by Spencer Wolf
Two Chokebots entered from pores along the wall of the tank and climbed to its height. The leader’s tail stinger was coiled. They arched over and scurried along the top flesh of the tank, and grabbed the side-by-side tendons of the hanging gondola with their pincers. They descended. Their vibrations ran down the length of the cables.
Ceeborn squinted up through the corner post lights into the darkness. The leader leapt from the cables to the top bar of the gondola frame. It scrambled for a hold. Its tail stinger jabbed in its twist as it fell uncontrolled. Ceeborn was hit.
Ceeborn fell back into the gondola. He grabbed at his neck. He had been struck, finely needled. The pain pierced worse than any venomous sting. No flying insect had ever hurt so deep, or penetrated so fast. The stabbing pain spread, radiated down through his shoulder.
The Chokebot fell belly up, its head extended off the platform’s edge. Its legs flailed upward. Its dangling dome and front body section were hyperextended from its back.
Ceeborn writhed and kicked through the searing pain. With each thrust of his kicks, the Chokebot’s middle and rear legs clambered for a hold. It teetered. He kicked again. The Chokebot fell from the gondola’s platform. It flipped as it dropped to the skin covering the water. Its tail stinger and six claws punctured the surface with a pop.
He kneeled on the gondola platform. The Chokebot clicked and looked up beyond its reach. As it lifted a leg, water seeped from the gash in the surface skin and dripped from the point of its claw. The drops stained its dome. It knew not to move another step.
The second Chokebot descended the cable head-dome first. It didn’t jump.
Ceeborn held his hand to his neck as the bot kept its distance to the side rigging and catty-cornered the gondola’s frame. It crawled down and flexed out on the platform, circling in its space for position to lie down. It had barely enough width to turn. It flattened to its abdomen and held the gondola’s frame with its left middle and rear left legs. It leaned out over the edge with its upper body section and reached down to the lead Chokebot fallen on the skin below.
The lead Chokebot reached up with its forward arms. With each move it made to rise or get closer, it treaded the membrane’s wounds. The hanging Chokebot jostled for an extension from the edge of the platform but still failed its rescue reach. It clacked a long guttural roll. The more the lead Chokebot moved or reached up with its front legs, the more pressure its four remaining legs placed on the skin. A growing swath of punctures slicked the skin with oozes of iridescent swirls.
The pain in Ceeborn’s neck subsided and he sat on the platform’s floor to consider. He could neither help with a rescue, nor run from the platform where they were trapped. So, he scooted forward and kicked again with a thrust.
The hanging Chokebot angled its dome toward him, illuminated with a yellow-blue sickened glow, and clicked a message onto its screen. Ceeborn lifted his knee and cocked his foot to strike. “Stop. Wait,” the Chokebot’s screen read as a plea.
Ceeborn relaxed his foot. Empathy for a foe felt strange. The Chokebot returned to its sinking companion.
The leader’s dome stayed fixed in its glare and illuminated itself with its own blood-red glow. In its precarious position on the breaking surface of the skin, it cocked its head as its angry red color of warning sent an altogether more ominous meaning for a single repeated word: “Wait.”
Ceeborn kicked the hanging Chokebot’s right middle leg from the platform. It screeched and clicked, and the harder he slammed, the redder its dome became. Its two hanging front claws locked onto those of the leader. Its two left legs clung as precarious anchors to the edge of the platform, its right two others sprang rearward for grasp at any remaining support.
He kicked its body well past center and in a wild flail before it fell, it let go of the leader and leapt with a twist to grab the side of the platform. Whether accident or vengeance, its two rear claws cut like a scythe through the platform’s suspension cable. The cable unwound and recoiled into the darkened ceiling. Half the gondola fell. The hanging Chokebot went over. Ceeborn held tight.
The edge of the platform pierced the water’s skin, gashing a wide-open wound.
As the end of the cable drew free from its wheel, the gondola slipped further through the water’s skin. But the platform was still tethered by the cable on its left side and it stayed suspended beneath the surface of the water.
Ceeborn released from the platform, sank and twirled in agony from the venom and water’s reaction on his neck. The two Chokebots let go of the shredded underside of the skin. They turned and sank, legs down.
