Long Fall

by Chris J. Randolph

  "Yeah, I guess. Kind of like you... This kind of shit isn't really my area of expertise." He scratched his chin and sighed. "What was it like when you... when you became a... uh, construct?"

  The interrogator sat down on the floor opposite Jack and locked his hands around his knees. "Will it make a difference?"

  Jack shook his head. Shrugged. "You tell me."

  Kai took a second to collect his thoughts. Then he said, "To be honest, I was afraid. I'd trained my whole life for this one honor, yet when the time came, it frightened me. What if the procedure went wrong? I could lose some part of myself and arrive in the new body a drooling idiot. Or worse, what if I wasn't strong enough to control it? Power like that could drive a man mad. I had questions and worries, but in the end, none of them mattered because it was my duty. My nation was at war, and they needed me to be stronger."

  "And the process? What was it like?"

  "Painless, when done correctly. I went to sleep and then there was the dive. That's what my predecessors had called it... like sliding through a tunnel made of light, with darkness chasing you. I'd always suspected it was just a dream or hallucination, but it was exactly the same each time I transited afterward... so I don't know."

  "Then you just woke up?"

  "In the tank where the body was grown," Kai said. "That experience... well, it's not pleasant. Takes a while to clear out brand new lungs."

  Jack giggled and Kai joined him in his odd manner.

  When they were quiet again and the mood of the room had become just a little too heavy, Kai said, "You don't have to be a weapon, you know."

  Jack looked confused.

  "I'm just saying... having this power doesn't automatically make you a weapon. Not anymore than having fists does. Unless this new form has knives for hands... That would make my case a little more tenuous."

  "It doesn't have knives for hands," Jack assured him. In fact, though they looked strange, the Yakara were still human in shape. Two hands, two feet; limitless possibilities. There wasn't anything that made it a weapon... except perhaps for its ability to punch holes through starship hulls.

  "Then it'd be your choice how to use it, Jack. It could be a weapon, or it could be something else we haven't even imagined yet. It's just a tool."

  "An extension of my will," Jack said, echoing something he'd been told once while laid out in the dirt. "And what about the lie? I mean, what... Fucking Donovan wants to be the pope, with Charlie's body up on the cross?"

  A memory flashed by of the old house, where a pair of candles burned on a shelf. He hadn't thought of it in years.

  "If you want moral guidance regarding the truth, you're asking the wrong being," Kai said. "But from a purely tactical stand-point, I believe his plan is sound. These people are breaking, and they're desperate for something to believe in. If it's not you, it may be someone else."

  Jack felt the empty hole that his beliefs used to fill, and he could sympathize. "I'm not cut out for this," he said. "I don't know if anyone is."

  Kai said, "Someone will be, for better or worse."

  And Jack saw what a clever line of attack that was. Who in the universe would he trust with that kind of power? The possibilities lurking within that question chilled his heart.

  "We have to destroy it," he said. "It's too much." He cupped his hands over his mouth and nose. "It's just too much."

  Kai's voice took on a quality that wasn't particularly human, but it was incredibly soothing. "Then millions will die. You know the stakes here, Jack."

  He did, and it made him want to punch the wall. Instead, he started tugging at his hair again.

  "Let's just imagine for a second that I decide to do this... I... combine with this alien thing, and I... I fucking pretend to be Charlie. What then? I'm not going to be Donovan's puppet. So where do I point these lost and broken sad-sacks?"

  "Where you've pointed this one," Kai replied. "Toward protecting the weak and helping those who need it most."

  Jack realized a funny thing about persuasion: if the manipulator was good enough, it didn't matter how obvious their moves were. It didn't matter because the best manipulators simply pushed their marks toward what they already wanted.

  A few seconds passed before the alien added, "And if you forsake it, what will happen tomorrow?"

  It was an honest question and Jack knew the answer. It was a vision he couldn't stand for.

