The Cloud

by Daniel Boshoff

“Can you read it?” Matthew asked Brenner. Evelyn looked at him strangely. Why wouldn't she be able to read it? It was in English.

  “Some of it. It looks like Larry.”

  “Larry? Larry who?” Kenji asked.

  “L.A.R.I.I ...” At his blank expression Brenner rolled her eyes. “Learning articulating reproductive intelligent indexer.”

  “My God what a mouthful, I can see why they use the acronym. What's it do?”

  She gave an exasperated sigh. “It's the code Reyner invented that made him his first million. It constantly corrects and updates itself to adapt to its tasks, and it's much faster than anything else out there, which is why Reyner used it for his AI experiments. Also, it's really hard to use, so if you could stop distracting me …?” Brenner turned back to the screen, frowning at the text.

  “Okay, jeez,” Kenji said, holding up his palms.

  “Code that evolves.” Evelyn heard Clove mumble. “That sounds like a great idea.”

  “Okay, I think it's this one.” Brenner selected the command that said on-board facilities.

  A new list appeared on screen, and Evelyn saw the names of several different kinds of lab equipment and even a music option.

  Brenner glanced irritably at Matthew. “What was it you said I needed to do again?”

  “Look for 'preset modes' or something like that.”

  “Right.”

  Evelyn watched the cursor move over an option that read 'reset main power supply'. “Um, Brenner?” she said. “I think you went past it.”

  “You can read this?” Brenner said in disbelief. “This is like, the quantum theory of coding. People study for years to work with Larii.”

  “Really? It looks like plain–”

  Evelyn …

  She spun around, startling the others.

  “Whoa,” Kenji frowned at her. “You okay?”

  “Um. Yeah. I thought I heard …” She shook her head. “Never mind.”

  That voice again … She remembered the strange black mist swirling around her head, and how the elephant's eyes had filled with terror the moment the mist had left it. Suddenly she had a feeling she shouldn't mention to the others that she could read the L.A.R.I.I. code.

  “Evelyn, can you read this?” Brenner asked again.

  “I … can make out a few lines here and there. I have a bit of programming experience.” She lied. “Try that one.” She pointed to Preset Mode: Living Quarters.

  “Oh, yeah. I think you're right.” Brenner squinted at the screen. “Thanks.” She hit enter and there was a whirring from beneath the floor.

  They all turned around and watched as the interior of the shuttle began to morph. Panels in the walls lifted up, lowering cushioned seats. Sections of floor moved aside and tables sprouted like trees from the floor. Against one wall a counter dropped down and an appliance resembling a microwave oven slid into view at one end.

  “Okay, that was cool,” Kenji nodded approvingly.

  “So, who's hungry?” Matthew said cheerily, holding up a few silver sachets.

  Everyone looked at him like he was made from solidified snot.

  “I'm sure we can figure that thing out,” Brenner said, snatching the packets of food from him. “It's time for you to start talking.”

  “Yeah, out with it,” Nelson added.

  Matthew's shoulders slumped. “Here we go again,” he mumbled.

  “Oh, were you expecting a 'please'?” Nelson said irritably. “We just got chased through an extraterrestrial jungle by a pink alien elephant … thing. Yesterday morning I was drinking coffee at home with my mother and brother. I need an explanation for this, and you, for whatever reason, seem to be the only person who has one.”

  Matthew shook his head grimly. “Didn't you hear what Reyner said? You didn't see your family yesterday.” His eyes fell to the floor. “We left Earth behind us a long time ago. The Rift was over a light year away from our planet, and Janus was another light year away from the Rift on the other side. Do you know how long it takes to travel that far?”

  “About ten thousand years,” Seren broke in. “With known long-term space propulsion tech.”

  Nelson frowned. “Nobody can live that long.”

  “Actually,” Matthew said. “They can. We did.”

  “Bull,” Brenner snapped. “ Look at yourself. You're still a teenager. I can count your zits from here.”

  Matthew bristled at this observation, and turned his face away self-consciously.