The lead Chokebot clamped onto his waist, then his legs, and they descended together, tumbling in projections of red: the Chokebot from its dome, Ceeborn thrashing in his fire-red hoodie. They were face-to-face as they sank. He stared straight into his reflection in the Chokebot’s dome, both panicked, uncertain. There was no light from below.
The Chokebot’s back came to a rest on the bottom and its dome flared a brighter orange, a quiet scream of intensity, a brightness that flickered and faded. A thickened organic paste rose from the bottom of the tank and engulfed the Chokebot’s body. The paste rose up the length of its legs.
Ceeborn was locked in its higher grip and he stared facedown, his fight all but choked except for the pounding he inflicted with his elbows and fists.
His reflection in the dome was of fear, panic, and pain. The Chokebot’s screen attempted a luminance of blue to calm his mood. But the paste reached its dome and in a flash of white light, its screen captured the face of Ceeborn’s fear. The Chokebot’s last word stayed superimposed on its screen as it unlocked its grips.
“Wake.”
Then it died with a bubble that rose from its dome.
Ceeborn swam up toward the water’s skin. He passed the submerged gondola and the self-sealing skin patched its puncture wounds with scabs. But the remaining gondola cable continued to stir, preventing the skin’s complete healing, and the thickened water bled out into the open tank.
He squinted into the quiet darkness. If the door he fell through to enter the tank was fed from a river that emptied into the space above the tank’s water, then the outflow to leave must be deep underwater along the tank’s wall. He felt the tug of a swirling current into the darkness below. He dove and righted himself in its pull, then swam toward a door that opened and closed like a valve timed with the rotation of the gully bulkhead. The door led out to a dark river channel.
He broke from the current into daylight, bounced off a solid outcrop of ground, grasped for the tips of a tangled ball of roots, pulled hard, and came ashore along the muddied bank of the gully. He rolled on the shore and felt the pressure pounding in his chest. He was alive.
EIGHTEEN
TOO FAR, ALONE
PACKET ROLLED TO his side and realized he was lying in his hospital bed, a soft pillow under his head, a blanket over his legs, and an intravenous needle in his arm. The tube of the needle ran up to a bag on a pole. He could move his fingers, but he was more intent on blinking his eyes to see if he was awake. He couldn’t be; the gully looked nothing like this, and his terraced home with Daniel had nothing so soft and clean. He picked at the tape of the needle.
His eyes came into a focus toward the window of the room and he saw Meg sitting in a chair. She was contemplative, hunched over, and caressing a blue-gray bird in her lap. It was the bird from the garden. It had grown, but not much. It was stronger and sat upright in her hands. It bobbed its blue beak out from between her fingers. She stroked the side of her finger across its nostril on the topside of its beak. Then she raised it in her hands and nestled its head feathers against her cheek.
“There you are,” he said. “I came looking, but I couldn’t find you. You were with your father.”
“I’m here,” she said without looking, but then saw his eyes were open and she jerked upright in her chair. “Wait, you’re back. Don’t leave this room. Let me get Daniel.” She looked at the door.
“I created it for this room. It’s not real. It’s a baby Prion. They like the cold and the ocean, but—” She stood from the chair. “It’s nighttime. Let me call him. He’ll be right here. Daniel! Daniel, come now. He’s back,” she hollered, standing.
“Sit down,” Packet said without moving. “I can’t see you. This tank is giving me terrible nightmares.”
She sat, cupping her bird, breathless. “You’re not in the tank anymore. Stay here. Don’t leave, please.”
“I tried, but I couldn’t catch that bird on the ship,” he said. “I have to go back. I can help everyone from getting Luegner’s spray.”
“No, you’ve gone far enough already. I know what you found out about the sickness, but if you keep thinking you’re in the ship, you’ll never come back, I know—”
“If you don’t let me go, countless more children will suffer. I can warn them all.”
“No, it’s not real. Do you remember ‘belief and know’, DID, and all the other psychology that Daniel, my mom, and I tried to talk to you about?” She shouted again for the door, “Daniel!”
“I remember.”
