Synchronicity Trilogy Omnibus

by Michael McCloskey

  “Self-repairing?”

  “Yes. Somewhat eerie though, given that the thing was ‘dead’. How can it repair itself in that condition?”

  Feng nodded. “It may have repaired more than its armor,” he said.

  “What? Well it failed. You felt the tremor? The thing exploded and took the whole lab with it! Some error caused by damage?”

  “It destroyed itself,” Feng said. “Just look at what we were learning from it. It was probably designed to destroy itself if captured.”

  “Then why didn’t it explode earlier? You mean it actually waited to get to the lab?”

  “Maybe the dogs’ charge disabled the mechanism. Either we triggered it by accident, or it repaired itself then self-destructed.”

  “Repaired itself so it could explode. I suppose it could happen. Stranger things have happened, though not many.”

  “How was the device able to take such punishment?” asked Feng. “Any idea what the armor is made of?”

  Sheng shook his head. “More mysteries. The armor isn’t very strong at all. Only a little stronger than the front weave of a dian chuen.”

  “It must be a material that starts out incredibly strong until it has accumulated many fractures, like a plastic that gets weaker as it’s bent many times,” Feng said.

  Sheng tilted his head. “That’s one possibility,” he said, in a manner which convinced Feng that he didn’t believe it.

  “Yes?” Feng prompted.

  “I think it becomes incredibly strong only when it needs to be,” Sheng said. “Perhaps at great energy expenditure. But that’s just a guess. We’re checking its conductive properties to see if electrical current changes its most outward physical characteristics. But with the lab in a shambles, all we have are the support rooms to work in.”

  “A fleet is forming. We’ll have more facilities soon,” Feng asserted.

  “I hope so. Feng, right now we don’t even know how it moved. The arms didn’t push off of things. Yet it was so fast.”

  “Deadly fast,” Feng agreed.

  ***

  The next day, Feng lay on his bunk. He’d exhausted himself working on his new duties. He finally took a break, realizing that he needed to rest for a moment before continuing. His thought drifted to his previous life, and inevitably, to Xinmei.

  He’d found the girl so captivating and yet frustrating to deal with. They were classic yin and yang, he always direct, always pursuing her and never wavering, while she sidestepped and resisted without resisting, flowing around his every willful charge forward. He still wondered... had he caught her at all? He had told himself she was his as he left for his training. She had agreed to be his. But now as he replayed the conversation in his head, her assurances had started to sound more like empty words to deflect him rather than an ironclad promise.

  The more he thought about it, the more he realized that Xinmei might not wait for him at all. The thought didn’t anger him, though he felt stymied again. It saddened him. Then he realized he had to do anything he could to make sure he was always the one pursuing her. If he never flagged, and made himself into a successful officer, then she would acquiesce to him in the end. It was only logical.

  And though Xinmei was indirect, and a free spirit, she was also smart, and thus in the end she would choose him as long as he gave her no reason to reject him.

  He strode purposefully to the communications room, where his link told him Lieutenant Wenbo was working.

  The room was small, filled with specialized equipment which Feng didn’t recognize. He hadn’t much training in communications gear or operations, thought he assumed most of it was run through a PV interface just like everything else aboard the ship.

  “Hello. I came to ask you a favor,” Feng said.

  “For the hero of our divine robotic corps? Anything!” Wenbo said.

  “It’s my girlfriend. She’s out of contact. Is there any way—”

  “Stop there. These security measures are very serious. They’re in place for a good reason.”

  “Of course. I know,” Feng said abashedly.

  Wenbo winked. “Good. Then you get back to planning and give me some time to work on it.”

  Feng smiled.

  “Thanks!”

  “Don’t thank me. It may take a while,” he said.

  “You have time. We have millions of kilometers to go,” Feng said.

  ***

  Half a day later, Feng awoke to a headache. He lifted his throbbing head in his bunk and recent events came rushing back into his awareness. He opened a link to Sheng.

  “Well, it’s a good thing you got some sleep. You looked like you were about to fall over,” Sheng said.

  “What did I miss?” asked Feng.

  Sheng thought for a second. “Well, I’ve heard news about the alien thing. We’ve been studying the brain we took out of the shell before it exploded,” he said.

  “Oh good. The brain wasn’t destroyed in the explosion, then.”

  “Yes. We took it out to a different location. It has eight identical lobes,” said Sheng. “It’s tough. The level of interconnection is amazing. Many times denser than our brains. This thing was smarter than we are, Feng.”

  Feng frowned. “It doesn’t look so smart anymore. What do you mean, it’s tough? It’s just a brain, you said.”

  “It’s physically very stiff. Very strong. I mean not in a muscular way. It’s just made of a strong, rubbery material. Our own brains are closer to mush compared to this. I think it’s because the thing is so fast. Its brain has to be more resistant to sudden acceleration.”

  “No matter, as long as a bullet or a laser can still go through it,” Feng said.

  “Their technology is superior,” Sheng said. “And now we learn they’re smarter. What chance do we have? We should be sending the diplomatic corps, not the space force.”

  “We killed this one, didn’t we? If they’re so powerful, where is their space fleet? Where are their weapons? Their robots?”

