Star Spring

by David Bischoff

“I have no sexual attributes. No gonads, no hormones circulating in my system.”

  “Yes, well, I’m in love and I’m not going to keep her waiting.”

  “Todd,” Cog said. “I didn’t bring you on this boat to intersex!”

  “I don’t care!” Todd grabbed a mechanical arm with fierce enthusiasm. “Cog, she’s the most wonderful, luscious, delectable—”

  “Hey! I’m off-duty! Don’t do anything I have to clean up.”

  “You just have to meet her!”

  “If we survive.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I haven’t been entirely straight with you, Todd. I’ve kept you in mystery.” The high-pitched voice sounded sorry, somber.

  “I don’t care. I forgive you. Bye!” Todd drained his glass, shot off his chair, and headed enthusiastically for the door. A three-digited mechanical hand streaked, caught him by the back of his shirt, and dragged him back.

  “You don’t seem to understand the seriousness of the situation we face,” Cog said.

  “You don’t seem to understand that the woman of my dreams is waiting for me back in her room, curled up and sighing my name.”

  “I have to show you something, Todd. I can see you won’t believe me if I simply ask you to have faith in me.”

  “Lemme go, goddamnit! Lemme—” His mouth was suddenly stuffed with a brush. With astonishing strength, the omnicleaner hustled him from the bar. Todd cried for help, but none of the bar’s inhabitants even twitched in his direction, no doubt thinking the muscling was part of the rough ambience of the pseudodive.

  “It’s very simple,” Cog said. “I can put you out with a flick of a hypo, Todd. I’m every bit as much in control of you now as when I was the leg of the MacGuffin you rode. Or you can be cooperative and come with me. Now, which do you choose?”

  “Okay!” The word came out muffled, but Cog seemed to understand. He let Todd go. Todd stood for a moment, staring down at the bossy omnicleaner. He thought about all the worthwhile things for which this creature called Cog was responsible. Cog, after all, had always been right, no matter how strange his operating methods were. Who knew what planet needed saving?

  Then he thought about Veronica, reclining, her dark-brown eyes skeptical and inviting.

  No contest.

  Spinning about, he hopped for the nearest cylinder-car.

  “Todd, Todd, Todd,” Cog said sadly behind him. Something seemed to bite him on the ankle, and he belly-flopped into oblivion.

  SCRAPING. Hollow clattering. Echoes, as though from some subterranean cavern.

  Todd’s eyelids fluttered open. Dimness flowed about him almost tangibly. His head felt like something had burrowed through an ear and was gnawing on his neurons.

  He opened his mouth to comment on his feelings, but something quickly interposed betwixt vocal cords and open air.

  “Shhh,” Cog hissed. “We’re in enemy territory.”

  He nodded. This time he kept mum.

  Cog removed the brush from Todd’s mouth. “Just look.”

  A beam flashed from the omnicleaner’s side, arcing across a large chamber. At first Todd did not understand what he was seeing. They were clustered on the floor like locusts snacking on wheat. They hung from the walls like napping bats.

  Thousands.

  “Lord have mercy,” Todd said quite sincerely.

  He recognized the little wings, the antennae, the pincers at either end. He remembered the eye-stalks, the thing’s gleaming body—the needlelike neuro-connectors. Metal clones of the robot Disbelief Suspender that had bloodily torn away from the back of Dr. Peters, the psychotherapist.

  “But why?” Todd asked.

  “I suspect there’s one of these for every creature on board,” Cog said. “But let’s depart. It will be safer to talk outside.”

  “I’m for that,” Todd remarked, feeling dread grow in the base of his spine—just the place where all that sharpness would rudely penetrate.

  The omnicleaner helped Todd to his feet. A door whooshed open; Cog ushered his charge into the corridor. Only after the door reclosed did Cog pipe up in his inimical way.

  “Do you remember how we enlisted aid to defeat Ort Eath?”

