Their minds reeled, flooded with information, flooded with physical sensations and emotional memories. Overcome, they surrendered to the rush. And then, as the experience brought them right up to that very moment in their lives, the bright light returned. Like a sun going nova, it consumed everything.
Stunned, Mags and Patches awoke in a glass test tube. Their tiny bodies floated in a briny liquid. Beside them swam a single baby octopus.
“We’re inside its mind, too.” Despite the physicality of the experience of swimming inside this test tube, Mags could mentally feel Patches close to her, as if her arms still held her kitten. This comforted her.
Forceps clamped the baby octopus. Operated by giant hands, a syringe pierced the infant’s skin.
The octopus writhed in pain. Released into the water, it struggled in vain to find shelter. Only relentless, transparent walls met its touch.
The hands, gloved in white, lifted the tube and set it in a chamber. The chamber grew dark when its door slammed shut. Then they felt the heat, and they felt the octopus feel the heat, and a strange glow enveloped them.
“The bastards are radiating us! Oh, this poor little thing.” The three of them floated in the green light as their bodies burned, cooking like eggs in a microwave oven. Their DNA broke apart and reassembled in new mutations. Mags screamed.
Patches clawed at the walls of the tube to no avail. Her fear and the octopus’ fear swept over Mags, whose heart ached in her chest.
She opened her arms to hold the octopus the way she held Patches in her mind, to establish the same mental union which felt like a comforting hug to both of them.
The baby octopus swam to her and wrapped around her. Mags cradled it with Patches, who nuzzled the terrified sea creature.
Then they were all caught up in the white light once again.
★ ○•♥•○ ★
“Tarzi. Tarzi, stop.”
He heard Meteor Mags’ voice and looked around.
“Tarzi, stop shooting.”
“Auntie? Is that you?”
“Yes, it’s me! Now will you please listen?”
“Where are you?”
“I’m—it’s hard to explain right now.”
“How can I hear you?”
“I’m speaking right into your mind, Tarzi. Now please. Just relax for a minute. Everything will be fine.”
He had fired his laser pistol at the octopus, shooting at its central mass. He had not fatally wounded the octopus, but gouts of green blood now oozed from the wounds he had inflicted. “Mags! You’re freaking me out. What’s that thing doing to you? I’ll fucking kill it, I swear!”
“Dude, calm your tits! We’re just—we’re just talking. I’ll be right down, I promise.”
He lowered his pistol, but kept the safety off just in case. “Okay. It’s cool. I’m cool. It’s all cool.”
“Sooo cool, dear. Be right back.”
Tarzi leaned against the rough-hewn wall to his back. Without taking his eyes from the octopus, he fished in his pockets for a pack of smokes. As he lit up and puffed, Tarzi brought up the display for his seahorse again. He slowed his breathing, calmed his mind, and imagined Swans in concert. The crushing beats and the pulsing drone grew farther and farther apart as he entered his trance. He studied the seahorse’s menu in detail.
Before his cigarette had burned halfway down, he realized the full extent of what his new pet could do.
★ ○•♥•○ ★
In their quest to create cybernetic lifeforms, the researchers in the asteroid lab ran into several problems. The octopus which held Meteor Mags and Patches in its grip formed the first stage of their solution.
Proteins form the basic building blocks of cellular life, so the researchers needed organic lifeforms which could merge with their inorganic cellular technology to create weaponized, metallic life. The researchers found no existing, complex lifeforms could achieve this union. However, their studies on bacteria showed that genetically altering successive generations could result in an animal whose biology was up to the task.
As Mags and Patches relived each moment of the octopus’ life, they learned this as the octopus had learned it. For the researchers had not considered the implications of working with octopuses. Among Earth’s most intelligent and adaptive animals, octopuses already possessed impressive brains. Aside from one central brain resembling a mammal’s, an octopus had a network of neurons distributed throughout its tentacles. This allowed each tentacle to act independently. When grown to the size of the mutant octopus in the lab, that networked brain became a force to be reckoned with.
