Boundary (Field Book 3)

by Simon Winstanley

  Robert Wild, Archive’s resident Storykiller, had subsequently swamped the news with copycat sightings of crop circles; circles that he’d had produced. The designs had ranged from simple circles to outlandish glyphs. After several weeks he’d used the press again to reveal that they were all hoaxes. The Field generator mistake had been successfully lost in the noise.

  By revisiting the same time period, Douglas and Kate were using those exact same crop circles to conceal a new set of experiments. In and around some of the more decorative designs, Douglas learned to manipulate various physical constants, forces and structures. By the time they’d finished, Douglas was of the opinion that the chaotic looking results had enhanced the artistry of the local landscape.

  They revisited Tristan Westhouse where Douglas refined his earlier attempts to bring the Exordi Nova symbol to his attention by creating a distinctive circular wear mark on the sub’s miniature air-hockey table. Using very much longer timescales he also arranged for the broken circle symbol to appear more prominently within Sebastian Westhouse’s original Glaucus Docking Ring blueprints.

  Douglas had to marvel at the dexterity with which his daughter handled the Sea-Bass intervention event; studying her actions as she manipulated the bonds within the hydrogen and oxygen of the seawater.

  At the appropriate moment, she removed the heat energy from the water within the boundary of a three-dimensional Eversion ring. The tonnes of seawater instantly froze as the temperature temporarily dropped to absolute zero. Once the symbol was fully formed, she returned the energy to the surrounding water in kinetic form, sending a massive subsurface swell in the direction of the Sea-Bass.

  Influenced by the symbols he’d helped to place, the submarine returned to investigate the frozen anomaly and lowered itself inside the ring. Kate then triggered what she called a manifold inflection; the space around the submarine elegantly folded in on itself, carrying the Sea-Bass with it.

  “OK, Dad, are you ready?”

  He knew the moment would come, but despite the research and practice he now felt under-prepared, something Kate could easily read.

  “Small steps. The key will be finding that one memory within her mind. Ideally it should be one you’ve both experienced, even tangentially, it gives a common point of reference that you can navigate from.”

  He could picture her clearly. It had been New Year’s Eve 1999. It was the point of no return; they’d made preparations to leave Archive and the staged cave-in was about to happen. The picture of her grew clearer, it was on a temporary dance floor at the centre of the incomplete USV3.

  “OK, Dad,” Kate was saying.

  He suppressed a shudder as he recalled that the whole disco area would eventually become an artificial lake. He’d been left on his own to cope with a social situation for which he was under-prepared: dancing.

  “Dad…” someone was screaming but the sound was quickly replaced with bombastic music. He suddenly felt his senses jolt into pin-sharp registration; in response, the needle on the DJ’s record skipped. He turned around and saw Monica walking across the dance floor. She was joining in with the round of derisive applause for the clumsy DJ, who continued to insist that the jolt hadn’t been his fault. She effortlessly moved on through the small crowd, making brief small-talk as she went, until she arrived in front of him.

  “Dad!” he heard her say.

  He felt the sensation that he was being pulled away from the moment, but he fought back, not wanting to leave his wife. There was a ragged discontinuity and he found himself in her arms. Not remembering, but re-experiencing an event.

  He lowered his head to whisper into her ear, “I C U Monica, and I love you.”

  “I C U too,” she whispered back and then tenderly pressed her lips against his.

  For one perfect moment they occupied their own private universe, away from the surrounding distraction. For one crystal clear instant, time was immaterial and could not touch them. Then the delicate envelope began to erode, as the physical world began to intrude on them once more.

  There was a jagged rip through his senses and he arrived in another time. The location was the same but the USV lake was now in place. He felt a million thoughts erupt through his temporally-wrenched mind. Memories of her, of places they’d been to. Times in the distant past or deep future overlaid in complex and impossible decision trees; infinitely recursive and branching pathways permeating him.

  Thought, matter and energy now interchanged in a fractal mist to create ephemeral apparitions of structure around and through him. The scales of time and matter were immaterial; the full breadth of the universe and the space within an atom were at once accessible to explore at will.

  He could see the small people frozen in fear at the spherical disturbance he was making within the lake. He could see the giant loops of electromagnetism reaching out through the tiny underground space, causing power spikes and failures.

  Suddenly he could see Monica again, descending the metallic steps with several others, leading the way down from the Warren into the USV. He was seeing the moment that she’d first arrived here and, to his horror he realised that she was watching this disturbance.

  He was altering the past.

  Hundreds of possible futures branched out explosively from this new moment, existing simultaneously alongside each other. The inherent perfection of being able to hold open all possible decisions, forever, had an unassailable beauty; but in every branch, her pathway would always end. She would always die down here.

  The memory of the night he’d proposed to her, equally real and simultaneous, came into focus through the unresolvable chaos of thought and possibility. The diamond ring and her words were suddenly clear to him. With a sense of infinite sadness that he would never see her this way again, he released his grip.

  Once more, he found himself standing next to Kate in the simulated living room; but the deep sorrow he was feeling was bitterly real.

