Eva

by Simon Winstanley

  “I suppose,” Cassidy shrugged, lacking the energy to argue.

  Turning away from Gail, she could see that most people were focussed on the projection screen. However, a small group of people were assaulting their sense of sight in a different way: using re-purposed digital recording binoculars to watch ‘virtual reality’ experiences in glorious stereoscopic vision. As Cassidy watched them, she could see their blinkered grins and reactions. The simple ‘tours’ of Earth’s former cities were innocent enough, but she’d also heard rumours of an underground DRB trade in much darker virtual adventures; experiences that would be bought and sold behind closed doors.

  Gail shuffled on her mat and tried to get comfortable lying on her side, positioning her Biomag to rest protectively on her bump. At that moment a fly buzzed out from behind one of the nearby plants, but before Cassidy could react, it had disappeared from view.

  “How the hell can there be flies in here?”

  “Where there’s plants,” said Gail, “there’s insects.”

  “Yeah, but I thought they zapped the soil, or something, before it got here?”

  Gail looked at her bump and gave it a gentle rub, “I guess ‘life’ finds a way.”

  “Or somebody just fucked up,” Cassidy shrugged.

  Even as the cynical words left her mouth she realised how, biologically, they could be taken the wrong way. To worsen matters, she was still staring at Gail’s pregnant belly. As she stammered to apologise, Gail burst out laughing which soon had the pair of them struggling to contain themselves. Neither did it help that people nearby thought they were laughing at the second-hand items on display. Gail held onto her abdomen, struggling to silence her laughter and pleading with Cassidy to stop. Only after several more items had been presented did they manage to begin breathing normally again.

  “Thanks,” she smiled at Gail, “I think I needed that.”

  Gail levered herself upright, breathing deeply, “Did we miss the item?”

  “I don’t think so,” Cassidy whispered, “Didn’t Roy say he was going to embed Scott’s test message towards the end?”

  “Yeah,” she replied, “He… oh.”

  “He… what?” Cassidy looked at the screen and saw a cheap, glass snow globe was on display; a transparent bubble holding a small house, surrounded by ice and snow.

  “Swap!” Gail shouted, much to Cassidy’s surprise.

  “Gail,” she dropped her tone, “We’re not supposed to be bidding!”

  “I know… Sorry,” Gail winced and drew a sharp breath, “Quickest way to shut everyone up…”

  “I -” Cassidy began, but then realised that Gail was actually in significant discomfort.

  “Cass!” Gail slapped the mat hard with her open palm and swore with words that Cassidy had never heard her use before, “Get Roy! I think little Armstrong’s about to make a landing!”

  Cassidy looked down and saw that the foam mat underneath Gail was soaking wet.

  Although the Node no longer had a doctor, Cassidy thought the medical trainees coped well. Rather than risk transporting Gail to the infirmary, the Observation Deck was calmly evacuated and privacy screens were erected around her.

  As part of her antenatal care, Gail had already received a booster of the Field-anchoring isotope. However, when the baby was born it would have no Biomag of its own. Adapting an earlier technique of constructive Field interference, six Biomags were positioned to surround Gail during delivery.

  Cassidy knew it had been near this location, on day one of the Node’s journey, that Roy’s actions had saved Gail’s life. Now, as then, he was staying by her side during a traumatic event, even giving her his burn-damaged hand to squeeze and crush.

  During the long delivery, Cassidy waited with a pair of Civil Protection Officers at the Observation Deck entrance. Any visitors to the door were turned away, but not before Cassidy had written down their messages of goodwill.

  Around the third hour a shrill cry echoed up through the full height of the deck, announcing the arrival of the first child to be born within the Node.

  Cassidy didn’t recall covering the distance across the floor, she simply found herself being guided behind the privacy screen by one of the medical students.

