Alastair (Ghosts of Ophidian Book 2)

by Scott McElhaney

  He performed individual searches on each of those fourteen ships and found no hits anywhere in the galaxy. Then he switched the search to pull up any ships that loaded up with at least two tanks of water, left the system, and then returned at a later date with no record of ever docking at any known system before its return. After he pressed enter, he stared at the screen in awe. It scrolled through over three pages of ship names.

  The total at the end of the page was ninety-seven. Ninety-seven ships stopped at the Oort Station and traded supplies for at least two tanks of water. Those ninety-seven ships returned later for more water or to offload supplies and yet none of those ships had docked at any Ophidian, Legacian, or Earth port between the times the ships left and the times they returned.

  He printed the page, then changed the search to avoid the Oort Station altogether as a return destination. He did a search on how many ships stopped at the station for at least two tanks of water, left the system, then returned at an Earth port without ever docking at any known port outside the system. He pressed enter.

  The pages scrolled past, sometimes showing repeated missions with the same ship. In all, there were two hundred and sixty missions that didn’t involve a known port outside of Earth or the Oort Station. Theo suddenly felt butterflies dancing in his stomach. It was like his abdomen didn’t want to accept what he was seeing.

  Theo couldn’t be the only one who took the time to perform such basic and mindless searches in the archives. Why had no one else besides his brother noticed these peculiarities? Why would a couple of young ice monkeys be able to see this and no one else could?

  There was something deep down that told him he always knew his brother wasn’t inventing conspiracy theories. There was something significantly wrong with those numbers in front of him and why no one seemed to notice it was beyond him. Theo suddenly decided to take the crazy “conspiracy theory” to the next level. He took the previous numbers and requested a comparative graph regarding sheol weed-related injuries, suicides, and incidents.

  The computer took a moment to calculate the graph, then draped the two graphs overtop one another. They were nearly identical. Any time a ship returned to the station after disappearing off the grid, the sheol weed overdoses, suicides, injuries, and other related incidents increased significantly within a few weeks.

  His brother was right. Theo had wasted six years writing his brother off as a crazy teenager. His brother was onto something and everyone chose to ignore the warnings. To this very day, sheol weed was being imported from an unknown source and nearly all the Earth ships appeared to be involved in this illegal import.

  Theo scooted his chair out and rose from the terminal. He shut down the power and pushed his chair in. He wanted to check a few more things out before he addressed anyone with his theory.

  . . . .

  The schools on the Oort Station only offered a very basic education. By the time the student reached the age of ten, the schools either gave up on that child or they started encouraging the person to take courses that would help the more intelligent ones succeed in certain jobs.

  Theo had been one of the smarter students, but he was being pushed along the odd path of a future in Agricultural Science. He had no interest whatsoever in working in the greenhouses, but his teachers insisted that his grasp on biology shouldn’t be wasted. After finishing the secondary course on botany and a somewhat disgusting course that had been quaintly titled “Fertilizer – Waste Conversion in a Closed Environment”, he chose to drop out and pursue the careers of his father and his brother. He ultimately wanted to be a pilot, but there was no such thing as a pilot who never spent some time as a gatherer in his or her youth.

  Today, Theo found himself standing outside the main door to his alma mater on the twentieth floor. He was wondering now if his agriculture professor would shun him after knowing he’d given up on his education.

  “It’s a scary door alright,” a voice came from behind him, “But it’s worth opening. You never know what you might learn.”

  He turned to discover the woman who taught either algebra or calculus. For the life of him, he couldn’t remember her name. He never had her as a teacher, but he knew of her through some of his friends.

  “Theophilus, right?” she asked with a smile.

  That smile was the only thing he remembered about her. She could light up a room with the same smile she was beaming at him.

  “Yes ma’am. I was studying to learn agriculture a while back,” he said, reaching out to shake her hand, “I dropped out during the course on turning human feces into fertilizer.”

  She chuckled, then nodded.

