Relics, Wrecks and Ruins

by Aiki Flinthart

  A-Class alien female. He frowned. Inside that casing, she could be the shape of a jellypod.

  “On my next visit, I’ll bring you some music to listen to,” he said. “I find it soothing and uplifting. Perhaps it will have the same effect on you, Sarin. It also speaks to the nature of our species.”

  She didn’t reply immediately, but Kyne noticed the sarcophagus infusing with a rosy color.

  “You’ve changed color,” he said, delighted. “I find that hue warm and pleasant. I shall assume that it’s a sign of your approval.”

  The color deepened.

  Kyne spontaneously reached out to touch the screen between them, but as his fingers contacted the surface it went blank. “Sarin?”

  The door in the side wall slid open and one of the guards burst in. He lifted Kyne from his chair and roughly bundled him into the corridor.

  “What is this? My hour with the A-Class isn’t finished! And your manner is unacceptable!” protested Kyne. “I’m an esteemed member of the station scientific community. You c-cannot treat me this way!”

  He would’ve said a lot more, but a four-guard escort formed around him and began to move. He had to lift his knees and jog to keep from being trampled by them.

  The guards maintained a silent and threatening manner on the trip back to his rooms.

  Kyne squirmed in their grip. But they held fast, implacable, and unyielding.

  Ridiculous! Excessive! He tried to send a complaint to the stationmaster as soon as he was alone again.

  Stationmaster Floraboden is engaged in a Level Five scan and unable to be disturbed. His M-A sounded annoyingly prim.

  Kyne swore and poured himself a double measure of Mintakan port. The sweet, thick wine coated the raw anger burning his throat, and soon he settled at his desk to select music for Sarin.

  #

  His visits to her followed a pattern after that: somber and silent guard escorts, time in the little interview room communing with Sarin, then a somber and silent return. Kyne was careful not to touch the screen in the interview room again, and the guards did not treat him roughly.

  Soon he looked forward to the daily visits, and he learned much about Sarin on the strength of his own conversational skill and linguistic savvy. Kyne knew he was doing a good job.

  Sarin also seemed to take pleasure in speaking to him, often showing her emotions by changing colors.

  He compiled daily verbal reports for Floraboden, pleased that he’d identified that she was from Pleaides, specifically a 4.17-magnitude star she called !, which Kyne believed to be the star they knew as Merope.

  The crew of the Jetshift had found her crystalline casing floating in a rocky belt orbiting a one of Alderberan’s planets and thought it might be valuable. They’d held her captive for over a ship year, despite her request to be set free. (He was estimating the length of time based on Sarin’s description of overheard conversations.) How Sarin got to be floating free on the edge of Orion’s boundaries was still not clear.

  Kyne needed more time with her, and more music. Sarin appeared to enjoy Reikebord, Isikayao-Wha, and Piaf. Her favorite though, was Vangelis, an old, old song called Damask Rose. Kyne had taken to playing it at night in his rooms while he thought about Sarin and their conversations.

  Her wit and her fine tastes suggested a rare kind of woman. What was she like inside her shell? If only he could catch a glimpse of her. Perhaps she possessed beauty of kind to which he could become accustomed? And her to him. They were in every other way in tune.

  #

  On his next visit though, Kyne became concerned. As the strains of a Vivaldi concerto faded, Sarin uttered a sound that could have been a sigh.

  “You seem sad,” he said, taking care to frame it as a statement.

  “I miss .”

  Kyne took a moment to consider that. “Your language is quite beautiful. And should I try and guess, I would say that the reason you were found by the pirates so far from your home is because you were on a quest of some kind, perhaps a rite of passage. It’s common among far-traveling species that the young are sent out to find maturity through discovery. I believe your sense of longing is for lost opportunity to return home with some kind of prize.”

  Sarin’s crystalline sarcophagus took on the rosy hue he’d grown to understand meant agreement.

  “Your insightfulness is outstanding, Just Kyne. You must be from a superior subgroup of your species,” she said.

