Wanderer - Echoes of the Past

by Simon Goodson

  He knew it was a poor excuse even as he said it. Ali pounced on it.

  “Bullshit! I thought I knew you. I thought I knew what you’d do in a situation like this. Now I wonder if I really know you at all. I love you Jess, but the Jess I fell in love with wouldn’t delay. He couldn’t delay. Was I wrong?”

  Jess felt choked at her words, wanting to speak but feeling unable to. The pain he saw in her face finally unlocked something inside. Once the words started they tumbled out.

  “I want to! More than anything I want to save them. But we need to get to the Wanderer’s home system. We have to. If we save the prisoners then we might never get there. And we have to. We just have to!”

  “Is that you speaking, or the ship?” she asked coldly.

  Her question startled Jess. He wanted to insist it was him. any other possibility was terrifying. But he couldn’t. The more he thought about the question the more worried he became.

  “I… I don’t know… I don’t know!”

  It came out as a wail, a wail that wouldn’t stop. Ali grabbed him in a fierce embrace. Jess felt his world tumbling around him. For the first time since he’d grown used to being joined to the Wanderer he felt afraid of it. Scared of the link he had with it.

  As always, the ship was aware of his thoughts. Something that had felt uncomfortable at first, then had just proven to be useful. Jess became aware of feelings of concern and regret from the ship. If anything this reminder of how closely they were linked just made him more scared.

  The ship’s presence seemed to pull back a little. It seemed tentative to Jess. Uncertain. Then Jess felt a suggestion coming through the link. The ship was suggesting he search the information left behind by previous captains.

  Jess’s first instinct was to reject the idea. If it hadn’t been made so tentatively then he might have done. After a few seconds he decided to follow the suggestion. He started to think about what he needed to search for.

  Did he want to block the ship from his mind? No. That wouldn’t work. He needed to be able to control it still.

  Did he want to reduce what the ship could do? Return it to the state it had been in when he first came aboard, with very little consciousness. It was tempting. More tempting than Jess wanted to admit.

  Jess toyed with the idea for a while then discarded it, angry at himself for considering the option. It felt far too close to forcing the Wanderer into slavery, forcing it to give up its desires and will to suit his needs.

  “Jess, what happened?” Ali asked, clearly worried. “You suddenly tensed up and you look so angry!”

  “Sorry… it’s… I’m… just give me a moment. I need to try something.”

  “What?”

  “The ship… the Wanderer… has pulled back a little and is suggesting I search the memories the previous captains left. I think I should, but I don’t know what to search for. And I’m scared Ali… really scared. If the ship can affect my mind like this can I trust anything I think?”

  Jess could see the anxiety in her face. For a moment he worried she would leave, would want to get away from him. Instead she stood firm, holding his hands tightly. Jess felt a surge of confidence looking at her.

  “I don’t want to block the Wanderer,” he said. “And I can’t force it back to how it was when I first came on board.”

  “Maybe you need to turn things around,” she said. “Don’t look at the solutions you can think of, look at what the problem is.”

  “The problem is… it’s…” Jess realised it was hard to put into words. What exactly was the cause of the panicky fear he felt?

  “Are you worried the ship is trying to control you? To deliberately take over your mind?” Ali asked softly.

  Jess considered for a moment before answering. “No. No, I don’t think so. If it was trying to do that I’m sure it would be far more subtle.”

  “OK, that’s good. Very good. So what is happening?”

  “It’s… it’s just too much. The ship, the things it wants, are swamping me sometimes. I feel what it wants so strongly that I can’t tell where it ends and I start. It’s influencing my thoughts.”

  “Can the Wanderer tell you how to reduce that, to reduce the strength or shield you somehow?”

  The answer came from the ship before Jess could even frame the question. He shook his head.

  “No. It doesn’t know. That’s why it pushed me towards the records.”

  “Well, you know what you need now. Something that will reduce the intensity, or shield you against that crossover, without breaking your link to the ship.”

  “Yes. That would help. I… I don’t know if I’ll ever trust it fully again though.”

  “See what you can find first. Remember, you said the Wanderer wasn’t trying to control you. This effect is unintentional.”

  “All right. I’ll see what I can find.”

  *****

  Jess closed his eyes and focused, feeling himself flying through the vast amounts of information the ship had available. As he had done before, he sought out the area which held information imparted by previous captains. Most information from the Wanderer had the same utilitarian feel to it. Jess had discovered that where he was now headed there were significant variations, each captain had left his, her or — possibly — its own stamp on the information.

  Jess had become adept at extracting information from the cache of wisdom, but he had never dived too deeply in. He was scared of what he might find if he went too far back. Would he find proof that the Wanderer was created by some hugely advanced race? And if so, where were they now?

  Or would he find that it had been created by humans long before, which raised the question of how they’d had such advanced technology.

  Now he tumbled through the collection of information, searching for anything that could help. Finding nothing in the recent memories he dived deeper, going back through tens of captains. Still there was nothing. He dug even deeper.

  Jess reached the farthest back he’d ever been, but still without finding anything. He was roughly a thousand years back as best he could tell. Gathering himself, Jess pushed back even further.

