The Susquehanna Virus Box Set

by Steve McEllistrem

Entering the airlock, Addam right behind her, Aspen sealed it up and removed her Mars suit. She placed her suit beside Addam’s and opened the inner lock to the tunnel. It stretched away in a curve, moving down and to the right, leading fifty meters underground, with dozens of small caves branching off for various rooms. It looked much like the tunnels on the Moon, though the rock surface shone red in the light of the glow globes that hovered near the ceiling. And like the tunnels on the Moon, this one held hundreds of small vines that climbed the walls, providing oxygen and, someday, berries. But the atmospheric pressure was lower, which gave her a headache. And the fine red dust was inescapable. Her throat always felt parched.

  As they walked along the tunnel, Aspen recalled her time on the Moon. Everything was so different here, partly because gravity was thirty-eight percent Earth standard, while the Moon had been one-sixth. She felt more substantial and yet more lost. The sun, whenever she was outside, looked so small and shone with so little intensity in comparison to its size and brightness on the Moon that she despaired of ever feeling normal again—whatever that meant.

  “I like it here,” Addam said, reaching out to brush the leaves of a vine.

  “Have you noticed how content Shiloh and Kammilee are?” Aspen asked. “And even Phan and Benn?”

  Addam nodded slowly. “We’ve got it pretty good. Benn said he wouldn’t mind having genetic surgery to become one of the Escala.”

  “What?”

  “He and I have talked about it,” Addam said.

  “Well, you can’t do it.”

  “Why not? We’d have an easier time on Mars if we had the surgery. And who made you the boss?”

  “Zora did, remember?” Aspen reached the entryway to her room—her little cave—and swept the curtain aside. “Quekri would never allow it anyway. We’re a separate race—not that many of us left. You and Benn can’t change what you are. There’s a chance we might return to Earth one day, if the old humans die off.”

  “You think the Susquehanna Virus will kill them?”

  “Dr. Wellon says it’s getting deadlier all the time. She says some of the newer varieties are extremely potent, killing within days.”

  “Serves them right for ruining the planet.”

  “I don’t care about them,” Aspen said. “I care about Zora.”

  “What about Curtik and the others?” Addam said.

  Aspen shook her head as she entered her room. Without asking permission, Addam followed her inside. That irked her a little. This was her place, not his—her bed, her chest of possessions, her vid of Emerging Man on the wall. “Do you ever feel the rage anymore?” she said.

  “No.”

  “Do you miss it?”

  “Why would I?” Addam’s voice rose in surprise. “It feels nice not to be angry all the time.”

  “I think when Dr. Wellon cured us, we lost some essential component of who we are.”

  “You have to admit that on the flight here, we were in pretty bad shape. If not for her, we might not have survived.”

  “True,” Aspen said. She thought back to the four-month flight from the Moon to Mars, to the terrifying rage that overwhelmed her and her five companions, threatening them with complete devolution into unreasoning animals. “But for some reason, I feel like I’m not complete, like I’m missing a part of me.”

  “Didn’t Dr. Wellon explain it to you?” Addam asked. “She said the whole point of the Lunar Cadet Program was to create super soldiers who would kill without hesitation, with maximum efficiency and speed. The rage was necessary because it clarified thought and allowed for quick, decisive action. That’s probably what you miss.”

  Aspen shook her head. “Sometimes I wish I had a Las-cannon so I could demolish a city or even a whole country, purifying Earth of the crazies who run it. But no matter how many I managed to kill, more would sprout up to take their places. And those miners . . . sometimes I want to wipe them out before they ruin this place.”

  “Perhaps Susquehanna Sally, whoever or whatever she is, will change all that. She claims to have a new metric. Global cleansing. Maybe that’s why that Chinese ship is on its way here.” Addam’s eyes glazed over for a second. “We’d better get to the lab.”

  “Go. Tell Quekri I’ll be right there.”

