The Eurynome Code: The Complete Series: A Space Opera Box Set

by K. Gorman

  “Fallon liked my Trojan F-Class E-Emitter.”

  Apparently unperturbed by her glare—or perhaps forgetful of her sister, who’d threatened to skewer him on more than one occasion—he shifted his attention back down to the table. Pieces of metal lay scattered across it, each looking like a complicated bit of electronic puzzlery. Toward the end, sitting only partially-lit by his worklight and with a silhouette that put it halfway between a sliced-open egg and the interior of a blaster cannon, she recognized the upside-down, half-globe shape of the same type of drone that had chased her on multiple occasions, shooting electricity meant to stun them.

  She gave it a flat look.

  Great. So the military liked his electric balls.

  Of course they did. They were, after all, tactically advantageous, especially if he developed them more—which, by the looks of his table, he was doing.

  “He’s also a good assistant,” Dr. Takahashi added. “He’s proven valuable to the research of the Eurynome Project. And, if what I hear of this hive mind construct Cookie found is true, he is potentially invaluable.”

  Karin gritted her teeth together and let out a slow breath.

  Yeah, okay. Tasuhada was a biomechanical engineer with a specialty in cybernetics. Even she couldn’t think of a better skillset for helping them.

  And, truth be told, she wasn’t actually mad. Not really. Getting off Nova Earth and putting the Alliance in the Nemina’s rearview cameras had seen to that. It was a relief to be in space again, and an even greater relief to be back on a Fallon military cruiser.

  Military ships made her happy. Fallon military ships doubly so. Fallon had the best ships—the fastest ships—and they’d promised to take her through the ERL-Gate and back to Earth.

  Old Earth, this time. Not Nova.

  The thought made her positively giddy.

  It also fraught her with nerves.

  Old Earth felt like a homecoming. She wanted to go back. At the same time, all of her childhood trauma had occurred on Old Earth, and that put an icy fear straight into her bones.

  That conflict was doing weird things to her brain.

  “Whatever.” She flapped her hand in a dismissive gesture, not quite hiding the discontent that still curled her lip. She turned the movement into a pointing finger as she spotted the prone form of the laser injector on the table beyond and what looked like a diagnostics holo shivering beside it. “Did you figure out what that’s for?”

  “We already knew what it was for,” Takahashi replied. “It injects nanos directly into your brain via a laser needle system. It’s easy enough to get on the market, albeit a bit dated with the technology nowadays. This one, however, has been modified to keep a direct connection between your brain and the monitoring device.”

  She frowned. “As opposed to a wireless one?”

  Most nanos, such as the Nemina’s ship-board supply, ran on pre-programming, with only a kill switch attached to specific frequencies in case one wanted to stop them after they’d been injected. Others, such as the surgical nano available in clinics and hospitals, worked with a mix of AI forms and wireless commands.

  “Its intelligence programming is atypical. Shinji thinks it was meant to interact with an organic compound.”

  It took her a moment to remember that ‘Shinji’ was Dr. Tasuhada’s given name. She glanced over his way, her frown deepening.

  “Wait, isn’t that what nano do? Interact with organics?”

  And, if they were talking about the laser-injector—well, she highly doubted it was meant to inject into engine hubs.

  Tasuhada grunted, bending over as he trained his eyes on the piece of metal he was soldering on the table. “He means the other side. Organic computer as opposed to a more conventional one.”

  She paused. “Do those even exist?”

  “Not unless Centauri’s got extra creative with its bionics in the last seven years. Someone built a calculator once, and there was some speculation about comms devices, but as far as I know, we’re still having trouble with converting regular nerves and synapses into something resembling a circuit. I mean, theoretically, it should work—our brains are basically complex computers, and we can certainly run cybernetics through them—but the tech just isn’t there for organic computing yet. Not on this scale, anyway.” A wisp of smoke caught the light as he touched his solder wand down again. “The signal transfer certainly looks organic-oriented. It tracks the same as some of the cybernetics we use at Ajin.”