  “Oh yes. My sister told me about that one,” she said, “She works in the potato greenhouse on twenty-three now.”

  “It just never appealed to me,” he said, “I want to pilot the Galactic Cruisers and visit other star systems.”

  “A dreamer just like your brother,” she said, “Don’t underestimate the benefits of farming, though. My sister gets first dibs when if comes to corn or potatoes. By the time we’re eating the dehydrated or frozen stuff, she still manages to have fresh potatoes and corn. Figure that one out.”

  “I don’t doubt that,” he smiled, “Did you know my brother, Misses…”

  “That’s Miss Rice. Yes, he and I actually dated for a couple months. Didn’t really work out between us.”

  “Dated? How old are you?” he asked with more of an accusing tone than he intended, “I mean, you… you’re a teacher and he was a…”

  “He was a student and I was a student, Theophilus,” she said, “I’m twenty-four if you must know and I’ve only been teaching here four years now.”

  “I’m sorry for prying. I just thought… I guess I figured you’d always been a teacher. That’s all I’ve ever known you as.”

  “That’s fair. Just as long as you don’t say ‘I always thought you were older’,” she said, “Since you’re not a student here, I could readily slap you for a remark like that.”

  “Thanks for the warning. I would never think such a thing,” he said, returning his attention to the door.

  “So, you didn’t tell me. What are you doing here today?” she asked.

  He realized just then how silly it must have looked for him to be seemingly spellbound by the door to his old school in the middle of the day. He shrugged, then turned to her.

  “I was hoping to talk to my old Botany teacher. She used to have some cool stories about her own experiments and now I sort of regret the fact that I didn’t really pay attention,” he said.

  “Mrs. Titus,” she said with a nod, “Well, I doubt she can really talk to you if she’s in class right now.”

  “It’s so close to lunch now that I was hoping I’d be able to somehow catch her for a lunch date,” he said.

  “Ooh, dating the teachers,” she said with a wink, “Isn’t she a bit out of your league?”

  He laughed and opened the door, gesturing her in ahead of him.

  “If my league is “single and young” then yes, she’s way out of my league,” he said, looking at her curiously as she passed, “But that qualifier would mean that you’re definitely in my league, Miss Rice.”

  “Feeling a little confident, are we?” she asked, shaking her head as she led the way to the office, “I don’t date students or people of student-age, Theophilus. Now, if I’m still single in two years and you’d like to ask me out proper at that time… who knows?”

  He didn’t know if she was joking or not, but he did know that he was going to hold her to that statement in two years. She opened the office door and waited while Theo slipped past her. Before he even had a chance to tell the secretary why he was visiting, Miss Rice spoke up.

  “Is Mrs. Titus available?” she asked, “Theo is here for a lunch appointment with her.”

  “Let me check,” the secretary said, glancing curiously at Theo.

  Miss Rice grabbed a few papers from her mailbox and then swiftly left the office with only a
wave. Theo waited for an answer from the secretary who was talking quietly into the communicator. She placed the device on her desk and then nodded toward the sofa.

  “She’ll be here in a minute if you’d like to have a seat. Oddly, she doesn’t recall arranging any appointments today,” she said with a sneer.

  “Yeah, she probably wouldn’t,” he said.

  Before he even had a chance to sit down, Mrs. Titus entered the office. He was instantly relieved to see the recognition in her eyes when she glanced over at him.

  “Theo? What brings you back here? Please tell me you’ve reconsidered your future,” she said, taking him in a quick one-arm hug.

  “No, I really don’t think gardening is my game, ma’am. I do however have a question regarding something you once told us about in class,” he said, “It was in reference to some curiosities of sheol weed.”

  She glanced quickly over her shoulder to see if anyone had heard his statement. They both could see that the secretary was apparently too busy at her computer terminal to care what they were talking about.

  “Why don’t we go back to my classroom to talk,” she said, taking him by the shoulder and leading him to the door, “Please tell me you haven’t taken a liking to the weed.”

