Authors: Brett James
Peter
feinted to his right, then dropped to the floor, sweeping his legs
under another guard, who fell backward and cracked his head on the
floor. Another down, but more were coming.
Too many.
Peter
scooped up the gun and fired at the window. To his surprise, it spit
out a bullet. This was a weapon to use against men, not Riel. The
glass shattered and freezing-cold air blasted into the hall.
More
alarms now, clanging ones. The men at the machine fled at the sight
of Peter, escaping through a small door in the back of the room. It
was the only exit, so Peter chased after them. He tried not to look
at the half-printed man on the table, but his eyes were drawn to
him. The surface of the ice was uneven, garbling the face.
Is it
me?
he wondered.
Peter
slammed against a wall and bounced back. But it wasn’t a wall, it
was a man. Enormous hands clamped on to his shoulders and hauled him
into the air.
“Easy,
buddy,” the man said, his voice deep and rich, familiar.
“Saul,”
Peter sputtered, unable to believe his eyes.
It
was him. His beard was gone and his hair was longer, but under that
black uniform was the same old Saul.
“Do
I know you?” Saul asked.
“Don’t
be an idiot,” came a voice from behind. Peter knew this voice
too—Linda’s supervisor. “Just hold him still,” the
supervisor continued. “And turn him around.”
Saul
spun him easily, facing Peter to a man no taller than his waist. The
man was bald, his sagging clown’s face distorted by a snarl. He
wore a white lab coat over a dust-colored suit and held a syringe of
green-black liquid in his fat, carrot-shaped fingers. He aimed the
needle at Peter’s neck, but couldn’t reach.
“Down
here,” he said impatiently, and Saul forced Peter to his knees.
Linda
appeared at the broken window. She gasped, raising a hand to her
mouth.
My Linda?
Peter couldn’t tell. The needle went in
and cold liquid coursed through his blood.
“I
knew you were going to be trouble,” the supervisor said as
everything faded to black.
“Just
answer the question,” Colonel Chiang San barked. “Have you
downgraded his memory to before he met the General?”
“No,”
came the impatient reply. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you.
We don’t even have a version that
includes
him meeting the
General. That memory is coming from somewhere else.”
Peter
opened his eyes, blinking against the white light. He was back in
his room, strapped to the bed, still wearing his clothes. The
colonel stood over him, talking to Linda’s supervisor. And someone
else was there too, projected on the overhead monitor: a gray-haired
man in a tweed suit. He wore wire-frame glasses and had buckteeth
that could have been yellow plastic. Linda stood in the corner,
kneading one hand inside the other.
“How
is that possible?” the colonel asked the man on-screen. “It’s
not even the same body.”
Ten
slow seconds passed before the man heard the question; the delay
meant he was far away.
“That’s
exactly what we’re asking ourselves,” he said. “I’ve
conferred with the others, and we’re leaning toward Randolph’s
Theory of Neural Transmission.”
“Care
to translate that?” the colonel said.
“You’ve
heard of Dr. Jennifer Randolph, no? She proposed that each time the
neurons in our brain fire, we broadcast a tiny bit of energy. A
nano-size radio tower, if you will. It’s a controversial theory,
mind you—never been proven. Randolph claimed that the evidence lay
in telepathy and precognition, which, between you and me, is a
pretty shaky foundation.”
The
colonel shifted his hands to his hips. The last thing he wanted was
a science lesson, but he knew that with the communication delay,
interrupting would only drag it out.
“Randolph
believed that while everyone transmits, only a scarce few can
receive. And even then it helps if both parties have genes in
common—siblings, a parent and child, whatnot. They’re tuned to
the right channel, you see. Also, certain thoughts and feelings will
broadcast louder than others—traumatic ones, especially. There’s
a documented case of a mother knowing the instant her daughter was
killed in an accident half a planet away.
“More
important, Randolph felt these transmissions were residual, that the
neural waves could leave a stain. Sometimes it’s just a single
emotion, a feeling—bad or good—about a place. But they can also
be quite specific, like your dead uncle’s ghost making a sandwich
in the kitchen night after night. Or a murder victim quote-unquote
haunting her place of death. This aspect of the theory is
irrelevant, but interesting, no?”
