“Yes.”
“But wait. If I really was sent here, if I’m really the Beta who was born inside a sphere, why are there no Beta markers in my blood?”
“I can only presume that your body was modified to blend in with your surroundings.”
“So, what you’re saying is that I’m nothing more than someone’s creation? I’m a monster!” She was suddenly overwhelmed by her own thoughts.
“You are not a monster,” the voice said, “at least according to the definition I have just pulled from my records.”
She looked up at the wall, wishing that the voice were coming from a real person. Someone who could hold her and comfort her just then. “Then what am I?”
“You are the Emissary.”
She sat on the floor for several minutes, staring at nothing, trying to figure out what all of this meant. I’m not human. I’m a Beta. I’m artificial. She looked up at the wall. “What do I do now?” she asked, knowing the Hall of Records probably had no idea either.
“Like me, you must complete your programming; complete what you were sent here to do.”
She shrugged. “I guess I know quite a bit about them, about Jake and his crew. About humans.” She stood up and shook her head, feeling suddenly defiant. “But I will not help them. I will not help the Betas. I don’t care what my purpose was. Unless I have some sort of device planted inside of me that will make me turn against my friends, then I will not help them. I won’t do it.”
“My sensors tell me that you have no such device inside of you.”
“Good, then none of this means anything. The Betas don’t know where we are and I won’t tell them.”
“Incorrect. Your sphere has been transmitting its location ever since it was activated. We picked up its low-level beacon many months ago. They already know where you are, and they are coming for you.”
“What?” she gasped, suddenly worried they were about to burst through the door. “Where are they?”
A large grid appeared on the wall. On the side closest to her, she saw a small green dot with a number of thin blue lines spiraling out in all directions, and several meters to the right, along one of those lines, there was a group of amber dots packed closely together. She saw a third red dot moving slowly towards the amber group. “They are coming here? The Betas are coming here?”
“No,” the voice replied. “They are on a direct course to Civica colony.”
Apocalypse 03
“Glad you decided to join us, Captain,” Vee said from the kitchen area. “Grandpa and I, well, we sort of made a feast.”
“Trying to take our minds off our imprisonment,” Jake replied sarcastically, but then saw her face drop and immediately regretted it. “I’m sorry, Vee.” He looked around the room at the familiar faces. If this was a prison, at least he had friends with whom to share it. “I’m sorry for leaving you all back there and for hiding out in my room for so long.”
“We all have to come to grips with our situation,” Raines said. “You just chose to deal with it early.”
I wish it were that simple, he thought. Aloud, he thanked the two for making dinner and then proceeded to start setting the table. Jessie jumped up and joined him, reminding him which side of the plate the utensils went on; something he always got wrong.
When they all sat down, only then did Jake realize that Jane was not there. “Is Jane joining us tonight?” he asked Jessie.
“I don’t know,” she said, and then her eyes brightened as her brother came through the back door. “Ash!” she squealed. “Late for the work, but just in time for the food, as usual.”
Ash’s face was solemn. “I have news,” he said.
“What now?” AJ asked, standing up from the table.
Ash put his hands up. “Don’t worry. It’s not bad news. It’s...more like weird news.”
“Weird news?” Jessie asked.
“Yes,” Ash said as he walked up to the table. He noticed the food laid out and licked his lips. “Wow, that looks good. I’m not sure I really need to eat, but my stomach is telling me that I need to try.”
“The news?” AJ asked, sitting back down.
“Yes, tell us your weird news,” Vee added.
Ash stared at the food for a second longer and then shook his head and looked at Jake. “It’s weird because I don’t know how you’ll take it.”
“Just tell us,” Jake ordered.
“They,” he started to say and then pointed to the ceiling, “want to make us happy here.”
“We already know that,” Jake said, but then remembered that no one else in the room had been with him while his little sister tried to persuade him to find a way to do just that. “I mean, it’s obvious they want us to be happy here; it’s why they gave us this living space.”
Ash nodded. “Well...about that.”
Vee grabbed hold of her plate. “They’re not threatening to take all of this away, are they?”
Ash looked confused but then smiled. “Not exactly. They want to...change it.”
“Finally,” Wood said, speaking for the first time. “Someone heard my complaints about the water temperature in my shower.”
“Doctor,” AJ said.
“And a bathtub would be nice, and frankly, I’m not sure why it’s taken this long, considering that they can change—”
“Doctor,” AJ interrupted. “I think he’s talking about something more.” She looked back to Ash. “Aren’t you.”
The floor vibrated, and Jake looked at the faces around him and saw that they noticed it too. “What was that?” It came again, but then quickly developed into a rapid shutter. “What’s going on?”
“Quake?” Raines suggested.
Jane came running in through the back door. “What’s going on?”
Jessie ran over and pulled her over to the table. “Maybe we should get under it,” she said, pulling Jane to the floor with her. Wood dropped to his knees and crawled under with them.
Jake looked at Ash and saw that he was frowning, but otherwise looked calm. “Ash?”
Ash shook his head. “I was going to ask your permission, but I guess they decided to do it anyway.”
