by Karl Beecher
There was no response.
Don't leave me, Klablath. Please.
Klablath, please.
Klablath?
41
Colin drifted in and out of consciousness.
He stirred and found himself being loaded onto a stretcher. Tyresa and Robbi were still there, as were a couple of medics.
He blacked out for another moment before waking again to see the corridors of Lowcuzt's compound sweeping past. The medics ran alongside his stretcher. Tyresa and Robbi were no longer visible. He tried to crane his neck to look for them, but his body was still totally inert. He felt scared.
His vision faded away.
An indeterminate time later, he became aware of flying in a shuttle. Tyresa and Robbi were there too, sitting beside him and watching him intently. The sight of them calmed his fears a little.
From the corner of his eye, hidden from the medics, he caught sight of Robbi and Tyresa surreptitiously holding hands.
He faded away again.
Colin was surprised to find himself floating through outer space. He felt wonderfully calm and serene, which immediately betrayed that this wasn't reality.
Soon enough, he saw a familiar face materialise before him.
"Is it really you?" he asked. "Or is this just a dream?"
"It is a dream in a manner of speaking," replied Klablath, "but it is really me. I've arranged for us to speak together in the serenity of your subconscious. This way, your emotions will remain much milder. I thought it better that way."
"That doesn't fill me with confidence," replied Colin.
Klablath nodded gently. "This will be our final encounter."
It sounded an awful lot like the Predecessor had failed to persuade his fellows: Colin felt very little sadness, only an impassive acknowledgement that this was essentially the end.
"Is there nothing we can do?" he asked. "I mean, if you're worried about interfering with human history, I'm sure there's somewhere we could go where we'd bother nobody. A desert island—or a desert planet, I suppose. I could go and live out the rest of my days there alone, eating coconuts or whatever. You could operate my body for me. I could tell you which bits to move and when and…"
His voice trailed off. Even Colin could tell it was a lousy idea, almost as bad as when he'd thought of pretending to be the Abramans' prophet. It came as no surprise to see Klablath shaking his head.
"I'm sorry," said the Predecessor. "The decision is not mine. My people will be calling me home soon. Besides, I'm not convinced that you would enjoy living like a hermit."
"Oh, I don't know," replied Colin. "It would be pretty much identical to my life back on Earth. I've not exactly lived an adventurous existence, you know. I guess that's the way I like it."
"Really?" said Klablath, sounding unconvinced. "You would not regret that choice? I see it differently."
"What do you mean?"
"As you mention your home planet, I sense something in you. Don't forget, I can see into your mind. You may be able to fool yourself, but you can't as easily fool me. You feel there is something unresolved, a great, pressing question, a question that you would be prepared to go further than you thought possible in order to find an answer."
Colin sensed what he was driving at. "Yes," he admitted. "I suppose I would like to have known what happened to Earth while I was gone, why it died."
"Yes, but there's more than that. A desire to stay with your new friends, Tyresa and Ade. Despite everything, you find you enjoy being with them."
Colin sighed. "Yes, I suppose I do."
"And, looking back, you have found some satisfaction in your adventures together."
"Well, maybe I wouldn't use the word satisfaction, but…all right, I'll grant you that one too."
"In fact," continued Klablath, "there is one incident in particular, on Procya. For a brief moment, you were optimistic and hopeful, true?"
"That's right," said Colin, feeling the mildest embarrassment. "I got it into my head that I could help the Abramans by posing as their prophet. It was a stupid idea."
"But one that filled you with purpose. However misguided, it made you feel like you really mattered. Loathe as you are to admit it, coming to the future has made you feel alive for the first time in your life."
There was no point denying it. "Something like that," Colin conceded. "But it seems to have all come a bit late, sadly. Still… no sense in regrets. It might have been fun at times, I admit, but I suppose I'm not exactly suited to the future."
A moment passed in silence.