The
colonel sighed. He hauled his mouth up to a smile and motioned for
the man to continue.
“Precognition—seeing
the future—is nothing more than neural waves leaking backward
through time.” The man was quite excited now. “A traumatic event
happens to you tomorrow, and you receive your own broadcast today,
causing you to sense that something bad is going to happen—because,
in fact, it already has. You see? It’s even possible to see your
own death before it happens.
“Granted,
no hard documentation on that particular scenario. By the time you
prove that it wasn’t just paranoia, it’s a little hard to record
your findings, right?”
“I
don’t see how any of this—” the colonel started, but before
his words reached the man, he was talking again.
“What
we’ve got here is the exact opposite: a man broadcasting his
entire life and his future self receiving it
after
his death.
Who could have imagined? This is something completely new. Exciting,
really.”
The
man appeared to have finally run dry. Chiang San waited to be sure,
then said, “We’ve never seen this happen before. Not in this or
any other model.”
“Oh,
I shouldn’t think so. Transmission-reception is rare enough in the
Livable Territories, and we’ve got a much larger gene pool than
you do.”
“But
we have multiple copies of this very model here,” the colonel
insisted, his irritation showing. “Why don’t all of the Garveys
have this ability?”
“Near-exact
copies,” the man said. “We tweak each one a little differently.
Apply a bit of chaos theory, if you will. Give Darwin a kick in the
ass.
“You
might remember that we first tried fighting with robots. Very
effective, briefly. See, robots will always react the same way to
the same situation, which makes them completely predictable. Once
the Riel saw the pattern, they annihilated our defenses. Can’t
have our biologicals falling into the same trap, so we mix the
formula up a bit.
“What’s
that?” the man asked, turning to someone offscreen. He listened
for a moment, nodded, then turned back to the colonel.
“All
of that is classified, by the way. Best to forget I even said it.
Besides, we’re only talking about a minor tweak here and there.
You could spend a week with your original and never notice the
difference.”
“Well,
this one is very different,” the colonel said, red-faced. “Would
you care to explain that?”
“Not
really.” The man frowned. “It’s fairly complicated. Better if
you just trust me.”
The
colonel seemed ready to burst with rage, but he swallowed it down.
“Hell,”
he said finally, “if I understood even half of what you just said,
they’d have to give me one of those fancy white coats. Just tell
me what you need.”
“This
is a discovery of epic proportions,” the man said.
“Scientifically, it’s a chance to prove the Theory of Neural
Transmission. But there are also immediate applications, both
practical and military. Here’s a man who can capture his own
memories: details, sensory input, and even feelings. If we could
harness this power, put it in other reproductions, it would be huge.
“I
need you to send us everything you can—records, bio samples,
memory scans. Get it all on the very next cargoship out. Freeze up
that one on the bed, too, and send it along.”
“Will
do.”
“Thank
you very much, colonel,” the man said. “I can’t tell you how
much we appreciate your cooperation.”
— — —
The
colonel closed the connection. He nodded at the supervisor, who
turned to Linda.
“Roll
this one back to the technicians,” the supervisor said, motioning
to Peter. “Get it frozen—they’ll have a cryo chamber back
there somewhere—and have them pull samples from its tanks. I’ll
be by later with the rest.”
“Yes,
sir,” Linda said. Her voice was weak, weary. The supervisor laid
an unwanted hand on her shoulder, giving her a mannequin smile.
“Once
you’ve done that,” he said, “wipe your machinery and prepare
for a new patient. I think it’s best that we pull you off the
Garvey line entirely. It’s caused you far too much stress.”
“Yes,
sir,” Linda repeated.
The
colonel had been leaning over Peter, inspecting him, but now wheeled
around. “What’s that?” he demanded.
“I
was just telling her to prep for a new model,” the supervisor
replied. “Seeing as how we’re terminating this one.”
