329 Years Awake

by Ellie Maloney

  Remember, we talked about it in the Anglers restaurant, the last day when I saw you. That moment froze in my memory like a petrified leaf in a drop of amber. It’s immutable, it’s treasured and savored, dear. I remember everything…

  When the Unkari felt comfortable enough with me to reveal why they requested me for the diplomatic mission, they told me about the oscillation gene and offered cooperation. I could decline, but I agreed. Yes, dear, I am aware that it could be a false choice, that perhaps I was manipulated into it, but I really could decline the offer. I could have stayed. Maybe they learned me too well, still I feel like the choice was mine. I volunteered to help the Unkari to study this ability. This research will bring a lot of good to both our races. The Unkari say that oscillation is a uniquely human thing. They cannot do this, and none of the species they’ve met can either. Don’t you see, honey, we have an opportunity to find out why are we here in this universe, where we came from, because this ability has lain dormant in us throughout the entire course of our evolution. We just were not ready to use it. Our bodies had no capacity to withstand the chemical surges of an oscillating brain. The Unkari believe that I may be ready. They say I may be the very first human who would do this and survive.

  I see the future, Ny. I see the future so bright that it’s blinding me. I see the golden age of humanity where we conquer accidents, disasters, uncertainty, and can make better choices. I see the future where both our races live side by side in this pocket of our enormous universe. Do I have regrets? The only thing I regret is that we couldn’t make a family, and have children of our own. They would inherit the oscillation gene. They would experience what I experienced through the power of oscillation, and I only started! Who knows what I will be able to do! Save people from needless deaths, broker diplomatic agreements, avoid accidents and natural disasters? Maybe all of it!

  Ny, dear, this time I am not returning to Earth. I will leave with the Unkari, to live among their people on their home world, to learn from them and to explore my newly discovered ability. Please forgive me, my dear, but one way or another, the military would never let me go. I suspect they already told you I was dead; if not, they will soon. They would never let me go because of how much I know. And because of this oscillation. I am afraid that if I came back, I would accidentally reveal my ability in a moment of fear, because that is when it works the best. They would interrogate me, they would hit me, and I would spontaneously oscillate, and it would be all over for me. I don’t yet have a good impulse control over this ability yet.

  One way or another, my life and freedom is in jeopardy. On the other hand, I have an opportunity of a lifetime to do what I am good at - to record history. Any historian in my place would jump on this opportunity without hesitation. I will give my log to Anika, and she will find you as soon as she can. Ny, I will always remember you, no matter how far away I will be. You are my sunshine, you are the only one, and there will never be another. I take the memory of you with me, to another galaxy. I’m sure by doing this we will break all sorts of records for a long-distance relationship! That should be worth something… I wish I could stay… I wish I could take you with me… I wish I could change things… Someday I may. Meanwhile, I will be smiling at you from the night sky.

  So long, my love. Until we meet next time…

  ***

  The recording was over. Derek and Ny were in shock, tears streaming from their swollen eyes. Quietly, Derek got up and walked to a book shelf at the corner of the living room, which was covered with antique paperbacks from floor to ceiling. Here and there, the shelf was decorated with fashionable ebony carvings – African animals, statues of people, intertwined together in either dances or passionate love scenes, he could never tell. Derek reached toward one of the upper shelves and pulled down a cardboard box tucked on top of the books.

  “You want to play Kismet? Now?” Ny smiled faintly. Derek had loved that game as a kid. He could never get enough of it, and became quite good at it. He would ask Ny to play over and over again, often saying that he thought he could make the dice obey his command. Ny would always pretend to believe.

  “I want to show you something, Ma.” He extracted a black velvet pouch from the box – five white dice rested on his palm. He shuffled them in the palms. And rolled them on the coffee table saying: “Kismet of three.” And they both watched the dice turn until each side showed three dots on the top surface.

  “Wow, son, that’s pretty good.”

  “Ma, watch again. Kismet of six.”

  And he rolled again.

  As if in a slow motion, all five dice delivered the predicted number six.

  “Kismet of one.”

  And sure enough, all five dice rolled one.

  It went on and on, Derek rolling and calling the numbers, never once missing.

  “It’s a fine party trick, isn’t it?” he said, Derek smiling bitterly. “At least now I know that I inherited it from my father.” Some time passed by in silence, which Derek finally broke. “I don’t know if it’s the right time to bring it up, Ma, but what the hell. Let’s just get over with it.”

  “What is it, Derek?”

  “I’ve been to the doctor.”

  “Because of your nose bleeds?”

  “Right… It’s a tumor, Ma. I have brain cancer.”

  Three centuries later...

  9

  DEATH LOOP

  “Shhh…Quiet, River.”

  “What can I do? I sneezed. I think I’m allergic to this moss.”

  River patted the lush growth stretching of the floor of the abandoned Salonimite mine. “I’m not supposed to be allergic to anything, I thought it’s impossible, but this alien flora…”

  “Shut the hell up already or I’ll chop you for steaks myself!” When those words left my lips, I realized just how odd a statement it was. We were hunted by slimy, stenchy monsters on an enemy planet, and had had nothing to eat for so long, that somehow my grunt made sense.

