by Richard Gohl
“Hey! Well done, hotshot!” Madi slapped him on the back. Alia came in and sat down. Ryan smiled and asked: “When I go back to Dad’s will you guys be friends with him?”
“It might be hard… you see, when you were stolen from me, he didn’t care that you were stolen— he just took you...”
Alia, who had been squirming in the background, said, “We don’t know that.” Madi continued, “You know he’s not your real dad, right?”
“Dad didn’t steal me! He didn’t know I was stolen! Dad’s a good person. He bought me up because they said I had no parents.”
“Eleven years ago he stole you from me! He kills people like us! That’s his job. Ryan, he’s a murderer…” said Madi.
“Oh, you guys. No, no, no, no…” Alia stood up and tried to calm the situation. Madi had never had to practice patience or tolerance. She was used to testing those qualities in others. Ryan didn’t believe her. He was starting to like his new mum but thought, If she’s going to lie about Dad just because he’s a Napean, I don’t trust her.
He had another question: “Where’s my real dad, then?” Alia’s eyes looked skywards and she sat back down. “I never knew who he was,” Madi replied directly. “Doesn’t it take a man and a woman to make a baby?”
Madi rubbed her hand across her face. Alia wasn’t quite sure where to look. Then she raised her eyebrows at Madi as if to suggest a serious answer may be required.
“Yes, darling.” Madi took a deep breath and tried to keep control of her voice. “The fact is, there were a few men who wanted to make you…” Her flow was interrupted by a surprisingly adult gesture from the little boy—he slapped his palm upon his head in frustration, as if to say, “Why me?”
Push on, thought Madi. Push on.
“… And they all tried to make you, but it was a… a mystery who was actually the winner.”
“It doesn’t matter. I’ve already got a dad anyway. I don’t even want another one.”
“Of course you don’t, darling but the best part of the story is that I got you!” Ryan was sitting on the couch staring forward. Madi had to squat down in front of him to look him in the eye. “And you’ve got me!” she said. Ryan avoided eye contact.
Finally, Madi stood up, hurt, and said churlishly:
“So don’t forget: he wasn’t your dad. He stole you…” She immediately knew it was wrong; she’d gone too far. Ryan’s face began to break up. She persisted: “He became your dad when you were a baby…”
“He is my dad and you’re not my mum!” Ryan stood up and trudged off to his room. Bes, having worked a long shift in the vines and hearing the latter part of the conversation escalating in volume, joined her two friends from the next room. Madi sat there with both hands pressed on her nose, stifling sniffles.
“What’s up here?” asked Bes.
Alia explained, “It’s difficult. Ryan still feels a strong connection with his father and Napea…”
Madi blurted out: “His father made a plea bargain to save his own skin, and that meant letting go of his own son! I wish I could tell Ryan that!”
Alia disagreed. “The guy saved Ryan’s life. You know what they do to children normally.”
Bes tried to divert the focus of the conversation: “Such hypocrites! Half of them have children, yet if they catch each other with the children, they kill the children! They’re so messed up!”
“Well,” said Alia, “the Napean, the guard who he calls his father and who taught him telepathy, also saved his life. And don’t forget that Ryan hasn’t met, let alone been cared for by, any other people. At all.”
“The father’s on a pedestal.” Madi sounded defeated.
“What do you expect?” said Alia. “It’s his dad. The man’s obviously devoted himself to the kid. Kid worships him. I wouldn’t try to knock that over. That’ll only blow up in your face.”
“Isn’t anyone on my side here? I feel like he’s rejecting me! My own son!”
“He doesn’t know you yet! Give him a chance!” said Alia. “Encourage him to keep contacting his dad. To use his gift. That will help settle him and he’ll see we’re on his side.”
“Yeah, but we shouldn’t involve him in our problems,” said Bes, cracking open a cider and sitting down. “Let him be a child!” Bes’s view was not the fashionable one. Most real people believed childhood was overrated and unnecessary; when a child was physically old enough to work, they should be put to work. Childhood and toys were just an adult construct and not actually necessary for children at all. It was also believed, as a result of their contribution to society, that children benefitted by developing a sense of self-worth and confidence. Consequently they didn’t feel the need to destroy or reject the adult world at puberty and beyond.
“Well, I think once he gets older and finds out the truth about the Napeans he’ll want to help,” said Madi.
“You better go into him—don’t let him stew,” said Alia.
Ryan did contact his dad again a number of times, and with each contact he found his ability to see things in the Napean virtual world became enhanced. It was as if his increased distance from it forced him to bring it all into a sharper focus. The women were amazed at his power of concentration.
After three days of living with his mother and the other two women, Ryan wished he could see the other children again. Having experienced their company, the spontaneity and the fun, Ryan started to realize what he had been missing out on all this time.
Madi could sense his loneliness and realized that it was a gap she couldn’t fill. So on the third day, which happened to be the end of a three-month harvest period, she told Ryan about a game, “helix ball.” It was a game that everyone played and it was happening tomorrow. The timing couldn’t have been better.