  “Oh, Katie! I fell…” he felt his eyes fill, “I fell into the memory, I didn’t want to leave…”

  “I know, Dad…” she consoled.

  “I messed up our plan,” he hung his head, “I made a huge change… she always dies. I’ve lost her…”

  Kate closed the gap between them and held him tightly, then replied with one gentle word.

  “No.”

  ADAPT

  13th April 2014

  His drone still hovered in place behind the stairwell handrail; the impossible night sun shining and glinting off its spinning rotor blades.

  Marcus knew it; before the echoes of the gunshot had finished reverberating around the USV, he knew. Monica was dead.

  There had been no time to react. No time to plan. No time to save her. Yet the rest of life was going on without her.

  Far below him, people milled about; dashing in and out of their homes with equal urgency, reacting to the public-address messages. Occasionally, indistinct voices would drift up to him, cutting through the background noise of his own heartbeat.

  He suddenly heard a persistent new sound and looked down on the USV. For a moment, it sounded like several of the occupants had chosen a bizarre time to start using lawn mowers. The sound phased in sync with the drone hovering a few feet away and Marcus knew instantly what it was. He looked towards the lake and located the detention block roof. A swarm of drones was heading purposefully in his direction.

  He’d used the laptop to assume control of a single drone before, now it seemed he was about to have his hacking ability tested to the limit. As he flipped open the laptop lid, he heard Sabine shout his name from somewhere high above. He whipped around to locate her concerned voice and the laptop tumbled from his grasp; hitting the handrail briefly before beginning its long, silent descent to the USV floor.

  He was now a mere target for the approaching drones.

  They were close enough for him to see the electrical stun batons hanging underneath each of them. A moment ago, he’d tested the ‘Administer’ function of h
is captured drone and it had discharged harmlessly into the metalwork; but with an entire swarm of drones he was less sure if that would still be the case. He also realised that, depending on the sadistic freak behind the controls, the drones could be used ballistically; they could simply be piloted into him at speed. Their rotors would make mincemeat of him.

  From above, he heard Sabine calling him again and her descending footsteps were now joined by others. The inhaler’s effects were still active and he was suddenly hit with the terrible sense of history repeating itself. Sabine and the others descending the stairs would be met by the approaching swarm of drones.

  Monica had once told him that she thought he was indestructible, it seemed that he must put her theory to the test. Once more, he would have to do what he’d always done best: adapt.

  Marcus turned to face the drones. He’d obviously annoyed someone enough that they’d sent the entire contents of the Hive in his direction.

  “Hello, fellas,” he said, “Lookin’ for somebody?”

  He’d fought hard to get Sabine to safety and saw no reason to stop now. If the drones needed a target, he’d give them one. He fixed a smile on his face.

  “Catch me if you can,” he flicked his middle finger up at their cameras.

  Ducking under the handrail, he leapt from the stairwell.

  The unpiloted drone he’d captured was still hovering in mid-air nearby and Marcus grabbed hold of its inert baton. The rotors whined, attempting to compensate for the additional weight, but Marcus was heavier than the uplift the drone could provide. Very slowly they began to lose height.

  From here, he had an uninterrupted view of the entire USV. He was beginning to visualise possible escape routes; paths he could take once he’d reached ground level, when a deep and shuddering rumble filled the cavern.

  Directly ahead of him in the lake, a huge ball of lightning had appeared, intersecting the surface of the water. From his precarious position it was difficult to get a stable view, but he was sure that he could see something else. A perfect ring of water intersecting both the lake’s surface and the lightning ball itself.

  The ball of lightning flickered slightly brighter, then a minor pulse rippled through the surface of the ring itself. Fleeting glimpses of structure appeared inside the ring; some were connected to the water, others flashed briefly into existence above it. Each structure forming and vanishing into the hemisphere of mist that now occupied the space above the circular disturbance. The mist now became more opaque and Marcus could see there was a chaotic fractal pattern at work; as though it was continually folding in upon itself.

  Suddenly the hemisphere expanded drastically, reaching up towards the artificial sun above the lake. Immediately he felt a static-like pulse travel through him, then the noise of the rotors above him began to drop in pitch. Whatever was happening in front of him had caused some sort of electromagnetic spike. The drone’s rotors faltered and he began to lose height much faster.

  From the direction of the sun, he heard a shattering sound and saw someone falling towards the hemisphere. With almost primitive instinct he felt his hands grasp the drone tighter.

  The hemisphere suddenly began decreasing in size and he saw that the falling person was slowly catching up with its ever-shrinking boundary.

  At that point, the rotors above him failed and his own swift descent began.

  LIGHT

  ~

  As she fell, Monica could see the broken, circular window receding quickly away. The constant background echo of the dome’s interior was fading. She felt a soft light begin to envelope her; a chaotic, cloud-like, shifting fractal pattern that continually renewed itself.

  The space around her now appeared to be growing in size and she could see water-colour trails of light receding from her own body. The trails grew in intensity and multiplied. She knew the final moment would arrive soon and squeezed the engagement ring in her hand tightly.

  There was a moment of infinite brightness, then it subsided.