  “Maybe you should explain to everyone why Holly's head healed itself, Matthew,” Seren said again, in that strange way she had of making it sound like she already knew.

  “Yeah. Okay.” He took a deep breath. “One of Reyner's companies was working on some experimental tech. Nano Atomic Modifiers, they called them, or NAMs. They're basically millions of tiny construction workers controlled by an electromagnetic field – a field generated inside those pods we woke up in. Each group of NAMs is assigned a task, a part of our bodies to maintain. They work on an atomic level, so they can pretty much reconstruct anything from anything. That's how they kept us alive for the journey. We've probably been rebuilt a thousand times along the way, using the same matter. It's kind of like recycling.”

  Evelyn almost laughed. It was ridiculous. “Wait a minute,” she said. “So you're saying we're ten thousand years old?”

  “I believe the exact travel time was ten thousand and eighty one Earth years, yes.”

  “But, why haven't we aged?”

  “Hormones,” he replied simply. “The NAM's didn't work on adults, for some reason. The theory was that adolescent bodies were more equipped to undergo physical change. That's why they used us. We were the only ones who could have made the journey. And they had to keep our bodies from developing, so they adjusted our hormones. Now here we are: the youngest ten-thousand-year-olds in history.” He smiled weakly. No one smiled back.

  “Then why hasn't our hair grown? Or our fingernails?” Evelyn didn't want to believe what she was hearing. How could they be that old? How could everyone and everything they had ever known be … gone?

  “No growth,” Matthew replied. “The NAM's were working with finite resources. Anything they used had to come from somewhere else.”

  “Okay, this is crazy,” Clove said. “But I'll play along. So you're saying that those pods up there can keep us alive … forever?”

  “In theory, yeah.”

  “And they can heal us if we get hurt, like Holly?”

  “Yup.”

  “The interesting thing is,” Seren pointed out. “Holly wasn't inside her pod when her wound healed. No magnetic field means no NAM function … at least that's the way I understand it.”

  “You're right.” Matthew scratched his chin. “It's weird.”

  “We were in those things for a long time,” Seren ventured. “It's possible our bodies adapted, evolved to power the NAMs themselves.”

  “No … no that would be impossible,” Matthew shook his head.

  “My definition of the word impossible has been redefined quite a few times in the last few hours alone.” Seren smiled gaily. “And besides, our entire nervous system runs on electrical impulses. The NAMs could just piggyback on those. You said they have pre-assigned jobs, so they'd already know what to do.”

  “I don't know …”

  “Then we'll test it.” Seren picked up the ax lying near the airlock and pulled back the sleeve of her tracksuit top.

  “Dude ...” Kenji said, pulling a face. “Are you serious right now?”

  Seren gave him her strange, aloof smile and shrugged. “I'm curious.”

  She raised her inner forearm to the blade.

  “Wait,” Matthew said. “I'll do it.”

  “I don't mind.”

  “No. Let me do it.”

  Evelyn got the feeling Matthew was trying to apologize to them in some convoluted way. Seren appeared to understand it too.

  “Okay.” She handed him the ax. “Thanks.”

/>   Matthew nodded and clenched his fist, raising the blade to his skin. He shut his eyes and quickly jerked the blade down. Immediately blood welled in a line across his arm.

  “Oh man, that is just messed up,” Kenji said. “Totally ruined my appetite.”

  Matthew ignored him, staring fixedly at his arm. “Something's happening.”

  “Yeah, you're bleeding onto the floor.” Kenji threw up his hands and turned away in mock disgust.

  “No, I can feel … almost a tingling. Like an itch. And … the bleeding's stopped.” He went over to a small sink in the counter that had dropped out of one wall and ran some water over his arm, washing away the blood.

  “Well?” Seren asked.

  Mathew turned to them, a look of amazement on his face. He held out his arm. Every jaw in the shuttle dropped.

  There was not so much as a scratch on his pale skin. Not even a scar.

