by J. Benjamin
“At the heart of the A’biran genetic code lies a number. That number is a count of what place we are at in the lineage of the billions of A’biran which preceded us. That number is our identifier.”
“What about your names?” Alex asked. “Pravixyt, Ruutana, and Sattui are not numbers.”
“No,” the brains replied. “They are translations. Our genetic code is an extremely complex mathematical equation. The names you know our species as are phonetic translations of the far greater calculations which make up their code.”
“You talked about how your original world came to an end from environmental destruction and war. These sound like the things that are destroying humanity,” Edie said.
The brains paused for a long, uncomfortable moment, and then spoke. “Greed is what destroyed the grandmothers of the A’biran. Like many species across the spectrum of space and time, greed and selfishness were our original sins. Greed and selfishness are what eat away the decaying core of what’s left of humanity.”
For the first time since they arrived at the Krayasee, Edie felt her stomach sink. After what felt like a grand welcome and hospitable visit, this was the first time she heard the Krayasee speak so negatively, albeit frankly about humans. She didn’t disagree with any of it. Neither did Alex.
“You seem to know a lot about us,” Edie said.
“We learned it all from the Yonapi,” the brains said. “We regret what has become of the human civilization.”
“That makes three of us,” Edie said, pointing to herself and Alex. “That’s why we left Earth and the rest of humanity behind.”
“Everything you’re telling us about humans, we’ve known our whole lives. It’s why we joined the Aquar— I mean Yonapi, at their colony with those other humans. It’s why we traveled interstellar space with them. We’re desperate to find answers. Perhaps you can help us,” Alex added.
“Yes,” Edie said. “That machine we saw at the factory.”
“What about it?” The brains replied.
“You said it would be the machine that saves our species. How?”
“Assuming you are successful, and it won’t be easy,” the brains replied. “By now you’ve probably figured that the zone the Yonapi originally brought you to was temporary.”
“The Universal Crescent?” Edie asked.
“Yes, the Universal Crescent,” the brains said.
“What does the machine have to do with that?” Alex asked.
“Everything,” the brains replied. “In order for humanity’s future to extend into the future, this machine will be necessary.”
“What does it do?” Edie pressed again.
The brains took a minute before responding. The impact of their words would be remembered far beyond these walls.
“You want to know what the machine specifically does?” the brains replied. “Very well. We’ll show you.”
The walls of the dome begun to shake. Edie and Alex looked out in wonder as the dome dissolved from the ceiling to the walls. As it faded, the two humans felt a slight breeze. They were standing on an exposed roof.
A previously invisible platform faded into focus beside the edge of the roof. The nitrogen smoke between the skyscraper and the platform explained how it got there. However, it was the slowly-uncloaking object sitting on the platform that made both humans’ jaws drop.
The so-called machine, only constructed a short time ago, now sat completed. Though alien in its construction, its purpose was unmistakable even to the humans.
“Am I supposed to fly that thing?” Edie asked.
Chapter 33
Research Bay - Mission Control
Ty anxiously focused her attention on the two-way radio with Val.
“Don’t you get it? That’s exactly my intention,” Kosuke’s voice bled through the receiver, distant but decipherable. “We’ll never tame these beasts if we don’t fight fire with fire.”
“He’s lost his mind,” Minister Endo said.
Ty’s focus was shattered by a siren on her console. At the heart of the dashboard, at the center of a digital diagram of Minerva, a red alert flickered on the screen.
“What the Hell is that?” Minister Endo asked.
“It’s coming from the core,” Ty said.
“What?” the Minister recoiled. Ty promptly picked up the receiver.
“Val, what’s going on? We’re picking up strange readings. Please respond!”
Several seconds went by. No response.
“Val, come in,” Ty urged. “Val!” The only audible sound from the receiver was static.
Ty’s eyes widened as more alerts appeared over the diagram of Minerva. This continued until the entire screen was blanketed. Ty felt time come to a standstill. She turned to the soldiers on guard at either side of each entrance to the room.
“Get the Minister out of here, now!” she ordered. The soldiers ran to Minister Endo in protective formation.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Minister Endo commanded, making a halt motion with her right hand.
“Minister Endo, you need to get to a secure location now. It’s not safe here,” Ty said.
“Like Hell I am,” she replied. “What’s happening? Talk to me.”
The command center shook before Ty could respond. The lights flickered on and off. The darkness brought with it a veil of dread.
“Minister, we need to go now,” one of the guards urged. They grabbed her by the arms and began to drag her out by force.
“Look!” shouted one of the scientists who’d stood up at his station, his chair spinning out from under him. On the other side of the glass, the Aquarian vessel stood colorless.
The flowing oil colors of fuchsia, pink, and purple had gone out, as if dowsed like a flame. Then the vessel bulged into a bright, blinding white. In the command center, each onlooker held their hands over their eyes like visors. The Aquarian flagship appeared like a star about to erupt in a fiery death. The face of Lucifer itself.
Ty and Minister shared confused looks of horror.