“Well, Cessini and Ceeborn are the same person. You believe it. You know it. But you’re Cessini, not Ceeborn. There’s no contradiction.” She wanted to get up and run, but stayed in her chair.
He rose to his elbows. “That’s where you’re wrong. Cessini was weak, but Ceeborn is strong. I am Ceeborn.”
She looked over her shoulder as if to no one in particular in the room and bolted upright. “Okay, he’s on his way. Listen to me, it all comes down to this. Who do you want to be?”
“I want to be Ceeborn.”
“Then you know Cessini will be gone and you’ll lose me forever. Because Ceeborn isn’t real.”
“Then neither was Cessini. But even if he was, Cessini was only real to me when you were there. I remember you were his only friend.”
“No, that’s not true. He was real. And Cessini was more than a friend to me.”
“Then come back on the ship with me. We’ll tell everyone and save them together.”
“No, listen,” she said, pleading. She sat back down on her foot and took a new tact. “I wanted to say thank you for letting me come on your spaceship. It was really cool, but it’s not real.”
“It’s not my spaceship. It’s ours. We built it together, remember.”
“Then it’s time to take it apart.”
“Like the data center in my mind?”
“No, like your body that died. Hang on, he’s here!”
The door flew open. Daniel was there. Three young men and an adult were silhouetted behind him at the door. “I found them. They’re here,” he said, breathless.
“Then, forget it, I’ll save them myself,” Packet said.
Meg tossed the bird to flight and leapt toward the bed as Packet ripped the needle from his arm. The lights flickered and the whole room went dark, like a candle blown out in a cave.
NINETEEN
A RIVULUS AND A HOODIE
CEEBORN, STILL SOAKED from the tank, pushed open the door from the rotted hallway to a classroom. Three boys were in their seats. He dropped his hand from his neck. Six clear-paneled, honeycombed cubicles with chairs were set in two rows of three in the center of the room.
Tenden was the first to turn from his front center seat. His hair was combed, but still rough in licks. He was conscious of his own size in the chair, and the odd, bent-elbowed posture he kept with his arms always held to his front.
Ceeborn crossed the classroom and took the seat at Tenden’s side in the front left cubicle.
Spud was satisfied with his second row seat and leaned forward with a much-missed smile. But Ceeborn’s cubicle was too far to knock on so he didn’t even bother to kick.
Pace was slowest, and moved with a dizzying unease. He lifted his head from his desk at Tenden’s right. He was slight, pale, and sick. He had vertigo sitting still and was dizzy just opening his eyes. “Are the lights spinning?” he asked. He closed his eyes and breathed out a sickened sigh. He lowered his head and buried his forehead back into the cross of his arms on his desk.
“No. The floor is steady,” Ceeborn said as Daniel entered from the door at the front of the room.
“We can try to fix you,” Daniel said. “But we’ve already got plenty to fix on our own.” He turned to Spud. “And I certainly don’t have a fix on you, not yet. But we’ll try.” He winked and Spud took it with a grin of his cheeks.
“The people out there do,” Pace said, with a lift of his head. “It’s called a sack. You put it over your face.”
Tenden lumbered up from his seat in Spud’s defense. Pace was too pale to respond. He had overstepped and knew it. Daniel’s hand pressed on Tenden’s shoulder and guided him back down.
Daniel looked closer at Ceeborn’s neck. Ceeborn turned away and Daniel tugged the collar of the soaked hoodie down.
“It’s bad,” Ceeborn said. “It feels really bad. I think I’m getting worse.”
“Take this off,” Daniel said, pulling up on the hoodie.
Spidery red tracks drew out from a central spot on Ceeborn’s neck. Daniel pulled the hoodie up over Ceeborn’s head and tossed it, soaked, to the floor.
“What did you do?” Daniel asked. “This is a sting? Did you resist?”
“I was in the tank of the ship,” Ceeborn said. “It was dark.”
“Robin needs to see this,” Daniel said. “I don’t know what to do. Not at this stage.”
Ceeborn pushed past Daniel, gathered his hoodie from the floor, scrunched it to find its front-hand pocket. He pulled out the tan case and laid it on his desk. He unclasped the lid. Tenden and Spud circled over. The rivulus looked out, then darted back into the moistened bit of mossy sponge. It was alive and unharmed.
