Mindscape: Book 2 of the New Frontiers Series

by Jasper T. Scott

  Anderson shook his head. “You know I can’t do that, sir. You were dishonorably discharged.”

  Lars smiled crookedly into the holocorder on his desk. “Ja, Becker the Disgrace, the Admiral who cried Wolf—or is it the Admiral who Cried Aliens? That would be closer to the truth, I think.”

  “I’m very busy at the moment, sir…”

  “Listen to you—still calling me sir. If you have that much respect for me, then you need to listen to me now, Anderson. These attacks are not what the president thinks they are, and I have proof. If the Alliance goes after the Solarians for this, we’re going to end up with two enemies, and when the real one comes roaring out of that wormhole, we won’t be prepared.”

  Anderson grimaced. “I need to go, sir. I’m sorry. For what it’s worth, I have already presented your concerns to the president and the joint chiefs of staff. Unfortunately they didn’t share those concerns.”

  “You went to them without proof. I can convince them. Just give me five minutes with the president. That’s all I need.”

  “He won’t agree to see you. I’m sorry, sir. Take care of yourself.”

  Lars Becker gaped at the screen as the holo image faded away. He leaned back in his chair, considering what he should do.

  A loud moaning sound stole his attention. He glared at the thin walls of his apartment. The woman in 205D was having another virtual rendezvous. A frown touched his lips. The only good part about government housing was that it was free. He’d lost his benefits when he’d been discharged, and since jobs were such a scarce commodity, he couldn’t afford to pay rent in a nicer place. Pity being a conspiracy theorist doesn’t pay.

  Becker looked around his modest hundred-square-foot micro studio. The desk in front of him could be raised and lowered into the floor to double as a coffee table or just to get it out of the way. The couch where he sat was fully convertible, allowing him to sit upright at his desk, recline to watch holofeeds, or lie down and sleep. The kitchen was tiny and ill-equipped for cooking, so he mostly ate government-issue meal packs and drank nutrient slurry. He couldn’t afford fresh food, anyway. But by far the worst was the bathroom; the toilet was actually inside of the shower, and his knees touched the walls whenever he had to sit on his watertight throne.

  Becker grimaced and turned to look out the apartment’s only window—a convincing hologram. That window gave him a floor-to-ceiling view of whatever he wanted. Right now it showed a lake, blue water shimmering in the sun, a rolling carpet of bright green grass leading down to a pebbly shore. Large willow trees arched over the scene, casting flickering shadows across the grass as a breeze blew. Becker sighed and his eyes drifted shut. He imagined he could feel the wind on his face and touch the cool water with his toes, the sun beating down on his face…

  Then he opened his eyes. He’d just plugged into the oldest form of Mindscape—imagination. There’d been a time when people had spent their lives actually experiencing all of those things in the real world. Now they settled for the instant gratification of the Mindscape. Real beaches were garbage dumps with swarms of stray dogs and cats picking through the refuse. Few people even bothered with real pets these days, just as they didn’t bother with having children. Virtual ones didn’t cost money, and didn’t require people to spend less time in their beloved mindscapes.

  Becker looked away from the window and stared at the wall across from him. The black rectangle of an old-fashioned holoscreen hung there. On a whim, he waved his hand at the screen to turn it on. It was already tuned to an Alliance News Network holofeed. The news anchor talked about the missile impact in the Gulf of Mexico, and footage of the devastation flashed before Becker’s eyes on a horrendous loop, whole cities wiped out by the tsunami. An estimated thirty million people were dead or missing, and no doubt that number would only continue to rise in the days and weeks to come.

  Becker shook his head. These were just the warning shots. What would happen when the invasion came? It was going to catch everyone by surprise. He knew what was coming; he had a responsibility to warn people. Everyone acknowledged that the universe was simply too vast for humanity to be alone, but no one really took the idea of an alien threat seriously.