  Kyne’s cheeks warmed. “I am trained in a specific area of social behavior. Internal realities are my special interest area. Understanding external cues allows me to make intuitive conclusions about how humanesques think.”

  “But I am not a humanesque,” said Sarin.

  “And yet it appears that I understand you. I could share more of my theories with you, Sarin. We could see how closely the architecture of our minds is aligned.”

  “I look forward to that, Just Kyne. I look forward to you. Will you come again soon?”

  Kyne’s heart tapped a little faster in his chest. The idea that she wanted him brought him unexpected joy.

  #

  Later, in his rooms, he lay on his bed thinking about Sarin. Her last words to him had been in the form of an interrogative. Did that signal a shift in their relationship?

  His body throbbed in answer and the arousal surprised him. How long since he’d felt so stirred? And how absurd that he'd found intimacy in this situation!

  Yet his feelings were as tangible as the bedsheet rubbing against his foreskin. Regardless of how hideous or repulsive Sarin’s real form was, he knew he was losing his heart.

  He fell asleep dreaming of her but was woken a few hours later by his M-A.

  Professor Kyne, you have a call from Stationmaster Floraboden, it informed him.

  He jolted upright. “Yes, Stationmaster?”

  “I apologize for interrupting your rest, Professor. Your interviews with the A-Class have been terminated. Thank you for your service,” said Floraboden without preamble.

  “What?” exclaimed Kyne. “But I haven’t finished. Sir, you must—!”

  “The A-Class has been declared a hostile and is no longer available for study. Please send your final report through in the morning. Good night, Professor. Thank you for your work.”

  Thank you for your work?! Kyne sat on the end of his bed, his outrage growing. How dare Floraboden terminate his study!

  He paced, fuming over it.

  Until, slowly, fear began to replace anger. What had suddenly changed? If Sarin been declared hostile, what was Floraboden planning to do to her?

  Kyne knew the regular security protocols. Declared hostiles were ejected from the station into the black.

  His stomach lurched. No! He couldn’t let that happen.

  He sprang up, hurried into his office, and opened his specimen fridge. On the shelf above the preserved samples lay containers of formalin. He retrieved a couple and two hypodermics patches from his equipment cube.

  Sarin, I’m coming!

  #

  Wild thoughts swirled in his mind as he ran along the passages to the airvator. He must find her. He must change Floraboden’s mind. She was…they couldn’t…this had to be stopped!

  He entered the shaft, panting and trembling, and closed his eyes, taking a moment to recall the sequence. He’d made this trip so many times that he knew exactly how long it took. If he counted, he should be able to locate the correct floor.

  Ready…now…771…659…578…430…335... 242…191...stop!

  Kyne placed his finger on the emergency tab and the airvator stopped so quickly that he stumbled. He opened his eyes and with shaking hands, loaded the vials into the hypo patches. He had to be quick. Forceful if needed.

  “Open,” he told the concierge when he was done.

  He walked quietly down the cool, familiar corridor to the interrogation cells, expecting at any moment to be stopped. To his surprise, he found no one guarding them.

  Sudd
enly panicked again, he burst into the interview room. “Sarin! Where are you?”

  But the room was also empty, and the viewing window was inactive.

  He went over and hammered on it. “Sarin! Sarin! You’re in danger!”

  But the window didn’t change, nor did she reply.

  The agitation inside him coalesced into something monstrously aggrieved. Where was she? His love…what had they done to her? The pressure in his chest made it hard to breathe. How dare they interfere with his work. His life—

  “Professor Kyne,” said a clipped voice from the doorway. “The A-Class is no longer available to you.”

  He turned and glared at the soldier. Vaguely, maybe, he recognized him. One who’d been pushy with him in the past.

  “Where is she?” Kyne demanded.

  The soldier ignored his question. “Place the hypos on the floor in front of you. NOW!” He closed the visor of his helmet and lifted his weapon.

  A haze of emotions blinded him. Frightened, he launched at the man, and thrust the hypo against the soft skin under his helmet strap.

