Dreamspinner

by Merita King

  This thought then led his mind to the second likely explanation for this situation and he pondered it for a while. If his unit decided that what they were doing was beyond what they were comfortable with and mutinied, it would be the first such occasion Tearan ever heard of. Not once did he ever hear anyone talk about an IGEC unit going against orders and switching sides. It was unheard of but although unlikely, he knew the men in his unit each had a strong personal code of ethics. People sometimes got hurt at the Unit’s hands and they all knew they were sometimes sent to catch people that were then quietly executed without trial. People can be conditioned in such a way that the normal boundaries of acceptable behaviour are skewed and stretched. The training Tearan’s unit and the others like it received involved a rearrangement of those boundaries and they never questioned orders. If something occurred on board the Novosentia that caused them to question their obedience, it would have to be something awful. He was used to guarding the secrecy of others and not asking questions. IGEC personnel often had to do things that other people would not be comfortable with. The secrecy and cover-ups, things that would be distasteful to the general population. None of that ever made him consider going against orders though. In order for it to do so, it would have to be something even worse than what he had so far experienced and he was confident the rest of his unit would feel the same.

  If his unit had mutinied, they would now be in control of the ship, of that Tearan had no doubt. Such was his confidence in the unique skills of himself and his men that contemplating their failure was not an option. IGEC units are the most highly trained soldiers that exist. Their status as an, ‘above top secret’ unit means their skill base is wider than a normal soldier’s is. No matter what resistance they met, an IGEC unit in operational mode would have control of a ship like the Novosentia within a few hours. Their training, along with the weaponry and tools available to them make them the most feared and respected military force known. The possibility of Tearan’s unit trying to mutiny and failing to achieve their goal was not one he considered worthy of contemplation.

  ‘Unless whatever they’ve got behind there is even deadlier than we are,’ he mused within the confines of his mind. ‘If that’s true, then the universe is fucked.’ A force more deadly and effective than an IGEC unit was something Tearan automatically feared and he shivered as a new feeling of vulnerability swept through him. ‘If they created a monster behind that wall and it got out and killed my men, we’re totally screwed.’ He swore then shook the thoughts away. They would serve only to keep him awake at nights and he wanted to concentrate on what he knew and was able to deal with, not fantasise about monsters. Scanning the wall and empty shelving for clues, he brought his mind back to his immediate needs.

  There was no response to his yelling that he was aware of and the sequence of thoughts he had subsequently experienced told him it might not be a good idea to continue. He chose to assume that whoever was in control of the situation was filming him and probably had been doing so since he woke up. If this was indeed the case, he was doubtful that Tovis’s distress signal would be allowed to go out. Feeling suddenly paranoid at the thought of his every movement possibly being filmed, he decided to play them at their own game and see who gave in first. Unable to stop himself from grinning, he grabbed a hover loader, then went back up to deck three and the security room to pack.

  After parking the hover loader alongside the others, he unpacked and within an hour had set up home in the cargo hangar. With the aid of several seating cushions from the recreation room on deck five, he made a comfortable bed on the floor facing the Q-Wall. The gym equipment stood at one end of the large room and afforded him plenty of space to work out and keep his fitness levels at optimum. After fiddling with the vidicom handset control, he found that music could be piped throughout the whole ship, so he set the handset down beside his new bed. Several guns and hundreds of power packs were stacked within easy reach should he need them and a line of motion triggered alarms spanned the room. Setting these across the width of the room in front of the Q-Wall, anyone trying to sneak through would set them off and give him the chance to arm himself. On a whim, he decided to put another one facing the door that led out into the corridor and two more outside the door facing both ways down the corridor. Anyone approaching from any direction would set them off and he would not be caught unawares. If they were indeed filming him, he wanted them to realise it would be futile to try to sneak up on him.

  The cargo hangar’s small office contained a drinks dispenser, nutri-vend, and an auto snack so he would not want for food. The small staff bathroom at the far end of the office would ensure he would not have to leave the cargo hangar unless he wanted to cook a proper meal in the kitchen or watch a vidicom movie. The stores manifest yielded a personal library console, which meant he had ten thousand books, articles, and magazines to read, all contained within a small device four inches square and half an inch deep. After making himself a hot drink, he switched the vidicom handset control to random shuffle and cranked the volume up loud. The cargo hangar throbbed to the beat of some teenage boy band whose song consisted of little more than three completely unintelligible phrases, which they shouted repeatedly at the top of their lungs. He inwardly winced at the cacophonous noise and hoped whoever was behind the wall was doing so too.

  All there was to do now was to settle in and wait it out for as long as possible, or until someone revealed themselves. Tearan was used to digging in and waiting, sometimes for many days and he was disciplined enough to be able to withstand the boredom. He could work out, read, listen to music, clean the cargo hangar, and even move stuff around the shelving with the loaders to stave off boredom if he was suffering. Not having something to do would not be too much of a problem. No, that’s not what worried him at all. He knew the only thing he would find difficult was not having anyone to talk to. When his unit had to dig in and wait it out on missions, having each other’s company helped keep them sane and focussed. There was no one with whom to share his fears or lighten the loneliness and he knew the solitude was already taking its toll on him.

