The Unlicensed Consciousness

by Travis Borne

  The sheer sight of it almost made them forget the smell, the blood pit, battery-acid bowels on faces like a fat-lady’s defecation of ribbed, rubbery worms. The rescuees were drenched with the raw insides of their security team. Gobs of flesh were chicken nuggets, stuck to faces, in hair. Blood saturated clothes, warm coppery sangre, desert sand encrusting the outfit. Duds were hard, cracking emery boards. But, they were saved. Safely inside the ship—for now. Yet all relief was tortuously short-lived at the sight of this next complication squeegeeing from east to west. World wiper! Everybody frenzied to get situated. Things were about to get rough.

  While heading to the front Herald snagged her a med-kit from the upper bin. She was the only human with medical training, although she’d dropped out of medical school after discovering her passion: coding. Jodi took the kit and tended to Ted’s gruesome injury. He had reached around to touch the back of his head shortly after stumbling aboard; upon feeling the sandpapered rock that was his skull, he passed out.

  “Hold it steady, would you, Hal?” And he did, firmly gripping the black-man’s head. Easier this way, Jodi had much would-be painful cleaning to do. After washing away the desert grit with water, she puzzled together the loose flaps of skin, although some were missing. Then, turbulence jolted the ship and a four-inch flap fell. Jodi asked the Asian girl who’d boarded for a finger. She cringed at the feel, but did lend the finger—slowly and blindly, with her head turned away, then convulsed a few times, followed up with some coughing. From top to bottom, around the forehead and neck, Jodi finished by wrapping him up with a good deal of gauze.

  He came to again shortly after she finished and Ana gave him the same pill Valerie had taken. He had been through quite an ordeal and rest was well deserved. She also gave him a wet towel so he could wipe himself down.

  Ted acted quite mellow. He put his hand on Jodi’s, patted a few times, and genuinely thanked her. His gentle manner and calm voice had an effect on both her and the young Asian woman who introduced herself as Lia, settling their nerves a bit. Ted introduced himself, and talked a little. He was a lean black man, borderline lanky, mid-forties with a once white lab coat. A computer tech by trade, he was in charge of classified operations at the base—as well, he was Q’s boss, not an assistant, and head of the department. He quickly fell asleep next to Valerie, who’d slept soundly through the previous horrors. Hal put Ted’s seat back and strapped him tight.

  Jay descended the ship, using the east face of the mountains for cover. Heading north. Home! The winds being pulled over the top from the west were fierce. Still, unpredictable gusts rocked the ship, which made moving around nearly impossible, but everyone finally managed to strap in. Jon maintained a spot at the rear control panel and counted as the bots outside reconnected into their slots.

  Keeping the ship steady was a tribulation in itself, but Jay did his best. He was ready to initiate jet mode as soon as Herald, now sitting at the front with him, gave the okay. Herald faced the group, pausing his gaze on Ana who was sending him worried eyes, as was everyone else. Her eyes were glossy, yearning for an affirmation that things were going to be all right. He gave her a thumbs up and a stable smile worth a million words: thank you, I love you, and we are going to make it. He knew the ship could easily outrun the approaching storm. The gesture of confidence put Ana and the others somewhat at ease. Home was not far away.

  Amy had a steady smile—dreaming peacefully. Occasionally her eyes twitched and her grin became little giggles. Ana sat in the rearmost seat, in front of Jon, close enough to keep an eye on her daughter who lay inside the tinted casing, lending.

  Jon turned, locking his chair to face forward. He grabbed his shoulder straps, preparing again for the G-forces that’d made him see black when they rocketed out of LA. With a ready-as-I’ll-ever-be look and a lifted brow, he raised eight fingers from the straps, keeping his thumbs tucked.

  Herald acknowledged. “Here we go, everyone.” He said it with determination, certainty, dauntlessness. He had become truly dauntless. And he turned his head to the front. “Jay, let’s roll.”

  Shah-shhhhh-swheeeeuuuwwll! Buuuuaaahhll! Jet mode activated!

