The Drift Wars

by James, Brett

  “Down,” Linda said, shoving his chest. “You’ll hurt yourself.” She held him until he nodded. “Tell me what you saw.”

  Peter opened his mouth but stopped. She’ll never believe me, he thought. She already doesn’t. “I saw the General.”

  “You what?” Linda said, her voice cracking.

  “I saw the General. The Great General. He—”

  “Stop!” Linda said. She looked nervously to her monitor, then to the camera on the ceiling. Her face was drained.

  “I need…” she sputtered. “I need to talk to the supervisor.”

  “No,” Peter said, grabbing for her. But she was too fast.

  “I have to,” she insisted. “Just wait here.”

  “Linda,” he called, but she was out the door.

  — — —

  Peter was unstrapped. He felt around for the button that raised the bed and then opened the drawer on the side. He found the long needle, already filled with oily liquid.

  He dug around his arm until a vein swelled, then jabbed the needle in. It stung more than he expected. He pressed the plunger, withdrew it, and tossed it to the floor.

  Peter pumped his hands and swung his legs, feeling the warm animation spread though his body. It was taking too long. Linda would have already reached her supervisor’s office.

  They killed me because I saw him, he thought. The General himself gave the command. The General…

  Peter worked feverishly, flexing his muscles until they ached and pounding his fists on his legs. Then he eased himself to his feet.

  There was a tray over his bed, splashed with bright red, filled with hundreds of long needles. He ran his fingers through them, rubbing the blood between his fingers. Then he touched his scalp; the skin was tender.

  He let go of the bed, balancing himself, and started for the door. His legs buckled, and he threw himself into the chair at Linda’s desk. He put his head between his knees, trying to still the room. After a few deep breaths, he sat back up. Linda’s drawings were stacked on the desk.

  The top drawing was of a church, done in black ballpoint, precise and detailed. It was an imposing cathedral of cut stone, its windows dark and foreboding.

  The next one was of an alleyway between two tall buildings, the ink so thick it warped the paper. A shaded figure waited deep inside, a man.

  The drawings were all similar—gloomy scenes rendered through intense pen work—except for the very last. It showed a man lying peacefully in bed, a faint smile on his face. It was Peter.

  He pushed to his feet. He felt better, steady. He went to his duffel and pulled on pants and a T-shirt, to be less obvious, and walked through the back door. He started for the supervisor’s office but saw Linda in the other direction, walking away, her ponytail swinging.

  He sprinted after her, moving quietly on the pads of his feet. His muscles throbbed from the effort and were leaden before he was halfway to her. He considered calling out but was worried about what she’d do when she saw him back here. He hobbled on, reaching her just as she opened the door numbered 63.

  “Linda,” he whispered, slipping through the door behind her.

  She started at his voice, then jumped at the sight of him. She opened her mouth—to speak or scream—but Peter pressed a finger across her lips.

  “I’m glad I caught you,” he said, panting. “This could all just be some crazy mistake, a bad dream. So before you go to the supervisor, let me just ask, have you ever seen the Great General?”

  Linda retreated, wide-eyed. Peter followed her, staying close.

  “No?” he asked. “The thing is, in my dream he… This is going to sound ridiculous, but…”

  Linda tripped against a chair, falling into it. Peter knelt down in front of her.

  “Let me put it this way,” he said. “Is there anyone on this base who looks like me?”

  Saying it aloud made it sound insane, but Linda gasped. She looked to the bed in the middle of the room. A man lay there, chunks of ice sliding from his body. He appeared to be asleep, but his eyes moved rapidly beneath the lids. A mass of needles grew from his skull, each wired to the monitor over the bed. The screen flashed wildly, symbols scrolling by in some foreign language. But it wasn’t the monitor that caught Peter’s attention, it was the man. It was him. Peter. An exact copy of himself.

  “It’s true,” he said dumbly. He stared at himself on the bed, thinking back to the commandship, to the look of recognition on the General’s face. Peter had felt the same recognition; they were the same person.

  Peter turned back to Linda, looking first at her face, then down to her name tag. It read Linda 63.

  — — —

  Peter shoved past the Linda, toppling her from the chair. He dashed from the room and down the hall, the numbered doors passing in a blur.

  Am I behind each of these? he wondered. He ran faster, pushing his stiff legs.

  The alarm began to shriek as he passed number 8, biting his eardrums. Oversize doors loomed ahead, labeled Purple Area, Authorized Personnel Only. They swung open as he approached. He passed through into a different world.

  Both walls were lined with glass that looked in on large rooms filled with frantic machinery, like an automated assembly line. The machine nearest Peter was a massive archway operated by small men in white arctic jackets. Under the arch was a steel bed, the same as the one that Peter had just woke up on. That he always woke up on. A robotic arm raced back and forth, extruding water, creating a long block of ice one razor-thin slice at a time. But it wasn’t just water, it was flesh and muscle, blood and bone. The machine was a giant printer, printing a man encased in ice.

  A hand fell on Peter’s shoulder. He reacted instinctively, throwing his elbow back and finding something soft, probably a throat. Then he ducked low, stepped forward, and turned. A man in a black uniform charged him, another lay on the floor, grasping his head.

