by Joshua Cook
He made his way slowly to the galley again. He just wanted something to drink, a snack and to get some rest before the next problem. He steeled himself before opening the door; these hallucinations kept happening in rooms, but not the hallways. He wasn’t sure why, but it made him agitated to enter any room now. The medicine hadn’t had time to work yet, but he couldn’t wait on it. He walked into the galley to find everything, totally normal. Everything the way he expected it, and the way he had left it. He punched up a cup of hot tea, mint, and no caffeine. And got out one of the meal bars. Not terribly tasty, but in his current state he just wanted to eat something and not put any effort into it. The bar was bland, with a hint of fake berry flavor. But it was filling, and supposedly gave him all the nutrition he needed. At least that’s what the DTA briefings had said. He smiled, a brief moment of levity remembering the dog and pony show they had given him about how his every need would be taken care of in the sphere. How great these food bars were, give him the energy and fortify him in the long days to come. In truth they tasted mostly like damp paper. But what he wouldn’t give for a good hamburger. His isolation came home to him again, and he sighed.
So, first order, get some rest. Second order, find out what the hell a “T9 Anomaly” actually is, and third if you see something that isn’t real, don’t freak the hell out he told himself with a wry grin. But rest first. He left the Galley, heading towards the sleeping quarters. But on the way he turned left, and entered the sunroom. The official name was the “Mental Wellness and Environment Simulation Room”, but the sunroom just sounded better. It seemed like forever ago he had taken that long nap here, but it had just been what, 14-19 hours ago? Another quick nap, some semi-fresh smelling air, a little more simulated sunlight, and this time, it would be quick. The regular notifications would wake him in 3 hours, as they had for a year now. Assuming of course that the clock didn’t malfunction again. But malfunction or not, he had to get some rest, there wasn’t any other way. Caffeine or other stimulants would only keep him going for a short time, and he couldn’t afford to be truly impaired in a real emergency. So he got into the chair, laid back and to the sound of falling water, fell asleep.
And awoke, with a sneeze. As he opened his eyes, they widened. The sunroom was dead. Every plant, dried up, dead, a thick layer of dust overlaid everything but himself. The water was gone, the air was stale. Getting up he looked back at the chair, there had been a thick layer of dust on it, which the imprint of his body was now in. Dust caked on the back of his coveralls. Even the light in the room was dimmer, colder. In the faint distance, weakly, he heard it. A quiet Alarm, 4 beats. He froze. Four beats meant just one thing, total system failure and offline. Not that it was going to happen, but had happened. It was like years had passed, what was going on?? He paused. This could be another hallucination, the anti-anxiety medication had kicked in by now, but maybe whatever was causing him to hallucinate combined with the medication was making this strange vision. Maybe in fact he was still asleep, and this was some crazy lucid-like dream. The drugs, the lack of rest, all the excess cortisol, maybe it was all combining to give him this very real-seeming dream. Just then, he realized something. His arm, it didn’t hurt anymore. Glancing at his upper arm, the other shock, there wasn’t a cast there.
He closed his eyes, and tried to process everything. The sunroom looked like it’s been empty for years, decades even. There was no cast on his arm, there was a total systems failure alarm going on as well. This has to be a dream right? Jameston breathed slowly, the medication was helping from earlier, even if it was the root cause of this very lucid dream, he didn’t feel like breaking down and screaming, which was better than nothing, he supposed. He slowly opened his eyes, the same scene greeted him. Dust, stale air, and that faint 4 beat alarm. He pinched himself, hard. Hard enough to draw blood, as evidenced by the slight red stain on his nail. The quick lance of pain cleared his head, but he didn’t wake up. So either he was in some sort of semi catatonic lucid dream, or... His thoughts trailed off. Or this was real. He felt a crushing sense of truth about that, on some level he knew this to be real. He stood still unsure of what to do next. If this was real, how could this, this... ruin come to be? A few mostly crazy ideas flitted through his mind, but none of them could he even begin to really process. Finally he shook himself, the only way I’m going to know what’s truly going on is to leave this room and head to the main system control. Not that by the faint sound of it he was expecting to find things to be good there, but maybe he could at least get some kind of answer. The door opened far more smoothly than he expected it to, and he stepped out into the hall. The hall seemed normal, a bit threadbare, a bit worn out, but otherwise, normal. Even the air seemed normal, the faintly metallic scent in the air that was always there was in this case strangely comforting. With the sunroom now dead, it was nice to have some air that wasn’t dusty, and still. He was just about to walk to the control room when he heard it.