  River startled for a second, probably weighed just how resolute I was to chop him up. I knew he didn’t dwell on that one for too long because he lip-synced, Fuck you, asshole, peeking from the Salonimite ore pile with his sniper rifle pointing in the direction of the dark tunnel. The Unkari were close. Well, back at ya, you little prick. But right at that moment we had much bigger problems than River’s insubordinate demeanor and potty mouth.

  I could taste Sodium and Iodine in the air, a sign that those stinky sons of bitches were near. Erinozhan was a dumpy little planet not worth losing our lives for, but we had our orders. It had been eight days since the Royal Moroccan Fleet had been squashed like a Serzarian cockroach. For the first seven days or so, I had thought I was the only survivor.

  The transmitter didn’t work, and I had no clue how to fix the seventh-gen subspace modules. See, by the time I graduated from the Academy, my high school q-entanglement theory was hopelessly obsolete. Moreover, I’m a soldier, goddamnit, and picking apart state-of-the-art paraphernalia was not how I spent my Friday evenings. Even if I could fix the transmitter and send the signal, I know now that the Unkari would intercept and triangulate it right back to my location.

  Evidently, they’d intercepted us since we had landed on Erinozhan. When part of our platoon had fallen behind, we had transmitted the details for our retrieval, which solely hung on the element of surprise. Surprise had not worked, and we had walked into a trap. Those ogres who called themselves “Holy Warriors of Lenar Unkar,” or some shit like that, hadn’t even broken a sweat capturing us. Although, that’s not entirely true. Unkari always sweated, regardless of what they did. So yeah, they leisurely sweated when their dampening field scrambled our ammo’s hard drive. When clubbing the enemy with our useless rifles did us no good, we were forced to surrender. The son of a bitch disarmed me while casually munching on his field rations. I almost gagged when he approached within a yard’s distance
- the air reeked of Unkari sweat.

  Later we had tried to run and were shot in the back like wild game. I even suspect they allowed us to slip away. Maybe it was the day for target shooting in the Unkari unit. When running, something had struck me on the back of my head. I staggered. It had felt like a coconut shot from a canon. Not that I know how that would feel, it’s just the imagery that had popped into my head a fraction of a second before my lights went out.

  I came to my senses, unable to move anything but my eyelids. At first, I thought that my limbs were missing. As it turned out, I was buried in a ditch left over from the Salonimite extraction. I was not covered with soil as I first thought, but with dead soldiers in full combat gear. Luckily, my cat suit was functioning so I received a steady flow of oxygen. For seven long days, I hid in the mine, surviving on pre-packaged nutrients. Lucky to pick a few capsules off the dead soldiers, I was covered for another ten days or so. River, however, stretched his two-day supply as well as he could, but when I found him in one of the tunnels, he was trying to slit his wrist in order to drink his own blood. Talk about desperate! It was a good thing I got there when I did. Obviously, he was not thinking straight.

  I barely knew River. We had never met off duty. He struck me as new, maybe it was even his first mission. Either he was a rookie, or just neurotic. In any case I thought, We need a new HR director. Who the hell staffs a top-secret mission with such a neurotic mess?

  It’s a miracle he survived at all. A miracle, and nothing more. Lucky bastard. Now there were only two of us left alive, and only he had a weapon, which he refused to part with, quoting a paragraph from the regulations. Even the argument about my extensive sniper training did not work, while River couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn.

  This mission just kept getting better.

  ***

  Back behind the ore pile, River pointed his gun towards the winding tunnel. I tried to run an infra-red scan, but Unkari were cold-blooded and the only two warm bodies in the 50 meter radius belonged to River and myself. It was a pointless task, but I had to do something, because without the gun I felt naked. Finally, River alerted me with a hand signal, which looked like something he picked up from a movie rather than combat training. I rolled my eyes, but the headgear covered my face, so River could not see my annoyance. Soon enough I saw them coming around the corner. Despite wearing protective headgear, my eyes watered from the stinging air composition. The truth being, that even if River gave me his gun, it probably wouldn’t change a thing. The Unkari took us prisoner after he fired a single shot and the enemy’s dampening field kicked in.

  ***

  “What do you think they are going to do to us, Mazula?” River asked, stretched out on the dirt floor of the gated holding cell.

  “I have no idea. But whatever it is, it better start happening. This guy outside the gate stinks up the whole place. Tell me Ensign - you’re an engineer. How the hell does our headgear filter poisonous atmosphere, but not their hideous smell?”

  “Selective filtering. The logic is that soldiers need all their senses in combat. Research suggests that we are still too related to primates in an evolutionary sense. Although we are in space and cannot breathe the local air, we can smell some elements of it, to the extent that they are not interfering with our vitals.”

  “Bull! This smell interferes with my vitals! What if I throw up under my cat suit?”

  “Oh, you haven’t before? I personally do not recommend it. That smell stays as well.”

