With the quarry behind her and nothing but an empty horizon before her, Sky’s thoughts turned to her father. The current face of Earth was an upside down Australia. The Earth had rotated so fast it was as if time on the planet had sped up, and the Moon had been left behind.
The caterpillar took a sharp turn off the main road and, as Sky had feared, the Sun began to dip. They were passing over the terminator—the line between day and night. Worse, the caterpillar was rumbling toward the far side of the Moon, the side that was unseen by Earth.
The horizon began to lift its veil over the Earth, making it appear as if the planet was setting. Before it disappeared, Sky sent a message to her father:
Thanks for the luggage.
The message registered her current location. If she did not return, at least someone would know her last whereabouts.
Earth disappeared.
All that was left of it was a blueish haze across the land. After a time even the haze faded and the only natural light that remained came from the sunlight reflecting off the asteroid ring above.
There was one consolation; the darkness had allowed the stars to come out, like a canopy of fairy lights.
The caterpillar’s exterior lights flicked on and most of the stars disappeared. The Olon’s head lolled to one side, asleep.
*
Sky woke with a jerk. The caterpillar train had stopped. Her neck ached. The engines powered down.
She looked outside, as far as the lighting permitted, but there was no sign of any structures that might indicate the presence of a human colony.
Inside, the Olon was no longer in their seat.
Sky’s heart pounded as she looked up and down the carriages; was the Olon still on board? Had they passed the colony already? Uncle Jesse said it had been five hours since they had left Shackleton City.
She saw movement outside. Human figures emerged from the darkness, carrying bulky rifles. They approached the caterpillar and passed by Sky’s carriage, observing her with more than casual interest. A transport rolled into view, covered in armored plates and sporting two turret guns on its roof, both aimed in her direction.
8:3
Sky heard the hiss of an airlock. Five humans in lunar fatigues entered the caterpillar, their features hidden behind tinted helmets. They stopped a couple of meters from her, their weapons raised.
Sky was determined to control her fear. ‘I’m a freelance reporter,’ she explained.
They did not respond.
Sky spotted the Olon making their way through the line of soldiers. The Olon’s torso shifted unnaturally, as if they were melting into the environment. Sky felt something on her shoulder and froze—it was a swarm tentacle.
The Olon’s face switched to a man’s features, his eyes melancholy yet warm. There was something about them, and his orange hair.
‘Hello,’ he said. ‘The name’s Dante. I’m the mayor of the colony.’
Dante.
It was like meeting a nightmare in the flesh.
Dante glanced at the luggage at her feet. ‘That’s a mighty dangerous piece of equipment you’ve got there.’ He opened his palms as if in apology, ‘Of course, there’s nothing wrong with that; you’ve every right to defend yourself. But it’s not the weapon that concerns us as much as your intentions.’
‘I’m a reporter and—’
‘Of course. But you’ll need to hand over control of your luggage before we can proceed.’
The gun muzzles had remained locked on Sky the entire time. The Olon’s swarm tentacle caressed the back of Sky’s neck, making her hairs stand on end. The last thing she wanted to do was to hand her only weapon over to these people.
Uncle Jesse?
< You got shit to no chance, ma’am. Pardon the expression. >
Once that sank in, Sky unlocked her secure link with the swarm. A second later it shuffled, out of her control, to the Olon-as-Dante. He opened it to examine the contents, finding only clothing and toiletries. In the meantime, the Olon’s swarm searched Sky’s body—a little too close for Sky’s liking—but found nothing of interest.
The Olon-as-Dante gestured to Sky’s swarm, ‘You’re either very wealthy or have powerful benefactors, yes?’
Sky shrugged.
He smiled. ‘Follow me.’
Under the gaze of their weapons, Sky did as she was told. She followed Dante into the airlock where she donned her helmet. The airlock depressurized and they stepped into the shadowy landscape where the armored vehicle and its guns awaited her.
‘I’m sorry,’ the face of Dante said, ‘but we have to be careful who we allow into our home. You see, we only open our doors to those linked to our network. It’s to ensure the safety of our kin.’
‘I can’t harm you now,’ Sky said. ‘You have my only weapon.’
‘If you wish to enter our home, you must connect with us, brain-to-brain. All we need is your consent and we’ll link you with our network. Then you’ll see us, and we’ll see you.’
ATTENTION
This is a brain-to-brain connection request from an unknown source… DANTE.
WARNING: Connecting to an untrusted source may void your security and health insurances and result in neurovirus infection.
Do you wish to proceed (not recommended)?
Sky left it hanging.
‘There were no conditions on the ticket that required me to connect brain-to-brain.’
‘We can refund your ticket.’
‘I don’t see why you need me to link with your network.’
‘We must access your mind to understand your true intentions. A telepath colony has no secrets. No masks,’ Dante glanced at the helmeted guards. ‘At least, no mental masks.’
As much as the thought of connecting disgusted her, Sky realized that it would give her access to their minds and a better chance at finding Geppetto, and maybe the cure itself.
But what good was a cure if they gained control over her brain? She would be like a hen opening the henhouse to the fox.
