Starbound: Eleven Tales of Interstellar Adventure

by SM Reine

  If that was the case, we were screwed.

  But I just couldn't reconcile myself to believe we were being hunted. For what? Being two ex-partners wanting to share a drink?

  Rich was looking at the window. Wanna be a cliché?

  Sure. Why not?

  So we climbed out the window. It wasn't locked or barred—we had peace now, so why fear being robbed? And anyone wishing to disturb that peace was dealt swift justice because the drones were always watching.

  The deli backed up to a small alley. We ran to the road-side exit, and Rich peered around the corner.

  "Do you see it?" I had to disconnect from the whisper. My head was pounding.

  "Yeah. It's patrolling the entire area. I say we make a break for it and head to Johnny's lab."

  Wait. "Lab? What does he have a lab for?"

  "I don't know. He just said if I ever couldn't find him, I was to get to you and then go to his lab."

  I didn't really have time to pout about Johnny not confiding this to me because Rich took that moment to yank me with him across the street. But not the street visible to the drone. We went down the opposite side, turned right and then left until we were in a residential area.

  He stopped in front of a nice heirloom Charger and opened the door by placing his hand on the driver's side window. I got in, and the car smelled like it looked. Old. "Where did you get this?"

  "Don't knock it. It's been in the family for generations. It's got the usual upgrades to make it street legal."

  I'd forgotten Rich was from Earth. "What about flight legal?"

  "No can do. These models were just too heavy for that mod. But—" He started flipping switches and pressed a button.

  I felt an old, familiar queasiness in my stomach and stared at him. "You installed a cloak!"

  "Yeah, I did. I know where Johnny’s lab is. We're just going to have to get out of Roswell first. I need you to keep an eye out. I can't drive with the cloak on or we'll get nailed hard when no one sees us. But when we park, we can—"

  We both saw it at the same time. The Helix drone came flying around the same corner Rich and I had. It stopped in the middle of the street, at the T-section where the road we traveled met the neighborhood road. I looked at the road name. Moonshadow Court.

  He touched my arm and I nearly jumped. Putting his finger to his lips, he pointed at the drone, indicating not to speak. I knew the thing could pick up an engine, so what did it matter if we were quiet or not? We were screwed!

  Just then, a newer model Honda pulled out of the drive of a house and nearly backed into us. Rich eased the Charger forward and kept behind the Honda. Ah, he was masking the Charger’s engine with the Honda’s. He gestured behind us, so I looked and the drone was moving down the residential street in the opposite direction.

  We didn't speak again until we were several miles from the town square and he pulled over to drop the cloak.

  "What the hell!?" I finally blurted. "Drones aren't allowed inside residential housing areas."

  "I know that."

  "But it went right in! They're not supposed to do that!"

  Rich put a hand on my shoulder. "Calm down. I saw it too, San. Things are changing fast, but I'm afraid you and I are the only ones seeing it."

  I was quiet as he drove the car on the highway. There wasn't much traffic for ground-bound transportation. Most of the traffic happened above us on the expressways. Which suited me just fine, though I caught myself looking around frequently, afraid of seeing that drone's little blue light.

  Johnny's lab was in a scary looking abandoned warehouse. I couldn't remember the last time I'd ever been inside of one these old rust buckets, made when girders were fashioned out of steel or iron. The whole place was one big rust spot behind an even worse looking rusted fence. Thick forests covered the land outside the fence. But that didn't make me feel any safer.

  Rich parked the Charger behind a pile of concrete blocks covered in other bits and pieces of building debris. I was pretty sure no one had been out this way in several decades.

  Hands tucked across my chest, I followed Rich around the right corner of the pile and into the trees and discovered a door worked into the wire. I instinctively reached my hand out to interface and unlock it, but Rich grabbed my wrist. “No. Johnny’s got it rigged if you do that. Whole thing will go up in flames.”