  ***

  Six hours later, Jack Hernandez sped through Legacy's maze of crimson tunnels. The feeling was baffling and miraculous, lacking any sense of acceleration except for a spell of weightlessness and the rush of oncoming wind. He knew he was moving at an incredible speed, but he was totally fearless. Legacy's control was so fundamental, so innate that the tunnel posed him no more threat than his own veins did to red blood-cells.

  As Jack travelled, he couldn't help but think about Kai's experiences and the mysterious dive he described. Would he see the same thing? Sadly, none of the Eireki crap in his head included this particular step, and that left absolutely no way to know.

  He was flying blind yet again, but now it seemed he'd finally gotten used to it.

  A bright portal appeared at the end of the tunnel and he passed through it into Legacy's medical facility. The place was stark white and sterile like the rest of the ship. Between that and the flat lighting, he couldn't help feeling he'd been transported into a home-goods catalogue; all it needed was a collection of brightly colored salad bowls, and the scene would be complete.

  Kai followed a few seconds later, setting down on the floor gently but unable to mask his irritation at the technology. Jack had never seen the alien so thoroughly rattled by anything, and it puzzled him.

  He had more reason to be upset—freely walking back into the hospital that had been his prison just a few short hours ago—but instead he felt oddly at peace. He briefly wondered if he might feel the same given a tour of his old cell back in Africa, but he doubted it.

  Donovan and Juliette St. Martin had arrived ahead of him and they stood astride the main entrance, he in a Fleet uniform with a bit of extra embroidering around the collar, and she in her flowing blue labcoat. The physician looked worried, while the fleet commander simply seemed excited.

  Jack might've thought Donovan's excitement a cause for worry, but he knew from touching the man's mind that this was just how he reacted to the unknown. If he wasn't moody and lost in thought, it was only because there was something new and invigorating that he refused to miss.

  "Mr. Hernandez," Donovan said. He managed a hefty dose of decorum, despite being as giddy and eager as a child locked in an ice-cream shop overnight.

  "Donovan," Jack replied. He turned to the physician. "Are we ready to begin?"

  St. Martin squinted at him. "Not yet. I want to examine you first... and... you're sure there's no way I can talk you out of this? There's no telling how the device might react with a modern human."

  Jack looked to Donovan, whose eyes took on an uncharacteristically steely quality. "No," Jack said. "We've run out of options. I mean, unless you have a better idea, Doctor. I sure don't."

  She pursed her lips and shook her head.

  "Then if you don't mind," he said, and motioned for the door.

  They travelled down the hospital's main hall and then to the far end of the building, three of them walking while Donovan flew. From there they took a vertical tube upward, bringing them finally to a heavily guarded wing tucked away on the highest level.

  With each step, Jack's world grew just a little bit brighter, a little less stable, and he recognized it for what it was: an adrenaline surge. The glowing walls cast off a dizzying glare, and he fought to keep his breathing steady, his heart-rate under control.

  At the hall's end, they came to a large bubble like a ceramic bowl set in the wall, which burst and shrank away as they approached. On the other side was a circular room with manned workstations around the outside perimeter, while the center was filled by a glass case that looked
like the reptile enclosure at a zoo.

  Jack knew the glass was an illusion, of course. The walls of the container weren't truly transparent, but instead displayed an image on their surface, like a much more sophisticated version of Kai's camouflage.

  There was a simple pedestal inside the enclosure with the hollow-drive resting on top of it. The device was a pentagonal case made of something clear, with machinery wedged in the corners holding a fleshy ring in the middle. The drive was now vividly alive, no longer home to a shower of sparks but instead a burning, sputtering light like a road-flare.

  And it grew visibly brighter an instant after he caught sight of it.

  When no one else spoke, Doctor St. Martin adopted the role of tour guide. "Welcome to Deep Well Six, our highest security research and containment lab. Normally, we wouldn't allow anyone inside without the best vetting possible... but you appear to be a special case, Mr. Hernandez."

