EXOSKELETON II: Tympanum

by Shane Stadler

  “We are inside the sphere,” the being said. “Time is essentially standing still on the outside.”

  “Who are you?” Will asked

  “It is not who I am that matters. It is what.”

  “What are you?”

  “I am the Inquisitor and Judge.”

  Will didn’t like where the conversations was heading. “Judge of what?” he asked.

  “Your world.”

  Will’s chest tightened.

  “I am here because I have been summoned,” the Judge continued. “The probe was actuated three days ago.”

  “You mean the first beacon – a probe?” Will asked.

  “Was it you who had actuated it?”

  Will nodded.

  “This action has confirmed that your world has come of age,” the Judge said.

  “Come of age?”

  “Passed into a new phase of existence,” the Judge explained. “The probe can only be accessed in the evanescent state, where the consciousness extends itself beyond the confines of the physical body. You have accomplished this. You turned the lever.”

  Regret flooded Will’s mind. Why had he pulled the switch?

  “Accessing and actuating the probe required an advanced level of development,” the Judge continued. “First, you – your kind – had to discover and decipher the disk to obtain the location of the probe. Then you had to travel to that location of the planet – a place that is highly inaccessible. That had required you to exceed a threshold of technological development.”

  The bottom of the Southern Ocean was certainly an inaccessible place, Will thought.

  “While discovering the probe requires a certain level of intellectual growth,” the Judge explained, “you cannot access its interior unless you have developed an evanescent existence.”

  “And what happens now?” Will asked.

  “Evaluation. Judgment.”

  Judgment? It implied a punishment – a sentence. “What are the ramifications?” Will asked.

  “There are existential consequences.”

  Daniel’s words echoed again in Will’s mind. “Our existence is at stake?”

  The Judge nodded.

  “On what is this judgment based?” Will’s mind flooded with numerous negative images of himself, and even more of human history. His stomach churned.

  “It depends on your answer to one question,” the Judge said, keeping steady eye contact.

  “One question?” Will scoffed. “How can the future of the world depend on one man’s answer to one question?”

  “It is a very revealing question,” the Judge replied.

  “What if your judgment is negative – what will happen?”

  “A chain of events will be initiated to renew your world,” the Judge responded.

  “Renew?”

  “Wiped clean, followed by a new genesis.”

  “Humanity will be wiped out.”

  The Judge nodded.

  “And if we pass your test?”

  “You will receive further enlightenment.”

  “To what end?” Will asked.

  “Immortality.”

  Will was taken aback. What did that mean?

  The Judge seemed to read his expression and his silence. “It is complicated,” the Judge said. “But you are seeing a crude aspect of it right here – in that body you are occupying. If it were able to exit this sphere, it could be claimed by any free soul in the same manner as you are occupying it right now.”

  Will thought of the Nazis’ plan to reincarnate Hitler. It seemed their conjecture was not as absurd as it appeared.

  “But immortality reaches beyond the physical world,” the Judge continued. “Even souls can be destroyed before they are cast.”

  “Cast?”

  “Made a permanent part of existence. This is the true immortality.”

  “Our souls are not cast?” Will asked.

  The Judge shook his head.

  “What happened to those who have died – where are they?”

  “They lie in wait,” the Judge replied. “Their existence depends on the outcome of this inquiry.”

  Will felt like he was being crushed. Why was he put into this position? Why him? It then occurred to him: why not him? He was as guilty as those who had created him. He’d killed many.

  “The idea of judgment should not surprise you,” the Judge said. “All humans have an innate sense of immortality, death, and judgment. It is manifest in religion – a collective guilt and fear of judgment. But you also have hope – hope that there is something beyond this existence. Both your fear, and hope, are justified.”

  Will didn’t feel any hope. “What if I refuse to answer your question?”

  “It would result in a negative judgment.”

  Will wanted to flee back to the North Dakota. He regretted bringing things to this point, but he quickly rejected culpability. He’d been forced into it from the beginning. He did not acquire the ability to separate – to access the evanescent state – by his own will. It seemed to him that humanity had finally meddled with something that would lead to its destruction. He’d always thought that, if it were to happen, it would’ve been thermonuclear war, or some technology-gone-wrong, that would destroy the world. Humanity would eventually have done everything within its reach, most of which was driven by power, greed or, more benignly, curiosity. Either way, someone would eventually have occupied the chair in which he currently sat.

  “Ask your question,” Will said.

  The Judge nodded and looked into his eyes. “You are here only because you have acquired the ability to transform into the evanescent state. There are only two ways to attain this ability.”

  Goose bumps formed on Will’s arms. The Judge seemed to notice.

  “The first way is through enlightenment,” the Judge explained. “It is nurtured through the development of the intellect over generations. It is a progressive process accomplished through an environmental stimulation of evolution. In this case, the evolution occurs in both the intellect and consciousness, the latter of which you refer to as the soul.”

  The situation was looking bleak. “And the second way?” Will asked. He was pretty sure he already knew the answer. The face across from him became grave.

