Netherspace

by Andrew Lane

  The simulity process had first come to humanity courtesy of a cyclist, a punctured tyre and an Eridani accompanied by six GalDiv guards. The punctured tyre had been exchanged for 173 ceramic-like yellow cubes, each the size of a matchbox. As usual the guards issued a receipt and took the objects away. If they were found to be valuable, the cyclist would get a reward. The floating Arc de Triomphe and the metal-excluding force field that still enclosed the Gaylord Convention Centre in what was then Maryland, USA, but which was now part of the Eastern Seaboard State, were reminders that alien technology was best left to grown-ups.

  It took six months, three happy accidents in the laboratory and the destruction of three of the ceramic-like cubes to discover what they could do. As opposed to what they were meant to do, which, until humans learned to converse with the Eridani, the scientists had no way of knowing for sure.

  When connected to both an AI and a human brain the Eridani cubes enabled humans to process vast amounts of information in a short time; somehow they speeded up the brain’s processes without doing any harm. They also allowed humans to become part of a simulation, an immersive shared virtual reality that was logical and completely real to the user. Several humans could inhabit an identical simulation – and, since the cubes allowed an individual to experience another’s deeply personal memory, users bonded whether they wanted to or not.

  In practice the Eridani cubes were often used to brief special forces teams at short notice for specific missions. Official Assassins also found them useful. Kara had used a cube several times and had come to enjoy it. No matter how fraught the simulation, an uncharted part of her brain would murmur, “Not to worry, you’ll get out of this alive.”

  “It’s standard briefing procedure,” Greenaway told Marc as he and Kara were strapped into their seats. “Accelerated learning. It’ll help you work better together.”

  A moment’s absolute stillness, a flash of green light and Kara was elsewhere – she was someone else, now long dead. And also melded with Marc Keislack.

  ~ We have to get out. ~ He’s more concerned for her safety than he is for the mission.

  ~ We stay. ~

  ~ I promised I’d keep you safe. ~

  She should have known. He sees himself as the dominant one in the relationship. ~ My decision. Fuck off if you want. ~ He smells of sweat, earth and adrenalin; sour. Or is it fear? Fear for her or for him?

  ~ Any moment we’ll be cut off. ~ The situation is, as they say, fluid. If they are surrounded, enemy sensors will find them within minutes. This opponent is particularly unpleasant, a religious enemy that likes to play with its prisoners.

  It is a dark hollow on a damp hillside.

  Her eye is clamped to the scope. ~ I have him. ~

  ~ You hope. ~ His hand closes around the rifle’s barrel.

  A shell explodes fifty metres away: semi-smart submunitions whining through the air. She barely notices, only concerned by the target and his hand on her rifle. She shakes it off.

  ~ Fuck off! ~ She dimly hears him make a slight grunting sound as her finger takes up the first pressure. Nothing matters except her target. The rifle recoils against her shoulder. Five hundred metres away the enemy commander’s chest explodes. ~ Confirm kill. ~

  Silence.

  She’s aware of his body pressing against her hips. For some reason her mind swings back to the first time they made love. She twists around, aware that the enemy will be searching, their orders not to kill the sniper but to capture and play with him. Or her.

  She sees that he has been hit. One of the heat-seeking submunitions. His right thigh is wet with blood. She doubts he can crawl, let alone walk. His eyes are bright and fixed on hers.

  ~ Go, ~ he says, pain splintering his voice. ~ Leave me.~

  ~ Can’t, ~ she says briefly, her hand automatically reaching for a pain-suppressant, tourniquet and energy-boost shot.

  ~ Bone’s smashed. ~ Then he sighs as the drug takes effect.

  ~ Splint. ~ They both carry an inflatable one.

  ~ Slow you down. Go. ~

  She ignores him, fumbling in a pouch for the splint, then glances up in alarm, instinctively knowing what he’s about to do.

  ~ Leave the rifle, ~ he says and bites on the official suicide pill. You do not want to be captured by an enemy that plays with its prisoners. Unsaid – there’s not time, the pill acts quickly – but understood by both: This way you’re mine forever.

