by J. K. Norry
The Admiral didn’t wait for a reply.
“It wouldn’t be so easy,” he said, “to do this, with an actual person.”
The Admiral’s hand went to his hip, and Link didn’t even see the thought fly by that told it to. One moment he was standing there with one eyebrow arched, relaxed and at ease; in the next, he had the device he kept shooting things with in his hand, and it was shooting this thing too.
Very little smoke rose from the collapsed contraption, and one of its eyes still had a spark of blue in it. The Admiral shot it once more, and two more times after that, before holstering the weapon.
Link watched mindless knee-high drones wheel out of panels that slid open in the wall, and saw them clean nearly all the pieces before he felt that familiar spinning lure from his own world. He felt The Admiral blink, and shake his head; and then he was gone into the darkness.
SIXTEEN
Link’s eyes were only open for as long as it took to seize the nearby bottle, and take another pill. The glass of water by his bedside was old, and stale; he didn’t care. He put one down, then the other, and lay back down to go to sleep. Not a single glance went to the clock, or registered what time of day it must be by the light outside; the only actions he took in his own world were purely perfunctory, and done to get him back to the other.
Just as time seemed to pass slowly between realities, it flew by while he was disengaged. Link was both disappointed and relieved to find himself, as The Admiral, saying goodbye to the woman he had been talking to earlier. They were together in his chambers, her hair was loose and flowing freely about her shoulders, and the makeup under one of her eyes was smeared in the most strikingly suggestive manner. She stood near the part of the wall that opened up to the rest of the ship, gazing up at him and smiling softly.
“How do I look?” she asked.
Neither of them made physical contact of any kind, although it was clear they had recently engaged in plenty of it. Link heard the thoughts in the head he was sharing, and couldn’t believe the man was not considering telling her she looked beautiful or gently dabbing at the smeared bit of coloring under her eye.
“You look fine,” The Admiral said. “Make sure no one sees you leave.”
He turned his back to her, and moved to the log. The sound shifted in the room, as the opening appeared; a moment later it was silent again, save for the dull rumbling that could be heard anywhere on the ship. Link watched him make his strange shorthanded entries, watched the thoughts that played across the landscape of the other man’s mind even more closely, and rode along with him to a shared mealtime.
The food they ate was surprisingly similar to what Link was accustomed to, other than the lack of sweetness or strong flavoring. He could taste it as well as the man whose mouth was chewing it, and tuned out the mild but delicious sensation as easily as he did. The Admiral’s thoughts were on his plans and his people, while Link’s wandered the full spectrum of fascination. Everything from the utensils they ate with to the trays they ate from to the food itself was familiar and alien all at the same time, and he was silently delighted to discover that the trundling robot Cervice had used to communicate with him earlier was indeed for clearing and storing trays.
The Admiral ate in a slow and considered fashion, as did everyone in the shared eating space. Conversation did not fill the room, any more than the raucous sound of utensils banging on trays. No one behaved in a particularly relaxed or hurried fashion, and he was no different. Link felt the calm of the others like it was a palpable field of energy, permeating both his host and his own deeper mind with a shared tranquility.
Instead of being disappointed that the second pill only gave him a glimpse of the man saying goodbye to his paramour and a spectator’s seat at mealtime, Link told himself he was gaining valuable knowledge by just getting more familiar with the other man’s thoughts. When he woke again, there was no consideration of where or when he was; all that mattered was losing as little time as possible in riding along for a day in the life of The Admiral. He took another pill, without bothering to wash it down with water or refill the empty glass from earlier, and jumped right back into the other man’s skin.
Next was a meeting where a slew of terms Link didn’t understand got thrown around quite a bit between a lot of people he had never seen. They seemed to be weighing the dangers of courting an asteroid field with the benefits of mining a rich variety of ore from the selection it offered. The Admiral was pointing out how much they had buffered their fuel reserves already, and how unlikely it was that they would find another opportunity like it soon if they set about adrift. A few were vocally opposed, arguing that some ships had been destroyed and many more damaged since the fleet had begun interacting with it. Others pointed out that they had detected a new gravitational presence, which could indicate safer mining conditions relatively close by.
Link did his best to follow the conversation, only to find himself counting the lighted bands on the other people attending the meeting and being pleased that he could tell who was what.
The arguments were all made in a measured and considered tone, and no insults or berating words came from either the people or the robots. Cervice was in attendance, the only clearly artificial being in the room for anyone who didn’t know about the bands. He surprised Link, putting forth only reasons for them to stay, and complimenting The Admiral on his clarity about the situation. Link had difficulty determining who each person was, or what duties they performed, in the stalwart quiet of his host’s mind. Only when their shared eyes fell on Cervice did the other man react emotionally, and he kept those reactions from showing to anyone but Link.
At one point, it was all too tempting for him to call Cervice out. He was making a point about the ships that had been damaged or lost, and how each had been a calculated risk that had ended in zero casualties. The robot gestured toward him, and nodded in his direction.
