by David Gill
'I haven't got any proof yet, if that's what you're asking, but I've checked the Phasewave logic and think that ice debris from a comet tail was brought down to Bouron on a Phasewave transmission. The Phasewave machine then accidentally processed the organic components trapped inside the debris and managed to create a living entity before the machine was destroyed by a thermal overload.'
Gil stared at Declan in disbelief. 'Tell me that this isn't true.'
'The theory correlates with the work I was involved in on Scion3, only we were working with comparatively crude equipment. We had no idea that Phasewave could have completed our task in a fraction of the time.'
'Surely nothing could survive the temperature and pressure of the explosion,' said Gil.
'Nothing physical could, but I think that by the time the process had been completed the transmitted matter had been compressed and accelerated so much that the created life form had evolved to a point way beyond the human evolutionary scale. If that was the case, it is quite feasible that billions of years of evolution were compressed into a fraction of a second, producing an advanced form of life beyond our comprehension, a life which now exists as highly intelligent, formless energy.'
'I can't believe I'm sat here listening to you,' said Gil. 'If this thing does exist, what does it live on?'
'Pure energy. Stray currents, caused by the unstable atmosphere, can be found all over Bouron, and the base foundations are riddled with tunnels burnt out by random discharges. There's a lot of surplus energy in that area.'
'This is pure speculation,' said Gil. 'It sounds to me like you've been taking Jenna too seriously. Does she really know what she's talking about, or is she suffering from space sickness? Did she actually stand there and watch people go in and out of the machine? It's a wonderful story, but what we're after is fact, not fiction.'
'I understand your disbelief,' said Declan, 'but I'm convinced that Jenna is telling us exactly what she saw on Bouron.'
'Well I'm not,' said Gil. 'I've only just got to bed after listening to your last conversation with Jenna. Explain to me how and why the alien suddenly turned into Scyros Maddoc, and watch what you say, I have a short attention span when it comes to this kind of thing.'
'While it was inside Unit Nine the alien could access all the billions of bits of information that pour through the Phasewave system, all the media and communication transmissions, data, television, you name it. We are talking here about intelligence much higher than our own, almost pure thought, which, by monitoring what was going on inside the machine, could learn in a very short space of time practically everything there was to know about the human race. The alien must have noticed the effect Scyros Maddoc had on Carrick and decided to take advantage of it. If you consider my premise far-fetched, think how life evolved on Earth and look at the colossal difference between the first and final forms of life on that planet. The immediate priority of any intelligent life form would be survival, which would mean adapting to its surroundings. That is why it was observing the crew.'
'There's a big difference between an electric current and a human being,' said Gil.
'Not as big as you might think,' said Declan, 'but at some point the alien made a quantum leap in its development by deciding to adopt the physical form of a human being. I'm guessing now, but all life forms possess innate programmes to reproduce and maybe that was driving it to expand its environment. I think it may have become confused by the emotional bond between Carrick and Ellen, something so uniquely human that an alien would have extreme difficulty understanding it. My guess is that the alien worked out that it could only fully experience that state if it adopted a physical form and once it had adopted the physical form it could then fulfil its desire to reproduce, but this time as a human being. To obtain that physical form the alien utilized its knowledge of the crew and whatever ideas it had picked up from the Phasewave transmissions. If the alien understood that Phasewave was capable of creating life, it must also have known that the machines had even greater capabilities, which is why it drew upon its knowledge of the Phasewave workings to help it achieve its goal.'
'We still don't have proof,' said Gil. 'I can't use any of your theories to wind up this investigation.'
'Without giving too much away, do you have anything at all in the way of proof?'
'If I did you wouldn't be here now.'
'There's the Phasewave on Bouron, the work on that is proof, isn't it?'
Gil shook his head. 'The Phasewave doesn't exist, or the tracker, they were both destroyed.'
'How did they come to be destroyed?'
'Let Jenna tell you,' said Gil
'What exactly do you want from me?' Declan asked.
