Crystal Rebellion

by Doug J. Cooper

  The Cage controls were intuitive enough and Melody finished her instructions in a few minutes. “Godspeed,” she said as she made for the door. “I’ll be right down the hall.”

  As the doors closed behind her, Sid moved the chairs so they were side-by-side and facing the exit. Cheryl sat and he remained standing. “You practiced a lot more than me,” he said. “What’s your take on how we should do this?”

  “The steps are to find it, board it, then try to control it,” answered Cheryl, where “it” referred to the scout. “Let’s see if we can sense its presence.”

  Folding her hands in her lap, she placed her elbows on the armrests and stared straight ahead. In her mind’s eye, she pictured herself swooping over the Earth, looking and listening for hints of the ship.

  Then she sat upright and looked at Sid. “Criss will know someone is trying to break into the scout. Since he won’t know who I am, I’ll be tagged as a threat. He could kill me.”

  Sid didn’t speak for a moment, then he nodded. “Let me try.”

  “No, I’ll do it,” she said, annoyed by his response. It’s not the danger. It’s being killed by Criss.

  She slumped back in the chair, breathed in a steady rhythm, and imagined herself flying. When she did this on the scout, her thoughts would transform into a new reality and she would become an extension of the ship. Here, the brain interface system didn’t know what to do with her intent. In spite of her best efforts, she could not lift her sense of self out of her seat. Her concentration drifted and she refocused. When it drifted again she conceded the difficulty of maintaining a proper mental state when the equipment did not engage.

  She tried imagining she was in orbit and then pictured herself flying just above the treetops. She focused on her breathing. And when that didn’t work, she tried intensifying her concentration. In her mind’s eye, she flew faster and then slower, moved in straight lines and then zigzags.

  And none of it helped. “Can we take a break?” she said, rubbing her eyes after hours of sustained effort. “I need food. And caffeine.”

  Clem, on guard outside the Cage doors, directed them to a small commissary at the end of the hall. When they entered, Cheryl saw Melody sitting alone at a table along the far wall. Melody saw them and stood, then rose up on her toes with her hands clutched at her waist, head bobbing as she tried to lock eyes. Her face fell when Sid shook his head.

  After what turned into a lunch break, it was Sid’s turn in the chair. Cheryl used the ops panel this time, raising and lowering different amplifications, concentrations, and other parameters to see if she could fine-tune their way to success. Like her, Sid couldn’t conjure an inkling of a connection with the scout.

  At the end of the day, Melody and Clem followed them out to the street. After delivering the bad news to Melody about the need to return tomorrow, Cheryl and Sid rode back to Cheryl’s apartment. Sid spent the first half hour acting moody, then announced he was going for a run. She went to bed early, before he’d returned.

  They started again the next morning, and this time they both sat and worked together to sense the scout. They first used a coordinated approach, then tried working independently, visualizing different scenes aimed toward the same goal.

  When nothing happened, Sid moved the chairs around the room looking for a sweet spot of maximum signal strength. Then they tried adjusting the settings on the ops panel in a systematic fashion to be sure they’d tried every combination.

  Frustration grew as the hours passed. Then Sid—Cheryl couldn’t say why the comment even had relevance—suggested that she “just relax and let it happen.” He might as well have slapped her.

  Beyond the fact that the statement implied that their problems were her fault, the words themselves were a trigger phrase for her. She’d snuck out from her parents’ home when she was fourteen to meet James—eighteen and gorgeous. He’d started molesting her the moment they were alone and she’d fought him like a wildcat, knees and elbows swinging everywhere. Then he’d wrapped a huge hand around her neck and used those same words.

  Sitting in the cage, she flashed on a memory of the fear that had pierced through her as he’d leaned in for a kiss. Puke and liquor. His breath had smelled awful.

  And she remembered running home wondering how she would explain the bloom of ruby-colored blood on her blouse. She’d head-butted his face with her forehead, breaking his nose with a sickening crack.

  Standing up from her chair, she let the edge show in her voice. “I’m taking a break.”

