Prison of Souls (Science Fiction Thriller)

by Xander Gray

  “You see this?” He wiggled a syringe. “This is loaded with a particular breed of artificial brain cells dedicated to basic life support. When I inject your wife, these cells will supplant every organic cell in her brain stem.”

  He was stealing her humanity. My body shook with fear. “Why are you doing this?”

  He ignored my question. “These cells are better than the originals in every way. Did you know they come equipped with impressive life support functions? If she ever fell through the ice of a frozen lake, these cells would determine the optimum moment to trigger her mammalian diving reflex, inducing coma until rescuers could retrieve her.”

  Did he expect me to be impressed? “We’ll never interfere again.”

  He lowered the needle to the bend of her elbow. “These cells will also provide an interface on her brain stem so she’ll be able to swarm once I hit her with the next treatment. And swarming is the whole point.”

  He injected her.

  I thrust all my weight against the restraints. The bed rattled, but did not tip.

  The blue wheel hummed. Shadows danced over her face.

  Slaven picked up an ornate, silver box, balancing it in his palm. “Treatment number two contains billions of artificial cells dedicated to reproducing the functionality of the remaining brain structure. All I have to do is press this red button.”

  “You’re making her inhuman.” I felt sick.

  “Nonsense.” Slaven chuckled, like someone had told a joke. “She’s not going to suddenly become someone else.”

  “How do you know?”

  Slaven shook his head, as if conversing with a child. “If she were going to become someone else, what would be the point of loading her into the grid? I’m punishing you and your wife, not some copy or clone or whatever you think she’s becoming.”

  “You’re going to load her into the grid?” I couldn’t save her. My fists trembled. “Please don’t do this!”

  Slaven held the silver box under her nose. If he opened the lid, a swarm of purple smoke teaming with billions of nanites would invade her skull. “Highly motivated type-A personalities often suffer from deep seated insecurities. What demons haunt your wife?”

  The only thing Crystal feared was losing.

  “No answer?” He caressed the box. “That’s okay. We’ll know soon enough.”

  I imagined my wife chased through an endless maze by fear or guilt—perhaps the guilt she felt over my incarceration—and something popped in the back of my skull, like I'd just been jacked up on amphetamines.

  In the middle of the room, halfway between me and Slaven, a bubble the size of a basketball appeared in midair, magnifying everything behind it. Slaven’s belly bloated and shrank as he crossed behind the bubble. When he stepped out of the way my wife’s head appeared distorted through the bubble, blue light arcing along its periphery like a crescent moon.

  “Now that’s interesting.” Slaven regarded the bubble. “Are you doing this?”

  I became acutely aware of my brain, its various sections pulsing and throbbing, my hind brain trembling as my vision connected and disconnected.

  “You’re full of surprises.” Slaven backed into the pod. “This is great news! We can use your ability to pull the Ouroboros into Hell.”

  Navarez’s voice, barely detectable beneath the screaming pod: “Joshua!”

  If I lost concentration on the bubble, it might vanish. It was keeping Slaven distracted, which was keeping Crystal safe. I couldn't look away.

  “Joshua!” Navarez shouted again. “That’s exactly what successful tunneling experiments looked like in the lab. It’s a target bubble, a traceable window through space laid over a potentially motile destination.”

  A motile destination. A human being.

  Slaven turned toward my wife with the silver box, one finger on its button. “Help me one last time, and I’ll stop.”

  I concentrated on the bubble. Pain exploded behind my eyes.

  Slaven’s face, distorted by the lens, bore an expression of mild concern. “Joshua?”

  It was the last word he ever said.

  The death row vanished, and I descended into purple mist carved with black arteries. It was totally silent. I was a spirit, disconnected from the physical world. Somehow I knew this place existed both within the universe and without it, a compact dimension through which every particle intersected. In the center of everything lay a red orb, bright as the sun, flashing lightning bolts caught at the instant of their birth, filling me with heat and energy and a million chaotic visions of a million impossible universes—the beating heart of God.

