Point Apocalypse

by Alex Bobl

  "It's our trump card. We'll sever contact with Earth and deprive them of biocyne. That way we'll play for time."

  He had everything ready for that scenario. A camp had been set up in the old city in strict secrecy and the necessary equipment had been installed. Clones were drafted in for this purpose. They still hadn't built their republic in the foothills and were gallivanting around in the eastern part of the Continent bushwhacking, risking being wiped out at any given moment by local clans.

  Captain Rustam Blank, the general's confidant and the camp foreman, as devoted to Varlamov as a puppy, pulled the wool over the clones' eyes by promising them the latest sequencer that could extend their limited lifespan. He provided them with weapons and rations, and things got moving.

  The next day after this conversation with my father, Mira, myself and a squad of cyber troops set off for the old city in order to accomplish two objectives. First, the squad had to strengthen the security of the location where the Forecomers' machine was situated. The second objective: someone had to risk his life and venture out into the swamps in order to retrieve fresh samples of the malignant bacteria from which Mira would then try, under field conditions, to extract the vaccine. We had literally one drop of unpurified biocyne and now we had to decide on a volunteer to administer it to before sending him to the swamp.

  So there we were in the City of Forecomers. It was my first time on the Continent. Mira stood next to me and I didn't need anything else. The cyber staff patrolled the area in three shifts. Clones were sent to guard the camp's perimeter. The ubiquitous Blank kept ordering neurotechs and operators around growling at them to hurry them up with the equipment installation and tuning. We had to get it all done within a week. Professor Neumann alone was thoughtful and spoke little but instead spent a lot of time by the Forecomers' device - the rods under the gasometer's dome, directed toward the matt black semisphere underneath. The sparks from the exploding bolts of lightning above showered his gray head. The device functioned even though it seemed to be idling.

  Once we'd finished installing the equipment, the engineers commenced with the building of the optical membrane which had to divide the gasometer's hall in two and protect the Forecomers' machine from unauthorized access. I had little idea of how the membrane worked. It appeared to be made of fiberglass, only crystal clear, its fibers less than one micron thick invisible to the human eye. The fibers integrated a communications network that could be tuned to a specific cyber trooper's personal channel allowing the signal controller to let a particular person through to the machine. If you attempted to get through the activated membrane without authorization, the best scenario was that you could lose a limb, and the worst, you could be killed.

  I thought that father would entrust the membrane control to me. But Blank told me it was none of my business. He booted the professor out of the hall and cast a predatory glance at me when reprimanded. He didn't risk answering me back knowing that if ever we came to blows he'd lose: what with my latest implants, my combat potential was two units higher than his.

  Temporarily put on the sidelines, Neumann and myself went out for some fresh air (I wanted to check the sentries and get the patrols' reports). The professor became talkative. He told me of the purpose of the rods being scattered all over the Continent and their connection to those installed in the gasometer's dome. But first he speculated on the origins of the Forecomers on Pangea. It was only a hypothesis, of course, but I believed him. It sounded plausible enough.

  He started his story from the swamp which the volunteer was about to enter. The swamps appeared to be the Forecomers' doing who used to travel between worlds. For these alien Gods, Pangea was some sort of manmade intermediary station that housed the portal machine we'd discovered.

  He didn't actually call them Gods, of course, replacing the religious term with some euphemism like "reason" or "the almighty Force", or whatever.

  "The Forecomers had achieved a certain technological threshold, just like humans are about to do now. They'd learned to control the device."

  Neumann called it a portal machine. It opened doors to other worlds serving like a router while the rod towers on the Continent worked as beacons used to enter the coordinates of your destination. The entire installation worked much as a GPS module, only instead of receiving a satellite signal, the beacons sent and received frequencies from outer space. So one day either through a fault of their operator or for another reason, a wormway opened on an unknown new world letting in all sorts of toxic alien matter. The professor chose to call them "the intruders". The Forecomers realized they had to leg it. And leg it they did, just in time, because we didn't find any of their remains next to their portal machine. Neumann, too, had studied the Continent up and down during his years of research but had failed to find any alien burials or other evidence of their demise.