‘My mind is my own,’ she told him.
‘Is it?’ He looked surprised. ‘Your mind is not your own, and it never has been.’
His statement was cryptic enough to sound wise, on the surface at least. He continued, ‘Your government has been in your head since birth, scanning your every thought. At least we offer you a two-way link.’
‘I’ve come all this way,’ she pleaded. ‘I’m a freelance reporter—’
‘An inexperienced one, it appears.’ He pulled up her fake reporter bio.
‘I only committed to my dream of freelancing recently.’
Dante laughed, sending a mist of spittle against his visor. ‘Have you ever been lied to, madam?’ His stare made her more uncomfortable than the guns.
‘Hasn’t everyone?’
‘How does it feel?’
She thought of her father.
‘How does it feel?’ Olon-as-Dante repeated.
‘It hurts.’
Dante’s eyes analyzed her with such presence that she felt exposed before him. ‘And why did it hurt?’
Sky searched for an answer, but whenever she dipped into the childhood memory of her father she came up against a wall, as if the pain was no longer there, or a part of her refused to revisit it.
Dante spared her the effort. ‘A lie is the greatest crime of all. The liar forces the lie into your mind, making you believe something is, when it is not. The liar alters your reality without your consent. The liar is the true hacker, the true brainbender. The liar is the mind-raper.’
Sky could not help but think he was talking about her.
‘You Earth-lubbers are accustomed to lying to each other,’ he said, ‘but when we are lied to…’ Dante shook his head in solemn manner, as if recalling a great hardship, ‘… it hurts more than you can possibly imagine.’
< Ma’am, it don’t look like you have much of an option. I don’t reckon they’ll let you in without connectin’. >
It was rare for Un
cle Jesse to comment on her decision-making, but when he did, Sky knew she must be struggling.
I hear you, Uncle Jesse, but… her mind blanked… there’s something wrong here. Something… I just feel like something horrible will happen if…
Sky felt a retch coming on, but throwing up in a lunar helmet was something she was desperate to avoid.
The telepaths remained silent, waiting.
‘I can’t,’ she said at last. ‘There must be another way.’
The Olon’s face switched from that of Dante to another, then another, then a cascade of faces, which slowed until it returned to Dante’s.
‘Then I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘but we have security concerns. I hope you understand.’ His face disappeared and all that remained was the stark white canvas of the Olon’s head, with a slit for a mouth to suggest humanity.
The caterpillar’s engines rumbled to life. Its giant wheels began to turn. Then it rolled onward, without Sky. The Olon boarded the armored vehicle along with the others.
‘You’re leaving me here?’ Sky said, looking around her in the darkness.
‘There’s a transport junction not too far out,’ the Olon said. ‘You have enough oxygen to get there.’
The junction’s coordinates appeared before Sky.
The Olon shook its blank head. ‘Shame. You had potential.’ The vehicle’s doors began to close.
‘What about my swarm? My clothes are in there,’ Sky cried.
The doors shut.
The armored transport rolled out after the caterpillar train. Sky watched as its rear lights shrunk, then disappeared. Uncle Jesse said the cost of her train ticket had been refunded.
She was alone in this land of shadows and unreachable stars.
Chapter 9
Over
9:1
Sky trudged toward the junction, a dim glow on the horizon. She imagined how she would appear on satellite footage; like a dust mite on a gray blanket. What an unreal landscape, she thought. Everything was still, a time-frozen tableau. The lack of color, the odd way the dust moved and settled under her feet, as if the air were liquid. The only sounds were her breath and the rustling of her lunesuit against her body.
‘Found anything, Uncle Jesse?’
< There ain’t a lot of options. When you get to the transport junction you could hire a rover and try to follow the caterpillar’s tracks. They’ll still be there; there ain’t no wind here to blow them away. >
Sky wanted to speak to her mother now more than ever. She found a link to the Earth Neuronet and manifested live footage of her mother’s hospital room. The maya of her mother in her bed against the lunar backdrop was an absurd sight. Sky expanded it until the Moon’s landscape faded and all she could see was the virtual bedroom.
The last light of the day streamed through the hospital window. Data hovered above her mother’s head. Sky read the section titled: “Estimated date of neural collapse”.
Four days left.
Sky’s journey to Apollo, her escape from the cartel, and the Som Razer job had wasted three Earth days already.
Four days, 96 hours, before the virus degrades her neurals beyond repair.
Sky reached out to touch her mother, as if to spark life into the image, but all they exchanged were the subtle flickering of meshing mayas as Sky’s fingers passed through the woman’s face. It was just an echo, just another hallucination. They had all given up on her; the doctors, the husband, the planet.
Sky ripped herself from the maya, returning her senses to the barren Moon.
She looked back at her tracks in the lunar regolith, so still they could have been molds. She could follow them back. She could find the caterpillar’s tracks…
‘Uncle Jesse, how much oxygen do I have left?’
< About a day’s worth, ma’am. > The ample oxygen was courtesy of her suit’s rebreather, which extracted oxygen from the carbon dioxide she exhaled.
Sky called her father.