  I lowered my arm as Rich typed in a combination. The gate open and we approached the structure. It, too, had a keypad and Rich had to reference his link for the combination. The door made a thump, and he pulled a small pressure inducer from his bag. Inducers were the mainstay of law enforcement, a HPA's tool to subdue the non-conformists and haul them away for approved treatment. How Rich had one—I didn't know. And I didn't ask.

  I stayed behind him as we stepped into the dark, then I heard a squeak and a slam as the door closed behind us. A few more steps, then, "Hold on."

  Another pause and there was a click. The lights came on, and I saw Rich with his hand on a panel. Blinking, I took in the interior.

  The outside might have looked like a throwback, but the interior wasn't. Johnny had decked the place out with the latest in technology. A few things I recognized, like a kitchen, a living area, and wall screens. The rest were big, and silver, and shiny; and all stayed in a side room open from the kitchen. "This is his safe house."

  "Yeah, but I didn't know he lived here," Rich said. "John, you home?"

  We both strained our ears. No answer. "He's not here. Where is he?"

  "I don't know. Come on." He led me straight to that weird room with all the gleaming equipment. I recognized a gurney, several large monitors stacked on the left, and a very messy desk on the right. I moved to it and touched the film of soft, silky dust coating the surface. "I think this doubled as his office too."

  A panel glowed a soft green to the right on the desk's top display, and before I could say anything, Rich put his palm on it.

  The lights dimmed and the stacked screens brightened. Johnny appeared, looking very frazzled. His hair was a mess and his clothing mussed. He also had bruises very visible against his dark skin and his lip was bleeding. "Rich, Sansah—if you're seeing this, it means what I feared all this time is finally happening. I know that doesn't make any sense to you, but you have to listen—I don't have a lot of time.

  "When the Helix project started, it was built around the idea of creating the perfect soldier by using a technology once known as Programmable Matter. And it's exactly the way it sounds. Matter with the ability to be programmed to perform a specific function. Our first attempts at this were very basic, and not a lot of thought was given to the physical structure of the matter. We concentrated on function, and after a lot of fuck ups, it was decided by the committee that we should keep the outer form human. Anything other than that defeated the initial purpose of the project."

  Johnny looked to the side for a second, and I realized he was sitting at the desk behind me.

  "Programming for human form and function was easy. Programming the matter to act like a human—this was too complex. Over a hundred tests and over a hundred failures. Humans could pick out the fakes."

  His face had dissolved, and we were shown recordings of such tests. A group of people standing in a crowd, all dressed in white, as someone is led into the room and simply told to pick the one that's different. Time and time again, they picked the fake.

  "They said they could tell because of the way they blinked, or didn't, smiled, or didn't; small nuances that couldn't be programmed for flawless execution. The fakes didn't understand transitions from one to the other. All the little things that make a human…human.

  "Twenty years before you were recruited for this project, Dr. Vasco Conte succeeded in developing a technology that could copy the electromagnetic impulses of the brain and reconstruct them in digitized form. In other words, he discovered how to copy the human mind. But it was more than that." Johnny moved closer to the camera. "Conte was able to copy the soul itself. I kno
w how crazy that must sound, but it's the truth. Clones aren't the exact copy of the one they were cloned from. Physically, yes. Even genetically, yes. But not their minds. The way they think, their opinions, even their predispositions aren't copied. Those form on their own through environment.

  "But this…this was unbelievable. In less than a year after Helix brought him on board, they were able to program matter with a living human's soul pattern, as he called it."

  “What’s he saying? That we’re not clones?”

  "Bullshit," Rich hissed. "We're clones, not this matter shit."

  "I know you're thinking this is just stupid and ridiculous and what does it have to do with your lives. So you're going to have to listen to me very carefully. Especially you, Richard."

  Rich came to stand beside me as we faced the projected screen. "Helix commissioned a project to develop matter soldiers to go into the field, infiltrate, gather intel, and then eventually destroy. They were to work in teams of couples, two to four. There were a hundred of you in all. Now there are less than thirty."