  I was about to suggest that they could have cremated their dead but I bit my tongue. The old man was too engulfed in his story. The installation must still have worked at the time of their exodus, otherwise it wouldn't have been possible. But for some reason, it hadn't been shut down afterward. This drew Neumann to suggest that it was controlled by a limited-intellect program which kept the machine operational in order to preserve the global beacon network from destruction.

  The machine had allowed the professor to discover Pangea. After the electronic bomb test explosion on the Kola Peninsula, the portal device had detected the resulting perturbations and sucked part of the peninsula onto Pangea, complete with the Samotlor tanker on its way from the Arctic gold mines. About a hundred Kola garrison personnel and various equipment had also found themselves jumped to Pangea. Raiders were still busy hunting for all the junk and taking it to New Pang to sell.

  The professor described the state of the two worlds as a collision of two soap bubbles.

  "Imagine a straw connecting an Earth bubble and a Pangea bubble. It created an enormous surface tension so perilous I call it Point Apocalypse. So what caused the connection to stabilize without destroying both worlds? The portal machine, of course."

  The professor nicknamed it "his bubble theory". Now he wanted to find out how he could open portals to other worlds - any worlds. Knowing how to do it would allow him to disconnect the Earth from Pangea, then create a new wormway if needed.

  It all seemed to come together. If this world was indeed nothing more than an artificial docking station, then it explained the fact that the environment was so limited: its creators had only bothered to include the elements they needed. The absence of mineral resources now explained itself: the Forecomers had had to be humanoid or at least catered for such, while the toxic swamp had to be the result of a near-human error.

  The toxic intruders' world had to be entirely different both in its structure and environment. Mirabella Neumann couldn't give a concise description of the swamp life forms, so deadly to humans. By now, the area had capsulated forming its own habitat and a breeding ground for new colonies of mutated viruses and bacteria. Some of them had adapted to life outside the swamp; others penetrated the ocean. That's why you had to treat all local food produce with care for fear of poisoning or even death.

  It was possible that the Forecomers had realized or even known what they were dealing with. So they'd sealed Pangea and left. But now, people had arrived instead. Neumann especially belonged to this species of science fanatics: the race that would stop at nothing until they got the answers to their curiosity. According to him, science had finally stumbled onto the right path and made the first baby step toward our extraterrestrial brothers capable of traveling through time and space. The similarity of our technologies had allowed for this first contact promising more progress ahead.

  Neumann hadn't even noticed the wasting of his and his daughter's life on research which until now had brought no tangible results worth mentioning. Okay, so he'd put forward his bubble hypothesis and worked on his Point Apocalypse theory suggesting, in part, that the Earth-Pangea wormway could be destroyed by e
xploding a nuclear charge inside the wormway itself. That seemed to be the only way to destroy the portal that consumed indecent amounts of energy threatening to collapse Earth.

  But Neumann didn't want to be known as an armchair theorist. A man of practice ready to embrace the unknown, he wanted to take his ideas to their logical end. Just as my father did.

  I felt sorry for the old man. Everyone seemed to be using Professor Neumann: my father as well as the government.

  I arched my body and heard a dull snap as my sinews and vertebrae spasmed. I opened my eyes and collapsed onto the bed. My heart drummed in my chest. Reality came back just as quickly as it had taken them to remove the memory chip. The clock showed 5.24.

  "He's come to," the neurotech threw the electrodes onto the defibrillator stand.

  "Where are we taking him now?" his assistant pulled my eyelids down one after the other and nodded.

  "Blank told me to take him to the general as soon as he could walk," the neurotech glanced at me. "Think you can do it, Master Specialist?"