  The wisdom left by Captain after captain shot past Jess. He couldn’t begin to absorb even a tiny amount of the information flowing past and had to rely on the search criteria flagging anything he needed. The estimated date became shakier and shakier, based as it was on an estimate of how long each Captain had flown the Wanderer. As it reached two to three thousand years Jess started to despair of finding anything. Surely he would reach the Wanderer’s creation soon. Was he ready to face that? To know how old the ship was, and who or what the first captains were.

  He had to be. Jess plunged backwards, wondering if his rapid travel would send him beyond the time when the Wanderer was built. Would he overshoot and be left floating in nothingness? It was a stupid thought he knew. He traversed memories laid within the ship so how could he overshoot them? Yet he couldn’t shake the worry.

  As he pushed further and further back the process became almost soothing. More and more records streamed past without what he was looking for, but now he no longer worried.

  Time stretched out, flowing smoothly past, until a tingle drew his attention to the estimate of how far back he’d gone. The lower estimate had passed ten thousand years, the upper was close to fifteen. Jess was awed by the scale of time involved. He’d known the Wanderer was old, but not that it might be anywhere near that old.

  And still there was nothing that matched what he sought. There was no way he was giving up now though. The memories already stretched much further back than he’d thought possible. He wanted to know just how far back.

  The memories minimum age hit twenty thousand years. Then twenty-five, then thirty, then thirty-five thousand years. Then, abruptly, the flow of information stopped. Jess stared at the estimate. The records were somewhere between thirty-six and forty-eight thousand years old. He had to take a few moments to steady himself.

  It was truly a
mazing. Could the ship really have been around that long? He supposed it was possible. The ship’s ability to morph and change would also allow it to repair most damage, given enough time. But still… at least thirty-six thousand years?

  Then he realised with a shock that he hadn’t reached the end of the records. Instead his search had finally found a match. The period of time left Jess shaken. If it was that long since such a thing was needed did that mean the Wanderer had been stuck in it’s limited, only partly conscious, state since then? And Jess had thought about forcing it back into that state. He felt a wave of shame for considered the option.

  Jess examined the memory, trying to absorb the knowledge. It very quickly became clear that the captain who had left the message wasn’t human. The thoughts felt icy and metallic. Accessing them sent waves of pain through Jess’s skull, but he persisted. He had to have the knowledge. Slowly he managed to absorb it, relaxing as the pain eased then faded completely.

  Finally he examined the memory, and found the idea was both simple and completely original. He would never have thought of it himself. He focused, using his implants to set up the barrier he needed.

  The barrier would allow all of Jess’s thoughts and orders through. Anything flowing the other way, below a certain intensity, would pass through. However anything from the Wanderer above that threshold would be limited, reduced, to acceptable levels. Jess would be aware that the idea or thought carried great weight with the Wanderer, but he wouldn’t be overwhelmed.

  Jess turned his attention to the memories around him. He was tempted to push back even further, to find how old the ship was, but at the same time he was scared to. Just how old would the ship turn out to be? What if it was hundreds of thousands of years old, or even millions? Could he take in that time frame at all, let alone cope with it?

  He decided that was a question for another day, and with a deep sigh of relief he released his connection to the Wanderer.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Jess blinked his eyes open and let out a deep sigh. He was surprised to see Elizabeth and Sal next to Ali. All three were hovering over him with worried expressions.

  “Jess! Are you all right?” Ali asked, grabbing his hand tightly. “I was so worried about you.”

  “What?” Jess managed to say. His head felt fuzzy and his body ached all over.

  “You’ve been sat there without moving for bloody ages,” Elizabeth said. “We were starting to wonder if you were ever going to recover. What happened?”

  “I… it… the… what…”

  Jess stopped, unable to focus his thoughts. Tears started to flow down Ali’s face. She was a picture of misery. Jess concentrated hard, focusing on the words he needed.”

  “OK… I’m OK. Just… just struggling to… to think clearly. A minute. Give… a minute.”

  The others pulled back slightly, clearly still worried. Jess took a moment to compose himself, then reached out to the Wanderer to find out what state his body was in. He stopped before the thought was complete, worry over relying on the Wanderer filling his mind. Then he steeled himself. Either what he had done worked or it didn’t, and if not then he might as well find out.

  He reached out to the Wanderer, inviting it to return to it’s usual close proximity. He sensed its mind doing so, felt the closeness that he had grown so used to. He was still aware of the Wanderer’s keen desire to revisit its home system, but he no longer felt swamped by it. He felt… well, like himself once again. The changes were working.

  He turned his attention to his body, scanning it using its implants and the ships sensors. Nothing was obviously wrong, but he was a little dehydrated and suffering significant muscle stiffness. The ship let him know that both were to be expected as he hadn’t moved in almost thirty minutes.

  Jess’s mind reeled at that. He’d been sitting for thirty minutes in the real world while diving through the past captain’s wisdom? Focus. He had to focus. Using his implants he countered the dehydration. The stiffness he would just have to work through.

  “How… long… have you… been… there…” he managed to say.