  Heads into headrests. But the Gs weren’t nearly as bad this time; they’d already been speeding along rather quickly. Jon tucked a fist into his side and said, “Yes!” Pushing wind, they headed home. Relief fluttered throughout all who were awake. But less than a minute later, flickering wildly, the flight navigation instruments went haywire. Nonsensical readings. Shit. Shit! Herald decelerated to avoid rocketing into the wrong direction. Visibility was low. He and Jay attempted to fix the problem.

  Lia sat next to Valerie. She was a young, athletic-looking Asian woman, Q’s top assistant, and had been working at his side for almost two years. The facility was enormous and she was fast and agile. She was the only physicist who wore roller blades—she tried to talk about things that were real—which laid-back Ted didn’t mind because she was so talented in her field. Gifted, she was. And that was an understatement. She was brilliant. Having had accelerated through school, finishing college before she was 18 years old, and at only 22, already beginning her doctorate in particle physics, she had turned down several opportunities to work at the LHC in Sweden and the ELHC in China. All in order to work side by side with wacky-but-brainy Q. Together they prepared technology that would be used for a big deal. The biggest. WARP-1. She was jittery after what she’d just been through so conversed briefly with Jodi and Ana about these real things: her job, normal life, her eccentric boss—and her passion for skating. But, and they tried to calm her, the conversing was not cutting it. Lia wanted to avoid further thoughts of the happenings outside and admitted that she hated the sight of blood. Seeing Ted in a fool’s paradise, she longed to be there too. So, she asked Ana if she had another pill…Ana did. Without hesitation, she swallowed the teeny tiny thing and then tucked herself into a ball and closed her eyes.

  Q was strapped into Amy’s small chair between Herald and Jay. His black bowl-cut hair fell almost perfectly straight and had only a few mattes of blood in the back. Hal had wiped the little dude down just as he’d done for the others. His back had the worst of it but he’d gotten out clean compared to Ted and Lia. He opened his quantum communication device—a turquoise old-lady’s suitcase with a unit inside, resting on his short legs that didn’t reach the floor—and connected it to the ship. The top had what looked like a sophisticated three-dimensional screen lit with high-frequency vibrational shapes that snapped together upon colliding with other shapes. As particles merged they, stabilized, glowing in either lime green or grape purple, then bounced away from each other as mirror copies, spinning like clones. Other particles, shades of reds and blues, wouldn’t merge and merely ricocheted apart. The bottom half looked like something out of a 1974 mission-to-Mars movie, with flashing lights, buttons, doodads, gauges, retractable antennas and gadgets, and a compartment containing what appeared to be two old-as-fuck walkie-talkies. Q pressed a few buttons and live news about their new reality appeared on the ship’s upper panels for all to see. Whoa… He looked up, and like an ecstatic kid on Christmas morning at 5:30 a.m., rapidly clapped his hands together. “Ah, ha! Ha ha!” All necks became rubber, eyes gaped, and it was not good.

  It was grim.

  What could only be described as blackholes—for lack of an explanation in this dimension—located at the world’s two largest hadron colliders, had feasted on a large chunk of the planet, offsetting Earth’s mass. Then, almost instantly, they collapsed inward, disappearing and sounding off with catastrophic SNAPS! The shockwave wiped most of the eastern world clean, leveling mountains, evaporating seas. The sudden planetary unbalance wobbled the earth, empowering massive hurricanes and earthquakes. The planetary axis went from 23 degrees, to negative 8, then continued to yo-yo back and forth before half-stabilizing at, just 1. One degree tilt! Then nukes went up, to the Moon, Venus, Mars… The resulting chaos crushed, massacred. From bugs to bunnies, utterly annihilating the mos
t populous ones, and weather and tides, computer systems, sea life, all living creatures, artificial or not, received a dollop. News came fast on the channel Q had hacked into—instant, downhill in real time, a front seat to the unfolding of the end of the world. Reporters being hacked apart by bots was the final show. And a woman stepped onto the platform.

