Immune

by Richard Phillips

  Raul increased his focus, bringing every working part of the Rho Ship’s massive neural net to bear on his analysis. If only he had made more repairs to the ship’s data storage banks. Perhaps they held some data that would give him a better idea of how this could be happening. Instead, he had been so busy repairing the matter disrupter power cells that he had delayed further work on the ship’s computing systems. Now that decision had come back to bite him on the ass. Well, there was no help for it. Raul would just have to make do with the tools he had.

  As he began analyzing the nature and pattern of the probe, it disappeared as suddenly as it had begun. Odd. Had it noticed his sudden attention? Raul replayed the incident, noting every detail of the intrusion.

  The signal strength had been very low and had just appeared, moving around inside his neural network in jumps. That in itself was quite fascinating. There was no sign in any portion of the neural network that something had passed through it. The signal had just appeared at various points as if out of nowhere.

  Out of nowhere! Almost like what he had been able to accomplish through his worm fibers.

  Raul rechecked the data, cross-correlating with gravitation readings from the other instruments. Except for the low-level gravitational flux from the Rho Ship itself, there was nothing out of the ordinary, certainly nothing of the magnitude a gravitational singularity such as that would produce.

  So this wasn’t a gravitational technology. That left subspace manipulation as the most likely source of the anomaly. Subspace! The technological realm of the Enemy.

  Raul felt his heart rate jump. Had the Enemy somehow managed to track the Rho Ship to earth? Shit! In its current damaged state, this ship was in no condition to survive an Enemy attack. If that was the case, he was trapped in a bottle that was about to be shot off the fence.

  But that scenario didn’t feel right. Raul reexamined every measurement associated with the probe. The signal strength was far too weak to be an Enemy scan. It had also been too random, almost as if the source of the probe had not known what it was looking at. With the Rho Ship’s shielding inoperative, an Enemy scan would have been very powerful and would have simultaneously engulfed the entire neural net and all other shipboard systems.

  Raul looked around the room in which he hung suspended in the stasis field. The artificial lens that had replaced his right eye swiveled in the socket, the hinged mechanism extending out of his head to zoom in on the panel where his umbilical cable connected to the ship. No doubt about it. If he wanted to have enough computational power to figure this out he was going to have to get back to work on the computing systems. For too long he had delayed the next round of self-surgery, the drastic step that would grant him the level of access he now needed.

  Raul had imagined himself beyond fear, but now that he faced the reality of what had to be done, a deep dread made him weak in the knees. Glancing down at the empty space where his legs had once connected to his hips, he managed a smile. Perhaps not.

  Then, taking a deep breath, Raul turned back toward the umbilical connection panel, letting the stasis field gather the surgical devices that would be required. His artificial eye telescoped into a thin flexible tube, extending to a point where it could focus on the spot where the umbilical entered the base of his skull. Having acquired sufficient skill with his field manipulation, Raul could control the instruments without using his hands. Unfortunately, he would have to remain completely conscious throughout the operation. The necessity of allowing the ship’s neural net to monitor the surgical progress meant that he didn’t even have the freedom to damp down the pain.

  At least, bound by necessity, here in the dim gray light at the heart of the Rho Ship, he retained one essential freedom. He had the freedom to scream.

  85

  “Oh shit!”

  “Back out of there!” Heather gasped.

  Jennifer’s fingers were already flying across the keyboard, activating the commands that would jump the subspace transmitter to another coordinate, still within the Rho Building, but onto a conventional computer subnet.

  Jennifer leaned back. “Done.”

  “Thank God.” Heather suddenly remembered to breathe.

  Mark had begun to pace beside the workbench. “You know what this means? That damn Stephenson has somehow managed to activate the alien computer system on the Rho Ship. God only knows how long he has had access to it.”

  Jennifer shook her head. “Just because it’s turned on doesn’t mean he’s able to understand the data. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen.”

  “I wouldn’t make that bet. What about you, Heather?”

