Novum Chronicles: A Dystopian Undersea Saga

by Joseph Rhea Rhea

  “After I beat you,” Ash said, “I’m going to take all of these beans and go upstairs and brew up the strongest pot of coffee this ship has ever smelled.” He tossed his die on the table, and it came up five. He smiled. “And then, I’m going to drink that entire pot of coffee all by myself, right in front of you.”

  Without another word, Raines tossed his die on the table. The look of shock on Ash’s face told Jake the outcome.

  “Ahhhhh!” Ash yelled as he jumped up and stomped across the room. “I can’t believe it! I can’t believe it!”

  Instead of gloating, the older man calmly pulled the pile of beans to his side of the table and counted them one by one. Then he walked up to Ash and held out his hand.

  “What’s this?” Ash asked.

  “Your allotment,” Raines replied.

  Ash looked stunned. “Why? After what I said, how can you be so generous?”

  “Oh, on the contrary,” Raines said. “I’m actually being quite selfish. We have a lot of time to kill in the weeks ahead. You are the best Hex player aboard, and I like to play. If you don’t have beans, you can’t play.”

  Ash opened his hands and accepted the beans. “You’re a better man than I am, Norman Raines.”

  The engineer smiled and returned to the table. “Well, that goes without saying.”

  Jessie giggled and then said, “I’m going to beat both of you the next round.”

  “Join us, Captain?” Raines asked, acknowledging Jake’s presence for the first time.

  He started to reply when Vee’s voice called from the overhead speaker. “Captain to the bridge.”

  Jake looked at Jane then back at the others in the room. “Well, I guess I’ll hold on to my beans a bit longer,” he said then stepped out of the doorway and jogged up the stairs.

  When he reached the bridge, he saw Vee and AJ staring at what looked like a cloud of static hovering above the center chart table. “What is that?” he asked, dumbfounded.

  “You mean, what are they?” AJ corrected him.

  “They?” he asked as he felt a shiver run down his spine. AJ adjusted something on the table, and a model of the Rogue Wave appeared in the middle of the cloud. If the scale was accurate, the cloud was at least fifty times larger than his ship. “I don’t understand. What am I looking at?”

  “We don’t know,” Vee said. “They vary in size, but none of them are larger than about ten centimeters.”

  He put the book he was carrying on the console and peered out of the side viewport. This far away from the colony, he could see only black out there, even with the window’s low light filters pushed to max. “Where are they?”

  “Keep watching,” Vee said then veered the ship slightly to port. Outside, a thousand points of light appeared, but then immediately flicked off.

  “They look like stars, don’t they?” AJ said, standing beside him.

  Jake shook his head. “The stars in Capitol City aren’t that bright, even the ones they repaired last year.” He looked at Vee. “Do it again.”

  As she nudged the ship back to starboard, the sea lit up again. When they winked off, he looked back at the size of the cloud on the chart table. “How...how many do you think there are?”

  “No way to tell,” Vee replied. “They don’t give off a metallic signature.”

  “Maybe you need to get Jessie up here. She’s the acoustics expert.” He suddenly froze then turned to Vee. “Signature?” he asked, stunned. “Tell me you’re not actively pinging them.”

  AJ stood up. “Of course we are. They don’t give off any acoustic signals themselves. We wouldn’t even know they are out there if Vee hadn’t been bored. They actually seem to be attracted to—”

  “Stop it,” Jake yelled, as he switched off the chart projection. As the particles dropped back down to the table’s surface, he turned and reached for the acoustics console to his right but stopped short. He had a basic understanding of all bridge operations, but acoustics was a bit of an art form. Moreover, Jessie had configured her dashboard in a way that only made sense to her. He looked back at his first mate. “You need to shut off the transmitters.”

  Before AJ could respond, Jessie slid under Jake’s outstretched arms and in to her chair. “Don’t sweat it, Captain,” she said.

  He turned to her. “I will sweat it, if you don’t mind,” he said as he wiped actual beads of perspiration from his forehead.

