Snake Eyes

by Joseph D'lacey

  He took out his pistol and aimed into the throng at head level. The first shot passed through twenty heads before losing its velocity. The weed mummies dropped in a line, only to be replaced by many more. Using this technique he brought down hundreds of them before his three clips ran out. It was nothing against their mounting thousands. He looked down at the water once again. It seemed distant and blue and peaceful. It reminded him of sleep and yet the height and the thought of the fall terrified him.

  A cloud passed across the sun and as it did so the water became momentarily translucent instead of reflective. He saw a shadow far below the surface. Looking up he scanned the sky to find the cloud that was casting such a huge shape onto the water. There was nothing but a few wisps of ethereal vapour, drifting so slow they hardly moved at all. The army approached him, coming within a few a meters. Soon they would be able to reach out and take him and the one choice he had left would be gone.

  The lightness that had gathered in his stomach deepened into something stronger; a sense of anticipation like the moment before any leap only much, much worse. He believed his bowels were about to let go.

  “We will be like you, Johnson. You will be like us.”

  Green hands reached for him. He turned to the city’s edge and sprang beyond their reach.

  For the briefest moment he felt weightless, then gravity took him and he was impelled towards the water.

  Do I want to die or try and survive?

  The waves accelerated towards him. He positioned himself to hit the water feet first, tensing every muscle in his body. One last look at the water showed the silhouette of some huge craft below the surface, a shape he thought he recognised.

  Chapter 24

  D rowning. That is what reality feels like.

  Sinking and sinking until the downward motion inverts, propelling you upwards towards a new surface. The underwater world has turned over. You are rising, not sinking. Yet, you know there’s no way this new surface can be reached before the first desperate, involuntary in-breath fill your lungs with water and death. There, a few precious metres above is freedom; the first tier, the way out. Reaching it before blackness overwhelms you isn’t possible.

  At least, it never seems possible but that is part of the thrill.

  Chapter 25

  When his face broke the water, penetrating the air at last, Robert Johnson woke up, instantly relieved to have made it and in the next moment sad to be back. Although partially submerged in the treacly, tepid saline, most of his body floated upon its dense surface. He had not, as he’d believed in the final moments of the cabal, swallowed any water. He was not drowning.

  Instead, he was safe and he was warm. There lingered within his muscles, however, a scintillating rigour; an intense afterglow of the final moments in tier two. It was the only remnant of the fantasy he had brought with him. It had been a satisfying and terrifying absence; yet another in which he had not once guessed the truth.

  With reluctance he allowed his body to settle, let the tension in his neck ease and gave into the floating support of the womblike follicle. Occasionally, a droplet of condensation would plink into the solution upon which he lay. With his ears under the surface of the water, each drip sounded like a deep, melodious plop; one that Johnson knew would be echoing around the silence of the Angelina for several seconds. The entire ship was a whispering gallery, an unintentional echo chamber that sometimes charmed him, sometimes pushed him close to insanity.

  He closed his eyes in the darkness and drifted. He was tired by the journey and there was no reason to hurry now that he was back. In some level of consciousness that was part dream, part memory, part much needed sleep, he remained aware of himself.

  Sometime later, feeling more refreshed, he returned to full consciousness once more. He tried to speak and managed only a croak that sounded muffled to his waterlogged ears. He tried again.

  “Weaver?”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  “I’m back.”

  “I am aware of that fact. I have been monitoring your progress, as always.”

  “How am I doing?”

  “Your vital signs fluctuated greatly during this cabal. However, they appear to be normal now. I take it you have enjoyed your respite from my company.”

  “Heartily. Drain the follicle, would you?”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  The smell of salt and body odour was strong in the confined space, the darkness total. Now that the thick brine was being sucked away, Weaver provided a tiny evanescence to enter the follicle so that Johnson could see when he came to climb out. His heels and backside came into contact with the fibrous base of the follicle first and, as the rest of the water swirled away below him, his back and head sank against the warm shell.

  As with every return, the heaviness of his true body weight was a shock and at first, he could hardly sit up. The effort made the front of his neck and his stomach muscles ache. He pushed with his hands against the shell to assist him. When he was sitting up, he rested for several more minutes.

  “Withdraw all interfaces. Carefully, this time, Weaver.”

  In the half lit glow, he watched the many needles, drip lines, waste collectors and contacts retracting into the shell of the tank. When he was free of the tangle of organic filaments he rubbed the soreness from the places where his body had been spliced to the cabal follicle.

  “Exit, please.”

  Part of the shell dissolved and he climbed the four small steps to floor level. He raised himself upright slowly so that he would not faint. For a time, he stood dripping and cooling, slick with oily salt water. It was always at this moment that he felt as if he were being reborn. The sensation was the only pleasant thing about his return and he knew it would not last longer than the time it took to shower and dress.

  Salt crystals had formed in the hairs of his armpits and groin as they always did. He played the hot water onto them for a long time, losing patience eventually and pulling the larger ones free along with small pubic tufts. The high-powered jet of the showerhead helped to revitalise muscles that had lain dormant and atrophying for the many months it had taken Johnson to solve the cabal.

