by J. D. Tew
‘That wasn’t very nice, Theodore,’ Lincoln’s mother said, aghast. She was actually quite thin, and brushed the mistaken insult off so quickly that I knew once again that she wasn’t real. ‘But I forgive you,’ she said, grinning malevolently.
‘I wasn’t speaking of you Mrs. Royce; I was just sharing a new joke with Linc.’
‘Oh! Pardon my intrusion, then.’ His mother was really causing me some discomfort with her perfectly flawless speech and her knee-jerk responses. Even ED seemed natural, compared to this deranged fabrication of matronly perfection. She left, and Lincoln was glaring at me.
After his mother left, Lincoln’s voice and tone became louder, ‘It is true that I’ve known you? What makes you think I want to leave here? That is why you are here, Theodore, isn’t it? It is because of you that I am here, right? That is what I am figuring out now. I saved you on the planet Tritillia.’
Adrenalin coursed throughout my body. Finally, I was getting through to him! I took some quick breaths, now afraid to speak, in case anything I said next would push him back into the artificial microcosm of his former life.
‘Lincoln, you wanted more than anything to come with me and be a part of this adventure. You told me yourself. You even gave yourself the nickname, the missing Linc.’
He rushed toward me, embracing me. His arms felt like the steel appendages of a robot, and he actually bruised me even though he was hugging me as normally as any warm-blooded human. Typically every person has scent, but Lincoln didn’t; he smelled like a burnt-out light bulb or fuse. He hugged the hell out of me and then stepped back, but still holding me by the shoulders.
‘Geez, where the hell have you been? I calculate it has been a couple of months, you putz!’ Even though he connected to me, he still couldn’t act like his old self. His voice was still too carefully clipped and robotic. His limbs moved in odd manners; for example, his arm sometimes bent far beyond the range of comfort, as if he no longer had limits on his muscular or skeletal structure. .
As if she had been outside listening in again, Lincoln’s mother entered his room once more. ‘Lincoln, is everything okay?’ she asked. When her words fell on his ears, he had a look of fright that I had never seen in him before. I knew what he was thinking. He was afraid that the one woman he had grieved for so long would be taken from him again.
Lincoln tried to trick his mother back into Sepheran complacency. He said, ‘It’s okay Mom.’
‘Of course, honey! Help yourself to any snacks if you get hungry,’ she said, and as I thumbed through the collector cards, she continued, resting her hand on my shoulder. ‘You are very—warm. Where did you say you were from?’ she asked. The curious tone in her voice was unsettling.
‘Right here,’ I said, acting as if I was puzzled by her question. ‘Now Lincoln, we should probably go to my house, don’t you think?’
Upon fear stalking my heart, I saw things as they were. Her eyes were cold and outwardly angry. She was not his mother, but a Dietonical anchor, pinning him to that Sepheran prison. Everyone and everything there seemed so fake and cold. My mere existence there, my warmth, was too much for her. She knew I was an anomaly. The only escape was through Lincoln’s window. I looked through it, and I saw Dennis, the man who was mowing his lawn. He stopped, as if Mrs. Royce’s discomfort was telepathically transmitted to him too, and perhaps to the entire neighborhood. He was looking right at me and my flight response was all encompassing at that point. Dennis started walking toward Lincoln’s window with a grimace on his face, his lawnmower left running. Alarmed, I saw the Chrylon detach itself from the spot on the ceiling where it had rested the entire time we were in Lincoln’s room. Behind the back of Lincoln and his mother, it swerved through the air, out through the doorway.
‘Lincoln we need to go now!’ I yelled, walking backwards, away from the hateful glare of his mother.
‘You just got here!’ his mother yelled in return.
‘I don’t know if I can lose her again!’ Lincoln shouted.
‘Oh, Lincoln,’ pleaded Mrs. Royce, ‘Can’t you see? You’re safe here. If you never, ever leave, we will always protect you.’
I screamed to Lincoln as his mother advanced on to me. ‘I’m leaving right now. Come with me, will ya!’