"There is one thing I could do for you," said Klablath finally. "Something that might make our final moments together more pleasant. My people and I have now learned much about humanity. Partly from encounters with you, which gave me a glimpse into your mind and your knowledge. We are also discovering much from Crzethnuk, who is being interrogated as we speak. It transpires that he learned much during his stay in the corporeal realm. We have put all this information together to deduce a theory on what happened to humanity between your entry into stasis and subsequent revival. Would you like to hear our theory? It would at least provide a possible answer to that pressing question in your mind."
Colin's curiosity was piqued, although very mildly owing to the ongoing suppression of his emotions. "Sure," he replied.
"Very well." Klablath proceeded with his explanation. "It is assumed by many in your species today that humans became spacefaring at some point in the past and then lost that ability due to some unknown interstellar disaster, popularly known as the Breakdown. This caused humans to lose both faster-than-light travel and interplanetary communication. This theory is very likely false."
"False?" said Colin. "How do you know?"
"Shortly before our ascension, we saw your planet as a promising location for the development of intelligent life, so we placed a beacon on a neighbouring planet for you to discover. And, so the theory went, we would come into contact automatically when you first began venturing from your homeworld. However, that didn't happen. What's more, Solo III is now dead, and the beacon on Solo IV remained undisturbed until only a few days ago. Somehow humanity missed the beacon. We see only one plausible possibility.
"You see, Solo IV shows no obvious signs of attempted settlement by humans. None of the planets in Solo do, but that contradicts how spacefaring species develop. Normally, they first create settlements on local planets before discovering faster-than-light travel and moving to other stars. So, what happened in the case of humans? Likely, the Solo star system was abandoned before any settlement could happen."
"Abandoned?" said Colin. "You think we abandoned our own solar system?"
"Yes," replied Klablath. "And with very great desperation, for people abandoned it in a manner which meant they didn't expect to return. Why? Likely because Solo III was dying."
"Dying?"
"Solo III is the way it is today because of complete climatic collapse. That collapse happened before humans developed terraformation. We know this because geoplanetary engineering—the ability to transform an uninhabitable planet into a habitable one—takes a very long time and is a much more sophisticated technology than, say, stasis or sub-light interstellar travel. Thus, for a pre-light speed species facing the destruction of its homeworld and having no other habitable planets nearby, the only option would be to abandon their star system altogether and find a planet elsewhere.
"Our surmise is that, at some point after your entry into stasis, a climatic disaster occurred. In desperation, humanity used its last scraps of vitality to create a fleet of slower-than-light spaceships. Those ships, perhaps a few dozen, were stocked with colonists in suspended animation and sent on one-way journeys to a selection of nearby star systems. The lucky ones would awaken decades or even centuries later to find themselves arriving at a habitable planet.
"The rest of history plays out as one might expect. The lucky colonists settle their new worlds but lose touch with all the other colonies. Over the follo
wing centuries, they each build up into thriving new societies until the discovery of faster-than-light travel enables them to re-establish contact with one another. The development of light-speed was probably a result of someone discovering and reverse-engineering a Predecessor artifact. Which reminds me: we really should apologise for leaving such a mess behind. We didn't do as thorough a job of tidying up after ourselves as we would have wished."
"Oh," said Colin. "Erm… don't mention it."
This talk of light speed and beacons reminded him of the various diagrams and maps that the artifact on Mars had forced into his head.
"So, you didn't intend to tell humans all about warp engines and such?"
"No," replied Klablath. "As I said before, the beacon on Solo IV was sabotaged. Crzethnuk sabotaged it. His plan was always to leave behind some means of returning after our ascension, but since the Predecessors were giving up physical bodies, he also knew there'd be no way for Predecessors to exist in the corporeal realm. He solved that problem with possession, the entering of a physical body via an interdimensional portal. He knew he couldn't turn the beacon on Solo IV into a portal, that would have been far too obvious, but he could at least hide a second portal elsewhere and seed the first one with instructions which would go unnoticed."
