by J. Benjamin
“I’m here,” Val said. “What’s going on?”
“A transport arrived from Earth,” Ty said. “Unmarked.”
“From Kauai,” Minister Endo added.
“Kauai?” Val asked. “What the Hell is there? Nothing except . . . the GSF safehouse!” Val said. “Who do you think it is?” Val asked, but Minister Endo refused to answer. Suddenly, a new group approached from the arrivals section of the spaceport.
There were fifteen in total, wearing the uniforms of the now-defunct Global Space Federation. They wheeled large crates into the main area of the spaceport. A figure followed, out of uniform.
Thomas Adler. He approached the crowd. The former Secretary-General looked disheveled. He clearly hadn’t shaved in days. His hair was a ghost white from the gray when Val last saw him. Yet despite the wrinkles of old age, he kept that same dignified, upright posture of a former military leader. If there’s one thing Val knew about Thomas Adler, it was his ability to remain defiant, even in the face of turmoil.
As they entered the terminal, the crowd gave a rousing hero’s welcome.
“Your excellency,” Adler said, bowing to Minister Endo. “Val, Ty. Good to see the two of you again.” They exchanged handshakes.
“I thought you were captured,” Val said. “Or . . .”
“Dead?” Thomas said. “No, but it’s funny how I seem to fool people into thinking I’m dead all the time, only to turn up alive somewhere else.” Val noticed Ty cringe at the very mention of death.
“I got your message,” Minister Endo said firmly, reminding Val that these were two heads of state with years of history. “Is this all of it?”
“It most certainly is,” Thomas replied with a grin. “And I am relinquishing it to your possession, provided my crew gets full diplomatic immunity.”
“Of course,” Minister Endo replied, beaming with excitement. “Besides, you are the only people who know how to operate it.”
“Operate what?” Ty interjected.
“What’s going on? What’s in those crates?” Val demanded. It seemed everyone else at the spaceport had their eyes trained on them with curiosity.
“Glad you asked,” Thomas acknowledged Val. “I was just about to get there.”
“You want to tell them?” Minister Endo said. “They’re going to find out anyways. Might as well announce it publicly here.”
“Citizens of New Tokyo,” Thomas announced loudly to the crowd. “What you see in these crates before you is the Leon Esposito Spacetime Accelerator. We will reassemble it and continue GSF’s unfinished research in conjunction with New Tokyo.” The crowd roared in cheers and hollers. Thomas turned to Val.
“You must have a lot of questions.”
“That’s putting it lightly.”
“We’ll brief you, Ty, and the Minster shortly.”
“By the way,” Ty said. “where is Secretary Jackson?” Thomas’ jaw tightened and his brows furrowed.
“Secretary Jackson was captured by the United States.”
Chapter 7
“Are they drunk? High? Or just out of their damn tentacles?” Adriano shouted at Edie, his dreads flying as he flailed his arms dramatically. They stood together in the Villa del Universo Community Center for what Edie imagined would be their last time. The circular, open-air, wooden hut sat at the community’s edge between the treehouses and the beach of the human realm.
“Do I look like I speak Aquarian?” Edie replied. “They chose me and Alex. It is what it is.”
“You don’t have to do this.”
“Believe me, it’s not like we were given much of a choice,” Edie claimed. “Remind me again what that one villager shouted at me?”
“He said we should have fed you to the god-damn aeroceteas when we had the chance,” Alex recalled. Aeroceteas were the flying, blimp-like alien whales in the neighboring realm. Their concept of lunch meant dissolving live prey into a gas state in its stomach. “But fuck him. Even if we wanted to feed you to the aeroceteas, you’d be dead from suffocation and skin boiling-off the moment you crossed the realms.”
“Thanks for the visual,” Edie said. She looked to the fireplace, which she had hand-built. In addition to laying the bricks, she even molded the bricks with sand and mud. That fireplace was the main gathering spot for the community that she also helped form. “I will miss this place.”