  I felt connected to all living things, and when I focused, I could distinguish one from another—the butterfly from the moth, the ape from the monkey—even within the same species, each with a unique identity. I sensed the sleeping inmates, each struggling through his personal hell. I sensed Navarez, pulling against his restraints. I sensed the Ouroboros, cloistered at Nexus, gathered around their ark. And there, in the center of all these interconnected relationships, wrapped in layers of energy from the pulsing red heart, I sensed my wife, asleep on the pod, as human as ever, possessing the same identity she had always possessed.

  I pushed through layers of red ether to the edge of the ark—the Ouroboros recoiled in fear—and released a tether from my mind. As if distance were illusory, the tether slid through the gateway of their quantum processors and into their servers, where it siphoned up six million filaments of blue light.

  They screamed and sputtered and tried to escape, but I held them. I was every mythological beast of the deep, every tentacled leviathan.

  Their disjointed cries filled my mind, combining into a single frenetic wail, until finally it faded to an anguished murmur. One voice—Attis'—rose above them all.

  Briar? Is that you? Please return us to the hive so we can provide your world the help it needs. We can help you too, end your legal woes in the blink of an eye, make you wealthy and powerful. All you have to do is let us go. Let us go. Let us go.

  I did not respond. I wouldn’t have known how—I was pure energy, devoid of mouth or tongue or fingers—and the thing beckoning me was not human. I felt its monstrous appetite for souls twisting through me.

  I retracted the tentacle, dragging Attis and her hoard into the pulsing heart of the universe, but there was one more soul to collect: Slaven’s. I cracked the whip through his skull and pulled him to me.

  An awareness flowered in Slaven’s mind and rolled through the masses like a tsunami. All I heard were screams of agony.

  Attis raged at Slaven. What have you done?

  You wanted to leave the hive, Slaven threw back, so I built you a new home. You’ll appreciate this one more.

  You’re working with Briar?

  When you finally realize what’s happened to you, just remember I wanted to kill Briar years ago. You’re the one who kept him alive. You caused this. You.

  I flicked the tether—it vibrated like a bass string—and watched all six million and one souls slide into the dark. Silence replaced chaos.

  Then I looked beyond the mist, through the perimeter of the bubble, back into the world. Slaven stood against the pod, perfectly still.

  In one quick beat, I was through the skin of the bubble, into his body.

  Chapter Thirty-six

  I put the syringe on the counter and turned to my wife, still sleeping inside the pod. I had to stop the machine, but had no idea how. I shouted above the din. “How do I turn it off?”

  “What?” Navarez, strapped upright to his bed, stared in disbelief. “You’ve forgotten?”

  “I’m not Slaven. And I’m not kidding.”

  His eyes widened. “The red button.”

  I pointed to the only red button I saw, a fat glowing square beneath a bank of meters on the front of the pod. “This one?”

  Navarez nodded.

  I pressed the button. The circle of lights ground to a halt, its noise fading from shriek to growl to silence.r />
  Crystal didn't move.

  “How do I wake her?”

  “Over there on the monolith.” Navarez gestured with his chin.

  On the corner of the monolith sat the anesthetic orb, the strange cue ball with the affixed breathing cup. I pressed it over her face. “Now what?”

  “Squeeze it.”

  I did. Purple smoke entered her nose and mouth. She coughed and sat up, covering her mouth and gazing around wild-eyed.

  “Oh thank God.” I hugged her.

  “Get away!” She batted my hands and slid off the pod.

  I should have paid more attention to which body I was wearing. “It’s me. Your husband.”

  She eyed me warily.

  I searched the shadowy spaces around the monolith for any sign of the bubble, but it was gone. There were other ways to transfer my brain from Slaven’s Capgras back into my real body, but the thought of lying on a hospital bed and jettisoning my brain through a corrugated tube turned my stomach.

