Dense Space

by Robert Harken

  Dense Space

  Robert Harken

  © 2017 by Robert Harken. All rights reserved. This eBook is licensed for your personal use only. You may not re-sell or give away this eBook. Thank you for supporting art.

  This story is fiction. Similarities to people, places, things, or events are coincidental.

  Published 2017 by Harken Media.

  Cover design by Robert Harken.

  Cover photograph of the Messier 104 galaxy courtesy of NASA/STScI/AURA.

  Table of Contents

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Preview of Life on Nubis

  Sign Up for New Release Alerts

  More Stories by Robert Harken

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  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Click Here to Get New Book Alerts

  Chapter 1

  The mob cheered for the deaths of billions. Pheno and Eddientis leaned over the wobbly suicide barrier around the rim of the dormitory’s roof to watch the masses jostle in the city square for the best view of the floating broadcast. Many danced in place, the celebration of another’s end being more about survival than death. Chants of “One dies; the rest live,” erupted enthusiastically from small groups, probably Boosters moving among the crowd, and faded quickly. A few, notable in their stillness among the roiling bodies, stared silently at the point in space where so many would soon perish. A breeze carried the tang of charred meat.

  “Place your final bets now folks.” The announcer’s voice switched to hypno-subliminals. “The payoff for a fraction of a second could set you up for life. You deserve it. Imagine floating above the Chamean Abyss in your private cruiser, the brilliance of a trillion suns above and nothing below. All yours. Sip a warm midnight vesper while a cool Trilerian attends all of your needs. It’s so easy. All could be yours in a flash of light for a fifth-mark. Hurry. The countdown starts in three minutes.”

  Someone—maybe Ti—had told Pheno the exact death count down to the individual: 27.182 . . . something, something billion. Pheno wondered why so much effort had been expended to count everyone. What difference did one life make when a whole planet died? When people spoke of Ertryds they rarely considered the individual, preferring to stereotype the species as detached and insensitive, bordering on heartless, because of the planet’s unwavering supply of technology to the Galactic Counsel regardless of the faction in power or their misdeeds. Still a few espoused a more tolerant view of the reclusive world. Synthetic voices from the Fringe periodically hijacked nagbots to proclaim the imminent apocalypse a murder, but Pheno suspected that distinction mattered only to the living.

  A new set of odds flashed on the Chancetaker’s screen. Light from the numbers eclipsed other illumination in the square. Timing the impact had always been a mathematical affair. Grifters had sold formulae to the gullible before the Core completed its announcement of the exoplanet discovery. Physics governed destruction of the Ertryd home world in a precise and knowable process; but measurement error, unexpected variables, and hubris lured the number worshipers.

  A fool’s quest, but who plays the fool? Ti worshiped numbers. Yet, Pheno doubted any of her wagers had expired with the passage of time. No, thought Pheno, Ti will have compromised a hacker’s illegal feed of the probes orbiting Ertryd to record the extinction. Recalibrating her model in real time probably wasn’t enough. She would wager with the Chancetaker’s own money, temporarily appropriated for Ti’s convenience through a series of system mods that would eventually lead to an innocent but deserving culprit.

  The way Ti speaks of numbers I almost find them interesting, if they weren’t so detached from reality. Formulae understand nothing of living . . . yet, scribbles in a hologram describe us. How is this possible without meaning? Ti forecasted the amounts people would bet without considering the empty stomachs of the gamblers’ children. Many others worshipped numbers with her, praying over a casket oblivious to the screams of their victim trapped within; Ti was the queer cultist who opened the casket, not to save the martyr, but because it was closed. He had to admit her extracurricular activities circled a quasi-justice . . . from a distance . . . with a fleeting, sideways glance. He had learned to question her morality only when his integrity demanded the sacrifice. Does it matter that she’ll spend none of her winnings? Static numbers bored Ti, and currency in her vault qualified as “out of play.” A moot question because . . . because she’s Ti. Wealth, even of questionable origin, collects friends at the Trellix Academy. Their mistake. They underestimate Ti’s sheer force of personality and an inability to accept barriers. I wonder if she scares any of them.