  “The opposite of enlightenment,” the Judge replied. “A single being is made to suffer so greatly that its consciousness wants to escape the physical world, but is somehow constrained.”

  “Torture,” Will said.

  The Judge nodded slowly, keeping eye contact. “I am here because you summoned me,” he said. “Now the question becomes, how did you get here?”

  Will’s thoughts scrambled in his mind. The answer to the judge’s question was unequivocal, but he couldn’t answer – not with the truth. He remained silent.

  The Judge reached across the table with both hands and grabbed both of Will’s. “Torture, or enlightenment?”

  Will’s thoughts bounced back and forth between revealing the truth and lying. How should he answer? He knew it would take little effort to uncover the truth if he were to lie.

  He then wondered if the Judge already knew the answer. It was obvious to anyone who looked that the world was no bastion of enlightenment. It was the opposite – it was a crucible of war, torture, disease, immorality, greed, and indifference to life. These things practically defined the world. If it were only he who was to be judged, Will would admit his every transgression. But he wouldn’t condemn the world with his own words. It was not his place.

  “You don’t need me to answer that question,” Will said. “Look for yourself.”

  The Judge let go of Will’s hands and leaned back, never breaking eye contact. “The answer must come from admission, not observation,” the being said.

  “Why?”

  The Judge remained silent.

  Will’s mind whirred. “Are you not able to observe? Are you confined to this object?”

  “Judgment can only come from your testimony,” the J
udge responded.

  “I will not answer your question.”

  After a long silence, the Judge said, “If you answer, you will be spared.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You will not suffer the regeneration,” the Judge said. “Your soul will be cast.”

  “What about everyone else?”

  The Judge shook his head. “Only you.”

  Will was insulted. He imagined an eternity of guilt. “No!”

  “I can destroy you right now.”

  “I don’t care,” Will said. “You will not condemn the world on my words.”

  The being leaned forwards and its eyes darkened. “Very well,” he said and leaned back. “You are free to go.” He waved his hand as if to tell Will to leave.

  Something was wrong.

  Will exited the body.

  The Judge, still occupying the other body, said, “Please, wait for a moment.”

  Will kept his position above the table as the Judge separated. However, instead of coming up to meet him, the wraith entered the body that Will had just exited. What the hell was it doing?

  The face came to life, and then distorted in an expression of recognition, and then anger. After a short time the Judge said, “This body was pristine. By entering it, you imprinted upon it – all of your memories. And now, not only do I know everything that you know – I have experienced it. I know the answer to the question.”

  The being exited the body.

  “Admit what happened to you,” it screamed. “Say it!”

  “No!” Will yelled back.

  “Then you will be destroyed.”

  “What gives you the right to condemn us?” Will shot back.

  “You have destroyed yourselves,” the being replied. “Your intellectual development is stagnant. Your morality has been nonexistent from the beginning. You are still bound to your dirty planet, and will annihilate yourselves in your own filth – greed, war, and ignorance.”

  “Not everyone is guilty,” Will said.

  “You have all come from the same tainted origin,” the Judge said. “Judgment has been made.”

  The being morphed into something that resembled a demon – more hideous than the wraiths Will had seen before.

  But Will had no fear. He was ready to fight. He wanted to fight. Then a thought entered his mind out of nowhere.

  He rushed towards the first body the Judge had occupied, and entered it.

  Unknown Time

  The body was identical to the one Will had first occupied. The difference was that his memory seemed to change – he began to remember things he knew he hadn’t actually experienced. His consciousness became overwhelmed with information that surged so quickly he had no sense of what was happening around him. It was like trying to catch a waterfall in a bucket. Images of things he’d never seen before – alien to him – flickered before his eyes. And there were emotions connected to the memories. Most of it was beyond his comprehension.

  An instant later, he was looking down upon a headless, twitching body. He watched as the wraith decapitated the second one, its head rolling off of the pedestal and into the darkness at the bottom of the sphere. Both bodies slumped forward, spurting blood on the white table that quickly poured off the edge and onto the platform.

  Will realized that he’d just experienced being killed, but his attention quickly turned back to the wraith.

  “You are vile,” Will said. “Evil.”

  The wraith sneered. “I am everything you fear. I am the Judge. I am the Destroyer.”

  Will sensed the pedestal ascending towards him. The sphere was moving upward. He darted to the wall to his right as the wraith screamed at him.

  “Your world is dead!” it screeched. “Your filthy world is dead!”

  4

  Saturday, 13 June (1:21 a.m. EST)

  It took Will a few seconds to recognize the dark eyes that stared down at him. They were Denise’s. He didn’t recall the trip back to his body.

  “We just rolled violently and alarms sounded,” Denise said. “I came to see if you were okay. What’s happening?”

  He figured the North Dakota was jostled by the turbulence from the beacon’s ascent.

  “Couldn’t you separate?” she asked.

  He was confused for a second, but then understood. “How long have I been gone?”

  “Two, three minutes,” she replied.