“The Admiral has made many hard decisions,” the robot said, pivoting slowly to catch every natural and artificial eye in the room. “They have all been correct, in the end. We must rely on his ability to make those hard decisions, and continue to lead the fleet unflinchingly in the direction of our continued shared purpose. So long as lives are not being lost, everything we do lose can be replaced due to our proximity to large quantities of every element imaginable. If we leave behind this opportunity in search of another, we could be drifting a long time before we find it. Situations exist in which a gravitational field of the nature of the one we have detected could indicate something other than available resources, or even less tenable mining conditions than those we are now dealing with. Better the devil we know...”
When his lighted artificial eyes found the ones Link was looking out of, he felt a rage boiling in him that almost made sense. If Cervice had so much confidence in The Admiral, why go to such great lengths to undermine him? His hand twitched at his side, but stilled as he respectfully returned the robot’s nod.
Link rode with him for as long as he could, until he felt irresistible tendrils of darkness begin to claw at the edges of their shared mind. He was pretty sure that his host consciousness was heading to his chambers for a sleep cycle, but he wanted to make sure before he let the darkness take him.
They were both surprised to find the woman he had engaged with earlier, waiting outside the part of the wall that would disappear with his continued approach. He ushered her inside, and crossed his arms over his chest. The wall took silent shape again as he spoke.
“How long have you been out there?” The Admiral demanded. “Who saw you?”
She shook her head, and smiled.
“No one saw me,” she said. “And I haven’t been waiting long. I came as soon as we figured it out, because I knew you would want me to.”
He nodded, arms still crossed.
“Alright,” he said. “Then tell me.”
She bit her lip, as if to k
eep from laughing.
“We found a way to shut down the central system,” she said. “I also figured out how to turn it back on, without rebooting The Engineer. Admiral, sir, we’ve figured out how to kill Cervice and save the fl—”
He took her in his arms, surprising her and Link alike with the sudden movement. She reacted immediately, wrapping her arms about his waist and fervently returning his passionate kisses. Link reacted in the next moment by giving in to the darkness, and slingshotting back into his own lonely body.
SEVENTEEN
Link hesitated, two pills in his hand. He didn’t want to jump into full control while The Admiral was with that woman, any more than he wanted to miss his window of opportunity to warn Cervice of their plans. He decided to put the pills back, get up, and draw a fresh glass of water. His phone was in the kitchen, on mute, and he turned it over on the counter and pressed the home button.
It lit up, showing him several things he hadn’t expected all at once. The date was all wrong, the time was too late, and there were messages waiting to be viewed.
Link looked at the window, as if the sun would be up for some reason not indicated by the digital time stamp. The curtains were dark, as was the world beyond. When the phone’s light faded, he tapped the button again. Fingerprint technology sensed his authenticity, and the lock screen turned into his home screen.
The messages were from Sherry, and there were two of them. The first had come in Friday night, and was nothing more than five question marks. The second was the same, a series of question marks; it had come about an hour into the party he had missed on Saturday.
It was past midnight, which was why the date display said ‘Sunday, December 25’. That meant it was not just the worst time to call or text; it was also the worst day of the year for the kind of message he might send. Of course, that didn’t stop him from starting to compose one.
‘Sorry,’ he typed, then stared at the screen.
“Sorry what?” he muttered under his breath. “Sorry I find my dreams more interesting than you? Sorry I slept through the party, I was busy trying to save the world? Well, not the world; but a world. Or a bunch of people, anyway. They probably only exist in my mind, but just in case they are real I want to dedicate my life to living one of theirs. It will probably only be for a little while, then we can get on with having some kind of relationship that I can screw up in an entirely different way.”
His hand was shaking, poised over the single sorry word. The thoughts were whirling in his head, going in circles top speed in a way that seemed to pain him in a very real fashion.
Link deleted the apology, and had another look at her series of punctuation marks. He tried to scroll up, and couldn’t. Confusion furrowed his brow, as he tried to remember deleting the exchange they’d had the other day. Thinking back hurt too much, and even keeping his brow furrowed caused a real and tangible ache in his head.
The phone went dark with another touch, and Link set it on the counter. He needed coffee, to make the growing pain subside. The thought of it made his stomach grumble, reminding him that he likely needed food as well. What he really needed was a way to go back, and start at the beginning with Sherry; although if he had that ability, Link would spend his whole life just going back. It was likely he would never make it through an entire day.
With a sigh, he turned on the brewing machine and listened to it warm up while he got a mug from the cupboard. It still wasn’t ready when he was, so he looked at the question marks Sherry had sent him one more time. No new information leapt out from between the characters, and Link darkened the screen and set it down again. He made a cup of coffee, and took it into his living room to sit in his easy chair and stare at the silent and blank television.