  The tingle of Eddientis’s containment shield against the back of his hand focused Pheno here, now, on the rooftop. He gasped when he felt the tentacle push through the barrier and lay gently upon his hand. In a slow, fluid contraction, the suckers gently bonded. Pheno wished he could understand. I know pain but not the worst pain.

  “Impact in thirty seconds; mark the stars, citizens. You bear witness to the greatest spectacle of your life,” said the announcer.

  What does it matter that I can’t speak Eddientis’s language? I have no words. How do you console someone bearing witness to the deaths of their siblings, parents, and pod and the annihilation of their home?

  “Twenty seconds,” said the announcer.

  The floating broadcast showed the pale-blue ocean of Ertryd on the dawn of its last day. The waters, with potassium cyanide levels lethal to most alien species and essential to the planet’s life, looked peaceful. On the far edge of the screen the exoplanet moved into view. Sunlight shown upon a cratered, rocky surface. It was huge. The wayward planet appeared almost as big as Ertryd itself, which dwarfed most habitable planets in the galaxy.

  “Ten seconds.”

  Eddientis’s grip tightened. Pheno could feel something emanating from his hand, a sense of something but the actualization eluded him. I want to do something. Why doesn’t somebody help them? Everyone just stands around letting it happen.

  “Nine seconds.”

  For the sake of freedom, forget words; just feel. Pheno placed his other hand over Eddientis’s tentacle. It felt warm and solid but slippery.

  “Eight seconds.”

  A few voices, whispers against the sky, chanted from the square. “One dies; the rest live.”

  “Seven seconds.”

  “One dies; the rest live.”

  “Six seconds.”

  The chant swelled. “One dies; the rest live.”

  “Five seconds.”

  “One dies; the rest live.” Chanting filled the square, pulsed the air, swayed buildings.

  “Four seconds.”

  “One dies; the rest live.”

  The planets closed.

  “Three seconds.”

  Ertryd’s ocean drew into a massive wave reaching toward the exo.

  “One dies; the rest live.”

  “Two seconds.”

  Eddientis encircled Pheno’s hand and constricted.

  “One Second.”

  Pheno clenched Eddientis’s tentacle.

  “One dies; the rest live.”

  Nothing happened.

  “One dies; the rest live.”

  “One dies—”

  “Impact!”

  A schism hit the image stream then the exoplanet slammed into the Ertryd home world. The silent rupture ended billions. Plumes of lava the size of continents erupted into space
through the debris cloud enveloping the planetary embrace.

  Pheno turned to see half of Eddientis’s tentacles fumbling for the containment field control that would release Eddientis’s life-sustaining cyanide water.

  “No!” Pheno lunged forward. The field flowed around Pheno, maintaining a barrier between him and the toxic Ertryd water but smothering him in the process. Pheno held his breath and pried tentacles off of Eddientis’s mantle only to have others move in to shut down containment. “Stop, Eddientis! You’ll kill yourself!” The liquid muffled and warped his cry.

  Eddientis ignored him.

  Tentacles outnumbered Pheno’s arms and legs two to one; so he wrapped himself around Eddientis’s mantle, blocked the control with his body, and hoped Eddientis chose to live before Pheno suffocated.

  Eddientis writhed and rolled. Suckers clamped onto Pheno and pulled hard. The skin on his cheek and the hair on his scalp tore under two of the larger discs. His clothes ripped; his lungs burned. Let Eddientis die. Walk away and you’ll be alright. He heard Eddientis’s screams, deadened by the containment field. Eddientis’s voice synthesizer shouted Pheno’s name. There is no second chance. Pheno tightened his grip to fight his growing desperation for air. Stop it! Damn you, choose to live! What for? Black and white and purple and blue spots blinked across his vision as it blurred. Eddientis’s struggle weakened but not as fast as Pheno’s muscles failed. He couldn’t hold him. No second chance. Pheno locked his fingers and hooked his feet. He shook his head violently, but the instinct to live forced his mouth in a final, no-alternative gulp. The containment field flooded his mouth and the world faded then disappeared.

  The hum repeated incessantly. Why would someone persist for . . . Pheno opened his eyes. A light blinded him. He blinked.