  Jonathan burst into the room. “We’re following the beacon to the surface,” he said, out of breath.

  Will didn’t know if that was a good idea.

  “Let’s go,” Jonathan said, waving them to follow him.

  Minutes later they were standing in a crowd of more than a dozen sailors staring at a bank of monitors. They were displaying various views of the probe with night-vision cameras.

  The orb was clearly visible, rising into the sky. Will estimated it was already 100 meters above the surface.

  “What the hell is that thing?” Captain McHenry said. He looked to Will. “What did you do?”

  Will shook his head. “I’ll explain later,” he said. If there was a later, he didn’t add.

  They watched as the probe kept growing, the part of the stem at the surface of the water thickening as it rose.

  After 10 minutes he could hardly see its spherical head. It had to be more than a mile high, and its stem at the water’s surface had widened to a diameter of more than 100 meters.

  “It stopped,” a man said from behind a computer consul. “It’s at a height of two kilometers.”

  “My God,” McHenry said.

  Everyone else stared in silence, waiting for something to happen.

  And then it did.

  Everything went dark, except for intermittent sparks that illuminated the area like flash bulbs.

  “What’s happening?” McHenry yelled.

  “E-M pulse, sir,” a man yelled back.

  Will knew exactly what that meant. An electromagnetic pulse was a high-energy surge of electromagnetic fields that could destroy electronics. It could be produced a few ways, one was by detonating a nuclear weapon.

  “We’re supposed to be shielded!” McHenry’s voice blasted in the dark. “Was it a nuke?”

  “Unknown,” a voice answered. “All systems are down.”

  “Emergency power,” McHenry bellowed over warning alarms that seemed to come from every direction.

  Another surge of sparks lit the control room in a bluish-white tinge, and then it went to darkness again.

  “Another E-M pulse,” someone yelled.

  “Dive! Dive! Dive!” McHenry screamed.

  Will found an empty chair and sat in it. He separated and passed through the upper hull and into the night. The probe loomed in the moonlight. He searched the horizon for any hint of a nuclear blast but found nothing. The skies were perfectly clear.

  He followed the North Dakota beneath the surface and returned to his body. Denise squatted down and huddled next to him, grasping his forearm.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “I just don’t want to be in the way of people moving in the dark,” she explained.

  Will knew she wasn’t easily frightened, yet her hand trembled as she squeezed his arm.

  “It wasn’t a nuke,” he said. “I just looked.”

  Will stood and talked loudly into the dark. “There was no nuclear explosion.”

  Another flurry of sparks illuminated the room.

  “How do you know that?” McHenry asked in the dark.

  “Just trust me, I know,” Will replied, not revealing what he’d done in case the crew hadn’t been informed of his abilities. The scoffs that emanated from various directions indicated he was probably right to keep his mouth shut.

  McHenry asked questions in the dark about the damage. The North Dakota needed repairs, but it was going to be okay. And they were safer at their current depth – a 150 meters of salt water would shield them from the E-M pulses.

  McHenry set in a new course for
the rendezvous point with the Stennis. He walked over to Will. “I hope there’s still a carrier group to meet.”

  Will nodded. So did he.

  5

  Saturday, 13 June (7:28 a.m. EST)

  The crew of the North Dakota managed to make repairs and get them off emergency power. It rendezvoused with the carrier group four hours later. McHenry was then ordered go to Mar del Plata, and then on to an American base for thorough checkup.

  Now back on the Stennis, Will followed Denise and Jonathan into the ready-room, where Captain Grimes, Daniel, and Sylvia were waiting. Grimes sat directly across from Will at the head of the table.

  “Where’s Horace?” Will asked.

  “Sick bay,” Sylvia replied.

  By her expression Will sensed that Horace wasn’t improving.

  “We can’t approach the probe with anything – aircraft or surface ships – and I’m not risking another sub,” Grimes explained. “The electromagnetic signal is just too strong for our electronics to handle.”

  “How was the carrier group able to avoid damage?” Denise asked.

  “We’re a few miles away,” Grimes answered, “and our systems are well shielded.”

  “Have you analyzed the signal?” Will asked.

  Grimes nodded. “It’s stronger than anything we’ve seen, save a nuclear E-M pulse. About every few minutes there’s a blast at all frequencies – radio to microwave wavelengths. Between blasts, it continuously broadcasts an encoded signal at a few discrete frequencies. That’s all we know – we can’t decode it.”

  “Has it changed at all since it started?” Will asked, wondering if it was another countdown.

  “No,” Grimes replied. “Just keeps repeating the same broadcast.”

  The term broadcast gave Will a sick feeling. The first two probes sent out signals intended for people on earth – sound waves in water. This one was broadcasting radio waves to the entire universe. Earth would look like a lighthouse to anyone who could detect the signal.

  Will described what had happened inside the probe, and his conversation with the being – the Judge. It seemed that everyone believed him – no skeptics this time. Their expressions and body language projected worry, except for those of Grimes, whose face became stern.