by Greg Dragon
“As usual, the disbelief,” the old man said passively. “The countries I mentioned, the war, the skill I demonstrated are all from another plane, you see. We jumpers—or as you call us, spies—have the means to jump to the various galaxies and on rare occasions jump to other planes of existence.”
Rafian stared at the old man intently, waiting for him to burst out laughing at the joke, but what he read in his face was that he spoke the truth. It made him feel like a tiny, irrelevant gnat on the surface of a world too big to appreciate his existence.
“For all your rank and respect, Captain, you are a mere toy soldier in a very real war to protect humanity. I guess you realize now why your titles, your accolades, and your petty revenge do nothing to impress me?”
Rafian ignored the slight to ask, “What’s on the other side?”
“Fantastical things, my boy, fantastical things. Things that I cannot begin to explain to you. But the catch with jumping planes is that we cannot control it. We can only stay for a time or come back at will using warp crystals, but we cannot open a new fissure on our own. The openings to other planes are controlled by a higher power; we take advantage whenever the opportunity is presented to us.”
“So, what is a fissure, and when and where do they open?”
“About a hundred years ago, during the first conflict, there was a Meluvian scientist by the name of Genda who found a large crystal on a dead planet near the third meridian. The crystal was a curious thing, as it produced a tiny ripple within its vicinity. And when Genda tried to touch it, he noticed that his hand would go through it. Genda took the crystal to a secret base on Vestalia, and he and a number of other important people would go through that first tear and make contact with the people of the planet on that other plane.”
The old man went back to his chair and sat down, rubbing his bald scalp as he continued his tale of the warp crystal phenomenon.
“That other plane had a world that was ancient, but the people could do miraculous, magical things. Their technology was very different from ours. While the professor could take things into the fissure with him, he noticed that it would only allow small things to be taken out. Carrying a tiny bit of the crystal itself inside the fissure allowed him to warp back to this side just by exposing it to the right amount of light. Don’t ask me to explain much of how this all works.
“That was our first contact with one of the other planes before extreme experimentation and study allowed us to learn of its miraculous properties, giving us faster-than-light travel, spirit jumping, and so much more. To say it in words that you will understand: with the crystals we can jump to galaxies, resurrect ourselves through cloning, and explore other planets throughout the known universe.”
The education on the warp crystals blew Rafian’s mind, and as he listened and thought about it, he understood why the jumpers seemed so cold, distant, and elitist. Knowledge of things so life-changing that they were unable to explain to the standard galaxy would make the common soldier appear as a mere golem to the powers that be and largely insignificant to the bigger picture.
The jumpers had learned how to expand their survivability through cloning and had learned to manipulate powers that were beyond human thought. The biggest eye-opener to Rafian, ever the martial student, was that knowledge gained through missions within a fissure was forever grafted into one’s DNA. Jumpers were not limited to the tiny brain capacity that a standard human being was—that part he didn’t want the details on, as it was all too much to process already. Rafian wondered how Camille was taking all of this and whether there was a white-haired old woman in her padded room running down the crazy powers that she was about to be given.
The tutelage went on for hours, and then he was escorted from the room to a facility that housed a number of men and women who looked wide-eyed and stunned (just as he was) from the “education,” as they called it. The room was all white and had tall walls, as if it were built to house giants or starships. There were tall, cathedral-styled windows that depicted jumpers in various poses, and Rafian could not shake how religious the whole place felt. Light spilled into these windows, illuminating the hall in an ethereal way, and each space between windows was a circular column that had a patchwork of digital lights that danced upon its surface.
Along the walls were seasoned jumpers, all dressed in white 3B suits that left no part of their perfectly sculpted bodies to the imagination. The ceiling was painted with a diagram of what he assumed to be the universe. He tried to find Anstractor and realized that it was the smallest of all the galaxies. When they got all the recruits together (there were twenty of them), he saw his beloved Camille, but as they were hustled along through the hallway, she would not look up to give him eye contact.
They were taken to the cloning lab, where a specialist downloaded their DNA and physiological data. As if to answer the question that was on all of their minds, they were given a demonstration via vid on how cloning worked. Next, they were given a live demonstration by the old man who had spoken to Rafian. He squared off against a younger jumper, and while it was an impressive display of skill, neither fighter could get the upper hand, and Rafian wondered at how it would end. After minutes of fighting, the elder produced a las-knife from his robes and stabbed his opponent through the throat, causing him to fall and thrash about in pain. It had to be one of the cruelest kills that Rafian had ever seen. Gasps and horror covered the faces of everyone watching, but within minutes, the man’s death throes had ceased and he emerged from one of the clone stations, happy, unscathed, and very much alive.
The dead body took on a grayish hue as the blood continued to pour from the neck. Rafian stared at the clone, trying to see if the man was merely a twin and this a trick of some sort.
“I don’t know how cool I am with this,” said one of the female members to nobody in particular, and the old man spun and threw the knife into her head, causing her to instantly drop dead! Again, there were gasps and expressions of shock until she cloned and popped up out of the machine looking scared, angry, and red-faced.
