Onliest

by J Daniel Batt

  “Give me a moment. I wasn’t focused on smells.” He paused and a moment later said, “That’s…That’s…No.” His speed increased, and he zipped through the tunnel. He could propel himself through the magnetic induction embedded in all of the ship’s surfaces.

  Not Syn. She had to swim like a frantic fish. Or get to where she could push off of something and use that to increase her speed. “Blip wait! What is it?”

  Blip then said something that was unbelievable. “Gunpowder.” Then he was out of the tunnel and into the main hold before the gate, a good fifty meters ahead of her.

  Syn stood frozen. She knew what gunpowder was. In their constant visits to the theater, binging on film after film, they had gone through a western phase. She was particularly in love with the True Grit renditions. A lone young boy seeks to conquer the wild world around him. That theme resonated with Syn. In the third remake—the 2045 version with Caleel Wastonbi, there was a scene in which Wastonbi, reprising the classic role of Cogburn, decided that he wanted to send a message and loaded the mine under the hideout with gunpowder and set it afire. The land became a living hell. The final confrontation took place against that orange glow and the world itself had erupted. It was a twist that was not in the original two films, but it was beautiful. Syn knew the power of gunpowder. That was gunpowder: lighting the entire world on fire, turning the distraught wild west into an uncontrollable inferno. But gunpowder didn’t belong on starships. Syn was sure he had to have said something else. She had to have misheard him. There was no way that she was smelling gunpowder. And yet, as she thought of it, there was a smell of sulfur and fire, sharp and pungent. A tang that stung the inside of her nostrils.

  Gunpowder.

  Syn maneuvered to the floor, aimed, and pushed herself as hard as she could after the white little bot.

  11

  The Gate

  “riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.”

  ― James Joyce, Finnegans Wake

  The tunnel opened into a cavernous room. In the vast steel room, floating aimlessly, Syn felt smaller than an ant. Though the ship was an unfathomable distance from Earth, Olorun still had bugs. The ship had quite a large array of insects. She hated most of them. So many of them were nuisances, but it had been decided by the Builders and explained to her in one of the introductory videos that certain insects were important to “the balance of the macro eco-system.” She was convinced the Builders were idiots.

  The gate itself loomed before them. Not David and Goliath. This was David and Jupiter. The gate was over 100 meters high with a circumference of 314 meters. It was several meters thick and consisted of three different iris mechanisms—opening and closing upon the circular entry.

  And something had dented it.

  The gate’s irising blades were bubbled in its center. Something significant from the other side had pushed the blades in this direction.

  “Whoa,” Syn said.

  Blip wasn’t looking at the gate at all. Instead, he was carefully moving in a circle, scanning the edges of the gate room.

  Blip finished a 360 turn and swiveled to point upwards. He searched through the dark corners below and above them. Syn didn’t need his sensors though. She could hear it. She could feel it. They were alone.

  They were always alone.

  “It’s fine, Blip,” Syn said as she pushed gently off of the metal floor and propelled herself up to the center of the gate.

  “There’s no one here.” Blip circled one more time as if he needed to convince himself.

  “Blip, who could be here?”

  He didn’t answer. Instead, as he swung around, he zipped up toward her and stopped hard in the air. Syn felt a tinge of jealousy. She couldn’t do that maneuver. An object in motion tends to stay in motion. An object at rest tends to stay at rest. When Syn moved around in the zero gravity of the needle, she had grab something to slow her momentum. Not Blip. The little bot could stop hard. Syn shivered. It was creepy, as if the rules of physics didn’t apply to him.

  “What caused this?” Syn held her hand above the oversized bubble in the gate. The large blister itself was localized. The entire gate hadn’t ballooned out. Just a small two or three-meter section in the center.

  “An explosion.”

  Syn glared at him and smacked him with the edge of her spear. He wobbled, straightened and looked back at her. “What was that for?” he asked.

  “Don’t be sarcastic.”

