by SD Tanner
“You lack enthusiasm, son.”
“I’m not your son,” he replied, not bothering to hide his sulky tone. “I’m a mini you. We share exactly the same DNA. We are the same person.”
Dunk Two snorted softly. “Maybe so, but you’re immature and that makes you more than a bit stupid.” He placed his arm across his shoulders, not in the way a father would, but more as a show of his superior position. “Save your poor attitude for the masses. I know you too well to be bothered listening to the griping of my own youth.”
If he could say nothing else about his relationship with his clone, it was brutally honest. They each understood what drove the other, and his older self knew his every thought while he was maturing into the man he was destined to become. Not being unique offended him, but Dunk Two had known that before he’d learned it about himself. In an attempt to be different, he’d allowed his beard and hair to grow until it was unruly. Wearing clothes for several weeks before changing them, barely bothering to bathe, he’d believed he was finally different to his clone. It was only now, several months since he’d started his desperate attempt to separate himself, that Dunk Two had shattered his illusion by showing him footage of his own days of looking like a tramp. Whatever he thought and however he felt, Dunk Two had beat him to the punch, and there was not a single idea or emotion he could call his own.
Running his hand across his recently shaved chin, he shrugged unhappily. “What was the point of that? I know what the universe looks like. It’s boring.”
“Yes, it is. Lots of empty space, not useful for anything other than keeping planets apart and making space travel awkward.”
Dunk Two was echoing his own jaded view. “So, what was the point?”
Stopping in the brilliantly lit corridor inside of the main research building, Dunk Two gave him a small manic smile. “I know you know what the universe looks like, so why do you think I made you sit in the middle of the hologram?”
Searching through his mind, hunting for most idiotic reason, he rolled his eyes. “You’re showing me my empire.”
“Empire in build, boy. It’s not done yet.” Waving his hand vaguely at the door of the hologram display room, he added enthusiastically, “That’s nothing compared to what you’ll find. Your achievements will build on mine, until we own even more of this useless real estate.”
“If it’s useless then what do we want it for?”
Narrowing his eyes, Dunk Two replied, “You know why.”
Coldly studying his clone, it didn’t take long to find his reasoning for taking over the universe. “So, no one else can have it.” When Dunk Two nodded, he shook head in disgust. “I’m starting to appreciate why everyone thinks we’re insane.”
CaliTech was the brainchild of Dunk. Originally designed as a weapons research center, since the first Dunk had seized control of what little was left, it had expanded to take over what had been known as Sequoia National Park. With over one hundred large buildings, each used to control part of their growing empire, a city had sprung up around it. There were one hundred million people on earth and thirty million lived in what had once been the United States, taking over the land and houses on the west coast. Over a million of them lived around the grounds of CaliTech, providing it with all of the resources and services it needed. On the edge of their compound were the main Navigator barracks housing three hundred thousand troops, ready to defend what was essentially the headquarters of the United Guild.
Dunk Two pushed him to continue moving along the corridor, heading towards the research laboratory. “There’s a fine line between genius and insanity.”
Having always lived behind the walls of CaliTech, he wasn’t sure the line was fine as it was a brick wall, and Dunk Two had fallen onto the wrong side of it. Whenever he pointed that out to him, he was always quick to assure him that his view of sanity was immature. According him, being crazy was not only genetic, but a preferred state of mind. He was the third lunatic to be hatched from the same set of genes, which meant his future was inescapable. Apparently, the tiny strands making up his every cell determined he was a psychopathic megalomaniac in the making.
The light grey door to the research laboratory silently slid open. Stepping inside of the room, he stared across the enormous floor that was segmented into sections. Now that Ark Three had left to learn how to travel through space, conquering anything that got in his way, he was expected to take over the research division. Much of what happened inside of the lab remained secret even within the walls of CaliTech. This wasn’t his first tour of the site, but Dunk Two was slowly exposing more of their secrets. It would take decades for him to gain the knowledge and experience to continue the research, but he would gradually be given control of the projects until he owned them all.
Above and below the room were floors filled with rows of engineers surrounded by three-dimensional screens. Some were specialists, only ever dealing with their one area of scientific knowledge. Others were designers, integrating and linking technology to create a capability. CaliTech aimed to fuse technology with living tissue, creating a hybrid human that was deadlier than any other species in the universe. The Bombardiers combined the science of cellular transformation with weapons, allowing them to travel across space without suffering the effects of radiation. Some Navigators had their eyes replaced with computerized orbs, permanently giving them the same advanced vision as a Bombardier. All of the Navigators could use their visors to control any computerized weapons remotely.
With no appreciation for individuality, the hundreds of people busily working inside of the lab were wearing identical loose pants and wraparound jackets. The soft grey color identified them as working for the research division, and an upper armband indicated whether they were of a senior or mid-level rank, not that it mattered to him. As a clone of the man who created this world, he was the top dog, destined to control it and never to work for it.