“I don’t know how this place will manage without you and Alex around,” Adriano said. “You’re the pioneers.”
Edie put her hand on Adriano’s shoulder. “You’re here, and that matters,” she said. “Half the people here see me as a banana republic dictator. After what happened with Simon, I think it’s impossible to earn their trust back. But they still respect you, despite their reservations about me and Alex.”
“You think we’ll see each other again?” Adriano wondered as he looked into Edie’s eyes. “You think they’ll eventually take us where they’re taking you?”
“Maybe? It’s really hard to tell where we’ll end up,” Edie said, shrugging.
“It’s funny,” Adriano said. “I can understand why they chose you and Alex and not any of us.”
“We do talk to them the most,” Edie acknowledged. She turned her gaze toward the waves beyond the center. “Come with me? Let’s check it out one last time?”
“Gladly,” Adriano said. They left the community center and walked along the sand. Edie, wearing shoes she had crafted herself on the island, removed them and stepped along the wet sand, waves crashing against her toes. She started to feel the weight of her decision to leave.
“You’re going to miss this place,” Adriano said.
“I will,” Edie admitted. High-pitched siren sounds filled the air. Edie turned her gaze to the right, toward the pink sky in the realm which neighbored their own. She saw not one, but two of the blimp-sized aeroceteas hovering above the water. Their tentacles latched onto the same unlucky sea-monster, which struggled hopelessly as the two floating whales ripped it apart and consumed its carcass.
“Look at the bright side, at least that ain’t you,” Adriano joked, pointing to the prey.
“They couldn’t get me that far even if they tried,” Edie said.
“That I do not doubt, Ms. Brenner,” Adriano said. “That I do not doubt.”
Edie walked up to Adriano, putting her hands on his shoulders, and looked him in the eyes. “I’m not who they say I am. Dev, his goons, the people in the village who want me dead. I am not a monster. Just misunderstood.”
“I know,” Adriano replied. “And you never have to convince me of that. Neither does Alex.”
“Take care of this place while I’m gone,” Edie said. “Take care of yourself Adriano.”
Chapter 8
New Tokyo - Ginga Mizumi - Mystical Tea Garden
A separate stream made its way to a nearly-hidden koi pond with lily pads and floating lotuses, the central feature of the Mystical Tea Garden. Across a red foot bridge, which symbolized the journey between the physical and spiritual worlds, stood towering pines, pink azaleas, and pink cherry trees. Tourists to New Tokyo often joked that it was one of the Two Wonders of the Moon. The other was the Apollo 11 site where Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin made history more than a century prior.
Val, Ty, and Thomas Adler gathered at the edge of the koi pond with Minister Endo and Seiji.
“Now that all of Sol knows we’re here, we should discuss what to do next,” Thomas said.
“Glad to see we’re on the same page, Mr. Secretary-General,” Minister Endo replied, using his former title.“
“Again, I insist on you calling me Thomas.”
“Again, New Tokyo still acknowledges the GSF as a legitimate state. Therefore the title stays.”
“Oh no, everyone else still has to call me Secretary-General,” Thomas said. “But you saved our lives. You get to call me Thomas.”
“Acknowledged,” Minster Endo said as she stared down a congregation of Koi. The effects of the moon’s gravity elo
ngated them to the point where they resembled half-white/half-orange eels as opposed to the famous Japanese carp. “There’s another matter we need to discuss.”
“I assume you’re talking about the political situation on Earth,” Thomas said. He turned toward Val, Ty, and Seiji who each listened with heightened curiosity. “Something to do with my being here?”
“The Emperor is pissed,” Minister Endo replied. “The Prime Minister is barely holding off the world powers. Everyone is coming for our throats.”
