“So trolls are real and imaginary?”
“Exactly. And I’ve never seen anything that I thought deserved to be described as a troll as well as those Mud Men. They’re actual monsters.”
Aelfwyrd picked up one of the wires and began following it down the stairs. Charlie followed. The level below was apparently the real laboratory. The air smelled of formaldehyde. A loud bubbling sound filled their ears.
“But they’re not imaginary,” said Charlie.
There were at least ten dead or unconscious Mud Men encased in transparent bubbling tubes. One of them appeared to have cancerous or mutated growths on his neck and chest. There were three long silver operating tables. The walls were covered with boxes of notes and books. Charlie opened one of the books at random. The pages were crinkled and used, dirty, but blank.
“Your notes are gone.” Charlie stated.
“Mmm. The ones I wrote down, sure. But my subjects are still here. I can see the progression; maybe understand what I was trying to do.”
“You changed the Mud Men, like you did the people on Mars.”
“I think so. Maybe we needed them to be able to survive in our environment, or maybe there’s more to it. I don’t need the books. I’ll be able to simply read the corpses.”
Charlie walked up to one of the tubes. The Mud-Man inside of it seemed to be twitching. He couldn’t be sure if that was the effect of the bubbles, or if it meant there was still life in the patient.
Aelfwyrd walked up behind him. “That’s one of the early ones. You see, his skin is almost translucent. That would be how they look on their homeworld, before we edited them.”
“This is terrible. We’re playing at being Gods.”
“Says the man who changed human society.”
“I don’t remember any of-“
Charlie was cut off. He felt the needle slip into his arm.
He turned around. Aelfwyrd had backed away, but was still holding the empty syringe.
“Why?”
Aelfwyrd smiled nervously. As Charlie began to stumble, there was a look of relief on the doctor’s face.
9
Charlie woke up again. He lay on a silver metal laboratory table. His hands and legs were tied down with black leather straps. The back of his head was sore and his arm was throbbing from where the needle had broken the skin. He was bruised from fighting the Mud Men. He didn’t immediately see Aelfwyrd, but instead when he looked ahead he could see one of the Mud Men specimens floating inside of its tube.
The face was severe, but the arms rested gently in the fluid as the bubbles blew through them. The smaller bubbles clung to the flesh and slowly made their way up against the creature’s skin. It looked like a medieval vision of the Devil. It looked like death.
Doctor Aelfwyrd walked in. He was wearing a white surgical gown and plastic apron. His face was covered with goggles and a white surgical mask covered his mouth, but Charlie recognized him easily enough.
He sat down near Charlie’s head, took out a notebook and a pen. “Do you remember your name?”
“You know who I am, David.”
“I need to set up the control. Do you remember your name?”
Charlie clenched his teeth. “I’m Captain Charlie Daemon.”
“Is this reality?”
“I’ll answer your questions on one condition.”
“What’s that?”
“For every one I answer, you have to answer one.”
Aelfwyrd nodded. He removed his goggles and pulled his mask down. “What do you want to know, Charlie?”
“What the hell are you doing?”
“Ah. Well, you see I figured it out. It’s the robots, Charlie. We need the workers. I don’t want to imprison and experiment on thousands of aliens, to make them suffer, when we have an automated work-force just waiting for your password. It’s not worth it. And you, you’re new. This version of you just started today. I’m sorry, it’s been fun, but these few memories are not worth punishing and enslaving the Mud Men for. I need to know what you know, and I need to know what you should have known. Now. Is this reality?”
Charlie thought for a moment before answering. “No, this is not reality. I think the real Charlie Daemon and the real David Aelfwyrd died, oh, maybe a thousand years ago. We’re just clones, duplicates, and broken ones. None of this is real.”
Aelfwyrd was scribbling rapidly in his notebook. He didn’t react to the answer. He just wrote it down and described the way it was given.