  She nodded to Clem in the hallway, then made for the commissary. Get it together, Cheryl. The stakes are too high. She’d succeeded in life because of her intelligence, work ethic, and thick skin. She could shake this off, but she needed some time to do so.

  Melody stood as Cheryl entered the commissary. Her expression went from hopeful to crushed when Cheryl shook her head. After grabbing a cranberry muffin and coffee, she found herself at Melody’s table. “Mind if I sit?”

  Nodding, Melody motioned to the other chair. “Please.” She sat forward in her own seat, squaring her feet and lifting her back so her swollen belly rested on her legs. “Are you almost done?”

  “Sorry. We’re trying as hard as we can.” She pinched off a corner of her muffin and popped it in her mouth. The cranberries were tart and she washed the mouthful down with coffee. “What are you waiting to test?” she asked, more interested in a distraction than anything else. “Are you allowed to discuss it?”

  Melody turned and reached into a yellow satchel hooked over her chair. Turning back, she placed a cream-white doily on the table and straightened the edges for Cheryl, revealing an intricate lace weave about as big across as her open hand.

  Cheryl felt her attitude improving and attributed it to food raising her blood sugar levels. “What’s it do?”

  “It’s a live-mission interface.” She lifted the lace with one hand and set it on top of her head. “It gives the wearer much finer control over thought-enabled equipment. Fleet is less interested in that, though, than in using it as a connect amplifier for field agents in remote areas. There are still lots of places on Earth where web links are few and far between.”

  Savvy about technology development, Cheryl asked the all-important question, “Does it work?”

  Melody accessed her com and a display projected in front of her. “Put it on your head and I’ll show you something very cool.” She tapped and swiped, then looked up, smiling.

  Cheryl took the lace and set it on her head. Every nerve in her body came alive. “Oh my.”

  “I know, right?” said Melody. She tapped again. “Breathe steady. Let your eyes unfocus.”

  Having practiced just that for the last two days, Cheryl slid into a receptive state in a few breaths, and in her mind’s eye she found herself floating above the floor.

  “Use all of your senses to experience the web,” she heard Melody say. “Reach out and feel a feed. Use your tongue and taste a link. Seriously. We amp everything.”

  The web was alive all around Cheryl. While the presentation had muted colors and a stark simplicity, it was good enough for her to see the paths and channels of signals zipping every which way. She turned and sniffed at a yellow flow passing near her head. “It smells hot,” she said, smiling. “And I didn’t even know that was a scent.”

  A blue packet whizzed by with a high-pitched whistle. She tried to move using the same mental reflexes she’d developed in her sessions with Criss. After a few false starts, she managed to push herself in the direction of the Cage, and soon made enough progress to see Sid slumped in a chair with his eyes closed and legs stretched straight.

  Removing the lace from her head, she returned to the staid world of the Fleet commissary, with Melody sitting across the table. “This seems like a no-brainer. Did Fleet say why they’re dragging their feet? And no offense, but if they made you wait a year to use the Cage, they’re not that interested.”

  “Because my method uses hardware.”r />
  “What?”

  “The committee that sets the schedule for the Cage has a strong bias toward passive methods—those that don’t require the user to wear a device. An admiral actually told me that his people don’t wear beanies.”

  Cheryl’s foot started tapping on the floor as her mind raced. “Could we try this inside the Cage?”

  “Can I come?”

  “Sure.” Cheryl rose to her feet and waited for Melody to collect her things. Holding the lace up to the light, she noted the simple construction common to many prototypes. “This is very cool, indeed.”

  “Thanks.” Melody waddled toward the door and Cheryl followed. “After I finish with Fleet, I’m releasing a gaming version. That’s where the real money is.”

  Cheryl remained quiet but guessed that the Cage committee knew about her interest in gaming, and that too contributed to her low priority.

  Sid emerged from the Cage as they worked their way down the hall. He gave Cheryl a quizzical look.

  “Back,” she commanded him, pointing at the door.

  Clem watched from his station along the wall. “Is everything all right?” he asked, his question directed to Melody.