  “Not at all,” he whispered, matching her hushed tone.

  “Someone you know, then?” she asked, concern in her expression.

  “Ma’am, if I can just get right down to it,” he said, “You had a lot to say about the drug and it wasn’t the same stuff everyone else said.”

  “Let me correct you right now, Theo. First of all, it’s not a drug and second of all, most of the stuff I taught you all was common knowledge.”

  She opened her classroom door and gestured for him to lead the way into her room. She closed the door and offered him a seat near her desk.

  “Why are you so interested in this plant now?” she asked, sitting down at her desk.

  “You claim it’s not a drug or a narcotic, yet there are hundreds in the slum levels who would strongly disagree with you. Heck, I’d say the suicides and the freaks in the asylum on level three all point to the sheol weed as being a powerful drug,” he said, “There are documented hallucinations that happen to people who chew the weed.”

  “Are you here to argue with my findings or are you willing to learn what has been discovered? If you’re here on a witch-hunt, I’d rather you leave right now,” she said, leaning back in her chair with crossed arms.

  Theo was startled by the sudden change in her tone. His teacher was looking at him with something of a scowl on her face.

  “I discovered some things recently that led me to believe that sheol weed is being imported from an unknown planet. I came here because I believe you predicted this finding of mine nearly two years ago,” he said, “And if you predicted this, it piques my curiosity about other odd things you’ve said about the drug.”

  “It’s not a drug! Stop calling it that,” she said, relaxing suddenly, “But yes, we’ve imported native fruits, vegetables, nuts, and even flora from Ophidian and Legacy. Everything we’ve imported and eaten from these planets have the same right-handed double helical structure of DNA that exists in all known life forms. While the DNA is definitely alien and unrelated to life on Earth, it is most certainly right-handed or winds to the right just like the DNA we have all been accustomed to. It’s probably the very reason we can digest the alien food. I’m grateful for that because sko-nuts from Ophidian are one of my favorite delicacies.”

  “Oh, I can eat a full bag of those in one sitting,” he chuckled, “I take it then that the sheol weed is different?”

  “The sheol weed contains left-handed DNA, also known as Z-DNA. This has not been found in nature anywhere. It was predicted as a possibility back in the 1970’s, but no one has found a left-handed double helical structure until I mapped out the sheol weed genome.”

  “What does this mean?” he asked.

  “It means that it came from no planet we’ve ever visited and it also means that it cannot be digested in any way whatsoever by any creature we know,” she said.

  He stared at her for a moment, “Then how does it transmit the hallucinogenic-”

  “It’s not a drug or a hallucinogen!” she spat a little too abruptly.

  “Then why don’t you tell me what it is?” he demanded just as quick, “Sorry.”

  It didn’t feel right to shout at a teacher who was old enough to be his mother. She offered a polite smile, informing him that she understood his frustration.

  “You will probably join the rest of the station and not believe me when I tell you the answer to that one, so let me ask you something first. What is one of the favored effects that the ‘drug’ has on those who take it?” she asked, making quotation marks with her fingers when she spoke the despised word.

  “Time seems to stand still,” he said, repeating what he’d heard many times before, “And the crazier ones seem to enjoy the common side effect of zombies, demons, or whatever else they want to call the imagined monsters.”

  “Not imagined, Theo,” she said, “I’ve been to the asylum and was permitted to speak to two of the most severe weed victims. I was also blessed to be a part of a study conducted on a patient currently under the influence of the sheol weed. I can tell you from that particular study that the brain showed no effects whatsoever from the plant. We carefully monitored the hippocampus, the cerebellum, and the basal ganglia – three areas that are typically affected the most during a drug induced high. There is a bounty of data available from other studies done on all types of drugs, so we had plenty to reference.”

  “So you’re telling me that we cannot digest the weed and we cannot achieve any physical affects from it. How can you explain what people experience?” Theo asked.