“Tomorrow you’ll meet a lot of the kids on our street. They’ll all be playing!”
“I’ve never heard of it,” said Ryan. “What’s the game?”
“We’re competing against the other two streets. Anyone living in the streets under our transdome. So there are three teams using the one ball… come and I’ll show you.”
They went into the rec room, and Madi typed in the words “helix ball,” which appeared in large letters on the wall. The search produced vision of children chasing a black ball that both seemed to be able to float and fall. Madi paused the action and explained: “Each team has its own goal at the bottom of its street. You know how our streets are spiral-shaped, right?”
“Yeah,” said Ryan.
“Okay, so normally, the ball floats. It’s got a lightweight gas in it. So you have to catch the floating ball and run down to the bottom of the street and score a goal. If you drop the ball it will float up the spiraling street around the bend until it becomes a dead ball at the top. Get it?”
“Not really,” said Ryan
“All right, lets watch some more.” Madi turned the movie on again. There were scenes with both children and adults playing, diving and jumping at this black ball which, when fumbled, rose quickly into the air. One man jumped off one foot to grab the ball, which had nearly reached the roof of the street. He missed. The ball crawled along the top of the rocky roof up and around the bend. A crowd of people came chasing the ball from below. Meanwhile, higher up the road, slightly around the bend, two men had formed a human ladder and several women were lining up to run and spring board off the men to grab the ball. The first woman missed but the second woman was successful.
The oncoming crowd of people seemed to be a mix from the three different teams. “It looks rough!” said Ryan.
“It’s just a bit of fun,” said Madi, who then paused the vision. “Now watch this woman who has the ball. Her teammates try to protect her while her and a teammate press the twenty Earth holes on the ball. This turns the gas inside the ball into a fluid, making it really heavy—so now, if they drop the ball it will roll down toward their goal, at the bottom of their own street.”
“I don’t think I want to do it…” said Ryan.<
br />
“Well, you’ve got a place on the team, if you want it. There’s a twelve-and-under team and everyone between ten and twelve from Blackwood transdome 2 is on your side… so you’re not playing against adults. ”
“Well…”
“Don’t be scared—no one tries to hurt each other. It’s just a way for all the people down here to come out of their houses and have some fun on the street.”
“Okay. What happens if I stole the ball on someone else’s street? How do I get it back?”
“Well, a good player needs to know the tricks. Don’t forget; streets are connected about halfway down and at the bottom. If the other team has taken the ball onto their street and they’re running down with it, or the ball is rolling downwards, two players from a different team can touch the twenty holes on the ball, reversing the state of the fluid, turning it into a gas, making the ball float. If it floats to the top of that street, it becomes a dead ball and gets moved to the middle of one of the other streets. Get it?”
“Sort of.”
“Hey, if you get a touch, you’re doing really well!”
The next day, while Ryan got knocked around on the underground streets and made new friends with his unusual attitude (despite his reluctance, he proved to be a fierce if somewhat clueless competitor), Shane had been trying to contact him again.
Ryan’s safety had been assured, although his location had never been revealed, and now Shane couldn’t re-establish contact with him.
This isn’t going to work at all, thought Shane, and he started to think about a solution.
Chapter 27
Yes Captain
SHANE WAS DISCOVERED, through Telesync, to have been in contact with someone through ETP—without having a registered transmission recipient. Service information police paid Shane a visit to clarify the situation.
Although he was surprised at their level of knowledge, he knew right away why they were there. “Oh, I get so lonely… I use the ETP application ‘afterlife’ to contact my wife,” he lied. “Sometimes I feel she’s talking to me from beyond.”
The afterlife application was well-known for accessing stored information from a client’s conversations and posts and being able to create virtual, realistic conversations from them. “Just until I get over it… self-indulgent, I know.”
“That’s not what we’re talking about, Captain Wing.”
“Oh, I do it with my son too,” said Shane.
“But your son couldn’t access ETP, so what do you mean?”
“Well, I can still hear his voice, so I talk to him,” Shane lied.
“Why is it that we have records of you receiving links from an unknown source?” “I have no idea how or what your records… certainly very strange—I mean, obviously I can’t actually talk to my wife or my son—not in reality… it doesn’t make any sense.” Shane had quite a reputation as a smart and tough, if ruthless, guard. The two policemen wanted to believe him. But they were suspicious. After all, this man had gone against the strictest Napean code.
One of the guards said: “Maybe it was your use of the ‘afterlife’ program that was picked up—though that’s unheard of. Only other explanation would be: did your son ever practice any form of electro-telepathy?” The guards were receiving cues from their superior.
“No,” said Shane. “He was only ten years old; he wouldn’t have even known what that meant.” The officer, using ETP, said, “I just checked with Aaron at HQ. He says the afterlife software should never be used in tandem with ETP at all.”
“Okay, then. I’m sorry… it’s just my grief… I’m still… that boy was my…”
“It’s okay, Captain Wing. We understand.”
After a significant pause, Shane said quietly: “Will that be all, men?”
Chapter 28
Ryan I.N.