  "Hundred of you…us?" I looked at Rich, but he was staring at the vid with his jaw working back and forth.

  “You have to accept it when I tell you that you’re not clones at all, but imprints. Fakes. Your original human patterns were removed from your original human bodies and programmed into the matter." He gave us a sad smile. "I was there when the subroutines were created. I was part of the team that made it possible for you to whisper to one another, interface with codes, machines, and give you full control over your bodies. This is why you can see greater distances than a rifle scope and why you can blend in with the population. You’re a superior blend of man and machine.”

  I stared at the vid, unable to look away.

  "You've probably noticed by now that you haven't aged. That was something no one really predicted. Especially Conte or myself. Your matter is constantly self-replicating; meaning your bodies—your matter-constructed bodies—will never die of old age. You will continue to exist as long as your mind can last.

  "But this is where Helix has realized their mistake. You’re not the first to notice this. Others have actually contacted me to ask questions, while some have reached out to one another, like you and San, disobeying Helix’s most important rule to not contact one another. You do realize that’s a method of control. So you won't talk and share information, or even worse, ask questions."

  Johnny moved to the right and then backed up as he held a flat, clear disk up. "When I learned so many of the Helix Agents had disappeared over the past year, I looked into it. I traveled all over looking for their bodies and found none. Not one body has been left behind. All reports, where there were reports, said they died in a fire."

  I gasped.

  He looked around and then disappeared. There was a skip in the recording and then he came back, looking worse than before. Dark circles under his eyes and his features were gaunt.

  Johnny held up the disk again. "I don't have much time. I think they found this place. I came across this a week ago, a bit of intel sent to me by one Gamma Team before they all died. I thought a safety had never been entered into the soul imprints. I was so damn wrong. There is a branch of Helix that created an order called Rescind into the core of the soul imprint. This…this command, once given, causes the matter to self-destruct. That's why there aren't any bodies. Six months ago, just after the Freedom Day celebration date was announced, the Rescind order was executed by Helix itself. With the complete and utter control of Hepburn being delivered to the world, they can’t allow super soldiers to exist. No one knew you existed during the war, and no one can know you ever existed because they want to use this technology again. They want to keep it a secret.”

  He got up into the camera, and I could see the sweat on his brow, almost taste the fear that emanated from him. I put my hand out to Rich and he took it. "The drones. Beware of the drones. They're being allowed everywhere here. On Earth. That's why you were all brought back to a single location. You're all here. Now they can send the Rescind order directly into the matter that makes up your bodies, but they have to have a line of sight to do it and you have to be looking into their blue lights. That’s their conduit. They will not stop until they find you." He held up a small, pink crystal. "Take this and find Conte. It's rumored he has a counter command. But if he doesn't, get off Earth as quick as you can. Before they burn you—"

  The recording ended. We stood still for several seconds as we processed this information. I wasn't sure which part to question first. None of it sounded sane. Especially… "I'm an imprint…of my soul?"

  Rich didn't say anything as he let go of me and went to Johnny's desk. He started moving things around, opening drawers, boxes, swearing under his breath. I joined him, my gaze moving over the desk for the pink stone.

  My foot slipped a bit on the tile, so I looked down and saw a lot more of that soft dust. I touched it again and noticed the silky texture. There were mounds of it under the desk. Rich was stepping in it. That's when I spotted the crystal just under the desk and leaned in to get it.

  I hesitated.

  Johnny had been sitting at this desk, holding the crystal when the recording cut off. I took another look at the silt, touched it again, and then realized… "Rich…"

  "I can't find it. Maybe he hid it somewhere else."

  "Rich."

  "Or maybe he took it with him."

  "I—I don't think he ever left."

  "What?" Rich finally bent down and looked at me from the other side of the desk chair. He saw the crystal and then looked at the silt. He reached a shaky hand out and touched it just as I had.

  Abruptly, he lurched back and said some rather irreverent things as he stood up. "Son of…that's Johnny. It's ash, Sansah. That's ash. It's Johnny's remains."

