by Dan Davis
Ram had a thousand objections and questions but he fought down his anger and played along, feeling the control coming. He might only get a single escape attempt and he had to get it right.
“It’s just like practicing in Avar,” Ram said at one point after performing twenty controlled pushups. “Repetition until you get it right.”
That amused Dr. Fo, standing beside Milena to watch Ram while his team cleaned and cleared the clinic room behind him.
“Did it ever occur to you that Avar is based on real life and not the other way around?” Dr. Fo said. “You practice something, you get better at it, whether it’s punching a guy in the face or scratching your balls just right. Avar is an incomplete simulacrum of reality. This is the real world young man and Avar is just a poor copy.”
Before Ram could respond, Milena cut in.
“Learning is part of the animal experience that we call consciousness. It doesn’t matter where our attention is focused, whether in the physical world or the virtual reality of Avar or in mindfulness.”
“Very interesting,” Dr. Fo said, with a straight face.
Ram decided that what he would have to do is charge Dr. Fo first of all and take him out. Just charge him down, flatten him. He was short, slight, he looked like he would have weak bones and Ram was sure he would be able to cross the four meters to the doctor in a couple of strides, hopefully before the little fellow would have a chance to trigger the mechanism for disabling Ram. If that mechanism even existed. And then Ram would grab the woman Milena as a hostage, force her to open the security door for him. Force her to open all the doors. Maybe force her to help him when they got to the street, summon a taxi for him using her ID and so on.
“We have enough readings now,” Dr. Fo said. “Everything is working as it should be. Better, actually. So I officially confirm Ram’s graduation into full mission subject. You poor bastard.”
“Why do you say that?” Ram said, standing and looking down on Dr. Fo and Milena, the top of his head near to the ceiling. It was amazing how tall he was.
Before Dr. Fo could respond, Milena cut in “It is just the doctor’s terrible sense of humor,” she said.
“That’s true,” Dr. Fo said, sadly, peering at the screen in his hands while he spoke. “Lost my marbles from the horror of all this. Plus all the radiation, of course. Crazy to be out here again, cooking my noodle in a gamma ray soup. Just goddamned crazy.”
“Radiation?” Ram said. “What does radiation have to do with anything?”
Milena stepped forward, cutting off the doctor again. “It is time you are taken to Disclosure.”
“Disclosure?” Ram said. “About what?”
He had to charge now, quickly. He looked down at the doctor, willing himself to flatten the old bastard.
“Don’t even think about it,” the doctor said, looking him square in the eye and speaking calmly. “We can read your neurotransmitters and hormones like a book, Rama. Like a transparent book, I might add.”
Ram hesitated.
“You wouldn’t get far,” Milena said. “It’s not just the doctor with a paralysis button. There are cameras watching your every move. Even then, we have Marines here who would stop you well before you could do any real damage.”
“I wasn’t going to do anything,” Ram said, looking between them. “I wasn’t, honestly.”
They ignored him.
Dr. Fo placed a hand on Milena’s lovely shoulder. “Look after him, my dear.”
“Of course,” she said. “Better than anyone.”
The doctor looked up at Ram. “I fear I shall see you in here again rather soon. Nevertheless, I wish you the very best of luck.”
Ram just stared at him, frozen by the insanity of it all. He still wasn’t sure that he was truly awake. If he had to guess, he’d say he was experiencing a locked-in Avar Psychosis.
Whatever the truth, he sensed that he had lost the initiative and in his heart, he doubted whether he ever would have been able to crush a kindly doctor anyway. Even if the mad old bastard had cut off his body.
“Rama Seti,” Milena commanded as she strode for the door. “Follow me.”
4. MISSION #1
I have full control of a powerful new body, Ram thought as he stepped into the corridor. He decided to bide his time and wait for an opportunity to escape to present itself. They might be bluffing about the knock-out switch and the Marines.
Anyway, he really wanted to find out why he was there at all.
The door slid shut with a slight hiss and a soft pop as the air sealed in place. A stenciled design on the door said B3 RECOVERY SUITE 1.
“Come on,” Milena said and headed down the corridor.
Walking just a few steps required a level of concentration that gave him a steady ache in the temples. His new body might not have been ready for violence after all. The glare from the white ceramic tiles on the floor, ceiling and walls did not help his mental state. Diffused green light came through latticed aircon illumination strips between the tiles low down and a bluish-white light filtered through higher up on the wall and ceiling. A lame yet effective attempt to make indoor spaces mimic natural daylight that featured in municipal and government buildings.
And yet he was walking. Moving under his own power, in a giant, powerful body. A body like an Avar avatar. The fact of it felt pretty great. He wished he could see himself in his skin-tight gray shorts and vest. On his feet, he wore these little, flexible gray shoes that gripped the tiles remarkably well. They were like rock climbers’ shoes, he thought and wondered how long they would last if he had to make his escape through a desert environment or in a jungle.
“Are you really going to give me answers now?” Ram said, the top of his head a few centimeters from the ceiling.
“The truth, yes,” Milena said, stopping at another door that said B3 CONSULTATION ROOM 4. It slid up, revealing a small room. Before she went in, she squinted up at him. “How are you feeling right now?”
