He frowned and put his hand on his chin. "It sounds like Williamson may have been playing it too close to the wind. I doubt he's got the funds to pay the fine. The company will be sold up, probably along with any of the existing patents. Come on, Kiera, lighten up. Let's forget about it for now. It's over."
But she wasn't going to be silenced that easily. "I would love to see where the discussion will go when you and I perfect the upload program." She grinned. "What do you think everyone will think about us evolving beyond bodies to become human machines?" She didn't wait for him to answer. "I mean, don't you think it's a given that we'll need to become machines? How else are we going to be able to negotiate the incredible distances and time spans to travel to other galaxies?"
"You may be right, Kiera, although cryo is well advanced." He didn't want to dampen her enthusiasm. "But we've got quite a way to go yet."
Excitement surged through him as the realisation finally struck him. "Great Universe!" He enfolded her in his arms. "That will change humanity forever, but I wonder what it will mean for you and me? Will we get to live forever?"
Kiera kissed him and gave him a broad smile. "Who knows what the future holds? What’s most important is that we're on the journey together. Let's have that glass of champagne now, shall we?"
"At last!" Luke dashed off into the kitchen. He took the bottle from the fridge and withdrew the cork with a satisfying pop. He carefully poured two glasses, picked them up, and took them out to Kiera. He handed her one before sitting down next to her.
As Kiera stared at the effervescent liquid, Luke contemplated the bubbles rising in his own glass. Humans were a little like those bubbles––their lives were brief, ephemeral and mostly insignificant. But his and Kiera's lives were going to make a significant difference. The bubbles also reminded him of all the worlds out there just waiting to be explored. He leaned over and gently clinked his glass with Kiera. "To us," he said, smiling at her.
"Yes, to us," she said, taking a sip. "To us and the rest of our lives."
Upload Part 2
The Future-Year 2221
Chapter 23
Awareness dawned…cold became warmth…darkness became light.
I heard sounds…the sounds, faint at first, became louder…speech…it was speech…I began to comprehend. A voice told me to relax…it explained that although my mind was awake, my body still slept. In soothing tones, it said that it would take time for my body to catch up…to stay calm…stay relaxed.
Tingling…tingling, as I began to feel feet, hands, arms and legs. The tingling became pain, but the soothing voice said it would only be momentary. The voice was right.
It told me to wriggle my fingers and toes, and to open my eyes. I tried, but I still couldn't move…I stayed calm, and the light that seeped through my closed lids reassured me. I grew warmer…my eyes flickered open…Blurred images everywhere…Slowly…Slowly things came into focus. I lay cocooned in a pod of some kind. There were lights and buttons to the right of me. The voice told me to press the first button when I was able. It told me that after I pressed the button, I would feel a series of light sensations run down my body but not to worry. It would only be the leads disconnecting from my sleep suit. Seconds ticked by. I tried to move my hand, but it still wouldn't respond. I relaxed and counted to ten.
I reached out and pressed the button. A wave of dragging sensations cascaded down my body. As promised, the pod leads had disconnected.
With a hiss and a pop, the canopy covering my pod slid silently sideways and disappeared. Cool, fresh air caressed my face, and the soothing voice told me to remain still. My pod began to slide out, and tilt up, as a prelude to moving me into an upright position. Straps around my legs and chest tightened and held me secure.
After a few moments, the reassuring voice returned. It told me that once fully upright, I should wait until my body acclimatised before I released the restraints. It told me to expect to feel a little lightheaded but that it would only be temporary. It instructed me to press the green button once the sensation had passed and to carefully step out onto the floor.
I took a deep breath and pushed the button. The restraints slid away. I stepped out gingerly with my right foot. It wobbled a little, but it didn't collapse, so I followed with the left. I paused and took in my surroundings. The memories all tumbled back as I recognised deck twenty-six of the Serenity, our behemoth ship bound for the Kalgarin star system. I took a few more uncertain steps towards the glowing control panel in the centre of the deck, where a single red light flashed insistently. As I moved I had a strange feeling. An odd sensation niggled at the back of my mind. I felt…unbalanced somehow. I looked down. I screamed. It wasn't my scream.
