Backflow Boxed Set

by F P Adriani

  “Increasing speed,” Gary said now. “Release in three seconds, Chen.”

  “One, two, done!” Chen said.

  And then on the viewscreen, the warship finally soared away into the cosmos, almost instantly turning into a tiny dot, which disappeared altogether the next moment.

  My bottom lip was hanging way down now. “According to my panel, the ship’s gone from this layer! How the hell did it go so far?”

  “The Monument does not impart a normal momentum to anything,” Devin said in a matter-of-fact voice, reminding me of Kostas. I wondered if he thought of her, if he missed her—or maybe he didn’t because it seemed that her absence had left him at a higher position of importance….

  No, I was probably being stupidly human while thinking like that: knowing the full workers, their egos weren’t in their jobs, so Devin probably hadn’t been coveting Kostas’ position.

  I stared around the bridge; the postures of my crew had greatly relaxed by now, as if they were relieved and pleased with what had just happened with the warship, which was exactly the way I felt.

  However, something suddenly struck me now: “You know, you Keepers make no sense sometimes: you didn’t want to fire on the ship because it could hurt the individuals inside, yet you let us ram the thing—and hard enough to push it out of this layer!”

  “We have not explained to you how powerful the weapons on here are,” Thura said. “They are quite like the disassociating engines. If we fired a disassociator at the warship on the very lowest setting, parts of it would have been decimated. Outside of a room-engine, we cannot control exactly where a disassociator would disassociate, and who would die in the path of that.

  “The warship’s field can handle damping most of our push from the perspective of the inside of the warship, but that ship’s a much more inefficient, sluggish design than the Monument and would need time to reach us again. We will be long gone by then—Purn has just finally mind-linked with me. He has recharged the load cells. We are ready for an omnivelocity profile.

  “Over the next few days, we will have to make various adjustments to the settings of many of our technologies, so that the warship and others cannot locate us in future, even if our cloaking fails again, as it did that one day. We will also have to change all of our cloaking as Keepers to maintain a tighter control of all the locations where our matter is in this universe, especially for where our matter is visible.

  “I will program a secure destination into the ship’s computer, so we can work undisturbed; we will modify the ship’s cloaking to strengthen it again and do the same to all of the transporter cloaking. Your crew may now pick whatever specific location you want inside that secure area, Captain Zarro, and then take us there right away using an omnivelocity profile.”

  “No wonder Claudius wanted this ship,” I mumbled, remembering back to what he’d said to me, about how powerful the Monument was.

  For once, Claudius was right.

  *

  When the Monument reached that more secure area of space, the ship uneventfully floated inside there for a time and was finally cloaked in an updated, more secure field.

  My crew and I were also cloaked more effectively now—and I was also finally able to get cleaned up and REST.

  I had been through so much: the physical war with Claudius, the war of words with the Krin—essentially, I’d been involved in a two-front war. And now I was completely exhausted; now I felt out-of-phase with my life.

  Walking onto the Demeter now seemed stranger than ever; even my cabin felt, well, unfamiliar to me.

  “I don’t know how to be in here,” I said to Gary, standing in the middle of my cabin, still in my dirty worksuit.

  He’d been undressing and was now wearing only his worksuit’s detachable underwear—it, too, looked as dirty as I looked. Gary’s face was far too pale, and his hands were kind of cold when they reached for me now to help me take off my suit.

  But I quickly lowered my head to his shoulder and finally let the tears that had been burning behind my eyes flow.

  *

  When we had showered together and slipped into my bed, Gary held me and said, “Always remember that you did good.”

  “I did?” I asked in a weary voice, my eyebrows sliding up.

  His arms around me squeezed me tighter. “When you were with the Krin, I was on the Monument’s bridge. Babs and I got to see more of the framework’s science in operation. It was incredible—both massive and intricate. There’s a continuous, massive amount of both normal, abnormal, and dark energy coming off it, almost as if there’s an engine inside creating all kinds of energy. I see now how its collapse could affect the universe and even destroy it. But that hasn’t happened now—thanks to you.”

  “Thanks to us,” I said.

  *

  I slept beside Gary for I didn’t know how long. At some point, he got up; at a later point, I had difficulty rousing. When I finally did wake up, I was alone in my cabin, and both my worksuit and Gary’s worksuit were gone. He’d probably brought them to the workers to be cleaned further. My red captain’s belt had been cleaned and was now lying near me on my nightstand….

  I sat up quite fast, suddenly feeling a moment of dizziness and suddenly worrying about my crew and how they might be feeling now. For too long lately, I’d had to worry about myself, and now I felt like I’d totally forgotten about my crew for most of that time.

  I quickly used my bathroom and got dressed in my normal shirt-and-leggings-and-red-belt captain’s outfit. Then I went to the dining room.

  As I moved through my ship, it felt like a ghost-ship; I saw no one along the way and no one inside the dining room—oh—Geena suddenly popped out from one of the pantries.

  Her eyes brightened when she saw me. “Captain—you’re awake!”

  My mouth slanted across my face. “I forgot to check how long I was out….”

  “I think it’s been nearly a day.”

  “Shit!” I said, running a hand through my hair. “Where is everyone?”

