All The Frail Futures: A Science Fiction Box Set

by J Battle

  Jack lifted him up to see their contents.

  Debois scraped away the dirt and was able to see a beautiful young woman suspended in her frozen moment of time, unchanged by the passing century and a half.

  The other chamber contained an equally beautiful young man, a frown still etched on his perfect features.

  ‘Are they still alive?’ he whispered. The moment seemed to require a whisper.

  ‘The chambers seem to be in working order, but we won’t really know until we open the chambers. Apparently the boy was alive but injured when Number Seven put him in the chamber, so he should be OK. The girl was already in the chamber.’

  ‘Number Seven put the boy in the chamber? He rescued him?’

  Debois twisted and looked at jack.

  ‘Perhaps somewhere deep inside you there is also a hero.’

  ‘Number Seven wasn’t being a hero. It cost him nothing to save him. And there was no risk involved. I believe to be a hero, you have to take a risk.’

  ‘No, I can see you as a hero; dashing here and there saving damsels; and pageboys.’

  Jack made a quite articulate grunt and dropped him to the ground.

  The girl was released first. In stasis you are not asleep; time has merely stopped for you. Therefore you are as alert when it is switched off as you were when it was first put into operation.

  ‘Max!’ she called, sitting up and trying to climb out of the chamber. Number Seven stopped her from falling.

  ‘Who are you?’ she grunted, struggling against his unyielding arms. ’You’d better let me go.’

  ‘My friend is trying to help you young lady. There is no need to be distraught.’ Debois decided he should take control of the situation. ‘Your friend will be released as soon as you are safe.’

  ‘Well, see that he is.’ She looked around at the two tall dull black creatures and the plump guy in the too tight spacesuit.

  ‘What’s going on here? Did you steal the habitat? You’re in so much trouble. You wouldn’t believe it.’

  Jack and Number Seven carried them out of building and through the tunnel.

  ‘We’ll go back for your colleague,’ said Jack, and did just that.

  ‘What have you done?’ Sarah was staring at the remains of the world she had worked so hard to create.

  ‘You’ve ruined it!’

  ‘It wasn’t me! I just got here!’ Debois could hear the whine in his voice.

  Then there was a noise behind and they turned to see Number Seven carrying out the young man.

  He looked a little pale and he was obviously in some pain, but his face lit up when he saw Sarah.

  ‘Sarah! You’re OK!’

  Sarah dashed towards him and wrapped her arms around him. Number Seven bent a little to make it easier.

  ‘What are you crying for?’ teased Max, returning the hug.

  ‘I’m just so happy we made it. I didn’t think we would. And I was so worried you wouldn’t be able to get in to the chamber on your own.’

  Number Seven lowered Max gently to the ground, with Sarah still clinging to him.

  ‘What’s wrong with your leg?’

  ‘I broke it, I think. Just before you got into the chamber.’

  ‘Then how did you get in to your chamber, with a broken leg? It’s not possible.’

  ‘I don’t know. I passed out, on the floor.’

  ‘I think you had a little help,’ said Debois, nodding towards Number Seven.

  Max looked up at the figure towering above him.

  ‘Thanks for saving us,’ he said, simply. There was no response.

  ‘Who are you people? And what’s going on?’ asked Sarah.

  ‘Let me introduce us. On your left is Lieutenant John Russell (discharged – grounds not relevant at this moment), on your right is one of his replicants, who it seems goes by the name of Number Seven. And I of course am Michelle Debois The 43rd, Earth’s emissary on this mission and I am so pleased to make your acquaintance.’ There was a complicated little bow/ curtsey involved.

  ‘This is Sarah Downes and I am Max Jennings,’ Max said after hesitating to see if Sarah would speak first. ’Oh and thanks for rescuing us.’

  ‘You’re very welcome. Now it’s time for us to think about leaving.’

  He moved his leg a little, carefully.

  ‘I think my nanos have almost fixed my leg. It doesn’t hurt too much to move. I might be able to stand up, with a little help.’

  Sarah helped him to his feet. He took a couple of hesitant steps, his arm across her narrow shoulders; her arm around his waist.

  ‘I think I’ll be OK,’ he said. They kept their arms around each other.

  ‘Where are you taking us?’ asked Sarah, letting go of Max with one hand, to pull a strand of hair behind her ear.

  Debois looked at Jack.

  ‘What is the plan here, Jack? What are we going to do with them?’

  ‘I don’t have any plans for them. But Number Seven seems to have a strangely soft spot for them. If we can help them without interfering with our plans, I don’t suppose it would be a problem.’

  ‘So,’ said Debois, turning back to the couple, so delightful in their youthful earnest trust. ‘You have a choice. You can come with us as we flit about, saving the universe. Or you can stay here.’

  Max and Sarah looked at each other. They didn’t have to speak. Yesterday, subjectively, the idea of being on their own on this beautiful world had seemed idyllic; for a day. But now, on this decimated world, forever? It didn’t seem such an attractive proposition.

  ‘We’ll come with you,’ he said, hugging Sarah.

  ‘Perhaps we’ll find a suitable place on our journey to drop you off. Somewhere with people, where you will be safe.’