  “That’s where it gets really weird. While those portions of the brain are most affected by hallucinogenic drugs, they are also the same portions that play into our perception of time. Our subject at the asylum showed no unusual activity in those areas at all, but there was however a significant amount of synaptic activity in the suprachiasmatic nucleus. It went from normal to an explosion of activity in an instant – not a gradual increase, but a sudden inexplicable change. That unusual activity closely mimicked the same activity seen in someone from the Chronological Variance experiments of the early twenty-first century.”

  “Stop right there, please,” he said, exasperated, “I’m not understanding even half of what you’re talking about.”

  “Theo,” she prodded curiously, “Surely you’ve learned about the Chronological Variance experiments by the time you took my class. You know, the time travel tests done by the US Army? Skylar Rains? Sean Roush-Johnson?”

  “It sounds a little familiar. Listen, I really didn’t pay that much attention in school. You might have thought I had what it took to pursue further education, but my scores were the results of just plain luck and a lot of last minute studying. And I have no idea what that nucleus thing was that you mentioned,” he said, crossing his arms.

  “Then it sounds like you’ve got a lot of catching up to do if you want to continue your sheol weed investigation. Let me put it in the simplest terms for you, Theo. In all my investigation and the combined experiments conducted by myself and Dr. Reichert, I have every reason to believe that the weed literally stops time for the one who chews it. Don’t ask me how or why, but I can tell you for a fact that any person who claims that the ‘drug’ gives them a feeling that time has come to a halt is telling you the absolute truth.”

  Theo cleared his throat, then rose from the chair and glanced around the room.

  “Now this is the part where you realize that I’m off my rocker. Before you make a decision, why don’t you go to the asylum and ask Dr. Reichert for the CT scans. Better yet, why don’t you talk to your uncle?”

  He turned to her suddenly, “You visited Uncle Leonard in the asylum?”

  “He was one of the two subjects I interviewed at length. But
yes, if you’ve got the stomach for it, I’d highly recommend you talk to him,” she said, “You may think I’ve lost my mind or perhaps you believe my science is skewed, but I think he might have something you’d like to hear.”

  Five

  Theo wouldn’t be going to the asylum after speaking to his teacher. He also wasn’t going to cling too firmly to Mrs. Titus’ theories regarding the drug. While he could grasp the concept of a reverse-wound strand of DNA posing an issue when it came to digestion, and while he accepted the fact that she had mapped the plant’s genome, he couldn’t quite bring himself to believe it could affect the actual flow of time. He knew enough of basic physics to accept that time was relative and could indeed be slowed down depending on the speed of the observer, but that involved some form of action, not to mention a very powerful engine.

  Chewing a leaf certainly couldn’t change the flow of time or stop it altogether. That was out of the realm of science and into the realm of voodoo and witch doctors. Concepts like that was better left to fiction or to the creepy palm readers on level twenty-six.

  The thought of the palm readers on twenty-six brought his attention to that level as a whole. Twenty-six was the level of the docking piers. Its close proximity to the visiting ships was the very reason all the finest pubs, restaurants, hotels, malls, and arcades were constructed on that level. Any space sailor who decided to leave the confines of his or her ship would discover a long docking pier that immediately led them to an equally long corridor lined with a variety of pubs. Beyond the pubs were various restaurants that specialized in a wide range of exotic foods to appeal to any culture or alien breed. The hotels, which for the most part had become brothels of late, followed the restaurants.

  After making his or her way past the hotels, the unsuspecting sailor would discover that the corridor came to a halt and offered them only two directions. If the sailor hadn’t already chosen one of the side corridors that branched off between the restaurants and pubs, they now had no choice. If they chose the left, they would find another large corridor lined with malls, arcades, and seedy hangouts that really only served as illegal drug stores. If they chose the corridor on the right, they would discover a few gambling establishments, two dance clubs, and some freaky palm readers or fortunetellers.