  “They didn’t then, and they don’t now…” Becker whispered. The president might not want to speak with him, but there was another way to get his attention, and while he was at it, the attention of the entire world. It was time to go public with his information.

  Again.

  The last time he’d spoken to the press, he’d earned himself a dishonorable discharge, but this time would be different. This time he had proof.

  Chapter 10

  McAdams took another sip of her martini, and Alexander downed his third tumbler of Scotch. He stared absently into the bottom of the glass and savored the pleasant warmth spreading through him. It made his head feel five pounds lighter, and he’d almost managed to silence the accusing screams of the dead. One more glass should do it.

  Or maybe that was what it would take to pass out.

  Not that he could pass out while he was in the Mindscape. It was designed to keep him conscious, and the instant someone upgraded the ship’s alert status from condition yellow to general quarters, sobriety would be back and hammering away with accusations—You didn’t hit even one missile. That’s all it would have taken. Just one, and Earth would be safe. One lucky shot to save millions of lives.

  Reports from Earth had reached them over the past hour—the impact had triggered an earthquake and a massive tsunami. The gulf coast was completely inundated, whole cities leveled. The scale of devastation was immense.

  “You have any loved ones close to the impact?” McAdams asked.

  Alexander began to shake his head, then he stopped himself and shrugged, his lips parting in a bitter smirk. “You know, I have no idea. It’s been a long time since I’ve had any loved ones.”

  McAdams’ brow pinched with sympathy. “I’m sorry. What happened between you and your wife?”

  Alexander met her gaze, at a loss for words.

  “If you don’t mind my asking,” she added.

  “I suppose you have a right to know since I left you to go after my wife. I guess karma’s still a bitch, because twenty years later she left me to go after our son.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I had the boy’s real father conscripted; he died somewhere in old Confederate Russia. When Dorian found out, he disowned me and his mother.”

  “You had him conscripted? Is that even legal?”

  “Oh, it was legal. The man was an illegal immigrant in the North. Back then the penalty for that was the same as the price for citizenship—military service.”

  “Then you didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “Well, I did hunt him down to make sure he was caught, and then I made sure he was sent somewhere dangerous enough that he might not survive.”

  “I see,” McAdams said, her gaze hardening.

  Alexander nodded. “Not so hard to understand why they left me, is it?”

  Her expression softened, and she placed her hand over his. “We all make mistakes. And I know you, Alex. To do something like that, you must have had a good reason.”

  “Sure, that guy was abusive. He almost killed my wife back when they were together. You could call what I did revenge, but he had it coming.”

  “What I don’t understand is how your wife could leave you over that. Your son, sure, but even he should come around if you explain it to him. Besides, it’s not like you put the man against a wall and shot him yourself.”

  Alexander poured himself another half a glass of Scotch. “The Mindscape ruined us. At the end we spent so little time together that we may as well have been two strangers living in the same house. Living like that, our marriage couldn’t hope to compete with the love of a mother for her son. Caty saw that she needed to distance herself from me in order to win Dorian back, and that’s exactly what she did.”

  “Did you try to go after th
em? To explain?”

  Alexander took a gulp of whiskey and grimaced as it burned a fiery trail down his throat. “If either of them still cared, they would have come back. Besides, I was tired of living an empty virtual life. Best case, I would get to go back to that. They gave me the excuse I needed to unplug and get the hell away from it all. The last taste of real purpose I ever had was with the Navy. You don’t know how strong the drive to be useful is until you realize that the world wouldn’t even miss you if you were gone. Long story short, I came back to the only home I’ve ever known.”

  “I’m sorry,” McAdams said, rubbing his hand.

  “Don’t be. Plenty of people lost their families to the Mindscape. At least I had another one waiting for me.”

  McAdams smiled, her blue eyes shining bright.

  “What about you?” he asked.