'Facts, I only want facts. I will back you whichever way you decide to go on this case, but in less than two weeks' time I will be put in a position where I will have to justify your verdict to several million people. If all I can produce are funny stories about an invisible alien, I'll be looking for early retirement and my department will be history. If, however, we can produce live footage of this thing we'll be in the record books.'
'Did Jenna tell the other investigators about the alien?'
'I don't have access to records of what she told the other investigators, but I believe that this is the point at which they all stopped listening.'
'We must continue.' said Declan. 'Jenna has a lot more to tell us, and she isn't aware that the alien was created by the Phasewave.'
'Bear in mind what I've just told you,' said Gil. 'By the way, there has been another development in this case. Last night the Kalmis Phasewave base was broken into. No damage was done but the security was breached.'
'Who would want to break into a Phasewave?'
'I've no idea. You might mention it to Jenna at some time and watch her reaction. I'll talk to you again later today. In the meantime I suggest we both try to get some sleep.'
Gil turned off the monitor and stared wide-eyed at the blank screen. Had he dreamt the conversation or had he actually listened to Declan go on about aliens for almost an hour? The thought left him cold. It was unbelievable, totally unfuckingbelievable. He also wondered how long it would take Declan to work out who had broken into the Phasewave, but there was only so much information he was willing to share at that time. By now wide awake, Gil turned out the lights and returned to bed, but, minutes later, cautiously crept back to his study and checked the monitor to see if there was a spot of light in the centre of the screen.
The next morning Declan stood on the apartment balcony and inhaled deeply. The sharp mountain air had been chilled by the forming dawn and hurt as it penetrated his lungs. His mind was clear and alert following the first sound sleep he had managed in days, even if it had only been for a few hours, and an itch on his damaged arm told him that the burns were starting to heal. Another three months and he could start thinking about surgery. He stretched and yawned and was idly looking towards the rocky mountain wall opposite the balcony when a movement caught his eye and he briefly saw the figure of a man move across the rock-face and disappear into the stone. Declan, convinced he was mistaken, was watching the point where the man had vanished for further signs of movement when the whole mountain face suddenly sprang into a complex pattern of shapes. The side of the mountain consisted of a complex of apartments, each of which was unique in shape and size and was constructed from mountain stone in order to blend with the contours of the surrounding rocks. Even the irregular-shaped, unreflecting windows through which he had glimpsed the figure were tinted to match the natural hues of the mountain. Declan was surprised that he had been there so long before noticing that a large portion of the mountain was man-made. The site was an impressive piece of workmanship and an obvious choice for the monitoring centre; from there microwaves could easily be bounced off the walls of his apartment. Declan waited a little longer, watching for sight of further movement, and then gave up and went back inside to find Jenna preparing breakfast.
'By the way, I spoke to
Gil this morning and he told me the Kalmis Phasewave had been broken into,' said Declan.
Jenna put down the tray she was carrying and stared at him. 'Why?' 'Why would anyone break into a Phasewave base?'
'I'm afraid I don't know the answer to that question,' said Declan. 'Gil did not know who was responsible.'
Jenna had sat down and was staring at the table top in front of her.
'Aren't you eating?' said Declan, noticing the untouched meal.
'Would you lie to me, Declan?'
'Why do you ask?'
'You talk as though breaking into a Phasewave is an everyday occurrence. In view of what we are currently involved with, don't you think it's more than a coincidence that someone has broken into a Phasewave?'
'I'm only repeating what Gil told me.'
'Well, I don't think Gil is being honest with you. If Gil can't explain who broke into the machine and why, it does not say much about his interest in this case. He seems to be taking a very casual approach to the break-in.'
'I really have no idea,' said Declan. 'Gil did not volunteer any more information.'
'You know more than you're admitting,' said Jenna. 'What else are you trying to hide from me?'
'Nothing,' said Declan. 'If you're unhappy I'll contact Gil as soon as I can and obtain an explanation for you.'