  “Certainly. We placed you in the real-fic computer. You communicated with all the passengers wearing Disbelief Suspenders,” Todd said, exercising aching joints. Where on the ship was he, anyway?

  “More than that. We manufactured a specific personality overlay. We almost possessed them.”

  “Are you saying that’s what these mobile DSs are for? To hook up to passengers, take them over?”

  “To connect to them, but I suspect to utilize their individualities rather than actually enslave them.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Todd, how would you characterize my true form?”

  Todd glanced, bemused, at the omnicleaner. “You’re a robot leg.”

  “No, no. That’s my corporeal form.”

  “You’re a Crem anchor, you said. A manifestation in this existence plane of a more elevated state where you used to live with your fellow beings in some strange combine. You’re an energy being, Cog. I felt you and your siblings in that Felorian temple. A truly cosmic experience, though now I suspect much of it was illusory, just to impress me.”

  “Close enough for conversational purposes,” Cog judged. “You realize, of course, that we Crem used to have carbon-based proto-plasmic bodies just like you humans. A few more arms and mouths, three sexes—or was it four? An extra sense or so, but all in all, flesh and blood.”

  “Right. The Galactic Council generally considers your race extinct, leaving behind all those lovely ruins like the Melphic Temple.”

  “We simply passed on to the next state in our particular evolutionary progression. A state similar to that which the Morapns are working toward ... Hence their current disinterest in territorial expansion. A state for which the human race has already laid the spiritual groundwork.”

  “You’re saying that humans are destined for another plane of existence? But what does that have to do with those ... those machines in there?”

  “A connection exists, believe me. But let me finish. Not only are humans destined for this plane of existence, part of each and every one of you is already there.”

  “How could that be?”

  “Collective energy emanations. Psychic spillover, if you will, pooling randomly in an adjacent universal flux/stasis. A different dimension, in other words. You are surely aware, Todd, that you are much more than you perceive yourself to be. Your present consciousness—your ego, if you will—is merely a filter between your perception of biologically linear space/time and your true Self. Rather like the iceberg and its tip. Over the centuries, since its development of sentience, the human minds at large have a multiple subconscious—a Collective Unconscious, residing in a vast energy aggregation beyond your immediate ken.”

  “Heaven? Hell?”

  “Primitive notions, intuitions or precognitions of this development. Although, I must admit, there are theologians among my people who claim all this is part of some Divine Plan. Difficult to say. Beyond each Ultimate Reality there is another Ultimate Reality—ad infinitum. Whether there is an Ultimate Consciousness ... well, that’s not for me to say right now.” Cog thumped a brush up and down contemplatively. “What occurred in the case of the Crem was simply a massive pilgrimage, choosing one state in preference to the other. However, since all planes interconnect, and the events on one echo and vibrate the other, we are naturally concerned with all events in this universe. Hence my participation in the Star Fall matter last year.”

  “Is that existence where an individual goes when one dies?”

  “Not precisely. To digress again, your concept of yourself is not really you. The ego is a terrible and neurotic tyrant of the Self,
a construct, an illusion. For example, Todd, would you say that your ego is the same as it was two years ago? Of course not. Your concept of yourself has changed. Thus the projection it makes on Biological Linear Time is ‘dead’ already. We can discuss the fine points later.”

  “In other words, all humans throughout the known universe are connected by this extradimensional Energy Pool?”

  “Precisely. Just as all points in your universe intersect with the points of Underspace. Which, in truth, happens to be the habitation area of this extradimensional Energy Pool.”

  “Just an amorphous blob, floating around in mystery, huh? Sort of a cosmic acid pool into which we all eventually dissolve as the chemicals of our body dissolve into the Earth and the sky when we die in an ecological system.” Todd shook his head. “That’s very hard to accept, Cog.”

  “Bear with me, please,” Cog said. “I want you to try to understand what’s happening, what Earnest Evers Hurt is attempting to do.”

  “He seems like a rather nice fellow, actually.”