  Oh, you stupid, stupid man, she thinks. But also aware that she no longer has to make the hardest of decisions. And then: Did he guess I planned to ask for a replacement? Did he know I intended to have sex with someone else? And from nowhere comes the memory of her first live ambush, feeling more alive than ever before, hearing a faint scritch-scritch-scritch near her and looking down, realising her senses are so acute she can hear wood ants walking on dried leaves.

  She takes his dog-tags, touches the cooling face once and begins the slow crawl back to safety. Leave the rifle, he’d said, hoping the enemy will think he was a lone sniper, as if he can save her even when he’s dead. Hope, not reality. The enemy knows snipers work as a pair.

  * * *

  He reads the letter left by his parents, the letter explaining that the house is sold, they have gone off-world and telling him not to follow. He is sixteen and just released from juvenile prison. No wonder there was no one to meet him. His family are light-years away.

  Kara feels his laughter. Good riddance. Don’t write.

  They’d often talked about off-world. He’d assumed he’d go with them. Wasn’t he the apple of his mother’s eye, always to be forgiven? The carrier of his father’s genes? He wonders idly what was the final straw: selling his mother’s jewellery perhaps?

  What he wants is what he needs. Other people matter if they can help, are worthless if they can’t, are enemies if they won’t. They are there to be used. He has always felt this way while knowing that others – the herd – see life differently. Maybe life is different in the Out. He’ll find out.

  First shock: the Out isn’t primitive, at least not in England. It’s very different, though. No personal chips. No AIs. It’s here he develops an aversion to computers. Out There – the Wild – is still high-tech, though. It just doesn’t like being governed by corporations or EarthCent. Hence the free spacers.

  ~ My family’s on Epsilon Seven, ~ he tells one.

  ~ That colony failed. ~

  ~ I get vidcards from them. ~

  ~ Show me… Sorry, kid. That’s Gamma Three, not Epsilon Seven. I recognise those things that look like trees. You must have got it wrong. ~

  ~ Who cares? ~ He shrugs. ~ I ain’t goin’ there. ~

  Kara is in his head when Marc gets interested in art and leaves the Out. She experiences his obsession, understands it stops him thinking about things that hurt, appreciates the way that he can use art to distance himself from others. Kara understands his secret fear: that people will find out his family abandoned him – and why. She is there when he begins simulated military training, acting as his squad leader in a firefight that is absolutely real even though she knows it isn’t. Marc behaves as if it’s life or death. Kara understands her initial, instinctive dislike for him. She did not want to empathise with him. They are too similar. Now she has no choice.

  * * *

  Kara’s mind went blank as hands began to ease the helmet from her head. White-gowned technicians carefully avoided any eye contact as they began releasing the restraints that had kept Kara and Marc tight in their padded chairs. People coming out of simulity could be a little sensitive for a few minutes. Raw. Even the briefest of glances from a stranger could be construed as an insult or a declaration of love. The technicians finished and moved away.

  Marc looked at her and made a face. “So that’s what you do for a living.”

  “Did,” she corrected, and yawned. She could hear her avatar complaining about the sudden memory load. Sod it. It was customary to sleep for an hour after a session but Greenaway had war
ned them that they would be meeting the staff of the SUT they’d be joining – and one other member of the team about whom he’d been annoyingly vague. “A kind of a diplomat,” was all he’d said.

  “Hornets?” Marc asked. “That’s brilliant.”

  So he’d seen her last assignment. “Better than cockroaches.” The artwork that had impressed Greenaway, or so the man had said.

  Marc grinned. “Maybe I’ll use hornets myself, next time.” Then, more carefully: “What if he hadn’t taken the pill? Your spotter. The ex-lover.”

  “He thought I’d stay with him or try to save us both.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  Kara stared at him for a moment. “You’re a borderline psychopath?”

  “Apparently. Not telling me anything I didn’t already suspect, but it’s nice to have the label. And now with added military training. So?”

  “You tell me.”