  “An explosion caused this.” He moved closer to the center of the Gate. In her mind, Syn imagined themselves as Jack standing before the door to the Giant’s castle. So tiny as to almost be unseen. Yet, there they were. And judging by the dent, the giant on the other side was angry.

  “You determined that before. I felt the explosion. What exploded? What went boom, Blip?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Did a bot go boom? Did a bitty bot make a big boom?” Syn was having fun. It would annoy him. But he was the one with answers, and he wasn’t giving her any. She hated the way he parsed out info as if Syn had just woken from her crèche.

  “There is nothing on the other side of this.”

  “That can’t be.”

  His voice firmed, and he repeated, “There’s nothing on the other side of this.”

  Syn did the same. “There seems to be something on the other side. Big dent.” She pointed as if he couldn’t grasp what she was staring at. “Big dent. Big boom.”

  “Syn, you are an annoying pest. Listen to me. There is nothing on the other side of the door. Something had to hit from outside. Maybe a meteorite.”

  “Isn’t the ship supposed to protect against those? The ramscoop?”

  “Well, obviously it did not.”

  “Obviously what? You’re sure it’s a meteorite?” He was starting to make her angry.

  “It had to be. What else could it be?” He spun and came to eye level with her. His words came out sharp and precise. “There. Is. Nothing. On. The. Other—”

  He never finished the sentence. From the other side of the gate, a single tiny tap sounded. Just once. They both turned and looked. Then another tap came. Two taps. Spaced apart.

  “Debris settling,” Blip explained.

  Syn started to believe him until two more taps came. A distinct rhythm. Tap. Tap. Fast, together. Then a pause, and another tap. Tap. Tap. Pause. Tap. Then again.

  On instinct, Syn rapped against the metal with her knuckles. Tap. Tap. Tap.

  The tapping stopped

  Syn’s eyes went wide, and she stared hard at Blip. He looked up at her and then went pure green, turning on every single sensor he could.

  “Space pirates,” Syn whispered.

  His green glow pulsed over and over as Blip used every detection method possible. After a minute of the green glow and no tapping, Blip turned back to his normal white porcelain shell. “There is nothing there.”

  “Tap? Tap? Tap?” Syn said, rapping her own knuckles on his hard shell.

  “There’s nothing there!” he shouted back at her.

  Syn pulled back. He had yelled at her. The two had fought before. They had disagreed. But he had never yelled back at her. In her mind, he was exactly what he was named: a companion bot. He was there to help her. To advise her. Deep inside, she had always assumed that meant that he was also there to ultimately obey her.

  Syn stayed there, her mouth hung open. He hovered, glowering as well.

  A voice, smaller than an insect's wing, whispered, “Help me.” The words were thin, like ice. Nearly silent above the background hum of the gate room.

  Two words.

  12

  The Voice

  “Smoke and dust, the stuff of simple myth trying to be legend . . .”

  —Marcus Aurelius

  Syn kicked out and swam toward the gate. She slammed both hands against the metal, gripping into the thin edges of the massive i
ris blades. “What was that?” she shouted, but she didn’t wait for an answer. She yelled again, “Hello? Who was that? Hello?” She shouted over and over and heard nothing.

  Blip was speaking, but she was not listening.

  Syn had heard someone. She had heard another voice. A human voice. She continued to shout, trying to get the voice to respond.

  Blip yelled, interrupting her mania. “Stop! I can’t hear!”

  He was right. Syn was yelling so loud, they wouldn’t be able to hear if the other person was responding.

  Syn shut her mouth, but she could not stop her mind. So many possibilities raced through her head. It had sounded like a girl. Like she was hurt. But Syn couldn’t be sure. Her mind ran. How could there be someone else on board? Maybe a ship hit us? Another Earth ship? When Olorun launched, it was supposed to be the fastest ship ever. It’s possible they made faster ships. But ships that could catch up to us?