  He turned to Jack.

  ‘Is there likely to be such a place, on our route? I’m guessing you won’t want to deviate from your original plan.’

  Jack considered the worlds they were due to visit and declined to answer the question.

  Chapter 24

  Technician 2nd class Lewis was one of less than 100 people who were currently on the Moon, investigating the possibility of reclaiming some of the material left behind when war struck. No-one was yet ready to return to the moon permanently, to be so isolated in case of future aggression. But there were treasures just waiting to be found.

  He was more than a little surprised when he spotted the big black guy on this side of the dark side boundary line, and he wasn’t made any less nervous when he started waving at them.

  He wanted to drive on; no-one should have been there, and where did he get such a strange spacesuit? But Technician 1st class Morgan was in charge and he said they had to stop. So they did.

  Morgan told him to stay where he was whilst he investigated, and squeezed into the airlock. On his own, Lewis decided that he should radio this in, then he found that the radio wasn’t working. That had him really worried; it was an essential piece of equipment out here and was filled with multiple redundant systems to ensure that it would never fail. Now it had; and it felt like it was more than a coincidence.

  Then the big guy pulled himself through the airlock door and sat down in Morgan’s seat. Lewis looked up at him, hearing the chair groan under his weight.

  ‘Where is Morgan?’ he asked, his voice breaking.

  ‘Drive.’ Was the response.

  ‘We have to wait for Morg…’

  ‘Just drive. He won’t be coming back with us.’ The voice was a little metallic, and there was something off with the phrasing, but his meaning was clear, and Lewis was not about to argue.

  They had been driving for an hour or so and the ship was only a few kilometres over the horizon, when Lewis was ordered to stop by his unwelcome passenger.

  The narrow spike that was rammed through his skull and deep into his brain hardly left a trace, hidden by his thick hair. It didn’t kill him, though there was some degradation in his ability to remember, and things would never smell quite the same again.
But his motor functions were in full working order and he was able to restart the rover and continue his journey, every action controlled by the AI now residing in his head.

  **********

  Back In the ship, Debois felt a little unsettled by the presence of two Jacks. He would find himself about to talk to the original and then realise that it was the copy.

  ‘Couldn’t he wear a banner or something, to show he’s a copy? It would make thinks simpler, don’t you think? And can you get him to talk? This silent act is spooking me.’

  ‘It’s not an act. He simply has nothing he wishes to say to you. It’s a novel idea, but you might like to try it out; see how it feels.’

  ‘What ever do you mean?’

  ‘Talking only when you’ve got something to say. It might catch on.‘

  Debois sauntered closer to Jack and put one hand on his chest.

  ‘You can be so hurtful sometimes. But I know you don’t mean it.’

  ‘In any case, we have more important things to consider,’ said Jack, pushing his hand away.

  ‘What to do with the habitat and what our next step is going to be?’

  ‘That’s more or less right. Although I already know what I’m going to do with the habitat.’

  ‘And what’s that?’

  ‘You might call it insurance.’

  ‘Now you’ve got me intrigued.’

  ‘At this stage there’s no need for you to know anymore. When the time is right, I’ll tell you.’

  ‘But…’ Debois stopped. Somehow he knew that Jack was no longer listening.

  Jack was checking on the TPI drive that was being fitted to the outside of the southern pole of the habitat. The ship was using drones to do the heavy work and the task was well under way.

  Another day and it would be ready.

  The habitat’s mass wasn’t a problem, though its size was. The field generated by the TPI wasn’t designed for such are large body, but hopefully the ship’s ad hoc modifications would work.

  Five Little Fish was travelling at 1.6 million kilometres per minute, heading in the direction of the universe’s boundary. Even at this speed and after a journey of millions of years, it would never have actually reached its destination. The gravity of the universe was such that the little world’s trajectory was curved and it would have ended up orbiting the universe, never able to reach escape velocity.

  With the TPI drive in operation, the habitat could flicker in and out of real space, skipping across the unimaginable distances like a stone across a flat lake. Its real space speed would be undiminished, but each flicker would take it across significant fractions of degrees around the universe’s circumference.

  After thousands of flickers it would arrive back in real space for the last time, having circumnavigated the universe.

  It would arrive back close to where it had started its journey. To be more precise, it would arrive slightly more than 78 trillion kilometres from Earth.

  Its velocity would still be 1.6 kilometres per second and its course would be such that in almost exactly 100 years, it would collide with Earth.

  Chapter 25

  ‘Are you really The Jack Russell?’ asked Max.

  ‘I’m certainly a Jack Russell.’

  ‘But you know what I mean. Jack Russell, from ancient Earth. Operation Sunshade and the Slobs; we did it all in history.’

  ‘Actually it was Sunblind, and I don’t appreciate the abbreviation of such a rare and special species’ name.’

  Jack took a step closer to Max.

  ‘Their correct name was Jeuroespylobnonyen.’ During the second and third syllables he waved his hands up and down before him; for the penultimate syllable he hugged Max to his chest.

  For a second Max fought for air, then he was released and dropped into Debois’ chair.