  The first thing she saw was the hexagonal arrangement of tripod-mounted Biomags; the red light on each of the six units denoting their active status. At the centre of their overlapping Field-anchoring pattern, lying on some foam mats, was a clearly exhausted Gail Armstrong. Kneeling on the floor at her side was Roy; holding her hand through the boundary of the Biomag cordon. Asleep and lying in contact with the skin of Gail’s chest was their tiny baby.

  Gail had once relayed to her the textbook guidelines concerning postpartum bonding. But when Cassidy compared it to the scene before her, the medical text was a poor description of the love and contentment she could see.

  She crept over and quietly knelt down at Gail’s side.

  “It’s OK,” Roy beamed from the opposite side of the mats, “You can move a little closer.”

  “I don’t wanna mess anything up,” Cassidy looked at the equipment and maintained her position, “Just to be safe… you know?”

  Roy nodded that he understood and resumed his infatuated stare at Gail and their son.

  “I had to swap it for a pair of shoes,” Cassidy smiled and held up an item, “but I brought you the mini-Node.”

  “Please,” Gail snorted a tired laugh at the kitsch snow globe, “I want you to keep it.”

  “But it’s bloody awful,” Cassidy found herself grinning.

  Gail simply beamed at her and then spoke to her sleeping baby in low, comforting tones.

  “Now, this is Cassidy. She’s a very good friend of Mommy and Daddy…”

  Before Gail got any further with their introduction, Cassidy heard several people approaching from beyond the privacy screen. The footsteps stopped and part of the screen was slowly pulled aside.

  “I do hope I’m not intruding,” said Alfred Barnes, apologetically entering the enclosure but leaving the screen open behind him.

  Cassidy was used to reacting positively when in his presence and it appeared that both Gail and Roy were becoming more adept too; neither of them hesitated in welcoming the president into the makeshift medical bay.

  Through the opening in the screen, Cassidy could see Alfred’s bodyguards had turned their backs in order to watch the rest of the room.

  “I came as soon as I heard,” Alfred beamed down at them, “The first child to be born inside the Field! My best wishes to you both.”

  Roy and Gail made appreciative smiles and noises for him but Cassidy could tell from their eyes that neither of them were really comfortable with the situation. Alfred didn’t know them as well as she did though, so it was unlikely that he’d have noticed.

  “So,” Alfred moved a little closer to the surrounding Biomags, “Have you decided what you’re going to call him?”

  Gail raised her eyebrows slightly at Roy who then nodded.

  “We think it’ll be Neil,” Gail smiled.

  “Neil…” Alfred repeated firmly.

  From her low perspective looking up at Alfred, Cassidy felt a chill run down her spine; the one word he’d just spoken sounded more like a command.

  “I hope you don’t mind,” Alfred stepped inside the ring of Biomags and showed Gail a small paper bag, “This was created specially for your son.”

  Without handing over the bag, Alfred removed his gift and held it up. A Biomag had been spray-painted a cheerful orange colour and had been adorned with a few silvery stars. There was another subtle difference but she couldn’t quite place what it was.

  “Please, allow me,” Alfred insisted.

  With the same fixed smile, Gail carefully lifted her baby’s head away from her chest and Alfred lowered the Biomag into position.

  “Welcome,” he said, placing the specially shortened metal chain around the baby’s thin neck.

  INTERVENTION

&
nbsp; ~

  Monica thought the plan to liberate the occupants of the Warren had been ambitious, but when she considered her daughter’s proposed lunar manipulation, the USV was just a small component of what lay ahead.

  Despite the incredible forces that Kate could obviously control, Monica felt that an underlying issue had never been fully explained.

  “Katie,” she began, “I know it’s within our ability to turn the lunar events to our advantage, but I think we might have missed something critical.”

  “And what might that be?” Kate folded her arms.

  “Long before you had the idea of altering the collision and geological makeup of the Moon, Eva had already decided on her course of action. She destroyed the Moon to put the fragments into Siva’s path.”

  “What are you getting at, Mum?”

