The Simmering Seas

by Frank Kennedy

  The blood is settling, Ham thought. Are we too late?

  The bay was full of killers, but most held pallid complexions. Some turned away. Ham saw nastier business on the battlefield and in the labs of Special Services, yet he offered a silent apology for brutalizing Ryllen’s body.

  “How long?” Lan asked.

  “Usually, ten minutes. Short or long. But this time?”

  He shrugged, and Mei backed off.

  “I’ve seen this before,” she said. “He showed me. Not a cudfrucking chance I’m watching that again. Call me if he makes it.”

  She pushed through the crowded bay and headed for the bridge. The twins followed her. Ham pivoted to Po and Myra, both of whom seemed intrigued.

  “I think we’re good,” Myra said. “This, I gotta see.”

  Ham understood their grotesque curiosity. How many humans had the opportunity to witness a dead man reanimate? They must have wondered how the return would reveal itself. Would he start breathing and open his eyes at once as if brought back through electric shock? Or would the process be gradual, with subtle hints in the skin color, the closing of wounds, or the infusion of color in his hair?

  There was no rational explanation for how this was possible. If immortality could be achieved through bio-engineering – as the late Emil and Frances Bouchet did in their labs on Earth – why wouldn’t all parents wish this for their newborns? An eternal legacy. Yet few people – Chancellor or indigo – clamored to better understand the science behind the Bouchets’ experiments. The Aeternans rescued immortals from the colonial worlds with little or no dissent.

  The most common refrain? Humans are mortal. These children are not humans. Though the many worlds of the former Collectorate agreed on little, they shared this view. Ham appreciated their unified vision of the human experience, but he also knew what drove their resistance to infinite life. All were witness to what centuries of genetic engineering did to the Chancellors, creating behemoths and a fanatical army of child soldiers capable of slaughtering humans by age fourteen. The colonials no longer wanted to look up into the sky and see another race of engineered creatures staring back at them.

  If Ryllen did return, proving his body could withstand any form of brutality, Ham vowed to get the kid off Hokkaido as soon as possible. Once word spread of Ryllen’s abilities, he’d be feared and mocked – far worse than being labeled a Randall.

  This time, the rebirth was a sluggish series of fits and starts, violent spasms, new blood pouring from orifices or wounds before they sealed, teeth falling out and being replaced in minutes, deep purple bruises appearing and disappearing in seconds. It was as mind-boggling as it was repulsive. And all the while, a great fear paralyzed Ham: What if the kid returned minus his mental faculties? The brain’s ability to rebuild corrupted tissue without altering personality, intellect, or memory astounded him most. Surely, there had to be a limit. If only he knew the rules.

  Fifteen minutes after the metal was removed from his gut, Ryllen opened his eyes, which were clear and blue. They were also disoriented, rolling in frantic circles as if unable to make sense of the surroundings. Ryllen jerked away when Ham bent down beside him and reached out a comforting hand.

  Ham knew this recovery was like no other when a river of tears revealed Ryllen’s terror. Over Ham’s shoulder, Po and Myra were aghast by the regeneration. Po sent Myra to tell the others.

  “RJ,” Ham said, “do you know me?”

  The pitiful response was little more than a breath.

  “Ham.”

  “Yes. We’re on the Queen Mab. The submarine.”

  “How?”

  “How did we get here? Or how did you get here?”

  “Don’t remember.”

  “What? I can’t hear you, RJ.”

  Ryllen squeezed his eyes shut and buried his face in his hands. He imploded into a deep, wailing sob. Ham gave him space as the others crowded into the medical bay, no less stunned by the impossible sight.

  Mei glared at Ham as if he were the villain of the hour.

  “What’s wrong with him?”

  “He’s died four times this week, Mei. Allow him a moment.”

  His return upon previous deaths was so quick, his personality restored in an instant. Ham knew right away the kid would never be the same after this regeneration. In time, Ryllen settled, wiping his tears and regaining some measure of composure.

  “How long was I dead?”

  “Four hours in the sea. Your rifter crashed. What happened, RJ?”