  When Addam left, Aspen took a moment to decompress, to savor being alone. Perhaps that’s why Zora never initiated contact with her. Maybe Zora was relishing her first taste of life without responsibilities. Possibly she was just being a kid. Aspen opened the chest and removed the vid-picture of Zora she’d made before leaving the Moon. It showed Zora breaking into laughter. “I miss you,” she said. “I love you.”

  She stared at the vid-picture for a few seconds until her eyes began to blur, then put it back and headed to the lab—a well-lit cave further down the main tunnel, where Quekri, the Escala leader, stood before the equipment that would be transmitting Guffie’s mind to Earth. A quick rush forward, a knife severing the spinal cord, would paralyze Quekri and allow Aspen the time to make another strike into Quekri’s heart. Aspen told herself she didn’t really want to kill Quekri; that image was just the residue of her rage.

  “We couldn’t wait any longer,” Quekri said. “We started without you.”

  Her dark hair and skin reminded Aspen of a wild animal—huge and powerful. Was that just because Aspen was so pale and blond? She glanced over at Zeriphi, working at another station. Zeriphi—the prettiest Escala woman—had blond hair like Aspen, but darker skin. She stood six and a-half feet tall and weighed over two hundred Earth-pounds, yet she was actually a little shorter and thinner than Quekri. The male Escala were even bigger, nearly seven feet tall and three hundred Earth-pounds: more than a foot taller and twice the weight of the cadets. The cadets maybe moved faster, their transgenic nature granting them speed surpassing anything ordinary humans could achieve, but the Escala were nearly as fast and they had enormous strength.

  Shiloh, working beside Zeriphi, looked like her true age of eleven. Aspen had to remind herself that Shiloh actually possessed the body and mind of an adult woman. Sometimes Aspen wished she could be a kid again. And then she would recall the physical and mental enhancements and all the things she could do and she would be glad they had accelerated her growth.

  And according to Dr. Wellon, their minds had been enhanced to the point where they were almost as advanced as the Escala.

  Addam stood before the DCD—the Stelzie-Hanson Digital Collector and Descrambler that was transferring Guffie’s mind to Earth. On the far wall a holo-projection of the Earth rat—Hugh—was being projected to Mars, an image that was actually fifteen minutes in the past.

  Aspen nodded as she approached Guffie, who lay motionless on the receptor plate, four small transmitters aimed at his skull, set to transport Hugh’s mind into Guffie’s brain. “It’s okay, Guffie,” Aspen said to him. She wanted to stroke him, comfort him, but she knew Guffie’s mind was already gone. And Quekri insisted that no one touch him during the transfer. Even the tunneling machines had been shut down, a precaution against a particularly strong vibration that might throw off the calibrations of the DCD.

  She studied the monitor above Guffie’s body. So far, everything appeared to be working perfectly. The chemical and electrical signals of Guffie’s neurons were compressed by the DCD and transmitted as electrical impulses to Earth, where they would enter the machine and reconstitute as chemical and electrical signals in the Earth rat’s brain. A glance at the chrono showed that the transmission to Earth had begun thirteen minutes ago; the data Earth was transmitting back had begun at that instant.

  Addam stepped back and gestured for Aspen to take his place at the DCD. He was a good guy, Aspen realized, even if she didn’t love him. She smiled her thanks and went over the controls, confirming that the calibrations were perfectly aligned. Quekri gave her a nod as her eyes darted from system to system, checking the s
tatus of each one, as if she could do anything about it now. Why did Quekri consider this experiment so vital? Even if it worked, its practical applications were limited. She had to know that.

  A small light came on above Guffie’s head, indicating that Earth’s transmission had finally arrived. The machine now dispersed Hugh’s mind into Guffie’s brain, which meant Guffie’s mind was even now loading into Hugh’s brain. When Aspen examined the scanner monitor, checking for brainwave activity in the appropriate regions, she found none.

  “Nothing so far,” she said.

  “Give it time,” Quekri said as she bent to examine the DCD more closely. “You can’t expect it to absorb everything the other rat knew in a matter of seconds.”