Chapter 24
I sank, my mind spinning, as my knees thumped onto cold metal. I jumped, and my pulse accelerated as a hand gripped my shoulder. I stared up at the tubby man wearing a red sleep suit and my brain flooded with recognition; Jack? Great Universe, it was Jack.
"Kiera? I heard a scream, are you alright?" Jack grabbed hold of my hands and pulled me up. "What the hell is going on? You're not supposed to be awake."
Immobilised by shock, I could only stand and stare.
Jack gripped my shoulders. "Are you alright? Kiera? Kiera, answer me for God's sake."
As I gazed into Jack's familiar brown eyes, the appalling truth finally penetrated. Somehow my consciousness had been uploaded into Kiera's body. My mouth went dry, and I tried to speak, but no sounds would come.
Jack wrapped his arms around me, patted my back, and made soothing noises.
It must've been the shock, because without thinking I squirmed out of his grip and pushed him away. I heard myself say in Kiera's voice, "I'm not Kiera, Jack. I'm Luke." I watched as disbelief flashed across his face, only to be displaced by anger.
"I don't have time for this, Kiera. We've been woken up because there's an emergency. We need to link, now!"
He started to turn, but I grabbed his arm. "I––am––Luke––Jack. Someone has fouled up on the uploading."
Jack stood motionless. "Not possible. Either you've suddenly developed a split personality or you've gone insane."
"Neither, but let's get moving." I ran my fingers through my hair, swallowed down fear and confusion, and tried to concentrate. I headed to the nearest console, slipped into its chair, and pressed the link button. As I leant back into the soft headrest, Jack hurried around me and followed suit. My headband array deployed and wrapped itself comfortably around my forehead. The chair cocooned me in softness, moulded to my form, as the array arms linked and the process completed. A familiar surge of energy hit me as the system booted up. My training kicked in. I relaxed, closed my eyes, and slowed my breathing. The familiar giddy sensation enveloped me, as I was sucked down into a void of darkness. Next, I was hurled into a universe of dazzling light. I fought off nausea as I swirled down into a dancing, psychedelic rainbow streaming out to infinity.
I concentrated to form the question clearly in my mind.
––State the nature of the emergency.
I opened my eyes, and my vision cleared as the screen in front of me began blinking a message. My heart sank.
––Error––brain bio-electric parameters do not match body parameters.
––Upload error––try again.
I sighed in exasperation. Of course, I wasn't in my body. I should have guessed that this would happen. I carefully formed the thought response.
––Emergency override authority, capital L, capital A, capital M, six, one, zero, two five. Bypass all bio-parameters. Confirm with bio-electric password.
The screen cleared, and I waited. I glanced at Jack. His slack, blank face indicated he'd already engaged the information download process. My screen blazed into life.
––Password located––please verify.
The cursor flashed, waiting for my response. I formed the thought.
––Army of mice.
––Confirmed match––please wait
––rebooting in progress for Luke John Masters.
I waited, shivering in spite of my thick, blue sleep suit.
––Reboot complete.
Flooded with relief, I concentrated and repeated my question. The response leapt from the screen in blinking red letters.
––Imminent failure of module three.
––Bring up schematics, show location.
The plan of our location; section seven, deck twenty-six P, flashed onto the screen. The problem area was highlighted in red.
––Zoom in and immerse.
I closed my eyes and allowed Virtual space to envelop me. My pint-sized avatar materialised in the midst of an immense maze of electrical circuitry. Abruptly, I snapped back into reality. Take it easy, Luke. Slowly does it. Take nice slow breaths. I'd always had a problem with the immersion process. Some people took to it naturally, unfortunately I wasn't one of them.
