"Jack, isn't there some way to change the Mission Director's mind?" Gladys Swift couldn't help but ask.
"I have no idea how to change her mind. It seems like she has a grudge against me, Norwell, or some other person at the Agency. A typical bureaucrat, according to Sam's dad," Jack chuckled. "She has very strict instructions. Glad, it feels like they don't care what's going on here. I asked for a weapon, but they refused."
"Mmm, but you know that you're not a military officer and you aren't supposed to use it."
"So, I'm supposed to die here, right?"
"No. I'm sorry. What am I saying? I agree! You need a weapon!"
"And I'm sorry for interrupting."
"They give you tasks... the tasks that aren't part of your duties... How do you even cope with all that?" She said in a half-whisper as though she were on the verge of tears again.
"Guys, wrap it up. Time's flying," Sam's voice was heard from somewhere in the distance.
He approached the teleport on his side, coming into Jack's view.
"How much time do we have?" Jack asked in a friendly, careless way.
"Two minutes."
"Thank you, Sam. You're a true friend. I didn't even think..."
"Oh, come off it. Wouldn't you rather like to say goodbye to your girlfriend properly?"
The remaining two minutes, Jack and Gladys stared at one another, unable to tear their eyes away, as if they were sitting at the same table without billions of kilometers separating them.
"We'll definitely see each other again."
"I love you."
"I love you too..."
The connection abruptly ended. Sam probably turned the transmitter off. First Lieutenant Jack Sallenge rubbed his right cheek. No, what just happened was as clear as day.
The red-hot star was baking the sandy surface of the steppe outside, warming everything living and non-living. Rare fluffy light-gray clouds slowly drifted across the sky. The greenish-blue sand gathered around the pavilion, where the only living person on the whole planet was sitting. Jack's feelings mixed with his worries, which were provoked by the habitual view from the wide panoramic window in his high-tech house. Gladys, Sam, Earth, Nereus, the Sun, the alien star, earthly flowers, the blueish-green desolate sand, tears on his cheeks - all this combined into a crazy kaleidoscope of thoughts and images that whirled about in the officer's mind.
Did he have enough strength to continue his fight? He had gained a new incentive. Or rather, it floated up to the surface of his mind. His memories of Gladys. Did she realize how much he needed her? Replaying the last minutes of their conversation, Jack suddenly felt guilty because he forgot about his parents during the emotional encounter.
"I should have told Sam to tell mom and dad that I'm alive. Although he probably told them everything already. They are no less worried than Glad," he thought. "Mom must have gone gray several times over, forcing her to spend tons on hair dye."
54
The next two hours, Jack sat in front of the teleport at the same spot he had recently been talking to Sam and Gladys. His head started feeling heavy and the fatigue made him drowsy. He needed a vacation after several months of intense work. Reaching his bed, the lieutenant fell asleep without taking his clothes off.
When he woke up, evening was already falling, and the daylight was retreating. White, light-green tones gave way to warm orange-yellow overflows. The sun was becoming increasingly red as it moved to the west of the pavilion. Jack went outside to take a stroll around the local rocky ledge. He hadn't gone jogging that day or done any other morning exercises, for which his body was complaining about the need to do something physical. The low gravity was quite appealing for his earthly body, which was used to the more intensive pull.
The fresh air slowly refreshed Lieutenant Sallenge. He even managed to get distracted himself from the memories of that morning's conversation as he carefully walked around the steppe. In fact, the half-deserted steppe wasn't as lifeless as it seemed on the face of it. Under the sands, whole labyrinths were hidden. The dwellings of underground creatures went so deep that one needed about a whole week of exhausting digging to reach the closest underground level. The silhouettes of strange ribbon-life specimens that resembled flat snakes flew in the breeze above dry bushes in the distance. Jack had no clue what they consumed or how they survived the arid climate. Nothing like them lived on Earth.