Jenna watched Declan suspiciously and he noticed that her face looked quite different when she was being serious.
'Okay,' she said, 'why don't you go and do it now?'
'Gil's not in, I've left a message,' said Declan, re-joining Jenna in the living room. Outside, a layer of stratus cloud linked the mountain tops, the first visible sign of the approaching Vennican winter.
'I'll be very interested to hear what he has to say,' said Jenna. 'In the meantime, let's keep going. Where do you want me to start?'
'At the hard bit,' said Declan. 'Let's start at the point where everyone ends up inside the Phasewave machine.'
*******************************
'You already know most of what happened, so I won't bore you with details,' said Ellen. 'When Scyros, or our version of Scyros, first appeared he was friendly and humorous and everyone liked him. I have to admit that even I took a shine to him. He told us that the Phasewave Company had given him a special toy to play with and that he had been carrying out secret experiments involving the transfer of matter through the Intranet. He claimed to have successfully carried out several experiments, but the last transfer had been corrupted in the backlog and had overloaded Unit Nine during its processing on Bouron. He sounded plausible enough, until he started talking about humans travelling through the Intranet, at which point we began to go cold on the idea. Making people laugh on a talk show was one thing, but teleportation or whatever was something else. Anyway, whatever our concerns, he obviously managed to change our minds and we eventually fell for it. His reasoning went along the line that he himself had travelled outside the intranet to an experimental site on Vennica, but, with Unit Nine down, this was his first opportunity to modify a transmitter on another planet. He asked us if we wanted to take part in a revolutionary experiment, to be the first people to travel through space via Phasewave. Even now it sounds ridiculous, but I guess the answer was yes, we did.'
'Were you ever suspicious?'
'Yes we were, but only for short periods. He had answers for everything, which, with hindsight, is not surprising considering that he was listening to our conversations. We suggested that he visit us on Bouron, but he said that the unit was too badly damaged to be modified into a receiver, although it would still function as a transmitter. They say that if something sounds too good to be true it usually is, but we had spent a long time on Bouron, and I think our only excuse for allowing it to go that far was that we were just plain bored out of our minds. Scyros got everyone fired up doing the modifications to the machine, after which it was just a matter of time and curiosity.'
'So what went wrong?'
'Come the big day we all drew lots. Sewell was first and went down the line to Tracker South, followed by Rogan. Then there was a bit of a delay until they appeared together on the monitor, talking to us from inside the tracker. I recall that Rogan was actually crying when he spoke to us, but we needed little convincing because we'd just seen our friends dematerialize and turn up somewhere else. You've been there, it's addictive. I can see Sewell too, looking like he'd won a year's pay, telling us to hurry and get our asses into the machine. We genuinely believed we'd swapped a year's boredom for a place in history.'
'Why did the alien bother with all that stuff about modifying the Phasewave? Why didn't it just go to Vennica?'
'For some reason the alien wanted to become physical in the form of a human being. When a human being dematerializes upon entering the Phasewave it releases a life force, and the alien needed that life force to adopt human form. The modifications to the Phasewave were purely fabricated to draw us into the machine and allow the alien to take our life forces.' Ellen fished around in a drawer, found a pack of cigarettes and gratefully lit one. 'What happened on that first transfer was that Rogan and Sewell were immediately destroyed when they went into the machine. The faces that appeared on the monitor belonged to the alien, it could reproduce anything digitally, impersonate anyone - Scyros, Sewell, anyone.'
'But why did it destroy Rogan and Sewell?'
'I've no idea,' said Ellen, 'but I don't think the alien was interested in them. It seemed to be more interested in Carrick and me. Mainly me.'
'What was it like? What did it do once it had got you inside?'
Ellen's hand trembled as she poured another glass of water. 'Being inside Phasewave was like being trapped in an endless bad dream. It was very unpleasant but not threatening; it was more like being in a dream from which you can't wake up. The alien examined us for several days, during which time I never knew whether I was imagining it or not. Only afterwards did Carrick and I become aware of each other and discover that we had become formless and trapped inside the Phasewave machine.'