  He sniffled. “Dunno. We were on some kind of mission. Right?”

  “Yes. Mangum Island. High Cannon Collective.”

  Ryllen stared at the crew as if they were strangers.

  “Cudfrucker. I can’t see it, Ham. All I feel is …”

  “Slow down, kid. Take your time.”

  Mei joined Ham at the bedside. “C’mon,” she said. “Sit up. Get your blood moving, you little asshole.”

  Ryllen did as ordered, a glare of sudden recognition breaking through. He glanced down and saw he was not only naked but also hard. He closed his legs together.

  “Might we find some clothes for the kid?” Ham said testily, scowling at the twins, who were snickering. “Better yet, most of you should clear the room. Give RJ some space.”

  Lan guided the four young agents away. Mei refused.

  “I was there the night he was stamped,” she said, pointing to the tattoo. “Known him longer than you or Ham,” she told Lan. “Remember that night, RJ?”

  He glowered, as if she had no business telling the story.

  “You hated me because of Kai. Always wanted him for yourself.”

  She bared teeth. “There you go. RJ is back.”

  “Am I? What happened on the island? Why was I in a rifter?”

  “You remember nothing about tonight? The sphere? You went inside. You walked away with an artifact. RJ, you were holding it when we found you beneath the ocean.”

  “I’m sorry, Ham. Mei. It’s just … cud. There’s this place I call the abyss. It’s dark. There’s no bottom. No hope. When I’m there, it’s like … like I relive everything over again, but worse. All the worst memories. All the things I want to hide. All the things I’d never admit when I’m alive.” Again, the tears streamed. “The other times I was killed, I was there long enough to be thankful I’d never become a permanent resident. There’s always a tug that yanks me back. Then I wake up, right as the rings. But the tug never came this time. It …”

  Ham saw a terror in those blue eyes he had not witnessed since his soldiering days: Defeated enemies on the battlefield, begging to avoid the inevitable execution, in full knowledge their entire lives amounted to no more than a miserable death in a lost cause.

  “I’m shit,” Ryllen continued. “Worse. I kill people, and I don’t care. I always come back for more. And every time, I like it more than the last. It’s all I am. You called me a serial killer,” he told Ham. “Mei, you said I was a psychopath. Those weren’t just words. They were the truth. The abyss showed me. I’m shit.”

  “Maybe,” Mei said, “but you’re also a cudfrucking whiner.”

  “In my experience,” Ham added, “the universe creates ample and well-paying jobs for killers. They tend to balance the odds when fortunes are attained too easily. They provide accountability to those who deserve to be culled from the greater herd. You’re not shit, RJ. You’re necessary. And you loved someone very much. As humans go, I’d say you possess a healthy balance. Yes?”

  A ray of hope twinkled in his eyes.

  “I feel like I’m still down there. It doesn’t want me to leave. If I clear my head of it, I’m sure I’ll remember the mission.”

  “I’m sure of it, too. What say we get you into some clothes and fill you up on some Queen Mab rations?”

  Ryllen didn’t object, although he looked awkward at best in the full-length, deep green bodysuit of a utility pod operator. The hair regained none of its color. While Ryllen ate, Ham huddle
d up front with Lan.

  “What’s your take?” Lan asked.

  “Difficult to assess. I’ve never seen this version of RJ, if it is one.”

  “You think he’s been influenced by the cube?”

  “No doubt. To what extent, we’ll have to see. But the cube? We have it under lock and key. This deep, dark hole he calls the abyss? Far beyond our control, if it exists at all. And since I’m not prepared to die, I’ll keep my focus on what’s within my grasp.”

  “Just so you understand, Hamilton. We don’t know the true risk of returning to Pinchon with that cube – or frankly, with RJ. They were bound to each other underwater for hours. I believe that cube brought him to us, but why?”

  “You’re suggesting the cube is what … sentient?”

  “At the very least, an AI with a skillset we’ve never seen.”

  “I have to admit, I never saw a design like it; and if there was technological madness to be found, it lurked in Special Services. Did you ever hear of a weapon called a Shock Unit?”

