by J. Benjamin
Both women stood at the bank of a rapidly flowing river which cut into the horizon.
“Ty, look!” Across the river sat a giant stone structure. Its shape and moss cover reminded her of the Ancient Mayan ruins she had once visited in Tulum.
“I think that is what the pulse wanted us to find,” Ty said.
“How are we supposed to get over there?” Val asked, looking at the river in between them and the stone structure.
“Unless there’s a shortcut we’re missing, I think the answer is rather obvious,” Ty said, also looking to the river, which had been flowing at a much faster speed than any of them felt comfortable with. They stared defiantly into the raging rapids, the cool mist brushing across their faces. Having previously done white water rafting, Ty suspected this was the part of the rapids where she held carefully to the raft and ducked.
“I don’t get it,” Val said. “A river?”
“Yeah,” Ty said in agreement. “To be fair though, the original gammanauts had to fight a giant squid in the middle of the ocean. This doesn’t seem half as bad.” Ty threw a sarcastic grin to show she was kidding.
“How do we know there isn’t a giant squid waiting for us in that river?” Val asked. For a moment, Ty paused to consider her words. Then, closely examined the river.
“Val, question. Let’s pretend for a second you were about to go face to face with an alien who was magnitudes more intelligent and advanced than you. No offense.”
“None taken.”
“In that situation, what are the first things you would be concerned about? Especially knowing what you know now?”
“Well for starters, I’d be concerned with its ability to read me,” Val said. “Kiara said in the first part of the sequence she was completely blindsided by how the Aquarians were able to read her mind like a book.”
“So your biggest concerns is how Minerva could get in your head?”
“Yeah,” Val said. “What are you thinking?”
“I agree,” Ty said.
“We can’t outsmart it,” Val said. “And we can’t out muscle it.”
“But what if we can endure enough to see through its mental obstacles?” Ty suggested.
“Explain.”
“See this river?” Ty replied. “It’s here to block us from our destination—that ancient ruins which looks like Tulum.”
“It does look like Tulum!”
“What if this river represents the fog of confusion that kept Kiara and Matt separated while they were getting sorted in the Aquarian anima? Metaphorically speaking.”
“Hell, I’m getting confused just looking at it,” Val said. “But I see your point. There’s no obvious way around it.”
“Unless there is?” Ty replied. Without thinking, she ran toward the river.
“Ty, what are you doing?”
Ty leapt off her feet. A loud thud emanated instantly.
“Oh my God!” Ty stood suspended in mid-air. The river continued rushing beneath her feet as she stood on invisible ground.
“There must be a hidden barrier,” she said. “Come on!”
“You make it look so easy, babe,” Val replied. With the suspense now gone, Val casually walked toward the river. She leapt to meet her wife on the invisible platform. Instead, she fell feet first into the river with a loud splash, at least a dozen feet beneath the invisible platform.
“Oh, shit!” Ty shouted. “Val!” She looked for her wife but saw nothing. “Val! Where are you?”
“Ty . . .” Val shouted, her head emerging from the raging waters. She was a few yards away, struggling to swim against the current.
“Hold on, Val. I’m coming to get you.” She ran toward her wife who was mostly submerged. Strangely, she continued to remain on an invisible platform which spared her fall.
Val was starting to drift toward a bed of rocks. Ty figured it would be best to stand from a solid position and not risk falling in, so she leapt to the other side of the river. She ran toward the rocks to intercept her wife before she floated into them headfirst. Ty crouched toward the water and extended her arm, her heels dug into the bank.
“Grab on!” Ty shouted. Val, struggling to stay afloat against the vicious current, saw her wife’s hand. She threw hers out to meet Ty’s and they locked onto each other. Ty held onto Val’s upper arm and yanked her completely out. They both fell onto the side of the shore.
Val coughed as she sat up in the tall grass. The smells of dirt and rock helped her regain her bearings. Ty embraced her. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, are you?”