Lincoln’s mom raised a fist to my face as she snarled at me. I punched back at her, and gasped in shock as I disintegrated the exact portion that I struck. Her forearm and her wrist were still intact and moving about as if nothing had happened, but her elbow and crook of the same arm was completely missing. ‘Ahh!’ Lincoln screamed, horrified to see his beloved mother’s image violated before his eyes. At the same time, I heard a window smashing downstairs. I didn’t know if it was the Chrylon fleeing the house, or if Dennis had decided to make his welcome a very brutal one.
I started running toward the front door. She yelled, ‘Now Theodore, that’s not very appropriate! She let out a blood-curdling scream.’Ahhhh!!’
Lincoln tugged away at my sleeve as he ran ahead of me, his eyes bugging out. ‘I’ve had enough, Ted! Let’s go!’
Mrs. Royce started crying. ‘Don’t abandon me, my love! You can’t lose me again! You can’t!’ Her body structure started fluctuating, as if she were truly losing her existence. Even so, she bared her teeth and ran after us, shouting. Part of her right arm was still missing, even as her right hand and wrist followed her as if they were never severed.
We started sprinting down the road, without looking back. We could hear footsteps behind us. All of my neighbors, that is, the fake representations of who they once were, chased after me. It was as if there was a horde of zombies behind me. I swiveled my head back, peeking out of fear, and every Sepheran being in the vicinity was hunting me. Yelling the same ear-destroying war cry: ‘Ahhh!’
All of them, were crying out with the shrill battle cry. As I ran, I saw the whirl of matter ahead of me, where Trazuline must have activated the teleporthole. Lincoln was behind me, and I felt a slamming force into my back. Upon entering the teleportation anomaly, my mind went blank, like I was processed and re-fabricated, rolling through space. I had entered the portal, and someone was with me until my molecules dissipated. I wasn’t sure who, but I hoped the person that tackled me into the portal was Lincoln.
And it was.
We came out of the portal like bats out of hell.
‘Wow, what a rush,’ Lincoln said.
‘I’m feeling sick.’ My head was swirling like the portal.
‘That’s the Theodore I remember,’ Lincoln said.
‘You made it!’ I shouted, grabbing Lincoln by the shoulders, feeling like I had won an Oscar or the Nobel Prize. Behind Lincoln, the Chrylon was doing a bit of a victory dance of its own, bobbing up and down as it hovered in the air.
‘I would say, I feel like I have never left, but my random access memory suggests otherwise.’
We bent over in laughter, being goofballs again.
‘Check the Sepheran for any harmful programming!’ King Trazuline yelled, over our excitement.
I was busy trying to achieve stability and Lincoln was in the middle of a scan from the Chrylon; the tiny hovering ball scanned Lincoln, while a blue light flickered from its tiny transparent nodes. Chrylon looked over his entire body.
‘Listen! We have very little time. Theodore, you will go through the portal first. We will send Lincoln one morget after, so that you can ensure the area is secure. Then we will send Nilo. Do you understand? The point of contact is Freebird. Remember Theodore,’ King Trazuline paused. ‘Eppa... She probably knows you’re coming. Be careful in your judgments.’
I held out my hand to shake on it, but instead King Trazuline grabbed my hand, pulling me toward his chest of armor, close. He whispered within ear’s reach, saying, ‘Eppa knows everything.’
‘Why are you telling me this?’ I said at a normal volume.
‘Here,’ he said, holding out a metallic blue cube-shaped object.
‘Do you think—’
Ki
ng Trazuline interrupted me, shouting over the sound of the portal. ‘No! We are only presented with paths. It is you that has to choose your own destiny! I will be in touch, and before I forget, here is the cleric’s identity file. Show this to Lincoln before your arrival in Diode.’ He leaned in closer. ‘We have fitted your vessel, Freebird, with a deployable virus bot. If you decide Eppa is a threat, you must destroy her. This is a homing device for the missile; place it at the most central point of the mainframe.’ The device King Trazuline handed me, was shaped like a coin, as small as a nickel and no thicker than one. ‘Now go! Doviont!’
I walked through the portal with all my gear, ready for whatever was on the other side. Lincoln was about thirty seconds behind me.
Mariah, Liam, Dan—the entire crew was waiting for me, aboard Freebird. As I started to materialize, I could hear and see them. They had not noticed me yet, and then I surprised them.