  “I didn’t have anyone waiting for me after the war, and it took me a while…” she looked away. “It took me a while to get over you. By the time I did, the Mindscape was everywhere, and dating was more virtual than real. Virtual relationships filled the hole for a while—until one day I decided to meet up with my virtual boyfriend in the real world. We planned to get married for real. We were old-fashioned I guess. We even discussed having real kids someday.”

  Alexander regarded her beneath a furrowed brow. “What happened?”

  McAdams smiled. “When I met him, I discovered that he was about five feet tall, skinny as a reed, and had a face like a scarecrow.”

  Alexander barked a short laugh, then quickly stifled it with a cough. “Sorry,” he said. “So he wasn’t a gener like you.”

  “No. I guess now you think I’m superficial.”

  Alexander shrugged. “Everyone is to some extent. What did he look like in the mindscapes?”

  “Tall, dark, and handsome, of course.”

  “Of course,” Alexander replied. “So what did you do?”

  “I broke off the engagement. He was heartbroken.”

  “Don’t worry, I’m sure he got over it with some virtual hookers.”

  “He wasn’t like that.”

  “No? I thought everyone was like that these days.”

  “Are you?” McAdams asked, her eyes measuring.

  “Call me old-fashioned, but I never liked virtual hookers.”

  McAdams nodded.

  “I prefer the real ones,” he explained.

  Her eyes widened suddenly, and Alexander held her gaze for a second before cracking a smile. “I’m kidding, Viviana.”

  “Oh.” She blinked and relief softened her features.

  Alexander’s comm band buzzed. “Admiral de Leon speaking.”

  “Admiral, Hayes here, we have a reply from the Solarian ship. You want to come back down to the bridge, or should I patch it through to your comm?”

  “Patch it through.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Alexander held his wrist out for both him and McAdams to watch as a hologram materialized above his comm band. They saw a man wearing a deep maroon combat suit with black piping—Solarian Navy colors. The silver star on his right breast marked him as a captain. He sat in an acceleration couch, though that could have been virtual rather than real, depending on how many Gs the enemy ship was pulling. The Solarian captain’s face was long and narrow and very pale, no doubt due to generations of living under the dreary Martian sky. The captain’s crimson eyes and black hair struck a fierce contrast to his ghostly complexion, making him look demonic. Red eyes were fashionable for Martians. Alexander noticed that the man’s face was perfectly symmetrical, his features sculpted, and his complexion completely smooth. This was the face of a gener—not that it should surprise him. Mars wasn’t any different from Earth when it came to how people engineered their children. The main difference was that they were still having children.

  “Admiral de Leon,” the man said in a deep, resonant voice. “This is Captain Vrokovich of the Crimson Warrior. I was disappointed that your hail came to me via your comms officer rather than from you personally. I would have liked to hear from the Lion of Liberty face-to-face. Word of what happened to Earth reached us soon after your hail. Fortunately so, or else I might not have been so understanding when I received your demands to know our flight plan and the purpose of our mission. The Alliance has our condolences, Admiral, but let me assure you personally that we had nothing to do with any of the missiles fired at either Earth or the Moon. May the Architect be with your people in these troubled times. Vrokovich out.”

  The captain’s face faded away, and Alexander activated his comm band again to speak with his comms officer. “Hayes, send that message to Fleet Command and ask them how we should proceed.”

  “Aye, sir… Message away.”

  “Good, let me know when they reply. De Leon out.”

  “The Architect?” McAdams asked as Alexander went back to his Scotch.

  Alexander turned to her with a curious look. Then he remembered how Captain Vrokovich had ended his message. “You’ve never heard of the Universal Architect?”

  “No,” she admitted.

  “For Solarians the Universal Architect is analogous to God for Earthers, but while we still have multiple different religions and multiple different gods, the Solarians have just one religion and one god—Simulism and the Architect.”

  “So Captain Vrokovich is a Simulist,” McAdams replied. “Interesting. I never really understood what Simulists believe.”

  “It’s simple. They believe that we’re living inside a simulation.”

