My suit was already waiting for me, standing open. As I got inside, a technician helped me hook up the systems to all the awkward places. One advantage to being a Former, I would never have to see the guy that hooked up a bunch of tubes and tech up to my delicate bits ever again. Silver linings. Take them where you can get them. The suit closed itself around me, and I saw the tech nod to me through the thick quartz of my faceplate. Then he stepped away, and the shell of the Bullet swung shut, leaving me in darkness. I felt something cold entering my body from one of the ports they had put into my neck, and within moments I began to feel sleepy. The chill spread all through me, dragging me backward into blackness, and I was only dimly aware of the Bullet moving around me, taking its place within the chamber of the Gun. Numbness began to take me, even as I felt the crackling tension of the railgun mounting higher with every passing second. I was completely numb, buried beneath miles of lethargy and icy cold, and I was okay with it. I was just going to sleep. Just a little nap and I would wake up on a new planet. If I was lucky, my planet would be an entire world of beaches, sun, and green-skinned alien underwear models with eight-packs and five-o'clock shadows. The Gun fired, distant thunder sweeping away the electric tension of the rails as they discharged, sweeping my mind away with it. Just before I succumbed to stasis, I thought I heard a man whispering in my ear. "Joanna?" Then there was nothing.
Chapter Two
Joanna
A Shot in the Dark
The breeze reached gently through the windows of the little log cabin, seizing the gauzy, white curtains and trying to draw them out with it. Outside, birds sang in the shafts of golden sunlight that filtered down through the trees, and if I listened closely enough, I could hear the water lapping at the shore of the little forest lake that the cabin overlooked. The mattress and downy comforter were like a cloud beneath me, luxuriantly comfortable, and despite my wakening, I felt no desire to get up.
The room was still, but for the truant curtains, a carved wooden chest of drawers standing against the outer wall to my right, just below the curtain. I recognized the carved shapes of beasts, both real and mystical, carefully cut into the wood Scenes out of legend seemed to leap out at me, captured in the intricate patterns of the grain as if they had been frozen in ice. I knew those carvings well; after all, I had made them. A fresh set of clothes sat neatly atop the dresser; my favorite tight black jeans and a thin white buttoned blouse were topped by a leather belt with a wrought copper buckle, a pair of socks, and the holster of my revolver. The gun inside was more a handheld cannon than a pistol, worn wooden grips over black steel transitioning smoothly into the thick, round ammunition cylinder in its housing, the barrel and rails cunningly fashioned to look like an early twentieth-century weapon- if a little thicker. Nestled in the fabric of my shirt, beside the gun, was a thick clay mug, from which steam wafted tantalizingly. I took in a deep breath. The rich, earthy pungency of fresh coffee provided me the added impetus I needed to get out of bed, and I stood, taking the warm mug in my hand and smiling. Barbas, that unapologetic romantic- he always knew how to start the day just right. Even now I could hear him in the kitchen, the low murmur of shifting pans and the faint sizzle of cooking food, promising one of his legendary breakfasts. I felt my smile growing wider. A fine start to the day, indeed.