THE SERVICE HAD very nearly discovered Shane’s telepathic activity with his son. Fearing for Ryan’s safety, Shane had tried to tell him that they couldn’t talk for a while but had had trouble making contact.
Coincidentally, during this period, Alia, Wez, and Madi were hoping to use Ryan’s talents to access Service information. Without regular contact with his father, Ryan became less wary of using the Napean network. He began to walk more confidently in that world as a free agent. He saw and heard many strange things because he moved around largely unnoticed by the inhabitants. Sometimes ETP users felt a presence, saw movement in the very structures and colors around them. But Ryan was never found out. He was like a spirit wandering in a busy hotel.
But, likewise, Ryan himself was blind to many things. Without Iris Navigation, the virtual signposts, in the Napean network were missing or not visible to him. This was where he had to work in tandem with Alia, who had charted some of the main navigational routes on the Iris lens. She had been there before, and although things looked very different for Ryan, she was able to guide him through some areas of the labyrinth. They hoped Ryan would have access to the whole network and like a ghost maybe he could walk through some important doors.
Alia explained to Ryan, “We want to stop some very unfair things from happening. The Service use the network—Telesync—to stop the Napean women from having their own babies.”
“That’s why they take real babies?” asked the boy.
“Well done. Exactly,” said Alia. “When we find the launch site for this program we want to shut it down.”
“Oh,” said Ryan, “okay.”
“The other thing is,” continued Alia, “did you know that the Service use Napeans’ brains to store information about all the other planets and stars… because they want to leave Earth and they’re trying to find a better place to live?”
“I have heard of it…”
“Yes, but they don’t want to share information. We need to find out if we’re safe living here and if there are other planets we can go to. We need to look for these answers on the Napean network.”
“Dad said I wasn’t allowed to do that… but he didn’t know the Service was doing that! I know how to go to the network but I don’t know where all the different places are…”
“So what can you do?” asked Alia.
“Well, I can send messages to Dad just like everybody else can, ’cept they use a little machine to help them. I don’t. They can do much more than me, though. They can do anything … go places… talk to friends… play games… get medicine…”
Madi took over the explanation. “We have a lens and we can use it, but just like Napeans, we need to enter the system electronically—you, however, have telepathy and can get in—and actually, Ryan, you’re safe to use it because you’re invisible.”
“Ohhhh,” said Ryan, interested but visibly a little worried.
Madi tried to instill some confidence by providing some more detail. “There was a way we used to be able to use a borrowed lens, with a borrowed ID, but not anymore. It used to work just by sticking a micro camera in an eye… in a lens… but we just can’t get in anymore. You can, though…”
“Dad did say said that I wasn’t allowed to go anywhere near Napean Service doorways or anything except talk to him. He said they could take me away.”
Madi struggled to hide her indignation. “That’s already happened, and look! You’re completely safe with us now. No one can take you away now!”
“Yeah, but Dad might get in trouble.”
“It’s only dangerous if you talk to someone like when you do with Dad,” Alia chipped in.
“Well, I haven’t talked to Dad for a while…”
“I think that’s a good idea, darling,” said Madi. “Because yes, they can hear that. But just quietly looking around—just like being in a big library, that’s all. You’re just there to get some information. And we can show you the way around! It’s perfectly safe!”
Bes added her support to the case: “You could be helping so many families, all the kids at Ginny and Ben’s. One day they might need a new planet too! You’d be a hero for finding out!”
> The next morning, Madi and Alia helped to get Ryan comfortable and settled. “I need to think!” he said. “Dad taught me to do it properly. I have to relax…” He lay down on the couch, put his hand behind his head, and was still.
The house was absolutely silent, and they waited several minutes before Ryan said anything. “There’s a lot of people talking… lots of voices… oh, too many. I can’t understand anyone!”
“Keep trying, Ry—move towards one voice,” said Alia. “I can hear two people talking…”
“What are they saying?” asked Madi.
“Sound like two women… they’re talking abou ... sex.”
The women all laughed.
“Situation normal,” said Alia. “Ryan, try and leave that area. Can you see a door or a window?”
Once again Ryan began to feel like he was in a room, sensing a confined space, soft walls. Over to one side he saw a familiar dark shape—a hole, a door.
“The only thing I can see is a hole over there. I can still hear lots of different voices. People are talking to each other. They sound happy.”
Alia said, “Go to the hole, step through it into the next space.” Ryan did as he was told. He stopped in front of the dark recess and heard that same hissing sound like a breeze blowing into the hole. He thought he could see glimmers of light through the hole.
“It’s too dark. I can’t see the ground.” He froze.
Alia reassured him, “Step in, Ryan—you’ll be absolutely fine—I’ve done it before myself…”
As he stepped through it felt as if someone had pushed him from behind; he was dragged forward, and then standing in a space with the same dusky light as the previous one. Wez and Bes quietly entered the room. Ryan was lying on the couch. His eyes were open and darted around as if in REM sleep. Sometimes his hands moved as if attached to strings of some puppeteer. He didn’t seem conscious of anything in the room.