  McAdams chuckled. “That doesn’t take any faith. Most of us are living in a simulation. You and I are in one right now.”

  “Simulists would say this mindscape is just another level of simulation. They believe the physical universe and everything in it is like the Mindscape, except that we never wake up from it—until we die, that is.”

  “So the Universal Architect is…”

  “Whatever entity created the simulation,” Alexander said.

  “What led people to think we’re in a simulation in the first place? Just because it’s possible?”

  “It’s actually an old theory, but if you look at the Mindscape, it’s not hard to believe. How can you tell that we’re not actually here in the officer’s lounge right now?”

  “Because I remember entering this mindscape, and I’m aware of the reality behind it.”

  “Right, but a lot of mindscapes suppress that awareness to make virtual worlds seem more real. When that happens, you can’t tell the difference between virtual and real.”

  “The scale of virtual worlds is smaller,” McAdams argued. “Go far enough and eventually you’ll hit a wall past which nothing else is simulated.”

  “Yes and no. Some of our virtual worlds are procedurally infinite, so it’s hard to find that boundary, but we’re not really talking about what we’re capable of doing right now. For all we know our world and all of our mindscapes are part of a much larger simulation being run by us or some other species in the far future.”

  “What would be the point of that?” McAdams asked.

  Alexander shrugged. “History lessons. Entertainment. A prison? The possibilities are endless.”

  “Sounds unlikely to me.”

  “Not really. Think about it in terms of us right now. How many people spend the majority of their time in mindscapes rather than the real world?”

  “Most people I guess.”

  “So the majority of people are already living in a simulated reality and the ones in full immersion mindscapes aren’t even aware of that fact until they wake up. That’s a pretty compelling argument right there.”

  “But it doesn’t prove that we’re still in some higher level of simulation even after we wake up from the Mindscape.”

  “No? Suppose that in the future we create a full immersion Mindscape that’s identical to the real world, complete with its own mindscapes running inside of it. How do you know that you aren’t in that world right now?”

&nb
sp; “You just gave me chills.”

  Alexander smiled. “Not so far-fetched after all, huh?”

  McAdams nodded slowly. “Trying to convert me, Admiral?”

  Alexander laughed. “No, I’m just trying to pass the time. Besides, between the alcohol and convincing myself that our reality isn’t actually real, it helps me forget that I just let millions of people die.” Alexander drained his glass one last time and shook his head. The room was starting to spin.

  He felt McAdams’ hand on his again. This time she laced her fingers through his. “It wasn’t your fault, Alex.”

  “Maybe not, but it was someone’s fault.”

  McAdams nodded. “The Solarians. Or some other enemy we have yet to meet.”

  Alexander snorted. “Right—aliens. I’d sooner believe it was the Solarians, but if I’m right, then things are about to get a lot worse. Earth has spent the last three decades scuttling its fleet, while the Solarians have spent the last three decades building theirs.”

  “Our fleet is still stronger than theirs.”

  Alexander nodded. “For now.”

  His comm band chimed, interrupting them with an incoming message. He answered it. “Admiral de Leon here.”

  “Admiral, it’s Hayes again. I have a reply from Fleet Command along with updated orders.”

  “Patch it through, Lieutenant.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  Fleet Admiral Anderson’s face appeared hovering in the air above Alexander’s comm band. The admiral’s short blond hair was unwashed and pasted to his scalp. His gray eyes were bloodshot and his cheeks gaunt, suggesting that he hadn’t eaten or slept much since the attacks began.

  “Admiral Leon, the Solarian Ship did not answer our request for their flight plan nor did they state the purpose of their mission. They blatantly ignored our inquiries and masked that fact with well-wishes for our people. Under the circumstances, we cannot allow this type of secrecy. You are cleared to engage the enemy as soon as you reach weapons range. Shoot to disable and then board the enemy ship. We’re looking for any evidence that they may be the ones who attacked us. Anderson out.”