  “It’s not what you think, Jake,” AJ said. She always used his first name when she was trying to calm him down. In the past week, she had started using his first name more and more.

  “Do you know that for a fact?” he asked.

  “Know what?” Ash asked as he came up the stairs. “We could hear you guys yelling all the way down on C-deck.”

  “Nothing,” AJ said. “Just an old sailor’s story.”

  “I love old sailor’s stories,” he said as he dodged the chart table and went to sit at his navigation console in the bow.

  “You won’t like this one,” Jake said, then turned back to Jessie. “Is it off?”

  Jessie touched her dashboard and then gave him a stiff salute. “Active acoustics are disabled until you say otherwise, Sir.”

  Jake nodded and then looked at the others. “Listen, people. We are all alone out here.”

  “You don’t have to remind us of that,” Vee interrupted.

  “What I mean,” Jake said more calmly, “is that when you are walking the streets at night all alone, you don’t Wave your light stick around. That invites every mugger on the block to come and rob you.”

  “Wow,” Ash said. “What kind of neighborhood did you grow up in?”

  “My point is that we don’t know what’s out here, but we can assume that anything we find will be dangerous.”

  “What are these sailor’s stories?” Vee asked. “I’d love to hear them.”

  Jake turned to her. “You’re off shift now, aren’t you?”

  Vee nodded sheepishly then sat down on the now dark chart table. “I’d like to stay up here, if you don’t mind,” she said. “With the rec room turned off, there’s not much to keep us occupied during off hours.”

  Jake nodded then looked at the others in the room. “Look, people, we are a week and a half into this trip and we could have up to three more weeks to go. You have to find things to occupy your time or you’ll go crazy. Or you’ll drive me crazy.”

  There was silence for several seconds, and then AJ spoke. “Good pep talk, Sir. I’m sure we’ll all be fine now.”

  Jake felt anger building in him, but then everyone broke out into laughter. When he realized the joke, he forced a smile. “All right. Just for that, extra rations for everyone.”

  Ash grabbed his throat. “No, not that. It’s too horrible of a punishment. No more corn!”

  Everyone laughed again, but deep down, Jake knew this was what Captain Coal would have called “gallows” humor. They were heading away from civilization toward a destination that most likely didn’t even exist. If they didn’t reach it, they would die out there. First, they would starve as the food ran out, then the batteries would go and they would die slowly as the breathable air was used up. It was not a pretty thought.

  “Okay,” AJ said, as the laughter died down. “Vee, you’ve got the oh-six-hundred shift, and you need to get some rest. That’s an order.” A few days earlier, they had switched from four-hour bridge watches to six, at AJ’s recommendation. As she passed Jake, she added, “I’m on at midnight, so I’m going to bed now.” She looked at Jake. “Coming, Captain?”

  Ash cocked an eyebrow, and Jake knew why. “I’m serious, Ash. Extra corn if you don’t stow it.”

  Ash dropped the brow and nodded. “Aye aye, Sir.”

  Jake looked at his first mate. “Actually, I just woke up. I... I guess I forgot what shift I was on.”

  “You? Sleeping in the afternoon?” AJ mocked.

  Jake shook his head. “I thought it was morning. To be honest, I was never very good at shift wo
rk.”

  “It happens,” she said. “Well, see you all at dinner then.”

  Rubicon 02

  After dinner, Jake was heading to his quarters when AJ stepped out of her door across the hallway. “Turning in early?” she asked.

  “Actually, I’m...” He couldn’t think of a way to say it that didn’t sound stupid. “I’m going to do a little writing.”

  “In the book?”

  “Wait. You know about the book?”

  She nodded. “Jane gave all of us copies, with instructions to tell our version of events since we’ve been on board the ship. But I think you’re the only one who has admitted to writing in it yet.”

  His earlier embarrassment faded. “To be honest, it actually does calm my nerves a bit. I thought writing about the past year would be like reliving the past, but it feels good getting it on paper.”