“YOU HAD NO RIGHT!” she was shouting, tears streaming down her face. She was all fire and unaware of her nakedness as she ran out to face down the old man while giving the recruits a full-on display of her goods. When she realized her nakedness, she froze and panicked. One of the aides brought her a robe to cover up, and she quickly hustled away.
“Very appropriate,” the old man began as he paced the metal floor looking at each of the recruits, who now stood at attention.
“Appropriate because jumpers are to be removed from the shackles that are sexual commitment, personal possessions, and, as much as humanly possible, matters of the heart. Your bodies belong to the organization now. I own you all.”
That statement elicited a reaction from Camille, who had found herself next to Rafian, both observing the horror of the membership they had signed up for. The couple was holding hands, and the old man glanced at them as he spoke. Rafian balked at the thought that they would be punished somehow for revealing their togetherness, so he unhooked Camille’s hand and made a mental note to stay away from her to avoid further suspicion.
The recruits were then made to partner up with each other, preferably with members of the opposite sex, and the general idea was that partners were to have sexual relations at some time every week and were not to develop any attachments from it. Refusal meant permanent death, or “perma-death,” as it was called, and as jumpers, they were mere recruits doing as they were commanded until the time when they prove themselves worthy to be given the rank of person.
They were next given number designations as names, which were to be used on missions and in espionage operations. Names were only given to jumpers who had proved themselves worthy of being regarded as persons. Rafian became number 03 (pronounced Zero Three), and Camille was number 11. He saw her get paired with a large, red-headed man who got number 13, and it crushed him to think about what would be happening to her moving forward. It took ev
erything within him not to go berserk and start killing every spy there, but of course he knew that he was outmatched. Still, the thought of Camille in another man’s arms made him truly feel the horrors of his new position, and for the first time in years, he felt completely helpless to play the part of savior.
The girl he got partnered with was the spitfire who had gotten herself cloned. They were escorted to their room, which seemed very mundane compared to the stark white aesthetic of the rest of the building. It was a metal-walled tiny room with full-sized plasteel beds that took up the majority of the space. There was enough walking room for a single person to shuffle between the beds to access the storage dressers, and next to the entry were a tiny refrigerator and stove.
Based on the size of the room, Rafian realized how close they would be forced to be. He tried to figure in his mind how he could make things less awkward between himself and his new partner.
“I could just die,” the girl said. She was pale with dark-almond eyes; long, shiny black hair; and a face that could be best described as plain. Rafian felt no real physical attraction to her, but something about the way she had fought back earlier made him look at her with admiration. Her name was Tayden Lark, and she was given the number 05 by the jumper commander who killed her. They found out that his name was Arn. He seemed to be more feared than respected by the veteran jumpers, and in his presence, nobody talked without permission.
The girl who introduced herself as Tayden Lark was a first-grade starfighter on her own ship and colonel to a squadron of rangers known as the Screaming Ayries. Rafian had fought alongside them in the past, but the situation had been so intense that there was no way Tayden would remember him.
“Tayden, you are a leader of men; you have to come to terms with this,” Rafian finally said after listening to her complain for what seemed like hours.
“Thype this shtill, Rafian! What if I don’t come to terms with this lunacy, huh? Cloning, warping, and forcing rape on us weekly? How are you good with any of this?”
“Whoa, who said anything about rape?” Rafian snapped back, suddenly concerned.
“It’s sex that we didn’t sign up for or WANT, Rafian, oh great ‘leader of men!’”
She stared at him angrily as if he were the dumbest man alive. “Do you or your girlfriend out there want to be made to cheat on each other every single night? Or are you looking forward to nailing every girl in here? If it’s the latter, then cheers to you, mate! By the time you become a thyping ‘person,’ you will have added ten notches to your bloody belt.”
He shook his head in sadness and retreated to his bunk to process everything that had happened since they were taken. First of all, if Tayden, with everything that had happened to her, noticed that he and Camille were together, then everyone else would have noticed also. He thought of everything the old man had told him and tried to see the good in being a jumper. There were some serious perks to this new job, but the killing to prove cloning and the forced sex were not what he imagined the “good guys” would be doing.
“How can they know if we are having sex, Tayden? Do they have capture cubes in here or old-school cameras?”
“Oh…I guess they didn’t catch you boys up, eh?”
She hopped off of her bunk and danced a mocking jig in front of him as she explained.
“We women have been sterilized. You may want to check yourself to see if you feel odd because I’m quite sure they’ve taken away your baby card as well! A jump’ah does not procreate without permission, apparently, a little item they forgot to add to the recruitment paper we signed. Oh, and in terms of sex? We women will be checked for evidence of intercourse every week, and upon failing said test, will be summarily punished for noncompliance. How ya feeling now, future super spy?”
Rafian was still absorbing the sterilizing portion of her statement and decided that he was done with Tayden’s attitude and mocking accent.