  It appeared that Weaver still had the unpleasant knack of being able to guess his thoughts.

  “It will require two hours of intense training in the gymnasium per day this time, Captain. I estimate it will be over five weeks before you reach the required levels of fitness to ensure your continued health on this mission.”

  “I’m not the Captain and there is no longer a mission. Why don’t you leave me alone for a while, Weaver? I need some time to adjust.”

  “As you wish, Captain.”

  Alone once more, he let the water massage him for an hour or more. The only noise then was the splattering, dripping and rushing of water and the many echoes and reverberations they made around the living halls and corridors of the Angelina.

  Stepping out into the dimly lit recreation sanctum, he toweled himself dry with long deliberate movements. The effort was exhausting. When he’d finished he stepped towards one of the mirrors. All he could see was a shadow.

  “More light, please.”

  Soft glows illuminated the area around the mirror bringing Johnson’s reflection into plain view. He reached up to the greying hairs of his beard, grown much longer than he’d anticipated. He touched his forehead where there was no longer any sign of the thick, unmanageable locks he’d once had. Instead, there was more skin visible, shinier than the rest and with a barely visible layer of inconsequential down. His hairline had moved far back now and the hair he retained was much thinner, wisped with silver throughout.

  Around his eyes there were lines; they had been called crows feet long ago but now there were no crows and he doubted the cracks in his skin in any way resembled their extinct feet. His jowls, though gaunt, hung downwards as did the area beneath his chin. His lips, once passionate, were now thin lines expressing distaste in any position.

  He dressed slowly, dr
aping baggy clothes over his drooping flesh and prominent bones.

  Barefoot, he walked along the gently pulsing corridor to his cabin, the whisper of his softened soles spreading rumours of his return to every part of the ship. The distance was greater than the last time; the ship seemed to have grown too much in his absence. He collapsed into his cot and let sleep, the only other escape he had, reclaim him once more.

  Chapter 26

  Seventy hours later and only slightly refreshed, Johnson reclined in the captain’s couch on the bridge.

  “How long was it this time?”

  “Twenty three months and nineteen days, Captain.”

  “What?”

  “It is the longest so far.”

  Johnson ran his fingers over his head.

  “Longer by a year. This is great. Bring up the first section of the fourth tier—I want to see how I did.”

  Weaver dimmed the bridge and showed the opening of the experience across 180 degrees of the dome, splitting the view into first and third person. Johnson was about to crack his usual joke about how much better he looked in his cabals than he did in real life when he felt something scurry across his foot in the darkness.

  “God damn it, Weaver, I told you to spray the place while I was absent.”

  “I have done as you asked.”

  “Well what the hell just ran over my foot? Pause it and bring the lights up full.”

  In the glare he saw three vacuum spiders dart for cover.

  They were the curse of the void, able to float through space indefinitely in rocklike cluster colonies, reanimating when they made contact with anything that would support them. Usually they drifted in asteroid fields devouring every one they made contact with but sometimes they found their way onto ships.

  He’d experienced their excruciating but venomless bites but they were far more interested in staying hidden and eating the ship one succulent cell at a time. Johnson had based some of his best cabal material on them. In truth, they weren’t spiders at all. However, no one had been able to classify them before the Angelina had set out, no more than a seed, so many generations previously. As far as Johnson was concerned they were just…

  “Fucking little bastards…they mutate every time. Resynthesize the poison, Weaver.”

  “Of course. And may I say that, on this matter if on no other, I share your feelings. They are eating through much of my germinal cortex as we speak.”

  Johnson was aghast. Amongst Weaver’s many inadequacies was its inability to make a joke.

  “You’re not being compromised are you, Weaver?”

  “To my mind, Captain, I am. However it is nothing that will affect you at this time. I take it that is where your concern lies.”

  “Of course. How long until I will notice?”

  “I would estimate a period of nine months.”

  “Jesus wept. Why haven’t you told me about this?”

  “You seemed a little…distant.”

  Weaver, the consciousness of the Angelina, was referring to Johnson’s not wanting to talk on returning from the cabal but really, it was Weaver’s own fault. It could have woken him from his experience to inform him of the worsening spider problem but Johnson had expressly forbidden it to do so. An experience broken before it was completed was a waste of weeks of preparation and months of potential intrigue.

  Johnson, too, wondered about the wisdom of his orders. There was now a chance they would cause him to lose everything.

  “If I’m going to die, Weaver, I’d like to do it mid-cabal or by my own hand.”

  “So you are fond of saying, Captain.”

  “Nine months. Shit.”

  “Perhaps you would care to review your latest ascent through the tiers at a later date.”

  Johnson thought about it.

  “No, Weaver, these experiences are all I have left. Play it.”