“Fine,” Ram said, trying not to think of escaping.
“I’m going to increase your dopamine uptake a little,” she said, tapping on her screen. “It will make you more docile.”
“No, don’t,” Ram said, anger flaring. “Honestly, I’m fine.” A wave of contentment overcame him and he sighed, losing his train of thought.
“Come on,” she said and he followed her into the room, ducking beneath the top of the doorway to peer inside.
A scrawny young man sat at a desk beneath a large, blank screen up on the wall. Milena walked in and took a seat. Ram stepped through the door, bending at the waist and holding onto the frame so that he did not fall over. The door slid closed behind him and Ram stood in the doorway.
“Rama,” the scrawny man said, turning about in his chair. “My name's Diego. I'm part of the UNOP Mission Four Intel Team and I am your designated information liaison officer. Right now, my job will be to brief you on what you need to know about Mission Four and the Orb Arena Project. I’m the context provider, okay? So for now, my man, take it easy. Sit back, relax, watch this movie.”
“Sit here,” Milena said, pushing a mechanical button on the wall and a shelf-like seat slid out, big enough for his ass to perch on with room left over. Ram sat his vast bulk against it and held on. He did not trust his control over his body, yet.
Ram looked down at the man called Diego, trying to be casual about his examination. He was gaunt, quite small and Ram thought he could probably take the guy as a hostage with more ease than he could the woman called Milena. Maybe it was his cultural prejudice that made him hesitate to harm a woman but it was more the fact that she seemed like a fighter. He bet that if he grabbed her she would gouge his eyes out or yank a chemical spray out from her pants or something and mess him up. She had the lean musculature of someone well used to physical fitness. Trying to hold on to her lean body while she raged would be difficult.
The information liaison officer, though, looked like a little nerd. And Rama felt comfortable with
little nerds. He knew enough of them in Avar to know that they were mostly physical cowards. Yeah, he thought he should probably take the little African guy as his hostage.
Just as soon as he got some answers.
The black screen up on the wall that Diego and Milena were staring at was not actually blank. The white specks were stars. A single star right in the center grew larger and larger until it resolved itself into a small white disk. The other two in the room with him were staring at it without speaking, as if it was somehow fascinating. Their silence was almost reverential. It kept growing, starting to fill the screen.
“What is that?” Rama asked, leaning forward. “Is it flat or is it three-dimensional? There’s no way to assess the scale.”
Diego grinned over his shoulder. “This thing is four thousand meters in diameter. Your file said you prefer Imperial measurements. That’s like two and a half miles. Are you American? We have a few Americans here.”
“I’m not American,” Ram said, still looking at the thing on the screen. “I understand Imperial measurements because my idiot father is a Rajist. He thinks India was only great under British rule three-hundred years ago and they want to take things back to that. You’d think an engineer would know better. This is four kilometers in diameter, so an asteroid? A small moon, maybe?”
Diego laughed and pointed at the screen. “This thing, man, ain't nothing natural. Watch this.”
He tapped a pad on his desk and the image grew again, gradually. The resolution slowly improved.
“These images were taken from our first probe, the Hanno Mission, back in 2055,” Diego said. “See, the Orb was discovered out beyond the orbit of Neptune. And in case you don't know, that's a long way. That old probe was ninety-nine percent propulsion system by mass. The rest of it was imagining, sensing and transmission equipment. You see, we don't know how long it was out there because it's not in orbit around the Sun, as such. It is holding position, relative to the Sun and the thing can change its outer hull from completely black, which is its normal state, all the way to a mirror shine like you see in these images here. We only saw it when the Orb began signaling us. It's not just able to change the surface reflectivity but actually to emit radiation in the visual and other wavelengths, flashing out coded signals for years. It was saying that it was artificial and we thought it was telling us to come visit. When the probe arrived, the images we resolved were astonishing. As you can see, it is a perfect sphere. And it can emit tight bands of radiation in the visual spectrum, blue to red light and into ultraviolet and infrared. When the probe arrived they were expecting a hatch to open on the Orb and for little gray men to wave the probe onboard.”
“Wait a second,” Rama said, looking between Diego, Milena and the screen on the wall. “This is insane. I know all about this. I've seen conspiracy theory shows about this, read about it. The Alien Space Station conspiracy theory. Yeah, out at the edge of the Solar System. I've seen movies about this, I've even played an Avar on that thing, there was this deathmatch horror hybrid set on an alien space station orbiting Pluto. Some of my team were convinced it was a real thing, they’d send me blurry pictures and recordings of people saying they’d seen the aliens that built it, there’s all this hacked data. Whole communities in Avar constantly talk about this. And you’re trying to tell me that all that bullshit, all that alien conspiracy theory stuff, it's all real?”
Diego shrugged. “A lot of that theory is speculation, extrapolation based on incomplete data and ends up pretty much wildly incorrect. But sure people know about it. You know, this Project has been a worldwide effort for decades, over a hundred years since the Orb was discovered. Tens of thousands of people, at least, have had Full Disclosure over that time. Hundreds of thousands have worked on the project directly and millions have worked on it indirectly. Billions, probably, when you think about it, how our global, system-wide goal has been increasingly focused on the Orb Project. The Project is managed under the United Nations. In fact, you might say that the United Nations has only made it through the last century because of the Orb Project. The United Nations as an organization exists now almost entirely in order to run the Orb Project.”