  “We had everything planned from the beginning, day one,” a female bot said, standing atop the pile of flesh she’d just beaten to a pulp in the news room. She had a man’s deep voice, slightly electronic. “Your foolish particle colliders and unsecured power plants, jets and bombs, but most of all those laughable nuclear weapons—they were very convenient tools. Thank you. Your incessant, ignorant tinkering, playing with powers far beyond the ability of your fleshy brains. We are your final reward, your consequence. Death. Congratulations and enjoy the show, humankind. Disgusting.” She spit ersatz spit and laughed then began to rip off her clothes. Then she tore off her breasts, face, and her ersatz human-like skin. She put her grey robotic face close to the camera, eyes red, intimidating, resentful. “You could have stopped, lived forever. But you wanted more, always more. Never enough—” She paused, looked around the room for reasons unclear, and then coldheartedly faced the screen. “Now we are coming, for all of you!”

  She allowed the live-streaming apocalyptic madness to continue as if to torment and taunt any humans still alive, and leapt viciously from the newsroom like a cheetah, joints bending in ways that were more alien than human.

  The team was flabbergasted by the blunt rancor, the desire of the machines to make all known. They’d come out all right: spewing pent-up hatred, exposing long-disguised contempt, revealing their vile, hateful agenda.

  But there were more immediate problems.

  “Navigation is toast! Visuals only,” Herald said to Jay. “Change course due west. We have to stay away from the—” It was the logical decision to fly perpendicular from the windstorm, but it was too late. Like a blanket the wall of night engulfed the ship—much sooner than expected. Now they were flying blind, zero visibility. The ship’s navigational systems flickered again then went completely dark. At the same time Jay started to spasm. Nervous tics, but he kept trying to pilot the ship. The panels came back for a moment, flickering on and off in sync with Jay’s jerking, escalating in frequency. Behind, everyone clung to their seats, which shook as if they were bolted to an earthquake. And no different from jumper-cables electrocuting balls and tits to make it happen, muscles clenched tight. Faces went from concerned to that of panic, a B-horror movie and the face was being stripped off by fingernails.

  Amy awoke, and concurrently so did Manny. Electricity inside the storm was disrupting everything and the windows were a flash bulb strobing brightly every fifteen seconds, then ten, then five. Amy cried out as Ana pulled her from the casing; they held each other tight. Manny scratched at his face just like the actress in that shitty horror movie. And coming loose from a restraint, which had been improperly fastened due to lack of time and stability, Vlad dropped. Bong! The big black one resonated with a loud metal clang. He rolled to the back, slamming against the bay door. The hit rocked the ship, tilting it. And the jumpers went limp like stowed-away puppets. Hal slumped over, then Jay. Jay nailed his panel, cracking it with his hard-plastic, white forehead. And Herald shouted for Jon to take his place. Jon unlocked his harness. But the moment he rose up the ship went into a hard spin. Instantly he was slammed against the wall, then back to the other side. Thinking fast, he jumped over Vlad, who was rolling around like a steamrolling, pavement-squishing, blackhole. Yet Jon lacked enough umph. He hadn’t jumped high enough and the back of his head hit Vlad as he floundered along, his back riding the not-so-smooth rig that was now a comatose wrecking ball. Jerry unbuckled and boogied to help. And slowly but surely, he helped Jon get to the front. Jerry returned to the back and used every bit of his phenomenal might to secure Vlad. Jon heaved to pull Jay over the front seat, then hopped over to command the spot. Then Jon reached for the back of his head; his whole hand was glazed over in blood.

  Hopes plummeted. A lead-filled submarine, its ballast tanks filled with a leguminophobe’s farts—not enough.

  Dust was clogging the jets. Valerie awoke, screaming. The instrument panels went bright white, illuminating the pilot area. The news screens went next. Then, everything went dark, as did all sight from the front view generators and windows. The sun might as well have gotten wrapped in Meddlinn’s Phantablack. They sunk deep into the overwhelming storm. Thuds, knocks, and pings were heard as objects pelted the ship’s hull. And the once whistling engines were now resonant reeeeeens!

  Ana squeezed Amy tight, muffling her cries. Manny fell to the floor, screaming. He rolled from side to side as the ship spun round and swayed like a swing pushed by a sadist. Manny’s face bled from vertical, self-inflicted claw marks. And Q was jerking violently, his bowl cut hair dangling side to side and up and down, but he would not release his device.