  “Maybe this is just the scout. Maybe they’re coming.”

  Feng snorted.

  “I’m not just giving up. Keep learning from it. We’ll figure out its secrets.”

  “At this point, it’s like a primitive mongol nomad trying to figure out a Yongshan.”

  “Or a monkey trying to control an astronaut?”

  “What?”

  “Never mind.”

  Feng disconnected. He slid out of his bunk, grabbed a dose of caffeine and went to the private world of his PV to catch up with his work. He was disappointed to learn the engineers on the station remembered little of the spinners.

  Feng’s rank allowed him access to the information they’d obtained from the engineers. He could see their dossiers and watch footage of the interrogations. He watched just enough to see the frustrating truth that somehow their memories had been suppressed.

  There were some notes added to the investigation, that mentioned the ship’s memory had also been censored of many details of the spinners’ presence.

  He saw one thread in the report, detailing a source of data that had survived the cleansing. He opened a connection to the lieutenant who had overseen the interrogation of the engineers.

  “I see here we recovered a small cache of information from before the suits were worn by everyone,” Feng said.

  “Yes sir, one of the engineers had written some interesting things down, even though his memory was suppressed after that. The spinners have managed to learn a lot about human brains, apparently.”

  “How is it this information survived where we seem to have lost everything else?”

  “He kept a sort of diary. It was stored on an archaic heirloom, off the network. So it never got erased.”

  “Give me the summary,” Feng said.

  “Yes sir. He describes the creature’s arrival. Says it took over in short order. No one was harmed, though some security machines were disabled.”

  “How did it arrive?”

  �
�A regular shuttle.”

  “We need to trace that. Okay, what else?”

  “The creature described a new system of ranking everyone by intellect. The engineers were to be ranked and rewarded by achievements of tactical and strategic prowess. Those of the highest skill would be allowed to reproduce. It is basically a kind of forced eugenics program. It sounds like it was trying to form a new society centered around making everyone smarter.”

  “Well obviously it didn’t have time to get very far. Sounds like a slow process.”

  “Well, it also mentioned the mass conversion of the population into cybernetic creatures like the spinner itself,” the lieutenant said.

  “I should study this diary but I may not have time. Was there anything else of use?” Feng asked.

  “I’ll send you the data, sir. The man who wrote didn’t know how many spinners there are, but he heard something that made him think the spinners aren’t all cooperating with each other. Two of them are competing with each other. Their ranks are too close or something. Kind of like a second in command gunning for the top one’s position.”

  Feng grunted. If the spinners’ team was fragmented, then all the better. The Divine Space Force needed all the advantages it could get.

  ***

  Wenbo sent Feng a message a few hours later.

  “I’d like to say I succeeded, but the truth is, somehow Xinmei already sent you a message in secret that we hadn’t noticed. I assume you will have the key to open it, so I’ve simply passed it along to you. I’ll be more alert to subtle drops from her in the future. Don’t worry, I won’t say anything about it.”

  “Thanks,” Feng said.

  “Anything for the hero,” Wenbo said teasingly.

  I should have known, Feng thought. I should have checked myself for something hidden away. I’ve been very focused on my work. It was only luck that Wenbo is a trusted friend.

  Feng dropped the connection and examined the file. He opened it with a secret code he’d shared with Xinmei in college.

  Feng,

  You know me. I couldn’t resist sending you a message even though I’m not supposed to.

  I’ve been inserted into the slave trade as a spy. I did it because I wanted to be as brave and dutiful as you are. I won’t be able to communicate much until I get back. I’m still promised to you.

  I’m proud of you Feng, and I hope you’re proud of me, too. Love, Xinmei.

  Feng felt concern and then pride. Xinmei wouldn’t be outdone, he thought. She had a competitive streak as strong as her impulse to get into things where she didn’t belong. He loved her for both.

  Eight

  Finally Mr. Adrastus returned. This time, Xinmei greeted him immediately.

  “Welcome back,” she said.

  “Thanks,” he said. Xinmei helped him remove his gear.

  “Would you like massage? The gear is heavy.”

  “Ah, uhm, sure.”

  Xinmei pointed to one side of the room. She walked ahead of him and touched a panel. A white massage cot slid out from the mirrored wall.

  Mr. Adrastus pulled off the rest of his gear and left it where it fell. He collapsed onto the white surface and immediately Xinmei’s hands began working on his back.

  “How it go today?” she asked after a minute.

  “Not good at first. But some good things came up later,” he said. “Some weird things.”

  “What is weird? I mean… what things?”

  “I found a strange place today. A place I wasn’t supposed to find. Or… maybe a place I was supposed to find, I’m not sure.”

  “What place?”

  “I don’t really know. It’s a big hangar with some kind of spacecraft, or missile or something. You haven’t heard anything?”

  “No.”

  But I’m intrigued. Good thing I was able to disable the helmet’s device!

  “You may have been there and forgotten. I noticed that some of the people coming out of there had forgotten what they’d seen. Or pretended to anyway.”

  I haven’t been anywhere on the station, really. I’ve been trapped here, of course.