  A soft gasp escaped the guard’s lips.

  They were locked together, for an instant, struggling in a tight circle. Something whirred. The guard’s weapon had activated.

  He tried to wrench it away. As he twisted, it discharged a pulse of heat that burned deep into Kyne’s chest. He staggered back, his vision clearing for a moment.

  Movement flickered on the viewing window. As if she was watching.

  “Sarin!” he choked out and fell.

  #

  Floraboden welcomed everyone to the virt-meet; sector stationmasters were present, as were senior members of the Orion League of Sentient Species—OLOSS. He had to play this right. The meet would remain on record for analysis.

  “Proceed with your evaluation, Stationmaster Floraboden,” said the OLOSS facilitator’s avatar opposite him.

  “We captured an A-Class alien on a JetShift trader close to Bellatrix. It took the form of a crystalline sarcophagus, which protected the actual entity inside.”

  “And the traders handed the A-Class over to you without quibble? I’d like to have seen that!” said one of the other stationmasters who favored an avatar with a thick fringe and large ears.

  Floraboden glanced at the speaker’s name: Cobb from Cobb-Vermont Station out near Saiph. They were rivals with Leto for the next round of OLOSS maintenance grants. It would suit Cobb well for Floraboden to look bad in this.

  “The traders were all dead, S-M Cobb. By murder and suicide, we determined,” he said.

  Cobb grunted. “Mutiny then?”

  “Of a kind. Yes. We verified the A-Class as a threat, based on the situation we found.”

  “Which was?”

  “The bodies were within the proximity of the crystal casing. It had shot out crystalline threads to attach to them.”

  “Feeding off them?”

  “There was evidence to suggest it had absorbed amino acids from the corpses. So, yes.”

  “And your response?”

  “We employed one of our psycholgeestes to study it. If you have read the report uploaded to your M-As, you will find events logged in chronological order?”

  Nods from those who had read it were vehement. Cobb clearly had not and shrugged.

  “Just prior to Professor Kyne’s unfortunate psychotic episode, we were able to breach the sarcophagus and identify the true nature of the A-Class,” added Floraboden.

  “Breaching an A-Class? That is outside protocol boundaries, Floraboden. Not to say, risky,” said one of the OLOSS members.

  “I understand that, Pre-Eminence. But we feared an outcome like the one we found on the JestShift. I decided that we should act in the interest of station security.”

  He watched the mixture of reactions. At least half of them approved—better than he’d hoped.

  “So, what did you learn? And why was it not included in your report?” asked the Pre-Eminence.

  “I thought it better you heard it from me, so there was no misunderstanding. You see…we found nothing,” said Floraboden.

  “Explain!” demanded the OLOSS contingent in a synchronous chorus.

  “The sarcophagus held only a tiny, tiny creature. Or at least, a part of a creature that we believe to be its detachable projection organism. I oversaw the opening myself.”

  “You mean the A-Class had left an echo behind in its shell?” asked Cobb.

  “Yes. Years ago, we believe. The projection organism that Kyne interacted with was merely as you say, an echo, left as a guardian against scavengers, in case the A-Class needed to return to use the casing again.”

  “You’re saying that your psychologeeste developed a relationship with the echo of the original inhabitant?” asked Cobb, seemingly amused.

  Annoying fellow. Floraboden pressed his lips tight. Restating the obvious and asking questions he should already know the answers to. In real time, Floraboden rubbed his throbbing temples, but didn’t allow his avatar to copy the gesture. “So, it seems.”

  “And the crew of the JetShift?”

  “The same fate, I imagine. After they were dead the sarcophagus harvested the amino acids from the bodies to boost its energy signal—like a location finder.”

  “So, you sacrificed one of your own to learn what the A-Class was up to?” Cobb, was openly sticking the needles in now, insinuating that Floraboden had mishandled it.

  “Professor Kyne was appraised of the risks and chose to serve his community. By observing his interactions with the echo artifact inside, we were able to deduce how it worked. It is adaptive and responds differently to varying stimuli,” said Floraboden, stiffly.