  ‘The hug is sort of an accent; without it the name becomes an insult. Of course I only used about 10% of the required force, so it would still have caused some offence. And one thing you don’t want to do is offend a J-Yen.’

  ‘J-Yen?’

  ‘That is the only acceptable abbreviation; to me.’

  ‘Okay. Sorry. Can you tell me about the J-Yen? They haven’t been seen for such a long time.’

  ‘They were inveterate travellers. They are still out there; exploring and trading. But you are right, they have left human space far behind them. And it is our loss.’

  ‘Tell me about them, please. ‘

  ‘They came to Earth in the summer of 2042; well it was summer in the old US. They came in a single ship, that had settled into an orbit that brought it over the US capital twice a day.

  ‘Of course we knew they were coming; the ship was detected well before it passed through the asteroid belt, and armed ships were in place in plenty of time before they arrived.’

  ‘Did they fire on the J-Yen ship?’

  ‘There was some action, but the J-Yen simply ignored them. That’s one of the things about the J-Yen, it can be quite hard sometimes to get their attention. They have incredible focus.

  ‘So they ignored the warships and sent a landing craft to drop into the lawn opposite the Whitehouse in Washington; just like in all the old SF films I used to watch.

  ‘They were surrounded by soldiers and tanks, and helicopter gunships buzzed all around and, of course the world’s media was agog to record the historic meeting.

  ‘The US President waited; can you believe it was another Bush! He waited for a week, but nothing happened. In the second week he pulled the army back and reduced the presence of the heavy machines, to see if that would entice the aliens out.

  ‘But it didn’t work so, at the end of that week, we watched the VP stride out of the Whitehouse’s main entrance and make his way towards the ship, his steps dignified, his expression serious. I think he was hoping this would get him the next presidential nomination.

  ‘This time, the J-Yen did react. Steps were lowered and he climbed them in a statesmanlike way. When he reached the top, he paused and turned towards the cameras. He gave a simple nod and entered the large round doorway before him. And he was never seen again.’

  Chapter 26

  Jack had been released from prison for six months when the aliens arrived. He’d served 20 years of his sentence and was now on parole, helping Hominids R Us with their research.

  They’d replaced his aging original body with a new lightweight flexible version and they kept adding new features for him to try out.

  Like everyone else he was glued to his screens, waiting to see what was going to happen.

  In addition to working with Hominids R Us, he was working with Pips, an offshoot of the mighty Apple Corporation. They had brought out the first hi-tech behind the ear device, feeding into contact lenses that gave full 3D images, the I-Iphone. This was soon followed by the first subcutaneous device, the Iplant.

  So Jack now had a powerful computer in his head, directly linked to his brain, that enabled him to manage all of his body’s systems and keep in contract with the new NetWeb.

  He watched the VP enter the ship and saw the hesitations, ineffectual bluffs and even more ineffectual bombardments that resulted.

  It was quite a few months before they finally called him.

  The man he met was wearing civilian clothes, but there was something military about the way he held himself.

  ‘Russell. Mr Russell. We appreciate you accepting our invitation. This is an opportunity for you make redress for your crimes.’

  ‘I’ve spent the past 20 years in prison, so I’ve paid for those crimes.’

  The man leant forward in his seat, his elbows on the polished mahogany desk.

  ‘That hardly suffices, in my opinion. The fact that you are even alive offends me, and all other right thinking Americans. And I’m going to make use of you in that fancy suit or whatever you may call it. You’re going to do this for your world; for mankind.’

  Jack’s body wasn’t really designed to shrug but somehow he conveyed the messa
ge.

  ‘It is critical that we deal with these Aliens. And it has to be soon. It just ridiculous, having them sat on the White House lawn and not talking to us. We’ve done everything we could to open up an effective form of communications with the aliens. We’ve sent several others into the ship, after the VP. But all with the same result.

  ‘They speak American well enough for us to sort of understand them, and they keep saying we are insulting them; that the substandard representatives are too weak to sustain conversation with them. They won’t explain any further what that means.’

  ‘So, what do you want me for?’

  ‘I would have thought that was obvious. We want you to go in there and find out what they want.’

  Chapter 27

  Sarah was a little bored.

  Max was talking to one of the big creeps who had sort of rescued them. She wasn’t sure how grateful she was supposed to be, because she suspected that they had something to do with the whole disaster in the first place.

  So she wondered around the ship, hoping to see something that was interesting. There was nothing much on the deck level, just lots of big rooms with very little in them.

  She found the stairs to the lower level and began to descend them. As her head dropped below deck level her stomach flipped and suddenly she was supporting herself on her arms, her feet braced against the walls on either side of her.

  Somehow, down was now up.

  With an acrobatic twist she stepped out on to what should have been the ceiling but which was now the floor. She forgot about the strange gravitational occurrence when she spotted the four stasis chambers.

  Three of them were standard human sized devices. The fourth was much larger. When she approached it, she was disappointed that there was nothing to see; the lid was completely opaque. With her hand on its side, she could feel a low steady hum.

  She swiftly moved to examine the other three.

  At each one, she brushed away the dust and ice covering the viewing plates and checked the contents. Then she would move on to the next one.