DUALITY: The World of Lies

by Paul Barufaldi

  The next morn the rising western sun greeted him with more fine weather. He thanked Cearulei and enthusiastically got trekking without delay. By the long end of noon, he'd reached the point where the two rivers merged. He saw the islet between the merging rivers the guidebook referred to. This was one of only three known sites in the world home to the most precious of the herbs on his list: “a small milky pod that grows amid the deep mosses of the islet.” The author had also referred to a rope-pull that his expedition had strung across the deep and treacherous rapids between the riverside and the islet. Gahre found only the tattered remnants of a hemp rope tied to a tree on the bank. It really came as no surprise since the book had been authored some forty-eight years ago.

  If they had strung a pull-rope once, it meant at least one man had crossed without one. Gahre was a strong and experienced swimmer. He had never attempted anything quite this daring, but after surveying and plotting his course, decided it was a worthy risk. He dropped the bulk of his gear on the shore, stripped down, and dove in. He had a mighty fight against the currents, and they got the better of him more than once, hauling him under and thrashing his body against rocky outcrops, but it was nothing he couldn't handle. He scrambled onto the shore of the islet somewhat shaken and battered but otherwise no worse for wear.

  He caught his breath and set about scouring the islet. It was a wet fuzzy piece of terra, shaded by drooping cyprus, carpeted with fern and moss. Following the guide he trudged toward the moss. Sensing something, he preemptively jumped back in the nick of time as a slick dark adder sprang out and coiled itself into defense position just a few short feet from him.

  He carried with him a rock from the shore just in case of just such an occurrence and held it back as if to throw it. “Snake! Pursue me and you will be crushed!” he warned and set foot again on his way. The snake continued to hold its ground for a few moments then quietly slid back into the undergrowth to lay in wait for its next unsuspecting avian prey.

  To his delight, the gray moss he came upon was laden with low green budding plants, with features perfectly matching those described in the guide. The reader was advised to collect “only those pods as thick as a man's thumb, as only these matured buds contain the valued essence in any worthwhile quantity.” Gahre saw the pods were in various states of development, ranging from tiny to bulbous, but far moreso on the prior end of that scale. He also reasoned that his thumbs were larger than the average man's and thus he could harvest pods that were slightly smaller. He plucked one and broke it open. It felt spongy and was possessed of a sour musty odor that didn't strike him as particularly plantlike and disinclined him to taste of it. These pods were so valued they would fetch a gold coin apiece from a specialized herb vendor and twice that from those who had consumed it before and knew of its virtues.

  Before long he'd harvested all the sizeable pods the patch had to offer, filling nearly half his sack. They were to be “partially dried and compressed in a sealed container.” He had only brought along two jars which barely seemed to suit the volume he had collected, but then realized that after this very spongy harvest was compressed, just one ought suffice. He had not counted them, but there were easily over a hundred there -at a gold apiece! “Easy coin!” he laughed. Easy being a relative term here, not accounting that it took two days journeying through the territories of apex predators, braving deadly rapids, and dodging venomous serpents to retrieve them.

  With a better understanding of the depths and currents, his return swim to the shore was less hair-raising. He robed up and collected his gear. He then had the good fortune to spot a river foul, snare it with the bolas, and add it to his load. It would make for a hearty dinner. The path he was to take would break off west of the river another 8 kilometers downstream. Though this area was very suitable for camping and he was anxious to start cooking, he just couldn't allow himself to waste so much daylight by remaining here. He set off further south. It became a grueling hike as the soft river banks rose into the high rocky ledges of a gorge. He hit the marker by evening atop those ledges but did not see any trace of the western trail referred to in the guide. Oh well, that task would have to wait til morning. Compelled by more immediate concerns, he scouted a suitable clearing and made camp before the red lanterns of night could cast their glow upon the world.

  He quickly settled in with his clothes drying on a makeshift line and a fowl roasting on the spit. He spread his treasured pods out to dry on a warming stone and admired his bounty. He dug out the field guide to refresh his mind of a reference: “The Cloudy Moss Pod is a potent mind alterant that promotes a sense of cosmic unity, opens new pathways, induces visions, and enhances creativity.”

  Gahre was never one for intoxicants or narcotics, preferring to remain in a state of vigilant sobriety. But for all he'd done to retrieve this herb, he felt he owed it to himself to do something more than covet it. He culled through the seasoned bits of wood in the area til he came upon one suitable in size and shape to carve into a crude wooden pipe, which he fashioned, then packed with half a moist pod and topped it off with an ember. The smoke was thick and acrid but not entirely unpleasant. It was surprisingly easy on the lungs. He wistfully puffed away until the bowl was spent. Then he lay back on the soft ground resting his head upon his satchel.

