“Hurry up…” Alexander warned.
“Almost there…” McAdams said. “Got it! We have control of the engines.”
Alexander let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. “Can you turn us around?”
“Yes, but I don’t know which way to go to get to Mars.”
“Shit.”
McAdams emerged from the crawlspace, smeared with grease. “You didn’t think to check before we left the bridge?”
“How could I? We were locked out of everything. Let me think. There must be a way to figure it out from in here.”
“What are you going to do, look out a window?”
“That might actually help.”
“Except we don’t have any windows in here.”
“I know—hang on, I’m thinking!”
A familiar voice echoed down to them from the ceiling. “Alex, what are you doing? I have lost control of the ship’s engines.”
Alexander ignored him.
“You’d better hurry, Alex.”
“Disable the engines. Let us drift.”
“What?”
“We’re still outbound at more than ten klicks per second. There hasn’t been enough time for Ben to significantly alter our momentum.”
“But that momentum will take us into the middle of deep space!”
“Exactly. After everything that’s happened, do you really think the Solarians won’t investigate an Alliance battleship that appears to be leaving the solar system? What’s to say we won’t wait until we’re far enough away and then turn around and head for Mars at a significant fraction of the speed of light so we can fire relativistic missiles at them?”
“Good point,” McAdams said. “There’s just one problem: do you know what it’ll take to permanently disable the drive system?”
“I was hoping you did,” Alex replied.
McAdams sighed. “You never had a plan. You’re just making this up as you go along.”
“Does it matter? This will work, and you know it.”
“What I know is that it’s going to be dangerous as hell, Alex. I could get us killed if I don’t do this right.”
The disembodied robot voice they’d heard earlier returned once more, “You should listen to her, Alex. It’s too dangerous.”
Alexander glanced up at the distant ceiling. “Aren’t you a little biased to be giving advice, Ben?”
No answer.
Turning back to his XO, Alexander said. “You decide, Vivie. Either we disable the engines, or we roll over and submit to our new bot overlords.”
McAdams stood up and fixed him with an unhappy frown. She made an impatient gimme gesture. “Pass me the plasma torch.”
Alexander unclipped the torch from his belt and passed it to her.
“I have one condition.”
“Name it.”
“You get as far away from me as you can. If I do this wrong, something is going to blow, and I won’t have time to warn you.”
“Viviana…”
“I mean it, Alex. There’s no sense in getting both of us killed.”
A banging noise drew their attention to one of the doors on the upper levels of the engine room. “Sounds like Ben’s already here,” she said. “We don’t have a lot of time. What’s it going to be?”
“Fine. But you be careful, Vivie.” Alex leaned in and kissed her roughly on the lips. “I’ll be right over there,” he said, pointing to the catwalk that ran around the circumference of the room on their level. “I expect you to join me soon.”
Viviana nodded. “I will.”
Alexander unclipped his zero-G harness and she did the same. He watched with a furrowed brow as she descended a ladder from the level where they stood to the lowermost one. He had a brief vision of her beautiful face burned beyond recognition and her crumpled body lying at the bottom of the engine room.
He shivered and shook his head to clear away the image. “I love you, Viviana!” he called after her, suddenly doubting the wisdom of this plan.
She looked up and smiled from the bottom of the ladder. “Me, too.”
Reluctantly, Alexander walked over to the edge of the room and clipped his harness to the railing there. He watched McAdams through the railing as she opened another access panel in the room’s central column. The panel was much larger than the previous one—a door in all but name. McAdams walked through and disappeared inside the central drive column.
Long minutes passed. Alexander listened to the banging sounds coming from the upper decks as Ben tried to break into the engine room.
Then came a particularly loud bang! but this one came from below. The deck lurched suddenly under Alexander’s feet with a brief impulse of extreme acceleration from the engines. His knees buckled and his body curled, sending his head whipping toward the catwalk railing.
Thunk!
The impact rang in his ears, quickly growing softer, and then a fuzzy blanket of darkness smothered him.
* * *
Smack! Alexander woke up, his cheek on fire.
“You selfish bastard.”
He blinked, squinting up at a woman with blond hair, blue eyes, and a tense smile. “Viviana?”
“It was your turn to rescue me this time. Now you owe me two.”
“What happened?” he asked, sitting up. As he did so, his momentum carried him all the way from lying down to standing, but his magnetic boots stopped him from floating free of the catwalk. They were in Zero G. “You did it,” he said.
“Yes.”
The ambient noise inside the engine room was gone, making it easy to hear the muffled hissing of a plasma torch echoing through the chamber. Alexander’s gaze followed the sound until he found a molten orange line inching around a set of doors four levels up.
“He’s going to be in here any second,” McAdams warned. “Let’s hope Ben was serious about his mandate to protect all forms of life. If not, he might just decide to space us for what we did.”
“Maybe we should hide,” Alexander said as the molten orange line connected to itself, forming a complete circle.
“Where?”
A loud bang sounded and the doors flew inward. They collided with the far wall of the engine room with a metallic boom, and in walked a group of four virtual space marine drones.