Using wide arm gestures, Dunk Two waved at each section as he named it. “Recon drones. Robot gunners. Cyborg modifications. Alternative space travel. Cell mixing for new tools. Advanced cell analysis.” Pointing to the back of the room, he added, “Advanced weapons for ships and operators, including the new space battle droids.” Spinning on his heel, he nodded at a set of double doors guarded by several Navigators. “And that’s our virus and bacteria division. They’re the ones that developed the planet cleanser.”
Whenever they found planets seeded with the enemy DNA, the planet riders would set up a viral bomb, destroying all life. According to Dunk Two, once the virus died for lack of hosts, they could start colonizing the planet. Currently the planet riders only gathered cells, but soon they would send Navigators, using them to extend the areas under their control.
The planet cleanser was the single most destructive weapon they’d ever developed. If it was ever allowed loose on earth, it would destroy mankind, not that Dunk Two seemed to care. When Ark Three had learned about the weapon, in the privacy of their quarters, he’d ranted that Dunk Two was a lunatic who would kill them all. He’d never seen his brother so enraged and even now, he wasn’t entirely sure why he’d been so upset. They were the elite, above all of the scrambling for power in the lower echelons of the Guild, and none of this had anything to do with them. It was their destiny to take the reins and lead earth to become even stronger. He valued his brother, but some days he simply didn’t understand what his problem was.
Glancing at the heavily armored and armed Navigators guarding the door, he said, “That lab shouldn’t be here.”
“Why?” Dunk Two asked.
“Because it’s a weapon that could be used against us.”
Hearing his sourly made observation, Dunk Two leaned closer to him, whispering softly, “It’s not here. That’s just for show.” Uncomfortable with having his clone so close he pulled away, raising his eyebrows and staring back him. Dunk Two tapped his nose conspiratorially. “Can’t explain any of that here. Too many big ears.” Failing to see his discomfort, Dun
k Two leaned into him again. “We’ve refined it and now it only kills the enemy DNA.”
Curious, he resisted the urge to pull away again. “Why’s that such a big secret?”
“It means we can get rid of the renegades by targeting the enemy DNA they carry. Only a person with too much of it will die of the disease.”
Renegades were mostly made up of people who carried the DNA that had allowed the enemy to transform their people into killer critters. In theory, the renegades could be used that way again, but nothing had happened since the first attack, so he couldn’t see any point to eliminating them. They lived on the fringes of the habitable world, barely surviving without technology. He couldn’t imagine why they’d wasted their time developing a virus to target them.
“That’s a lot of effort to kill a group that makes no difference to anything.”
Dunk Two gave him an appalled look. “We didn’t develop it to deal with them. It’s to cleanse planets in a way that leaves the useful cells intact.” Sounding indignant, he added, “Every time we cleanse a planet we kill all of the life on it. It’s a waste of good resources. We don’t find that many planets with life as it is and I don’t want to keep wasting what we do find.” With a casual flick of his hand, he added, “I don’t care about the renegades. I was only going to use them to test the virus.”
Frowning, he eyed his clone skeptically. “They pose no threat and we use them to train the Navigators.”
“They could be used by the enemy just as humans were before.”
Although he’d watched the archived footage, he’d never even seen a so-called critter in real life. Not a single one had appeared since they’d taken back control of the planet. He often wondered if the historical footage was a sham used by the United Guild to maintain their control over the empire. Tank had repeatedly assured him that the enemy aliens did exist, but he wasn’t so sure. Although Ark Three was devoted to Tank, he thought he was a man lost in time, filled with old-fashioned ideas of honor and duty.
Snorting softly until he realized he sounded exactly like Dunk Two, he asked, “Why would they do that after all of this time?”
“If we can eliminate the risk at no cost to us then why not cleanse all the planets including earth?”
“Do you really think the aliens will try to take earth again?”
When Dunk Two didn’t answer, he realized he didn’t need to. The chances of them appearing were becoming more remote with every passing century. Dunk Two was only using the threat of an unseen and unknown enemy to maintain control. It wasn’t a clever tactic and only spoke to the stupidity and weakness of the human race. If they could be conned and cowed by an imaginary enemy then he hated to think what they would do with a real one.
Sighing and unimpressed, he asked, “What else have you got?”
Showing tolerance for his obvious boredom, Dunk Two walked along the wide corridor through the center of the huge room. On each side of him were banks of tables, some with test equipment, and others with prototypes of drones and robots. Every section contained over a hundred people hard at work making Dunk’s vision a reality. One day, earth would rule the universe, no doubt making a complete mess of it.
“You know that we create the ships from living cells and they’re designed to use the reactionless drive for propulsion.”
The living skin covering a ship absorbed heat, light and motion, giving it the energy to power a magnetron that created microwaves in a cone-shaped resonant chamber. The microwaves produce a thrust at the large end of the cone that moved the chamber forward, away from the narrow end. Since the thrust was created inside of the chamber there was no chemical reaction, nothing was consumed and there were no exhaust fumes. The ship simply moved. With chambers in various positions on the ship, they could be fired in sequence to move it in any direction.