The electrical field generated by that brain now gave the octopus a reach and ability beyond anything which had ever existed. As it grew in its isolation tank, the octopus became aware of the researchers’ minds. Quietly, unnoticed, it observed them. In time, the octopus grew to understand not only their language but their intent. Mags and Patches, from their vantage point inside the mind of the octopus, at last understood that intent as well.
Mags whispered, “They’re going to kill her babies.”
Though she had never become pregnant, Patches understood the primal bond the octopus felt with its young. She felt the violation as the researchers forcibly impregnated the octopus with spermatophores of their own creation. These cells, engineered nowhere in the universe but in this asteroid lab, contained a synthetic form of haploid DNA. The resulting babies would generate the living tissues which could be harvested to create the third and final cybernetic generation of sea creatures. That the second generation infants would die in this process meant nothing to the researchers. But it meant everything to the octopus.
During the few weeks in which her fertilized cells grew into eggs, the octopus decided her course of action. Reaching out with sheer mental force, her massive brain subverted the researchers’ wills. Intelligent though they were, their tiny mammalian minds were no match for hers. The octopus seized control of their bodies, forcing them to open first the door to the caverns outside their lab, and then to destroy the glass barrier of her gigantic isolation tank.
The water in her tank burst into a flood, pouring out of the laboratory and into the caverns beyond. The octopus flowed out into the caverns with it. Her flexible body squeezed through the doorway. The shock of submersion nearly freed the minds of the researchers from her spell. But the octopus, having absorbed what they knew about anatomy, used their knowledge against them.
As Mags and Patches experienced this escape, they felt the mother octopus’ ruthless hatred. They joined her great mind in shutting down the researchers’ respiratory and muscular functions. They reveled in her rage as the researchers drowned, powerless beneath the waters. Then they shared her joy as she laid hundreds of eggs in the moistened caverns.
But this joy soon turned to disappointment. Though her mutations had given her and her potential offspring the ability to survive on limited amounts of water, the eggs required full submersion to hatch. The octopus had not realized this, for neither had the researchers. And so, the mother octopus took refuge in the largest of the pits, where the most water had gathered, and she bided her time with an unearthly patience. Her mind reached out to her hundreds of unhatched offspring, soothing them, calming them as they grew inside their translucent shells. She waited in this communion for years.
As their reliving of the octopus’ life brought them right up to the present moment, both Mags and Patches knew what needed to be done. “You need water, dear,” Mags told the octopus. “Your babies need it to hatch.”
Patches visualized the enormous tanks which lie beyond the doorway where Tarzi now stood, picturing them in her mind so the octopus could see them. Mags felt something she had never felt before, and she realized Patches was communicating with the octopus nonverbally. Patches’ feline imagination pictured her and Mags, and then showed them releasing the waters into the caverns. Her mind drew a picture of the eggs hatching.
Though her body remained captive in the tentacle
, Mags felt a glowing pride. Look at my little kitty, she thought, solving this problem on her own.
As Patches and the octopus conversed in their wordless, animal way, Mags reached out with her own mind to talk to Tarzi, and to calm him. Then she returned her attention to the animals’ conversation.
The octopus gave the combination to the lab’s door. It had slammed shut shortly after her escape due to the lab’s security systems, but she had gleaned the code from the researchers’ minds before she killed them. She could not use it, for her tentacles were too large to operate the keypad. But now, the code numbers floated in sequence across the canvas of Mags’ mind. Then slowly, gently, the monster set them down on the bridge.
Mags scooped up Patches in her arms. “Oh, my little kitten.” Patches nuzzled her and licked her nose several times, purring.
“Auntie! Patches!” Tarzi ran to them. “Are you okay?”
Mags threw an arm around him, and the three of them embraced. “Tarzi, you are never going to believe what’s on the other side of that door!” His eyes grew wide with disbelief as she told him all about it. “Now come with me,” she said firmly. “Patches and I made a promise, and we intend to keep it.”