Water, running water. He stopped, turned and reopened the sunroom he had just left. It was normal, blessedly and completely normal. Plants alive, water there running, no dust, and no death. Jameston rubbed his hand through his hair. Once again a room hallucination, more and more real every time. And yet of course the medical diagnostic had proclaimed him sane. He paused, listening. The alarm was gone, the four beats were silent, vanished like the last hallucination. Still the control room was the best place to be. The regular maintenance was going to be due very soon, and might as well be there when it’s needed.
He walked towards the control room, somewhat unsure of himself and his actions, but considering the lack of options at this point, what else could he really do but continue on. He couldn’t call anyone and complain, and there still were about 5 months until the resupply tram came to get him. So work, and attempt to keep as firm a hold on reality as he could was about it. The control room for once was normal-appearing. No hallucinations, the clock was actually correct for once, and the maintenance window was about to start. Pleasant enough, and with the last few days in mind, normal routine was just fine with him. He started the diagnostics and made a checklist of parts that needed replacing soon. The optical relays in the left panel were reaching the end of the duty cycle, and should be swapped out. Not that they really needed to be, but the DTA was a stickler for replacing it when they said so. Besides, it kept him busy, and at this point, busy was good. Everything else checked out, vacuum in the tunnels was good, magnetics were good, timing control good. Magtram traffic was a bit light, but nothing to be worried about, he thought. So, now to figure out what a “T9 Anomaly” was. When he’d gotten this job they had told him about T1, T2, and T3 anomalies. But they had stopped there, and he hadn’t even known there was anything past a T3 anomaly. T1 was an anomaly in the magnetics and the interactions with the earth’s magnetic field. Not common, but had happened before. A T2 anomaly was an unforeseen issue with the power generation and the heat flows around the sphere. And a T3 anomaly was unforeseen microbiological activity in the water sources. He personally had never seen any of them; his tour on this sphere until recently had been the model of uneventful. He punched into the main system search, “T9 anomaly reasons.” The system, usually faster to respond than he could process, had a noticeable pause and the readout commenced.
WARNING: T9 ANOMALY LISTINGS ARE CONSIDERED HIGHLY DANGEROUS BY ALL GOVERNING BODIES. INFORMATION ABOUT T9 LISTINGS IS TO BE RESTRICTED TO A MUST KNOW BASIS ONLY. IN THE CASE OF T9 ANOMALIES THE ASSIGNED ENGINEER MAY ACCESS THIS DATA ONLY IN THE CASE OF AN ACTUAL T9 ANOMALY BEING DETECTED BY THE GHIB-T47 CONTROLLER SYSTEM. T9 ANOMALIES ARE BASED ON A NOT UNDERSTOOD INTERACTION OF GRAVITY AND PRESSURE WITHIN THE SPHERE ENVIRONMENT. T9 ANOMALIES ARE BEST DESCRIBED AS A SLIPPAGE IN TIME CONTIUITY WITHIN ASPECTS OF THE SPHERE ARCHITECTURE. DO NOT ENTER A ROOM WITH A T9 ANOMALY ONGOING. IF PERSONNEL ARE IN A ROOM WHEN AN ANOMALY TAKES PLACE, PERSONEL ARE AUTHORIZED TO BEGIN RED LEVEL PROCEDURES FOR A SHUTDOWN OF THE SPHERE. PERSONNEL MUST THEN STAY WITH THE SPHERE AND WAIT
FOR EXTRACTION. DO NOT ATTEMPT TO LEAVE THE SPHERE.
Jameston sat back, stunned. Red level? That meant a totally abandonment of the sphere in question, full shutdown, and consider it no longer viable. And time slippage? Meaning time as in actual time? Not just the clock being wrong, but actual time, being changed? So time travel... His head hurt. Just hurt. What the hell was going on with all of this?