Tester answered within minutes. She permitted him to appear in maya-form. She could have allowed him to see her surrounding environment—her suit, like many modern materials on Earth, had miniscule cameras installed—but decided she did not want to worry him. Instead, he would see a generic image of her against a plain background.
‘Sky,’ he said, elated, ‘I’m not getting any live footage of you. Are you safe?’
She nodded. ‘Your gift was useful.’ She said nothing about the telepaths taking her swarm.
His maya stuttered in the weak connection. ‘I had hoped you wouldn’t need it.’
‘Any progress on the cure?’
‘We have not given up,’ he said. ‘You?’
‘The VOL is more complex than I expected.’
He had the decency to avoid saying I told you so.
‘Is there anything I can do? Anything else you need?’ he asked. He appeared genuine.
Another swarm would be handy, Sky thought. ‘You look like you could do with some sleep.’
He chuckled, his guard dropping for a second, an opening in the clouds. The sound of his laughter tugged at Sky, like a fond memory.
Jeong-soo Tester. Who was this man? Sky had only a few memory impressions of him from her childhood. Why had she called a stranger at a moment like this?
She knew she had more to say to him, but she had no way of expressing what was going on inside her. It was as if her emotions were speaking a foreign language; they were just sounds without meaning.
‘I have to go,’ she said, and hung up. Her father tried to call her again but she did not answer.
Sky stared at the light haze on the horizon where the transport junction waited.
She turned her back on the junction and began to retrace her footprints, cocooned in her suit yet exposed to the elements, each step closer to the cure… or to another, unthinkable, outcome.
9:2
As Okiro had expected, his captain believed Sky’s neural spike was unworthy of further analysis: ‘If the scanners do not think it is a problem, it is not a problem.’
‘Dr. Kritikos thinks it is,’ Okiro pressed. ‘He suspects illegal commands have been implanted in her brain.’ Okiro confessed to arranging a consultation with the neurotech without the captain’s approval.
The captain was less than impressed. She told him that any further errors of judgment would put an end to his bonus, and perhaps result in disciplinary measures. ‘Your concern for your client is commendable, but we have two hundred thousand brains to program under the federator’s new directive,’ the captain explained. ‘We are a month behind schedule, understaffed, and underfunded. Given your client’s altercation with the brainbender, I am sure the NIA is already monitoring her. We are out of our depth on this.’
‘But the spike—’
‘If you wish, book her in for a more thorough scan, but I cannot devote any more resources to her case.’
After the meeting, Okiro did not return to his desk. Nor did he attend the programming reassessment session that Dr. Kritikos had arranged for him. Instead, Okiro went for a walk.
He ended up at Liberty Gardens. He took his mind off things by browsing Australian Outback camping tours. He was hoping to pay for the trip with his bonus.
After some deliberation, he called the NIA emergency link. He expressed his concerns for Sky, he told them that he believed the brainbender had manipulated her, and that this might explain her uncharacteristic offworld travel.
There would be hell to pay when the next scanner report arrived. So much for the trip Down Under.
9:3
Sky bounded across the lunar desert in great strides, her toes barely touching the ground as she skimmed the surface. She retraced her steps, following her footprints which were undisturbed in the airless environment, until she returned to the location where the Olon-as-Dante had abandoned her.
From there, she followed the tracks carved by the caterpillar train and the armored vehicle.
The tracks were her lifeblood, her
last chance to find Dante’s colony. They were visible only a few meters at a time, the extent of her suit’s exterior light which held the darkness at bay like an invisible umbrella.
Without the Sun’s light, Sky had trouble making out the horizon, such that the Moon and space seemed to merge and she felt that at any moment she might float off in the void. At least the stars would keep her company.
She was exhausted but there was still no sign of a colony or outpost or anything.
< Ma’am, we’ve got a problem. Your oxygen is below fifty per cent. >
‘So soon? You said I had a day’s worth.’
< Your suit’s rebreather has decided to take a break. I’ve been trying to fix it but it looks like a mechanical issue. There’s still time to head back, ma’am. >
‘Get the extra O2 from the drinking water and urine,’ she told him and moved on.
Sky had always preferred solitude, but now there was an unease. Back on Earth, she could choose to isolate herself in the knowledge that her mother was around. She had fantasized about waking up and finding Detroit emptied of people, allowing her to explore it in peace. A solitary walk in the lunar desert should have been bliss, but all she wanted at that moment was to see another person. She realized that even back home the presence of others in the neighborhood, even strangers, had given her comfort.
To think, all it had taken for her to realize this was a simple death walk on the Moon.
If I ever get out of this alive, I promise to find a more pleasant method of learning a lesson.
She chatted to Uncle Jesse about random subjects, which helped a little, but there was something missing, an unknown factor that her Brain Operating System could not simulate.
Her mind wandered to Okiro and his honey eyes. She could call him; he had invited her to do so.
Instead, she had Uncle Jesse create a maya of Okiro to hop along beside her.
‘Helluva place for a first date,’ the virtual Okiro said in that laconic tone of his. They talked awhile, but Sky could not shake the feeling that it was a one-sided conversation. She dismissed the maya.
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