“I’m okay knowing you’re okay.”
“What the Hell was that?”
“I don’t know,” Ty said. “I thought it was going to be an illusion. For both of us.”
“Well it was an illusion for both of us,” Val said. “I was under the illusion there was an invisible barrier that would catch us, and you were under the illusion there wasn’t.”
“Yeah, but I got the better end of the deal,” Ty quipped.
When they stood up, Val realized her jacket, jeans, and hair were completely dry. There was no evidence of what she’d just experienced. Her breathing was normal, as if she weren’t struggling for air moments before.
The temple was now just steps away. No other obvious obstacles or illusions appeared to stand in the way.
Chapter 16
Once inside the temple, they realized it was a realm far greater in size than what it appeared from the outside. Apparently, the rules of physics were non-existent in the cerebral realm.
The space beyond the temple entrance resembled a massive stone subterranean sewer-like space. A river of green sludge flowed parallel to them.
“And I thought the GSF had interesting simulations,” Ty said. “I’m guessing we follow the radioactive water?”
“I guess so,” Val replied. The dark tunnels were cold, damp, and musty. The path was a grated surface, and they weren’t walking parallel to the sludge, but rather, directly over it. As they continued, the tunnel walls were getting further apart, as if they were entering a massive, vaulted chamber.
“Oh no!” Val said, finally understanding their surroundings.
“What?” Ty asked.
“Something about all of this is déjà vu.”
“Déjà vu?”
“Ty, remember Deck 55D?”
“Oh shit,” Ty said, finally understanding. “On the Sagan?”
“Exactly. You were never inside, but I remember it clearly. A moat full of green nanites. Grated platform.” Before Val could finish, a bright flash of light erupted only a few feet from them at the end of the platform.
Standing six-feet-tall in its human facade was the interface of the AI super-intelligence Val knew all too well.
“Starscraper!” Val said.
“Dr. Alessi, I see you didn’t drown in the river.”
“I see you’re as much a snarky sonofabitch in here as you are on the outside.”
“Holy shit!” Ty said. “You weren’t kidding. Looks as real as any human.”
“Don’t let the looks fool you,” Val said. “I spent more than a year on the Sagan dealing with this character.”
“Ah, I see you brought a companion, Dr. Alessi,” Starscraper said. “I’m sorry, I believe we haven’t been formally introduced. I am an artificial sentient intelligence. But you can just call me Starscraper.”
“That companion is my wife, Ty Islan!” Val said through clenched teeth.
“Nice to meet you,” Ty said. “Nobody told us you would be part of the simulation.”
“You’re being trained to talk to a hyper-intelligent alien who could literally obliterate all human life as we know it,” Starscraper said. “And when they have to train you for something like that, they turn to the only thing in existence worthy of playing a stand-in. Me!”
“If you’re our best hope, we’re screwed,” Val said.
“Now, now, Dr. Alessi. Why the negativity?” Starscraper said. “Like it
or not, I am the one who decides if you are fit to enter the sequence. See, that big alien thing turned fuchsia and well, that’s not good. So, we really need to make sure you’re up to snuff. You know, before letting it inside your brain. Let’s not forget we uncovered some pretty amazing stuff together. Blade 53, Alpha Centauri, Wolf 482.”
“Val, I thought that information was classified,” Ty said.
“Not anymore,” Val replied. “Since there’s no more GSF, his secrets belong to New Tokyo now.”
“Yeah, but we’re not here to talk about that today,” Starscraper said. “In fact, I think this would be a lot more interesting if one of you didn’t talk at all.” The interface snapped his fingers.
“It’s going to take a lot more than that to shut me up,” Val said, but the smirk on his face hinted that it wasn’t Val he was silencing. Nervously, she turned to face her wife. Ty’s mouth was gone!
“Ty!” Val said. Ty tried to speak but made only muffled sounds. She offered Starscraper a middle finger.