  “You met him?” Cog seemed alarmed.

  “Yes. In the art show. We had an interesting talk.”

  Cog shuddered. “I would have made arrangements to immediately head back to Feloria and rejoin my race through the portal in the Temple, but for emanations I perceived in this universe plane. I lingered, I explored, I investigated. This is what I found:

  “Hurt is a curious sort of megalomaniac. He not only has vast power and knowledge, he also has vast wisdom. However, his scope is limited ... his conceptions of the universe stilted. His desire for power and personal immortality have eaten him up. They essentially control him now. He has long known of this Energy Pool I speak of. Many philosophers and even scientists have hypothesized its existence. Many mystics have perceived it through devotion and meditation into what is called the Ground State of Being or the Cloud of Unknowing. Whatever you label it, it is the dreams, the bright shadow of Reality of the human race ... However, unlike Hindu and Buddhist thought, there is no overriding conscious Self—at least in this particular psychic pool. Individually, in your biophysically supported life, you can tap into it. But generally, in such moment of ‘nirvana’ or ‘cosmic consciousness’ as the experience is called, the person involved loses sense of Self—and finds it an exhilarating experience. Sometimes, however, it is ultimately disorienting.

  “Hurt is very close to death. He has studied this evolutionary energy state all his life. With the help of the Morapns, by studying their methods of penetration into the state, he is aware of how he may objectively penetrate this state. In other words, he wishes to explore it from without, rather than from within—and thus maintain his sense of ego, of Selfhood.”

  “I’m still not following the logic. Why the altered Disbelief Suspenders, then? I grasp that he thinks to penetrate this field or state or whatever using the Star Fall in Underspace ...”

  “By routing every Human Consciousness Center on board into a special computer-structured fabrication of Collective Unconscious—a gigantic communal real-fic, if you will—he means to create an energy field powerful enough to create a portal into the true human Collective Unconscious. The participants in this are all the humans now aboard the Star Fall—humans specifically chosen for their intelligence and psychological aptitude for such a use. He has collected all human knowledge in the banks of his computers on the Star Fall ... By replaying every myth, symbol, magical and religious belief, all psychology and philosophy in this gigantic communal real-fic, he intends to develop the process by which this mass-mind connects to ultimate human psychic collectivity, thus possibly providing himself with a fulcrum, a wedge into the Macro-self of the human race. He has simulacra of all the great thinkers of mankind working for him, Todd, reliving, rethinking, reexamining the human experience for the key that will unlock control of the Human Collective Unconscious, the Macroself.”

  “My God!” Todd said, shaken.

  “That’s precisely what Earnest Evers Hurt wishes to become, Todd. He not only wants to absorb the passengers of this ship into himself—he wishes to thus seek conscious immortality by dominating and controlling the Energy Pool connected to all human minds, everywhere.”

  “But what can we do?” Todd said, ashen.

  “Those things in there are obviously the link-ups to the artificial mass-mind, the Fabricated Reality—and also to the identity-overlay crystals which will be employed. I’ve discovered this access to these mobile Suspenders without Security’s knowledge. Clearly, the best way to postpone Hurt’s operations is to destroy them. It will give us enough time to figure out what to do.”

  “But how?”

  “We’ll blow them up.”

  “With what?” Todd objected.

  “Leave that to me.”

  “Happily.”

  “No, I’ll need your help.”

  Todd suddenly remembered Veronica, waiting for him back in her room. His heart sank.

  “Can I have a moment to make a call?”

  “Sure, but make it quick.”

  Todd tromped to an intercom station. Dialed Veronica’s room number.

  No answer. He tried again. Same result.

  He moped back to the corridor corner where Cog impatiently waited. “She’s not there,” he sighed. “She must have given up on me.” He speared Cog with a look. “All this weird stuff, Cog—Human Collective Consciousness, Hurt trying to control it—are you sure that’s what’s really happening?”