  “So, with your Professor…err…Kyne, it chose seduction.”

  “Yes. We think it reacted to his…umm…well…Kyne kept to himself. He was perhaps more vulnerable than we realized. It used his loneliness to form an attachment. Then Kyne became irrational and attacked a guard. Both died during the incident. We believe a similar situation may have occurred on the JetShift. The creature’s echo seems to be able use human emotions as a weapon against us.”

  “Ingenious,” said Cobb.

  It was not the word Floraboden would have chosen.

  “We’d better keep this one under wraps. Wouldn’t want our enemies to know things are so loosey-goosey over Leto way,” Cobb added.

  Floraboden enjoyed a momentary image of strangling the man before his M-A registered his spiking blood pressure and flooded his body with a light sedative. “The situation was handled perfectly professionally, S-M Cobb. We suffered no loss of life and followed the OLOSS protocols once we established the A-Class was potentially hostile. The casing is on a trajectory with the Mintakan calcium cloud.”

  It was only a half lie. There was no way he was reporting in front of Cobb that they’d found a second guard dead with his hand adhered to the observer’s window. Floraboden would back channel that information later and blame it on an accidental station death.

  Eventually, the OLOSS chorus spoke. “Thank you, Stationmaster. We’ll retire to consider the implications of this. Meanwhile, please award Professor Kyne a memorial plaque for services to humanesquekind.”

  The meeting adjourned and Floraboden was left alone in his rooms. He let his valet know he was ready for a glass of grape juice and settled himself on one of the kneeling stools to think about Kyne. He recalled the terms of their agreement.

  Mount a plaque to honor Professor Kyne in the corridor near Professor Freeburg’s office, he said to his M-A.

  At the mention of the dead man’s name, he noticed the normally white lights along his array turn a rosy hue. An anomaly. But after a quick system check, he could determine no issues. Maybe he’d been awake too long and was hallucinating again. He logged a check-up with the station medic and went back to his maintenance schedules.

  16 Minutes

  By Jasper Fforde

  The technical term was ‘Closed-Loop Temporal Field Containment’ bu
t to everyone who had been so incarcerated, it was known as Looping. You were a looper, you had been looped. The period of time in which you found yourself was a loop. The company that managed the system on behalf of the Chronoguard was named Loop Inc.

  Loop, loop, loop.

  Which is what you do these days: same sixteen minutes of time, exact same place, exact same people. You can explain to others what’s happened to you, but success is short lived. Even if someone does believe you, it will never be for very long. Inside the loop those sixteen minutes are all you have; outside the loop those sixteen are simply an empty block of time that, to most people, is utterly unremarkable and has now long receded into the dim forgotten past.

  Cruel and unusual? Sure. Effective? Youbetcha.

  “Will sir be having a dessert today?” asks the waitress, taking away your plates. She is young and pretty and has a kindly face. She has served you nearly twenty-five thousand times. You’ve told her your name every single time. She hasn’t remembered once. She can’t remember. There are any number of her, but only one of you.

  Anything you have with you, stays with you; anything you put down is lost into the Chronoclastic ether next time the loop was reset. You change clothes, washed, ate, drank, disposed of waste—everything is supplied accessible within the temporal window they gave you. That’s why loops are generally centered around shopping malls with a food court and public restrooms. It wouldn’t take you long to starve, stuck inside sixteen minutes, in say, the middle of the Atlas Mountains.

  When you arrive at Loop 1, you first find a notebook and pen to log the number of Loops, the equivalent of chalk marks on the wall of the cell. You have no money, but you can steal what you want, because your punishment for a world in which there are consequences is to be banished to a world where there are none. The irony and perversity are not wasted on you.

  You try using the phone, but there’s no one to call that can help you, nor believe you. The people you call think you’re a crank or a hoax caller, and you’re reset every sixteen minutes, so it’s like it never happened. You even try calling your past self to figure out a work-around, but your past self is only eleven.