Chapter 5 – T9
He was suspicious of the directives. It was basically an order to go down with the ship. He’d die quickly if he stayed in a red level shutdown sphere. And based on what he just read, he didn’t think they’d be all that big on coming to get him. But why would they want him to stay here, and not travel to the surface via the emergency tunnel? They pay good money for that tunnel to be up. Localized temperature control so someone in the tunnel wouldn’t burn out, and a straight shot to the junction station. He really needed to know more. He queried the system for information on the effect of T9 anomalies on people.
DATA IS CLASSIFIED. IF EXPOSED TO T9 ANOMALY PERSONNEL ARE ORDERED TO PERFORM A RED LEVEL SHUTDOWN AND STAY WITH SPHERE FOR EXTRACTION.
“Great, very helpful.” He said out loud. He had for months avoided talking to himself, but at this point with everything going on, he really didn’t think it mattered much anymore. So the facts as he was being told were that the T9 Anomaly was a “time slip” in various rooms in the sphere. The DTA just wanted him to shut everything down and wait. Really just shut everything down and die. A small grin crossed Jamestown’s face. “Yeah, that’s not going to happen.”
He actually felt better after reading everything he’d just seen. He knew that he wasn’t going crazy, and things were in fact going downhill. And it had nothing to do with him. He felt some level of pride in his work, and to find out that everything that was going on was due to this “anomaly” meant that he hadn’t failed at his job. Not that he was totally sure what to do next. If he followed the DTA line, he’d be dead in days, if not hours. His options were limited: he could totally ignore this anomaly, wait for the additional 4 months, and take the pickup home then, pretending none of this ever happened. Or take the emergency tunnel to the switching station and tell them something as to why he’d walking up out of a sphere 4 months early.
But making a decision like this in a vacuum is hard. He didn’t understand why they wanted him to stay in the sphere. The primary system had that information on lockdown. Then a thought occurred to him, the medical diagnostic station that was semi-autonomous. If he asked the right questions, it might tell him what he wanted and needed to know. Feeling like he was making some kind of progress, Jameston got up and heading toward the medical bay. He realized he needed to eat and drink something on the way. All of the stress he’d been under had made food and drink near the bottom of his list of important things in life. Now that he gotten a handle on what was really going on, his hunger and thirst had made a roaring comeback in priority. The galley seemed normal and boring as he walked in. He just wanted a cup of coffee, and something filling and decently edible. He settled for a rehydrated pastry concoction that the food dispenser made up. He liked these dispensers. Based on the 3d printer concept, they used over 1000 different things to first mix the ingredients, the cook in a rapid environment to give you a close approximation of what you wanted. Some foods turned out better than others; he still shuddered at what he had gotten when he asked for steak. But coffee and a pastry, it could do. Taking his meal with him, he walked the rest of the way to the Medical Bay. Besides, he liked to take medicine, any medicine with food. And it was about time to take the next anti-stress pill anyway. Taking his medicine and following it with a strong swig of coffee, Jameston went straight to the terminal.
He thought about how to phrase this. He needed to find out why the Engineer exposed to a T9 Anomaly had to stay in the sphere. He tried asking the diagnostic a few different things about T9 anomalies, but the system just kept saying either “No Data Found” or “Access Denied” He paused; why not phrase it as a medical question, he thought. He asked the diagnostic about “Effects of exposure to T9 Anomalies,” and the Diagnostic answered.
EXPOSURE TO T9 ANOMALIES IS CONSIDERED A CLASS 5 QUARANTINE EVENT. A PERSON EXPOSED TO A T9 ANOMALY IS NOW OUT OF PHASE WITH STANDARD LINEAR CHRONOLOGY. AS A RESULT, THIS OUT-OF-PHASE ENVIRONMENT SURROUNDS THE PERSON AND CAN HAVE DANGEROUS AND UNPREDICATABLE RESULTS. OUT-OF-PHASE BUBBLE CAN EXPAND RAPIDLY AND UNPREDICTABLY TO AFFECT LARGE AREAS. THERE IS NO KNOWN LIMIT TO THIS TIME PHASE ENERGY. KEEP ALL PEOPLE EXPOSED TO A T9 ANOMALY OUT OF POPULATED AREAS.