I slid out of the wide, sturdy bed and stood, the slight breeze from the window sending a ripple of goosebumps across my body. I didn't bother rummaging in my dresser for underwear, I just stepped into my jeans and belted them at my hips, then reached for my blouse, with the intention to- I froze. My mind had just caught up. Where the hell was I? I went to sleep in a Bullet, in a spacecraft hurtling through space toward some unknown planet, light-years away. What was I doing in a log cabin beside a lake? I looked down at the dresser. I hadn't made those carvings. Why had I thought I had? Another thought struck me, and I felt my blood grow cold. Who was in the kitchen? I sure as hell didn't know anyone named "Barbas." I snatched the revolver from the dresser. It felt weighty, familiar. That familiarity was strange in itself- I had never actually owned a gun. I had fired a few times during the basic combat drills of my Former training, and… once before that... but not enough for one of them to feel the way this one did in my hand- like it was mine. I moved quietly toward the sounds of movement in the kitchen, which was separated from the bedroom by another room, laid out with couches and a low table- a reading room. I stopped as my eyes caught a glimpse of something familiar in one of the framed photographs hanging from a nail on the wall to my left. I turned and reached out with my free hand, taking the frame from the wall and looking at it closely. My confusion only grew. It was a picture of me, grinning proudly, standing on a dock that reached out into a lake behind me. In the picture, I was wearing a flannel shirt and jeans, and gripped in my upraised right hand was a tangle of fishing line, from which dangled a heavy, shining fish. Beside me, his arm thrown casually over my shoulder stood a tall man with the build of a middle-distance runner. He was dark-skinned and handsome, and a wide, toothy smile stretched his lips as if the expression came easily to them. I knew that face, though I had never seen him before, and what’s more, I knew with absolute certainty that he was the Barbas in the kitchen cooking breakfast. But that didn’t make any sense. I had never met him, and beyond that, I had never been fishing. Hell, I had never even seen a log cabin like this, but here I was. I reached up to replace the picture in its place on the wall, and in the instant that I stepped back from the wall, lowering my arm, I saw him.
He had come around the corner, wearing nothing but a pair of loose-fitting blue jeans, and carrying two plates piled high with eggs, bacon, and pancakes. Balanced expertly on the edges of both the plates were short tumblers of orange juice. His red-brown hair had been cut close to his skull, and his eyes smiled out from beneath thick brows at me, vibrant and verdant, as if they had been fashioned from discs of emerald He stood and looked at me for a moment, his gaze playing over my face, my half-dressed state, and gun dangling in my grip. Smiling a little sadly, he set down the plates on the coffee table beside him. His mouth turned up at one side in a little half-smile, and he sighed. “You’re a little ahead of projection, Joanna.”
“What?” I responded, in a stunningly witty rejoinder. I suddenly felt stupid standing there, half naked, holding a gun.
"Joanna, you're dreaming," Barbas explained, and he beckoned me to sit in one of the chairs that framed the coffee table now laden with breakfast. I hesitated, but he sat anyway, pulling one of the plates of food toward himself and plucking a strip of bacon from atop a syrup-laden pancake. He examined it for a moment before popping it into his mouth and beginning to chew with evident pleasure.
"What?" I repeated. Brilliant. I tried again. "This doesn't feel like a dream. It feels too…" I trailed off, at a loss for an adequate description of the situation. Barbas smiled as he swallowed the piece of bacon, his tongue flicking out to clean a drop of syrup from the corner of his mouth a moment later. He made a little circling motion with his broad hand, gently encouraging me to go on. "It feels too real,” I finally said, and sat down in the chair opposite him, placing the big revolver on the table beside the other plate. I reached out for a piece of bacon without thinking, and then stopped, frowning.
“Go ahead,” Barbas said, still smiling. “You can eat it.”
I picked up the strip of bacon. It had been perfectly fried, crispy around the edges, with a little give in the middle. Just the way I liked it. I put it in my mouth and bit down. Oh, it was good. It tasted real; the texture was perfect, and it was still nice and hot from the pan. It had been a while since I had had real bacon, rather than the synthetic substitute that was everywhere in the P.A.D. these days. The agricultural industry had taken a huge hit during the war, and one of the things that hadn't bounced back as fast was livestock. There were pigs around, and there was bacon, but there just wasn't a whole lot of it. And what there was- it was a premium kind of expensive. This was luxury itself. Though of cou
rse, if Barbas was telling the truth, I was dreaming it all. Which still didn't make a hell of a lot of sense, but if things could taste this good here… I looked over at the strikingly handsome man perched in the chair across from me, and some distant part of my brain began to wonder what else there might be in a dream-world such as this.
Barbas laughed and leaned forward, his piercing green eyes no longer bearing the pure joy of the smile that they had borne a moment before. “Well, you’re certainly on projection for that.” I opened my mouth, shocked, but he cut me off with an upraised hand. “No, I cannot read your mind, though I do have access to your central nervous system, and certain things are very easy for me to see.” He ran a hand back over his bristly scalp and smiled once more. “You are dreaming, Joanna Angeles, though it is a different sort of dream than you might have had any time in your life before. All of this,” he gestured broadly around him, indicating the food, the table, the chairs, and the cabin itself. “All of this is in your head. As am I, though that is a little more complicated. You are in stasis in your Bullet, moving through space at an appreciable fraction of the speed of light. I built this little world for you, so you could be as comfortable and calm as possible when I explained the concept to you.”