  “Oh, you’re awake!” A round, pudgy, pink face imbued with too much humor moved into Pheno’s field of view. “Welcome back, Dear. You scared quite a few people at the Academy. First Thinker Weylen called in no less than three adjudicators to manage the issue.”

  “I am so, so sorry.” Pheno tried to sit up but pain spun around his skull when he moved. “Where am I?”

  “The infirmary, Dear. They brought you here for post-op recovery. I’m nurse Butria. Counting surgery, you’ve been unconscious for, let’s see . . . yep, nineteen hours.”

  “I had surgery? What for?” asked Pheno.

  “Reconstruction. That Ertryd tore you apart.”

  “Eddientis! Is Eddientis . . .”

  The nurse leaned closer and whispered, “Alive but not well. Eddientis is strapped to the next bed—suicide watch, you know.” He straightened and spoke in a normal volume with an artificial pleasantness. “You did well saving the young Ertryd’s life. I think you’re the first employee to save a student. First Thinker will probably note you in his monthly address.” He moved out of view and made scraping noises. “What’s your work at the Academy?”

  “I’m a servile to the assistant lab cleaner,” said Pheno.

  “Oh, er . . . I see, well, this is awkward. Right. I’m sure they’ll find some way to congratulate you. Perhaps your master will thank you.”

  Pheno grimaced and the pain returned. Klug’s thank you would come in the form of a beating for missing so many hours of work. His master prided himself on matching the punishment’s severity to the inconvenience his servile caused. Pheno had never missed so much time. This infraction far surpassed the soiled shoes that drove Klug to carve Pheno’s foot with the lab’s lathe. He tried to rise again but collapsed in agony. “I must get back to work.”

  “Stop that nonsense,” said the nurse. “Surgeon Huhn ordered four passings’ rest.”

  “Four passings! I can’t . . . I—”

  “Which labs do you clean? I’ll let the Thinkers know.”

  “Thanks, but I must get back.” Pheno forced himself higher, but the nurse placed a hand on his chest and pushed gently, collapsing Pheno onto the bed.

  “Not for four passings,” said the nurse. “Which labs?”

  “Organic Chemistry and Xenobiology,” said Pheno.

  The nurse grimaced. “Ew, I wouldn’t touch Xeno without a containment suit.”

  “I don’t have a containment suit. They’re reserved for students,” said Pheno.

  The nurse laughed nervously and covered his mouth. “I’m sure you don’t need one.” He patted Pheno’s shoulder.

  Pain radiated from his shoulder. Pheno sucked air through his teeth.

  “Oopsies, forgot about that one,” said the nurse, wiping his hand on Pheno’s sheets before disappearing.

  Crusty beakers and unidentified slime in Klug’s labs worried him less than the consequences for missing the students’ classes. If assignment deadlines passed . . . Maybe Ti can jack me into the classes from here. This place must be easier than connecting the cleaners’ room on floor zero. She’s already hidden the observers; it’s probably easy, but how do I reach her?

  The only option occurring to Pheno involved asking the nurse to call Ti. The impropriety of such a request would draw suspicion, but he had no other options. Eddientis had condemned and foresworn assisting Pheno. He ticked through the schedule of philosophy, psychology, history, and xenobiology classes he eavesdropped on, the “soft subjects” that lacked the cool factor of gene hacking, coding, or math. Pheno hated the circumstances—but not the learning—his “education” provided. Ti had been generous, no doubt. She had doubled what Klug paid him despite Pheno’s willingness to complete her homework for the privilege of watching the classes alone. He sighed. Pheno remembered at least three assignments coming due but thought more were likely.

  There is always another way, Pheno told himself—especially here. He hadn’t appreciated this planet’s opportunities when he first arrived on Gressa. His parents had told him they acted to save his younger brother and sister. That he would have a better life. Pheno knew they wanted to believe their words, and he supposed his parents had done their best. He remembered both of them gesturing wildly in the argument with the trader; but after two flagons of merril ferment, they had agreed. His parents sold him into servility. Is someone still a parent if they sell their child?