  The thoughts stacked on themselves. Perhaps it wasn’t a human. Perhaps it was just a bot that had gone haywire or was injured and malfunctioned. But how had a bot gotten out there? Maybe it was one assigned to the ramjet, but we’d never heard of any bot being placed out there. She and Blip made sure the bots were well taken care of. They were all checked up on regularly. She could tell you most of their names and what they were doing—she had named all of them herself. There weren’t many that even came up to the needle, let alone managed to get through on the other side of the gate. But perhaps one of them had the access codes to open the gate. She and Blip never considered that one of the bots might be assigned duties on the other side.

  “Are there any bots missing?” Syn said.

  Blip looked at her, his expression empty. “What?”

  “Are there any bots missing? Could that have been a bot?”

  “On the other side of the gate? Seriously?”

  “Stop disbelieving me. We’re not getting anywhere with that. Just answer the question.”

  Blip sighed. He gave a slight nod of his head. He turned to analyze, but she caught him roll his eyes. A few seconds later he said, “No. They’re all accounted for. 272 independent bots. Not counting any of the plant growers or field maintenance. Over 1089 deactivated without any change.” After he had spouted off the facts that he was reading, he narrowed his eyes, “Just the same as always.”

  Syn whispered to him, her eyes still on the iris of the gate, her fingers lightly touching the metal, “Who said that?”

  “Maybe it was a recording.” Blip moved back and floated. “Maybe it was an announcement.” He came up to Syn. “Maybe we didn’t hear it. Maybe it was a mass hallucination.”

  “You’re a robot. That’s not possible. Besides, you know what we heard.”

  Blip waited and then gave a brief nod.

  “So can we just wait and see if they talk again?”

  Again, Blip gave a subtle nod. He understood that this was important to her. There might be someone else on board the behemoth known as Olorun.

  So they waited. And listened. They floated inches away from the iris of the gate like tiny dots before some ancient edifice. Nothing broke the stillness of that empty cavern. Nothing moved, and no new lights shone. It was only the two of them in the quiet dark.

  Minutes passed, and they still heard nothing. Syn was frozen in anticipation and fearful to break to moment—fearful that the instant she chose to leave, to call it quits, the voice would sound, and she would miss it. Minutes turned into hours, and they still didn’t move. Nor did they hear anything. It was a tranquil quiet. Far away, the Jacobs’ ratcheting whirrs could be heard as the lifts went up and down transporting an array of bots performing their business between the various levels of arch-wall structures. But nothing moved in the gate room. And nothing spoke.

  Blip’s voice broke the spell. “Syn, wake up.”

  Syn’s mind drifted. Wake up. Why would he say that? I am awake. My…Her eyes were closed, and when she opened them she was drifting about the room, in a slow tumble away from the gate. She had fallen asleep. Syn shook her grogginess away although it didn’t help much. Syn gently swam toward the gate, toward the bubble. “How long has it been?”

  “That we’ve been waiting?” Blip asked, “A few hours. I don’t think we’re going to hear anything.”

  Syn ignored him and pressed her face close to the bubble and said aloud, “Are you there? I want to help.”

  As expected, they heard nothing. Syn put her hand on Blip’s head. “Okay, let’s go.”

  “Where?” Blip asked.

  Syn paused as she aimed herself at one of the tunnels. She replied, “The bridge.”

  Blip nodded, and they darted up (or down depending on perspective) toward the hatch to the bridge along the wall of the gate room.

  13

  A Bridge of Liars

  “How cheerfully he seems to grin, how neatly spreads his claws. And welcomes little fishes in, with gently smiling jaws.”

  —The Caterpillar, “Alice in Wonderland”

  Syn placed her hand on the hatch and stopped. No, she didn’t want to be up here anymore. At that moment, something stole over her. It wasn’t a chill, although she felt very cold inside. She felt alone. And at the same time, she felt very not alone. Something had invaded her world, something she had not met. And she knew nothing about it.

