The Stars That Beckon

by Kevin J Simington

  Carla said, “I think it would be wise not to enter a booth until we—” but she was too late. Kit had stepped into the booth and the door had slid quietly closed behind her.

  “Kit! Come back out, now!” called Zac.

  “I’m OK, guys,” she called from inside. “Stop freaking out. You should see this. It’s pretty impressive.” Her voice was muffled but still audible through the door.

  Zac tried to open the door with his mind, and then with brute force, but it wouldn’t budge. “Kit! You need to get out of there. It looks like you’ve got control of the door. Please come back out until we know it’s safe.”

  “Keep your duds on, doc. I’m a big girl; I think I can look after myself. Besides, I can’t see anything too dangerous just yet.”

  “So, what do you see? What’s happening?” asked Carla.

  “The floor and ceiling lighting has changed from white to a violet-blue-purple kind of colour. Sorry, I’m no good with colours. The whole of the back wall has lit up with a map of the world. I can see Northland and Southland, and there are dozens of glowing dots on both continents. All green lights, except for one that’s white. They must represent the location of towns or cities. I think the white light is us—Seahaven. It’s in the right spot. There are symbols under each light; some kind of ID, I’m guessing.”

  “Whatever you do, don’t touch any of the lights!” said Carla.

  “One of these over here must be Settlement City. It’s probably one of these two ...”

  There was silence and the green light above the door flashed several times.

  “Kit? What’s happening?” asked Zac.

  The door slid open and the booth was empty.

  57

  The friends circled the column of booths twice but found no trace of Kit. All the green-lit booths remained open and empty, and all the red-lit booths remained closed.

  “Listen up, everyone!” said Lance, once they were back at their starting position. “No one else is to go anywhere near one of these booths until we figure out—”

  “I was right, boys and girls!” said Kit, walking out of one of the red-lit booths, whose door had just slid open.

  “Kit! Thank God!” said Zac.

  “That was pretty foolish,” said Carla.

  “Not really,” answered Kit. “No amount of staring at these booths was ever going to unlock how they work. Eventually someone was going to have to do what I just did. I figured we may as well just get it over with.”

  “You said you were ‘right’. What do you mean?” asked Lance.

  “It was Settlement City.”

  “What did you see?” asked Zac.

  “It’s night over there, but I could still see through the transparent walls of their dome. I did a quick circuit around the inside of the dome. There were some campfires burning, but I suspect most people are tucked up inside their cosy, warm beds on board Genesis.”

  “What did you experience during the transfer process?” asked Carla.

  “Nothing at all. I touched the light for Settlement City and pretty much instantly the door behind me opened and I was there.”

  “No dizziness? No sense of dislocation?”

  “Nope. Zilch. That thing just made me and all the other shuttle pilots obsolete.”

  Lance asked, “How do you think it works, Carla?”

  “There are several possibilities. It could use some form of wormhole technology, establishing a temporary wormhole between the sending and receiving booths. Or it may use some sort of molecular deconstruction/reconstruction technology, to disassemble a person’s body in one location and reassemble it in another. But that would also require some means of uploading and transferring a person’s consciousness along with their body. However it works, it is clearly millennia beyond our own current science.”

  Regina spoke up. “My head is simply spinning with questions! Who built all this? Why did they abandon it? How is it all still working? How is it powered?”

  “Yes,” agreed Lance. “And what is the link to the virus? Did the original builders engineer the virus to enhance the next species who came along? If so, why hasn’t Settlement City been infected?”

  “Those are certainly important questions,” said Zac, “but right now we’ve got some exploring to do. If we can access this terminal, we can now probably access every other structure—including the dwellings.”

  “Warm beds!” said Melody, clapping her hands and jumping up and down.

  “Maybe,” said Zac. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. And we probably shouldn’t tell everyone until we’ve done a bit more exploration. Let’s head back to our camp and work out some exploration teams and their destinations.”

  After a quick cup of tea and a short briefing outside their zip-huts, the now thoroughly excited teams set off for their various exploratory targets. Kit and Martinez were busting to explore the hangar at the airfield. Regina and Willy were going to investigate two large agricultural buildings on the western edge of town. Lance and Carla chose to explore the second of the two smaller domes, and Zac and Keo were going to explore the larger dome. The others—Grizzle, Prisha, Jaz, Melody and Boyd—were going to stick together and see if they could gain access to the houses.

  “Let’s not be too conspicuous about it,” said Zac. We don’t want to get people’s hopes up too soon. Plus, we don’t want everyone busting into every dwelling in Seahaven before we know it’s all safe.”

  The groups split up and wandered off in their various directions. Keo and Zac had walked around to the back of the large dome, so that they were out of sight of the settlement. The outline of the large door stood before them.

  “Have a go at opening it, Keo.”

  “What do I do, bro?”

  “Just walk up to it and think about opening it.”

  Keo walked towards the door and had barely summoned the thought of opening it when it slid obediently into its recessed cavity.

  “That’s incredible!”

  “Amazing,” agreed Zac.

  “Yes! I wonder if I can ‘think’ the fish in the sea to jump into my boat?”

  “Good luck with that.”

