But there was no blue sky, or starry night, visible through the thick armoured glass under our feet. Instead, there was a mass of dark red meat and sinew.
At that moment there was a loud roar and the whole cabin shook. Tukarra and I were flung, head-over-heels away from the window, bumping, and tumbling, over the two pairs of seats, to land with a thump against the back wall of the cabin.
Gravity seemed to be running away with itself. We couldn’t move our arms or legs. My head felt like it weighed a ton.
In an instant, the dark red fleshy mass, pressing against the windscreen, gave way to a view of the star filled heavens - rather more like the type of scenery we might have expected.
The rocket motor stopped firing, and a cloak of deathly quiet descended upon us.
But our exit from the rocket silo had not been a smooth one. Some of the tougher veins had clung on just long enough to send us into a spin.
With no one sat in those seats, to pilot the vessel, and no particular pre-programmed destination, there was nothing to correct the spin. Brilliant white sunlight, and sharp black shadows spiralled around us.
With each revolution, I could snatch a glance of the much larger spaceship we had been jettisoned from. Directly behind us, and rapidly receding into the distance, we had left a rough crater, in the skin of the ship, looking rather like an empty eye socket. A shower of what was almost certainly large spherical blobs of blood spewed out, in all directions, from the perimeter of the crater - where our rapid exit had severed a number of root-like arteries.
Although we felt much lighter now, the relentless spinning of the cabin held us against the back wall; and I managed to stand up, on the wall, with not too much difficulty.
I helped Tukarra onto her feet, but the seats and all the important control panels over our heads were out of reach.
Vitcha’s deep voice resonated through the cabin and took on an even darker tone, ‘Kleb, purge the atmosphere from the room. Let the air out slowly, very slowly. I want to see the son of Aleq Goreman die in agony.’
Kleb complied. From his position standing within the airlock, he first locked the inner bulkhead door, the door we could see his face through. There was a definitive, unforgiving, clunking noise and I could imagine a number of sturdy bolts moving between the door and its frame.
Looking beyond Kleb, through the tiny porthole, I could see an outer door swing open, revealing nothing but rapidly alternating light and darkness behind the robot.
Unaffected by the vacuum of space, Kleb carried out the second part of his task. He produced a small diamond tipped drill from a utility belt, and proceeded to make a tiny hole in the glass.
After about ten seconds of high pitched screeching, I could hear the faint but distinctive hiss of escaping air. Then a full size hologram of Vitcha Kesinko, dressed in white flowing robes, appeared before me. I presume he had chosen that representation so he could use his virtual hands to more effectively deliver the following, even more personal message.
‘Firstly, I need you to know that you have to die. On your graduation day, I think it was, your father confided in me he was going to provide a member of his family with the means to destroy all the technology he had ever created. I can’t allow that to happen. Aleq’s inventions keep me and everyone else in this godforsaken solar system alive these days.’
Tukarra shot me a quizzical look. I shrugged my shoulders. I had no idea what Vitcha was talking about. He had made it sound like I was a human time bomb. I tried to ask Vitcha exactly what he meant but he either could not, or did not wish to, elaborate.
‘Secondly,’ he continued. ‘I need you to die slowly and painfully, to satisfy my hunger for revenge, payback if you will, for the pain inflicted on myself by your father. I have suffered for the last thousand million years due to his clumsy, ham-fisted, surgery; surgery that turned out to be completely unnecessary because he did not tell me he had successfully perfected the teleportation system, based on solid Astracite, that you two have just used to get here.’
‘Your death will help me to put my hatred of your family behind me and also mark the dawn of a new era. I will become the supreme ruler over every Elite colony, as my children spread from world to world and from galaxy to galaxy.’
By now the thinning air was causing my skin to itch, like a thousand ants were crawling over my neck and shoulders. My legs were becoming weak, and my head and fingers ached.
I filled my lungs with as much air as I could and called out to Tukarra, ‘Our suits: Can’t our suits do anything to help us?’
Taking a deep breath at the end of every sentence she croaked back, ‘Sorry. They could only seal us inside them. They can’t make oxygen. We would suffocate. They know that.’
The hologram smiled as Vitcha said, ‘You could try pleading for mercy. I would enjoy that, but it won’t get you anywhere. I want you to die a slow painful death because your father didn’t.’
That left me wondering what he meant by his use of the word didn’t, but there were more pressing issues to worry about.
My chest hurt. I could hardly breath. I used my last good lungful of air to shout, ‘Your quarrel is with me, not with this girl. Please spare her life.’
‘That girl is already known to me. She has a dangerous mix of curiosity, perseverance, conscience and a resistance to my thought controls. Tukarra is determined to discover the truth and I am sure that, just as yourself, she would have no qualms shutting me down. Like you, she has to die, right here, right now.’
The shimmering hologram raised its virtual cotton clad arms for effect and continued, ‘The military back in your century tried to shut my starship programme down. I couldn’t let them do that. To make sure they couldn’t, I destroyed them all. In fact, I wiped out the whole of the human race, even those in the colonies on the Moon and Mars. I turned the very robots that protected the Earth against them.’