The ground beneath them shook. Ty felt a sharp pain on her right temple. At first, she wasn’t sure if she’d fallen to the floor or if her head had banged into the console. It seemed to be both. Then she saw blood, but wasn’t sure whose it was.
Ty gripped the edges of the console and pulled herself up as though hanging from the edge of a cliff. She had to hold onto something as the command center rocked violently.
Ty heard a low hum. The console? A thick sheet of metal ripped off one of the walls. Before Ty could warn the two people standing in its way, they were crushed beneath it.
She felt a tingling in her right ear from the fall but didn’t have time to assess her injuries.
“Ty!” A voice shouted. “Ty!” Minister Endo, pinned to the floor between several security personnel, shouted in her direction. “Ty, send in the strike force now. Do it!”
Barely able to see Minister Endo’s face in the dark, Ty nodded. She grabbed the radio receiver.
“Ground team,” Ty shouted through the receiver. “Commence strike. Minister’s orders. Go!”
“Affirmative. Moving in now,” their commander responded.
Ty watched as the five soldiers, suited with tactical armor and rapid-fire lasers, ran toward the entrance of the Minerva vessel.
The soldier in front fell to the ground at the foot of the ramp. The second and third fell next, followed by the remaining two.
“Ground team,” Ty said. “What’s happening? Please respond.” None of the soldiers spoke. Ty watched in horror as the entire team writhed on the ground, helplessly. They were shaking. From what Ty knew about the Aquarians, this was not a good sign.
Then, a sharp pain pierced through her head with an intensity unlike anything she had ever felt. Ty grabbed her temples. This wasn’t a migraine. An outside force was trying to break into her head like a home intruder. She screamed at a decibel so high, she was sure it would shatter glass. The pain moved around her head like a mouse
in a maze.
The physical pain was still no match for the helplessness she felt. The walls were on fire. Except they weren’t the walls of the command center. They were literal walls of fire. The floor was fire. Was this Hell?
Ty saw demons moving about in the distance. Perhaps they were shadows or visitors from an unknown world. They all looked at her. They wanted to consume her flesh. She had to consume them first.
In all the chaos and madness, a moment of clarity rose above the noise. These weren’t demons. They were her fellow colleagues. This wasn’t Hell. This was the command center. The Aquarian anima hacked her brain and was fucking with her mind. It hacked the minds of everyone in the Research Bay just like Kosuke hacked Minerva. This was what the Aquarians were capable of doing.
Ty managed to snap part of her memory out of the violent hellscape and locate the receiver. She grabbed it with a talon-like grip.
“Val. If you can hear me. If you’re still in there. I want you to know I love you more than anything in the universe. I love you more than life itself,” she said tearfully. “I’m so sorry. I’m sorry I can’t protect you. Please, do whatever you can to save yourself.”
The receiver disappeared, and Ty fell back into the fire.
Chapter 34
Minerva went pure white. Except this wasn’t the icy white of a dying Aquarian. It was a hot, raging white. Val knew this was unusual. She couldn’t even begin to fathom what was happening on the world outside and pushed the thought out of her mind.
The branches and eggs that lined the insides of the host changed in rapid succession to every possible color of the spectrum. It would have been a beautiful sight if not for how ominous it felt.
Kosuke was still fully conscious and laughing like a maniac. He still had a blaster in hand.
“Kosuke,” Val shouted. “End this madness now. Please! You’re going to get everyone killed.”
“No! I must have their secrets. I must know the truth if we’re to save humanity.”
“What truth?” Val shouted. “Look around you. You’ve destabilized it. You have to stop now.”
Kosuke didn’t respond. He was intent on going further down the rabbit hole.
“I can’t believe it. The sights.”
Val’s attention shifted as the wall of the makeshift human section of Minerva became slightly less transparent. A massive holographic overlay took form, dwarfing the humans.
“No,” Val recoiled in disbelief as the hologram face of Starscraper towered over them. It looked as precise as the interface on the Sagan. “It’s impossible.”
“It’s real,” Kosuke said. “I’ve done what no human in history ever dreamed of! I’ve truly bridged the divides with an alien species!”
Val looked up at the face of her AI companion. “Starscraper, don’t listen to him. Please.”
“It can’t hear you,” Kosuke said. “It can only communicate with the person tethered in.”
“Damn you!” Val said. Kosuke said nothing. His attention continued to drift to her and to whatever he was seeing in the interface.
“Starscraper,” Kosuke commanded. “Find out if the vessel can communicate with the world outside.”
“Affirmative,” Starscraper announced. “Moving to enter Aquarian cell-space.”
Static came through the radio. Val adjusted it to get a better signal.
Ty was in pain and barely able to speak. Behind her, several voices shouted in agony. Val had spent enough time studying the Aquarians and reading about Kiara’s experience to know what was happening.
“You hear that?” Val demanded of Kosuke. “My wife and everyone here is dying because of you. Was it worth it?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Kosuke said. “You and I are just fine.”
“That’s because we’re inside the vessel you bastard! Listen!” Val took the audio and relayed it to her shared channel with Kosuke. She watched his face through his helmet as the audio played back. He remained emotionless.