  Having missed a mid day meal, Tearan approached the nutri-vend in the cargo hangar office and perused its menu. Military personnel use these machines all the time, so he knew what to expect. These machines deliver a variety of hot and cold meals, all made with a nutritionally balanced, food grade, synthetic puree. With the addition of equally synthetic flavourings and some processing, something safe, healthy, and edible is available to those in situations where cooking or real ingredients are not an option. The puree is highly concentrated and stored with all the air taken out. The high concentration means a little goes a long way and when air is reintroduced through the extrusion nozzle as it exits the machine, it fluffs up to fifty times its volume. Used by a single individual, a fully stocked nutri-vend machine can go for a thousand meals before needing a refill cartridge.

  Tearan knew what he was going to choose, but he always took the time to peruse the menu anyway. All nutri-vend machines offered the same fifteen item menu of well known dishes from a variety of planetary systems. With many different savoury and sweet dishes on offer, most soldiers knew the menu by heart and had tried them all, with the exception of one. Yamelian Pie is one of the sweet dishes offered by all nutri-vend machines galaxy wide and is a popular dessert from the Canorly system, right out in galactic sector 83583-3340P. The Canorly system has three large inhabited planets, all of which are the only known location of Mexahedralonium X4. All three Canorly planets produce it in abundance, via the unique mineral make up of their molten cores. With an abundance of volcanoes on all three planets, the bright pink lava flows yield a constant supply, which is sold all over the galaxy at enormous profit for use in the production of a high specification space ship fuel additive. The substance makes Trans Wave Flow Core engines run cleaner and enables them to gain up to twenty-four percent extra speed. Because of the cost of this rare substance, it is used exclusively by the military, wh
ere extra speed and agility in the theatre of war can save countless lives.

  The Canorly people love Yamelian Pie passionately. As a token of gratitude from the military for providing them with Mexahedralonium X4, they were promised that wherever a Canorly soldier should find himself, no matter what dangers he may be placing himself in for the good of others, he would always have a taste of home to keep up his spirits. Thus, Yamelian Pie will always be on the nutri-vend menu. The only problem for everyone else is that no one other than Canorly people like it. Everyone else unanimously agrees that it is the most disgusting substance known. Tearan was not about to break with tradition, so he plumped for his usual Wassalen Toka, then Noma Curd for dessert.

  After spending a couple of hours reading, he decided it was time to start stirring things up a little. This would not only give him something to do, but it would hopefully annoy the hell out of whoever was keeping watch from behind the wall. If so, that would amuse him no end. He was done trying to avoid getting involved in whatever was going on and did not care that he was making it plain he knew of their existence. Whether there was any danger to him from knowing about the Q-Wall, he did not know, but he was beyond caring. He had to change things and if they proved dangerous, so be it. Remaining on board alone, possibly for years to come would send him insane with loneliness. That was worse than death and he would rather die than endure it.

  He switched off the music and began to sing aloud. If the men in his unit were still alive and watching him, he knew they would be wetting themselves laughing. Tearan, a strong and dependable soldier, a highly trained elite operative with many awards for marksmanship and for his ability to focus in extremely stressful situations, was most definitely not a natural singer. Being tone deaf meant that if he ever sang a note on key, it was by accident rather than by design and his friends teased him mercilessly about it. During training, when he and his men did twenty-mile training runs with seventy five pound kit packs on their backs and full helmet air masks on their heads, they sang various songs to help keep their spirits up and their feet in step. The men in the unit got together and taught Tearan to sing these songs all on one note, as a sort of harmonisation for their own voices and it worked reasonably well.

  In the cargo hangar, he let rip with as much force as his voice would give, only this time he did not sing the songs all on one note. His attempts to sing reverberated around the lofty space and he knew he could keep it up for hours, as he used to on those training runs. Singing at the top of his lungs, he let his mind drift as he jogged back and forth up and down the room. By going through each song a certain number of times, Tearan knew he had run up and down the cargo hangar for something approximating twenty miles during the three hours and twenty-five minutes he had been singing. One of the songs had one hundred and seven verses, each one telling the story of a fictitious person from an equally fictitious Arlenikan village. A terrible tragedy befell the village and many different forms of the song exist in different military units. The one Tearan and his unit sang had the villagers suffering a flood, with each verse telling the story of one of the village’s one hundred and seven inhabitants. Although the tragedy that befell the village tended to change with whomever was singing, the ending was always the same. Each of the inhabitants died and their spirits remained to haunt the now abandoned and forever uninhabitable village. Tearan decided that if his men were still alive and listening, he hoped they were joining in.