  It's been a while since anyone called me by my rank. Ever since I'd left Pangea, to be precise. How long had it been, two years? Something like that.

  Gingerly, I bent my elbows and sat up trying to adapt to my body.

  "You'll live," the neurotech concluded. He lay his hand on my shoulder and leaned closer. "We've implanted you a fourth-generation memory chip, standard upgrade, three channel coms. Sorry we didn't have anything more state-of-the-art. In your left eye is a monitor lens with a built-in infrared camera. In your cardiac muscle you still have a burnt-out stabilizing stimulator. That's it."

  His assistant handed him a measuring tube filled to the brim with a cloudy liquid.

  "Drink this. It'll make you feel a bit better," the neurotech took the tube and nearly brought it up to my lips but held his hand. "Apparently, the Feds fitted your aorta out with a chemical blocker. You'd think it's nothing much, and then... Had we known about it straight away, it wouldn't have taken us so long. The fucking thing activated so we were forced to give you CPR. I thought that was the end of you, Master Specialist. You were lucky we had a defibrillator at hand. The stimulator screwed up, naturally. We'll give you a new one when we have time."

  He brought the tube up to my lips. Mechanically, I opened my mouth and swallowed the liquid, all the time trying to remember the names and identities of these two. I couldn't possibly remember all the camp staff but they certainly knew me as General Varlamov's son.

  Father, I sent him a silent call, are you waiting for me? We're back together again.

  The stone walls dampened my signal. The memory chip's operating range without the amplifier didn't exceed a few dozen feet.

  My bare feet touched the cold floor. I inspected my staple-patched chest. The scar was still stinging like hell but I knew it wouldn't be long before its edges knitted together. Then I'd pull out the staples myself: not for the first time, I might add. Still something felt wrong. I couldn't quite put my finger on it but the world around me seemed to have somehow changed. I sensed it but I couldn't explain it. It could be post-op grogginess... I needed to recuperate. I had my false identity removed; they'd unblocked my memory but those Federal experts had very nearly done for me with their heart blocker. It had to have been their analysts' idea. Either they knew the general would try to recapture me or they were afraid of me changing camp. So they covered their backs. It may look like nothing much, just as the neurotech had said, but the delayed-action chemical blocker couldn't be detected with a scanner. And it's pretty pointless to try and open the aorta to look for a clot when the patient is about to croak. That's why the lab staff used the defibrillator. It had worked a hundred percent: they had broken the growing clot down with electric pulses despite the obvious risk. Had the stimulator not burned out, my heart would have gone into overdrive, and then...

  I raised my head and met with Captain Blank's gaze. He had several soldiers next to him - regular guys, not the cyber type. Blank had already tuned to my frequency and kept his channel open and receiving.

  Oh well. I sent him a return impulse, rose from the bed and walked out of the "clean" room. Blank handed me an army jacket. I already knew where to go: the monitor lens showed my route in every detail.

  So! The tables had turned. The mind games were over. They had given my memory back but it didn't change very much. The only thing that remained was to speak to my father. I had to stop him at any cost. It had to be possible because without me, he'd never get anywhere. I was the only one who could start the portal machine.

  Part Three

  The New Level

  Chapter One

  The Dream Is One Step Away

  Still, I wasn't quite right. The hallway seemed to be the same but when you looked at the stone walls, they seemed to emit a weak glow. I squeezed my eyes shut and opened them again. Now they were ordinary walls of dark uneven basalt.

  But... wait up!

  My feet froze to the floor. Blank gave me a rough shove in the back and I lost my train of thought. Barely staying on my feet, I turned round and glared back at him. The guards raised their rifles and glanced in alarm at the captain waiting for his orders. He said nothing. His face relaxed and he waved us through.