Charlie continued, “Now how the heck are you going to do this? This isn’t the Genesis Chamber. Allambree, Sally Brightly, and Kalligeneia are all there, maybe more. If you euthanize me, I’ll wake up with them.”
Aelfwyrd nodded. “Yes. Which is why I will keep you alive and unconscious until the chamber is clear. Once the rebellion is over, I imagine that things will calm down fairly quickly. It won’t be so difficult. My question: Is this the first time we’ve spoken?”
“No. You and I have spent the day together fighting the Mud Men, exploring the ship, and arguing about trolls. Wouldn’t you rather work with me? We could find a way to make the robots function, or some other solution. We still don’t even know why we would need anyone to do our work. We don’t know enough. Let’s get our answers first.”
“Was that a question or a speech? For a man who says he doesn’t remember his political career, you sure sound like the man we studied in school. I have already looked into it. I studied the problem from every angle and did my best to find a less dramatic solution.”
“When?” Charlie mocked.
“In my previous life. He was me. I am him. If I can’t trust his judgment, then I can’t trust my own. I will sort out all of the details, but we’ve already reached the end result. Charlie, I need you to remember. You’re the captain of the ship. Your briefing was more important than anyone else’s. It’s indispensible. This isn’t just about robots. We don’t even know what other functions require your passwords and knowledge. We’re not in our own galaxy anymore. Our mission is important. What if the next version of you might remember? Or remember just a little more?”
“Or what if I’m not a glitch?” Charlie asked. “What if I’m exactly the way they designed me? You’re a scientist. You know about lying to your patients. Who says this is an exploration mission? What? You remember someone in a dream who told you that it was? That’s not science. That’s not how a scientist would work this problem. Let’s learn more. Let’s gather data.”
Aelfwyrd kept writing for a long time. Finally he paused and looked up at Charlie. “What do you remember from before?”
“David! I’m not just an iteration. I’m a real person. When I die you might get someone who looks like me and acts like me, but I’ll be dead. My death will be real. I will die.”
“What do you remember from before?”
“I remember destroying The Machine. I remember the explosion. I wasn’t near it, but the heat was devastatingly hot. I felt like I was on fire. I had to take off my coat. When the blast died down I had to take another off of a dead friend’s back so that I wouldn’t freeze to death.
“I remember walking into the ruins with my gun. I shot at a piece of machinery which was still moving, in case The Machine was alive inside of it, but I think it was just shaking from the explosion. I remember finding Armando’s burnt body. His face was gone. I could see his bones, but I recognized him from his clothes.
“I found Willis next. His left side was gone. He had bullets in his body, so I knew he had died before the blast, but the heat and fire had cooked him all the same.
“I touched a piece of shrapnel as I made my way inside of the shell of the building. It melted the fingertip of my glove a little bit. The robot, the king of all robots, was inside. He’d made himself a body like a teenager would design. He was covered with guns and phallic symbols. The outer armor was shaped like steroid-pumped muscles. The A.I. was smart, but in most ways he was just a child. Really, only a child would have
started killing all of those people. It makes sense in movies, but what sane mature adult would do that?
“I remember hacking away at the head, at the neck for maybe half an hour until I got it to break free. I buried it in the snow and mud to cool it off while I ate the rest of my rations. Then, as things started to cool, I tied some of the wires around a metal pole and I started dragging it off with me. I was going to keep the monster’s head as my prize.
“I remember walking through the cold for days, getting weaker and weaker, and forgetting about my prize and just letting go at one point. Life was more important to me.”
A voice called out to them from across the room, “Life is important. It is all that is worth killing for.”
An Asian man stood at the bottom of the stairs where Charlie and Aelfwyrd had come in. He seemed to be wearing a high-tech helmet, and his hands were covered in red, yellow, and purple metal. A blue view-finder hung in front of his right eye, which allowed him to aim. He was holding a weapon which looked similar to Sally’s drive-rifle, but much bigger and more menacing. He wore a thick and carefully styled moustache. His right ear could be seen, not his left, there were at least five jeweled earrings hanging and shining from the lobe and cartilage.