  She smiled. “You sound like Norman. I think you need to get off the ship for a while.”

  Now he smiled. “Wouldn’t that be nice?”

  “No, I mean it. You should visit Rem Town tonight.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Don’t tell me you’re involved in that.”

  She shrugged. “We all are, even Dr. Wood.”

  He shook his head. “I never got into shared dreaming, even back when I was a kid. It seems a little too personal for me.”

  “With the rec room shut down, we don’t have an easy way to escape the daily routine. Rem Town might not be as versatile as a true simulation, but it’s still pretty nice.”

  “So, it really doesn’t use any external power?”

  Her eyes widened. “You’re telling me that you’ve never tried it? In your entire life?”

  He shuffled his feet. “My parents were pretty strict when I was a kid. They said they worked long hours to give me access to the surface dome and therefore didn’t let me do any simulations at all.”

  She stepped back inside her quarters then brought out a pair of ear buds and handed them to him. “I’m on shift at midnight so you can use mine. Vee and Jane are already connected. If you want to try it out, they can show you around the place. Vee’s the one who did most of the work setting it up.”

  He looked at the dreamset in his hands. “I don’t know how to use these.”

  She put a hand on his shoulder and pushed him towards his door. “Lay back on your bed and stick them in your ears. There’s nothing to it.” He wanted to ask more questions, but she turned and said, “Just close your eyes and enjoy the experience. Look for Jane and Vee in the club.”

  “How do I find it?” he called after her, but his door closed before he could finish.

  He looked at the open book on his desk and then at his bed. Maybe for an hour or so, he thought, just to see what it’s like.

  The moment he closed his eyes, he found himself in the center of a brightly lit city at night. The buildings around him were impossibly tall, nothing that could actually fit inside a real dome. And there were people everywhere, more people than he had ever seen on the streets of Capitol City. Of course, there, most people lived below the streets, down in the lower levels. Only the rich and well connected ever spent much time topside.

  AJ said that he would find Vee and Jane in a place called the club, and as he thought those words, a passerby stopped and pointed towards his right and nodded her head. This was a dream simulation, he reminded himself, so people reading his mind was probably to be expected.

  It took him a few minutes to figure out how to walk normally. In recreation rooms, walking meant utility fog sliding under your feet and took some getting used to for first timers. Here, it was actually much easier once you let go of the fact that your body was lying in your bed, and just tried to live in the moment.

  A few blocks away he found what he was looking for; a large circular building with the words “The Club” in giant, multicolored flashing letters. Inside, he discovered that it was a dance club, and it was so crowded he could barely move. Even so, after so many months living on board the Wave, the room seemed huge, and the crowd felt welcoming. Everyone had a drink in hand, and the music was blaring. He could have just stood there in that one spot for the next hour and would have enjoyed the experience.

  When an attractive woman walked up and offered him a tall glass from a tray she was carrying, he awkwardly brushed the hair over his ear and felt an ear bud, a stark reminder that this was all a fantasy. He could have pulled the buds out at that moment, ending the dream. Instead, he accepted the drink, thanked the woman politely, and then proceeded to look for his two crewmembers.

  He found them a few minutes later, standing next to each other on the far end of the circular dance floor. He dodged his way through the crowd of dancers and watchers, then slid up behind them unnoticed.

  “Having fun?” he asked.

  Jane turned first. “Jake! So glad you joined us.”

  Vee was less excited to see him. “What are you doing here, Captain? Is my shift up?”

  He shook his head as he watched a couple dancing nearby. “Relax,” he said. “I’m off duty too. I just wanted to see what all the fuss was about. Besides, this isn’t me, remember? I’m in my quarters.”

  “Well, in that case,” Vee said, swallowing her drink and grabbing one of his hands. Jane did the same as they pulled him on to the dance floor.

  “No, thank you,” he said as he tried to politely pull away from them. “I don’t dance.”

  “This isn’t you, remember?” Vee said as she started gyrating to the music, still holding on to his hand.