  Peter drove his foot in the charging man’s stomach, then walked over him as he fell. More black uniforms rushed into the room. Guards of some sort, Peter decided. They looked tough enough, but Peter was a marine.

  They rushed him from all directions. One pulled a gun, but it fell as Peter broke his hand. Another grappled Peter’s chest but crumpled as Peter’s fist drove into his neck. Two more down.

  Peter feinted to his right, then dropped to the floor, sweeping his legs under another guard, who fell backward and cracked his head on the floor. Another down, but more were coming. Too many.

  Peter scooped up the gun and fired at the window. To his surprise, it spit out a bullet. This was a weapon to use against men, not Riel. The glass shattered and freezing-cold air blasted into the hall.

  More alarms now, clanging ones. The men at the machine fled at the sight of Peter, escaping through a small door in the back of the room. It was the only exit, so Peter chased after them. He tried not to look at the half-printed man on the table, but his eyes were drawn to him. The surface of the ice was uneven, garbling the face. Is it me? he wondered.

  Peter slammed against a wall and bounced back. But it wasn’t a wall, it was a man. Enormous hands clamped on to his shoulders and hauled him into the air.

  “Easy, buddy,” the man said, his voice deep and rich, familiar.

  “Saul,” Peter sputtered, unable to believe his eyes.

  It was him. His beard was gone and his hair was longer, but under that black uniform was the same old Saul.

  “Do I know you?” Saul asked.

  “Don’t be an idiot,” came a voice from behind. Peter knew this voice too—Linda’s supervisor. “Just hold him still,” the supervisor continued. “And turn him around.”

  Saul spun him easily, facing Peter to a man no taller than his waist. The man was bald, his sagging clown’s face distorted by a snarl. He wore a white lab coat over a dust-colored suit
and held a syringe of green-black liquid in his fat, carrot-shaped fingers. He aimed the needle at Peter’s neck, but couldn’t reach.

  “Down here,” he said impatiently, and Saul forced Peter to his knees.

  Linda appeared at the broken window. She gasped, raising a hand to her mouth. My Linda? Peter couldn’t tell. The needle went in and cold liquid coursed through his blood.

  “I knew you were going to be trouble,” the supervisor said as everything faded to black.

  [14.08.2.69::3948.1938.834.2D]

  “Just answer the question,” Colonel Chiang San barked. “Have you downgraded his memory to before he met the General?”

  “No,” came the impatient reply. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. We don’t even have a version that includes him meeting the General. That memory is coming from somewhere else.”

  Peter opened his eyes, blinking against the white light. He was back in his room, strapped to the bed, still wearing his clothes. The colonel stood over him, talking to Linda’s supervisor. And someone else was there too, projected on the overhead monitor: a gray-haired man in a tweed suit. He wore wire-frame glasses and had buckteeth that could have been yellow plastic. Linda stood in the corner, kneading one hand inside the other.

  “How is that possible?” the colonel asked the man on-screen. “It’s not even the same body.”

  Ten slow seconds passed before the man heard the question; the delay meant he was far away.

  “That’s exactly what we’re asking ourselves,” he said. “I’ve conferred with the others, and we’re leaning toward Randolph’s Theory of Neural Transmission.”

  “Care to translate that?” the colonel said.

  “You’ve heard of Dr. Jennifer Randolph, no? She proposed that each time the neurons in our brain fire, we broadcast a tiny bit of energy. A nano-size radio tower, if you will. It’s a controversial theory, mind you—never been proven. Randolph claimed that the evidence lay in telepathy and precognition, which, between you and me, is a pretty shaky foundation.”

  The colonel shifted his hands to his hips. The last thing he wanted was a science lesson, but he knew that with the communication delay, interrupting would only drag it out.

  “Randolph believed that while everyone transmits, only a scarce few can receive. And even then it helps if both parties have genes in common—siblings, a parent and child, whatnot. They’re tuned to the right channel, you see. Also, certain thoughts and feelings will broadcast louder than others—traumatic ones, especially. There’s a documented case of a mother knowing the instant her daughter was killed in an accident half a planet away.

  “More important, Randolph felt these transmissions were residual, that the neural waves could leave a stain. Sometimes it’s just a single emotion, a feeling—bad or good—about a place. But they can also be quite specific, like your dead uncle’s ghost making a sandwich in the kitchen night after night. Or a murder victim quote-unquote haunting her place of death. This aspect of the theory is irrelevant, but interesting, no?”

  The colonel sighed. He hauled his mouth up to a smile and motioned for the man to continue.

  “Precognition—seeing the future—is nothing more than neural waves leaking backward through time.” The man was quite excited now. “A traumatic event happens to you tomorrow, and you receive your own broadcast today, causing you to sense that something bad is going to happen—because, in fact, it already has. You see? It’s even possible to see your own death before it happens.

  “Granted, no hard documentation on that particular scenario. By the time you prove that it wasn’t just paranoia, it’s a little hard to record your findings, right?”

  “I don’t see how any of this—” the colonel started, but before his words reached the man, he was talking again.