  “A damn long time,” Elizabeth replied. “Fifteen, twenty minutes. Maybe more. We didn’t think we’d need to time it!”

  Jess managed a small chuckle at that. Strangled though it sounded it seemed to relax the others a little.

  Jess worked his jaw backwards and forwards a few times before speaking again.

  “Muscles stiff… I'm all right though.”

  The others didn’t look convinced. Clearly it was going to take more to persuade them he was completely unscathed.

  “Aaaarrrghhh…” he said, as he stretched his back out. It hurt, but it also felt much better.

  “Thirty minutes,” he managed to speak more easily. “That’s how long the ship said I was stuck there for. I was searching through the ideas previous captains have left behind. It took longer than I expected.”

  “Ali told us, but it’s never taken anywhere near this long before,” Sal said.

  “Yeah… I had to go back a lot further to find what I needed.”

  “Did you find it,” Ali asked anxiously.

  Jess nodded. “Yes. I’ve set it up already. It doesn’t interfere most of the time, but it prevents anything from the Wanderer that is too strong getting through. Well, it gets through but reduced to a manageable level.”

  “You don’t look too happy about it,” Elizabeth said, studying his face carefully.

  “I am, but… I’m still coming to terms with what else I learnt in there. I didn’t just go a long way back through the previous captains, I went a really long way back. I finally found the idea in memories that are at least thirty-six thousand years old. The ship is that old, and quite possibly much older. I found what I needed so I stopped exploring.”

  “Sweet god,” Elizabeth breathed.

  “That’s impossible… it must be wrong, mustn’t it?” Sal said.

  Jess shrugged his shoulders.

  “That was the conservative estimate for the age of that memory,” he said. “Very conservative. It could be as much as forty-eight thousand years. And there are definitely older records.”

  “That’s much older than the Empire,” Elizabeth said. “The exact age of the Empire isn’t known, or so we’re told, but it’s somewhere between six and eight thousand years.”

  “What was there before?” Jess asked. “I must have heard fifty conflicting versions when I was a slave, many of them claiming one god or another was responsible.”

  “I don’t know,” Elizabeth replied. “I suspect the information was deliberately withheld from most people, though by now it may have been truly lost. The few scraps I’ve picked up down the years talk of a time when people were just starting to reach the stars, to settle new worlds and systems.

  The stories say it was a chaotic time, with companies and governments scrambling to grab prime land, and that there were battles and wars. Ordinary people bore the brunt of the violence and disruption, as they always do. The fledgling Empire promised stability and protection. People welcomed it with open arms, allowing it to grow rapidly.

  By the time the companies and governments realised they had a rival for power it was too late. The Empire was too strong and went on to absorb or destroy all of them. Then it turned its focus outwards, settling system after system and becoming ever more powerful.

  That’s what I’ve managed to piece together. It might not be completely accurate of course. In fact it might be a complete fabrication. I’ve heard variations on that story far more often than any others though, and in many different places. I’d say there’s at least a hint of truth to it.”

  “But that means there’s at least twenty-five thousand years between the memories Jess found of the Wanderer and when humans spread to the stars,” Ali said in a small voice. “That pretty much guarantees that the Wanderer was built by aliens.

  “I’m pretty certain it was anyway,” Jess replied. “The memory I needed, the one I found,
was from a mind very different to ours. Absorbing the memory hurt. It hurt a lot, and it felt so… well… alien is the only word really.”

  They all fell silent as the implications sank in. Not only was there an alien race that had built the Wanderer, it had done so at least twenty-five thousand years before humans were spreading out to the stars.

  “Well, we know there are intelligent aliens,” Ali said at last. “Teeko proves that. It’s just the thought that they were around so long before us… and that their technology was so advanced even then. Where are they now? Why aren’t they still around?”

  “Thirty-six thousand years is a hell of a long time,” Elizabeth said. “Who knows what happened to them. Maybe they had a war, or a natural disaster got them — a supernova or something. Or maybe they moved on somewhere else. Who knows how long they’d been in this area of the universe. Maybe they wanted to explore somewhere else.”

  “But there’s too much disruption in areas of jump space,” Ali said, a touch of reproach in her tone. “You told us that.”

  “Yes, but that’s now. Was it the same thirty thousand years ago? Who knows. And maybe they found another way to travel quickly, or they found ways to travel despite the disruption. Hell, they might even have built massive ark ships and headed off at sub-light speed.”

  “I think we’re getting distracted,” Sal said. “Jess, you said the Wanderer isn’t influencing your thoughts anymore. Are you sure?”

  “Yes. It wasn’t trying to influence them, it’s just that it was overwhelming me. I can still sense how desperately it wants to reach home, but that doesn’t affect me — not directly anyway. I still want to help it — that’s me talking, not the Wanderer — but it isn’t affecting my thinking anymore.”

  “So, the question is…”

  “Sorry,” Jess interrupted. “We’re coming up to safe jump distance. The Shadow Beam is asking if we’re ready. I think we should go for it. We can always change course or drop back out before we reach Daspal. What do you think?”

  “Yes, go for it,” Elizabeth said.