  “I’m still missing the ‘why’,” said Monica, “If there was no guarantee of success, why did Eva do it at all? What gave her the idea?”

  “Mum, surely the bigger picture here is trying to turn a catastrophe into a benefit?”

  Monica had enough human experience to know when a conversation was being steered away from an issue.

  “This is exactly my point!” said Monica in exasperation, “I think you’ve grown used to the idea of altering things at will. The actual reasons why people do things have become… irrelevant to you.”

  “That’s absurd!” Kate laughed.

  “That’s arrogance.”

  “Excuse me?!” Kate placed her hands on her hips.

  “Monica,” Douglas questioned her choice of words.

  “Sorry,” Monica backed away slightly, “Sorry. It’s just that when anyone sees their own power as absolute, it can lead to missed details or blind spots. Douglas, you know that’s true. How many times did we exploit that fact in working around Archive’s control?”

  Douglas offered no rebuttal, so she continued.

  “What if Eva had -”

  “Alright!” Kate shouted, “Alright.”

  The living room fire flared but then settled again, leaving the three of them in an uncomfortable silence.

  “Listen,” Kate began quietly, “I’ve not lost sight of the small details. Far from it. The lunar task ahead is complicated enough anyway, I just didn’t want to burden you.”

  “Burden us?” Douglas appeared to be taken aback.

  “There is a reason that Eva acted the way she did,” Kate actually appeared to shiver, “I’ve studied the events. In detail.”

  “But…” Douglas began, “The whole time we were together, you never said anything to me!”

  “It’s something I only looked into… recently,” Kate rubbed at her forehead, “Damn, this language is completely inadequate…”

  “What do you mean by ‘recent’?” Douglas followed up.

  “OK,” Kate sighed and walked back over to the sofa, “Let me see if I can explain.”

  Monica and Douglas joined her and watched as she produced a piece of string from a pocket.

  “You remember we were talking about time-lines?” she asked them rhetorically, “Inside this construct, this cottage, I’ve arranged for a passable simulation of linear time… easier to maintain our discussions if there’s an idea of relative tense, but, well…”

  She cleared a space on the table, laid the string out in a straight line and then pointed to a knot in the middle.

  “Dad, this event is you and me, before we set out to, er, collect Mum from the USV.”

  Kate then tied another knot to the right of the original one.

  “This is you, me and Mum arriving back here.”

  “OK,” Monica could see that one event knot logically followed the other.

  “Dad, do you remember that, just before we left here, I said I needed to pop outside for a little while?”

  “Like any good parent I asked you how long you were going to be out!” Douglas smiled sheepishly, “You went outside but then came straight back in again.”

  “You asked me if I’d forgotten something, right?” said Kate, “Assuming that I’d been gone for too short a time.”

  “I remember,” Douglas nodded.

  Kate now placed a tangled-looking bundle of string onto the table, but allowed its two loose ends to trail across the surface. She then arranged the two ends to be in contact with the first knot of the original string.

  “I was gone for a long time,” Kate pointed to the bundle, “but my departure and return points were coincident. From your perspective, it just looked like I never really left.”

  “Katie,” Monica found herself pointing at the dense loops of string representing Kate’s journey, “How long were you out there?”

  “How long’s a piece of string?” Kate laughed.

  “I’m serious, Katherine,” she found herself using the more stern form of Kate’s name.

  “Mum,” she replied softly, “the duration is utterly meaningless here. But I was gone long enough to learn all I could…”

  “What did you find?” said Douglas.

  “Eva had a dream,” Kate still seemed hesitant, “that showed her the destruction of the Moon and a cloud of lunar debris breaking Siva apart. She told the other crew members but they explained it away as anxiety.”

  “That seems fair enough,” Monica understood that with the hopes of the world resting on the crew, it was not surprising that psychological effects would emerge.

  “Except the dream was a recurring one,” Kate continued, “At around the same time she began to notice the Floyd computer discrepancies and became suspicious of the crew. She drastically increased her metathene dosage to assess the whole situation in greater detail.”