As he searched his mind of all the organisms he knew, trying to identify the one that was closest, Jack recalled Earth, the vegetation in the cities, his home, family, Sam, and Gladys. And then he suddenly remembered one thing.
"Sam sent me so much interesting stuff! It's time I unpacked the parcels!"
The excitement catapulted Jack back home. There was something screaming with excitement inside him. Jack couldn't wait to immerse himself into culture of humanity and finally listen to his favorite "Space Pale Clouds" or "Nuffer Walls".
During his freshman year at the Academy, Sam and he didn't miss a single concert at Aeronaut City Hall. Compositions had been being written by machines and half-organic cyborgs for a long time. Listeners couldn't distinguish them from those written by people, but still, the demand for music created by living musicians didn't die. It might seem strange, but there was no actual difference to the neurons in the brain, which were the true creators of music that could trigger the right emotions. The effect was quite psychological, if not philosophical.
"Robots can't be trusted in creating such delicate matters as the creation of music," people declared.
People came to listen to people. Producers quickly realized that it was too hard to transform a robot into some youth's idol.
The most popular for listeners under 20 were the peppy guys from Space Pale Clouds and the eccentric orange-blue-haired Nurf, who performed surrounded by colorful walls from which the heads of back-up vocalists sang along. Sam loved Nurf. He thought she was sexy. Sometimes he used to say that she was the only woman he could marry. He placed Nurf's music on the highest pedestal of honor. Jack, on the contrary, found the cheerful guys from Space Pale Clouds more appealing.
There was something vivid, modern, and, at the same time, something sentimental and nostalgic to them. The music of space beckoned to the adventurous spirit of Jack, especially when the sounds were accompanied by the smell called the fragrance of neutron stars. Of course, the smell didn't really come from the stars. They were just perfumes with the scent of burnt sulfur mixed with electrified air and something that was alien to Jack. But did Lieutenant Sallenge really want those cosmic sounds that called him to travel? Had he already outgrown his idols who had never been on real interstellar missions? For a second, he felt uneasy when he thought about that. Did he really get older over the past three years?
The door slid aside, and Jack confidently entered the glassy pavilion. His wrinkled linen lay strewn across the whole bed. The table near the main panoramic window was empty and abandoned while the narrow tabletop located along the wall near the entrance was covered with equipment and samples. The interior looked spartan, cold, and lifeless. A long time ago, Jack used to be mad with envy when he gazed at similar cosmonaut habitats in VR simulations. It seemed so cool to be able to live in such a house. The pavilion was so high-tech that it had to be excited to use everything.
But in fact, everything turned out to be a bit different. Stopping in the middle of the room, the lieutenant seemed to forget why he was there. He stood there for a minute, feeling as if he might leave because he dropped in at someone's home by chance. But now the pavilion was his own house, which sheltered him from the afternoon heat and warmed him during the cold of night. Approaching the teleport, Jack remembered what he needed to do. He spent more than half an hour surfing through different bunches of data. Millions of music files, pictures, animations, and the most incredible landscapes. Instead of plain old glass panes, Jack could project butterflies, waterfalls, green leaves of spring trees, bumblebees buzzing on the window panels. The panoramic window c
ould become the screen for immersive realities.
For a couple minutes, Jack felt like a tourist relaxing on the beach of the Mediterranean Sea before hiking through a thick forest. The tweeting of birds jolted him with its unusualness. Such tweeting, which Jack hadn't heard for years, was surreal and unusual. The humid atmosphere of the forest filled the pavilion. The panels justified the labor required by their engineers exceptionally well. They realistically imitated the fragrance of tree flowers and the odor of slightly rotten dead leaves. Jack couldn't help taking one deep breath after another.