  Lan frowned. “No.”

  “Be glad. Nightmares are born of far less. But to your point, Lan: I know what you’re implying. If the cube is too dangerous, and RJ can’t prove he’s not under its control, he can’t go home.”

  Lan lowered his voice and leaned in.

  “It’s not the option I prefer. RJ was a good soldier. Stone cold. Committed. A little impatient, but persistent. Get him to talk, Hamilton. I won’t put an island of twenty million Hokkis at risk. I’d sooner scuttle the Queen Mab.”

  Ham offered no objection. He and Lan held a shared love of Pinchon, though they fought for it in different ways. If the glowing artifact posed a clear and present danger to the island, it had to be buried at the ocean’s bottom, even if that meant using the sub as its tomb.

  The ex-Chancellor considered his options and visited the galley, where Ryllen was demonstrating a voracious appetite. The kid already mauled three trays of rations and was plowing through his fourth, as if he hadn’t eaten in weeks. Drippings hung off his chin.

  But it was the hair that bothered Ham: Immaculate braids whiter than refined sugar. No evidence of restoration, not even at the roots. Ryllen appeared to have regenerated in every other way.

  C’mon, kid, Ham thought. No more surprises. Just the truth.

  37

  T HE RATIONS WERE DREADFUL, but Ryllen couldn’t eat enough. He savaged the bland offerings, knowing full well his rebirth was imperfect this time. He feared the worst. Was there a limit to an immortal’s regenerative powers? Was it time to stop putting himself in reckless positions? He didn’t want to spend another minute inside the abyss.

  That motivation and a full stomach forced him out of the darkness and onto the landing port at High Cannon Collective. The images returned in disjointed form at first, but the narrative glued together when he placed himself inside the sphere Ham called Invictus. He saw everything up until …

  He was flying the rifter out to sea, the sphere glowing in his hand. Then the sun came out.

  And nothing more.

  Wait. What?

  No clue to how he ended up in the ocean.

  When he told his story to the full crew, he began with the end. Ryllen hoped their tale of how they found him would trigger new memories. Lan said the sphere was pressing against the massive current, as if seeking to rendezvous with the sub.

  “You were bound to the cube,” Lan said. “Perhaps it wrapped you inside an energy field. You were unaffected by the sea. Even an experienced diver would have labored against those currents.”

  Ham continued. “The cube not only defied physics, but it also communicated with us. It produced a series of unnatural pulsations which our scanners detected. We changed course accordingly. It accelerated as it neared rendezvous. If not for the cube, you would have been lost, RJ. This leads us to consider certain hypotheticals.”

  “Such as?”

  “What if the cube is sentient? It brought you to us though you were dead. Did it know your true nature? If so, how? Why did it feel the necessity to save you? Did it know the sub’s connection to you? If so, how? Should we rejoice to have it onboard? Or should we be terrified?”

  Neither the description nor the questions ignited an understanding of his final seconds in the rifter, but Ryllen knew how to answer the last two questions. Instinct, not fact, told him what to say.

  “It’s not a weapon,” he told them. “Its purpose is navigation.”

  Ryllen was as surprised by the answer as the crew. He said the words as if guided to them. He also anticipated the next question, which he pre-empted by describing what he saw inside the sphere.

  Ryllen made note of the impractical architecture, the padded pilots chairs braced against the skeletal structure – able to slide vertically – and the robotic arms which provided the pilots with next generation holotech. Then he made his way down the cylindrical shaft at the heart of Invictus to the tiny glass case containing the cube.

  “What made you grab it?” Ham asked.

  At that point, his story became problematic. If he told them the rest, would they buy it? Already, he sensed their skepticism. Yet what purpose might a lie serve now?

  “The cube … it spoke to me. Not in the literal sense. It was a feeling. It was drawing me in somehow. But that’s not why I stole it.”

  Those next few seconds aboard the sphere now seemed like an excerpt from a dream.

  “There was someone else in the ship,” Ryllen continued. “Or at least, a transmission of him. He told me to take it. He called it the Splinter. He said I was out of time. I asked his name, but he ignored me. He said, ‘Everything starts here. Take the Splinter and run, or the rest will be lost.’”