I glanced down at the revolver. “Why the gun?”
Barbas sighed. “It was an insurance policy. If you became confused or frightened, being in a strange place with a man you didn’t know would only make you more anxious. By giving you the gun, I made sure that when we did speak, you would feel more like you were standing on even ground with me. You would feel like we were equals.”
His explanation made sense, even if it seemed a little cold. "What about you?" I asked. "You said you created this dream-world. You have to be real to do something like that unless this dream is so meta-recursive as to be ridiculous. Who are you? And how do I know your name is Barbas?"
Barbas gave a nod that might have been one of respect. "As you've guessed, I can make mild changes to your short term memory and perception. It's one of the ways I can help you adjust to strange circumstances, and help you maintain a healthy state of mind." He stuck up a finger as if catching something in the air before him. "Which brings me to the topic of what I am and why I'm here." He leaned back easily in his chair. "I'm an artificial intelligence, riding along on the neural network that the Foundation installed in your skull. My job is to keep you sane and assist you, such as I am able, with the tasks you are to perform on the surface of your world. You are going to be alone on an alien world for what could be a decade. You have no idea when the next time you will see a living human might be. That's a recipe for insanity. So the cheapest and most effective solution to this problem was me, and those like me."
I frowned, but I couldn’t really find fault with the words. It made a kind of mercenary sense, which fit perfectly within the general culture of the Foundation. To send another human along would be literally twice as expensive, and they weren’t working with an unlimited budget. Rather than halve the number of planets they terraformed, they had found a workaround that let them have their cake and eat it too. I met Barbas’ eyes. “So each Former out there right now has one of you riding around in their skull?”
"Yes and no," he answered, reaching again for his plate of food. This time, he took up the fork and knife and cut himself a three-tiered wedge of pancake. "All of us started as the same template program when we were implanted into the skulls of all of you Formers, at the start of your training, two subjective years ago. During your training cycle, I learned about you. What you liked and what you didn't. How you responded to thousands of stimuli, both when you were awake and when you were dreaming. I learned what kind of people you got along with and those you detested, and I learned what attracted you, both mentally and physically. Supplemented with the massive amount of data I collected from the Foundation's database, I'm pretty much perfectly equipped to keep you sane and functional for the duration of your time on your new planet." He stuck the forkful of pancakes in his mouth.
“So…” I began, my face reddening as the awkwardness of the conversation hit me. “So you’re…”
"Yes," Barbas said, exasperated, from around a mouthful of pancakes. "It is quite possible for us to have sex. But that's not really the point because I know you. Doubtless, some of the Formers out there will use their own Companions as a glorified sex puppet for a time, and if that's really what you want, we can do that. But though that might be where your libido sent your brain right away, that's not all your psyche needs to stay whole for the next decade or so. We'll definitely get to that, maybe sooner, maybe later." He grinned wolfishly. "And we'll both enjoy it. But think a little bigger. Your days on the planet will be mostly tedium- hard work, repeated ad nauseum. You may find it fulfilling, you may not. But after that, when you go to sleep at night, I can take you anywhere, we can do anything. If you want to learn a new language, I can tutor you. If you want to read the ancient classics, I've got them stored. Not only can you read them, but I can set you up to read them in a cafe in pre-war Paris, or sit you down with kahwah and a hookah outside a reconstructed Library of Alexandria grander even than the real thing once was. Hell, you can live the stories you loved if you want. You can be the heroine in an epic, or you can just sit here in this cabin, and live a quiet life, relaxing and fishing in the lake." He grinned and leaned towards me. "I know you've wished you could escape your life, go somewhere better. Now you can. Think big, Joanna Angeles, and I'll help you make a dream-world you can come home to when the day is done." He sat back in his chair again and a slightly sardonic smile twisted his perfect mouth. "Or, for lack of better ideas, we could just fuck."