  “Me either. I’d say there’s roughly an 84.61538 percent probability that he’s gotten at least some control over the system.”

  “Roughly?” A grin softened the worry lines in Mark’s face.

  Heather shrugged. “That still leaves two chances out of thirteen that I’m wrong.”

  “Well let’s hope you’re wrong,” said Jennifer. “From the way the alien data pattern was changing, I’d say something noticed our intrusion. I’d rather think it wasn’t Dr. Stephenson.”

  “I’m not sure I like thinking about what else might have noticed us either,” said Mark.

  “Well they can’t have figured out much,” Heather replied. “We were only in there a few seconds randomly hopping around the neural net. There’s no way to trace the subspace signal back to us.”

  “No way we know of,” corrected Mark.

  Heather closed her eyes. “Even an alien trace is highly unlikely.”

  “Please don’t recite the odds. We’ll take your word for it.”

  An angry response had just started to form on her lips when she noticed Mark’s quick wink. He’d been pulling her chain, and she’d almost rewarded him.

  As Heather stared, Mark’s face blurred ever so slightly. For a moment, it seemed that his eyes hollowed and long, greasy, blond hair hung over his shoulders. Then the vision was gone as quickly as it had come.

  How long had it been since her last dose of medication? Five hours and thirteen minutes. More than an hour overdue.

  “Sorry, guys. I’ve got to go home and take my meds. Mom’s probably about to come looking for me.”

  Jennifer raised an eyebrow. “What about this?”

  “I don’t know. I think it’s safe to keep searching for Stephenson’s computer, so long as you don’t access that ship. Wish I could stay and help, but I can’t. At least not until tomorrow. See you then.”

  As she made her way out of the workshop, Heather felt another vision building in her mind. Without pausing to wave good-bye, she broke into a run, letting the door slam behind her.

  86

  After midnight, the silence that crept into the strange rooms and corridors that honeycombed Henderson House thickened until it could almost be felt on the skin. It emerged as the day’s second of three shifts checked out, replaced by the late-night crew. This much smaller assemblage consisted primarily of security staff who retreated to their stations, surrounded by monitors displaying the moving images from the building’s black, bulbous glass eyes, lost in the magical pages of the twin Ks, King and Koontz. The ubiquitous glass camera housings were almost everywhere, their output tied into motion sensors and computer analysis software that used sophisticated algorithms designed to alert the guards should something out of the ordinary occur.

  One of these monitors showed a janitor working next to a trolley filled with an assortment of mops, brooms, buckets, and chemicals strong enough to kill germs by smell alone. The janitor had started the shift clad in snow-white coveralls that had now turned dingy, his rolled up left sleeve dripping brown water from the retrieval of a scrub brush lost to the depths of the mop bucket. His graying crew-cut head bobbed in a hypnotic rhythm as he swung the industrial mop slowly back and forth across the tile floor, each swing revealing the Grateful Dead tattoo that covered his right forearm.

  The janitor returned the mop to its bucket and pushed
the trolley around the corner into a narrow hallway that led only to the public restrooms and a large janitor’s closet. Fumbling with a heavy key ring, he unlocked the closet door, reaching inside to flip on the light. Then pulling the cart inside, he closed the door behind him.

  The dimness of the lone 40-watt bulb caused him to pause momentarily to let his eyes adjust. For several seconds, the sharp shadows from the double utility sink hid the pipes beneath it. The janitor removed the thick, Coke-bottle glasses and placed them on a shelf, rubbing his eyes with his fingers. Then, without bothering to empty the mop bucket, he reached his damp left arm deep inside the murky water, extracting a plastic baggy from the bottom.

  Drying the packet with a towel, he unzipped the zip-lock and removed a small cassette recorder and a tiny microphone at the end of a long, thin cord. The janitor worked quickly, inserting the plug into the microphone jack on the cassette recorder and then kneeling to lower the mike through the slits in the floor drain beneath the sinks. When it reached the bottom of the thirty-foot cord, he placed the recorder behind one of the sink pipes. Then, he slid a particularly foul smelling bucket of bleach over the drain, hiding both the microphone cord and the cassette.