He took another long sip of his coffee and thought. So... I’m out of phase with normal time now. And it’s... catching? Like some kind of time flu? Jameston still wasn’t sure if he should believe all this. It did fit the observable facts, but still it seemed a bit... Far-fetched? He was, if all this was to be believed, infected with some sort of time bubble that was out of phase with “normal” time. This bubble could grow and change in unforeseen ways, and the DTA knew about it? Jameston took another sip of his coffee, only to spit it out. Coffee should not be lumpy. He glanced down at his cup and almost vomited. Lumps of mold and unidentifiable things floated in his cup. Then he realized the time phasing had aged the cup to the point of it going bad. He wiped his mouth with the back of his arm, and muttered, “Not hungry now.” For the next two hours he sat in the Medical Bay, unsure of what his next move would be. There were limited choices, but he needed to make the best one for survival. He wasn’t about to go down with the ship, so to speak, so turning it all off and waiting to die was out. At first he had wanted to just wait it out and get the magtram when it came to get him in a few months’ time. But with the coffee incident in mind, he wasn’t sure that was the best choice now. He figured there had to be someone to help him somewhere, even more so if they actually already knew about this. If they knew about it, it meant it had happened before, and they had to have a plan on how to deal with it if it happened again. Jameston smiled wryly, unless of course the manner they want to deal with it was simply to let him die.
The only choice he could make was either to leave or stay. If he left, he’d have to give a reason for leaving. Then the DTA would investigate the sphere... And he’d be right back where he started from, sadly. Staying would at least buy him time. He knew they’d see the records of the Anomaly during the refit and resupply, but that give him several months to figure out how to hide that information, if at all possible. Simply, he didn’t have much in the way of choices when it came to this. So stay, and deal with the phasing, as the DTA put it, wait for the magtram, and pretend none of this ever happened. It wasn’t the best plan in the world, but it was a plan. Safer than the other options, and at least semi- realistic. Jameston felt better, more clarity than he had in days. He had a plan, he knew what needed to happen, now just to execute. The first item on the agenda was to reprogram the sphere to both erase all the past detections of the anomaly, but to also prevent any new ones from being registered. He felt fairly confident he could do so, but less confident that his modifications would not be detected.
Grabbing some food on his way to the control room, he began to think about how to tackle that problem. He knew a few tricks, and if he dug through the system software he could at least see where everything was that was going on that part of the system. Once he arrived at the control room, he got to work. He had one screen showing all the system config files, and one searching for the needed options. It was tedious work, but necessary. He didn’t want to screw anything up. Covering his tracks was one thing, causing a system crash or a mag tram issue would just mean that he’d not get paid, and after everything he’d been through, he damn well wanted to be paid. He got to work, and In short order had removed the already detected T9 anomaly records. That had been the easy part, not overly difficult, in fact. The hard part was going to be to make sure that no more detected anomalies made it into those same logs. He got down to work, examining every single part of the system he could get into, most of
which he wasn’t supposed to be doing. Five hours later, he was pretty sure he had a solution. While he couldn’t stop the detections from happening, he could fool the system into thinking the logs had been written. He put his fix in place, and cleaned up after himself as best he could. He had a few months before anyone came looking for him, so he figured he had time to go back over it multiple times, and to test the solution he had found.
He quickly took care of the routine maintenance that was about to be due, noting again that the tunnel traffic was light, even lighter than last time. One of the more irritating things about this job was the total lack of information on what was going on topside. He wondered if there was another trade dispute going on. Last time the European Association and the African Conglomerate had gotten into it pretty bad about 7 years ago, trade had come to a near standstill in terms of tunnel traffic. Trillions of dollars in trade had vanished nearly overnight, but all the other world powers had jumped on that fast and gotten it resolved. It had provided one hell of a shock to the world economy, took nearly 2 years to recover from. But countries, like people, always are looking for an edge, and if another trade fight started, this time he’d be at ground zero, not being a desk worker for a net entertainment company like he had last time around.