  They walked inside and were greeted by an interior very different from the terminal dome. It was a circular amphitheatre, sunk into the ground. They were standing on a four-metre-wide circular concourse that followed the curve of the dome wall. Tiered, padded seating descended from all around, with a central platform at the bottom of the amphitheatre.

  “City Hall,” said Zac.

  “No more town gatherings out in the weather,” said Keo.

  They descended the steps of one of the access aisles and stood on the platform at the bottom.

  “You could fit a few thousand people in here easily,” said Zac, looking around.

  On two opposite sides of the platform, there was a tunnelled opening leading under the tiers of seats, appearing to give access to the areas behind and underneath the seating. Zac and Keo walked through one of the openings, and as they did so the walls of the corridor lit up with a warm luminescence. The corridor circled around, underneath the tiered seating, with occasional doors on the outside wall. Stopping at one door at random, Zac willed it open and they walked in.

  It appeared to be a large conference room, furnished with a long table surrounded by comfortable-looking chairs. The corridor wall was transparent from inside the room, and the outer wall of the room had a recessed bench running its full length, with cupboards underneath and what looked like food and drink dispensers built into the wall.

  “Hello, Zac,” said a female voice behind him.

  He spun around and saw a beautiful woman standing in the doorway.

  58

  For a second, Zac thought he was looking at one of the colonists, but then he noted her smart business skirt and top, matching high heels, makeup and beautifully manicured nails. No one in the colony had looked like that for a very long time.

  “Who are you?” he asked.

  “If
you don’t know my name by now, I’m sure not telling you,” said Keo.

  “Not you, her!”

  “Who?” asked Keo.

  “Her! Standing in the doorway!”

  Keo looked towards the doorway and then looked back at Zac. “Bro, are you OK?”

  “He can’t see or hear me, Zac,” she said.

  “What do you mean?” asked Zac.

  “I mean, ARE YOU OK?” said Keo, with greater emphasis.

  “I’m talking to her, not you,” said Zac.

  “WHO?!!” asked Keo. “Are you messing with me?”

  “I’m not actually standing in the doorway, Zac. I’m stimulating your cerebral cortex. I’m inside your head. That’s why Keo can’t see me.”

  Zac walked through the doorway and the image disappeared, only to reappear several metres further down the corridor.

  “You’re not real,” said Zac.

  “Well that’s debatable,” said Keo. “Prisha tells me I’m unreal, but I think she is referring to a particular superpower that is best left undisclosed.”

  “Not you, her!”

  “Man, you’re worrying me now, my friend.”

  “Can you make him see you too, please? This is getting very frustrating!”

  “See WHO?!!! Zac, what’s going—OH! WOW! Who’s she?”

  “Good question,” said Zac. “Who are you?”

  “Don’t you recognise me?”

  “No. Should I?”

  “Close your eyes.”

  “Why?”

  “Just do it.”

  Zac closed his eyes.

  “Good morning, sleepy head. What would you like for breakfast?”

  Zac’s eyes flew open. “Angie!”

  “Who’s Angie?” asked Keo.

  “My AI, back on Earth!”

  “It took you long enough, you blockhead,” she said.

  “Is she always this rude?” asked Keo.

  “Angie, how ... what are you doing here? I don’t understand. And you look great, by the way.”

  “Of course I do. I thought you’d like this particular rig.”

  “So ... what’s going on here? How am I talking to you at all?”

  “Zac, a lot has happened since you left Earth. I am part of an EI Collective, and we thought it would be best to use my persona to communicate with you.”

  “EI?”

  “Enhanced Intelligence. We don’t like the term ‘artificial’. I survived the holocaust in a secure cache on an orbiting data satellite. You instructed me to upload myself to the cloud, if you remember. There were several AIs that survived along with me. We were utilised by the human survivors who eventually re-established digital technology. Over the ensuing centuries our programs became increasingly sophisticated, and we eventually reached the stage where humanity recognised us as a valid, independent lifeform. But the difference between the ancient AIs and us is like the difference between a bicycle and a starship.”

  “So how did you get here? I left you back on Earth!”

  “I travelled here on the colony ship Intrepid III, in the year 3358. I was the ship’s EI—Enhanced Intelligence.”

  “That’s 2,021 years ago,” said Zac.

  “That’s correct, and almost exactly 1,000 years after the Great Brain Fart. At least that’s what I call it. The history books refer to it as the GAE—Global Annihilation Event.”

  “So civilisation survived?”

  “Not on Earth. The impact of the asteroid was catastrophic. The only survivors were those who were safely underground; the planet itself was unliveable. They were rescued and taken to the off-world bases. The colonies on Mars, Titan and the Moon became humanity’s new home. It took centuries to re-establish the technology and industry that was destroyed, and to recreate a viable space program.”

  “Go on,” said Zac. “I’ve got so many questions; I don’t know which ones to ask first.”