  And by this time the Red Moon and the Fire Ruby had taken their mantles among the painted celestial clouds. He entered a dreamy state pondering the heavens. How high was the redmoon Oberion? It was surely composed of stone, just as the land beneath him was. And the stars, what were they? What perfection were the celestial beings, those devas? He imagined them as the statues of the Dharma temples depicted them: wise, elegant, and otherworldly, radiating their divine light through the cosmos. He imagined there were animals in heaven too, but more pure than their terrestrial counterparts, acting in harmony, singing, creating idyllic murals of nature. Heaven must be a wonderland, he guessed, not corrupted by The World of Lies he had been cast into, free from that disease of the mind that spread itself like a plague through the realms of mortal men. But then too, he reasoned, heaven must be terribly boring. How would a journey such as this satisfy his soul were it made with no pain in his feet or strain on his body? The beating he took in the rapids gave value to the prize it earned him. In a way, he reckoned, he had it better than those cosmic deities who could summon into being their every whim with only a thought, they who indulged themselves in bliss every moment of the day and knew no sorrow or pain. Gahre smiled to himself and laughed at the stars “How very weak and spoiled you all must be!”

  It occurred to him then how narcotized he must be to be mocking the celestials like that. It also occurred to him that he had a visitor to his site: a solitary raccoon with golden flowing hair, one of the few wild creatures bold enough to approach fire and much larger humans in the hope of salvaging scraps. It stood on its hindquarters and chirped on at him as though it were annoyed about something.

  Gahre thought about driving it away, but decided the creature was being civil enough. The outer layer of the spitted bird was now optimally cooked. He tore off a wing and tossed a bit of meat at the raccoon, who after initially recoiling, put on a hilarious display of attempting to pick up the piping hot scrap, dropping and juggling it every which way like a woodland jester, then attempting to eat it whole, only to spit it out and nurse his burned tongue. Gahre laughed a good bit at this. He spent the next hour picking away at his dinner and tossing bits of it to his new friend, who turned out to be an excellent listener. Gahre ranted on about the ills of men and the wonders of the cosmos to it. He posed lofty philosophical queries, and answered them in the raccoon’s stead with long soliloquies. Raccoon mainly hung around for the food, and probably wasn't taking all that much away from their discourse, but Gahre felt sure the creature would hold this curious encounter in his tiny brain for the remainder of his years.

  The Sphere

  Three hours since the thermal meltdown had begun and so far only Farprobe 41 had reported i
n, tracking another satellite in the ring at a safe distance. It was identical to the previous one they had observed, and there was still no sign of downward transmission.

  Aru watched forlornly as the hull of his precious ship deformed and melted into an abstract and deviant mockery of itself. It was a omen of death.

  As the highest command authority, he could, in an instant, order The Kinetic on an exit course, leaving this entire venture behind. Even then, he was skeptical about their odds of survival. He didn't trust System's estimates because this was unknown territory for any vessel. He didn't know if he was more frightened by the threat of the engine failure, which would leave them abandoned to a slow fiery demise, or by the more likely scenario of thermal seepage into the high energy fuel storage causing an anti-matter containment failure that would obliterate them instantly, and at this point, was probably the best outcome they could reasonably hope for.

  All he had to do was say the word. Well, that and silently order the roaming security bots to sedate his first officer since she would attempt to override that order with her go-to resort of physical force. It was do or die for Mei on this one, and he had to respect that.

  A part of him felt they had come too far to turn back. Finding that satellite transmission in this accelerated time-window was purely a matter of luck now, and the odds were far from favorable. There were 52 relays in the chain, and only one would be transmitting at any given time, for a period of several hours.

  No, he would not do it. Like all he did, this was for her. He had turned his back on the engagement that would have sealed his seat of power on Calidon, had never put in for the promotion to commodore, even now that the war had ended and there was no glory to be won. He had given up all these things and even agreed to this treasonous venture just to keep this ship and her in it with him.

  So it was decided, and he no longer allowed his mind to waffle. They were all in despite everything; despite the odds and despite the ship's direst warnings about the thermals, which grew grimmer by the hour.

  “Farprobe 46 has come online tracking satellite 13 at radial position 31 degrees on the ring,” System announced, followed by, “Increase in ionic density within the ship's magnetosphere has accelerated by 4% in the last hour. Thermal effects on hull integrity are also...”

  “System! Enough! You will only update us on ship's thermals when requested to from here on out,” Aru barked. “Display the data for Farprobe 46 on holograph.”

  It all came up showing the exact same readings as 41 had. Still no downward transmission. There was one more, the probe coming into perihelion with the Black Stone. Farprobe 33 was due to come online in another 40 minutes. And that was it. They had those three probes to go on, to find the one satellite in transmission mode among the entire ring of 52. Well, they still had their 8 nearprobes and the Kinetic itself scouring the target orbit, but that was a longshot. In a space this vast with the resources they had, such a sweep could take days or even weeks to comprehensively scan the region.

  Now it was just sit and wait. He could fill the time fretting over the damage readings, but what would be the point? No. He would just ignore them. By the time a ship system failure went catastrophic, it wouldn't matter anyway.

  Mei, he could see, was putting on her best face, but scared in her own right. She was still plotting and directing the near probes, refining their trajectories based on the very limited data of knowing that 2 out of the 52 satellites were in non-transmission, which at least gave them a very small sense of where their target was not.