  Straightening once again, he rubbed the base of his back, returned the glasses to their position on his nose, and pushed the cart back into the hallway. He paused to turn off the light and lock the door behind him before once again picking up the hypnotic mopping motion that made him all but invisible to the guards and their monitors.

  It had taken him six weeks of calling in every underworld IOU he had amassed over his career, as well as the bulk of his life savings to obtain the fake identity that had passed the security checks, which had allowed him to get this job. But the janitor had no doubt that the investment would prove well worth the cost.

  Several times, in the deep, post-midnight silence of Henderson House, he had heard the noises percolating up from the depths of the facility, from the lower levels to which he was denied access. Sometimes it sounded like distant screams. At other times, the sounds hinted at something far more horrible. They were so strange and distant that he could have almost believed he imagined it.

  But if there was one thing his ex-wives agreed upon, it was that imagination was a trait he completely lacked. As he worked the mop steadily back and forth, the thinnest of smiles tweaked the corners of Freddy Hagerman’s mouth. Imagination indeed.

  87

  “Where’s Jennifer?” Heather asked as she opened the front door to let Mark in.

  “Grounded for life.”

  “Jennifer?”

  “The one and only.”

  Before Heather could quiz him further, her mom entered the living room, still in her Sunday best. “Well hello, Mark. Where’s Jennifer?”

  “Hi, Mrs. McFarland. Jennifer had something she had to do, so it’s just me.”

  Mrs. McFarland smiled as she continued toward the door to the garage. “It’s not that we’re not glad to see you, too. I’ve got some errands to run in town myself. There are some leftovers in the fridge if you kids get hungry.”

  As the door closed behind her, Heather plopped down on the couch across from Mark. “Okay. Spill it. What happened with Jen?”

  Mark shook his head. “Well you know how odd she’s been acting these last few weeks. Last night she snuck out and went to a party with some of the cheerleaders.”

  Heather’s mouth dropped open. “Snuck out?”

  “After Mom specifically told her she couldn’t go.”

  “You’re kidding!”

  “I didn’t believe it myself. Dad blew a fuse.”

  “I can imagine. Have you talked to her? Jen must be pretty shaken up.”

  “Not so you’d notice. I stuck my head into her room this morning and she was just sitting at her laptop like nothing had happened. She just laughed in my face when I asked about it.”

  A frown spread across Heather’s face. “Mark, I’m really worried about her.”

  “You and me both.”

  “There’s something she’s not telling us. Ever since the science contest, her abilities have been changing in ways I don’t understand.”

  “It started before that. I should have noticed it when she started jogging at night.”

  “That doesn’t sound like her. When did she do that?”

  “Shortly after school let out for the summer. I noticed it, but I was so wrapped up in what I was working on that I didn’t really press her about it.”

  “How often was she doing it?”

  “Every night, I think.”

  Heather felt a knot form in the pit of her stomach. “She was going out to the ship!”

  Mark slapped his palm to his forehead. “Damn it. Of course. That’s what she’s been hiding from us.”

  “It explains how we got into that room we could never open before. Jen must have figured out how to access more of the ship’s computers. And somehow that closer link has changed her.”

  “She’s taken the next step. But what are we supposed to do about it?”

  Heather closed her eyes. She had the feeling that she should be able to see something important, something that she couldn’t quite pull to the forefront of her mind.

  “I don’t know.”

  Mark leaned forward, his deep brown eyes locking with hers. “There’s something else I want to discuss with you. Please don’t get mad at me.”

  Heather felt herself tense. Oh great. Here it comes.

  “It’s not just Jennifer that is changing,” Mark continued. “It’s all of us. She’s just changed faster than us, most likely because of her visits to the ship. But I’ve struggled all summer to get control of myself. Then there are your visions.”