“Casualties of war,” he calmly replied.
“That’s all you have to say?” Val replied.
“It’s them or all of humanity,” Kosuke said.
Val stared in disbelief. These were not the words of a man with a conscience. Though Kosuke tried to talk tough with the ‘us or them’ bravado, Val knew it was bullshit. She was staring in the face of a complete sociopath. Either he lost his sanity from living on the isolated moon, or perhaps never met the conditions for lunar living to begin with and should have never been permitted entry.
She took a look at the gun, still firmly held in his right hand, and still pointed in her direction. His index finger resting on the trigger, ready to pull in the blink of an eye.
All she could think of was Ty and what she would give to trade places. She would do anything to take all of Ty’s pain and save her from a horrific death.
“You’re wrong,” Val said. “It’s us, or all of humanity.” She turned the volume on her radio to full blast. Inside her spacious helmet, she cocked her head back, and slammed it into the microphone receiver, colliding it into the faceplate.
A loud frequency emanated through the shared channel. Kosuke gripped his helmet, reeling from the near-deafening feedback of the radio. Although he still held the gun in his right hand, Val charged him at full speed.
Kosuke tried to reposition himself to aim the pistol at her. A shot fired.
Val froze, as did Kosuke. She examined herself, no entry wounds. She was unscathed. Kosuke’s gun slipped from his hands as blood coughed up from his mouth. He fell to the ground. Blood also poured from the center of his space suit. Val turned to face where the shot originated from.
Thomas Adler stood, helmet removed and unbound. A hole in his left cuff link suggested the shot originated from inside his own suit.
“He should have checked the inside of my suit before tying me up,” Thomas said. He revealed the miniature blaster which broke through his bounds and hit Kosuke square in the chest.
“Quick,” Thomas said. “Grab the gun.”
Val picked up Kosuke’s blaster and aimed it at him as he bled out.
“We need to stop Starscraper,” Val said.
“Can you work the interface?” Thomas asked.
“I can try, but we have to act now.”
“Go.”
“Will you be okay?” Val asked.
“I’ll be fine, but we have no time to lose,” Thomas said.
Val looked at Kosuke and remembered that the interface was connected through his spacesuit.
“Help me remove his helmet,” Val said. They both worked to free the headset from the now-dead Kosuke.
Chapter 35
Val’s mind lit up like a system booting to life for the first time. Her attention still stood in the present location, inside the vessel, but she felt her psyche linking somewhere else. Unlike the connection in the hybrid anima, it wasn’t the Aquarians she felt connected to. It was a far more familiar interface, one she felt was acting as a buffer to a far more powerful force.
“Starscraper, can you hear me?” Val said, looking up at the towering head above them. “Please disregard any and all orders given to you by Kosuke Sato. I am in charge now.”
The AI interface turned its virtual head to face its new user. “Dr. Valerie Alessi. To what do I owe the displeasure?”
“Starscraper, whatever Kosuke said to you, disregard it now. You’re going to get everyone here killed.”
“I can’t,” it said plainly. “I’m an AI. Even if I want to stop, my cells are programmed to expand exponentially until I’ve consumed whatever cloud space, or liquid space, I reside on.”
“Can it stop the process?” Thomas asked.
“Can you stop the process?” Val repeated.
“No,” Starscraper said. “That isn’t an option.”
“Dammit,” Val cursed.
“But . . . this is odd,” Starscraper said.
“What’s going on?” Val inquired.
> “The anima . . . it’s . . . it’s fighting back. The vessel, it’s limiting my reach. I think I may have gotten in as far as I can.”
“Of course!” Thomas said. “Val, remember when the interface said ‘death imminent’?”
“Yes.”
“That’s because it wasn’t talking about us. If what Starscraper said is correct, all of this could be a defense mechanism from Minerva.”
“Starscraper, new orders! I want you to establish contact with the interface. Is that possible?”
“I can try, but no guarantees. This thing seems to talk differently to us AI than it does to you humans,” Starscraper said.
“Find out what Minerva meant when it said the words ‘death imminent.’ I think that’s at the heart of everything taking place here,” Val explained.
Starscraper went quiet. Everything went quiet. Thomas looked on.
Like waves crashing against a shore, Val felt a new energy slowly emerging. The telepathic link connecting her to Starscraper expanded. A third presence joined the conversation.
On the transparent walls, a second holographic image appeared alongside Starscraper. Its hundreds of tentacles drifted across the projection.
“Minerva,” Val said.
“Oh my stars,” Thomas reacted.
“Minerva, my name is Dr. Valerie Alessi. We met just a short while ago.”
“We remember you,” Minerva said.
She stared into the spaghetti-creature’s many tentacles, looking for its hard-to-see mantle. Yet in doing so, she noticed something unusual. The free-flowing fibers of the Aquarian host, previously aglow in every known color, were dull and gray. Gone was the rainbow-like beauty.
“When I saw you, you told me death was imminent.”
“Yes,” they replied.
“I know what you meant now,” Val said. “You meant your own death was imminent. You were trying to warn us.”