“Drop the attitude; I’m not the one forcing you to do this shtill, OK? One way or another, we’re going to have to play ball or die dishonorably in this hellish recruitment facility. My ignorance to this nonsense is not due to me ignoring the signs. Like many of the other people out there, I too was not informed. Do you think I’m enjoying this any more than you do?”
With that he moved over to the refrigerator, where he found a bottle of chilled Virulian rum and a flask of purple berry juice. He poured the liquids together into a couple of glasses and shoved one into the chest of the exasperated Tayden, who tried to mull over the words Rafian had just barked back at her.
He walked towards her and touched her shoulder. “Consider that we are made to do this mess, Tayden, and that we will not be able to drink once the murderous training starts, which you know will suck.” And with that, he gave her a wink.
“How about we drink to you being the first badass woman to be cloned in our company and learn to become friends, eh? You’re a soldier, right? Well, soldier up and become the type of marine that I need at my back.”
Tayden accepted the drink in surrender and gulped it down desperately. Like Rafian, she was intent on getting drunk to break the ice and get things underway, and it took only two more glasses before she was completely calm and relaxed. Before long, the two recruits were chatting; then the chatting turned into joking, and the joking turned into friendly touches, which became a wrestling match. Giggling, careless, and with too much to drink, they began kissing each other in the fiercest way, and what Rafian assumed would be awkward sex turned into one of the best nights of his life.
Tayden had needed an outlet for the entire situation and was appreciative of Rafian’s willingness to take the lead and bring her back from the hopeless abyss she had felt when the old man murdered her in front of everyone. She wanted to make love to him forever, hoping it would delay the inevitable months during which they would have to deal with Arn and the jumpers, but as they consummated the deed and the passion left their bodies, the fantasy dissipated, and she realized that she was still in hell.
Rafian was further under than Tayden was, having emptied the bottle as they spoke, and he was out cold minutes after he finished. When he awoke in the middle of the night, stirred by a nightmare of the wildest kind, he found her sleeping peacefully on his chest. Despite their rough start as partners, he was glad that they had gotten the sex out of the way, and it made him feel for the first time that he could survive the hellish recruitment.
Memory 12 | Blackout
One of the lowest days that Rafian had ever experienced occurred a week later, when he got a chance to sneak off to meet Camille. The shame and guilt that they both felt was overpowering, and it was as if they were strangers talking for the first time, with long pauses and silence as they held hands and stared at each other, trying in vain to cope. It was Rafian who decided to clear the air and address the giant elephant in the room.
“Let’s just be completely honest about—”
“How many times have you guys done it?” Camille cut him off to ask the question that had been irritating her all along. Tayden was one of the few girls who seemed in high spirits during the first week of hell. Camille had noticed the girl’s happiness and came to the conclusion that Rafian had made himself extremely comfortable with the situation, and Tayden was the recipient of the wonderful things he had shared with her every other night on the Helysian. He was taken aback by her interruption and fought himself internally with the choice of remaining absolutely honest or lying to spare her any more hurt than he had already caused.
“We have had sex practically every day, Camille,” he said without flinching. Her face immediately became pallid, and she balled her fists and stared at the ground next to her right foot, locking up the way she always did whenever she wanted to be emotionally strong, as she resisted the urge to rip his head off.
“How about you, Cam? How many times have that flame-maned lion slept with you?”
She took a deep breath and surrendered a “Two” before staring at him intently, as
if to beg him to save her. Camille had the most dramatic mannerisms of any woman Rafian had met—even more than Vani, the queen of drama, and it always took a lot of effort for him to not bust out laughing at her and what he called her superhero poses. This time he had no urge to laugh as she fidgeted with visible uncertainty. He reached out to hug her, and she stepped into his arms and hugged him tightly, as if to melt into his chest and vanish.
“This sucks,” she whispered, and Rafian thought it was an opportune time to impart on her the new clarity that he had found.
“Cammy, baby, this test they have us doing here…The goal is for us to give up our bodies. When we came here, you worried that things would change between us due to the conditioning, the brainwashing, and now this ridiculous ritual of promiscuity. They have our bodies, babe. Your hesitation and worry over that will not serve you because it is gone. They cloned us, practically raped us, and will kill us without a moment’s hesitation. Right now the only thing we own is our minds—what’s left of them—our souls, and our love. I haven’t stopped thinking about you since I got here, and they took you away from me. I’ve come to terms with this vessel of mine being taken and given to the jumpers, and you should know that I blame myself for dragging you into this nons—”
She cut him off with a hammering punch to his shoulder.
“No! Don’t you take this on, Rafian VCA; we made this decision as we have made all decisions concerning our careers: together. I will not be the sad, pathetic partner allowing you to take the blame for this or anything else concerning us. OK?”
They kissed passionately and held each other for a time, no longer worrying about the fact that they could be caught and punished for violating protocol.
“One day…” Rafian whispered with his lips pressed against Camille’s neck, so that only she would hear it. “One day, we will change this culture. We will rise and succeed, and then, like all other bullies in this galaxy, we will take away their power and change…this…culture.”