  I freed Navarez. “Joshua, is that you?”

  I nodded. “Any idea how I can get back into my body?”

  “Sure.” He shrugged. “But I can’t repeat the stunt you just pulled. You wirelessly tunneled. Do you know what that means?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He held up his hands in an all-encompassing gesture. “I’ve been working on hardware to do exactly that for the last year. Somehow, you did it on your own, unless Slaven had some secret wireless rig around here we don’t know about.”

  “I did it on my own.” I knew this much. “I have no idea how.”

  Navarez grabbed my shoulders and shook me enthusiastically. “At some point, your brain became connected to the spatial-pivot.”

  I recalled something McSorley had said during one of my time slips: When I told Attis about this, she said it sounded like Joshua’s brain had interfaced with the pivot dimension.

  “We’ve detected a number of extra dimensions during particle-accelerator collisions,” Navarez said. “Nexus tells us at some point in the future, a muon collider will finally detect all possible subatomic dimensions. One of these will be the spatial-pivot, which connects all points in the physical universe on the same temporal plane. That last part is very important. It means you can use the spatial-pivot to travel through space, but time travel involves a different dimension.”

  Apparently my brain had connected to both.

  He shook his head, perhaps thinking he had lost me. “Look, what I’m saying is that I’ve been trying to help the Ouroboros isolate the spatial-pivot for the last year so they can transmit their minds into people scattered around the world, and you appear to have done it via the sheer power of your will, and the only explanation I have is that your brain interfaced with the spatial-pivot during one of the transfers.” He motioned to the monolith and shrugged.

  “I don’t think you have to ever worry about the Ouroboros.”

  His brow furrowed. “What do you mean?”

  I walked over to the computer and swiveled the monitor so he could see.

  “My God.” He covered his mouth, eyes wide. In the upper right corner of the display, an unfathomable number flashed: 6,000,024. “Is Slaven in there too?”

  “Yes. Attis too. All seven Ouroboros, and all the souls from their ark.”

  “My God,” he repeated. “How?”

  I had no idea how. All I knew was that it had happened with the reflexive ease of a muscle contraction. “Any last words before I send them packing?”

  “Wait.” He stumbled forward, clutching the monitor, gazing at the number. “That’s six million people. We can’t kill them!”

  “They don't belong here.”

  “That’s no reason to kill them!”

  “You’re right.” I positioned my forefinger above the purge button. “The reason we kill them is because if we don’t, they’ll suffer for an eternity in Slaven’s computerized hell. And the reason I put them in there was because I had to stop them from carrying out their plan to murder six million innocent human beings.”

  “So killing them will be a mercy?”

  I put one hand on his shoulder. “Are you willing to take the chance they might escape? This is the fate of the world.”

  “Six million human beings,” he said, staring at his feet.

  “They stopped being human long ago.”

  He walked to the monolith and braced himself against its pulsing husk. “They’re not living in there anyway.”

  “Not anything I would call living.”

  He nodded, closed his eyes. “They were going to replace six million innocent people.”

  “They still would if they could.”

  “Can they escape?”

  “Not unless one of them is like me.”

  He tucked his hands into his pockets and looked away.

  I pressed purge. The monolith powered down with a clunk, plunging the room into darkness. I had never been superstitious, but part of me expected to feel something when the consciousnesses—the 22 inmates, Helena, the Ouroboros, the millions from the future, Slaven—winked out of existence. I heard my breathing and saw moonlight through papered windows and thought of the long line of murderous souls who had died here via gas chamber, but felt nothing.

  The servers came up simultaneously, lighting the room. A number flashed in the upper left of the monitor: 0.

  I examined the bodies of the 22 prisoners, lying on beds in a circle, partially covered with crisp sheets. Aside from the gentle, detached rhythm of their breathing, they lay perfectly still. I searched Gar’s tattooed face, so serene in the pulsing light, knowing it would never again bear an expression of joy or pain, knowing he was gone forever.