  “Good grief,” Monica shook her head, “You’re saying the metathene levels pushed her into an ego-morph state?”

  “It should have done, but it didn’t,” said Kate, “It gave her a mental edge, certainly, but the directive came from within her. She held it all in check using a personal… mantra, developed over a long time.”

  Monica thought she knew what had happened; she had experience of using keywords to subvert ego-morph directives, “You’re saying that she was programmed to destroy the FLC?”

  “What?” Kate looked confused, “No, no, well… look it’s probably easier if I show you.”

  Kate invited them to the living room window, but the view beyond was no longer a simulation of the Dover coast. Through a set of shifting perspectives, Kate allowed them to see various points in Eva’s history.

  “This is 2010, Chamber 6 of the FLC. There’s Eva Gray and that’s Leonard Cooper. Very keen on mythology,” Kate pointed to the scene in front of them, “During the installation of the FLC’s computing expansion ports, he talks to Eva, flattering her with talk about Persephone and her fiery underworld.”

  “Of course,” Monica shook her head at Leonard’s flattery, “Supposedly she was keeper of the fires of the old. Attraction, procreation… Very smooth, Mr. Cooper.”

  “It’s understandable,” Kate’s serious outlook hadn’t wavered, “Both of them are sterile, but their sexual attraction appears mutual.”

  “Katie!” Monica found herself responding prudishly to the scene in front of them.

  “Mother, please,” she dismissed the reaction, “It’s just their human biology. Leonard’s words and this encounter resonated with her. Enough to contribute to her final behaviour.”

  “So is this where it started?” asked Douglas.

  “No.”

  The scene collapsed and zoomed away, to be replaced by another.

  “This is 2009 and although this looks like the FLC, it’s actually a replica facility underneath Houston’s Mission Control. What you’re seeing is a training exercise.”

  They watched as a spacesuited Eva emerged onto the mock regolith surface. She proceeded no further than a few yards before seeing a baby sitting in a nearby shallow crater.

  “Who’s the child?” asked Monica.

  “Abel Meyer,” said Kate as the events c
ontinued to replay, “He’s eight months old and decided it would be a good idea to crawl over to this exact crater.”

  “Are you being sarcastic, Katie?” Monica checked, “Or was it really his idea?”

  “Just watch,” Kate replied.

  They saw the simulation terminate and an anxious mother dash across the lunar surface to retrieve her baby. While Eva and the mother talked, they could see Abel grasping Eva’s Kevlar-gloved thumb.

  “All the FLC trainees and crew took low-level doses of metathene to maintain focus and enhance neural efficiency but, despite this, Eva experienced an emotional reaction.”

  Monica could see that when the mother escorted the baby away, Eva began to cry. The reason seemed obvious to Monica; perfectly framed against a barren lunar impact crater was the embodiment of a motherhood that could never be hers.

  “Incidentally, Dad,” said Kate as the scene in front of them raced away, “At this exact time and date you were in Iceland, confirming the presence of a gravitational hotspot.”

  A rugged landscape unfolded into place in front of them.

  “This is August seventeenth?” Douglas studied the empty island in the middle of a lake, “This is where we chose to site the Node!”

  Kate nodded as the scene moved to frame an operations tent and a lightweight helicopter nearby.

  Monica watched as her younger husband, dressed in arctic gear, emerged from the tent. After securing the channel on his radio, she heard him report.

  “Öskjuvatn anomaly confirmed, 56.9 milligals. Send the bridge.”

  “This can’t be coincidence,” Monica stared between Kate and the scene, “Can it?”

  “I don’t think so,” Kate replied as the scene again folded and zoomed away.

  The scene that formed next seemed familiar to Monica.

  “This is 1989,” said Kate, taking a deep breath, “and you should both recognise it.”

  “It’s the Whitehall Bunker,” Douglas peered at the scene, “We raced to London because of the Heavy Rain false alarm.”