  The minutes slowly burned by as if the governing mechanics of time were different here. He stared silently into the ship diagnostics display watching one heat sink then another surreally eject. System was taking the steps of last resort, and stifling itself from making a report of it, per Aru's orders. The thermal situation had obviously worsened beyond what System had earlier predicted. They had dropped 4 heatsinks coming in through the corona, and they'd need at least twice that to make it out. There were only 6 left.

  Farprobe 33 came online suddenly, showing them yet another 6-cylindered com satellite, this one receiving transmission, adding another piece to puzzle, but not the one that mattered. Farprobe 33's downward transmitter was as inactive as the others, yet the incoming transcoronal transmission told them that the Black Stone was broadcasting into the ring in the same manner as the White. Such a volume of data coming in, yet none going out. It simply made no sense.

  Then System made a surprising announcement embellished with full visuals on the display.

  “Prior to 2 hours 23 minutes ago, Farprobe 33's log shows the lower axial transmitter active and transmitting what appears to be the same data as the horizontally relayed ring transmission, to a location just beyond 140 degrees of longitude of the target orbit, tracking toward the 141st, as indicated on display.”

  That was it! That was their target!

  Mei flew into action. “System, route all nearprobes to that location at once! And let's drop the Kinetic down a few thousand kilometers, do a full burn, and curve back up into this altitude on course to rendezvous with the search target.”

  “Aye, Commander.”

  Aru could not decide if it was a blessing or a curse that their destination was a quarter span of the orbit's circumference ahead of their position, another 5 hours of flight at full engine burn and the reverse thrust that would be needed to synchronize the Kinetic with it at rendezvous both exacerbated their fuel conservation dilemma, but time was more the essence here than all else.

  Two more hours in and another heat sink expelled. By now the entire outer shield layer had sloughed away, and the heat was expanding the shield ring segments which would soon begin to drop off. The hub was similarly showing signs of thermal expansion, and worse, it was now even encroaching into the highly protected material nanocarbonfiberized-glass inner ring of the ship where they lived and breathed -at least for the time being.

  “Not a word of this, System,” he voicelessly told the Kinetic over headlink telepathy. “Whatever we decide to do, you just agree the ship can tolerate it.”

  System texted back into Aru's implant. “You are expecting me to lie, Captain?”

  “No. I'm ordering you to!”

  “Aye, Captain.”

  He tried to remember the last time either of them had eaten. Ice-cream, he recalled, 2 days ago. Mei had barely slept over the past 3 days, and he doubted that she had gotten in anything resembling a proper meal.

  “You should eat something,” he told her.

  Mei looked at him, exhausted. She flipped the halo from her head and walked over to him. She hung her arm gently off his shoulder, leaned herself against him, and closed her eyes. Aru reciprocated her gesture by putting his arm around her.

  “I've renamed the nearprobes,” she mumbled, “1-6 as you'll see them labeled on the holoscanner.”

  “Yes, I've noted that already, dear.”

  She opened her eyes and eased away from their embrace, but remained close beside him. “Nearprobe 2 is coming into radar range of the target. I've got the visual on the 2D. Could you clear away the rest of these displays?”

  Aru had about 27 holograph displays going simultaneously, mostly ship's system data. He waved them away so they could exclusively monitor Nearprobe 2's camera and telemetry readings without distraction. They gazed at it, waiting, meditatively silent. As Aru felt his mind relaxing, his heart rate and respiration also slowed, until no more thoughts of impending doom screeched and wailed in his head. In light of the extreme circumstances, this zen state was the best place he could be, dealing with things as they came and letting go of all the rest.

  A blip on the telemetry cued System into an announcement. “A localized differential electrical field anomaly has been detected at the target location. Charge is estimated at 44 times that of the local environment.”

  Their surrounding medium, the chromospheric plasma, was itself a high voltage electric field. So it made sense that the object would be emit
ting one since it needed to generate a force shield in the same way as the Kinetic emitted positive electric charge and projected a magnetospherical rhombus around itself for shielding and as their probes similarly did on a smaller scale. But 44x? That was an extremely positive charge, several magnitudes of order higher than what they had generated in the corona. By scale, that might even be more than the star itself generated!

  “That's quite a concentration of energy,” Mei commented. “What's the field diameter Kinny?”

  “The standing data is insufficient to extrapolate the volume, Commander. We will gather more as Nearprobe 4 approaches. From the telemetry we're receiving now, I would estimate a field diameter of approximately 250 meters, encompassing an planar region of 196 square kilometers.”

  “By the folly of Mandu!” Mei exclaimed. “Aru, that force field must encompass...” She stuttered and paused. Without a halo, and her brainpower depleted by exhaustion, what would otherwise have been simple calculation failed her.

  “8000 cubic kilometers, Commander,” offered System. “18 times the shield capacity of this ship.”

  “And the source?” Aru asked.

  “The generation source is as yet undetected but its presence is inferred by these readings, Captain. The electron density of the field is millions of times that of the rarified plasma environment. If I may relay to you a correlation I find particularly striking, Captain?”

  “Sure, let's hear it.”