  Jane copied her movements perfectly, almost as though she was mirroring her. “Come on, Jake. Loosen up.”

  He felt awkward at first, but with the heavy beat of the music vibrating in his chest, it helped him relax a bit. Even the drink tasted more real than a rec room version, which surprised him. He silently scolded his parents for not allowing him an experience like this.

  The beat suddenly dropped its tempo, and he saw people around him taking partners to slow dance. Vee smiled and pushed Jane towards him. “I’ll take the next dance,” she said then grabbed another man and spun away into the crowd.

  Jane put her arms around his torso and pressed her body tight against his. It felt more like hugging than dancing as they swayed back and forth to the music, but he wasn’t complaining. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. So, this must be what relaxing feels like, he said to himself.

  At some point in the evening, he must have drifted off to sleep, because he awoke in his room with a smile on his face. The peaceful moment lasted nearly five minutes, until he heard something horrible outside of his door.

  Rubicon 03

  Jake bolted out of his room and ran up the stairs to the bridge, his ears plugged by his index fingers in a futile attempt to block the loud static blasting from the overhead speakers. “What the bilge is going on?”

  “Isn’t it beautiful?” Jessie replied from her acoustics console. When he shook his head, fingers still protruding from his ears, she frowned and tapped something on her dashboard.

  The sound stopped abruptly, but when he uncovered his ears, he could still hear a distant ringing. He wasn’t sure whether it was coming from the speakers or just an aftereffect of the assault on his eardrums. “What in the sea are you listening to?” he asked.

  “Music,” Jessie said and then leaned her head back and closed her eyes, head swaying back and forth to some unknown rhythm.

  “You call that music?” he asked, trying to sound calm. The thought of one of his crew going crazy so soon on a month-long trip was more than a little disconcerting. He looked at the clock and saw that it was oh seven hundred. “Where’s Ash or Vee? Why are you on the bridge alone?”

  She nodded, her eyes still closed. He was about to ask again when someone poked him in the back. Startled, he pivoted around so fast he nearly hit Vee in the face with his right hand.

  “Sorry, Captain,” she snickered. “I thought you were Ash.”

  “Did you tell th
e others?” Jessie asked as Vee walked past.

  Vee sat down at her helm station without answering. “What’s the frequency?” she asked as she put her own headphones on.

  “Everybody stop,” Jake said, his hands raised in frustration. “Will someone tell me what’s going on?” He looked at Jessie. “You’re not pinging those things out there again, are you?”

  Jessie shook her head and pointed to her headphones.

  “What are you listening to?” he asked.

  She stared at him for a moment, her face drooping slightly. “The last sounds we’re ever going to hear,” she finally said. “From home.”

  Jake stood there a moment, letting her words sink in. Then he turned and picked up the headphones on the engineering console. “I want to hear it,” he said.

  Jessie raised her hands. “I think I can clean it up enough to put on the overheads.” The static blasted from the speakers again, but before Jake could cover his ears, it faded away, and a sound almost forgotten filled the room. Music.

  “Where’s it coming from,” Ash asked as he came up the stairs.

  “I don’t know,” Jessie admitted. “I was skimming the channels because, you know, there’s not much else to do, and I just picked it up.”

  “Can you clean it up a little more?” Raines asked as he rose up the stairwell next, followed by AJ.

  “Did I miss anything?” AJ asked as she walked past Jake and sat down on the chart table.

  “Only a few minutes,” Jessie said. “Where are the others? They will want to hear this too.”

  “I’m here,” a small voice whispered from the bottom of the stairwell. Jake looked down and saw Jane sitting in her usual fetal position on the bottom step.

  He flashed back to how she looked at him while dancing in Rem Town, but quickly put the thought away. “You know you can come up to the bridge,” he offered.

  “I’m fine here,” she replied as she wrapped her arms tightly around her legs. He was tempted to go down and sit with her, but then Dr. Wood appeared around the corner of the galley and looked up at him.