Kharmic Rebound

by Yeager, Aaron

  Trahzi’s eyes went wide. “Wha... what is this feeling inside of us?”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Several attempts have been made to bring humans out of their seemingly perpetual state of poverty, the largest of which was the Humana Organa Organization, which collected billions of credits in donations after a very successful advertising campaign highlighting human suffering by showing pictures of the Olsen Twins. Scandal rocked the organization when it was discovered that “raising awareness” was code for buying a few cheap ads and then funneling the rest of the money into Neutral Apalik private accounts.

  -A Tourists Guide to Earth, 2nd edition, page 875, Valium Press

  Director Nathers didn’t consider himself to be a superstitious man. Sure, he burned incense to the old ones, set out offerings of food to his ancestors, refused to eat with his left hand because it brought bad luck, and carried around in his pocket a small bone fragment from Rakad, the Saint of Amnn; but he did not consider himself to be superstitious. The last two months, however, were quickly converting him.

  A shadow seemed to have fallen over the academy. There had been an outbreak of Bikass, despite the vaccinations. The Eternal Tree in the quad had died. There had been a rash of students reporting having personal items stolen from them. Thirteen statues had inexplicably fractured. There had been at least two dozen confirmed instances of dorm rooms being broken into, and twice as many unconfirmed. Three instructors had been forced to take a leave of absence. The Eye of Acta had been stolen from the vaults. There had been a break-in at the genetics lab. A computer virus had brought the entire academy to its knees, and of course, there had been the vlukkia attack.

  As he maneuvered his way past stacks of computer cores and candy wrappers, he couldn’t help but wonder how long it would take before the Board of Directors started looking for someone to shift the blame onto. Already three families had pulled their students out, and if something didn’t change soon, more were yet to come.

  “This better be good,” Nathers said as he walked up to the moist body of Chief Engineer Valans as he sat before an array of fifty monitors, cables protruding out of his pulsating head.

  “Would I have brought you down here if it wasn’t?”

  Nathers covered his nose and looked around at the bare walls. He could still see the faint brown outlines from where Valans’ collection of socks used to hang.

  “I have tracked down the source of the virus,” Valans explained, flicking his long tongue over one eyeball to moisten it.

  “Well done.” Nathers slapped Valans on the shoulder then instantly regretted it, his hand coming away trailing long strands of mucous. One of the windows came forward and enlarged itself, showing the entrance hall to the administration building. “The virus was introduced first into the check-in desk on the thirteenth, at 1034 hours local. Mrs. Icuatolda was on duty at the time. It almost instantly crippled her personal station, and when the techs came in to repair it, the virus copied itself into their diagnostic stones. Then, every time after that when the techs interfaced somewhere else on campus, the virus was reintroduced to a new part of the system. That’s why I’ve had so much trouble tracking this frakkin’ thing down. I had to eliminate hundreds of origins before narrowing it down to this earliest manifestation.”

  “So, the receptionist did it?” Nathers asked, confused. “I mean... I know she cheats at trategim, but I never would have suspected her to...”

  Valans shook his head slowly and pulled the candy stick out of his cavernous mouth. “She isn’t our attacker.”

  Another window came forward, containing security camera footage. Nathers watched, eyes wide, as he saw Gerald Dyson walk up to the reception desk and receive his retinal scan. “Dyson?”

  Valans croaked affirmatively. “His retinal scan coded for the virus.”

  “How can that be? Can you even do that?”

  Valans leaned back and thought. “You could do it. It would be ridiculously expensive to create a synthetic retina that coded a virus when scanned, and it’s probably one of the least efficient ways of introducing a plague into the system, but it is possible.”

  Nathers looked away distantly. “I can’t believe the human is responsible. Why would he attack the academy?”

  “He didn’t. I already checked, his eyes are not synthetic. He’s 100% natural.”

  Now Nathers was even more confused. “Then how did...”

  “I’ve run a million simulations. Even ran simulations on the simulation programs themselves, and there’s only one possibility I cannot eliminate.”

  “Which is?”

  “His eyes just happened to be that way naturally.”

  “Is that even possible?”

  “No, it’s not. At least, not in the way we normally use the word. It’s so unbelievably unlikely it might as well be impossible. It’s like the possibility of a hydrogen cloud spontaneously becoming fruit salad. The likelihood is so small we don’t have enough paper to write it out, but it’s there.”

  Nathers rubbed his forehead, steam rising out of the holes at the back of his skull. “So, the data from his retinal scan just happened to uncompress itself into a beastly computer virus? I... don’t even know what to think about that.”

  “Neither did I, which is why I’ve been doing some tests before I called you down here.”

  Valans took out a fresh cable and inserted it into a port on his head. A new window appeared with various numbering traditions. “To start with, are you familiar with Qeechan numbering systems?”

  Nathers took a second to download the relevant data. “I am now.”

  “Well, part of my people’s octol counting system is a linked alphabet. Every number also has a corresponding meaning. Some good, some bad.”

  “Right, that’s why your people time your spawnings to coincide with the seasons with good meanings. To bring good luck.”