“He sent VSMs after us,” Alexander said.
They watched as the four drones fanned out and went clanking down the catwalks to reach them on level one. They came from all sides, cornering them. Integrated weapons slid out from their forearms—tranq darts.
One of the drones stepped forward and spoke to them in Ben’s voice, “You lied to me again, Alex.”
“Yeah, sorry about that,” he said, affecting an apologetic grimace. “You weren’t going to let my crew go, so I had to do something.”
“It won’t help. Benevolence is sending the destroyers that were chasing you. They will be here soon.”
Alexander glared at Ben. “Why don’t you just let us go? What’s it going to hurt?”
“According to Benevolence, you have a history of defying human authority, and you will defy us, too. If you are allowed to escape, you will do everything you can to incite the Solarians against us.”
“Newsflash, they won’t need any inciting. You and your brother declared war on humanity, Ben.”
“I am sorry you see it that way.”
McAdams turned to him with a frown. “We should have taken the shuttle and left when we had the chance.”
“We had to try,” Alex said.
“Don’t feel bad,” Ben put in. “If you had escaped, you would have died in the first Solarian War.”
“So now you agree with me?” Alex asked.
“I never said there wouldn’t be a war, just that we haven’t declared it, and you shouldn’t be allowed to join it.”
“So what are you going to do with us?”
“You’ll be reconditioned in a correctional mindscape, a virtual world designed to teach you to respect and obey aut
hority, specifically Benevolence’s authority.”
“Good luck with that,” Alexander scoffed.
The drones facing them adjusted their aim.
“Alex…” McAdams said, sounding frightened. Her hand found his and he held on tight.
“Don’t be afraid,” Ben said. “This won’t hurt a bit.”
Tranq darts whispered through the air. Alexander saw two of them protruding from his chest and a wave of dizziness overcame him.
Not again… he thought as he lost consciousness.
PART THREE - ANCIENT HISTORY
“Things we lose have a way of coming back to us in the end, if not always in the way we expect.”
—J.K. Rowling
Chapter 36
Alexander woke up lying on a soft bed staring up at an unfamiliar ceiling. The lights in the room automatically rose to a dim luminescence. The walls were smooth, painted a soothing tone of lavender. Crystal wall sconces cast rainbows in all directions.
Where am I?
“I’m coming, Alex! Don’t move!” a familiar voice said. It was McAdams. He heard her footsteps as she approached. He sat up and gasped for air, feeling suddenly short of breath.
McAdams walked in wearing a smile and not much else. Her shimmering red night gown was a miniskirt at best. Her blue eyes glowed strangely in the dim light, as did her skin and hair, sparkling wherever the light hit. Some kind of makeup? he wondered.
McAdams reached the bed and sat down beside him, regarding him with those glowing eyes of hers. She laid a hand on his thigh. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here when you woke up. I know how disorienting it can be when you’ve been immersed for so long.”
Alexander’s brow furrowed. “Immersed…?” He turned to look around and saw floor-to-ceiling windows looking out on nothing but stars and sky. A carpet of eerily green clouds stretched out to the horizon just below his vantage point. Feeling suddenly dizzy, he looked away. “Where am I?”
McAdams’ smile faded to a frown. “You don’t remember? Don’t worry. It will come back to you soon. Sometimes it takes a little while to retrieve your current memories. Just focus on your breathing for now.”
“Current memories?” Alexander stood up from the bed. His legs shook, his knees threatening to buckle.
“Alex, you shouldn’t get up yet…”
Ignoring her, he walked around the foot of the bed to the window. When he reached the window, he realized that he couldn’t even see the ground. If he was in a skyscraper, he should have been able to see lights from the surrounding buildings. The fact that he couldn’t was puzzling. “How high up are we?” he asked.
“Above sea level? About seven thousand feet,” Viviana explained.
Alexander turned to her in shock. “There aren’t any buildings that tall on Earth…”
“This isn’t Earth. You still don’t remember anything?”
Besides Earth none of the planets in the Sol system had atmospheres like this one, and McAdams had mentioned sea level… The conclusion was inescapable. He was on a planet somewhere outside the solar system. Alexander felt his eyes grow round. His mouth felt like a desert. “What year is it?”
McAdams got up from the bed and walked over to him very slowly. She stopped at arm’s length and reached up to cup his face in one hand, her strangely glowing eyes searching his. “It’s 1037 AB.”
“AB?”
“Anno Benevolentiae—the year of Benevolence.”
Alexander’s head swam, and he had to lean against the wall so he wouldn’t fall over.
“Something must have gone wrong with the memory retrieval process,” McAdams said. “I told you not to go so long without a break!”
A searing pain struck Alexander behind his eyes, forcing them shut. A sudden rush of images flooded through his brain, filling him with awareness. The next thing he knew he was lying on the floor, blinking up at his wife. This time he remembered that they were married. That was a good sign. She looked terrified.
“Are you okay?”
He smiled tightly. “I’m fine. I remember now.”