"All those maps and diagrams of warp engines?"
"Exactly. They would lure the discoverer to the second beacon Crzethnuk had secretly placed on Alcentor, a beacon which did act as a portal. But, since the first beacon was never discovered, that information ended up serving no use. Humanity arrived at Alcentor, and the beacon was discovered accidentally years later by Lowcuzt Null. I can only imagine Crzethnuk's surprise after he came through the portal to find Alcentor already inhabited by billions of humans. It turned out better than he could have dreamed; a planet full of vessels for the souls of him and his followers. The rest of us Predecessors would have been forced to watch this mass possession powerless to prevent it, were it not for a freak accident."
"You mean our connection?"
"Yes. When the beacon scanned your mind, a trace of the interdimensional rift energy became snagged on the damage caused by your disease. It created a kind of unreliable communication channel between you and me. Were it not for that, you would now be overrun by renegade Predecessors."
Colin took a moment to process what he was being told. He felt mildly excited at being privy to this knowledge. However, as he absorbed everything, his excitement faded away and turned to disappointment.
"You know, it just occurred to me: I'm the only human who knows this," he lamented. "And I won't be able to tell anyone. You just laid out the real history of humanity, but in a moment you'll be gone, and I'll be left practically brain-dead."
"Yes," said Klablath. "But does it not satisfy you to know?"
"I suppose it should," replied Colin. "But what's the point of just me knowing? Think of what I could have done with this information."
"I'm intrigued. What would you have done?"
Colin ran it through his mind. "Dunno, really. I could have shared it with people, told everyone. Although, I guess they wouldn't believe me. I'd be seen as just some crazy old caveman ranting away. I suppose I could have gone looking for evidence to back it up, then I'd be harder to ignore. But I wouldn't know how to do that." Then he had an idea. "Tyresa would. That'd be right up her alley. I could have told her, then she could have gone and found the evidence. In fact, I'd quite like to have gone with her and helped out."
"Interesting," observed Klablath. "I sense it within you again."
As Klablath spoke, a dim, white light emanated from somewhere in the surrounding infinity and encapsulated him. A distant, continuous sound, low and choral, echoed sweetly.
"Sense what?" asked Colin.
"The optimism. The sense of purpose."
The stars around them began to dim, leaving behind empty blackness. The image of Klablath began to fade away.
"You're leaving?" Colin asked.
"Unfortunately, our time together has reached an end. We ought to say our farewells."
"Please stay," begged Colin. "Don't leave and condemn me."
"Alas, it is out of my hands now. But hold onto that sense of purpose, Colin Douglass, nurture that optimism."
"Hold onto it?" scoffed Colin. "What's the point, what hope is left for me now?"
"Oh, you'd be surprised," the Predecessor replied. "If I were you, I'd take that plan you just formulated and try to turn it into a reality. And don't worry about pride of authorship. You take our theory; it's yours. Go out and prove it."
"What are you talking about?" said Colin. "As soon as you leave, I'm dead."
"Don't be so sure. It's an exciting multiverse. Anything can happen."
Klablath continued melting away. He was barely visible now.
"One last thing," he said in a fading voice. "Thank you."
"For what?"
"On a personal level, I've learned something through our exchanges, or I should say rediscovered something."
"What's that?"
"You spoke of empathy, did you not?" asked Klablath. "Empathy, Colin Douglass. I've learned that it's a helluva drug!"
The Predecessor beamed with a broad smile before finally vanishing.
A moment later, the universe around Colin softened into nothingness, and his perception was snuffed out like a candle.
42
Colin awoke, hearing voices.
"I must make another examination," one voice said. It sounded like Doctor Zeddex. "We should sit him up."
"I'll take care of it," someone else replied. Tyresa's voice. "This button?"
"Affirmative."
Colin heard the gentle whirr of a motor.