  8

  “So are we, like, immortal now?” Kenji asked no one in particular, as they sat around the shuttle. Nobody answered. They were all deep in their own thoughts, trying to process what had happened to them. “I always wanted to be immortal …” he continued in a mumble, staring at his hands.

  Brenner had placed some of the food sachets in the re-hydrator and when they were ready she brought them over and they began eating in silence broken only by the sound of chewing. Evelyn kept trying to force her mind to accept their situation, but everything seemed too surreal, too completely far-fetched to possibly be happening. How could this, any of this, be real? The others, too, seemed to be fighting their own mental battles and she wondered how long it would take before one of them broke down completely. Holly had come close, but then she had had it worse than the rest.

  Evelyn's eye's fell to the brownish rectangle in sliver wrapping she clutched in her lap. The re-hydrated food seemed real enough at least, if a little chewy. She had no idea what it actually was. The taste was vaguely savory without identifiable flavors.

  “So, I guess we can breathe out there,” Clove broke the silence. “Holly seems fine, anyway.”

  “We should run some tests,” Matthew said absentmindedly.

  “Hey Tucker,” Nelson said. “What made you agree to this?”

  “Sorry?”

  “You knew what Reyner was doing. Why would you agree to come, knowing you'd never go back?”

  Matthew put down a half-eaten food bar. “Damien was my godfather. He and I were close. He … he convinced me to come. Said it would be the most important thing I could do with my life. Reyner was planning something, something that would fix Earth – I don't know exactly what, but I never felt at home there, anyway. I wanted to get away.”

  “What about your family? Your friends?” Clove asked wide-eyed. “How could you just leave them behind?”

  Matthew shook his head and laughed. His eyes looked sad. “I didn't have any friends. My father was my only family, and he barely knew I existed.”

  There was silence for a while. Then Clove spoke. “In the message Reyner sent us he said he'd done something terrible, that no one would be left alive on Earth. Do you think he was planning some kind of … genocide?”

  “You think Reyner was gonna exterminate the human race?” Kenji scoffed, looking at Clove. “Why would he do that?”

  “You heard what he said in the message. 'We were like a virus on the planet'. Sounds to me like he was pretty beat up about things.”

  “Sounds to me like he had a few screws loose,” Nelson added.

  “He never told me exactly what he was planning, only that he had found a way to save humanity from itself. For all his flaws, Reyner was the only true genius I've ever met. He understood things other people didn't. I trusted him.” Matthew said in answer to Clove's question.

  They lapsed into silence again, until Clove spoke up. “In the message from your father, who was he trying to tell us not to trust?”

  “I don't know,” Matthew shrugged.

  “He mentioned an AI,” Nelson reminded them, raising an eyebrow at Matthew.

  “I … I'm not sure what he meant,” Matthew said. Evelyn noticed he was looking at his feet when he said this.

  Holly stood up, preventing any further inquiry. “I … think I need to sleep. I feel exhausted.” The living quarters mode had turned the pods upstairs into comfortable if narrow beds.

  “Yeah, I'm with you on that one,” Kenji said, yawning. “Ten thousand years of snoozing just wasn’t enough for me. I need like one more night, then I’ll be set.”

  There were nods from some of the others and one-by-one they all disappeared up to the top floor until only Evelyn, Seren and Matthew remained.

  Evelyn's mind was still abuzz. She was tired, but she knew she wouldn't be able to sleep. There was too much to think about. She wanted to talk to Matthew about the spear. Who had thrown it? She glanced at Seren again and wondered where she had been when they went after Holly. And there was the message from Matthew's father... She sensed Matthew still wasn't being entirely honest with them about what he knew. Who had Miles Tucker been trying to tell them not to trust? She didn't want to speak in front of Seren. As much as she suspected Matthew of withholding information, Seren made her even more uneasy for reasons she couldn’t quite pinpoint. There was something about the girl's quiet presence that just made her feel … uncomfortable.

  Eventually Seren rose and ascended the ladder, bidding them good night with a brief nod.