‘Hey knuckleheads!’ I shouted.
‘Theodore! What happened?’
‘I will explain later. Fire this bay up. Set a course for Diode!’ I yelled loudly to speak over the shouting excitement of my arrival.
I said, ‘Mariah I have some good n—’
She interrupted me by yanking my arm and spinning me around. All my heavy equipment rattled as her chest pressed into me. ‘I am so happy to see you. You’re alive! What’s wrong?’ she asked, slugging my shoulder with her closed fist. Lincoln materialized a few feet behind Mariah. ‘What is it Theodore?’
I cleared my throat and signaled with my eyes.
She turned. It was the longest pause before a reunion that I have ever witnessed. It seemed like an eternity. Mariah ran to Lincoln, hugged him and held him. They were united with a need met for one another. Their moment was flabbergasted with a tackling embrace from Dan and Liam. They not only squeezed the hell out of Lincoln, but they took turns picking him up, or trying to.
‘Holy shit!’ Dan shouted. ‘You’re heavy!’
ED said, ‘Heavy. I know this; it’s slang for complicated or interesting in your world, right? Confusing, I didn’t know shit could be holy.’ For a moment we were all silent and then we burst into laughter. ‘What is funny?’ ED started analyzing Lincoln. ‘Amazing...’
‘What?’ I asked.
ED responded curiously, ‘Lincoln is like no Sepheran I have ever seen.’
‘Wait ED, what are you saying?’ Mariah asked.
‘These Dietons are not like those of which I examined on Karshiz. They are far more advanced. Leaps and bounds ahead of their predecessors.’
The Armizards rush over with their monocular head mounts. ‘You are not kidding, my robot friend. There is something different about these Dietons. Lincoln is it?’ Jetschi asked.
‘Yes. Give me a break. I just got here,’ Lincoln said.
I knew I had to interrupt. ‘Alright everyone! Break it up. We’re not going to put Lincoln under the microscope. Is that understood? We need to get to Diode, we have a definitive mission now. Objective one! Save Tezmarine. It all starts with Eppa in the city of Diode. We will discuss mission details after I catch some rack.’
I started walking toward my dorm to think, as our ship left the hangar of the secret Opposition’s compound. We were now on a heading through a rough ice cavern, which wasn’t protected by the subterranean hull monstrosity.
‘Where are you going?’ Lincoln asked.
‘I have to clear my head.’
When I stood in my room, I felt overwhelmed from the onslaught of all that occurred in that short time. I closed my eyes and listened to the hum of Freebird and rested my hand on her walls. I paced and Lincoln entered to chill with me for a moment. Lincoln was so touched by my rescue that he very reluctantly detached himself from all the hugs and exclamations of joy in the teleportation room of Freebird, so he could make sure I was okay.
‘What’s wrong, buddy?’ Lincoln asked.
‘It’s just so good to see you again,’ I said, tears streaming down my cheeks. Then I faced the sterile wall again. ‘Man, I don’t even know how old I am anymore.’ I said.
‘What the hell does that matter?’ Lincoln asked.
‘Think about it. I guess it’s been about a year. I’m probably a little over sixteen. You just turned seventeen. That’s right! We missed your birthday!’
‘Eh, don’t worry about it. My dad misses it sometimes too.’
‘I’m sorry about your mother,’ I told him. I was also thinking about my recently deceased grandparents. More tears ran down my cheeks.
Lincoln looked crestfallen for a moment, then stiffened his chin. ‘I always wondered what it would be like if she were still alive, how I could give her a hug all over again,’ he said in a husky voice. ‘I guess this just proves that what has happened, is meant to be.’
‘Very true,’ I said. Trying to wrap up this emotional moment, I wiped aside my tears with my sleeve and turned about. ‘Where’s ED?’
‘He looked like he went into standby,’ Lincoln said.
‘Well someone has to turn him on, so we can leave.’
Lincoln looked at me with mock skepticism and said, ‘What do you want me to do? Flirt with him?’
‘That’s a good one. You have something on your shirt.’ I pointed my finger at his undershirt, and brought it up quickly to flick his nose.
‘You got me,’ he said, in a sort of mocking tone, but he smiled knowingly.