  “Just about everybody’s gone onto the Monument for their normal work. I was headed there myself. One of the Keepers hasn’t been feeling well for days. I’ve been, well, nursing her with a special Keeper food preparation. It takes a few hours every day for me to prepare her gruel properly and feed her—oh, Lydia, you must be starving!”

  “Too right,” I said. “But you go do what you’ve gotta do.”

  Geena pressed a hand to one of my forearms. “There’s fresh hummus and spring rolls—are you sure you don’t need me to serve you?”

  “Of course not. Off you go. I’ll see you later.” I flashed her a bright smile, then walked over to one of the tall metal refrigerators at the front of the room and rummaged around for—well, for everything.

  My mouth watering, my stomach growling, I piled a bunch of different foods onto a tray, poured a big glass of fruit juice, then plopped my ass at one of the booths.

  I was half-way through shoving a plate full of spring rolls down my gut when Babs walked into the room. Her head was hanging low and her normally sure stride was faltering. She looked tired and depressed, and seeing her like this made my heart hurt.

  “Babs!” I said in as bright a voice as I could muster up. “I just woke from my endless sleep. I’m so glad to see you. Come eat with me.”

  Her face looked a little less dejected now as she sat down across from me and grabbed a spring roll.

  “How have you been?” I asked her. “What’s been going on with the crew?”

  Babs filled me in on a bunch of details now, including that Cambridge had been working on rebuilding an entirely new type of forward weapons-array by incorporating some materials from the other human ships on the Monument—and he’d finally finished the building job.

  “That’s great,” I said, but I felt kind of bad that Cambridge had worked so hard on doing that. What did it really matter at this point when weapons made with human materials were nothing compared to what we had ac
cess to on the Monument….

  Babs must have read my mind. “He said it looks like we don’t need them anymore, but he was using the work to help brush up on his skill-set. He’s been in training on the Monument, too, for doing similar work. He was in the Monument’s weapons area when we were under attack.”

  Babs talked some more about what my crew had been up to, but her face and her eyes were still lacking that enthusiasm of hers that I had come to count on seeing, and maybe even needed to see, especially now.

  I wiped my hands on a napkin and swallowed the food in my mouth, my eyes looking right at hers, which were turned down at her own hands as they played with her half-eaten spring roll. She seemed to be struggling to build up an appetite.

  “Babs,” I said, “you look so sad, and I’m so sorry.”

  Her nod was slow now; she was still looking down at the table.

  “Have you talked to the Keepers at all? I feel like—well, like I might have slept through her funeral….”

  Now Babs’ brown eyes shot up at me. “That’s what I don’t understand—I’ve asked them repeatedly if I could see her, but they told me they’ve got her sealed up in something. I never got to say goodbye….”

  I grabbed both of Babs’ hands. “Don’t worry.” I let go of her hands and used my belt-communicator to contact the Monument’s bridge. Devin was there; I told him where I was and that I wanted to speak to a Keeper.

  “I’ll tell Thura,” Devin said.

  A moment later, a spinning, sparkling patch appeared in the dining room; then an unrobed Thura materialized there. It seemed strange seeing her on my ship, especially when she finally walked over and sat down beside Babs—pulsed beside Babs really; parts of Thura’s body kept disappearing over the tabletop….

  “Do you want any food?” I asked her quickly. “There’s hummus—it’s mushed up—”

  “I know what hummus is,” Thura said out loud, her voice coming from somewhere inside her shimmering head. “I have had it before. Kostas was fond of making it.”

  Babs’ face twitched, as if she was going to cry; then I jumped up from my seat and rushed across the room to get the hummus from one of the fridges. I put a big mound of the hummus on a plate, poured some water into a glass, then brought that stuff over to the booth.

  As Thura began using her clear fingers to scoop up the golden hummus and slurp it into her still-red-tinged mouth, I sat back down and said, “We need to talk about what happened to Kostas. Maybe things are different for Keepers, but many of us humans prefer to see our dead and say goodbye that way. We really need to.”

  Thura paused in her various motions to stuff the hummus in her mouth; then she took a quick flickering drink of the water. I saw the contents of her mouth quickly slide down inside her transparent chest—I had to look away at the view of her intestines.

  Then she said: “When our Keeper paths first crossed with Kostas, we could tell she was a very brilliant person. And then she also became a very special worker. Kostas has had a Keeper worker-chip in her brain all the while, but she had also been injured when we first met, and we had to replace another portion of her brain then with Keeper matter.”

  A light-bulb seemed to flash on inside my head now: I had finally learned the reason why Kostas had seemed so stolid, so inscrutable.

  A tear slid down one of Babs’ cheeks. “She never told me about that. I wish she had.”

  Thura’s shimmering head turned toward Babs. “That probably was not because of you. We Keepers do not share everything, and, even when Kostas was not momentarily mind-linked with us, she had more of our traits than other human workers do because she had a bigger part of our Keeper material.” I thought of Chen now….

  “Fortunately,” Thura continued, “because of that matter, we may be able to bring her back to life.”

  Babs’ mouth fell open as her eyes shot to Thura’s. “Is that true?!” Babs said.