  “What we’ve got here is the exact opposite: a man broadcasting his entire life and his future self receiving it after his death. Who could have imagined? This is something completely new. Exciting, really.”

  The man appeared to have finally run dry. Chiang San waited to be sure, then said, “We’ve never seen this happen before. Not in this or any other model.”

  “Oh, I shouldn’t think so. Transmission-reception is rare enough in the Livable Territories, and we’ve got a much larger gene pool than you do.”

  “But we have multiple copies of this very model here,” the colonel insisted, his irritation showing. “Why don’t all of the Garveys have this ability?”

  “Near-exact copies,” the man said. “We tweak each one a little differently. Apply a bit of chaos theory, if you will. Give Darwin a kick in the ass.

  “You might remember that we first tried fighting with robots. Very effective, briefly. See, robots will always react the same way to the same situation, which makes them completely predictable. Once the Riel saw the pattern, they annihilated our defenses. Can’t have our biologicals falling into the same trap, so we mix the formula up a bit.

  “What’s that?” the man asked, turning to someone offscreen. He listened for a moment, nodded, then turned back to the colonel.

  “All of that is classified, by the way. Best to forget I even said it. Besides, we’re only talking about a minor tweak here and there. You could spend a week with your original and never notice the difference.”

  “Well, this one is very different,” the colonel said, red-faced. “Would you care to explain that?”

  “Not really.” The man frowned. “It’s fairly complicated. Better if you just trust me.”

  The colonel seemed ready to burst with rage, but he swallowed it down.

  “Hell,” he said finally, “if I understood even half of what you just said, they’d have to give me one of those fancy white coats. Just tell me what you need.”

  “This is a discovery of epic proportions,” the man said. “Scientifically, it’s a chance to prove the Theory of Neural Transmission. But there are also immediate applications, both practical and military. Here’s a man who can capture his own memories: details, sensory input, and even feelings. If we could harness this power, put it in other reproductions, it would be huge.

  “I need you to send us everything you can—records, bio samples, memory scans. Get it all on the very next cargoship out. Freeze up that one on the bed, too, and send it along.”

  “Will do.”

  “Thank you very much, colonel,” the man said. “I can’t tell you how much we appreciate your cooperation.”

  — — —

  The colonel closed the connection. He nodded at the supervisor, who turned to Linda.

  “Roll this one back to the technicians,” the supervisor said, motioning to Peter. “Get it frozen—they’ll have a cryo chamber back there somewhere—and have them pull samples from its tanks. I’ll be by later with the rest.”

  “Yes, sir,” Linda said. Her voice was weak, weary. The supervisor laid an unwanted hand on her shoulder, giving her a mannequin smile.

  “Once you’ve done that,” he said, “wipe your machinery and prepare for a new patient. I think it’s best that we pull you off the Garvey line entirely. It’s caused you far too much stress.”

  “Yes, sir,” Linda repeated.

  The colonel had been leaning over Peter, inspecting him, but now wheeled around. “What’s that?” he demanded.

  “I was just telling her to prep for a new model,” the supervisor replied. “Seeing as how we’re terminating this one.”

  “We’re doing nothing of sort,” the colonel barked. He marched over to the supervisor and glared down at him. “What gave you that idea?”

  “Well, the minister said—”

  “The science minister said that he wants a sample. So send him this one and then make me another.”

  “But it’s an unstable design,” protested the supervisor. “And I have thousands of others waiting to go.”


  “I don’t need more idiot grunts straight out of Basic. This is an experienced man, a master sergeant with fifty successful missions under his belt. I won’t have you throw him away.”

  “But—”

  “Don’t misinterpret this as a conversation, supervisor, because the other thing I don’t need is technicians who don’t know how to take orders.”

  “Yes, sir,” the man said, backing away. The colonel watched him retreat through the back door and then, with a nod to Linda, left by the front.

  Linda went to Peter’s bed and quietly prepped a needle. Her eyes were glassy, but she forced a smile.

  “See you soon,” she said, driving the needle in.

  Peter watched her fade to black, warmed to think that she would be there when he woke up.

  [unknown]

  Peter’s oxygen supply was low, ten minutes at the most. It was time to move. He could only hope that the Riel had left.

  He released the cabinet, his cover for the past sixteen hours, and let it float away. To his relief, the room was empty.

  The gravity was out, as was the power, so he crept forward using the magnets in his boots. The room was dark, and he didn’t dare to use his sensors; after living on this ship for three months, he could navigate by memory.

  The door to the main cabin was jammed, its electronic locks as dead as the rest of the ship. Peter gave it a kick, breaking its hinges, and continued forward. He headed for the reserve oxygen tanks; his life depended on their being intact.

  Stars shone through a gap in the roof. The hull had been blown outward, leaving a hole like a jagged crown. Outside, space was littered with hunks of metal and glass fused into strange sculptures. A man twirled slowly past, still clutching his stomach against the pain of whatever had killed him. Despite the death and destruction, the view was peaceful.

  There was no sign of the Riel spacecraft. Either Peter had escaped their sensors or they simply hadn’t bothered to kill him. And why would they? He was but one man on a ruined ship, too far from home for any hope of rescue. As far as he knew, he was the only living human in this entire universe.