“We’re
doing nothing of sort,” the colonel barked. He marched over to the
supervisor and glared down at him. “What gave you that idea?”
“Well,
the minister said—”
“The
science minister said that he wants a sample. So send him this one
and then make me another.”
“But
it’s an unstable design,” protested the supervisor. “And I
have thousands of others waiting to go.”
“I
don’t need more idiot grunts straight out of Basic. This is an
experienced man, a master sergeant with fifty successful missions
under his belt. I won’t have you throw him away.”
“But—”
“Don’t
misinterpret this as a conversation, supervisor, because the other
thing I don’t need is technicians who don’t know how to take
orders.”
“Yes,
sir,” the man said, backing away. The colonel watched him retreat
through the back door and then, with a nod to Linda, left by the
front.
Linda
went to Peter’s bed and quietly prepped a needle. Her eyes were
glassy, but she forced a smile.
“See
you soon,” she said, driving the needle in.
Peter
watched her fade to black, warmed to think that she would be there
when he woke up.
Peter’s
oxygen supply was low, ten minutes at the most. It was time to move.
He could only hope that the Riel had left.
He
released the cabinet, his cover for the past sixteen hours, and let
it float away. To his relief, the room was empty.
The
gravity was out, as was the power, so he crept forward using the
magnets in his boots. The room was dark, and he didn’t dare to use
his sensors; after living on this ship for three months, he could
navigate by memory.
The
door to the main cabin was jammed, its electronic locks as dead as
the rest of the ship. Peter gave it a kick, breaking its hinges, and
continued forward. He headed for the reserve oxygen tanks; his life
depended on their being intact.
Stars
shone through a gap in the roof. The hull had been blown outward,
leaving a hole like a jagged crown. Outside, space was littered with
hunks of metal and glass fused into strange sculptures. A man
twirled slowly past, still clutching his stomach against the pain of
whatever had killed him. Despite the death and destruction, the view
was peaceful.
There
was no sign of the Riel spacecraft. Either Peter had escaped their
sensors or they simply hadn’t bothered to kill him. And why would
they? He was but one man on a ruined ship, too far from home for any
hope of rescue. As far as he knew, he was the only living human in
this entire universe.
— — —
“This
is an extraordinary assignment,” Colonel Chiang San said to the
ninety-six marines packed into the briefing room and to the four
naval officers tuned in by video from their ship’s bridge. “We’re
not just pushing the battle further into the Drift,” he continued,
“but shooting out the other side.”
The
colonel traced a pointer over a projected map behind him. “Over
the past several months, we’ve beaten the Riel back to the very
edge of the Drift, allowing us to send probes though the far
boundary and to catch our first glimpse of their universe.
Unsurprisingly, the first thing we found was this.” Three orange
dots appeared just past the Drift boundary: Riel bases. “The
welcoming committee,” Chiang San said with a smile.
“These
bases are massive—twenty times larger than anything we’ve run
into before. A direct attack would be useless. But what, we asked
ourselves, are they protecting? It has to be something pretty
important, so we started poking around. And yesterday we found
ourselves a pretty good clue.”
A
grapefruit-size sphere appeared behind the bases.
“A
probe at this location logged a flood of radio signals, spanning the
entire bandwidth. In our experience, the Riel military—like our
own—is frugal with its communications. No easier way to make
yourself a target than with a bunch of radio transmissions. But
civilians are different. The one place in our own universe where
you’ll find this level of radio usage is in the Livable
Territories. And that, my friends,” the colonel said, pointing at
the sphere, “makes it a sure bet that there’s a Riel homeworld
around here somewhere.”
A
murmur spread among the men, a chain reaction starting from the
back. The Colonel cleared his throat, silencing the room.
“It’s
just a hunch, so don’t get your hopes up,” he continued. “We
don’t know anything past what I just told you. There is no way to
communicate through the Drift boundary, so the probe came back the
moment it made this discovery—better to return with a little intel
than to risk not returning at all. However, based on what we
do
know, the source is somewhere in
this area.”