Chaos Cipher

by Den Harrington

  Vance took a seat at the haptic controls and held out his hands, then initiated Malik’s neurophase. Malik felt the space unfold through his mind, and right away he recognised it as four dimensional, opening his mind to all the visible angles.

  ‘Can you hear me?’ a voice spoke through his mind, tinctured by the faintest synthetic quality, of something spurious and digital laced into the phonetics.

  ‘I hear you.’ Malik said.

  ‘Hold out your hands.’

  ‘I can’t…they’re tied…’

  ‘Not in the neuro-sphere, they aren’t.’

  Malik attempted to shift his hands and found they suddenly were able to soar free. He looked at them, turned them around, and was suddenly aware of sunlight. Malik squinted at the light and he heard his brother laugh.

  ‘Interesting,’ he said, ‘I’ve never seen anybody do that before. Perhaps, it’s because you’re not familiar with years of neuroware conditioning.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You created sunlight in the space,’ Vance said.

  ‘I’m doing that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Fascinating,’ Malik smiled, feeling the warmth of the sun on his skin. He turned his hands in the light, discerned their contours and shadow.

  ‘It’s so real.’ He said. ‘But the sound…I’m not convinced by the sound.’

  ‘Sound is conceptualised, Malik.’ Vance explained. ‘You get rather a sense of communication without noise in here. Actually, our conversations take place in an instant, whereas in the hardlands it takes time to pronounce words. You’ll hardly hear an echo for example in these realms. You’ll also find you can’t shut your eyes.’

  Malik hadn’t noticed it. He shut his eyes and realised he could still see the environment.

  ‘You’re technically already asleep.’ Vance laughed. ‘Now…try and turn off the sunlight without killing the visual.’

  Malik stared at the whiteness of the sun. He lowered his hands that were shielding him from the blinding light and looked fully upon it. The light he came to realise was no longer warm and he watched it start to grey and dissolve, taking with it all the cloud of appearances.

  ‘Not everything, Malik, if you can help it.’

  He reset his focus onto the neurosphere’s artifice and once more realised his environment, retuning to a four dimensional space. He laughed, feeling ascendant.

  ‘This is the neurosphere,’ said Vance, ‘it’s your personalised desktop before diving into your neural space. We access it to initiate transqualian or semi-qualia neurophases, and to access the paracosms of the quasiland. From here you operate and organise any information you retrieve for instant access. But be warned, Malik. Anything you keep in this space you have to know is vulnerable to cyber-attacks. It’s like wearing your thoughts on your sleeve. Today we’ll be extracting some of your memories from the Erebus. I will show you how to obtain, recall and store. I will show you how to encrypt into neuro-quantum data and transmit to another person via a method we call neuromissions. Consider the neurosphere’s sensorium like a hard drive of your mind.’

  ‘This is incredible!’ He stated. ‘How big is this place, is it as big as the Sensorium chamber?’

  ‘There is no physical character to this space.’ Vance revealed. ‘But the visual capacity you are feeling is infinite. Though it looks like there is a border, like you’re suspended in a large metallic sphere, there is no actual end. The closer you venture out to that border, will reveal something more and within that detail something further more. Don’t worry about getting lost in here, as I said the space is infinite, it’s a conceptual area for mapping your mind, it doesn’t need a boarder and it doesn’t need a centre.’

  ‘How do I move?’

  ‘That’s up to you,’ said Vance. ‘Some people reach out and pull information toward them. Others prefer to fly through the space like they were in micro-gravity. See what tickles your fancy.’

  Malik folded his arms and concentrated ahead of him. The space began to bloat. The boarder folded back on itself, like a pressure from outside the chamber was upon it, another sphere bulging back like an inverting bubble. Malik reached out to see the surface had pulsing veins. The arteries and capillaries grew, branching all around, getting closer. And he saw how they deepened into grooves, which curled backwards and tunnelled, warping into new surfaces. A kaleidoscope of colour enshrined him now as the shapes changed again, growing into impossible structures and columns.

  ‘You’re exploring locations in your mind,’ said Vance. ‘Try and remember your time on the Erebus.’