  Matthew stretched and glanced at her awkwardly. “Well, guess I'll turn in too. It's been an, um, interesting day.”

  “Wait,” she whispered, glancing at the ladder to make sure Seren was out of earshot. “There's something I want to talk to you about.”

  He glowered. “Look, I've told you everything I–”

  “No, not that. Today. The spear. Do you think it was, you know ...” she nodded towards the ladder.

  Matthew followed her eyes and frowned. “I … don't know.”

  “If it wasn't then we need to consider the other possibility.”

  “You mean that we're not alone here? I've been thinking about it.” He rubbed his eyes with both hands. “Tomorrow we'll take a look around. There's all sorts of research and surveillance equipment, drones and stuff, that will help us. For the moment we're safe in here, at least.”

  “Okay. There is something else,” Evelyn admitted

  “Mm?”

  “That message from your father. You must know what he was talking about...” She left the statement hanging.

  Matthew looked at her suspiciously for a moment. Then he seemed to make up his mind about something. He shifted closer to her and leaned in conspiratorially. “Listen, there is one thing I haven't told you.” He responded to her knowingly-raised eyebrows with a stubborn scowl. “With good reason. A few weeks before we left I walked in on Reyner working on something. He'd left the door of his lab open, and he didn’t hear me come in. There was a … a person on the table, and he was doing something to her – it looked like a girl, anyway, I didn't get a great look because he heard me and quickly drew a cloth over the body – but he was, like, operating on her.”

  “A person?”

  “Well, I dunno. It had human feet. I only really saw the feet ... girly feet.” he mumbled lamely.

  “So … what are you saying?”

  “Well, my father's message … what if Reyner made a humanoid AI?”

  “What? That's totally illegal!”

  “Um, so is sending a bunch of kids into space without their consent, I'm pretty sure.”

  “Yeah. Right.”

  “All I'm saying is, if one of us is an AI, and my father was trying to tell us not to trust it, for whatever reason, we should be careful.” He looked at her quite intensely, and she got the impression he was wondering if he'd made a mistake in confiding in her.

  Evelyn blinked. “Who do you think it could be?”

  “I have an idea...” Matthew glanced significantly to the ladder Seren had ascended moments ago, and Evel
yn thought again how she had seemed to always know what Matthew was going to tell them, how she had found the protective suits before anyone had needed them, how she had mysteriously disappeared when they went after Holly. And she thought about the spear. “Why would Reyner send an AI with us?”

  “I don't know. Maybe he thought we would need protection – though if it was sent to protect us it certainly isn't doing a great job. We need to listen to the message from my father again. There might be some way we can use the computer to filter out the static. I'll ask Brenner to give it a try in the morning.”

  Evelyn laughed. “I'm sure she'd be happy to assist you in any way she can.”

  Matthew smiled with her. “She's just angry. I don't blame her. I'd be pissed at me too.”

  “You know,” Evelyn said, smiling for the first time that day, “you're not as bad as I originally thought.” Their eyes met and held for a second but then they both looked away suddenly.

  Matthew stretched and stood up. “Guess we should get some sleep. Tomorrow we'll have to start figuring out what to do next.”

  “Yeah. I … I think I'll stay down here for a few more minutes. I'm still kind of processing all of this, you know?”

  Matthew nodded and climbed the ladder. Evelyn stared after him while her mind wandered, and it wasn't until an hour later that she ascended the ladder and went to her pod to sleep.

  9

  The next morning, Evelyn learned with relief that the living quarters mode had also revealed a tiny lavatory squeezed into the small room that housed the shuttle's power supply and computer system. She flushed and tried not to think about drinking her own wee later, after it had passed through the shuttle's purification system. When she exited the toilet, she found the others arguing in the main room.

  “It didn't just walk off by itself, did it?”

  “I'm not saying it did, but I didn't move it.”

  “Have you looked in the cabinet? There was loads.”

  “I checked, it's empty.”

  “Who was the last one up last night?”

  They all turned to Evelyn as she joined them.

  “What's going on?” she asked, immediately worried.