  “You’d have shot him,” Marc said nervously, because he’d learned enough about Kara to know when he would be making her uncomfortable. “Probably. Because no point in you both dying. Because the enemy would have tortured him before killing him. Because he had sensitive, tactical information. That’s why he took the pill. To save you the pain of killing him.” He climbed out of the chair and stretched. “I’m trying not to think how unutterably strange this is,” he said, sounding more like his old self. “That sim fire-fight we were in together. I owe you an apology.”

  “It’s not the worst that ever happened,” Kara said, thankful that her former lover was no longer centre-stage. There was a lingering taste of imagined blood in her mouth from when sim-Marc Keislack had head-butted her over a disagreement about tactics. If a simulity produces physical results, is it still imaginary? If a tree falls in a forest, does anybody give a damn? “Not as if it got you anywhere.”

  “You saw my childhood,” he said diffidently.

  “Your secrets are safe with me – and I bloody hope mine are with you. Anyway, it was more your mid-teens.”

  “I have no idea why I don’t feel like other people,” he said levelly, not looking at her.

  “Does it bother you?”

  “Sometimes yes,” he admitted. “Mostly no.”

  “Fuck. You’re only borderline. I’d hoped for the full psycho.”

  He grinned again and stretched. “I’m hungry.”

  After the sharing of their minds Kara now knew him as imaginative and surprisingly ruthless, a man who would enjoy combat and, although uncomfortable with taking orders, would co-operate with others until he decided his life was in danger. At that point he would make his own decisions. Were all artists psychopaths, or was it just him? Thanks to the simulity he would, if necessary, remember how to handle all standard weaponry; understand military tactics at platoon level; know how to navigate and survive – broadly speaking – on an alien world; be competent at first aid; and know what to do in a space utility transport emergency. When, if, he needed this knowledge he’d be surprised by how naturally it came to him; and that the simulity had also imparted muscle-memory, so his reactions would be immediate and fluent. For her part Kara had been brought up to date with all the latest military hardware; now knew how to navigate in space; how to atmosphere-land an SUT using updown-field generators or rockets; knew all there was to know about the Gliese, Eridani and Cancri, which wasn’t a whole lot. It felt as if her brain was swollen with far more information than she could access. Kara suspected that other knowledge had been implanted that would surface when needed and give her confusing dreams in the meantime. She decided not to raise the subject with Marc. He wasn’t used to the simulity process, and he might object to having his head stuffed full of information that he knew nothing about. Given what she now knew about his personality, Kara wasn’t sure how violently he would react.

  “There’ll be a canteen somewhere,” she said. “But you had lunch only a couple of hours ago. You’re not really hungry. The simulation fooled your body.”

  “The other way round would be a good way to lose weight,” he mused. “Use the simulity to make you think you’ve just eaten, and aren’t hungry.” He glanced at Kara. “Not that you need to lose weight. In fact, a bit more couldn’t hurt.”

  “No canteen,” a technician interrupted. “You’re due in Director Greenaway’s office five minutes ago. You’ll get fed there. And by the way, Mr Keislack: were you told about crossover emotions?”

  “About what?”

  “You and Ms Jones effectively exchanged part of your minds. The other’s emotions, attitudes, may remain with you for a while. Nothing to worry about, the effect will go away. It’s a bit like a ghost in your head.”

  “How will I know?” He immediately realised how stupid the question sounded. He could already sense the ghost-Kara – and she seemed to be amused.

  SEVENTEEN DAYS EARLIER

  Time was difficult to estimate when the length of the Cancri day was different from that of Earth. AIs wouldn’t have helped either, even if the Pilgrims had been equipped with them – there was no wider AI mesh for anything to link into. All Tatia knew was that it was seventeen Cancri days after they had landed on the planet that the boy Pablo had a flashback to his father being murdered and threw a stone at the Cancri guards. It missed but the slug-like rider pointed its weapon in Pablo’s direction. Three of the captives tried to shield him. Two others wanted to push him into the open, away from the protection of the buildings, where he could be killed without harming anyone else.