  ‘That’s what I’m working on.’

  Vance kept his avatar running, dropping momentarily out of the interface to watch Malik in the Sensorium room. The synaptic frequencies were running their usual patterns. He’d adjusted to the neurophase successfully. Sometimes, newly introduced subjects suffered neuro-shock, the feeling of being forever trapped in one’s paracosm. Vance had purgatory remitters for such a situation and they were already on standby. In the darkness of the Sensorium he saw lilac colours shifting from the projection units, filling the space with a holographic representation of what Malik was visualising in the interface. The colours and light danced and reflected off the dark waters below as Malik sought through the strange patterns and shapes of his mind. Satisfied his brother was fine, Vance sat back, closed his eyes and returned to his avatar.

  ‘All this seems familiar,’ said Malik. ‘Like I’ve been to these places before.’

  ‘These neural pathways and patterns your seeing are familiar channels for your consciousness Malik,’ Vance said, ‘we create them when we dream, solidify neural networks and exercise memory. This is why, once you are neurophased properly, you will never need to sleep again.’

  ‘Here,’ said Malik, bringing out a large branch of fleshy looking trees. ‘I think here is a good place to start…’

  ‘Localise it, visualise it.’ Vance instructed. ‘Now, surface within the memory, imagine you’re coming up for air after a big swim. You’re doing very well!’

  Malik found the artifice rushing towards him, and a focal point was sliding his way, swallowing him into a pitch-black darkness. Malik found himself on his hands and knees under enormous strain. He issued a cry of pain but heard nothing. He turned through the lightless environment and felt drunk and vertiginous, almost numb. A dull light was shining in the long corridor ahead of him and he knew he was on the Erebus. Malik shouted for Vance loudly, but no sound came from his lips.

  Did you really think you could bring him here?

  Malik heard her voice, crisp and clear. He sprawled on his knees, scurrying to stand but fell once more to his backside. He remembered now why it was so difficult. The gravity! The Charybdis was right below him, an abyss of eternal blackness that threatened to swallow the ship whole. Malik pushed up. He wasn’t able to control this world. This was not a dream, it was a memory he was supposed to experience again, there was no controlling or changing these events. They had happened.

  Anyone who sees your dreams will only see the surface of things, she told him. But you are the one who will relive them. Over and over…and over. This is your fate Malik. You will never leave the Erebus. Even in your dreams and memories you’ll find yourself right…here. In the heart of all creation.

  He screamed for her to help him, but no voice emitted from his lungs. He climbed a table top for support and worked his way up to his knees. He saw chalk marked around the surfaces, X’s and O’s and forks other strange symbols burned or scribbled wildly onto the inner hull of the ship, the graphomanic notes of insanity.

  What were you trying to achieve? She asked. Did you believe you could wield the chaos cipher for yourself? Did you really believe you understood it?

  He wanted to yell! He wanted to answer. He wanted to tell her that he was already free, that the chaos cipher had done its duty. But she already knew.

  The chaos cipher was never designed to save us, she explained. It was designed to lig
ht up a path for humankind to follow. It was designed to bring us together again and make us truly immortal. Gods of space and time.

  He had forgotten this moment. Penelope’s great revelation. Why had he come to this time? Why had he suppressed it so deeply?

  Penelope Hurt stood in the shadows, limping through the gravitational turbulence. She made her way down the dark corridors, enticing him to follow. He would never see her face in the darkness, he would only catch the strange symbols vanishing and reappearing on the walls. He watched her slip into a temporal field, vanishing, only to reappear out of thin air further down the corridor, like stepping through a curtain.

  We need to sleep now, Malik. She told him. Trust that the Erebus will make it out now. From here on in we have only each other to trust. It’s all just a matter of time.