'Did the alien communicate with you?'
'Yes. Before it left it let us know exactly what had happened to us and what it was going to do next. Then it disappeared, for which we were both eternally grateful.'
'You sound as if it did bad things to you,' said Jenna. 'Do you want to talk about them?'
Ellen lit another cigarette. 'After what I went through in there I no longer know the meaning of embarrassment.' Tears glistened in her eyes. 'Imagine yourself being endlessly raped in an unknown place, being penetrated both mentally and physically and not knowing what is doing it to you or why.'
Jenna passed Ellen a tissue and sat, transfixed, as she listened to the description of an experience no human had ever previously endured.
'I've got to tell someone,' said Ellen. 'The thing went into my mind. It was like being spread out on a board, unable to move, while it probed right through me, only each time it touched a spot it triggered an emotion and recalled an event. It dwelled upon the bad reactions mostly. Try to think of all the things you have ever done wrong and then imagine reliving each one in every sordid detail, with all the associated feelings of guilt, shame and disgust.' Tears flowed down Ellen's face. 'To have no secrets, to be unable to hide the most insignificant thought, to have every rotten thing in your life made public while you are incapable of doing anything about it. But it didn't stop there because it became fascinated by sex and went into that deeper still. We may not have had our bodies, but we had retained memories of our physical sensations. Nothing was overlooked. It explored practically every sexual experience I'd ever had, and I was forced to relive each one. Carrick didn't get the same treatment as I did. After it was all over I felt like I'd been continuously turned inside out until there was nothing left of me.'
Ellen broke down and started to cry again, and Jenna comforted her until the sobbing died down.
'I need to finish,' said Ellen.
Jenna waited until Ellen had dried her eyes and aske
d how the alien had communicated with them.
'It didn't use words or anything like that; contact was only made through thoughts. We found thoughts surfacing in our minds which weren't our own, but it was always clear whose they were. Once it had us in its power it never tried to hide anything, and, after it had found whatever it had been looking for, it took our life forces and transmitted itself to Vennica over the Intranet where, for all I know, someone like me is walking around at this very moment, or maybe the two of us are walking around. It was never made clear to us why the alien was so keen on going to Vennica, but the end result was that we had fallen into its trap and were committed to remain inside the machine in a formless state until we could acquire the necessary life forces to regain our former physical states. Being formless did have a few advantages, so, in the meantime, we learnt to travel around the base through the communications network and operate the monitors without switching them on. That was how we watched you searching for us.'
Jenna was horrified at the thought of being spied on in the security of her own cabin, doing private things. She felt the blood rise to her face, but Ellen appeared not to notice.
'It's hard for me to explain what state we were in,' said Ellen. 'Sometimes I wonder whether we dreamt it all, but you saw us on that monitor screen, so you can vouch for the fact that it was real and that we were inside the machine.'
'How could you appear on screen if you had no physical content?' asked Jenna.
'I'm not sure. One day we found ourselves inside a monitor circuit and accidentally triggered one of the electron guns, that's how it started. Can you imagine what we felt like when we saw ourselves reflected on the inside of a monitor screen, when we discovered that there was still something left of our former selves after believing that we'd been reduced to nothing? Carrick said that we must have retained some kind of blueprint of ourselves that the gun had recognized and managed to replicate. After that we became quite good at working the monitors. It became the focus of our existence, because it was the only way we could confirm our previous lives, or what remained of them. Although we managed to project the memories of ourselves onto the screen, the one thing we never learnt to do was to replicate other people. Only the alien could do that, which is how it worked the Scyros Maddoc trick. Once we'd fully understood what the alien had done to us and realized that we were still alive, it didn't take much imagination to work out when the next opportunity to regain two life forces would present itself. Which is when we worked out a plan to take over the life forces of the replacement crew using a similar story to the one Scyros Maddoc used on us.'