  “That’s what Hurt thinks he’s doing, apparently.” Cog’s voice became somber. “Frankly, his chances are slim ... unless ...”

  “Unless what?”

  “Unless he ultimately attracts something ... something I don’t care to think of ... something much less abstract. But that’s neither here nor there at the moment. There’s something we can do right now. Come on. We need to get some cleaning compounds in your section of duty. I’ll need you to run interference. I have an idea.”

  * * *

  “He’s a nice guy. I like him.” The whispery words puffed with smoke. “Don’t hurt him.”

  “Mr. Spigot’s health is not the issue here, my dear,” Earnest Evers Hurt said, absently massaging her shoulders.

  The Arachnid swung down from the webworking of steel cable that surrounded the control system covering most of the room’s side. Crystals throbbed with particolored lights. Eerie chatter emanated from speaker grilles. Cloudy visions swirled within the screens like imprisoned ghosts. The taste of electricity filled the chamber. The biobot fitted a gemlike thing into one of the thousands of slots grouped in rows along the bottom face of the machine, then turned to address the woman. “Be assured, Miss March, I am quite concerned with Mr. Spigot’s health as well.” Something like laughter gurgled.

  Veronica March lit another cigarette, then mashed out the stub she had lit it from. “I don’t like this at all. I had no idea what you planned.”

  “Now, now, Veronica. We’ve known each other for a while,” Hurt said. He leaned over and delicately kissed her cheek. “I am your patron, your friend—among other things. Trust me. Spigot and his bristly companion are misguided souls who once performed a great service for Earth.”

  The biobot seemed to bridle at that, but Hurt held up a silencing hand. “Now, now, Arachnid. You must admit that your consciousness then was somewhat—twisted. I have already told you, I would have done the same things they did, had I knowledge of your previous Self’s activities.”

  “But why do you have to use people so? Without their consent?” Veronica shivered. “I knew you were carrying your experiments with you on the Star Fall, Earnest. But not on this scale.”

  “If I could have obtained volunteers of the mental caliber selected for this cruise, I most certainly would have,” Hurt said, drifting over to his lowered carrier-bulb, robes whispering on the floor like a tiny chorus of worshipers. “However, I coul
d not. Besides, my dear, I will only be using the passengers for a short period of time. When the experiment is over, it will have been like a dream to them all. Including the misguided Mr. Spigot, with whom you have my blessings to renew acquaintance with afterwards.” He touched the stud on her black choker. “With or without your little device.”

  “I wish you’d never put that on me,” she said. “I wish you’d just left me alone this afternoon, too.”

  “Most necessary, I assure you. Fate played into our hands.”

  “I don’t understand,” she objected. “I didn’t get a chance to do anything except follow him. Anyone could have done that.”

  A smile spirited across Hurt’s features as he paused before his suspended capsule. “Who said your role is through, my dear?”

  “You obviously haven’t gotten the full scoop,” the Arachnid said, chuckling. “You see, this has all been a ‘partnership’ between your—uhm—pal and myself.”

  Veronica’s head dipped into her hands, her hair swishing down forlornly. “What about me?”

  The Arachnid examined a box of recordings from which he drew items to fill the slots. “I’m sure we’ve a spare personality we can stick on you.”

  “No!” Hurt said. “She is not for the Fabrication.”

  “Company, huh?” the Arachnid commented, turning its attention back to its work.

  “As well as other reasons.”

  “Well, whatever you do, I refuse to cooperate with you anymore in whatever you’re doing with Todd Spigot.”

  Hurt shrugged, then carefully lowered himself into his padded bulb. Automatically, neural connectors reared snakelike, then connected. A helmet lowered over his head. A gaseous purple cloud lowered over his body. “You’ve already provided what I wished for in Todd Spigot, who will be a welcome addition to our little universe.”

  “Yes.” The Arachnid peered up with a chuckle. “Motivation!”

  * * *

  “Cog,” Todd Spigot said, “this is not going to work.”