  Karin’s jaw slackened.

  Okay, just what exactly is in this hive mind?

  “Was this used in our treatment?” Her stare rooted to the device’s sharp needles, and she swallowed, unsure if she wanted to know the answer.

  “Yes, we think so—likely as part of the tertiary and quaternary phases that you and your sister have spoken about. A careful study of the schematics your friend provided indicate that it likely houses a computer of some sort. Plenty of ports, circuits, and wires—non-organic, by the way. But, without the actual computer it appears to house, we can’t tell much more than that. This, at least, has given us some progress.”

  He didn’t quite meet her eyes when he stared at her face, instead appearing to focus on a point just beneath them. Like usual, his expression was devoid of the normal shame she expected whenever they saw each other. Though he had apologized for his involvement in her childhood experimentation, she hadn’t felt any true remorse from him—as though, since he had been doing his job, he wasn’t truly at fault. She’d thought the continuous twelve-hour days he spent working through her files might have been driven by guilt and a need to recompense, but lately, she suspected that it was simply his normal scientific method.

  He blinked. She realized she was staring.

  Perhaps it was time to do the thing she had actually come here to do.

  She stepped forward. “I had a problem on Nova. Some kind of hallucination.”

  “Oh?” He glanced up from the netlink in his hand, gave her a sharp, critical assessment through the holoscreen’s back, then clicked the device down on the nearest table. His brows knitted together as he stepped around his workdesk, pulling a diagnostic spectacle over his right eye. A small screen glowed to life over his iris. “Are you all right?”

  The visual made him alien. Unbidden, a memory of him flashed through her mind, complete in its operating table, nano-machine, strapped-to-the-gurney terror. Her breath caught in her throat, and her hand clenched into a fist, but she fought it, resisting—just barely—the urge to take a step back.

  “I don’t know. Something’s been different about me, ever since…” She hesitated, not quite sure how to continue. Even now, after all she’d been through, it all seemed too absurd for her. They were talking about multiple universes, here. And her recent ability to bridge them.

  Her power wasn’t supposed to work that way. She was a dawn goddess—well, modeled after one, anyway.

  And as for this new vision she’d had—she hadn’t recognized either of the two doctors at the time, but in hindsight…

  The woman had called the other doctor ‘Elliot.’ The name matched one in Nomiki’s research files—a Dr. Elliot Corringham. One of the two leading doctors who had been steering the Eurynome Project in its most recent years, and who had begun its research into the supposed human consciousness ‘genesis point’ that both Dr. Takahashi’s memories and Cookie’s hive mind ‘cradle’ search supported.

  The guy didn’t look like any she’d seen in Nomiki’s notebook, but there were precious few pictures in it. And even less which had been labeled.

  “Ever since you split into a second dimension?” Dr. Takahashi prompted.

  With a jolt, she realized she’d been silent for a few seconds. He’d stopped by her front, examining her with that singular focus he had—though what, precisely, he was looking for, she couldn’t tell.

  At least he wasn’t concerned with how silly it all sounded. But maybe this was all old hat to him. Hells knew what he must have
seen working on the Eurynome Project.

  “Yes, that. Do you remember someone named ‘Elliot’?”

  His gaze snapped back to her eyes, surprised. “Elliot Corringham?”

  “Perhaps. What did he look like?”

  “Brown hair, Caucasian, on the thin side. About my height.” Takahashi shrugged. “Why? Was he in your hallucination?” He frowned. “I don’t think you ever met him.”

  “No, I don’t think I did.”

  Though her memory was spotty, she had to agree with him there. The information they had on the two Corringham brothers was filled with holes, but indicated that at least one of them had kept away from Earth for the past fifteen years. And the other might as well have vanished off the face of the universe for all Cookie had found about him. Except for an awards ceremony and some general accounting data—and, of course, more than a few files of Eurynome paperwork—the man was a digital ghost.

  Which begged the question—why would she see one of them in her hallucination?