“Do what?” AJ yelled over the creaking sound building around them.
Suddenly the entire room jerked sideways and nearly everyone still standing fell to the floor. “We’re sliding down the mountain!” Vee yelled.
“We certainly are,” Ash said, still calm, still standing, despite what was about to happen to them all. The crash when they hit the bottom of the mountain would be brutal. Jake doubted that any of them would survive.
Then something quite impossible happened; the room became the galley of the Rogue Wave, complete with oval dining table and stairwell leading up to the bridge. Jake assumed he was dreaming, or perhaps hallucinating, but then AJ yelled, “How’d we get here?”
The floor shuttered hard one last time, and then leveled out. When the sound and vibration ceased, everyone rose to their feet. Before anyone could ask the obvious question, Ash answered it for them. “Welcome home, everyone.”
Jake ran his hand along the textured surface of the table and then hit it hard with his open hand, startling everyone. “I don’t want this,” he said to Ash. “I don’t want to live in a fantasy.”
“That’s what I was worried about, but it’s real, Captain.”
“I don’t care how real it looks, it’s just another simulation.”
“What’s wrong with a simulation?” Jessie asked, crawling out from under the table. “I missed this place.”
“If we have to spend the rest of our lives in this space, what’s wrong with making it look like our ship?” Vee asked.
“It’s not a simulation,” Ash said quietly.
“Whatever you call it,” Raines said, “it might be the same to you, but to us, there is a difference.”
“But...”
“It’s not the same,” AJ added.
“But it is the same,” Ash insisted. “They used the
scan of the Wave, and reproduced every molecule exactly.” He looked at AJ. “This isn’t a simulation; it’s what they call a conception—a physical copy of the Rogue Wave.” He looked back at Jake. “The one and only difference is that I asked them to replace our batteries so that we don’t have to worry about recharging them every few weeks.”
“What did they replace them with?” Raines asked.
“What the isopods use for power,” Ash said. “Sort of like capacitors, but more efficient than anything you’ve ever seen. We could run the thrusters full power for a year and have enough power left for another six months.”
“Eighteen months between charges?” Raines asked.
“And that’s going all out. If you—”
“None of this makes any sense,” Jake interrupted.
“This is their gift to you, Captain,” Ash said. “To you all. They really do want you all to be happy here.”
As Jake looked at the faces surrounding him, he realized someone was missing. “My father. Where’s my father?”
“He couldn’t come with us,” Ash said. “Or, at least, he said he wouldn’t come with us, because of this.” He lifted up his shirt and tapped his abdomen. A hole appeared in his skin, revealing the silver end of a small cylinder. “Since this ship is now separate from the torus, I need a portable power supply to remain whole.” He tapped his skin again and the opening disappeared without a trace.
“How did you do that?” Jessie asked, touching his stomach.
His face turned red. “I discovered that I can...alter my body somewhat.”
“What do you mean,” she asked.
He pointed to his chin and Jake noticed for the first time that the scars on his face and neck were gone. “You can change the way you look?”
“Yeah, and it’s kind of great and kind of weird at the same time. I just visualize what I want to happen and it just happens. I can’t really explain it any better.” He looked at his sister. “I guess it means I’ll never get old.”
“That would be nice,” Jake said, then pointed to Ash’s stomach. “Can’t my father do the same thing? Don’t you have more of those power supplies?”
“There are several of them on this ship, but he refuses to put one inside himself. In fact, he won’t even try to change his looks. He says it makes him feel ‘less human.’”
Jake rubbed his own stomach. “I guess I understand that.”
“Anyone else notice that the floor is still moving?” Wood asked.
Jake finally realized it as well and looked at Ash. “More changes?”
Ash looked at the stairwell leading up to the bridge. “Go see for yourself.”
AJ beat them all to the steps and raced up ahead of Jake. When they reached the top step, they all saw water and the distant shoreline out the viewports. “Where are we?” Raines asked when he made it to the top.
“This is that huge lake, isn’t it?” Jessie said, running to her station to get a better view out the side viewport. “The one we saw when Ash disappeared.”
“Not technically a lake,” Ash corrected as he came up last. “It’s seawater.”
“It’s their internal ocean,” Jane said from the forward command station. How she always got past everyone was one of her many mysteries.
Jake walked up and stood in front of the chart table beside AJ. The motion of the floor was beginning to make him feel queasy. “I suppose you’ll tell me that this is real, as well.”
Ash placed a hand against his stomach. “A little too real, if you ask me.”
“Well, now we know why it felt like we were sliding down the side of the mountain,” Raines said. “Because it seems that we did exactly that.” He then knitted his eyebrows and said to Ash, “Wait a minute. I thought these machines were low on resources. What would make them build something this big for us?”
Ash shrugged. “This ship is really quite small by their standards, and I guess you could say it’s a long-term loan.”
Jake nodded and then whispered to AJ, “I don’t suppose they would let us take it outside the torus for a while.”
Ash frowned. “What do you suppose we could do if they did let us out? Even if we could catch up with the isopods, which we can’t, how do you propose to stop an entire army of them?”