  -34-

  Berengar walked the garrison entrance in casual stroll, scanning around at the trainees and martial artists out on the field. He saw them with their weapons, all kinds of small arms combat equipment from swords to poles to alternative kinds of tools that looked to him oriental in origin. He approached the gate and scanned his badge into the computer and the alarms deactivated, allowing him to pass. Berengar carried over his shoulder a large bag of training equipment he was returning to the lockers. Hattle’s training had reached some sort of plateau that the Lewis family apparently found quite felicitous. He’d informed Pierce that Hattle would need further conditioning to make sure his recent victories had nothing to do with luck and more to do with skill, but since defeating the Russian kid Pierce had seen his son with a renewed confidence. Berengar, he’d said, for the time being wasn’t needed. The training would resume without him. Though he’d doubted significantly Hattle had the self-discipline to keep himself motivated to the pressing degree at which Berengar himself had urged. Berengar’s new duties had less to do with training and more to do with clandestine insurgency on behalf of the Lewis family. He was looking for the gene-freak kid and he knew just where to go for that. The scouts were the best when it came to the whereabouts of people. They see what goes on, they know the details.

  Gustav Rutland was spiralling down a staircase to his floor when he’d commented.

  ‘Berengar the Bear!’ He said, ‘my eyes see a lot but I ain’t seen heads-nor-tails of your pretty face in six months I think.’

  ‘Been working a case study,’ he smiled regularly as Gus came to meet him and shake his hand. ‘Sort of a personal project.’

  ‘Well, not too personal I hope fella,’ he said, pulling his arm in and winking.

  ‘Nothing like that, Gus.’ He uttered. ‘Been training The-Uppercut-Kid.’

  ‘Ahh, you’re teaching Hattle, right?’

  ‘That’s right,’ Berengar said, dropping his bag. ‘Little fucker knocked out a tooth.’

  ‘Must be true what they say about his uppercuts.’ Gus said in surprise, looking in at Berengar’s missing teeth.

  ‘It’s not that you don’t see em’ coming,’ said Berengar, ‘but if he hits you…it’ll count.’

  ‘I know a great dentist on the other side of the city.’

  ‘I got my own.’ Berengar smirked a little, changing the subject. ‘You seen Mr Valdek around here?’

  ‘Mr Valdek?’ Gus laughed. ‘Jesus Bear, hanging around those Lewis’ really rubbed you the wrong way, huh?’ and Gus nodded to the outside. ‘Artex is out back, flying his hawk, Cedalion.’

  Berengar stalked through the fields. In the distance, he could see the animal shelters where the chicken huts stood for almost half a kilometre. The animals were nervous about Artex flying his hawk, but Cedalion kept away the other predators. Artex stood in a large open area alone. He swung a long line, spinning the end like it was a lasso, primed with fresh meat instead of a noose. He spun and swung the line, letting it up into the sky where the hawk circled, dove and chased the meat, swooping around him as he spun and led it. Berengar stopped and watched him do this a few times before Artex finally held out his falconry glove and let the bird feed there. He approached the Bear at last.

  ‘Can I help you?’

  ‘That’s a big bird,’ said Berengar. ‘What’s her name?’

  ‘Cedalion,’ said Artex, stroking the loyal hawk’s head. ‘She looks after the skies in these parts.’

  ‘How can you tell her apart from the others?’

  Artex pointed to the neuro-ligature cap on the hawk’s head and then tapped his own temple. ‘We’re connected.’ He explained. ‘Also…she’s tagged. In case I die.’ Artex gently pulled the hawk’s wink open, much to the animal’s frustration, to show Berengar the Three Circles insignia burned onto the wingspan. And Berenga saw it clearly; Cognition, Liberty and Ludus. Cedalion snapped her wing back and rustled her feathers, continuing to feast at the strip of meat Artex pinched between the fingers of his padded glove.

  ‘Any rookies for training?’ Berengar asked.

  ‘Not really,’ Artex shrugged, ‘probably not the person to speak to even if I did. You looking for work?’

  ‘I’m looking,’ said the Bear.

  Artex carried the hawk over to a large pole and set the soft ruby flesh onto a nail and the hawk dug its talons into the top and continued to rip at the flesh.

  ‘You could speak with Zeff,’ he suggested.