  Was she going cross-dimensional again? Had he gone cross-dimensional?

  No. That didn’t sound right. The vision had felt more like a memory than something in real-time. Even if it had been triggered by the weird second-energy she’d been using at the time.

  “Perhaps it was more than a hallucination, then.” If he was going to bandy about terms like ‘cross-dimensional,’ then she might as well get over herself. “It took over. I couldn’t move. Everything froze up. All of my muscles and joints were fighting against each other.” They still ached, actually. She’d taken a painkiller tablet back in the Nemina for it. “I was aware of what was happening, but I couldn’t get away from it. Like this hallucination was being beamed directly into my brain, and I couldn’t ignore it.”

  “Hmm.” He gave her another assessment. On the other side of the room, Dr. Tasuhada had also looked up at her explanation.

  “I’ve been feeling different ever since the whole dimension-crossing thing.” Not to mention she’d been doing it a lot more than she’d thought, if all those meetings with Tylanus had been legit—and if that time she’d vanished in front of Marc had been her doing, rather than Tylanus’. “It feels like there’s a second set of energy next to where my light usually is.” She searched his eyes. “Do you know what I mean?”

  No. No, probably not. Dr. Takahashi didn’t have special powers; he only made other people have special powers.

  But he surprised her with a nod.

  “Not directly, but many of my clients have remarked on how changes to their body affected them and their perception. Those with more extreme enhancements—both to their body and their normal senses—described the development of a kind of sixth sense. Similar to what your sister has, except less mature…” he trailed off, watching her face for clues that she understood.

  She gave him a nod. Nomiki did have a sixth sense, but it wasn’t the kind of sense found in the system’s more-popular paranormal netdramas. Instead of an ability to see ghosts and demons, hers was a culmination of all of her very active and acute normal senses, pieced together by her subconscious into a single, working intuition that whispered into her mind.

  Normal people could sense what she did, if they paid hyper-attention. But she did it about a thousand times faster.

  “I suspect some of your program might have been cross-wired in that dimensional event,” Takahashi explained. “As Program Eos, you were sensitive to light and could manipulate its energy. But without the tertiary and quaternary stages, you never fully realized, so that may be affecting it. With programs like yours, as opposed to, say, your sister’s, that lack makes a larger gap between the program’s start and finish, especially since you are so far outside of the normal spectrum.” He paused. “Do you understand?”

  Maybe. Sort of.

  “I’m more complicated,” she guessed.

  “Yes. And not finishing opens you to—”

  “Complications?”

  He gave her a smile. “Yes. Now, this second energy you describe—it feels different to you, correct?”

  “Yes.”

  He stepped to the side and made a gesture to the middle of his lab, where an examination chair filled most of the space with its cushy, faux-leather build. “Let’s get you under the scan and see what we can see.”

  A warm, queasy feeling slithered up from the base of her spine as she approached the chair. She noticed there was a large, circular hole in the back of the headrest where a doctor could work through the back of a patient’s skull. It did not instill confidence. But she lifted herself into the chair, anyway, settling stiffly against its back.

  “Just sit back.”

  A scraping sounded from somewhere behind her, and Takahashi reappeared holding a curved device—a crown similar to the one on the table behind him, but it had electrodes and sensors instead of laser injectors. She ducked her head and helped him settle it over her hair.

  A beep sounded close to her ear, followed by a corresponding beep from the holoscreen next to them. The light changed on the display, several diagrams minimizing to make way for a new map-scan that, piece by artificial piece, unfolded into the shape of a brain. Scales to the side bounced like the visualizer on her netlink’s audio reader. Takahashi hustled away, busying himself with the output readings.

  “There are some echoes of activity. A quick comparison between them and your previous Fallonese scans do indicate growth, but they fall well within the bounds of normal activity for you…” His squinting grew more pronounced as he trailed off. In the next second, he’d pulled off the diagnostic spectacle—useless when he wasn’t looking at her—and turned toward another table. “Give me a second, I’ll take a deeper look.”