“Can’t you talk to them? Make them stop what they’re doing?” Vee asked.
Ash shook his head. “As odd as it might seem to you, I don’t have any special connection to the machines that run this place. As the Hall of Records explained, everything here is independent of everything else.”
“But they created you,” AJ said and then glanced at Jessie. “I’m sorry to put it so bluntly, but it’s true.”
Ash looked at his sister and then back to AJ. “It’s okay. I’m starting to accept who I am, even though inside I feel like nothing has changed; I still feel like Ash Fields. Big brother to my little sister and navigator of the Rogue Wave.”
AJ nodded. “But you have to have some sort of connection to them. Some way to communicate with them.”
“If you were to give birth to a child, could that child read your mind? Could that child control your actions? It’s the same with me.”
“So you’re saying that you’re on our side, right?” Jessie asked.
“Sis, if I knew of a way to break you out of this place, I would tell you in a heartbeat. I would give my life again to help you.”
“Just promise me one thing,” Jake interrupted. “Promise me this thing won’t run low on power, dissolve, and drown us all.”
Ash shook his head. “It can’t dissolve, Captain, because it’s—”
“I know,” Jake said, “it’s real. I hope you don’t mind if we check it out a bit before signing off on your gift.”
Ash nodded. “Certainly, but remember, it’s not my gift. It’s theirs.”
Wood called from down in the galley. “Can someone please make the floor stop rocking? Also, there’s a pot of what seems to be fresh coffee down here.”
AJ looked at Vee. “Fill the ballast tanks and take us below the surface.”
When she started to move, Jake added, “Don’t go exploring just yet. Just park us somewhere where there’s no current.” He then addressed the rest of the crew. “Let’s all give her a full checkout. All systems—everything. Top to bottom, stem to stern.”
“I realize it’s been a while, but I think we know what to do, Captain,” AJ said with a wink. As he started to walk away, she nudged his shoulder. “You know, if this is real...” she left the thought hanging.
He started to respond, but then remembered his conversation with Juli, and Waved her off as he headed down the stairs. “We’ll talk about it later.”
AJ followed him down to the galley. “How about we talk about it now?”
Jake ignored her and addressed Dr. Wood who was standing on the other side of the table looking at them both. “Doctor, I’d like you to check out the medical bay. See if all of your instruments actually work like they’re supposed to.”
Wood looked at AJ. “I’m much more interested in what your second in command wants to talk to you about.”
“You can leave now, Doctor,” AJ said, not bothering to look at him. He stared at them both for a moment, then refilled his cup with coffee, and headed down to C-deck without another word.
“You know there’s no chance we can do what you’re thinking,” Jake said when Wood was out of earshot.
“I wouldn’t say there is no chance,” she said, sitting down at the table, “but it’s certainly more of a chance than we had an hour ago, wouldn’t you agree?”
He glanced at both staircases, then sat down next to her and lowered his voice. “Listen, AJ, I’m not going to pretend that this is a perfect situation, but at some point, you’re going to have to face facts.”
“And what facts are those?” She crossed her arms, the way she always did when she was preparing to argue with him.
I have to convince her, he thought. The crew’s more likely to f
ollow her than me in this. “I know that you want to get back to Civica, but even if this turns out to be a fully-functional ship, and even if we found a way to escape this place, it took us a month to get here, and we very nearly died trying. Those hunter-isopods, or whatever they are, will be at Civica within two days.” He glanced around the empty galley to make sure no one was listening. “Do I really need to say anymore?”
Her face darkened, but she didn’t argue the point. “So you think we will be trapped here for the rest of our lives?”
Juli’s warning came back to him: that his crew would follow whatever course he chose. “Do you really feel trapped here?” he asked, waving his hand around the galley. “I thought you planned to spend your life on board a ship.”
She looked around the room. “I think that I said I’ve spent most of my life on ships; I’m pretty sure I didn’t say I wanted to spend the rest of it inside one.”
He shook his head. “Well, you didn’t look all that comfortable back in my mother’s village.”
She playfully slapped his arm. “There was no one who looked more out of place than you, Jake. I think even Dr. Wood would have lasted longer if it came down to it.”
He felt his shoulders genuinely relax. “I’ll try not to take that personally, but you’re right. I wasn’t cut out for primitive life. I think that deep down, I’m a bit like Raines; I like tinkering with technology. You know, fixing things, or at least, making things last a bit longer.”
“So, you would be happy living on this ship for the next fifty years?”
The question triggered something inside him and he stared at her. Suddenly, fifty years didn’t seem so long. “I probably could if you, I mean, all of you, were around to keep me company.”
She didn’t appear to catch his near omission. “Maybe they would let us build a small city inside,” she said, her eyes lost in thought. “You know; something more substantial than a grass-hut village, but bigger than a single ship.” She refocused on him. “I guess I could get used to something like that. Maybe build that Guild bar we talked about.”
He nodded. “This is why we left Civica, isn’t it? To find a new home?”
Novum Chronicles: A Dystopian Undersea Saga Page 37