  She walked out toward the enclosure and pointed toward its contents. "I believe you're already acquainted with the miniature hollow-drive. We've been studying it in hopes of divining some secrets that the larger version won't divulge, but to no avail."

  Jack took a few steps forward and his eyes were instantly transfixed. He couldn't tear himself away from the hollow-drive, pulsing with light like nothing else in the world. The stream of fireflies inside came in shades of amber and gold, occasionally streaked through with electric blue.

  The doctor managed to tear him away. She tugged at his shoulder and led him to the side, where a small examination area had been hastily arranged. There was a bed made of Legacy's white flesh, flanked by various pieces of medical equipment.

  "You'll need to strip down," she said. "There's a curtain right over..."

  Jack's shirt was already on the floor, and the pants joined it a few seconds later. He couldn't wait to get out of the poorly fitted uniform, even if it meant being stark naked in a packed room.

  A few of the researchers couldn't resist a look, and Jack smiled sheepishly.

  "Oh... you're not bashful, I see. Good, now step onto this pad."

  Jack did as told, and over the next half-hour, the doctor thoroughly examined every last bit of him inside and out. She took his vitals first, and a blood sample which her computers analyzed in seconds, then inspected him like an art collector considering a piece of dubious origins. She paused at several of his moles, but otherwise seemed satisfied.

  At her touch, Jack began to feel the tingle of what he now recognized as a psychic connection, but it never completed. The doctor didn't need to know about any of that. Mostly, he was just glad her hands were warmer than the old grey-hair who checked him out at the ERC entry station.

  "Well, Mr. Hernandez... you're still underweight, and I'm concerned by some of your blood work, but you appear to be in reasonably good health."

  "So he's cleared?" Donovan asked.

  St. Martin glared at him. "I couldn't find any excuse to call this idiocy off, so yes."

  Jack glanced back to the hollow-drive, and it struck him that he was about to become one with this device... or creature... or whatever the fuck it was. The thought was accompanied by a blast of fear that nearly blew his hair back, but it didn't matter... what else did he have to live for?

  "So," he said, "how does this all work?"

  St. Martin furrowed her brow and frowned. "Frankly, I've no fucking idea, Mr. Hernandez. You seem to know more than anyone else here."

  "Yeah, flying blind," Jack said. He tried not to let his fear get the better of him.

  The doctor exhaled and relaxed a little, the same as anyone who realized they'd been making a bad situation worse. "We've tried to study the organisms as best we can, but they were designed to resist analysis. They can't be opened without destroying their internal structure, and if Legacy's previous drives left any remains at all, they degraded completely over the eons she sat here waiting for us."

  St. Martin pointed to the blank wall and a diagram appeared which depicted the hollow-drive and its components. The wall itself remained white, and the images which appeared on its surface resembled pencil drawings.

  "In the absence of data, I'll have to rely on theory. The drive was built to combine with other life-forms, some like the ship which are tailor made to accept it, and others like yourself which are not. To achieve the latter, it's able to rewrite its own genetic code, creating a seemless hybrid of the two. The action may be similar to some extremophiles on Earth which freely trade genetic traits across species, but obviously taken to another level entirely."

  The hollow-drive diagram was replaced by the familiar double-helix of a DNA strand. A smaller chain approached and the original flew apart, first splitting down the center like a zipper, then breaking into smaller fragments that spun away. The new DNA also came apart as it neared, then threaded itself throughout the broken pieces and assembled a new whole.

  Jack closed his eyes for a moment and tried to remember the Eireki who had bonded to hollow-drives. Yakara, he remembered. Other memories came along with them and he recalled failed experiments where hollow-drives failed to combine, leaving only a mangled mass that quickly died.

  "Are we exactly like the Eireki?" he asked of no one in particular.

  "You're exactly like the Nefrem," Kai replied. "Every gene."