He opened his eyes. He appeared to be on a bed inside a small room, a white, sterile-looking one, presumably in a hospital. He couldn't see much else, because Tyresa was reaching over him with her armpit hovering only a couple of inches from his face. He was moving slowly and inexorably towards it.
The bodily odour wafted into his nostrils.
"Pewww!" exclaimed Colin. "When did she last have a shower?"
"Shut up, you ungrateful bastard," Tyresa shot back. "Don't you know how long I've—"
She froze momentarily and then stepped back, looking at him in astonishment.
"Colin?!"
Something had sounded different about his last ‘thought.' "Erm…yes," he said. "Sorry, did I say that out loud?"
Tyresa grabbed him by the shoulders, and her face broke into euphoria. "Yes!" she cried. "Yes, you did. It was a shitty thing to say, but you said it out loud."
"I can speak?"
He took a deep breath, not an automatic one but a deep, controlled breath.
"I can move!" he yelled. He felt himself make a fist, then he raised his arm to bring it into view. Exhilaration surged through him. He shot up in the bed. "I can move!"
Tyresa flung her arms around him. "You're back!"
Over her shoulder, Colin saw Robbi and Doctor Zeddex standing at the foot of his bed. They smiled at him, like two proud but undemonstrative Victorian parents. This was probably the Transhacker version of elation.
The Doctor came forward to inspect him, looking curiously into his eyes and checking his pulse. "Most remarkable, Colin Douglass. Your catatonic state appears to have completely rescinded. How do you feel?"
Colin tried to take stock. "I feel…well, I feel just fine."
Tyresa finally let Colin go. "What happened to you?"
Colin struggled to think. By rights, he should be lying in a coma now that Klablath had gone. Or had he actually gone after all? Colin called out the Predecessor's name in his mind, but no answer came back.
He looked at Tyresa. "I don't know. I really don't know. Where am I?"
"We're in a hospital," she replied. "We've been here several hours. You've been catatonic the whole time."
As she spoke, the door opened and in walked a tall, handsome Transhacker in a pristine white uniform. Who
ever he was, he looked angry.
Doctor Zeddex turned to greet the stranger. "Doctor Tempa, a most gratifying development. Colin Douglass has revived."
But this man, Doctor Tempa, merely scowled at Colin. "I don't doubt that." He aimed his glare towards Zeddex. "Doctor, do you know what place this is?"
Zeddex frowned. "A frivolous question, citizen. Of course I do. This is a hospital."
"Correct," barked Tempa. "And as such, it is a serious place. Pranks and high jinks may be acceptable in the military, but here we do not appreciate our time being wasted!"
Doctor Zeddex stiffened in indignation. "I find your words egregious, citizen. We have come here with a plus-urgent case."
"I know what you claimed was there." Tempa produced a slate that had been hanging under his arm and thrust it at Zeddex. "But perhaps you'd like to explain this: the results of the brain scan we took."
She took the slate and peered at the screen.
"But…" stuttered Zeddex, looking bewildered. "But this is impossible…"
"It's quite real," replied Tempa. "In fact, we used a second scanning machine because we thought the first had developed a fault. We consulted several additional med personnel. We even called out the engineers to inspect the machines. You can appreciate the cost to us in time and resources, I'm sure. But the machines are in perfect working order and what you see is the undeniable truth."
Tempa glowered at Colin and Tyresa. "I appreciate that you two are outsiders, but if you attempt anything like this again, I shall report you to the authorities. Farewell and I hope we shan't be seeing you again."
And with that, he turned and marched back through the door.
Colin was beside himself. He turned to Doctor Zeddex. "What the hell was all that about? What do you see?"
The Doctor looked up, her jaw still slack. "Nothing."
"Nothing? There must be something to put that look on your face."
"Really," she said, handing the slate to Colin. "There's nothing there."
He looked at the screen. It depicted a cross-section of a head. Colin had seen his head digitally chopped in half so many times by now, he recognised it instantly. "I don't follow."