  His mother and father always favored Buenon and Sona. Pheno had arrived early, forced a union, and inspired surprised looks from acquaintances when anniversaries and birthdays collided. Buenon and Sona entered the world at the proper time for a family. People with neither wealth nor reputation clutch silly rules to elevate themselves, so his parents served Pheno’s meal to his brother and sister when Pheno shamed the family—that is when Pheno acted like Pheno. They coddled Buenon and Sona with blankets and clean water to drink, offered him nothing.

  If his parents spoiled his siblings and deprived Pheno to estrange the three, they failed. Pheno, Buenon, and Sona were tight. Buenon and Sona smuggled food and water to Pheno. They delighted in Pheno eating the rare delicacy, a sliver of redcake or a nectardrop, intended for them. In return, Pheno taught them his singular skill: how to get away with stuff. No matter how much his parents punished him, Pheno deserved much more. That had been his childhood, an education in survival that served him well as an adult.

  In Pheno’s mind, right and wrong missed the point. The way he figured, if he could commit all the evil acts in the universe to produce the same amount of good plus one quantum more, he should do so. That made him neither good nor bad but just. End-justified means. His parents, however, never believed that, and therein lay the problem. He tried to forgive them; even now after so many seasons, he still tried.

  Pheno had decided that his parents’ insistence on a Gressan servilment demonstrated something—concern perhaps. Hints of their logic showed even in the first passing on Gressa, though much remained a mystery until the history lessons. Gressa lacked resource abundance, a strategic trade or military location, and tourist aesthetics. The rock’s marginal habitability had both limited population size and selected for an independent and pecuniary breed. These circumstances created Gressa’s tw
o most striking features: universal voting rights, including serviles, and institutionalized bribery. This combination of features generated steady income for everyone that eclipsed subsidies for the poor of the most generous socialist regimes on other worlds. Wealthy residents simply bought the votes necessary to achieve their goals without the need for wasteful lobbying and political ads. Elections took less than a rotation and occurred continuously throughout the cycle. Taxes remained low, government small, and productivity high (at least for a planet incapable of producing anything of worth).

  For many thousands of cycles, the planet had been united by a philosophy of survival that eschewed principles. Gressan nursery rhymes sung of monsters driven to war for integrity and honor. The planet’s most enduring religion extoled the virtues of cowards who lived free of morals.

  Foreign activists occasionally arrived to proclaim the system corrupt and susceptible to despots; however, millennia of conquests had proven them wrong. Would-be conquerors quickly realized economics favored purchased loyalty over coercion. Those that attempted force faced the frustrating and futile task of rounding up residents who scattered into the myriad tunnels formed by the planet’s extinct volcanoes. Thus, Gressa achieved an enduring peace under continually changing external rulers. Such conditions fostered the Trellix Academy and other opportunities for the noble and nefarious alike seeking obscurity in the galaxy’s most ignored world.

  Pheno frowned at how afraid and naïve he had been when he woke from stasis in the servile hold of the immigration port. Fear had not saved those it immobilized. The masters of fearful serviles cut off digits or lips or ears and fed them to their pets then the serviles disposed of the pets’ waste. Innocence fared no better. How his hopes had soared during orientation when the trader told the crowd of wretcheds that their new masters would pay them. He had thought servilery no different than a job. Pathetic. Worse—foolish. Pheno blushed remembering how he had grinned and bowed when Klug pressed a single, cold credit into his palm—five passings’ pay to purchase his food. His bare feet had smacked the cobblestones in his haste to fill his belly with delights from the food stalls lining the allies beside the Academy. The stall keeps had shuttled him away from the Academy students inspecting cooked sugar delights and dealt with him behind their booths of sticks and rags. After bargaining had turned to pleading then resignation, Pheno sank into the shade of the Academy’s walls to rub his bruised feet and eat the one rotting puchin fruit a single credit bought. Pheno had decided to eat the whole thing instead of rationing it until his next payment five passings hence. The older serviles later berated him for his foolishness. Pheno kept silent while they nibbled their savings and wasted a little each passing. Of the memories from his first Gressan passings, he cherished eating all of that mushy, sour fruit the most.