  St. Martin shook her head. "That can't be quite right. As sophisticated as your people were," she said while eyeing the alien interrogator, "there are differences that simply must be represented in the code. If your understanding of genetics is similar to ours, you almost certainly ignored whole swathes of DNA... Introns we call them... which we believed until very recently to be junk data."

  Words flashed across Kai's gauntlet, and he ducked his head. "That... is correct."

  None of this meant much to Jack, and he was afraid his face showed it. "Not the same," he said. He managed to keep the creeping worry from his voice.

  "No, but we're very, very close," Donovan said after a moment. "The Eireki designed us to be their successors, custom built to defeat the Nefrem... do you think for a second they'd deny us their most powerful weapons."

  St. Martin had a look of deep introspection on her face, and then the light of faith came to her eyes. "Marc's right," she said hesitantly. "They planned moves that have played out over geological epochs. They were working on a level we're only beginning to see the edges of."

  Even though Jack only had murky fragments of Eireki memories, he could feel the shape of their intelligence and it was vast. It was unmistakably similar to his own, unlike that of Felix or Amiasha, but the depth of it was astonishing. Accessing those memories felt like dipping his head into a swimming pool only to find himself drowning in the sea.

  But even without finding what he was looking for, he knew what the others said was true: this too had to be part of the Eireki plan.

  He hopped off the bed and felt something else stirring in that distant Eireki consciousness. There was something there that resonated with him, a strength and fearlessness born of compassion that refused to be quieted, a will that could not be cast aside. This is what it means to be Eireki, he heard Legacy's infinite chorus of voices singing.

  Jack realized that his mind was made-up long ago. The only question that had ever existed was one of time. "I'm ready," he said, and all the faces that greeted him were full of worry and hope. Even Donovan's.

  He walked past them and then to the glass enclosure, where the wall parted like a waterfall split by jutting rocks. He stepped inside and it closed again behind him, crafting a silence so perfect he could hear only his breaths and the slow thump of his heart. The walls there were bare white without defect.

  He filled his lungs and let the air escape slowly, then walked across the floor. In six long and careful steps, he reached the pedestal and placed his hand gently on the hollow-drive.

  There was nothing at first, but then in the quiet he began to hear the song. A single voice sang in a melody of sadness, its words describing endless dre
ams of fury and despair. Those dreams stretched out across eternity until finally they faded into shadow.

  He brought his other hand forward and took hold of the device. The song's volume surged in response, its meter starting to race out of control, and Jack's pulse quickened to match it.

  He raised the hollow-drive from its place and the light at its core became blinding. He watched in wonder as the stars and embers that originated inside of it began to race outward, spreading around him like burning party streamers.

  The light pulsed and Jack tried to relax. Colors he never imagined hid within it, swirling in circles, in spirals, then they too reached out toward him. Together the light, colors, and song embraced him, and any last memory of fear melted away.

  ***

  Something tore.

  The darkness stood undivided. He heard neither his breaths nor his heart, and he quietly wondered how long he'd been here. He felt as if he'd been in this place before, and he would be here again. The cycle was neverending.

  Somewhere cloaked in the shadows, ladders were spinning and catching fire. The infinite dark that contained them breathed slowly and remained silent.

  He tried to stand but his legs failed him. He felt an unquenchable urge to scream, but his lungs, his throat, his mouth failed him too.

  Everything failed him, and time itself became torment.

  "Hate," he heard a voice whisper, crackling like dry leaves under hard boots. "Burn," it said, so close it must have been inside his disembodied ear.

  "Who are you?" he asked with a voice that arose from outside the dark, but no answer came.

  The shadows watched him and waited, and soon they changed. They billowed like sheets on a clothes-line, rippling from some force within. They rolled and waved and then faded away.

  Flesh clothed him, thin and spectral as sadness grown dull with age. He found himself on a spiral staircase with sky waiting both above and below, while memories of clouds slowly drifted across their surface.