  ‘No, thought I’d come speak with you,’ said the Bear. ‘Need to give you a friendly word of warning. They’re looking for the gene-freak.’

  ‘Who are?’

  ‘I heard Mr Lewis is,’ said the Bear. ‘I heard he’s sending a few moles around to ask for information.’

  Artex sneered at this.

  ‘Why’s he looking for the kid?’

  ‘Wish I knew,’ Bear chuckled. ‘He’s always cooking up some crap I don’t know. Maybe he wants to enrol him into the boxing or something. You know these gene-freaks are potentially tough little bastards.’

  ‘Anyway,’ Artex breathed, removing his falconry glove. ‘Kid’s gone away. Not quite sure where. They took a SkyLark.’

  ‘So that’s it, huh?’ Bear said. ‘Packed his bags and left? Said nothing to his parents?’

  Artex stared at Bear a little longer, curious now.

  ‘Where’ve you been all this time?’

  ‘Been training The-Uppercut-Kid.’ He said, spitting to his side as though something had started collecting suddenly in his mouth like a rabid dog.

  ‘Why are you back now?’

  ‘Kid won the fight,’ said Bear. ‘Apparently…they don’t need me anymore.’

  ‘Then welcome back to the garrison I guess,’ said Artex, leaving the hawk to chew on its post.

  ‘Can you imagine leaving your home like that?’ Bear asked, following Artex with his gaze as the scout master sauntered back to the training grounds. ‘Just going suddenly without keeping in touch.’

  Artex trudged through the field and ignored him. He’d done talking with Bear. Their conversation was over and he made sure the Bear was getting no more information on the Olympian kid. He’d cursed himself quietly for saying as much as he had, but he was onto that slimy fucker now. Bear should have stayed in the ring, he’s a terrible infiltrator.

  -35-

  Back and forth through the Perigrussia Skybus Pierce Lewis had paced for hours, irritably. Hattle was sat rubbing his eyes, eager to get some sleep. The day had been long and they hadn’t been home all night. Suddenly, Pierce’s Quantic-W sounded and he rolled up his sleeve and cursed at the name on his forearm. He tapped the name and the screen opened over his skin.

  ‘Danuta this is not a good time-’

  ‘Where on earth have you been Pierce?’ she said hoarsely.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  She pushed a black curl of hair behind her ear and came closer to the screen as though it would improve the confidentiality of their conversation.

  ‘I’ve had that rotten woman Enaya calling my Quantic all night.’ She hissed in a raspy whisper. ‘She’s asking for you. Whatever you’ve gotten up to Lewis I want
no part of it. I do enjoy my peace in fact and as much as I loathe what has become of this place, I will not have my time bothered this way. Now, I insist you shut her up!’

  ‘Why is she asking for me, what has she said?’

  His father’s tone had caused Hattle to straighten up and he listened carefully.

  ‘She’s complaining about a fire or something, I don’t know,’ she said shaking off her hand. ‘Apparently, you need to have an audience with her immediately, she claims to have enough evidence to pin you. She also said she has more witnesses who want justice or something.’

  ‘I’m being framed,’ Pierce told her. ‘Listen to me, Danuta. I’m on the Perigrussia Skybus…’

  ‘I have no idea what that means, just please stop her from bothering me. This woman is tenacious.’

  ‘I won’t be coming back until my work is done,’ Pierce insisted. ‘Don’t say anything about where I am. Hear me? She seems to think I started a fire.’

  Danuta sighed, vexed and with closed eyes she shook her head and jingled her ear rings. ‘Yesofcourse!’ she said at last, finally opening her eyes. ‘But don’t ask too much. Just do what you need to and I’ll cover you on my end until my patience will allow.’

  ‘You’re an angel,’ Pierce smiled.

  ‘Oh…go away you silly little man.’

  And with that Danuta ended the call.

  Pierce took a deep breath and scrolled through his list of contacts. It was a short list. He found Berengar up near the top and sent out the call. There was a moment and then the Bear’s familiar grizzled face appeared.

  ‘No news yet,’ said the Bear. ‘It’s not good. I get the sense Valdek is onto me.’