? What do you mean, ‘Why?’,
you silly little girl?” Overlook exclaimed, his face darkening.
“I’ll tell you why, because we
can
; because it’s our
right.”

“Your
right
?” Chris
asked. “It is your right to have dominion over everyone and
everything in the galaxy? How do you figure that?”

“Simply because others don’t
deserve it. Do you believe that everyone has the right to power, to
money, to eternal life? Not that we have any real use for money; we
only use it to keep everyone else in check. But, no, you don’t
deserve those things. Only a select few do. Not everyone possesses
the same intellect, aptitude, and command of respect. Those that do
take the top places in society, and the rest sit beneath. That’s
how it has been, how it is, and how it always will be.”

“I think there might be quite a
few that would have something to say about that,” Chris said.