“Minister, as long as you have Minerva, you are invincible. Nobody is attacking Japan because it would be the same as attacking here. The best generals can predict with precision the worst attacks their enemies will unleash. But nobody can predict the power of an Aquarian host, nor for that matter a spacetime accelerator. That’s why they fear you. You’re the most dangerous nation-state in existence and don’t you forget it.”
“Yeah but Mr. Secretary-General, that won’t stop UN Peacekeepers from blocking our trade routes. That won’t change the fact that tourism is down more than fifty percent and our coffers are bleeding dry. We’re staking our entire future on this.”
“Minister, you do not have to remind me of the stakes. I know all too well.” Thomas turned to face the three civilians. “Dr. Alessi and Ms. Islan, you probably want to know why I had you join us.”
“I’m guessing it involves something-something-research,” Val replied.
“Not just any research. Actually, we’re going to need both of you for this,” Thomas said.
“Pardon?” Ty had the look of a deer in the headlights.
“Ms. Islan, you understand the spacetime accelerator better than most people. You helped develop it back on the Sagan.”
“I may know a thing or two. Depends what you’re hoping to do with it,” Ty said, with suspicion.
“When Dr. Lacroix and Captain Ashford crossed the spacetime bridge, we assumed they were going a short five light-year distance. Little did we know, we had sent them half-way across the universe,” Thomas said. As he spoke, a koi fish flipped out of the water and landed in a slow-motion splash.
“They almost died,” Val replied.
“Correct, and I would know because I was in the thick of it when it all went down,” Thomas said. “But one revelation by the unlikeliest of individuals and before you know it, our gammanauts are back home and returned to their natural bodies, good as new.”
“You’re talking about Dev Ivanov’s map,” Ty added.
“Not just any map. What Dev and Cosmineral discovered was revolutionary in helping us understand the Aquarians and how they travel across subspace. Even though Dev’s team had only gotten a few nodes deep in the map, it was enough to help us beacon the Aquarians and bring our gammanauts home,” Adler explained.
“But how?” Val asked. “It’s not like being able to point to Alpha Centauri, or the Betelgeuse black hole, or Canis Majoris and say ‘okay, such and such node is fifty or a thousand light years away.’ For all you know, those nodes could be fifty-thousand trillion light years out.”
“You make valid points, Dr. Alessi, but tell me this. Why does it matter if the nodes are linked? As long as one is fifty trillion light-years away, it won’t matter if we can go to and from it in the blink of an eye,” Adler explained. “We know Earth wasn’t one of their original nodes. That’s how the first gammanauts got lost. The Aquarian network didn’t know where they were coming from, so it rerouted them to another system, three nodes deeper. Once we found our gammanauts and sent our signal, they found us and the bridge was reestablished.”
“So is Sol now a node on their intergalactic map?” Ty asked.
“Do we really want to know the answer to that?” Val added.
“Short answer, we don’t know. We lost our connection to the subspace map when the sequence ended,” Adler replied. “But there’s an Aquarian host sitting on this rock that will help us find out.”
“What makes you think they’ll take your call?” Val asked. “The little things inside are alive, but the big thing looks deader than a beached whale.”
“Which is why we’re going to wake it up,” Minister Endo interjected.
“And both of you will be part of it,” Thomas added, pointing to Val and Ty.
“Me?” Ty could not mask her surprise.
“Yes Ms. Islan, you know how the accelerator works. You’ve done basic bridge training. You’re gonna manage the external connection with a dream-net local host.”
“Me? By myself?” Ty asked. “Don’t you need two people for that?”
“We’ve made modifications to the accelerator. For local host connections, one gammanaut is all we need.” Thomas turned to Val with a smirk. “And the reason Ms. Islan will be going solo is because Dr. Alessi, you will be joining a representative from Minister Endo’s team on an expedition into the host.”
“Come again?” Val asked in disbelief, palms facing up.
“I said, you will be joining a representative from Minister Endo’s team on an expedition into the core of Minerva,” Thomas repeated.
“With Kosuke, just FYI,” Minister Endo added.