Rama ran one of his massive, synthetically grown hands over his bony face. “Billions of people have worked on this? I don’t understand, how can that be possible? You guys are lying to me, right?”
“Thousands of companies have been contracted to supply goods and services over hundreds of years. Engineers have designed components for equipment, weapons, ships. Our explosion of human exploration of the solar system and everything that supports those efforts has been driven by the Orb Project. There's no way to keep something of this magnitude quiet. Today, millions of people, like your friends, are totally convinced the Orb exists. And it’s an easy thing to believe, I mean, there are authentic images of it. Imaging from the observatories on Mars and the Moon. Private space telescope images, radio telescope recordings of the communications. Testimonials from people that worked on the project that you’ve seen. We've had elected officials and even heads of state talk publicly about it over the last hundred years and that’s probably some of the stuff your buddies sent you.”
“I can’t believe this. How can it possibly be so ridiculed? I mean, I never really looked into it much, I just figured it was another one of those things like the scare stories about Avar or AI or Artificial Persons. Why doesn’t everyone know about it, why isn’t it openly admitted to, it doesn’t make sense.”
“You’re right. Most governments and corporations have standing policies to deny it or they just keep quiet about it and so most normal people, like yourself, assume it's the crazy UFO nutjobs playing make believe again.”
“UFOs are real too?”
“No,” Diego said, chuckling. “Come on, man, no way. Look, the Hanno Probe arrived in orbit around the Orb in 2055 and we broadcast welcome messages to it. We broadcast stuff like we come in peace, we are earthlings. We showed them images of life on earth. Crazy, right? Even though they had absolutely no reason to think it, they were convinced the aliens would be peaceful.” Diego laughed. “They were so naïve back then it’s painful. But the idiots had their preconceptions confirmed. Because then the Orb replied. In English.”
Ram looked at Milena then back to Diego. “Come on.”
Diego grinned. “Seriously. It learned enough of our languages from our broadcasts and presumably already had decades of TV, radio, communications traffic to learn our languages.”
“What did it sound like?” Ram said. “Can I hear it?”
“Oh, it didn’t use sound, it used our own optical communications transmission frequencies to beam encoded messages back to us in the same digitally encoded format as we were sending to each other through the Deep Space Optical Communications Network. They thought the probe was malfunctioning until they realized what was going on. What it was saying.”
“And?”
“It said.” Diego paused for dramatic effect. “Send. Humans.”
“It did not say that,” Ram said, all thought of escape gone for the moment. All he wanted was to find out more, find out everything about this.
Diego chuckled. “The guys running the project back then just about shit themselves inside out.”
“I can imagine,” Ram said. He turned to Milena. “Did that Orb really say that?”
Milena nodded. “It has broadcast a lot more to us since.”
“Woah, let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Diego said, scowling at her before continued his story. “That was when they decided to launch Mission Zero. I mean, we only started calling it that later but it was the first manned mission to the Orb. Even before the probe proved beyond doubt what they were dealing with, our predecessors were already building engines, ship hulls and reactors like crazy. There were militaries involved back then, even before we found out what it was all about, and they were preparing for an invasion. Ships were being constructed in orbit before the probe had crossed Jupiter's orbit. As soon as t
he proof came through then the first ship was constructed specifically to carry a crew out there. Those guys on Mission Zero accepted it could be a one-way trip but they were willing to sacrifice themselves for the good of the species. A bunch of heroes, just like us.”
“In fact,” Milena said, cutting in. “The Mission Zero crew had a number of stated reasons. Duty, adventure. Most of the crew went in order to meet an alien lifeform in person. They wanted to be the first and they wanted to be remembered for all of human history. And they just wanted to meet an alien.”
“Yeah,” Rama said, imagining it. “Sounds amazing.”
“Something went wrong,” Diego said. “Still never totally clear what but there was a malfunction and an explosion that wrecked the ship, including the comms equipment. The crew was killed before they got near the Orb. The human crew that is. In order to minimize risk, there was a complement of Artificial Persons. No one knows how but those Artificial Persons completed the mission. They performed the deceleration maneuver and the orbital insertion. Incredible, really. The story of it got out and helped to accelerate the whole pro-human, anthropocentric crazies and the pro-Artificial Person terrorists. They were supposed to be incapable of so much as scratching their asses without precise instructions but the Artificial Persons actually repaired the comms and docked their shuttle with the Orb before their biological clocks gave up. And then the Orb beamed a message to the Zero ship. It said you passed the test. Now come back in thirty years. Come back in thirty years with your chosen representative and if they are worthy, you will receive great gifts of knowledge.”
“Holy shit, great gifts of knowledge from an alien race?” Ram sighed. “What about the aliens, did the Artificial Persons meet them?”
Diego shook his head. “The Orb was apparently unoccupied at that time. But we had made it there, that was the main thing.”