“Mr. Wu.” Aelfwyrd recognized him.
The newcomer spoke clearly and carefully. He sounded formal. “We would prefer to question you before sending you back.”
“This is an important experiment, Wu. We need to find the captain’s memories.”
Wu Gwei walked forward. He was a large and thick man. He had the eyes of a killer, and Charlie was suddenly afraid for Aelfwyrd. Perhaps also a little afraid for himself. “You are of no use to us or to your captain if you cannot respect your position. I could prevent your return. There are ways. Or I could punish you in your next life for your cowardliness of today.”
Aelfwyrd set his notes down on the table and stepped back until the furniture blocked him from retreating any further.
Wu kept his weapon aimed at the doctor’s head as Aelfwyrd began to untie Charlie’s bonds.
“Thank you.”
Wu Gwei nodded silently. He stayed still and held his aim.
It was left for Charlie to untie his own feet, but that was easy enough to do once his hands were loose. “We came here looking for the controls for the Mud Men’s collars.”
Wu Gwei answered Charlie without taking his eyes off of Aelfwyrd. “I believe you will find that the doctor has commanded the workers to disobey. They were his distraction, used to keep us busy while he experimented on you.”
Charlie turned to Aelfwyrd. “Is this true?”
“Charlie, I am your friend. I was trying to restore your mind. There’s no way we can know what you’ve forgotten. You should have been so much more. You were supposed to be our leader.”
Charlie got up, walked past Aelfwyrd into the next room and quite easily found the Mud Men control station. There was a placard above it, which would have once upon a time identified the device, but all of the words were gone. Charlie found a dial which had been set to red and he moved the line back to the left until it rested on green.
When the three men emerged, the Mud Men were all docile. Many of them had gone back inside of the building. Those which remained in the street were smelling flowers, singing, and two of them were even holding each other and exchanging gentle kisses.
“It was unthinkable that anyone recruited to this crew could have designed a faulty device. Therefore the control had to have either been sabotaged internally or externally. When we found your corpses in the Genesis Chamber, the picture was clear. In his first life, our dear doctor was forced to experiment on many thousands of patients in order to advance the species and make life in the universe possible. I saw nothing in his background which suggested he would hesitate to experiment on you if he felt justified.”
“Thank you for finding me, Mr. Wu. As you may know, I don’t remember my briefing before I woke up here – in this life. I don’t know you.”
“My name is Wu Gwei. I was born in the late 25th century. I led a planet full of warriors in battle against the worst of the monsters during the darkest times of the Age of Nightmares. I consider it a great honor to serve you.”
Aelfwyrd, his hands tied, spoke up, “If you think I’m the bad guy, ask your new friend how he convinced that planet full of warriors to sign up.”
Wu Gwei showed no sign of being upset by Aelfwyrd’s accusation. “I did what history required of me, as he did, as you did, as we hope all men will.”
EPISODE TWO
WAVES
“Geometry existed before the creation”
- Plato
The universe is impossibly vast.
Even with warp drive, teleportation, & worm holes,
there are places you could never go.
But you could broadcast a signal out across forever, you could tell the distant molecules to form new people on the other side and send them off exploring…..
1
The Mud Men were rounded up and barricades were placed around the street they lived on. Without Aelfwyrd agitating them, they were quite peaceful and passive. The alien creatures spent a lot of time playing in the fountains and lying on the grass.
Wu Gwei brought Charlie to the building which they called the Capital. The Captain’s quarters were in there. There was a large soft bed, a vast wardrobe of clothes, a bar, a library, a swimming pool, and a collection of ancient artifacts which made Charlie feel like he was camping inside of the Smithsonian. Two winged Sumerian lion-women were in his bedroom, each rough stone statue more than twenty feet high. A pair of his shoes had been left lying against them. Really, the floor set aside for him felt more like a whole palace than a “room.”