  “Don’t go there.”

  Mark swallowed hard, but continued. “I’m not going to preach at you. But I want to ask you to do one favor for me.”

  “You can ask, but I’m not promising anything.”

  “I won’t pretend to know how hard this has been for you. But I’ve been hiding stuff too. All summer I’ve been having a harder and harder time controlling my emotions. It’s like I get a heavy-duty hit of adrenaline over the least little thing.”

  “Sounds like PMS,” Heather said, immediately regretting the snippy remark.

  Mark nodded. “I probably deserved that. But if it’s PMS, then it’s the type that makes me want to break things, including people. The problem is, I could do it. Last week I almost hit Jennifer, and I don’t mean any friendly little love tap. I could have killed her.”

  Seeing the dread in Mark’s face, Heather believed him. Dear Lord. What were they all becoming?

  “But then I discovered something. You know how hard I’ve been practicing my meditation routines. The trouble is that meditation takes time. At least it used to.”

  “What do you mean?” Mark now had Heather’s complete attention.

  “I discovered that I can just recall how I felt during a certain meditation and it puts me there. Think about it. We all have these perfect memories. For us, remembering something is exactly like reliving it. Anyway, once I had the idea, I began mentally cataloguing a variety of meditation levels. I can drop into any one of them almost instantaneously.”

  Before she could respond, Mark’s eyes lost their focus, his chest stilling to the point that she thought he had stopped breathing. But it was moving, just in a very slow rhythm.

  Fascinated, Heather moved over to his chair and reached out to feel the pulse in his right wrist. A steady twenty-four beats per minute. Within seconds, it shifted to fifty-three beats per minute and his eyes returned to their normal alert expression.

  “Wow!” was all she managed to say.

  “And that brings me to my favor,” Mark said, his face as serious as Heather could remember seeing it. “I don’t think the ship is changing us into something inhuman. I think we were right from the beginning, that it’s just released all of our human potential. The problem is that we don’t have any idea what that me
ans. Maybe a thousand years from now, or a million, every human will be using every part of the brain. But we’re just stumbling around trying to figure out what new thing is going to happen to us next.

  “As scared as we are of what is happening, I think we’ve got to accept these gifts and learn to use them. I want you to let me teach you the meditation trick. Then I want you to stop taking the drugs they have you on.”

  Heather had known what was coming from the instant Mark had started talking, but his demonstration had at least made such a thing seem possible.

  “I don’t know if I can.”

  “I know. You’ve always been as aggressive and confident as I am. Do you remember that day when you talked me into climbing Ship Rock on the hard side? That’s still your personality.”

  “Maybe.”

  “No maybe about it. You’re not going crazy. You have a gift for seeing visions of the most likely outcomes. You just have to learn to turn it on or off at will. Maybe that’s as simple as remembering what it feels like when a vision is coming on or when one isn’t. I don’t know, but we need to find out. I think we’re going to have to learn to use every bit of our augmented brains and bodies to have any hope of stopping the Rho Ship and Dr. Stephenson. Besides, after what that bastard has done to us, I want to nail his ass to the wall.”

  For several seconds Heather remained still, remembering the feel of that climb up the sheer face of Ship Rock, the thrill of fear as she dangled from the wall, and the exhilaration of reaching the summit. Ever so slowly, she nodded.

  “How do you want me to start?”

  88

  Having spent the day working with Heather, coaching her on several of his favorite meditation techniques, Mark was as optimistic as he’d been in the last six months. Heather was always great at whatever she put her mind to, and once she had decided to master the techniques he showed her she was nothing less than amazing. Sometime around three o’clock, as the Thorazine dissipated from her system, she had wavered under the impact of an impending vision. But Mark interceded, physically shaking her until she regained her focus on his face. Then, ever so gently, he made her recall one of the meditation levels she had achieved.