“You’re an even bigger asshole than when we were on the Jellyfish together.”
“Val, I can’t analyze you if you’re both talking at the same time.”
“Okay wise guy,” Val said, this time in a far more confrontational tone. “If that’s the game you want to play, let’s play.”
“Now that’s more like it.” Starscraper’s grin was devious. “Why don’t you take a seat. Take a seat right over there.” Before Val could even react, the entire setting had completely vanished.
Starscraper was still before her, except now he was sitting adjacent to her at a metal table. She faced him directly. They were in a small concrete space not unlike a police interrogation room. Except there was no two-way mirror. Just a dim lightbulb dangling above. Ty was gone. Val’s hands were chained to the table and her feet were bolted to the ground.
“Comfy?” Starscraper asked.
“Quite,” Val lied.
“Now then, let’s discuss your case file,” Starscraper said, as he unveiled a manila folder. He removed a stack of documents and sifted through them. “Hmmm . . . childhood trauma? No not this one. Grad school dissertation? Jeez Val, you’re an even bigger bore than I thought.”
“Who did you expect? Indiana Jones?” Unsurprisingly, Starscraper ignored her.
“Hmmm . . . here we go!” He removed a sheet of paper and carefully examined it. He rolled his eyes up to look at Val, then back at the paper. “Tell me Dr. Alessi. Do you remember this?” He placed the paper on the table.
Val looked at the paper, which played a video back to her. At first, she was perplexed. Then she saw the moat of green. It wasn’t the moat she had just crossed, but the much smaller one on deck 55D of the Jellyfish. She used to spend her days there studying the data from Pelican drones with the very AI that sat before her. This could have been any day on Space Station Sagan. However, there was one detail that stood out. She was in the chamber with Starscraper’s holographic interface. This wasn’t just any other day. Val was on the ground, grabbing her head, shaking with beads of sweat pouring down her temples.
“The day of the lockdown,” Val said.
“You remember it,” Starscraper replied. “Very good.”
“How could I forget it? The reports from Blade 53 were coming in. You and I were reviewing the planet data from Mandela and Yerba Buena. That’s when it happened.”
“When what happened?”
“Well, I didn’t know it at the time, but a madman with a hodgepodge ship blew up the Fighter Bay and tried to kamikaze into the station. One Lt. Commander managed to get out in a Lancer and sent him to the grave,” Val explained.
“Dr. Alessi,” Starscraper said sternly. “I’m not interested in what happened outside the chamber. We all know how Gwen Jackson became a hero. I want to talk about what happened in that chamber.”
“Why are you asking? You were there with me. You saw everything that happened.”
“I want to hear it from you,” Starscraper demanded.
“You can read my mind, literally.”
“Oh, Valerie. I don’t need to be hooked up to a machine to read your mind. I’ve been reading it since the day I met you. From the way you observe data, to the way you retain information. I know everything about you.”
“Okay then,” Val replied. “What do you remember from that day?”
“Turning the tables, eh?” Starscraper asked. “Very well. I remember seeing a level of panic in you that I had never witnessed in all the time I’d known you. I remember watching you crouch to the ground and lash out at me. Not that I was offended. I am after all, an AI. But I want to hear you explain it. Explain why you panicked.”
“So you’re making me relive that?” Val shifted her gaze and tried not to clench her fists too tightly, knowing it would give away her desire to punch the AI. “I was locked in a claustrophobic space. After the bomb went off a few decks below, I was preparing for the worst. I thought a giant hole would rip the ship in half and I’d be sucked into the vacuum. Or maybe I’d burn to death when the ship exploded.”
“Was that all?”
“No,” Val said. “I had just met the love of my life, but didn’t know it at the time. I was upset because I thought I would die alone without her. All the time I’d hoped to spend with her was gone. That my story would be just another casualty of the destruction of humanity’s largest space-faring vessel.”
“What else did you feel when we were in that chamber, Val?”