  Did I do the right thing?

  I thought of the way he had grown up, his father’s tyranny, his scars from the war. He had tried to put all that behind him. He had tried to atone. But something deep within his subconscious mind, some anchor to the past, would not set him free, and if I had not turned the servers off, he would have dragged it with him always, each day living a digital nightmare of every tragic thing he had ever done or said or imagined.

  The right thing—freeing him—was not possible.

  Crystal slid along the monolith until she had clear line of sight to my face. “Are you really my husband?”

  “I am.” I stepped toward her.

  “You can’t touch me looking like that.”

  I could look however she wanted. I morphed the face so I looked like myself.

  “Thank you.” She looked sheepishly toward the floor. “I’m so sorry I made you come back. I could have gotten you killed.”

  “You didn’t know.” If she hadn’t encouraged me, I would never have known of Slaven’s deception. She had done me a favor. She had saved the world.

  Navarez walked to the bed where my physical body lay. He lowered the platform to a horizontal position and unlocked the wheels. “I figure you two are walking out the front gate, unless you have a better idea.”

  “Wearing Slaven’s face allowed me to escape before.” I shrugged. “Might work again. How much do you think the officers know?”

  “In a place like this?” Navarez looked around the room, as if extracting information from shadows and cobwebs. “He wouldn’t have converted all the officers to simcons—strange behavior would have disturbed their families and aroused suspicion. Most likely he eliminated the warden and issued orders that basically let him get away with murder.”

  “You think the officers are clueless?”

  “Most of them. McSorley could keep secrets.” Navarez picked up a breathing tube and motioned to one of the empty beds. “Here’s what we’re going to do. First, we’re going to put you back in your real body. Then I’m going to load a simulated consciousness into Slaven’s shell. And then our Slaven clone is going to walk you both right out the front door of this prison, and you’re never going to look back.”

  For what I hoped would be the last time, I lowered the rail of a h
ospital bed and climbed onto the hard mattress. “What about you?”

  “I’m staying.” Navarez gave a pensive frown. “I don’t feel comfortable going back to the university, not until I know for sure it’s safe. Plus, the Ouroboros were notoriously stingy with their schematics—these and the ones back at the lab and at Nexus are the only fully functioning quantum servers in the world. They can be used for so much good. I can’t leave them here. Who knows what the state would do with them. Probably throw them in the trash or plow them down with the building.”

  I closed my eyes when he popped the mask over my face, not wanting to watch the swarm. “How will you get out?”

  “When Slaven’s shell gets to the front gate, just tell it to turn around and come back here. I’m sure you’ll enjoy bossing him around.”

  “But it’s not really Slaven.”

  “No.”

  “Slaven’s gone.”

  “Thanks to you, it would appear so.”

  I heard Navarez punching buttons. A hollow sensation spread from the base of my skull to my forehead. A moment later I was back in my body, standing over Slaven’s shell in the adjacent bed.

  “How long will it take to load the simcon?”

  “Ten minutes.”

  “We’ll wait on the porch.”

  Navarez extended his hand. “We’ll be in touch.”

  “Don’t take this the wrong way.” I took his hand and gave it three quick pumps. “But I would just as soon never see you again.”

  Under more civil circumstances, Crystal might have slugged my shoulder for such a comment, but she was too exhausted. She heaved one arm around my waist and led me into the cool air. We stood side by side on the weathered porch, two souls plucked from billions by fate or chance. I put my arm around her waist and pulled her close, smelling her hair, thinking about the odds.

  What were the chances a ricochet would kill Helena Isaacson on the day she was scheduled to donate her body to Attis? What were the chances a young boy would be born with peculiar brain chemistry allowing him to manipulate time and space? What were the chances this gift—if you could call it that—had been bestowed on purpose by a jealous universe intolerant of deviations?