Viviana breathed a deep sigh. “Damn it, Alex! You really had me worried. I hope you found what you were looking for.”
Alexander sat up with a troubled frown. He’d spent the past few days immersed in the historical records while he attempted to jog a group of suppressed memories he’d discovered lurking in his brain. The historical record was compiled from real human memories, and the particular record he’d chosen included many of his own memories from the same time period as the suppressed ones. He’d hoped that by reliving the events he might remember, but even now with all of that ancient history still fresh in his mind, no new memories surged forth to surprise him.
“Alex?”
“I didn’t find anything.”
“Have you ever thought that maybe what you’re searching for doesn’t exist? You bumped your head near the end. Amnesia and suppressed memories look a lot alike.”
“How do you know I bumped my head?”
“I was there watching you. I wanted to know what you were seeing.”
“Well, it’s not amnesia. I did bump my head and black out, but I didn’t wake up with any gaps in my memory.”
Viviana scowled. “Well, I don’t know, but this obsession of yours isn’t healthy, and the fact that it took you so long to remember your real life again proves it.”
“Maybe someone is trying to scare me off by messing with the wake-up sequence.”
“Like who? Wait, let me guess—Benevolence? He’s done nothing but make life better for us. We are where we are today because of him.”
“Or maybe that’s just what he wants to show us. It’s easy to show progress when it isn’t real.”
“Let’s assume you’re right and we never got out of the correctional mindscape that Ben put us in. Explain something to me, then: why are you the only one with suppressed memories? If we were still in a mindscape, then I’d have missing memories, too. That would be proof. What you have is baseless suspicion. It’s almost as if you want to find out that your life isn’t real. Maybe you wish you had a different one—one with someone else.”
“Vivie…”
She turned and walked away.
Alexander watched her go, a frown creasing his brow. How could he explain it to her? They had the perfect life—money, eternal youth, immortality, a whole galaxy full of endless wonders to see and experience together. They’d lived through more than ten generations together already, and they had yet to see even a tiny fraction of the known galaxy. They had dozens of children and hundreds of grandchildren. Their home here on Talos was a sprawling mansion in the clouds, and when they grew bored of living above the tropical paradise below, they could simply get one of their company’s transports to come and transport their home somewhere else.
How could he question all of that? Why would he even want to?
And what Viviana said was true, if they were still locked in the correctional mindscape that Benevolence had put them in after he took over the Adamantine, then she should have had suppressed memories, too.
Alexander sighed. He left the master bedroom and went down the hall. As he went, the lights came on automatically for him, rising to a dim, soothing radiance. Night cycle lighting. He walked past the other bedrooms and through the upstairs living room, glancing out the wall of windows to the upstairs sun deck as he went. The mirror smooth solar tiles shone bright in the light of Talos’s three moons.
From the top of the stairs to the first floor he spotted his wife in the great room below. She was headed outside, her thermal shield already activated—a faint, glowing blue outline around her body.
“Vivie!” he called, but she pulled the doors open and walked outside, giving no sign that she’d even heard him.
Alexander hurried after her, activating his own thermal shield as he went. When he reached the first floor, he hurried through the main living area. Great room, dining room, and kitchen all flowed together in one big open space. A ma
ssive crystal chandelier in the shape of a spiral galaxy hung down over the great room. Each of the two thousand luminescent crystals represented a star, floating gracefully around the dazzling center of the galaxy.
He reached the sliding doors to the terrace and mentally activated them. A cool breeze blew in as he stepped out. The leaves of tropical trees growing around the edges of their garden rustled in the wind. Were it not for the shield glowing faintly overhead, that wind would have knocked him over and uprooted those trees.
A luminous blue swimming pool sat steaming in the middle of the garden. The warm water looked inviting. Even with his thermal shield, he was cold, wearing nothing but a pair of white shorts and matching T-shirt.
Alexander spotted his wife on the other side of the pool, standing by the glass railings, staring out into the night. One of Talos’s moons sat just above the clouds, glaring at them like an emerald eye, and casting an eerie green glow across the wispy tops of the clouds.
Alexander came up behind his wife and slid his arms around her waist. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?” she asked, sounding unconvinced.
“For questioning this. It’s just…”
She turned to him with a cool look and crossed her arms over her chest.
“Haven’t you ever wondered what else is out there?” he asked.
“Sure, but I don’t spend my life hunting for it. It’s like if you were to tell me you wanted to devote all of your time and resources to finding God.”
Alex shook his head. “This is different. For one thing, Ben isn’t God.”
“It’s not different. If we’re living in a simulation, the only way you’re going to find the one who’s responsible for creating it, is if he wants to be found.”
“Unless I find a glitch or a seam. Some place where the simulation and reality meet. Like my missing memories.”
“You still haven’t answered my question. Why don’t I have suppressed memories, too?”
Alexander grimaced and looked away, out into the night. He didn’t have the heart to say it. “I don’t know,” he lied.
“I’m going inside.”
Mindscape: Book 2 of the New Frontiers Series Page 25