It took about a minute to calm myself back into a sufficiently relaxed state to think clearly. As I jolted back into Virtual, a gigantic electrical discharge reverberated through me. I whirled as the sound assaulted my ears again.
––Damp sounds––damp sounds.
Instantly, the noise of the sparking, tree-sized cable dropped to a bearable level. But I still started as the eroding cable flashed again, sending white hot sparks flying outwards in all directions. I moved in as close as I dared; aware my mind couldn't tell the difference between a Virtual injury and a real one. There was always the risk of going into shock. Bloody Zark! Being in Kiera's body was enough of a shock for one day.
I remembered in the developmental stage of Virtual immersion, there had been instances of people becoming catatonic. Fortunately, in most cases it had been reversible, but I had no intention of testing it out.
One side of the cable remained intact, but with each discharge more wires melted out of existence. Time I linked up with Jack.
––Link to other user, Jack Summers.
A giant cursor blinked, and a billboard sized message superimposed itself on the screen in front of me.
––Link complete––engaging now.
"Jack, are you getting this?"
"Bloody hell! You really are Luke," Jack's voice answered from immediately behind me.
"Zark, Jack!" Startled, I whirled and came face-to-face with Jack's avatar.
"Gotcha! Nice to see you back to your old self." Jack's avatar grinned.
"Very funny. What do you think? Can we fix the problem?"
Jack's avatar screwed up its face. "No, it's cactus. This circuit is the end of the line in a system of redundancies."
"What about a crawler?"
"Take too long. Even if we had a Robo-critter handy, and we don't, they're in maintenance on deck forty-six. There's no time. It's too late, Luke. We'll have to use the emergency shutdown, while we still can."
My mind reeled. I didn't want to think about it. My brain flooded with images of Kiera. Where the Zark are you, Kiera? I had to think about something else.
"Where's the fault relative to our module?" I asked.
"It's a couple of modules down, on the other side. Come out and I'll show you. No point in staying here. See you up top." He winked out.
I concentrated.
––Zoom out and disengage immersion.
I opened my eyes and found myself back in my body. I sat and stared at the screen for a few moments before giving the next command.
––Disengage link.
The screen cleared before the blinking cursor reappeared with the message
––Please repeat bio-electric password to disengage.
––Army of mice.
––Disengaging.
Chapter 26
The screen blanked, and the headband slid away as the chair slackened its grip on me. When the process completed, I stood up. In hindsight, not a good idea as I nearly fell over, and I only saved myself by grabbing the back of the chair. As I stood and waited for wooziness to pass, I gazed at the banks of gleaming syn-spex pods that lined each side of the deck. It all seemed so clinical; the darkened pods, so devoid of life. There were 100 people in our section––each with their own unique dreams and hopes for the future. I remembered Kiera's comment on our prelaunch tour. She'd said: 'We'll all wait in our pods like fairy-tale sleeping princes and princesses for the kiss of technology to wake us in a strange, new, exciting future.'
I shook my head and inhaled deeply. The ship still smelt of new metal and plastic. "So, which module is it, Jack?"
He hurried around from his side of the dual screen and reached out to me. I flapped him away. "I'm alright," I growled.
"Okay, okay. Don't get shirty." He held up his palms and backed away from me. "We came from module one. The fault's in module two six P seven three." He turned and pointed. "It's the last across the other side, on our left."
At least, having seen me in Virtual, Jack now accepted me as Luke. No more cuddles, thank the Universe. If things weren't so serious, we could have both had a good laugh about that one. I pulled myself back to the current moment.
"Are you sure you're okay?" Jack's expression radiated concern.
"I'm fine, Jack. All the dizziness is gone now. Let's go and see what we are dealing with."
"No, wait here, Luke. I'll go and initiate the shutdown process. There's no need for both of us to be involved." He walked off.
Just the way he'd said it, and the lack of emotion on his face, made it sound like he was going to tighten a loose screw somewhere. I gritted my teeth with the effort of keeping my mouth shut.