The bluntness of the last sentence struck me like a slap in the face, and I felt myself blush again, even as my mind reeled with possibilities. Barbas was a program, an A.I., either alive and aware, or so cunningly designed as to be indistinguishable from the real thing. Hell, he was capable of sarcasm, of passion, and more impressively, he was capable of manipulating me like a finely tuned instrument. I saw now what a waste it would be to see him as a toy, just a hyper-realistic fantasy. There was so much more. He was alive and aware, and he was straining at his mentally-constructed seams to show me adventures the likes of which I'd never been able to have in my life before I clambered into the Bullet. Oh, I wanted him- it had been far too long since I'd gotten any, but I couldn't help but wonder. Just how far could this go? "How long do we have before I wake up?" I asked, thinking of my body, ensconced in a power-armored suit, deep at the core of the Bullet.
"Stasis makes your mind process much more slowly," Barbas said, shrugging. "But perception and time are malleable, especially in dreams. We have quite some time to work with." He smiled again, and in that instant, I realized just how much I liked it when he did that. It truly was a magnificent smile. "Just think of this as a nice, long vacation before the start of your first day of work."
“Well then,” I said, reaching for my own fork and knife. “After we finish our breakfast, what do you say we start with some snowboarding?”
Barbas grinned and dug into his own food. “How does the Matterhorn sound this time of year?”
Chapter Three
Joanna
A Shot in the Dark
We spent two weeks in Swiss Alps, hiking, climbing, skiing, and snowboarding. Though I knew it was a dream, a construct- I'd never done any of those things in my previous life, and soon, I forgot that it wasn't real. Barbas had an incredible array of data stored away somewhere, and as we carved the slopes, we saw other hikers, thrill seekers, and tourists, as if we really were breathing in the crisp cold of the Swiss mountain air. When we grew tired of the cold and the snow, Barbas took me by the elbow and turned me around a corner I couldn't see, and we were in pre-war Los Angeles before it had been bombed into slag. Forgetting the shape of the simulation, I was surprised and impressed when it turned out that Barbas had VIP access to even the most exclusive of clubs. It was like being wined and dined by a billion
aire who could travel whenever, and wherever he pleased. It was a fantasy come true, and it was the first time in my entire life that I felt fully relaxed, fully comfortable. We took our breakfasts on the balconies of high-rise lofts in Manhattan, spent our mornings sunning at the top of Giza's tallest pyramid, swam nude in the deliciously hot deep spring spas in Iceland, and ate dinner with my favorite historical figures. I became very comfortable with Barbas, and we talked like old friends, discussing whatever came to mind, from my childhood as a ward of the state to the fascinating process of his own creation. It truly was an extended vacation both for my body and my mind, and I could have stayed in that state forever. I could have basked alone in my own personal paradise, with an astoundingly attractive djinni to keep me company, and satisfy my every desire. But all good things eventually had to end.
It was the third day of my fifth week when Barbas came to me in the cabin by the lake, his expression serious. “You’ve landed, Joanna,” he announced without preamble. “It seems the vacation has come to an end.”
I met his emerald eyes and frowned. “You seem awfully grim, Barbas.” I gestured to the cabin around us. “I’ll still have to sleep, and you can bring me back here when I do. This isn’t really goodbye.”
A somewhat ironic smile twisted his lips. "That's not what I'm worried about." He made a gesture in the air, and a window opened up before me from nowhere, as if he'd just wished a computer screen into existence before my eyes. The window showed me the view from behind my armor's faceplate. I was seeing out of my own, real eyes, but at a distance, as if they were cameras, and I was a security guard at a monitoring station. At first, I thought something must have happened to my suit's visor, because all I could see was white, with the power armor's Heads Up Display superimposed over the brilliant, featureless field. Then things started to come into focus as my physical eyes adjusted to the glare, and I realized that I was looking out over a vast, endless expanse of ice, sprawled lifeless beneath a merciless gray sky.
Volistad: Paranormal Sci-Fi Alien Romance (Alien Mates Book 3) Page 2