  I still would have found the road even without the monitor lens. I remembered it too well. We were heading toward the stairs that led down to the closed level under the gasometer. There Mira had built her laboratory two years ago when we'd just arrived in the old city. The place was quite well-chosen, with a large room below and a wide shallow-sloping hallway leading to the exit upstairs, perfect for bringing in equipment. We'd had to widen the stairwell with a jack hammer but the former miners among the clones had made short work of that. Mira had also asked them to build a stone partition to divide the room into both working and living accommodation. Naturally, I'd been more than welcome in the latter.

  The guard in front turned into another passage and started down the stairs. The walls seemed to be gleaming again. I thought I saw some sort of grid shimmer appear on their surface. It flashed red and died away leaving a vivid imprint on my retina.

  I glanced back at the captain. He kept walking as if nothing had happened and gave me a quizzical look. That was weird. Did it mean that neither he nor the soldiers had seen anything?

  We walked down the stairs and along a wide hallway. The guard in front stopped by Mira's laboratory door. My palms broke out in a sweat as my heart pounded in my chest and I knew that Mira was behind the wall waiting. I detected her frequency, open and free, but my father seemed to be there with her. They were bouncing messages off each other and it seemed that the discussion was quite heated. At that moment I couldn't say which one of them I wanted to see more. All previous speculation was obliterated by my emotion.

  Advance, Blank ordered.

  Slowly, I entered the silent room. Practically nothing had changed there. A cot, a small table, two stacks of plastic containers in the corner. To the right, the stone partition and sliding glass doors. A light burned in the lab.

  Of course, after two years I wasn't used to the memory chips any more. I'd forgotten the idea of the thought communication. My eye caught sight of some shelves that hadn't been there before. Baby blankets were stacked on the top shelf, next to a folded bedspread. On top of it lay some homemade dolls made of plastic tubes, the kind that wounded soldiers used to fashion in hospitals during their convalescence.

  I stepped to the door and again glanced at the shelves. The lower one was occupied by two clean little plates edged with a cute drawing next to a baby bottle half-filled with white liquid. None of this belonged here. I walked toward the door, and the glass panel slid noiselessly aside. I entered the laboratory.

  Mira sat by her work desk staring at the opposite wall. A lamp was lit on the desk lined up with test glassware next to her electronic tablet journal where she normally entered her test observations. A refrigerator hummed in the corner. Behind it I noticed the ultracentrifuge she used to
separate liquids and mixtures. Next to it, stood the general.

  He put his hands behind his back and kept clenching and unclenching one strong fist as he stared at the sliding glass door in front of him. It lead into the airlock and further into the "clean" room. Only this one was not meant for the cyber staff but for Mira's studies. There, she worked with viruses - the viruses that had started the whole thing and prompted Blank to accuse me of treachery.

  Mira's stare shifted to my side. To stand there and not reach out to her was more than I could bear. I so wanted to hug her and run my fingers through her fair hair burying my face in it.

  General, I tuned into the open channel and stood to attention.

  What did you tell them, Mark? father asked calmly without moving.

  Everything.

  Mira could hear us speak. She looked at me, her eyes moist. The general turned around, paused and said, Why?

  I couldn't hold it in any longer. I tried to resist the impulse as I really didn't want to explain anything to him. But my emotions got the better of me. I blurted out everything I'd bottled up since I'd made the decision to change sides. I didn't want millions of innocent victims on Earth to die as the hostages to a handful of ambitious conspirators.

  You tricked me! You extracted the virus without telling me what it was for. I risked my life in vain back there at the swamps thinking that I was helping people to get the vaccine. And you... You understood everything beforehand. You were aware that I wouldn't go along if I knew your real plans. You taught me how to defend my country and its people and how to kill its enemies, but you yourself decided to wipe out all life on our planet. What do you say to that?

  The general remained silent. He stood there with his head tipped forward, his hands still clenched behind his back.

  I lost it, Are you still hoping to build a new society here on Pangea? Those flexible decentralized systems of yours without irreplaceable links? I shook my head. I'm afraid you can't. People don't change. And you-