  “Well done. Now, here’s Dyson’s birthdate in Eeeyarth reckoning, if we convert it to Qeechanian Octol, it comes out like this: He was born on an unlucky second, in an unlucky minute, in an unlucky hour, on an unlucky day, of an unlucky week, in an unlucky month, of an unlucky year, in an unlucky decade, in an unlucky century, of an unlucky millennium, in an unlucky era.”

  Now Nathers was beginning to suspect Valan’s findings. “Luck? Really? This is what you bring me?”

  “I knew you’d be a hard sell, hence the tests.”

  A new window appeared with more security footage. Nathers watched with his panther-like eyes as Dyson sat and studied by himself. Then Valans walked over and sat down at the other end of the table, nonchalantly flipping a credit chip with his hand.

  “Holy grun, you mean you actually left your cave?”

  Valans turned to him. “What, you think all I do is sit down here all day?”

  “Well, I...”

  He flicked his long tongue over his eyeball. “This is just my day job. I’ll have you know I have quite an active social life. My friends and I go dancing, ice climbing, surfing. On the weekends we...”

  “All right, I get the point. I guess I just assumed that...”

  “...You assumed that because I work in technical I was socially awkward, didn’t you?”

  “Well... you do collect dirty socks.”

  Valans frowned. “Do you know how racist you are sounding right now?”

  “Okay, I’m sorry.”

  “You shouldn’t judge my people just because we are different.”

  “All right. You are quite well adjusted socially with acceptable hobbies, okay? I’m sorry I thought otherwise.”

  Valans turned back. “Fine. Let’s get back to the task at hand. We can sign you up for some sensitivity training later.”

  Nathers scrunched up his nose, and steam shot out of his skull in frustration.

  “So, here I am doing a simple chip toss,” Valans explained. “Just a simple probably experiment. Do it long enough, you normally end up with roughly 50% heads and 50% tails, right?”

 
“Right.”

  “Okay, now watch here.” Valans forwarded the footage, he was now sitting right next to Gerald, still flipping the coin. “When I sat next to him, I got tails. Every single time. Two hundred forty-two flips, and every single one of them tails.”

  Nathers rubbed his chin. “So, what are you saying?”

  “I’m saying that this guy’s luck is so bad, it is actually warping causality around him.”

  “Yeah, but even two hundred forty-two is a pretty small statistical sample. You can’t just...”

  Valans advanced the footage some more. “Here I am the next day. I struck up a conversation with him. Nice guy. I asked him to call the chip flip in the air. Told him it was a Qeechan tradition or some grug like that. Offered to repair the door to his dorm room if he participated.”

  “Did you?”

  “Pffft, no. Anyway, out of 42 flips, he got every single one of them wrong.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “I think it means that whatever he guessed, his luck altered the result so that it would not be in his favor.”

  Valans forwarded the footage some more. “Here I am the next day, this time I am using a special two-headed chip without telling him. So, whenever he guessed heads...”

  “Then there is no way he could be wrong,” Nathers concluded.

  “Uh huh. Now watch.” Nathers looked on as Valans flipped the chip in the air. Dyson clearly called out heads. The chip came down, bounced a couple of times on the floor, then landed perfectly balanced on its side.”

  Nathers was astonished.

  “Now, you tell me if I am just wasting your time,” Valans boasted. “He guessed heads sixteen times, and every single time, the coin landed on its side.”

  Nathers gulped. “What are the odds of that?”

  “Not quite the same as the odds of a retinal scan randomly manifesting a computer virus, but it’s in the ballpark.”

  Nathers was dumbfounded. “This is it. This is why everything has gone wrong around here. It makes sense, in a weird kind of way. Everything that has gone bad has happened since he got to the academy.”

  “So, what are you going to do?”

  “Well, we’ve got to get him out of here. If he stays, things are just going to get worse.”

  “We can’t kick him out of school, you know that.”

  “Well, then let’s get him off campus.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know. Move up the schedule for their deep-space testing. Send his class on a field trip, it doesn’t matter. We just need to get him off-planet, to keep him as far away from this place as possible. At least until we can come up with a better plan.”

  Valans leaned back. “Well, he is Soeckian, and their Eldireer Festival is coming up.”

  “That’s it!”

  * * *

  Admiral Greir opened his aged eyes and looked out of the window of his retirement community apartment. The sun was shining outside; little happy birds were chirping. Even the clouds were whiter and puffier than usual.

  He couldn’t stand it.

  “Computer, turn off that stupid thing,” he ordered. The window buzzed and the false image disappeared, and was replaced with gray skies filled with angry commuters, tall lifeless apartment towers, and flickering holographic billboards.

  Admiral Greir sat up and ran his wrinkly fingers through his white hair. His room was cold and sterile, filled with beeping machines that monitored, hissing machines that scrubbed the air, and chirping machines that did other things he didn’t bother to learn about. It was a horrible noise to wake up to. The only decoration at all in the room was a small cupboard with his dress cap, a small case displaying his medals, and a single family photo showing a much, much younger version of himself holding a little girl with white hair in a beautiful white sundress and matching white sunhat. Between the bed, the shelf, and the medical devices, there was barely enough room to scoot around the edge of the bed. This was his reward for a lifetime of military service.