★ ○•♥•○ ★
“Just look at these poor little blighters.” Mags stood before one of dozens of giant salt-water tanks. Transparent tubes networked with an array of circuitry, they towered a half dozen meters into the air. They ranged in diameter from one to five meters. Only one of the tanks stood shattered and empty. “They must have starved to death.”
The bottom of each remaining tank held nothing but skeletons, the flesh having dissolved into the water long ago. “What an awful way to go out.” Tarzi shook his head. “But I don’t get it. I thought they were supposed to be cybernetic. These look like regular old bones.”
“Because that’s all they are. The eggheads found out they needed to create a couple generations of mutated animals first, so they could cull the modified tissues for the cyborgs. We’re looking at the remains of those early generations.”
“Fuck. Do you think that’s how Sparky was created? By mutating and then murdering some poor seahorses?”
Mags sighed. “I wish I could tell you otherwise, but that’s the bloody truth.”
Sparky hovered, and if he was capable of feeling anything for the dead creatures in the tanks, he showed no sign.
Mags placed her hand on the young man’s shoulder. “Don’t be sad, dear. What’s done is done, and the bastards who did this got what was coming to them.” She spat on the floor. “Animal experimentation makes me fucking sick. But at least these tanks can serve one final purpose.” She stormed off. “First, come take a look at this.”
The smuggler and her cat walked through the laboratory as if they had been there before. And, because of all they had learned in their experience within the octopus’ mind, they had. Mags stepped over the skeletal remains of one of the researchers. Patches ran ahead to a cabinet on the far wall. She rubbed her face on its corner and curled her tail around it.
Tarzi followed. “God, this place is huge. They must have carved it right out of the rock.” His voice echoed in the cavernous space, from the manmade surface below his feet to the stony walls and ceilings. He stepped over the skeleton of another researcher. The skull and hand bones protruded from a dirty white lab coat.
“Hand me your pistol, dear. Mine’s down in that sodding pit now.” Setting it to “torch,” she sliced off the padlock from the cabinet. The lock clunked loudly on the floor.
Patches scampered away, then returned to poke her nose impatiently at the cabinet’s double doors.
Mags opened them up. “You still reading that Dobzhansky book, dear?”
“Theo is the man! I read it like four times already.” He took the pistol and holstered it.
“My budding evolutionist. You’re gonna love this.” She grabbed the handle at the top of a black box taller than she was. “Here, give me a hand, will you?”
“Whatever you say, Auntie.” Tarzi clapped his hands together several times.
“No, you idiot. Help me with this goddamn thing!”
He stood beside her, placing his hands on the black box. The four corners facing them had wheels. Together, they strained against the weight as she pulled the top forward and lowered it to the floor. The box slid out of the cabinet. It was as wide as a pair of coffins. Mags wheeled it back and lifted open its lid.
“What’s all this, then?” Tarzi saw microscopes, and what appeared to be a computer, and more equipment he could only guess at.
“It’s a portable genetics lab.”
“No shit?”
“No shit, little man. The researchers used it in their field work, collecting specimens from earth and so on. You could sequence the genome of just about anything with these tools. Plus imaging equipment, miniature electron microscopes, all kinds of fun stuff.”
“I can’t believe you know all this without even looking at it. Do you know how it works?”
“Let’s just say I got a major crash course in genetics a few minutes ago. And you know what’s really fucked up?”
“What?”
“So did Patches.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No, I’m not. Of course, I don’t think she understands it all. I don’t even understand it all. It’s a little fuzzy, and frankly it’s giving me a bloody headache just thinking about it. I guess you can’t just dump a bunch of information into a brain and have it make immediate sense. Now be a dear and give your auntie a square, will you?”
Tarzi presented his pack of smokes and took out one for each of them. “What do you think she’ll do with all that information?” He held out a flame.
Mags touched her cigarette to the light until it glowed red. “Such a gentleman.” She blew a series of three smoke rings. “You mean Patches?”