  I considered that last bit of trivia for a moment and decided that I had to do something before I drowned in my own vomit. “Hey!” I yelled and threw a pebble at the Unkari guard. “Stop your filthy sweating! Haven’t you heard of deodorant?”

  The Unkari leapt from the floor and hissed. I was just warming up. My military shrink always said that bottling emotions was not healthy, and right there and then I felt that expressing myself to this ugly bastard was long overdue.

  “Mazula, what the… What are you doing?” whispered River, but it was too late.

  The guard barged forward and in two short leaps wrapped his clammy tentacles around my neck and arms. I was gasping for air. Luckily, River threw himself at the Unkari from behind, delivering a formidable punch to his head. The bastard staggered. He let go of my two arms in order to grab River, who continued punching him from behind. Trying to shake River off his back, the Unkari shot his snake-like paws at him. His grip around my neck softened, and I watched River evade those paws with uncanny speed and precision. I made a mental note to find out where River acquired those wicked combat skills, while gouging my fingers into the Unkari’s eyes. These turned out to be rather sensitive, as I learned, because the bastard belted a high-pitch squeal and went after me.

  Meanwhile, River took another shot at the monster and drove a sequence of hooks into his skull. Finally, I heard something crack. The guard was startled at first, then slowly loosened his grip around my throat and slunk to the ground, unconscious, or perhaps even dead. I did not bother to check. I gasped a few gulps of air, pushed the limp tentacles off me and bolted towards the gate to see if other guards were arriving. “Okay, River, I’m impressed.”

  Evidently River thought that he did a great job too. He performed a triumphant dance over the sprawled alien’s body, thrusting his hands in the air and cheering. “Did you see that, Lieutenant? Did you? These new-gen uniforms with muscle-assist exoskeletons are smokin’... I could never do that on my own strength. I mean, I have wrestled big guys in the Academy before, but this was Unkari, you know, with all their limbs, and they are so much taller too! Nobody ever knocked out an Unkari before. I am the first ever…”

  “River, goddamnit! Do you need a formal invitation? After you!” I pointed to the exit.

  We ran around the corner and sprinted down the empty corridor, while feverishly formulating a plan. Being stranded in another galaxy, you can’t simply walk home or catch a ride.

  Wait a minute. Maybe we could catch a ride after all! The Unkari must have some sort of transporters on the surface. Whether we could figure out how to pilot them remained to be seen. We ran away from the holding cell thinking about potential issues associated with stealing an Unkari transport, when…

  All of a sudden I found myself in the same holding cell, in exactly the same position, right before I threw the rock at the guard. There was no transition, no physical sensation, and no time dilation. Nothing. One fraction of a second we were running, and another we were back in the cell. For a second, I thought that the whole escape was just a hallucination.

  River and I looked at each other.

  “You noticed it too, didn’t you?” whispered River.

  “I did. Any ideas?”

  “Not a clue. It’s as if we went back in time.”

  “River, I was not the brightest kid in science class, but I think time travel is essentially impossible.”

  “You’re right. It is impossible. That is, outside of the pairs of entangled particles that communicate their state to each other over distances spiralling back in time and adjusting their state. But I wouldn’t even call it time travel in the first place! This is the fundamental quantum property of the universe. In its basic structure, the universe is fluid and uncertain. This is, however, impossible for non-quantum bodies, Anything bigger than a particle...”

  “Ok, ok, I don’t understand any of it anyway. That’s why I count on you to figure it out.”

  “Oh, no, no, Mazula, I’m not much of an expert. That’s just a random piece of knowledge.”

  “What’s your military occupation, you said?”

  “I’m just an entry level engineer. Theoretical quantum physics is way over my head.”

  I looked at him in disbelief. Either he was shitting me or he was delirious, on top of neurotic. I had no time to argue. “Okay, one step at a time. Let’s see if that guard has any memory of this event.”
River nodded, and I picked the pebble again. “Hey you, piece of rotten cheese…yes, I’m talking to you, motherpupper.” I yelled and threw the rock. The motherpupper probably did not have the knowledge of the previous time we did this, or so I thought, because he barged in all over again. This time, however, he drew a laser blade.

  Maybe he did remember after all.

  It all happened too fast.

  A tentacle wielding a blade stretched toward me as the alien bastard approached. Half a second later, my brain vaguely registered a sharp hit across my neck, and I blacked out.

  The next instance, I found myself in the very same cave, with River jumping off the floor and grabbing my shoulders. “Are you ok?”

  “Yes, I’m fine. Why? What happened?”

  “He slit your throat Mazula! You were dead for about two minutes on the floor with your blood all over the place. Heck, I had your blood all over my uniform.”

  “You cleaned up nicely.”

  “How can you joke like that? He killed you a minute ago!”

  “You said, two minutes.”

  “Well, yeah. But what difference does it make?”

  “All the difference, River. I need to know how long this loop cycle is. Next time…”

  “Next time? Next time??! There may be no next time! You can’t expect to just keep coming back from the dead!”

  “Ensign River, you are beginning to piss me off. Get your shit together. We are dead sooner or later if we don’t get out.”