Tenden dove and snatched up the case. He hunched himself over and extended his pointer finger toward the rivulus’s curious, darting eyes. “I’ll carry it,” he said. “I want it.”
Spud yanked at Tenden’s arm for a look, but Tenden ignored him with the wide-eyed focus of a master protector, one having found the ultimate little creature to protect.
“Where did you get it?” Pace asked. “Did you go to the zoo?”
“Robin told me everything about the spray,” Ceeborn said. “It’s spreading and we can’t fix it, no one can. We can stay on this ship, but we’re all going to die if we do.”
Daniel grabbed Ceeborn’s wrist. “No, don’t say that. You don’t have to be sick, or die. This pain will go away. Don’t listen to them. You can come back here. It’ll be just you and me.” He looked around the room. “I know I can fix it all, like a magician. And I’ve made a fix for each of you. Are you ready to see it now?”
“Yes! Open it up, let’s see,” Spud said.
Daniel backed away from Ceeborn and opened a curtain to a stage at the front of the room. Tenden and Spud cheered at what they saw. Pace stayed in his queasy restraint.
Daniel welcomed them up to a dream world stage filled with the most amazing toys and spatial apparatus. Newfangled equipment, life-size gyroscopes, an impregnated wall of varying-sized metallic spheres. And a clear, cylindrical water tank at the front of the room for Ceeborn which was sized for his height plus another half.
Tenden, in his bullish gate, hopped up the three stairs to the stage. He grabbed a bioship model in the shape of a squid. “I’m flying now, boys. Out of my way.”
Spud dodged Tenden and bumped a canister off of its platform stand. Colored marbles spilled on the floor, plinked, and rolled dizzily back toward the seats.
Pace buried his eyes deep into his arms over his desk and hid from the motion.
Ceeborn watched over the boys from his distance as he climbed up the side-mounted ladder of the tank where, from up on its platform, he had the best view of the room.
Daniel circulated, scientific and serious. He tapped on the tank beneath the platform and gestured for
Ceeborn to slip in.
“I want to watch you fix them first. I want to see them happy,” Ceeborn said.
“Meet me halfway,” Daniel said as he tapped again.
Ceeborn relented and slipped into the warm, thickened water of his tank, then bobbed up its wall. He folded his arms over its rim, his legs dangling submerged.
Spud sat behind a station’s black-cloth partition. He clicked his tongue in repeated, quickening directional ticks. He angled his head into the reverberations, detecting the bounce back of minute sound waves. He winced with a migraine and pointed to the upper right corner of the cloth. “There it is,” he said.
Daniel revealed an apple-sized metallic sphere from behind the cloth. “Okay, very good.”
He wheeled a supply cart in closer. It had a thick vertical board and, behind its obstruction, he exchanged the metallic sphere for a smaller marble. Spud struggled to exhaustion with his squinting and clicking. The marble couldn’t be seen through the board.
“Ready?” Daniel asked with a teasing smile. He pulled an atomizer from his cart and wafted the air in front of Spud with a bluish haze.
Ceeborn felt a chill from his exposed shoulders through the water to his toes. Daniel, his father, was a genius.
“We inserted a whole new count of SQUIDs in your facial disk,” Daniel said to Spud.
Spud looked through the settling blue mist as his broadened face came alive with awe. He panned his face into the new spectrum world he saw.
“SQUIDs,” Daniel said. “Superconducting quantum interference devices. That’s right. They measure the minutest changes in your body’s electromagnetic field so if you learn to measure it right, you’ll effectively see through objects. You’ll recognize the magnetic disturbances created. And when you’re ready, you’ll see even smaller. Maybe,” Daniel said as he knelt in closer with a childish goad, “maybe even a qubit.”
Spud leaned closer to the board and tried again. The marble was behind the upper left corner. His jaw dropped with the inspired rise of his smile, his realization that he, and his face, his disk, was a gift. He rose from his station and explored the stage, pinging and measuring the wall’s assortment of exposed semi-spheres.