“Trapped,” she said plainly. “Physically and mentally. There were no humans with us. I had nobody to sulk with. I felt . . . like I was going to die alone.”
For several seconds, neither of them said a word. Starscraper stared at her without emotion. Even though he was an AI, albeit the most advanced one at that, Val always wondered if there was any semblance of feeling beyond the algorithms.
“Tell me what happened in the days after that incident.”
“I requested to leave the Sagan. I know I wasn’t alone, a lot of other people did too.”
“Including your now-wife. Did you know she was going to be on the same ferry as you?”
“Honestly, I did not. I believed she was probably on her way out too, but I didn’t think it would be at the exact same time. Either way, it all worked for the better. Even with everything that’s happened. We’ve been through every storm together.”
“I see.” Starscraper clasped his hands together and looked Val in the eyes. “You see, there’s a reason I ask you all these questions. A method to my madness. You survived near-death on Space Station Sagan. You also found political asylum with our new friends here on the Moon. Whatever stress you think you’ve put yourself through, none of it will come close to what you are going to experience when you meet Minerva for the first time. You might never come back. Are you prepared for that?”
“It’s a challenge,” Val said. “But it is a local host and not an actual spacetime jump. Hopefully the failsafes will protect us from any insidious agendas concocted by the aliens.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that, Dr. Alessi.”
“Have you spoken to Kiara Lacroix? I know you met during her original training to be a gammanaut,” Val said.
“I’ve studied all of Kiara Lacroix’s public testimony, her available logs from the GSF, as well as her detailed mission debriefing after she and Matt Ashford returned. I’ve heard she met a Starscraper instance along the way, but I can assure you it was not me. They’re able to make clones of us,” Starscraper explained.
“And what did you get from it? From studying my friend so closely?”
“From the moment Kiara’s mind crossed the spacetime gate to the moment they got back, they were put through a mental ringer the likes of which nobody had ever witnessed. It’s a miracle they were not killed. Now that the Aquarians are displaying a potentially-hostile stance, we need to be more prepared and more vigilant than ever. So, Dr. Alessi, I’m going to ask you once. Why are you willing to do this
mission? Why are you willing to go through all the Hell you went through on the Sagan and then some?”
“Because if I don’t, I’m far more terrified of what will happen to everything that’s worth dying for,” Val said, clear-eyed and confident.
Starscraper remained speechless and emotionless. Val stared at him defiantly. She had never felt more sure of herself.
“Congratulations Dr. Alessi,” Starscraper said. “You’re cleared for the mission.”
“Where is Ty?” she demanded, not skipping a beat.
“I’m still interviewing her.”
Chapter 17
Agamemnon
As the water cleansed Edie, she marveled at the technology of the alien shower, it’s likeness to human showers, though they forgot to add a curtain or glass door. Anybody could just walk in on her.
Between Edie, Alex, the humans at the Universal Crescent, and the Golden Wave cloud storage on the Pelicans, the Aquarians had a wealth of information from which to understand humans and their desires.
The aliens even provided towels. After drying off, she made her way to the translucent room which had now become home and changed into a yellow jumpsuit provided by her alien hosts. Edie and Alex had decorated their living area with plants grown on the ship.
Edie found Alex in the observatory area, his back hunched and his face buried in a bed of plants. Their alien hosts had provided resources for their human guests to grow their own produce.
“Hey stranger,” Edie said. “How’s it coming along?”
“Looks like we’ll have enough tomatoes to make a pizza,” Alex replied. “Incredible. Maybe they know more about agriculture and Earth’s plant life than we do.”
“Let’s not forget, the Golden Wave had a specific database mapping the genomes of millions of plant species from Earth. Knowing how good our hosts are at replicating cellular structures, this shouldn’t come as a surprise.”
“Yeah, but it’s not just their ability to recreate our produce. It’s the taste. The texture. They got all the details down.”
“How long have you been harvesting tomatoes?” Edie asked.