‘Okay, so here is the cleric you will be trying to look like.’ I held out a projection device, showing a three-dimensional holographic representation of the cleric.
‘So I have to disguise myself as a weird looking alien with a big head?’
‘This is the only way that we can get into, Eppa. They are expecting this Rangier cleric to bless Eppa.’
‘Okay.’
‘Well, show me already!’
Lincoln closed his eyes and started changing. His Dietons moved like tidal waves, changing in color and flowing into position. When the morph was finished, he looked exactly like the Rangier cleric.
‘You look like a dork for sure now.’
Lincoln playfully punched me in the arm, but his fist felt like it was clad with brass knuckles.
‘Careful, you almost slugged my arm off. C’mon, let’s go to the deck and get everyone acclimated to your temporary identity.’
We both laughed together and walked toward the main deck, where everyone else was waiting, clamoring to connect with Lincoln, to ask him questions, to just look at him again, as if he had just arisen from the dead. Perhaps he had. For now, for me personally, it was a welcome opportunity to be the wallflower rather than the object of attention. I grinned to myself, barely able to keep my adrenalin down.
“Eventually, ED would act upon my instructions and lay in a flight to the city of Diode; there we would find the temple, Eppa, the Mecca mainframe coordinating every data transaction for all of Sephera. Could she give me the truth I was looking for? Only time would tell.”
18 THEODORE: THE BEAST WITHIN
“The city containing Eppa, was referred to as Diode, although it was more of a military base than a functional tourist attraction. The inhabitants? Rangier soldiers, mainly.”
I could see Diode’s bluish hue in the distance when looking through our forward scanner. The blue aura of the surrounding force field was comforting, yet befitting its status as a military-dominated base, the air traffic was quiet and subdued. I wondered if Diode had a zone of termination like the Uriel—Zane’s mothership. The Uriel would fire on any unidentified ships that trespassed into its perimeter. I could only hope that wouldn’t be the case with Diode.
Like Booyang and Zong, Diode was below the ice terrain, in its own huge layer of air, sandwiched between the ice core of the planet and Diode’s own ice roof, which was actually the outer crust of the planet.
The amazingly advanced technological society of the Rangiers was able to use their tech to facilitate life in the worst conditions.
The Council believed Foita wo
uld be the best place to create Eppa. A mainframe of that size functioned best in a cool environment and Foita, for the most part, was desolate, which was perfect for keeping Eppa away from the well-beaten paths of the galaxy. The Rangiers and the Council had a symbiotic relationship. The Rangiers were protectors of many religious and government establishments throughout galactic realms. It was no surprise that the Rangiers would incorporate their expertise into the treaty. Eppa was technically referred to as E-Phitorian-Altican, meaning Mecca in the Rangier language. The people of Foita were evenly divided as to their opinions of Eppa; either they worshiped her, or abhorred her.
The Rangier engineers used a technology developed by the Armizards to suspend their cities, including the vast grounds upon which the residents walked, intra-orbiting between the ice roof and the planet’s core. This allowed for the civilization to remain unharmed as the ice plates shifted above; to achieve this, they used a powerful calibrator that adjusted the delicate balance in between magnetic poles to keep the society within steady and safe.
I couldn’t wait for our arrival, which was still an hour away.
Aboard Freebird, after the initial exultation, Lincoln seemed to remain detached from our crew. I worried about his social transition. While he always had seemed quite withdrawn as an Earthling, this characteristic seemed even more pronounced now that he was a Sepheran.
‘ED, how much further till we reach the gates of Eppa?’ I asked.
‘Forty-two milovians. That would take us twenty-two morgets.’
‘So about forty minutes, boss,’ Nilo said, with a not-so-passive interjection. It seemed that with Nilo’s time policing job in limbo, he was seeking an alluring position aboard my ship, which was understandable.
‘I already answered the messiah’s question,’ ED said. As he placed his hands on his metal sides, they clanged. I guess Nilo and ED were engaged in some healthy competition. I doubted the king would compromise his insight into our operation by relinquishing his hold on ED. He was probably still using ED as a way to keep tabs on us. Grudgingly, I felt like I was still being tested as a leader in waiting.