  There was warmth here.

  A warmth that held her on all sides and from within.

  She heard her husband’s voice: “I’ve got you.”

  EMERGENCE

  20th December 2112

  Danny had still been staring at Kate as the Field shrank in size. With her Biomag deactivated he knew she stood no chance. Not wanting to see her go through the same horrific death as Colonel Beck, he tried to close his eyes. But in the brief moment that the Field passed through him, his eyelids could not respond; his eyes were frozen open to witness a time-smeared, gruesome tableau. She was standing, seemingly at peace, but simultaneously her body had begun to break apart; her skin laced with bright cracks.

  The Field completed its fleeting transition and he saw the inevitable conclusion to Kate’s final moments. His eyelids were now closed but it was too late, the image was seared into his mind.

  He’d obviously fallen to his knees because he could feel the cold ground beneath them. His palms too were absorbing the chill of the rough terrain. Still with his eyes closed, he heard screams and cries coming from all around him.

  He felt a hand on his shoulder.

  “Danny, you alright?”

  He opened his eyes to see Tyler crouched at his side.

  “It’s Kate! She -”

  “I know, Ty,” Danny could feel his anger bringing him to his feet.

  People’s voices were quietening and, from the periphery of his vision, he could tell they were looking at him. A few feet away he could see Kate’s Biomag, lying in the dirt; the device that had ended her life was still intact. He wanted desperately to end its existence, to stamp it into oblivion, but found he couldn’t. For seemingly no reason, he found himself recalling that this Biomag was not even hers, it had belonged to her father.

  Without a word, he picked it up and slowly placed it around his neck.

  He turned to face the others and found they were already watching him. Barnes was safely on the other side of the impenetrable Field; they could never gain revenge for their collective exile or Kate’s demise. All they had was the present moment.

  Danny found himself looking at the new light on the horizon.

  “We must not fail her,” he said quietly.

  Against the sound of a faint wind, a hammering, thumping noise came from somewhere nearby. It was persistent and was soon joined by a muffled, panicked voice. Those closest to the disturbance quickly determined that the noise was coming from one of the many supply crates that had accompanied them into exile.

  As the lid of the crate was opened, Danny saw a face that he knew well. The look of betrayal on Caroline Smith’s face told him all he needed to know.

  BUILD

  20th December 2112

  “It’s been fifteen minutes,” said Mike, “We’ve seen nothing change out there. Fai, could something have gone wrong?”

  “Yes,” she replied.

  Mike was drawing breath but Lana clarified.

  “It is the wrong question, Mike. Yes, of course, something could have gone wrong.”

  “So, what’s the right question?”

  “Fai, when will we receive update from your external server?”

  “We will receive an update from my counterpart when it has completed construction of the Trans-Field Message System. Number4 has been operational for twenty-five days outside the Field. The… TMS… is only one of the mission parameters.”

  “OK, TMS?” Cathy sounded curious, “Did you just shorten that for our benefit?”

  “Yes, Cathy. As with many of your abbreviations, it is also a verbal efficiency.”

  Using the Morse signal event near Jupiter as inspiration, Fai had designed a binary communication method that allowed direct communication through the Field. By accounting for the time-frame on the opposite side of the Field, pulses of light could be used to send basic messages between Fai and her counterpart.

  After several more minutes, the landing lights of the Shuttle appeared to strobe for a few s
econds.

  “We have received our first message,” said Fai.

  “What does it say?” asked Anna.

  Fai seemed to hesitate.

  “It is a binary string with no human expressible components. However, the closest approximation would be ‘Hello, TMS test’. It lists Number4’s operational parameters and consumables then requests a reply.”

  “It did all that in a strobe lasting a few seconds?” said Mike.

  “Owing to the time difference, the message took one hour and twenty minutes for my counterpart to send.”

  Outside the cupola window, a light pointing in the direction of the Shuttle turned on and off rapidly.

  “What did you just say?” Lana recognised that Fai had replied.

  “Message received.”

  Immediately, another pulse arrived.

  “I have received another message,” said Fai, “I must assume command of the Field generator.”

  Without waiting for their response, Fai expanded the size of the Field to temporarily encompass the Shuttle. There were several flashes of light as objects hit the invisible barrier, then Fai restored the Field’s original radius.

  “What the hell was that?!” Cathy looked around at the others and strained to get a better view through the cupola window.

  “The lunar ring system is still chaotic. I extended the Field to prevent the Shuttle’s destruction from lunar debris.”

  There was an exchange of strobe lights.

  “I have placed Field expansion under the control of my counterpart. It will have more warning of imminent collisions and it can act accordingly.”

  There followed another hour with no significant development. Then, with under seventeen hours to go, the crew watched as a real world time-lapse movie began to play out before them.

  The Shuttle cargo bay doors suddenly stood wide open. Number4 zipped along the Shuttle’s length several times, leaving a trail of exposed metal framework, then disappeared again. The cargo bay doors snapped shut and then reopened. Number4 emerged again but it was accompanied by a smaller assistant attached to the end of the Shuttle’s own manipulator arm.