His brain was deceived, intoxicated, almost taken by surprise. After spending several minutes like that, surrounded by the rustling of leaves and tweeting of birds, Lieutenant Sallenge decided he had to find something neutral to bring himself back to reality. To his own surprise, there were also 3D reproductions of the art from around the world. Paintings by Rubens, Da Vinci, Rembrandt, van Gogh, Roerich, Vasnetsov, Von Hesse, and other famous painters rotated one after another on the glass panels. The distinctive, unique art forms seemed to clash with the peculiar world of Nereus. Jack's sense of perception was being overwhelmed by such variety.
His attention was attracted by a bright, rich green canvas with orange figures of people who were spinning around some invisible axis, dancing wildly. Jack had never seen such a picture, but it entranced him with its furious rhythm of simple, primeval life. The pavilion's panels became blueish-green, re-creating the unique avant-garde atmosphere at the beginning of the 20th century. Lieutenant Sallenge was entranced by the incomprehensible yet alluringly mysterious inconceivable aesthetics being twisted into a lacy pattern of orange-red figures. Inside the glass walls, there was a thin, barely perceptible barrier between reality and the imagination, which was slowly being chipped away before his eyes, revealing the skillful insidiousness of the painter. Jack felt that he could go crazy at any moment, falling into the abyss of a whirling mess of blues, greens, and oranges.
Flipping through hundreds of music files, Sallenge intuitively chose an ambient one with sounds that flowed together, competing for dominance. The music was mostly smooth, with a couple instances of sharp and pointed notes, that seemed to slide across an invisible landscape, riding the current inside the pavilion. It was the electronic music of TR Reverberation, a band that created music for each point in space.
As he walked beside the panels, Jack could sense the curves in the musical landscape. The lieutenant felt he was being buffeted by completely different sounds that were somehow pieced together as one. The sophisticated weaving of such movement and melodies created the illusion of 3D-sound, causing the mind to cede to the sensation of traveling through time and space. Jack felt like he was being carried on the tide of the music, going up and down as each wave crested and crashed.
His eyes closed and Sallenge was mesmerized. His legs became light and turned to jelly while his neck became limp and flexible. He had never felt anything like this before. His thoughts were like weightless, airy feathers that flew around his consciousness, but none could be caught and placed at the center of attention.
But why?
His relaxation didn't last long. About twenty minutes. Then the pressing heaviness of his head returned, compelling Jack to open his eyes.
That evening, he flipped through another hundred paintings and songs, but none of the combinations influenced him like earlier. Fascinated by the analysis of the what Sam had sent, the lieutenant fell asleep at five in the morning.
The next day he woke up almost at 1 p.m. As Jack had received no messages via the teleport, he immersed himself back in Sam's files. There were some that contained simulations of sensor imaged from the works of Earth's greatest writers.
Ray Bradbury's "Dandelion Wine" stood out to him from the others. Jack breathed in the smells of meadows and aromatic dandelion flowers as he traveled through the space of the child's world of the main character. The atmosphere of absolute freedom seemed absurd at first, but as he immersed himself more in the novel, Jack felt that the idea resonated deeply with him.
He himself was completely free in all he did, but only because there was no one else but him on the entire planet.
[To Be Continued in Expedition Nereus: Part Two]
Author's Note
First of all, I must thank my dear reader for withstanding my tongue-tied, uneven narration. Probably, the book has very raw sections (I wanted to remove brackets, but then at the last moment I kept them in because it was required in the logic of the narrative or my heart).
Secondly, I have to thank my editor, Maria Karmanova, a linguistic prodigy who is a genius in her field (I have not yet been able to find, during all our conversations, any book she had not read). She honestly searches every character of text. She carefully read each letter and insisted that the text be clear and logical to the reader. Before meeting her, I thought it was, but as it turned out, I sometimes famously missed in this regard. She once told me to "pray that the reader would be kind." And I've been praying all this time. And still…
Thirdly, Victoria Kertutskaya who recommended me my editor with the words “she's the best I have.”