“Yeah.” Tarzi lit up. “I mean, hell. I don’t know what I mean. Can she talk now or something?”
“I’ve told you before. Patches has always talked. You just don’t understand cat.” She took another puff. “But how much of my mind, the octo’s mind, and the minds of all the researchers the octo had scanned—she’s always been a smart kitty, but that’s a lot to process. I think we’ll just have to wait and see.”
Patches rubbed against his leg and mewed. He knelt on the floor to scratch the side of her face.
“See? Same old Patches,” Mags lied.
“Yep. Same old Patches. Just—indestructible. And a genetics expert.”
“And maybe that. Okay, back to business.” She pushed the black box across the shiny plastic floor. “Our idiot mapmaker didn’t know about it, but there’s an elevator back here. It leads right up to the surface. We can take our booty up that way.”
“Argh,” said Tarzi. “Our godless gains.” He and Patches followed her through the cavern. “So that’s it? A bunch of dead fish, a psychic octopus, and a weaponized seahorse?”
“Oh, no,” said Mags. “Your little friend wasn’t the only finished project here. Do you see that cabinet up ahead? Torch the locks off it. And get some fresh filters in your mask!” She rolled the black box to the far end of the cavern while Tarzi got to work.
She returned from the elevator to find him struggling with another black box. “Dude, don’t give yourself a hernia! Teamwork, little man. Let me help you.”
Tarzi had torched the locks off two more cabinets. “These things are even heavier than the last one. What the hell is in them?”
“Set her down, and I’ll show you.” Mags opened the lid. Inside, a trio of eels lay in molded plastic. Their sleek, metallic surfaces glistened in the laboratory’s light. A meter long, each showed a ferocious array of teeth, soulless red eyes, and paneled skin like Sparky’s. “Not as big as that ichthyosaur carving out front, but still pretty bad-ass, don’t you think?”
“Look at those faces! I don’t know whether to scream or shit my pants.”
“I’d advise against the la
tter, dear. We’ve got a long way to go before we’re home. Here, help me with the next one.”
They pulled the second box out of the cabinet and proceeded to the next one. It held another black box, but the second half of the cabinet held a rack of full-body suits.
“That looks like the mesh we sawed through.”
“That’s because it is. Remember what I told you about Faraday cages and mesh?”
“Yeah. None of the juice can get through, right?”
“Right. These are Faraday suits. They go with these cyborgs we’re plundering.”
“Of course,” Tarzi realized. “It wouldn’t do any good to have a weapon like Sparky unless you were safe from all the juice he’s kicking out, would it?”
She patted the young man’s shoulder. “Damn right. And look at this.” Mags showed him the inside and outside of the helmet on one of the suits. “Whoever made them figured out a way to communicate from inside.”
“Wouldn’t a suit that can block electricity block out radio waves, too?”
“Exactly. I’m guessing they have an analog system here. The piece on the inside converts the microphone signal to a pressure wave, which is picked up by the piece on the outside, and then sent as a radio signal.”
“So if you had a platoon of soldiers wearing these in combat, they could still talk to each other.”
“Mhm.” Mags admired the technology. “Throw them on top of this case so we can wheel the whole lot of them to the elevator.” She flipped through the rack quickly. “I just hope they made one in my size.”
In the elevator to the surface, Tarzi asked, “You said something about a promise?”
“I did. That octopus out there needs water to hatch her babies. And we’re going to give it to her.”
“What’s the plan then? We blow the tanks?”
“I’ve got enough explosives in the Queen Anne to do it. But we also need to turn on the water pumps from under the surface. Those tanks aren’t all the water on this rock. The eggheads had a whole system to clean the water for the tanks, not to mention their own personal use, and there’s a subterranean reservoir linked to those tanks. We need to open that door, open the tanks, pump the water out, and get the hell out before it drowns us.”
Meteor Mags: Omnibus Edition Page 21