  She decided not to be alarmed. Having seen him at his other work, she knew he had a tendency to grab onto an idea and chase it for its entire length. She watched his back as he hunched over a small, 3-D manipulator device—likely also receiving signal from the scanner on her head, though she hadn’t heard a third beep—and, when he didn’t surface for more than a minute, directed her attention elsewhere.

  Ahead, located in a darkened portion of the lab and boasting the only warm source of light in this place—good gods, didn’t these people turn on the bloody lights?—Dr. Tasuhada had bent back over his work table, a diagnostics piece on his head that was not dissimilar to the spectacle Dr. Takahashi had been wearing, though she suspected it was meant more for machinery than people.

  The lab was quiet. Soothing, actually, though she found that part hard to believe. But she reminded herself that she was on a ship—a Fallon ship—with the most top-of-the-line equipment on it, and she began to relax.

  Yeah, I’m a girl with simple wants. Just put me on a ship, and I’ll be happy.

  When nothing appeared to be happening, or be about to happen, she allowed her head to sink back in its rest, decided not to think too much about the large hole her ponytail was sliding through, and shut her eyes.

  “Karin?”

  Crap.

  “Yes?” With reluctance, she squinted one eye open. Dr. Takahashi had his back to her, still bent over the visualizer.

  “You said it happens when you use your powers? I’m seeing more indications of growth beyond what our last scan on Chamak registered.”

  “Is it… still within normal bounds?”

  “From a technical standpoint, yes. You haven’t undergone an alarming change.” He sighed and straightened, folding his arms over his abdomen. “However…”

  “You think it’s something else?”

  “With someone like you, I am always suspicious—and this change is developing in areas your program isn’t supposed to touch. There’s been minor modifications to your medulla, and the potassium levels in your frontal cortex are off-kilter.”

  She straightened. Potassium—or lack thereof—had been a problem when she’d been using her powers on Caishen station. Soo-jin had kept her in and out of Med for a cycle, monitoring her.

  “So, you thin
k something is happening?”

  “Yes. You never finished your treatment program, which left aspects of you unfinished.”

  She frowned. “I can make the light.”

  “Yes, you can. However, Eurynome subjects were not made specifically for their powers. The Corringham’s goal was always—”

  “The hive mind,” she finished with a sigh, then leaned her head back on the chair.

  Everything seemed to be coming back to that, these days.

  “With you unfinished, I posit that your body and powers may have deviated from your Eos program, likely knocked off during the Shift Events, or possibly even earlier if you had inter-dimensional communication with Tylanus.”

  “So, you’re saying that I’m broken?”

  “You were all meant for connection, Karin. And with your sensitivity to light and energy, I suspect that manifested more boldly in you than in, say, your sister.”

  Her eyebrow twitched. “So, you’re saying I’m more prone to breaking?”

  Takahashi gave a long-suffering sigh. “If you want to look at it that way, fine, but my scans don’t indicate anything that is broken.”

  “I had a hallucination. I was paralysed.”

  “A hallucination that was related to your use of this second energy you describe,” he prompted. “And, before then, you said you flipped dimensions in the lab?”

  She ground her teeth together and narrowed her eyes. A sinking feeling in her chest told her she didn’t like where this seemed to be going. “Yes.”

  “With Eurynome subjects, your powers were always going to manifest. The program is written into your DNA. It’s your brain and body chemistry that’s the problem—it can’t change fast enough to keep up. I can see it here, flooding your amygdalae.” He paused, gesturing to the brain scan on the holoscreen beside him, the movement too brief for her to actually find whatever he had been pointing at, but she suspected it had something to do with the bloom of yellow color near the top of the brain stem. “Half the treatment drugs were meant to open your brain to anomalous development and pathways—to allow your mind and body to complete the program’s code—but the other half was meant to feed the brain full of accelerants, push it into construction mode, and run it through several dozen build-flush cycles that allowed it to catch up with what your program was doing.” He paused. “Treatment made you sleepy, didn’t it?”