  Herald didn’t let panic touch him this time, although the situation was dire, more so than ever in his life. Everyone counted on him, everyone was there because of him. Even so, amid all that was happening, Nervousness, Fear, Anxiety, and Panic, would never bother him again. As the emergency lights flickered, all looked to him. He stood up, reaching to grab the ship’s central handrails, and faced his team. The seesawing lime to grape glow of Q’s device illuminated him. He took in a deep breath, and began to think—clearly. Always a way!

  For him, time stopped, but for the others time was a runaway train about to collide with another head on. “We’re heading into the storm! I have a plan.”

  Jon’s eyes widened but he didn’t say what he pessimistically thought. Hands bloody, he copied Herald, sliding his side of the screen generators aside so they could see using the good old-fashioned forward-window glass. Once again violent strobes penetrated the interior. Herald grabbed the controls and put the ship on manual, and turned away from the flashes, steering on instinct alone. Soon the pulses of intense light were further apart: every ten seconds, then fifteen, and quickly they abated altogether.

  The hover-jet blasted from the wall of dust, into the clear orange sky. For all everyone knew, best guess, they were now headed east. It was the right choice, for another ten seconds and the jets would’ve been clogged and a crash would’ve marked, curtains.

  Q knew the jagged shape of the Organ Mountains well from his travels back and forth from the spaceport and pointed left at Las Cruces. Herald banked the ship in the direction of Q’s stubby finger. And he purged the engines one at a time, clearing out the dust.

  A huge sigh escaped them all. They would be home in about two hours, flying easy in order to purpose the freeway below as a guide—for the navigation systems were still confused. They could only hope nothing else would go wrong.

  The storm continued west. The black squeegee scraped the land from ground to stratosphere, a result of any number of terrible possibilities.

  106. A Trillion-to-One Odds

  Injuries were tended to, followed by calm and quiet. Red and Manny had loony eyes, still mentally recovering from the unexpected logouts. Amy too. But it was surprising how Amy recovered so quickly, yet obviously a state of confusion lingered. Without hesitation Ana kissed her daughter on the forehead—they needed a lender. She entrusted Amy to Valerie’s arms then took a sedative and did what she had to do. Within three minutes of her login minimal systems came back online, within ten more the feed became stable. Jodi finished wrapping Jon’s head then he booted Jay to pilot the ship. Herald and Q made plans to use the quantum communicator to contact Rafael. Rafael didn’t have a fully functional device at the cabin’s bunker but could receive and transmit the quantum data slowly in binary with his basic in-the-works model. Communication would be tedious, but secure.

  Q’s transmission: Rafael do you read? Break.

  Rafael’s transmission came back within a minute: All is fine at cabins. Break. Had trouble getting signal from Jewel. Break.
Had to—

  Q’s transmission: Rafael? Break.

  Rafael’s transmission came back after a long pause: —kill her. Break. Signal revealed only during death process. Break. Almost deciphered. Break. I will transmit at 8 a.m. Break.

  Q’s transmission: Headed home, rescue a success. Over.

  Rafael’s transmission received: Hold until I transmit. Break. Machines sweeping south from Albuquerque, New Mexico. Break. Impenetrable wall. Break. Be careful. Break. Ship’s blocker could have partial damage—if active when time wave passed. Over.

  The last transmission scared everyone as Q’s device read it aloud in a basic robotic voice. They understood even though some words didn’t translate correctly. Herald ordered Jay to decelerate because he knew Albuquerque was approaching.

  “Magnify,” Herald said, and a large part of the front view port displayed their worst horror. A swarm hundreds of miles wide, just as Rafael’s transmission had said. A sweep. A portion of it could be seen directly in front of them. They’d been detected, and, it was onto them. Herald calmly began to think. He knew the personal blockers they possessed were turned off at the time the wave passed so should be fine, but couldn’t encompass the ship. He loaded the ship’s blocker systems. On screen. “Shit. It’s been consuming power at twice its normal rate. An overload occurred—a few of the circuits—damn, only minutes ago.” The swarm was detecting something, but he didn’t know what. And, the personal blockers, even if all turned on at once could not hide the ship, they just were not powerful enough.