  Grinning, Melody nodded. “Things are looking good.”

  Chapter 31

  Stepping from the Cage, Sid nodded curtly to Clem in the hall, who glared back as if he were trying to drill a hole in Sid’s head.

  He’s aggressive toward me for making Melody unhappy. Something clicked and he looked at Clem again. I wonder if he’s the father?

  Melody and Cheryl marched down the hall in his direction, and Cheryl pointed to the door behind him. “Back,” she commanded.

  He’d chosen his words poorly earlier and instead of apologizing, he’d let them hang out there. She had a right to be upset.

  But they were here working as mission partners. He didn’t think for a moment this had anything to do with personal issues. Something big had her blood flowing, and anxious to learn what it was, he twirled on his heels and re-entered the Cage.

  He moved to the side and Cheryl walked past him and sat. The chairs were positioned side-by-side facing the door, and Melody plopped a yellow shoulder bag on the seat of the other.

  Putting one hand on her lower back, she looked at Sid. “Mind if I sit?”

  “Please.” He gestured toward the chair.

  She slumped down, pulling the shoulder bag up onto her lap in a precision move that she completed as her butt hit the seat. Digging around inside the bag, she pulled out what looked like a woven-wire cap. Cheryl confirmed Sid’s guess by placing it on her head.

  “I’m trying to locate something that doesn’t want to be found,” she said to Melody.

  Melody’s face fell. “Oh, that’s hard. Someone who doesn’t want to be found has lots of ways to hide.”

  “It’s a something, not a someone, and I’ve connected to it before, so I know exactly what I’m looking for.”

  “Okay,” Melody said, though Sid couldn’t detect confidence in her voice.

  Making a few precise motions, she launched a display and moved it so it floated within easy reach of her chair. Sid, who’d spent many frustrating hours with it over the last two days, recognized the display as the ops panel for the Cage.

  A tap and swipe later and she brought up a second display, this one oversized and crowded with a convoluted tangle of knobs and indicators. Sid presumed this was for the beanie. Standing behind Melody, he watched her adjust this and move that like she’d done it a thousand times. “Is this the invention you’ve been anxious to test?” he asked.

  “Yeah, but not so much test as refine.” She nodded toward the complex panel floating in front of her as she continued her fine-tuning. “I need to reduce this mess down to a few intuitive controls before Fleet will accept delivery. And to do that, I need to be in here pushing its limits to make sure I don’t sacrifice functionality as I simplify.”

  He still wasn’t sure what “it” was, but before he could ask, Melody turned to Cheryl. “Ready?”

  Cheryl answered by tilting her head toward Sid so he could see the beanie. “Melody made a power boost.” Placing her elbows on the armrests, she folded her hands in her lap and sagged into the chair. “Ready.”

  “You know what you want to do, so go for it,” Melody said to Cheryl. “I’m just sitting here watching.” As she spoke, she made tiny adjustments to a couple of knobs on the control panel.

  Cheryl sat still for few seconds. “Sid, I think I have something.” Her elbows started twitching.

  “Why is she moving?” Sid asked Melody. When using Criss’s thought reader, they remained motionless in their chairs.

  “She’s fine,” Melody sounded unperturbed, though she tweaked a couple of knobs. “This is normal.”

  Cheryl’s hips thrust up like the seat was on fire. Disconcerted, Sid intervened. “Turn it off, Melody. Now.”

  “Okay. Geez.” She reached out, lifted the beanie from Cheryl’s head, and draped it on the armrest. “There.”

  “Hey.” Cheryl sat up and looked at Melody. “I was right there. Why’d you do that?”

  “Talk to him.” Melody jerked a thumb over her shoulder. Then, struggling to stand, she said, “Junior is sitting on my bladder and I have to pee. You two figure out what you want and I’ll be right back.”

  “Why’d you stop me?” Cheryl asked as the door shut behind Melody.

  “You were flopping in your seat like you were possessed.”