I wish to express special words of gratitude to Andrei Vladimirovich Kurpatov, who agreed to read the first, still quite rough, version of the book. He had a terrible fight over the style, ambiguity, and lack of logic in some parts. But it was necessary and more than productive. Not only that, Andrei Vladimirovich himself writes a lot. He writes as a psychotherapist and as a methodologist of thinking, feeling the finer facets of the human psyche. His remarks pushed me to work through the characters and make them more voluminous and interesting (I will not say that I am completely happy with the result, but it was clearly better). I am also grateful to the Russian publishing house "Traktat" for the fact that it has printed this book at least three times (with different covers and corrected text).
Thanks to Alexandra Pchelkina (who sees the text in the same visual images as I do. And she did the first sketches of illustrations, drawing every detail).
Thank you to ArcInset OU for helping publish this book in English, and I am very grateful to Joshua Schiefelbein for translating and checking we were. I’m Glad we started collaborating with one another.
I have no words to express my joy that I was able to get to work with such talented artists as Victor Samoilenko (aka the Wookiee Chewbacca) and Anastasia Tupikova, both of whom produced real masterpieces... there are no words to describe my admiration. I hope the reader will share my delight!
I am obliged to thank Andrey Makashov for important corrections in the text concerning biochemistry and some aspects of xenobiology. Together we carefully read through each biological fact, finding scientific works and correcting if we saw discrepancies.
And now to thank everyone who was with me before and during the writing of the book, kicking, sitting at the table, guarding, and making sure that I wrote and was not distracted. A joke, of course, but only partly.
In 2016, we did research on "antistress" (relaxation). A good friend of mine, Danita Pushkareva, came to the study. We had once crossed paths during the work on the preparation of festivals for the new stage of Alexandrinsky Theater. One day, when I was taking off the electrodes, we talked about the psychophysiology of creativity. I let it slip that once I wrote a little, and that I had some unfinished stories. But I never published anything. She asked me to send her some. How surprised I was when the next time we met she told me that I was talented and had to write further. I wondered "what kind of talent", but that evening I sat and wrote the first page, which then disappeared (I deleted it, something I wasn't ashamed of).
Frankly, it's been a tough year. It was a little easier than the previous, but not much. Life has presented a few surprises (it probably also happens for you). I had to endure a lot: the betrayal of a friend, a huge financial loss, dismissal from work, and severe conflict with my family. The book was like a breath of fresh air.
I've been thinking about the story since 2006. An
d then this whole world of an alien planet invaded my mind. It attracted me and bounced around my head. And then ten years later I got such a push, an impulse. I threw myself into work. The world of Nereus (originally “Nero 8”) allowed me not to go mad, to escape back to the expanse of blue-green sand, to guide the hero through his trials, and to help him make new friends and understand the old.
Thank you to
Mattew Pavalic for reading my sketches in English (the first small pieces of text I wrote immediately in Russian and English).
Luba Evstigneeva, the best Anglophone I know (so many subtle features of old English texts, probably, very few people know) who corrected my translation of Kipling.
Maria Podurgina who believed in me. And when Vadim Pugach from the Writers Union told me that no one writes like this (he said kindly, honestly and professionally), you announced that... well, let it be your style. We laughed. I'm not sure this book would have happened without your support. You were there at the most difficult time, the one when I even wanted to perish. I'm glad that's over.
My friends, who even though they went to live in Europe, still strongly encouraged me.
Victoria Volokitina for the cover design and wonderful fonts.
Valery Chernyavsky for the first written reader's review in my life.
Alex Goljakov for simply supporting and listening to my ideas on books.
Dmitry Pilikin for important comments on the reflections of the hero.
Rodion Irodionov for tough but constructive criticism (even though it was not read to the end at the time of publication of the book).
Elena Zhavoronkina for reading NOT as a philologist (and she's a philologist and literary critic, so obviously it is not easy).
Dane (Scully) for insisting on not making Linda Robore “too one-sidedly bad”.
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