  Returned to gloom, Johnson watched the other lives he had created for himself and marveled at how well he had found his way through them. He’d always included a failsafe in each tier of the cabal so that if he became lost or disorientated to too great a degree, he would come across clues that would help him to keep searching for a way out.

  The theme of escape was a natural one for Johnson to pick after all these years alone on the Angelina. Every single cabal he’d designed had the theme of escape at its core and this last one, with four tiers instead of three, had tested both his endurance and his desire to survive.

  He watched his progress through the fourth tier, the most action packed arena of the whole experience, with enormous pleasure. He commanded Weaver to forward to exciting areas and replay scenes in which he had performed particularly well. His defeat of the matriarchal spider and subsequent escape to the third tier had his heart racing almost as hard as it had when he was there. These were his memories now, he reflected, not the years spent idling in the ever-expanding pods and deserted ventricles of the Angelina. The real Johnson was a man who fought against terrible odds and triumphed; a man of will and experience.

  In Weaver’s vast memory there were more than two dozen of his cabals. The first ones were primitive and the plots were terribly linear. They were the days of the ‘one-tier trip’. He’d even become self-aware in some of the earliest ones with no choice but to terminate the experience part way through.

  Now, however, he had mastered the plot programs and was a more skilful designer than any of his predecessors. He remembered how the crew had raved in his youth of the single tier experiences written by the likes of Geoffrey W. Payette and Christina M. Poole. Johnson’s works were feature length movies to their five-minute cartoons.

  His own early desire to access the complete history of visual entertainment in Weaver’s mind ended with his first cabal at the age of fifteen. Many of the crew born after him had still enjoyed the films made on Earth but he had always needed a bigger thrill.

  Johnson was already tinkering with the plot programs when the crew began to sicken in great numbers. He wrote soothing natural scenarios for those close to death. He hoped that it would ease their passage from life and Becker; the ship’s true captain had encouraged him to do it.

  It took ten years for the crew to die, as the virus circled and re-circled. Each time there was a respite the survivors would celebrate and call it a victory over disease. After the fifth epidemic, those remaining knew better than to celebrate. They realised at that point that they were dying of refinement. Each genetic line had been scoured of weaknesses and aberrations until every pod ship was filled with elite seed crews of perfect humans.

  Where the virus actually came from, no one knew. But it became clear that no one was immune. It was only at the very end that Johnson realised his own DNA was not quite perfect and that this imperfection had saved him. It had also cursed him to a life of solitude.

  “Show me the escape to the elevator again.”

  He watched himself running down the corridor with the river of baby spiders behind him. The look on his face was a mix of terror and determination. He smiled to see it. Somewhere in him was the man who had those feelings, the man who could handle that kind of challenge. He thought about the many weeks it had taken to construct the final scene of the fourth tier, the detail that went into every limb of every spider.

  After seven hours of viewing he was tired but he had still not reviewed all the parts of the fourth tier that interested him.

  “That’s enough for today, Weaver. I’m going to sleep.”

  “May I remind you that you have not eaten since your return?”

  “I haven’t?”

  “Perhaps I could prepare you something.”

  “Soup. Just a little soup.”

  “No bread, Captain? The wheat field had just been harvested.”

  “No.”

  On his way back to his quarters, Johnson wondered about himself. Why had he not eaten? It was almost four days since he’d exited the tank. Lack of appetite for food was not good; it suggested lack of appetite for life.
He didn’t feel he had reached that stage yet.

  As he lay on his cot a plan came to him.

  “Weaver, I’ve decided to create my own cabal follicle in my own personal recreation area. I don’t know why I still use the communal one after all these years.”

  “It is a strange request.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We have already constructed the follicle of which you speak.”

  “We have? When?”

  “Three cabals ago. You announced your plan, much as you have this time. I exuded the new chamber and follicle over the next eight days.”

  “Why don’t I ever use it?”

  “I have suggested it each time you prepare for the next cabal but you always tell me that you are saving it for something special.”

  “I said that?”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  “I wish you’d stop calling me that.”

  “Forgive me. It is merely a habit.”

  “So it’s functional?”

  “Absolutely. We designed it together and I must say, it far surpasses the other units on board.”

  “I’d like to take a look tomorrow.”

  “Of course. Here is your soup.”

  Johnson looked at the steaming bowl that appeared in a cell beside his cot. It did smell good.

  “Thanks, Weaver. I’d almost—”

  “Forgotten?”

  “Yes. Goodnight, Weaver.”

  Chapter 27

  When he stood in the smooth-walled hall that Weaver said they had designed together, Johnson had to admit that it did seem familiar. Not only that, he liked the feel of the place more than any other area of the Angelina. He considered the idea that it might simply be because it was new to him, but there seemed more to it than that. The place felt right to him. It felt ordained; a prerequisite and the logical next step in his existence.

  “When you die, Weaver, I have two options. I can die aboard the Angelina or you can jettison me in a new pod that is uninfected with vacuum spiders. You could grow the pod around this chamber, add enough of the Angelina’s germinal cells to it that it could continue to grow and then excrete it before you are compromised.”