  The door broke inward and nurse Dinot fell hard to the ground, crying in fear. A tall imposing figure walked in, fully armored, carrying a long-barreled pistol. The pupils of her black eyes glowed with a golden fire, her blue skin still looking young and vibrant, even after all these years.

  He recognized her instantly.

  “Lyssandra Bal,” he snarled.

  Behind her he could make out a dozen more pirates knocking out the guards in the corridor. One guard broke free and aimed his rifle at her from behind.

  Quicker than thought, she spun around, sweeping his leg out from underneath him. She threw out a device that exploded in the air, encasing the man in ice crystals.

  An automated turret formed down out of the ceiling. Its barrel whirred to life, but she threw a small disk that sliced through its ammo feed, and it spun fecklessly at her.

  “It’s been a long time, Admiral,” she said smugly as she strode up to his bed. The machines monitoring his heart beeped wildly, but his face remained passive and unflappable.

  “Yes, last time I saw you was the battle of Embers,” he said. “When we sent your ArchTyrant back to hell.”

  She reached over and tipped up the cap sitting on his shelf. “Do you know what your sin is, Admiral?”

  “I have nothing to say to you.”

  Her eyes flashed brighter. “Then listen. Your sin is murder. Tell me, how many people have you murdered in your long and illustrious career, Admiral?”

  He straightened himself up as best he could in his bed. “Zero.”

  “WRONG!” she screamed, suddenly enraged, then grew quiet again. “...dead wrong.”

  “I was an officer following orders. I did my duty. Killing an enemy at a time of war is not murder.”

  She pointed her pistol at nurse Dinot simpering in the corner. “So, if I were to shoot her, that would be murder, but if you shot her on the field of battle, it wouldn’t be?”

  “You know that is the way it works.”

  She threw her head back. “Ha! What a meaningless distinction. A person is dead, the result is the same. What does it matter the reason?”

  “I don’t want anyone to shoot me,” Nurse Dinot simpered.

  Lyssandra stepped in close, placing the barrel of her pistol underneath Greir’s chin. “You really think that little piece of paper from your superiors that orders you to kill makes you so different from me? We have both killed countless people.”

  He met her fierce gaze without looking away.

  “Do you really think that your hands are clean?” she asked.

  “You know I do.”

  She snarled and withdrew her pistol. “Unfortunately, the universe agrees with you. No one is punished for killing children so long as they have a little piece of paper that says it is okay first. It’s like this neat little pass that exempts you from kharma. That’s why everything is so frakked up. The laws of existence don’t make any sense.”

  “If you had come to kill me you would have done it already,” he spat fearlessly. “Take what you want and leave, stop wasting my time with this claptrap.”

  She smiled and stepped forward. “Ohh,” she cooed. Daintily, she ran the back of her finger along his jawline. “So you really think you still have time to waste? You’re nothing but a worthless old relic.” It distracted him so much that he barely noticed her slipping the ring off of his finger with her other hand.

  He looked down. “My ring?”

  She nodded. “I am a pirate, am I not?”

  “General, we just got word from their operative,” came a voice in her comm-link. We can attack in three days.”

  She turned to the others. “Let’s move,” she ordered. They stripped everything of value as they left, leaving the room practically bare.

  As the last of them ran out, nurse Dinot ran over and clung to him, crying into his shoulder.

  Admiral Greir looked down at the fallen picture frame, crumpled from being stepped on. He balled his fist and roared, slamming his hand
into the wall, cracking the material.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The whole concept of translation is something of a myth. Despite micronized atomic processors and the most advanced software ever devised by the nerdiest people ever born, there is still so only so much that translators can manage. The Volmbax, for example, communicate by psychically projecting emotions, the Bellogal transfer memory encrons through touch, and the Axaxax speak by releasing pheromones into the air. These languages and many like them simply have no spoken analogue. Nedavian, to name another, consists only of insults. Even among the verbal languages, most speech is littered with parables, proverbs, slang, and pop-culture references. As a result nearly half of everything said in everyday speech is impossible to transfer from one language to another, rendering even the best devices to a ballpark approximation. And that doesn’t even take cultural differences into account. A sword, for example, is a barbaric weapon of slaughter to the Konb, but to the Setzol it represents honor, fidelity, and loyalty, while to the Glit it represents feasting and celebration. So, even very simple words like ‘sword’ lose any intended cultural context when translated. The practical effect of all of this is, no matter where you go, or how much money you spend on a translator, you’re still going to have trouble understanding the taxi drivers when you get there, and you are still going to sound like an idiot when trying to order dinner.

  - A Quick and Simple Guide to The Galaxy, page 57, Tongzen Press

  The doors to the boarding ramp broke off their hinges and fell inwards, startling everyone in the vaulted terminal. Ms. Stubbs stepped out, looking like she was about to die, and wondering why she ever told her therapist that she was ready to go back to work. Her makeup had run into the lines on her face, making her look deathly ill. Her wrinkled jacket hung loosely off of one shoulder, revealing the blouse underneath, irrevocably stained with sweat.

  “Three days,” she droned pitifully. “Three days on that blasted starliner...”