  Warm water cascaded down his back as he stepped into the shower and closed his eyes. Anguish slowly melted away with the water as he stood there, eyes closed and motionless. He always indulged in a few minutes like this every time he showered. There was something about warm water gently flowing from above that calmed him like nothing else could. Whenever he felt especially stressed or anxious about something, a warm shower would float it all away. When he was finished, he wrapped a towel around himself and realised he felt uneasy at being half naked while someone was secretly filming him. It made him feel self conscious and he thought of the others behind the walls as voyeurs, getting off on watching him go about his daily life. This annoyed him and the annoyance drove away his blushes. Striding into the cargo hangar, he ripped the towel from himself and strode around stark naked. At one point, while feeling particularly vengeful, he had to physically resist the urge to wag his penis around flamboyantly and ask if they were enjoying the spectacle. Suddenly struck by the humour of that scenario, he laughed aloud, his guffaws echoing around the cargo hangar and reverberating from the walls. He realised it might seem to outsiders as if he had finally lost his mind. Tired from his workout, from the run, and now relaxed by the warm shower, he turned his back on the wall, lifted his right knee sideways and broke wind loudly.

  He slept surprisingly well and awoke refreshed. He was ready for another day of being extremely annoying whilst preventing anyone from using the Q-Wall without him knowing about it. Whilst he was intelligent enough to realise that there were probably other ways in and out of wherever they were, he figured it must be something of an inconvenience to have this cargo hangar Q-Wall unavailable for use. He spent the day working out, moving boxes and crates around with the loaders, jogging, singing, eating his nutri vend meals, and reading. It was while in the shower on the second evening that he realised he was losing his grip. Thinking back to earlier that afternoon, he remembered spending well over an hour trying to build a pyramid out of cans of some oil he found in one huge crate. Once built, with all the blue labels facing the same way, he leapt into the air, kicked it with his right boot and sent the cans to all corners of the room. He then remembered making the decision to try to make a bigger one the following day and he shook his head.

  ‘I’m losing it,’ he thought to himself, still too afraid to speak his thoughts aloud in case they incriminated him. ‘If something doesn’t change around here soon, I’m going to be smearing my own shit on the walls and drawing pictures with it. Someone save me from that, please.’ His mind was too traumatised to function properly, so he went to bed. By late afternoon the next day, Tearan had not got out of his bed, other than to pee and get drinks of water. When he did get up, he did not bother to shower or dress, workout or do anything at all. After having a bite to eat from the auto snack, he paced up and down the room while his mind raced.

  ‘I can’t keep this up for much longer. I’m supposed to be part of a unit but where are my men? Where are Mykus, Tovis, and Dr Arma? Are they dead or are they being held somewhere and hoping for me to come and rescue them? They weren’t my friends as such but we helped each other out here, even though we never met up.’ This thought stopped him in his tracks and his eyes widened as pieces of a puzzle came together. The picture the pieces made was so horrific he did not at first know how he was going to cope. All those times he asked the others to meet up but they never did and he could never figure out why. At one point, he wondered if his mysterious companions were figments of his own troubled imagination but he had dismissed the idea. Now he revisited this troubling scenario and it was no easier to face than it had been the last time. ‘Mykus, Tovis, and Dr Arma don’t really exist. They pretended to be them, those scientists or whatever they are; they left the messages pretending to be them. They’ve been filming me all this time and listening to me leaving messages and talking aloud. They pretended to be on my side to get me to talk. They’re worried about how much I know or if I’ll tell anyone about what’s going on.’ Sure that both Mykus and Tovis had been made up by the people behind the wall, Tearan felt more alone and lonely than ever and despair filled his heart. ‘I’m what they’re experimenting on. It’s been me all along. Shit, how do I get out of this?’

  Without bothering to dress, he strode up to deck four and the engineering briefing room. The recording handset was still there on top of the drinks dispenser and he snatched it up angrily. There were no new messages and he decided he was not surprised. This was proof that none of the other three had ever existed at all. It had all been so believable; he accepted
the existence of Mykus, Tovis and Doctor Arma without a second thought. Despite their apparent unwillingness to meet up, Tearan refused to wonder if this might be because they were not real people. He always chose to assume they were too busy or wanted their privacy, or maybe they weren’t quite sure he was trustworthy. So desperate was he to believe he was not alone, he happily accepted even the most tenuous evidence of their existence.

  Anger boiled inside Tearan, but he fought the desire to throw the recording handset at the wall. ‘Yeah you’d love that wouldn’t you assholes? Getting off on seeing me go crazy are you?’ Forcing himself to appear controlled, he walked back down to the cargo hangar. There was no way for him to know the exact nature of whatever experiments these people were doing on him and with escape impossible, he despaired for his future. An uncertain future as a lab rat was not a prospect he relished, but he was stuck on the ship. He did not have the skills to repair it, nor the ability to fly it if he did miraculously get it fixed. He was a soldier not a mechanic or pilot. Navigation was familiar to him, he realised that when he first visited the Bridge. Now he decided he would rather not know all the places he was unable to get to. Rubbing salt into his wounds would do nothing for his mental state, so he decided to stay away from the Navigation station. Feeling ill from keeping his emotions inside, he went back to bed and dozed fitfully until he awoke in the small hours knowing his ability to endure the situation was at an end.

  Being experimented on for however long he had left to live was something he had no intention of submitting to, especially without anyone to talk to or be friends with. With no way off the ship, he was stuck in a place he did not want to be. The soldier in him came to the fore and took control. Picking up the recording handset, he approached the wall and swept his eyes from one end to the other. With frightening speed, he flung the device at the wall, which broke apart on impact, sending small components flying in all directions.