  "No…I've seen a burned body. It doesn't burn down like this—"

  "Yeah, but we're not human, now are we? We're—"

  "Matter-made soldiers," I finished for him as I stood, the crystal in my hand. "Is this all true? Are we really not human? I mean…I'd always believed their bullshit about the vitamins, and training, and all the Eastern arts. But this? I don't know if I can believe this—"

  Rich put his hand up. Again, he was staring at something, but it wasn't past my head this time. It was to his left, my right. I turned just my head to see a blue light descend from the ceiling as the drone exposed itself. How long had it been there? Just hanging out as we watched Johnny's tape? Knowing Helix, that information was now in the hands of our enemies.

  Whoever they were now.

  "Run!" Rich called out as he picked up one of Johnny's statues and threw it at the drone. It made an evasive maneuver as I ducked down and scrambled to go underneath it. Drones could move bilaterally, but their central auditory and visual components remained in a stationary horizontal axis. Meaning it couldn't look down to follow me. It could lower itself to be on my level, but it would have to know where I was.

  I found a hammer under one of the chairs by the row of silver machines and attempted to get myself into position from behind it. It could swing around on the horizontal axis and look behind, so I had to be quick.

  It was between Rich and me. Rich started to move, and the front blue light flared bright with a loud, blaring noise. The only thing I'd heard like it before was when one of my classmates in primary school had tried to play the tuba.

  Blue light bathed Rich as he turned away.

  “Don’t look into it!” I screamed at him.

  But he did. I saw his eyes widen as he stood perfectly still.

  I stood up behind the damn thing, reared back, and took a swing at it with the hammer. I put everything I had into that swing too, calling on what I chose to think of as human muscles. The crack the hammer made to the side of its lightweight material told me I'd put a hole in it. The thing tumbled in the air, slammed into the wall, and fell to the ground. I ran to it and smashed it over and over with my hammer until there was nothing le
ft but sparking, smoking pieces.

  "Sansah…."

  I turned back to Rich…and dropped the hammer. He was glowing from the inside. It was like an internal sun, burning its way through. He reached out to me as he grabbed his chest, and his fingers dug into the melting flesh. Within seconds Rich Sanders, my partner for fifteen years and my best friend in the whole world, faded away.

  All that was left was a pile of the same silty ash. I slid to the floor as I screamed his name over and over until my throat hurt. The ash was still warm as I pushed my hands into it and through it.

  It smelled like him.

  But he was gone.

  I don't know how long I stayed like that, bent over his ash. Luckily, a spark of self-preservation woke my subconscious. I had to find the crystal. Where was the crystal? I searched for a few minutes before I found it on the floor where I’d dropped it, half buried in ash. I shoved it into my pocket and then started looking around for Johnny's recording equipment. I found a purple crystal and several greens, all different grades of portable media. I wasn't sure if any of them were his message.

  Within an hour, I had Rich's Charger packed with as many supplies as I could find. Water and food, all raided from Johnny’s kitchen. I grabbed clothing I could use, because I wasn't going to be heading back to my place. Or California for that matter.

  No. I was heading north from New Atlanta. Up the coast toward Durham first. I'd interfaced with Johnny's mainframe, using this alien matter-made body of mine, and found a list of the surviving Helix Agents. The closet one was a woman there. I didn't know her name. She hadn't been in my team. But she was like me. A walking experiment. Something that was used, soon to be an embarrassment, to be discarded and swept away with the evening trash.

  I pulled the Charger to the road then ran back to interface with the lock outside. And just as Rich had warned me, an alarm went off. I swept away the tire tracks as I ran back to the car, and then burned rubber as Johnny's and Rich's funeral pyre became a Viking burial of epic-ness.

  Wiping my face, I made a mental plan. I would find everyone I could, go over Johnny's information, and I would find Conte. I needed more. More answers to questions I hadn't even asked, like where was my body? If I'm an imprint, then where's the original me?