“Thank you,” Thomas replied. “That is of course, if you want to go through with it.”
Val took a moment to absorb what Thomas was saying. She’d had a feeling she would eventually be asked to enter the host, but she didn’t think it would happen this quickly. As Ty raised an eyebrow, Val could sense her hesitancy to what Minister Endo and Thomas suggested. It’s not every day somebody asks your spouse to put on gear and walk inside a living alien ship.
Val craved the opportunity to see alien life up close. Ty’s career as an engineer seemed tame by comparison. Val remembered once on the Sagan, sitting alone outside a concert they’d attended on one of their first dates with the phantom echo of the amps still ringing in their ears, Ty had shyly confessed to Val a fantasy she’d always kept of one day training to be a gammanaut.
“If you agree, we’ll start training the day after tomorrow,” Thomas said. “So what’s it gonna be?”
“What do you say dear?” Ty asked. “Let’s do this?”
Chapter 9
Universal Crescent
Half a universe away, Edie Brenner and Alex Harper made their way through the thick forests leading away from the beaches of Villa del Universo. They followed the dirt path until they reached a large, yet well-hidden clearing, careful not to trip on any of the thick tree roots. Edie wiped beads of dew from her forehead. The forest was tall and wet, just like the sequoia forests Edie had ventured half a lifetime ago in California. Now they faced four Aquarian hosts, almost as tall as the redwood trees.
Edie pointed to the host closest to them. It was the one they’d be taking for their journey. Where this journey would lead, Edie did not actually know. All she knew from talking to the Aquarians was that the fate of humanity depended on it, and they might not return to the Universal Crescent.
In another life, Edie would have scoffed at anything with a whiff of altruism. After all, this was someone who went from cutthroat businesswoman to contract killer and then to hired mercenary on the far edges of the Solar System. Those who interacted with her only knew her as a ruthless sociopath who would say and do whatever it took to get her way.
Yet Edie knew in her heart there was more to her than just a desire for money, power, and ego. It’s what drove her all the way to William Herschel Station, when there were far better places she could have gone. It’s why she sought such an active involvement in the leadership of Villa del Universo. There was an explorer’s curiosity to most of what drove her. Edie kept this to herself.
Alex Harper understood it. Then again, if one spent enough time with even the most guarded of people, eventually they would be able to read them front to back.
“Hey Alex,” Edie said. “What was it Elos compared me to back in the village?”
“I believe Agamemnon was the word he used,” Alex replied.
“Clever choice of ins
ult. You know what he meant by it?”
“Something in Roman mythology? Some ruler?” Alex guessed. They left the forest side-by-side and walked along a clearing leading up to the host.
“Greek mythology. The Odyssey to be exact. Agamemnon was the tyrant king who ruled Mycenae. Led the Greeks to invade Troy. Well, not really. It’s all a made-up fiction.”
“Funny you bring it up at the den of the kaiju,” Alex said, as he started to get a sense of Edie’s line of logic.
“Well you got Bowser, Cersei, and Voldemort,” Edie said. She then pointed to the nearby Aquarian host. “And now there’s Agamemnon.”
“You just love naming them after villains,” Alex quipped.
“It’s nothing personal, but if anyone on Earth saw one of them, they’d probably regard them as villains too,” Edie replied, completely unaware that everyone on Earth had in fact seen an Aquarian host.
Agamemnon, as it was now named, stood rooted to the dirt, as was common with Aquarian hosts when they landed on a terrestrial planet. The hosts were creative in the ways they sought sustenance, as Edie learned from her time with the Aquarians. As creatures who rose from the depths of extraterrestrial oceans, they’d rely on a combination of ground soil and solar energy, much like plants.
The Aquarians geo-engineered their own solar-absorbing bacteria. When spread far enough over vast plains, the algae-like substance was capable of powering the Aquarians’ gigantic underwater colonies. As far as humans knew, they had been doing this for millions of years.