  “Of course,” Thura replied. “This is what we have been trying to do since I brought her back here. However, her having died in The Error Universe will probably change her more than a normal death would, assuming we can bring her back. If we can, her memories will be unpredictable and might have combined with another part of her in The Error Universe, if there are any parts there.”

  “Thura,” I said fast now, “when we were there, we saw her ship. It crashed not far from us!”

  Thura was silent for a long moment. Babs’ waiting eyes were on Thura the whole time.

  Then Thura finally said, “You must have experienced some temporal effects there.” Thura seemed to intentionally shake her head as it unintentionally pulsed. “Whatever has occurred, if we get her back, there might be permanent losses of memory.”

  “You mean she’ll have forgotten me,” Babs said in a sad voice now, and I could feel my heart sinking along with hers.

  “We shall see what happens,” Thura said. “But this is why you should not have had relations with a worker if you are not a full worker yourself—or else your attachment will become too strong compared to a full worker’s attachment.”

  “I’ve already heard that kind of thing from my captain,” Babs said, a touch of tartness in her voice, but I could tell she hadn’t meant it toward me, and maybe not even toward Thura. I reached across the table and squeezed Babs’ hand, but she must have heard her own tone and had second thoughts about it. Her eyes quickly shifted back to Thura. “I’m sorry, Thura—I know you’re doing the best you can.”

  Thura’s mobile head seemed to nod, but the motion happened only once, so it was hard for me to tell if it was an actual nod or just her normal flickering.

  Babs twisted her hands together on the tabletop. “I don’t care what Kostas is like if you can make her come back; I just want her to be all right again. That you could even save her at all is like a miracle. I can see why Lydia wanted us to work with you.”

  “Lydia makes wise decisions,” Thura said, and I almost choked on my own tongue. “But,” Thura continued, “we Keepers do not perform miracles. What you are perceiving when you are around us is the science of who we are as a species, things we were born capable of doing so can’t help doing, things we have since learned to do. We make mistakes sometimes because there is so much to do. That places like The Error Universe exist shows that mistakes are probably an inherent part of the Omniverse. We Keepers have our path-library and our many other mechanisms that yield us data on so much in the Omniverse. But, there is always chaotic data inside data streams. The Keepers cannot read the chaos that much better than you humans and many other species can—you must always remember that. We may seem pushy sometimes, but that is likely because of the urgency of so much of our work, and because of the species-divide between us, which sometimes does inadvertently lead to insensitivity.”

  I remembered how I had accused Kostas of that on Babs’ behalf, and now I felt bad for my rash words to Kostas then. We had all been trying to do the best we could. Sometimes those efforts just wouldn’t wind up being good enough in the ultimately uncontrollable Omniverse—I saw that now.

  My eyes widened a bit as I thought more on what Thura had just revealed—it really did explain some of Kostas’ inhuman, dispassionate ways. At the same time, the other workers apparently didn’t have Kostas’ Keeper brain parts, yet they were often out-of-it, too.

  Or maybe I was being unfair and had been unfair all along: apparently, Kostas wasn’t that dispassionate, given what had happened between her and Babs. Maybe all of the workers were simply working a lot, so they were too busy thinking a lot to be feeling a lot. Would I become like that on the Monument? Time would tell….

  “So when can I see her—can I please see her?” Babs asked Thura now.

  But Thura replied, “She is in an activator-cocoon. It will be days before we know anything. If she does not come back to life, then you can see her. If she does come back, there will be a period of adjustment, and I don’t think it would be best for you to see her during that time.”

  B
abs sighed; then she quickly changed the subject. “I need to keep busy. I’ve not had enough work to do. Thank you for saying earlier that you were giving me time to grieve, Thura, but I only become more upset when I’m stagnant. What’s the itinerary for the Demeter crew today?”

  Thura swallowed the last of her food and drink. “Actually, something has come up, and we must go to Rintu. Captain Zarro, I thought you and your crew might want to fly the Monument to there.”

  “You thought right,” I said now on a smile.

  *

  A little later, I was finally in my now-completely-clean worksuit and was stepping out into the hangar when I spotted Devin and Cambridge walking into the hangar from the small meeting room.

  “Cambridge!” I said as I moved toward him. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you. Babs told me you finished working on creating a new weapons-array—super! What have you been up to today?”

  Cambridge was all smiles as he stopped in front of me and jerked a thumb at Devin. “I’ve been coordinating a Monument weapons-test with him. Captain, they moved me down to the weapons area permanently to work—I hope that’s all right.”

  “Of course,” I said, smiling.

  Devin’s gaze turned into a familiar-looking, distant haze, as if he was mentally talking to the Keepers. Then his eyes shifted to me and Cambridge. “If you don’t mind, we should all head to our stations now. You can talk as we move.”

  “We’re not transporting?” Cambridge asked as the three of us walked out of the hangar.

  “Zuri has finished more work on the new transporter cloaking; however, we are in the middle of testing it. We will then have to make more adjustments to the transporters in the red worksuits, but we’re always protected anyway when we’re inside the Monument.”

  “This place is awesome,” Cambridge said suddenly, and I couldn’t help smiling.