  At that moment, Syn wanted to be back in her tree. She wanted to be in her bed—to shut out the vastness of the gate room, of the Disc, of Olorun. She wanted to make her world as small as possible, to go behind the walls and lock the doors.

  But that wouldn’t solve anything. There was something on the other side of the gate and she knew nothing of its nature. There was an unknown on Olorun.

  Syn started to punch in the commands on the control panel to open the hatch. Then, she paused.

  She did know something about it. It knew her language. She had understood it. She thought to herself, would a space pirate, some cosmic adventurer, know my language? Maybe there was some universal translator, but really, did they work that fast? No. There had been urgency, inflection. The voice—the girl—knew Syn’s language. It was Syn’s language.

  Was it Syn’s voice? Quieter, yes. Strained, yes. Scared, yes. But Syn could hear herself saying those words. She mouthed the words as they descended: Help me. Then again, she breathed them out, nearly silent, inaudible except for her own ears. “Help me.” Blip didn’t stir. He didn’t hear. Or perhaps he didn’t care. But Syn could hear her words, and they sounded so much like the other voice. Maybe they had been Syn’s words. Her voice on the other side of the steel.

  Or perhaps Syn had imagined it. Floating before the hatch to the bridge, the fear of the gate ebbed away. She was less certain she had heard what she thought she heard. Perhaps it had been an echo. Maybe they were her own words. Maybe they were in her head. But Blip had heard them. Maybe the other words were clipped? Had she said something that would sound like “Help me?” Was there something she had done that made the cavern echo her own words back to me? Maybe.

  The hatch to the bridge popped open with a quiet hiss. As the door slid sideways, the light from the dozens of screens shone through and lit Blip up in a soft blue hue.

  “After you,” he chimed.

  “Gentleman,” Syn said, spear tight in her fist.

  The bridge was a series of arcs, descending as they spread from the main tube. The walls appeared as windows out to the stars. They were not windows. There was no glass there. They were computer displays—perfect resolution, clear as glass, and as precise as reality itself. It was like looking through actual glass onto the fields of the Disc. The screens showed the field of stars that surrounded the Olorun. Before them, in the direction the bridge faced, was the nose of the needle, and beyond that the Bussard ramscoop arrayed in a skeleton framework of arcs and a wired webbing laced between them. The ramscoop wasn’t solid. It was a massive net. A web set out to catch the flies of stray hydrogen and other particles that the ship could convert into energy or
other elements to replenish their always dwindling stocks.

  Syn walked to the center of the bridge and turned around. Lights blinked, images flowed past, and the metrics of the ship were displayed in graphs, raw digits, and other scrolling information. It was all here at her fingertips—the entire run of Olorun. On one screen, the biological and mineral balance was accounted for: hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, potassium, iron, and much more. Each had a target value, and the ship readjusted systems to achieve them. Too much carbon dioxide in the air? The ship would begin the collection of the increasing molecule and divide it into carbon and oxygen. The oxygen could then be mixed with hydrogen and added to the water supply. The free carbon would be combined with free hydrogen to create methane—a fuel that was used in micro-heating throughout the starship. This was one method to keep things in balance. There were hundreds, and Olorun was always planning ahead, working to resolve potential problems before they arose.

  On the other side, charts spread out describing the intricate underworld of the Disc where so many dumb bots worked: the body farm, the fields, the hive spaces, the under-solar generators, the filtering ponds. Syn was always astounded by how much else was happening below her feet when she walked the Disc. It was easy to forget that there were layers below layers between her feet and the emptiness of space.

  It had been several years after first setting up home in the treehouse before she had ventured into the Underworld. Oh, there was a proper name for it: Strata Level One. Strata Level Two. But to her, it was always the Underworld. Standing in the Disc, the sky reached up and up so high, to the very ground on the other edge. Nothing was pressing down on you from above. In the Underworld, that wasn’t true. The roofs were not low, but they were still there. Twelve feet high was the average height of the rooms. Some were taller. A few, the body farms, in particular, were much lower.