Across the other side, past the pool, he saw two drum-kits, a dozen guitars, a variety of keyboards, two sitars, a didgeridoo, a Theremin, a huge cathedral-organ, and some other futuristic equipment which he didn’t entirely recognize. He’d dreamed about having access to these sorts of treasures his whole life long, but he left them alone for the time being.
The captain asked that the crew be assembled that evening so that he could meet them all, and begin to understand their situation as well as possible. Wu Gwei promised to pass the message on to as many of them as he could. Then he left Charlie to go and find everyone.
The library was large and impressive, but as far as Charlie could see, didn’t contain anything written after the end of the 20th century.
There appeared to be twenty-five storys to the building. Twelve of them were designed as quarters for the different members of the crew. A hand-print was required to open the door on each private floor. Only the right crew member could access each. The top three stories were used to control the ship. The floor below that held the kitchen and dining halls. There was a prison, which now held exactly one prisoner. There were at least two levels of interior gardens filled with plants and fountains and artwork.
Charlie went and found what he needed to make himself a sandwich, took a pitcher of cool lemonade, and then retreated to his own room to get some sleep.
He turned out the lights and lay in the soft bed, between the two great Middle-Eastern Sphinxes. The ceiling above him was mirrored with a single seamless sheet of silver glass. A gentle light from the pool across the room reflected off of the mirror, and he found himself looking at his own reflection instead of sleeping.
He had three eyes.
It was still his face. He didn’t look any older than he remembered, but he looked easier. He looked softer. The scars were gone. His skin had never had to suffer the pollution and war that he’d seen in his life.
He had a new body.
He had his own nose back.
Charlie opened his third eye, just a sliver. The light of the room transformed. The white light from the pool opened into a broad spectrum of different kinds of blue. It was like he was at the bottom of the ocean and looking up. The perspective also seemed to change, as if everything
looked more solid and more real. He didn’t have the words for it. There were no words in his language to describe the difference between seeing with two eyes and seeing with three.
Not meaning to, he opened his eyes just a fraction more, and was confronted with the color Blajonge.
Charlie rolled off of the bed, at first coughing and then vomiting. He couldn’t hold his thoughts together. What had he seen? Was some actual thing that strange new color or had it been like a twisted floating line of hue which moved between objects? He shut his eye and then found himself banging on the side of his skull trying to beat that last after-image out of his mind.
When he could breathe again, his clothes were soaked with sweat. His mouth tasted like iron. His jaw and his chest ached. He walked over to the pool and, not bothering to disrobe, he simply allowed himself to fall sideways into the water.
He sank down in the wet, letting the cool clear liquid fill the vision of his two open eyes. He felt clean. He felt safe.
When he could, he dressed in a black suit. He had never felt anything as fancy or expensive as the fabric. He nonsensically wondered if he would be able to take it home with him when he left. The tie took him a long time to figure out and he never got it quite right. He finally remembered his lunch and found himself devouring it. Charlie couldn’t remember ever being as hungry or as thirsty as he suddenly found himself while he filled his glass with lemonade twice, and then a third time in rapid succession.
He set the glass down clumsily and it rolled off of the table onto the very deep and thick red shag rug. He didn’t bother to pick it up again.
Charlie rode the elevator up to the first level of the control rooms. The space was a single wide open room filled with electrical devices, glittering lights, flashing buttons, and glowing tanks of liquid. It looked a little like a Stanley Kubrick set, and a little like a mad scientist’s laboratory. There were enough chairs for two dozen people to sit at different machines at the same time. The center of the room was taken up by a black pool of liquid which was covered over with a huge circular pane of glass. Bubbles below the cover suggested that the fluid was very hot. It looked like tar.
The Secrets of the Universe (Farther Than We Dreamed Book 1) Page 8