  The Pilgrims were not handling captivity well.

  The low, curved buildings had been just that and no more, built from what could have been either metal or stone and empty save for large above-ground containers that held water, Earth-fruit and vegetables. No matter how much the Pilgrims took of either, the containers remained full. After half a day they came to understand that new fruit and vegetables materialised in the bottom of a container, although no one saw it happen. Similarly the water containers were always full, although there was no input pipe or valve. The building’s interiors were cool in the day and warm at night, when outside temperatures rose to the mid-30s centigrade, or fell to zero. There was no obvious sign of air conditioning or heating, or of the source of the late-afternoon, permanent light inside the buildings.

  There was an argument amongst the Pilgrims whether one of the buildings – there were six of them, seven metres high by twenty across – should be used solely for washing or defecation. One of the SUT staff advised that excrement would be less of a risk exposed to the high-ultraviolet-rays-emitting sun – which most of the Pilgrims already knew. But they needed to have some involvement in how their lives were organised. Arguing about toilet facilities was as good a way as any.

  There was another discussion about who would represent the Pilgrims to the Cancri. But since it was impossible to communicate with their captors, and since anyone going close to them was liable to be killed, there were no volunteers.

  All they could do was wait and speculate on what the Cancri wanted. On the plus side, the Cancri had obviously studied humans, hence the water, fruit and vegetables. Which also meant they intended to keep the Pilgrims alive. However, any optimism was destroyed by the obvious question: kept alive for what?

  That left remembering Earth and wishing they were there; and choral singing, which inevitably made people cry. Underlying this, the bitter shame at having believed aliens were gods because they needed an authority to protect them from an increasingly weird universe. Humans desperate for answers will often believe anything that offers mental and emotional security – even that aliens are gods with a small ‘g’. Aliens with a vastly superior science that might as well be magic for all that humans understood it. Small ‘g’ gods without whom Earth and its colonies would wither and die. Did anyone understand their motives? No. Had they brought great benefit to humanity? Yes. Were they mystical? Some believed so, but for most of Earth the answer was no. Small ‘g’ gods it was then, who one day would teach humanity the
universe’s greatest secrets.

  Except they wouldn’t. The Cancri were merely vicious animals that killed for no apparent reason. Not even small ‘g’ gods. Only the enemy.

  Meanwhile the Pilgrims could explore: the Cancri showed no interest if Pilgrims walked away from the buildings. But the flat, stony ground vanished into a heat haze in every direction. There was a line of low hills to the north, at least twenty miles away, but no way of carrying water to get there.

  The Cancri space vehicle was still parked two hundred metres away, an elaborately curving construct the size of a naval destroyer. Every now and then one of the guards would trot towards it and go inside. Every now and then a Cancri would emerge and trot towards the six buildings. They may or may not have been the same Cancri. None of the Pilgrims, or the staff, tried to go near the Cancri SUT in which they had landed. Even if they got inside they would inevitably get close to a Cancri and that meant death.

  Human beings are quick at learning how to survive.

  On the third day of captivity a familiar smell announced a minor miracle. At the bottom of each food container roast meat had materialised. A leg of lamb here, a shoulder of pork there, a prime rib of beef, and even a whole poached salmon.

  It was welcomed as a sign that the Cancri cared. Several Pilgrims from the group who had abandoned their religion abruptly picked it back up again – slightly dusty, but still usable.

  The next thing the Cancri did showed that they didn’t care at all.

  * * *

  Kara explained how Eridani cubes worked as she and Marc walked to the elevator, interested to see his reaction.

  “That doesn’t sound right,” he said, more thoughtfully than she had expected.

  “Why?” Perhaps her ghost was teaching him patience.

  “It suggests we have something in common with them, like how our minds fundamentally work. But we don’t.”

  Kara flashed back to her brief touch of a Gliese mind and the utter alienness of it. “Marc, we don’t even know if the Eridani use them the same way,” she pointed out. “It may be that we discovered some utility the Eridani don’t know about, because their minds work so differently.” It was the first time she’d called him Marc.