I leant on the console and watched as he padded diagonally, some fifteen metres across the grey, metal deck, past banks of horizontal sleep pods, to the middle of module three. He tapped the small touch screen to access the names, photos and bio-data of the occupants.
"Why do you need to do that, Jack?" I called. They were all going to die. I didn't want to know who they were.
"I need to check something."
"What?" I put my hands on my hips.
"Don't distract me," he said, in a terse tone.
Jack excelled at shutting people out when it suited him. It's funny how things occur to you at the oddest moments. I found myself thinking; of the few girlfriends he'd been with over his lifetimes, none of them had stayed long enough to chip away at his stony exterior to see what lay underneath. I sat down on the deck with my back resting against the console and closed my eyes. I must've fallen asleep, because I was woken by Jack tapping my arm. When I opened my eyes, Jack's white, anxious face leant over me. He was trembling.
"You need to come and look, Ki––Luke. I…Just come and look." He extended both hands and this time, I took them. Without another word, he turned and walked off to module three. I trotted after him, fighting down nausea and the overwhelming sense of my world about to shatter into shards of infinity.
Jack pointed to the display with a shaky hand. "They're not where they're supposed to be."
Julian, my twenty-year-old son, grinned at me from the screen. He and his eighteen-year-old sister, Tiani, should have been in module one. We'd all decided to stay together––Jack, Kiera, Julian, Tiani and myself, so in the event of anything happening to our module, we would all go at the same time. None of us wanted to be left behind to grieve.
My turn to start shaking. Jack had said ' they're'. Great Universe, surely he didn't mean… I watched as Jack, muttering, turned back to the screen and swished to the next photograph.
"Unbelievable," he whispered, almost to himself.
Tears began to stream down my cheeks. Tiani's young face, her eyes bright with excitement, slid into view. My knees buckled, and I began to see stars. I reached out and put my hand on Jack's shoulder to steady myself. I could feel him trembling.
This couldn't be real. This couldn't be happening. Not my children. Great Universe––not my children. My mind whirled. Perhaps they weren't my children. What if everybody had been mixed up? If my consciousness had been downloaded to Kiera's
body, whose consciousness occupied mine? But Jack's in the right body, and he'd come from the same module I had; module one.
Bloody Zark! Julian and Tiani weren't clones; they were gen one humans. They hadn't gone through the upload process the rest of us had. Somebody had to have engineered this. This couldn't have happened randomly. It just couldn't. Great Zarking Universe! Who could have done this and why? Why? My mind screamed.
Jack hesitated. He forced himself to take a deep breath before he swiped to the next photo with a shaky hand. A shudder ran down my entire body.
Zark! Bloody Zark. From the screen a smiling photograph of myself, or at least my bodily self, stared out at me, occupant unknown. My legs sagged. I let go of Jack and slid to the deck. My head spun, as the Universe pressed in and sucked all the life from me. My breath came in ragged gulps.
"There's something else, Luke," Jack said, as he bent down, slipped his arms under my shoulders, and helped me to my feet. "It's a message for you."
I stood paralysed in front of the screen. I stared and stared. Underneath the photograph lay a message where my bio-data should have been. It read: 'Luke, now you will know what it's like to lose everything. It's taken three lifetimes, but I'm a patient man. My only regret is that I can't be there to see the look on your face when you read this, Logan. PS Kiera is with me now. You won't find us.'
Logan Williamson? After all this time? I couldn't believe it, and what did he mean? How could Kiera be with him when I occupied her body? I wilted, in spite of Jack's support.
"Bloody hell, Luke." Jack sucked in his breath and turned towards me, white faced. His voice cracked, "I have no choice. I have to euthanise the whole of module three."
It had been part of our conditions of acceptance. Everyone on the ship had to agree to humanely shut down pods or modules that failed.
"We can't."
Jack let go of me. He stood and stared at me, momentarily helpless, emotional agony etched on his face
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