Shrugging at Dunk Two, he replied with a yawn, “So what?”
Guiding him towards another closed door that he hadn’t seen from the top of the room, Dunk Two used his palm print to open it. Behind it was another electronically controlled bunker door that led them underground, only he hadn’t known this room existed. It contained a large black metallic tube that was approximately twenty feet wide and fifty yards long. Filling most of the room, it was surrounded by banks of screens, with people intently staring at whatever they were displaying.
“This is the latest work we’ve been doing to speed up space travel.”
Their current method used warp time based on the double slit experiment, where a photon appeared to go through two slits at the same time. Whenever the photon was measured, it would change its behavior and only go through one slit. After confusing physicists for decades, they’d finally worked out that the photon was suspending time to change what it was doing. Copying the photon, their ships continuously suspended time for a fraction of a second, whilst travelling through space as fast as they could. A ship gradually picked up speed until it appeared to be travelling at fifteen light-years per hour, when it was really travelling a hundred thousand times slower than that.
Genuinely interested, he asked, “How does this chamber work?”
“We haven’t even made it halfway to the edge of our own galaxy yet, and given most of the planets we find are barren we need to widen our net.”
“I don’t see how we can get any faster.”
Dunk Two nodded. “We agree that’s a problem, so we need to shorten the distance. It might sound counter intuitive, but the shortest distance between two points isn’t a straight line. It’s a straight wormhole. A wormhole is a passage that connects a point in space and time with another.” He pointed at the chamber. “Right now we’re connected to the planet Morticus. It would take a ship a month to get there, but with a wormhole we can be there within a minute.”
The idea that Morticus was inside of the chamber tickled his imagination and he placed his hand against the cool, black metal surface. “How does it work?”
“Einstein proved that gravity warps space-time. The moon functions as if it’s going in a straight line, but gravity warps space-time so that it orbits the earth. If we can warp space-time so that two points are in the same physical location, then we only have to pry them apart a little bit to walk between them.” Joining him to stand next to the enormous cylinder, he added, “So far we’ve managed to create a wormhole, but they only get to about one inch in diameter before they collapse. We set the other end of the wormhole on Morticus, but it only stayed open for about two minutes, just long enough for a mouse to get there. That little guy was the fastest mouse in the known universe.”
“Can you make it work for people and ships?”
Dunk Two shrugged in exactly the same way he would when he didn’t know or care. “Maybe. The wormholes don’t stay open for very long and making them bigger just makes them collapse faster. We need to keep experimenting with matter that can make them strong enough to take more than a mouse.”
It could change everything they knew about space travel. Less time wasted meant they wouldn’t need to put the Navigators into stasis. If that were the case then they wouldn’t need the Bombardiers to control the ship while the Navigators slept, making him wonder whether they would need them at all. Eliminating them as a line wouldn’t be difficult. They disappeared in space within ten years, so all they had to do was to stop creating Bombardiers.
“If this works will we need the Boms?”
Guiding him towards the stairs that led to the bunker door, Dunk Two replied, “We’ve never liked them.”
“We?”
Taking each step at a steady pace, Dunk Two reached the top of the stairs and turned around. “You know what I mean. The Boms are too capable and they could do a lot of damage. We only created them for space travel, but if we don’t need them anymore…” He finished his sentence with a slight shrug.
He didn’t care about the Bombardiers. They were only a secondary species kept under control by how many CaliTech created. With only two thousand at any point in time, t
here wasn’t a lot they could do against three hundred thousand Navigators. His only concern was what would happen to Ark Three.
“Why would Ark Three transform if we don’t need the Boms anymore?”
Dunk Two shrugged dismissively. “That’s his call. I don’t care what he does. He’s only one man, so how much trouble can he cause?”
“Why would he cause any trouble?”
“His predecessors haven’t always agreed with our plans, and I don’t expect him to be any more cooperative than they were.”
He and his brother didn’t always see eye to eye. Ark Three believed in the power of people, but he didn’t have a lot of respect for the average man, not that he knew many. Most people were like sheep, deriving pleasure out of small things. The Bombardiers were a different type of problem. With their advanced capabilities, there was always a risk they could rise up against the United Guild, not that they’d ever shown any inclination.
By only ever allowing two thousand Bombardiers they were a hard won right. The average household in the Guild had just enough to get by. Adding a Bombardier or Navigator to the family entitled them to greater privileges, including better housing and extra monthly trading credits. The original Dunk had theorized that if people were kept busy working for their basic needs, and dulled by alcohol and entertainment, they wouldn’t have time to argue with his leadership. His theory had led him to reinstate the global entertainment Network dedicated to keeping the masses amused, and instead of alcohol, feel good pills were distributed by CaliTech. In effect, they kept the masses docile through the use of drugs and mindless programming. It meant the bulk of their population were dullards, so only the best were ever chosen to work as Bombardiers or Navigators.
He turned to his clone, giving him a sly smile. “There’s something missing.”
“What’s that?”