  “Really? I was so focused I didn’t notice.” She swiveled in the chair to face him. “I found the scout immediately and was trying to get inside. I could circle it okay, but whenever I approached, its defenses would activate.” After walking him through the details, she said, “It was scary at first, but I could’ve made it with more time.”

  That Criss had raised the scout’s defenses and scared her played to Sid’s base instincts. Leading into danger was his department, at least in his mind. He also thought Cheryl had a technological skill set that made her a better match for working with Melody in the Cage while he was under and looking for the scout.

  Moving around to the front of the chair, he motioned for her to stand. “It’s my turn.”

  “No way.”

  “Up.” He motioned again. “You’ve tried it. Now let me.”

  “Hey, you interrupted my turn.”

  “We’ve been taking turns since we got here. You just went. I get to go.”

  Melody returned at that point and offered an observation. “You two bicker like lovers.”

  Cheryl rose from the seat. “Sid’s going to take a turn.”

  Sid sat and picked up the beanie. “So having people flop about is normal?”

  “About twenty percent of our users move a small amount.” Melody looked at Cheryl with a sheepish expression. “I guess Fleet isn’t excited about that, either.”

  Sid placed the beanie on his head, sat back, and exhaled as he opened his mind.

  “Here you go,” said Melody.

  Sid’s consciousness flipped into a different world. Relative to Criss’s thought-immersion technology, this virtual realm had a two-dimensional presentation with washed-out colors. But he could recognize everything and, in his mind’s eye, he could move about at will.

  Guiding himself to cloud level, he circled the globe in great loops. On his fourth go-round, he found the scout. Presented as a white-gray silhouette with dull blue highlights, the craft sat underwater east of Boston and south of Nova Scotia on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean.

  “I found it,” he reported back to Cheryl. The image blurred when he spoke, so he stopped talking and studied the craft. There wasn’t much to see in the minimal rendering, though. The nuances discernable inside Criss’s thought-reading world were absent in this simple presentation.

  More by reflex than conscious action, he shifted his decision-making so his gut instincts had a greater say in whatever happened next. Keep going. He approached the craft in slow, deliberate
steps.

  The blue highlights around the scout changed to magenta and Sid stopped. Like Cheryl, he interpreted this as the raising of defenses. But nothing else happened, and his instincts urged him forward.

  When the magenta lights became red, he didn’t stop. Scrambling into the scout, he dashed down a passageway, onto the bridge, and lurched for the ops bench at the front.

  He swiped the bench surface to access the nav, but it didn’t respond. And for an awkward moment, his skin prickled as he imagined Criss preparing to strike. He allowed himself the fantasy for a heartbeat and then tried again.

  This time he pictured himself taking large, theatrical actions. An exaggerated tap on the ops panel caused the display to open. Swipe. Tap. With big, expressive moves, he accessed the nav, inserted a flight path, and signaled for execution.

  The scout shuddered and rose from the ocean floor. Sid grinned when it broke the surface, water spilling from its cloaked surfaces, and began to climb into the sky. Lifting the beanie from his head, he paused to reorient his thinking to the Cage. Then he shared the news with Cheryl in a whisper. “It’ll be waiting for us at the lodge.”

  Cheryl chirped with excitement and began readying for departure.

  With half a week left in her time slot and excellent user data from Sid and Cheryl’s session already recorded, Melody danced around the Cage, fist-pumping the air as she twirled.

  Sid moved to the door but Cheryl held back. “Can you fix it so people don’t move when they’re using your gear? I see that as the big hurdle to your success.”

  “I think so.” Melody stopped dancing. “I’ll lose some sensitivity, but I’m pretty sure it’s a matter of backing off on a few of the channels. Now that I’m here,” she swooped her arms to indicate the Cage, “I should be able to find the right balance by this afternoon.”

  Cheryl nodded. “How is it going getting investors to commit?”

  Melody’s eyebrows leveled as she transformed from euphoric to thoughtful. “I have a big vision, but getting there is harder than I thought it would be.” She told Cheryl the amount of money she was trying to raise to launch her company.