  “Think carefully, RJ. What else did he say?”

  “He knew the others arrived. The ones who attacked the sphere. And … he knew I was immortal.”

  Nothing else drew a reaction as electric.

  “How?”

  “I don’t know. He was young, maybe near my age. But he disappeared. Phased out. I grabbed the cube without thinking.”

  “Any other details you can recall?”

  “No. I ran outside, and those people came after me. They knew I had it. They were crazed for the Splinter. They would’ve killed me for it, so I shot them. But now I wonder. If the cube thinks for itself, like how it communicated with you and dragged my corpse through the sea, maybe it projected a holograph to tell me what it wanted.”

  Lan broke the ensuing silence when he rapped his fingers against a control board.

  “So, we know three things. One: It has a name. Splinter. It’s the heart of the sphere. Two: People are willing to kill for it, and it’s likely the reason the port was attacked. Ham and I suspect those soldiers were Aeternans. Your kind, RJ. And three: Those soldiers allowed you and Ham to escape. This implies they knew your identities and why you were there. How that is even remotely possible, I can’t imagine. But after what we’ve experienced tonight, I’d say the impossible is squarely on the table.”

  Ham turned to the crew of Green Sun agents.

  “This must be said unequivocally: Everything you have seen and heard since the beginning of this mission is classified. When we return to Pinchon, you will not utter a word of this to anyone. Open your mouth, and you will be killed. Understood?”

  They nodded in quiet assent. Ham pivoted to Ryllen.

  “RJ, you say you don’t remember how the rifter crashed. But do you know why you stole it in the first place?”

  He squirmed, unsure how to make this sound credible.

  “I took it because I was supposed to.”

  “Explain.”

  “I … I saw myself inside it, flying over the sea. It was where I was supposed to be. I can’t explain how I knew, but there was this peace of mind. I think the cube … the Splinter … was singing to me.”

  “OK. And what did it sing?”

  “Dunno. A lullaby. Maybe. But it felt right. Almost like … if I chose any o
ther path, I wouldn’t be in the right place at the right time.”

  “For what?”

  “This is where everything begins to fade. I’m sorry. The last thing I remember was looking directly into the cube.”

  It was beautiful. It was …

  Ryllen gasped when the revelation hit him.

  “It’s a singularity. The center of the cube. It’s a singularity.”

  He never saw their faces or heard their responses.

  For a few seconds, he went blind.

  When his sight returned, he no longer sat onboard the Queen Mab.

  The magenta carpet beneath his feet was plush and spanned the breadth of a drawn-out, cavernous corridor. Along the inner wall, giant portraits of Hokkis he did not know competed for attention as if in a dusty old art museum. Cathedral windows cast the art in the glow of Hokkaido’s sun. Beyond, acres of formal gardens ran into a thick forest of palms, bullabasts, and banyans. Yet they were not tall enough to hide the Pinchon skyline – its famous glass towers dominating for kilometers. That sealed it: He was standing inside an estate house in the Haansu District.

  It was quiet. Too quiet. Yet far from abandoned.

  A shadow loomed over the house and the gardens. In a blink, a fireball – the grotesque remains of a Scram – fell from the sky and disintegrated on impact, setting flower gardens to blaze.

  No sound. No reverberations from the crash.

  Ryllen tapped the glass. Nothing.

  Yet he felt the glass. His hands were warm but steady. His heartbeat was a tick rapid but certain.

  Why am I here?

  People entered the gardens, all moving at a desperate clip. They twisted and turned to escape the fiery crash and continued outward, toward the forest. The contrast was undeniable: These people were dressed in the richest finery. Elaborate gowns, bold tuxedos.

  The moment sang to him, and it warned Ryllen to beware his flank. He grabbed a pistol with each hand and pivoted. That’s when he saw a double door swing open partway down the corridor.

  Three searing laser blasts cut through the opening and shattered the great cathedral window in their path, but with no more sound than he might hear in the vacuum of space.