The coffee began helping his head pain immediately, while also clearing the muddled track of his racing mind. Link attributed the dull metallic aftertaste to the fact that he had gone so long without eating. His thoughts continued to turn in useless circles, beating him up for sleeping a day away and reminding him that he already had enough personality quirks to create a life of loneliness without adding this to the mix; but at least the spinning uselessness didn’t physically hurt any longer.
His thoughts went to Cervice, and The Admiral; they only stayed as long as it took to remind himself that they should be in a sleep cycle, and he should have plenty of time to rest and eat before he needed to get back to their world. Right around the time that he finished drinking the coffee, Link realized that he was still feeling rather exhausted. He pulled the lever to kick back the easy chair, stretched out and yawned.
“I may be sleeping more than ever,” he mused quietly to himself. “But I feel more wiped out than ever, too. All I need is some real sleep, in my own body, while they get theirs in space. Then I’ll go back. Then I’ll help, however I can. Then I’ll...”
His voice drifted off as he did, and Link felt those tendrils of darkness reach out to pull him to another world. The pills were still working in his system, and he didn’t realize it until he opened his eyes to a bank of alien technology.
The Admiral wasn’t sleeping, after all. He was kneeling next to a metal wall, where part of it had disappeared to reveal what looked like an access panel. Instead of colored wires and clumsily exposed connections, the device behind the wall was a visible electrical field of some kind. What few connections there were appeared to be transparent glowing tubes of glass that burrowed deep into the base of the simple clump of metal; it seemed to be generating the field, while acting as a pedestal for the projection. Other than the lights pulsing through the transparent tubing and pouring into and out of that miniature stage, all of the activity he could see was happening in the image that floated above it.
A voice to his right startled Link; The Admiral did not share his reaction. He turned to the sound, almost smiling. It was the woman he had been with earlier, of course; his top flyer, his recent prisoner, and his more recent lover. Link chided himself for being a fool, thinking they would sleep on such big plans. He realized what he had been looking at, through the other man’s eyes, as her words registered in his mind.
“That’s it,” she breathed, turning to him. “That is the central computer core; and that thing floating above it is Cervice’s brain, essentially. We need to shut it down, and have our little friend here fire it back up.”
The Admiral’s eyes went to where she indicated, following the wave of her hand. A simple contraption on wheels sat next to her, no more than knee high. It had four appendages, long arms that ended in intricate metal claws or clusters of interchangeable tools. Dull lights glowed on the otherwise featureless front plate, the only hint that the thing was anything other than a mindless hunk of metal.
“We’ve only got a few minutes,” she said.
The Admiral’s gaze found hers again, and he nodded.
“Cervice is unaware of our presence, and will be staring at a recorded loop if it looks down this hallway,” she went on. “This is one of the few robots on the ship that it can’t control, but that isn’t all it does. It also generates its own electromagnetic field.”
Link could feel the other man wanting to grin, and even leap to his feet and let out a victorious shout; he didn’t, though. Calmly, The Admiral asked a quiet question. There was no smile on his face when he did, or even the hint of one.
“How big is this field?” he said. “Will we be in it?”
She frowned slightly, and shook her head.
“No,” she said. “Just our little friend. He’ll reconnect the central computer, and engage the EMF generator, while bypassing Cervice altogether.”
A heavy sigh tried to find its way through the body he was inhabiting, and a feeling of fear tried to tighten his belly. The Admiral breathed through it, and stoked the fires of the rage within him; the feelings subsided as he spoke again, still keeping his voice down.
“So we’ll lose our enti
re identities for a few minutes,” he said, “and rely on that thing to bring us all back? That seems like a lot of faith to put in one machine. I don’t like the thought of our lives being completely in the hands of one of them.”
The last word sounded like a curse, the way he said it. Her eyes drifted from his, to the pulsing electrical field set in the wall. Blue and white light cast an eerie artificial glow over her features, and deepened the lines around her mouth when she frowned.
“I agree,” she said. “But we have no other option. Either we depend on this one for the next few minutes, or we hand our world over to that one. It doesn’t seem much of a choice, to me.”
Link was sure the only reason he was here was because he had taken enough pills earlier in the day to send him here. Without taking two right before going to sleep, like he usually did, there was absolutely nothing he could do but quietly panic deep inside the other man’s mind. He had no voice, to shout or even think loudly; from this side of the glass he seemed to stand on, he could see and hear everything The Admiral experienced with absolute clarity; but it was one-way glass, and no amount of soundless pounding or silent shouting could touch that distant alien brain.
All he could do was watch, as the woman reached out her hand and put it on one of the glowing tubes of lighted connectivity. Her eyes went to the robot at her side.
“Are you ready?” she said.
The lights on its front plate brightened visibly, all four of its appendages moved slightly, and it trundled forward a few inches on whirring wheels.
She turned to him, and she was biting her lip slightly.
“Are you ready?” she said, once more.
Against all of his useless protestations, despite his entire weakened will trying to pour some kind of control or lack of it into the other man’s limbs, Link felt his head nod.
She tugged, and everything went dark.