  “How is that?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. Could be some gas or something. A security measure, maybe... Well they may come for me anytime now. I wasn’t supposed to be there.”

  Xinmei kept massaging his shoulders. She decided to try some flattery and see how he responded.

  “So you sneak around like spy? Very brave.”

  “Oh, not really,” he said.

  “You going to find out what the thing is… the missile?”

  “I hope so.”

  “How you find out what it is?”

  “Hrm, I haven’t gotten that far yet. I only do it because I think that’s what VG expects of me,” he said. “I think this whole thing is a test, and I’m trying to get to the bottom of it.”

  “I sure you right,” she said. “You are very smart. Must be, to come here.”

  “Thanks.”

  Xinmei finished the massage without any more questions. She’d already asked a lot, but she thought it would be normal for a person trapped alone all day to be talkative.

  Mr. Adrastus got up and went into the bathroom to get ready for sleep. Xinmei prepared her yin xing ji to hack into his link while he slept. She wanted to find out what he’d learned. His link memory might even have pictures of the device, or documents related to it that she could send along.

  “Goddamn!” he yelled. Xinmei jumped. She hadn’t even started yet! Had he detected something?

  She hurried to the doorway of the bedroom.

  “What wrong?” she asked.

  “Argh, my… toe,” he said. “Ah, nothing, I smashed the hell out of my toe, that’s all, no problem.”

  “It is broken?”

  “No. No, it’s fine, thank you. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Yes, good night.”

  Xinmei turned and walked out. Xinmei released her breath. Her first reaction had been to assume she’d somehow miscalculated. But she hadn’t revealed herself. Everything was fine. She resumed her hacking. What Mr. Adrastus knew, China had to know.

  ***

  Xinmei and Feng danced on the wide wooden platform of the university event hall. Xinmei could feel the excitement of the evening. She couldn’t wait to win the contest again.

  Her feet started to run into each other. Then her legs weren’t working right. She tried to dance, but it wasn’t happening. She couldn’t move correctly.

  Feng looked at her strangely.

  “I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” she told him.

  “I don’t care if you can’t dance,” he said angrily. “It’s that man! I hate him.”

  “What man?” Xinmei said.

  Feng turned away.

  “What’s wrong? What’s wrong, Feng?”

  Xinmei backed up into someone. It was Mr. Adrastus.

  “Dance with me!” he said in Chinese with a horrible accent. He swayed clumsily. He looked drunk. He pawed at her.

  “Go away! I’m dancing with Feng tonight!” she told him. But he wouldn’t leave her alone.

  Feng shot them another poisonous look. Now he was talking to two other girls in beautiful dance dresses. They were pulling him off to dance with them.

  “Feng!” she cried. The women laughed. Everyone was laughing at her.

  “You’ve lost him now. Look at your new man! The big nose. He’s your boyfriend now!” a nearby girl said.

  Xinmei bolted awake. She almost fell off her narrow cot in the main room. The lights were dim. Her link chronometer said 4:45 AM station time. Mr. Adrastus was no doubt still asleep.

  She suddenly felt very alone. How could she have accepted this assignment? She rolled over and buried her head in the pillow.

  Feng. I will see you again. I must see you again.

  ***

  Xinmei received a hidden instruction module in a message disguised as a reminder for changes in coffee preparation for her ‘guest
’ Mr. Adrastus. Her yin xing ji immediately unpackaged the secret message and made it available for her to read.

  A drug packet has been placed inside one of the couch cushions in the central room.

  Add the drug to his food in the evening. It will require thirty minutes to take full effect. The recipient will become sluggish and his speech will be slurred. His memory for real events should be disabled, but he will remember the artificial input. Connect through his link. Tell him it is for a sensory empath program, to heighten the experience. Then simply run the program we’ve sent you.

  Xinmei frowned. She didn’t relish the idea of masquerading as this Westerner’s sex partner, but at least she wouldn’t have to really become his lover.

  She padded into the kitchenette with the tiny drug packet in her palm. What to put it in? Xinmei surveyed the food inside the refrigerator.

  The yogurt, she decided. It seemed to be a favorite of his so far. She added the packet into the yogurt and mixed it around.

  Mr. Adrastus had staggered into the room and retreated into the bathroom without uttering a word. Xinmei felt that something must have disturbed him. She wondered if he’d learned something important. She heard the shower start up.

  Maybe this is a bad time? But how can I know to pick the right time? Besides, I’ve already laced the yogurt.

  Once he had been in the shower for about five minutes, Xinmei took the yogurt and a cold sandwich and set it on a plate next to his bed. Then she retreated back into the kitchen.

  Mr. Adrastus came out and went into his room. Xinmei tried to be patient. She went into the bathroom and cleaned up the towels and the shower.

  Finally she checked and saw that he’d eaten some of the food. She started a timer in her link and strode about nervously waiting for the drug to take effect.

  Xinmei thought of Feng. The Westerner was handsome in his own way, but Xinmei wanted him to leave. She wished that Feng could come visit her in this luxurious room, that they could relax and exchange pleasant talk as they sometimes used to on the summer weekends in Beijing.