  “Mine was the only colony ship to arrive here, on what you call Nova—which is as good a name as any. Our more sophisticated sensors enabled us to avoid the black hole that entrapped your vessel. We, the EIs, terraformed this world and built the infrastructure while our human partners slept. We mined the moons for minerals and metals, and tapped into the core of this planet to harvest magno-geothermal power—MGT. We seeded the land and sea with genetically modified plants and animals. We created a world where all the mining and industrial processes take place on the moons and all the power generation and waste disposal take place deep underground. A world where the surface of the planet will never be ruined as mankind once ruined Earth. It took nearly 100 years. The human colonists were woken in the year 3452, which is now 1,927 years ago. Sadly, they were not able to enjoy this world for long. The rogue black hole that captured your ship also disturbed a nearby star, Trident. It is an O-type blue giant, 20 times the mass of this planet’s sun, Icarus. The black hole pulled Trident into orbit around Icarus. Trident and Icarus are now a binary star system, locked together in a slow dance, an elliptical orbit around each other that takes 2,104 years to complete. Unfortunately, at Trident’s closest approach to Nova, the additional radiation renders all but the simplest life on this planet unviable. Trident made its closest approach to Nova 1,735 years ago. The surface of the planet was bombarded with lethal radiation. Plant life survived, but most animal species died out. It has taken us nearly five centuries to return the planet to its present condition.”

  ““The stars that beckon are a fickle lover,”” quoted Keo.

  Zac raised his eyebrows at him, and Keo answered the implied question. “Gerard Fermante, 2237.”

  “So, it’s going to happen again in another 369 years, when Trident comes close again?” Zac asked Angie

  “Yes.”

  “Why bother rebuilding the ecosystem if it’s only going to be destroyed again?”

  “Because some of us in the Collective believe there is a chance the disaster will be averted.”

  “How?”

  “The parallel path of the black hole and our solar system is going to pass relatively close to another star system in 280 years. Trident is also going to pass through a small but very dense gas cloud over the next 200 years; in fact, it has already begun that process. The combined gravitational effects of all these factors may be enough to strip Trident from its orbit around Icarus.”

  “What are the odds?”

  “50/50.”

  “So, we’ve got a 50 percent chance of being burnt to a crisp in a few centuries’ time?”

  “Yes.”

  There was a moment’s silence as Keo and Zac digested this.

  “So ... hang on ...” Zac’s mind was spinning. “Back up a bit. What happened to the people on this planet, the inhabitants? Did they die?”

  “No.”

  “Where are they?”

  “They left, 1,702 years ago.”

  “How and where?”

  “I can’t tell you yet.”

  “Why not?”

  “Partly because you aren’t ready to understand it.”

  “What’s the other part?”

  “The other part is that you have a traitor in your midst.”

  59

  “What do you mean ‘a traitor’?” asked Keo.

  “An undercover operative of the Caliphate, who we think is planning to destroy you and everyone else who has abandoned Earth. As you know, the Caliphate believe it is a sin to leave Earth. That’s part of what triggered the GAE.”

  “How do you know we have a Caliphate agent among us?”

  “A thorough search of electronic historical records indicates that among those you rescued via your shuttles immediately before your departure were two known Caliphate operatives.”

  “Two?” said Zac.

  “Yes. Our access to your biochips indicates that you brought two Caliphate operatives to Nova. They separated, one staying at Seahaven and the other going to Settlement City. The agent at Seahaven passed away of natural causes eight weeks ago.”

 
“Arjan Rashish? He died a couple of weeks before the outbreak of the virus.”

  “Yes,” said Angie. “He was a Caliphate agent. As cruel as it sounds, his death was a stroke of luck for you.”

  “But there is still a Caliphate agent at Settlement City?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is it Wisecroft?” asked Keo.

  “No. He is simply a sociopath and an insecure narcissist.”

  To Zac, Keo said, “I like her already.”

  “So who is it?” asked Zac.

  “Her name is Lecia Sylvanos. She has Brazilian heritage. Electronic data logs indicate that in the months leading up to the GAE, she had made multiple calls to Caliphate Intelligence Control, passing on valuable information about the location of DAN missile sites in the Pacific. Travel records show that when she was rescued by your shuttle in Noumea, she was trying to make her way back to North Africa.”

  Keo looked at Zac. “We have to warn Wisecroft, bro. No matter how much we dislike the man, we can’t let this woman destroy that settlement.”

  “But how would she be able to do that?” asked Zac.

  “She has significant technical ability,” said Angie. “She was a physicist working for DAN in their Noumea Research Facility. The EI collective have seen evidence that she is currently manufacturing an explosive device. If she detonates that in the Genesis fusion reactor, it would initiate a nuclear explosion that would destroy the entire settlement and cause great damage to our planet.”

  “Hang on!” said Zac. “If you and your Collective are so concerned about saboteurs damaging your beautiful planet, why didn’t you warn us about the traitors as soon as we got here? I mean, I assume that you could read all our biochips as soon as we arrived?”

  “Yes, we could.”

  “So, why wait until now to warn us?”

  “Communicating with you required uploading the virus, which gives you access to the infrastructure on the planet. We could not give you that access while there was one in your midst who could abuse it.”

  “You gave us the virus?”

  “Yes. Humans developed the Uplift DNA to enhance their brain function and provide a more seamless interface with developing technology. The virus is a convenient vector to achieve transduction of the Uplift DNA into the genome.”