‘While you are dying, I shall explain the magnificence of my grand design for humankind. I haven’t had the chance to talk about it, to enunciate it like this, in a long time and, after millennia of silence, I have just realised how much I like the sound of my own voice.’
The room began to swim around me but Vitcha ranted on regardless, ‘My knowledge knows no bounds. I understand the workings of my universe from the very large to the very small.’
‘I invented the immensely powerful engines that have moved asteroids, pulled the Earth and Moon apart, and propel this ship. As I speak, those engines are allowing us to sail on the seas of dark matter that now bridge the void between our galaxy and another. We shall achieve light speed in just a few years time.’
Feeling dizzy from spinning motion sickness, and faint from lack of oxygen, Tukarra and I could no longer stand upright. We collapsed, allowing the centrifugal force caused by the tumbling cabin to lie us down, flat against the rear wall, once more.
Vitcha continued to sing his own praises, ‘At the other end of the scale, I invented a way to control billions of nanites, microscopic robots, driven by the power of my own mind. And through them, I have been able to create new forms of life to carry out my bidding, to grow the very fabric of this starship, and to sustain my brain within the Biological Quantum Computer prison cell conceived and built by your father.’
Tukarra sputtered through clenched teeth, ‘But the Elite, you need the Elite. You called them your “children.”’
For a brief moment, Vitcha mulled over whether or not he should honour what he considered a cheeky interruption from a condemned rebel, with a reply. His considered answer summed up his journey from loneliness to madness, and the increasing strength of his delivery served to emphasize just how far down that road he had gone.
‘I realised I could not leave this Solar System behind without help. So I created them. I am their history and their future. They worship me. I am their god.’
The words seemed to reverberate around the cabin for a while, after which he calmed right down to speak once again as the more rational,
but highly egocentric, scientist he really was.
‘Many, many, years after the dust settled on the Armageddon, I had brought about, I discovered that I could still communicate with Archive 239. Over time, I re-engineered the robotic life support systems, in that Archive, as a laboratory to produce the most perfect human forms imaginable.’
‘I called them “Elite” humans. I originally needed them to bring me building materials, but more recently they have also been providing me with a source of entertainment and food.’
‘Rhett, thanks to the Ether and your father’s invention of instantaneous, biological, massively distributed, quantum computing, I see this whole ship, the plants on Cerrina, and the prehensile tentacles that I can manifest in any of the recycling facilities across the Solar System, as extensions of my own body - or rather the body I used to have. Through them I can still enjoy the sensations of touch, taste and smell. I love my food to squirm and wriggle whilst I digest it. I can feel my victims, feel the vibrations of them screaming, as I slowly kill them. Its what has kept me amused, sane even, all these years.’
‘It has turned you into a monster,’ I added.
Ignoring my observation, Vitcha carried on, ‘It took me millions of years to genetically refine and educate my Elite enough to develop the practical skills and technologies that would bring them to me out here, to where I had been left to drift in space, orbiting the Sun; and that task was made all the more difficult due to the lack of natural resources left on Earth by your predecessors.’
The revolving view through the large windscreen was mesmerising. Whilst Vitcha was talking, it was impossible to resist looking back towards our point of origin, every time it passed by the window. It was during one such pass, I felt certain I saw something: a spray of red mist, and a tiny dart coming towards us at high speed. I wondered if another liberty boat had been launched. Had Vitcha expelled anyone else he had taken a dislike to? Or was someone coming to save us? Surely that was too much to hope for.
Vitcha droned on, seemingly unaware of what I had seen through the window.
‘I thought it a neat trick that I engineered my Elite to have human offspring. It would give them an ultimate goal to preserve mankind, and provide them with their own slave labour in the meantime.’
‘Now the Elite have finally left Earth behind, I thought I might have some fun with those slaves for myself. The few Scavengers who have taken refuge in the remaining cities around the world will find themselves overwhelmed by my robots. I am considering whether I might force them all to build a huge stone statue of my brain, or better still of my poor wife Paricianne, large enough to be seen from space when the Earth burns dry. I could build it over the last known position of Archive 238, where I had stored her genetic signature. You know, Archive 238 was lost to us, incinerated and crushed under a mile-wide lava flow.’
After a slight pause Vitcha came to a conclusion, ‘Yes, I imagine building a monument, in her memory, would keep me occupied for a few more millennia at least, until the Sun finally gets the better of our mother planet.’
A digital readout on a wall, now flashing red, showed the air pressure in the room was continuing to fall steadily, and it was getting harder for me to stay focussed. Nevertheless, I thought it better to keep Vitcha talking as long as I could.
‘What do you want with the people on Cerrina?’ I croaked, with my chest feeling as though it was on fire.
‘As we head off towards Andromeda, I expect my attention to detail in this galaxy will become harder to achieve. I will need a deputy. Someone, in my own image, to do my bidding in the Milky Way.’
‘What if they resist,’ gasped Tukarra, her skin looking decidedly marbled with blue veins now.
‘Never going to happen. Once a brain has been accepted by one of my plants, then ultra-fine tendrils are grown into it, woven right through it. I can then monitor and control every one of its neurons if I have to. I can filter and remove any hint of rebellion that might cross their mind. They will never be aware they even had such thoughts.’
‘True, there have been failures in the past, but I have learned from them. For example, my previous attempt to use the brain of the chief botanist was unsuccessful. For five years I groomed him, but eventually his immune response system managed to reject the botanical intrusions.’
‘Fortunately, as I speak, I believe I may have just found a new, more suitable, brain to replace his, one I do not expect to be rejected.’
*
On Cerrina, within the coils of roots wrapped around her, poor Suran was trembling, unable to open her eyes. She did not want to believe Khonen was dead.
Tukarra was also more than shocked and only able to stare at the soil in front of her, trying to avoid catching a glimpse of his headless body - that she knew would still be held upright in its place beside us.
My instinct for self-preservation kept me looking on, trying to find any weakness in our captor I could exploit.
A definite change in Eric’s behaviour was taking place. The central flower pod opened up, briefly displaying bright orange petals that pulsed rhythmically as if the flower was choking. Then its long stem wilted, and the huge bloom drooped down to release a long decayed head onto the ground in front of us. Its job done, the flower then shrivelled up, and after only a few seconds it withered away to nothing.
My attention was then drawn to the leaf that had taken Khonen’s head. It had started to weave around.
The leaf then reformed into a huge bud, its bulbous shape having become a permanent prison for the new head it contained. Then its long stem stretched up high in the air, to take the place of the now totally withered flower.
For a moment, the plant was still and a sickly silence fell throughout the Arboretum. The prehensile roots maintained their deadly grip on Suran, Tukarra, myself and the remaining men, women, and headless corpses around the enclosure. Those still able, looked around at each other, ashen faced, wondering what the plant’s next move was going to be.
*
Lying virtually paralysed from the lack of air, my other self was still listening to the ominous voice of Vitcha Kesinko.
‘Naturally, a few Elite were willing to help me by way of their own free will, for wealth, for power, for their survival, or for the promise of immortality. I have brought one of them here. He is now the resident mind in the body of that robot looking at you through the porthole. He chose immortality, the fool.’
‘I am getting tired of this conversation. See how I can control him.’
‘Kleb, increase the rate of venting.’
The robot punched his fist through the porthole glass, and the tiny background hiss became a roar. Loose papers, and Tukarra’s hair, started to flail about as essential air swirled around and past us.
Just at that moment, when I was beginning to think all was lost, the face of Kleb, the robot, abruptly disappeared from the window. There were a number of loud clanking noises. I saw fleeting views of other grey robot heads, flashing across the porthole. I saw a raised spanner. More bangs and clangs. There had to be a fight going on outside the locked door.
The thought, ‘Someone must be on our side,’ flashed across my mind.
‘They’re trying to save us,’ was the last thing I remember thinking as I finally passed out.
Chapter 29 – Android Minds
When I came to, I found myself firmly strapped into one of those four seats, which I had previously been unable to reach. Tukarra was similarly secured beside me, her head resting on my shoulder, strands of her hair drifting in front of my face. Two grey robots were stood over us and I could see the crumpled remains of Kleb, floating weightless, through the now wide open bulkhead door. The outer door was reassuringly shut, and the cabin pressure seemed back to normal.
Glaring sunlight was streaming steadily in through the windscreen, and I bit my lip when I noticed the rays of light being briefly eclipsed by that second liberty boat - now itself tumbling, out of control, and receding at high speed into the d
istance.
Tukarra opened her eyes. First she looked straight at me; and then she turned, squinting against the light, to focus on the outline of the two robots looking down at us.
We both had oxygen masks fitted over our mouths and, with each breath we drew, the pounding in our heads faded a little more and our skin began to regain some of its natural colour.
One of the robots wore a white hat with bands of black and gold trim around it. It was the hat of a ship’s captain. The robot spoke with a crude metallic sounding voice.
‘I know it will come as a shock for you, Rhett, but there is no easy way to say this. It’s me, Aleq, your father.’
I tore off my mask, stunned by this revelation.
‘What?’ I spluttered, that being the only word I could muster.
‘Vitcha brought me onto his starship in this form, just before you were frozen, to look after him, to maintain and fly the ship, to do the things he would have needed a physical body for.’
‘And you did what he asked of you?’ I blurted out in dismay.
‘Eventually, yes,’ the Captain robot replied. ‘For a million years, Vitcha kept my mind stored in this android body. In all that time, I was unable to move a limb or even speak. I was plagued by bad dreams and hallucinations; the walls seemed to be closing in around me; crushing me; merging me with a presence of evil, I imagined was stored alongside me. I would have done anything to break out of that nightmare of an existence. Therefore, when Vitcha offered me the job of Captain, I willingly took it.’
‘It turned out Vitcha had been waiting for “The Signal”, from the scout ship Quatinus 1; and when that signal finally came, confirming the conditions on New Earth were as we had all hoped, he released me. Thankfully, he left my thought processes and intellectual capabilities completely intact because he wanted to call upon my scientific expertise from time to time.’
Escaping the Sun Page 22