  Aspen watched the scanner as the rat’s brainwave activity began to register, just in bits and dashes at the moment, as Hugh’s memories and knowledge transferred into Guffie’s brain. Guffie’s body, meanwhile, continued to perform all autonomic nervous system functions. If the experiment worked, Guffie’s body would awaken with Hugh’s conscious mind.

  “Can you imagine the possibilities that arise from this?” Quekri asked.

  “The ability to travel at the speed of light?” Addam said.

  “Eventually, yes,” Quekri replied. “But more importantly, if successful, this will open the door to potentialities only dreamed of. Combined with genetic manipulation, this will allow humans to evolve into many different subspecies, with special adaptations for survival in select environments. We’ll be able to create humans who can breathe methane gas, for example, or people with gills who can breathe underwater.”

  Shiloh said, “I thought the mind-body connection was too strong to allow for such displacement.”

  “That’s always been a problem with chimeras,” Quekri acknowledged. “It’s what created the rage in us. But if we’re successful today, we might be able to avoid that kind of side effect in the future, in which case we’ll be able to create as many permutations of transgenic species as we can imagine.”

  “We could also,” Zeriphi spoke for the first time, “postpone death for many years.”

  “Like turning off the death gene?” Addam said. “A fountain of youth?”

  “The technology could be used that way,” Zeriphi said, “with robotic bodies.”

  “I wonder,” Aspen said, “if Devereaux had all this in mind when he conceived his ladder of enlightenment.”

  “He knew it was possible,” Quekri said. “But he cautioned against going down this path.”

  Zeriphi said, “Yet he knew there would be humans who would seek eternal life. Just as there were people who cloned themselves, there will be some who seek to live forever. And we’re giving them the tools to do it.”

  “Sooner or later,” Quekri said, “someone was going to experiment with mind transfer. Whether we succeed or not, someone will solve the problems eventually.”

  Zeriphi shrugged ever so slightly, acknowledging the truth of Quekri’s statement. Aspen, glancing down at her monitor, saw that conscious brain activity had increased dramatically. She hoped without really believing that somehow Guffie’s mind had returned to them. She tried to keep the excitement out of her voice: “Near normal levels of brain activity on the graph.”

  Guffie’s legs started twitching. He lifted his head as his tail flicked back and forth. Come on, Guffie, Aspen thought. Rub your nose with your left paw. She bent down to look into Guffie’s eyes. He ignored her.

  “You have to reboot him now,” Addam said.

  “I know,” Aspen replied. She picked Guffie up and placed him at the starting point of the maze.

  “Did you notice that?” Quekri said. “He didn’t rub his nose with his paw.”

  “I noticed,” Aspen said, her stomach dropping. “And he didn’t recognize me.”

  “Because he’s not Guffie anymore. He’s Hugh.”

  “So,” Shiloh said, “this maze has been reconfigured to exactly match the one the scientists are using on Earth?”

  “Correct,” Quekri said. “If the mind transfer worked, Hugh should be able to navigate the maze.”

  Aspen glanced at the holo-projection. Hugh’s body lay motionless, the transfer no doubt complete back on Earth, but the data stream lagging by fifteen minutes.

  Shiloh said, “Can’t we just scan his brain to see if the transfer worked?”

  “We’ll do that too,” Quekri said. “But running a full analysis will take a couple days. And our experiments indicate he must be challenged mentally as soon as possible after the transfer to seat the mind properly in the new brain.”

  Hugh struggled to his feet and entered the maze. Aspen knew he ought to turn left, right, left if the transfer worked. If not, if this was somehow actually Guffie, he ought to turn right, left and right. As he made his way to the first T in the maze she found herself holding her breath. When the rat turned left, she exhaled, fighting the disappointment. She glanced at the holo-projection again, hoping Guffie was okay in Hugh’s body on Earth.

  “It worked!” Addam shouted.

  “Patience,” Quekri said.

  But the rat turned right at the next intersection, then left. “He’s doing it perfectly,” Shiloh said. “No hesitation at all.”

  “Not yet,” Quekri conceded. “But if there are problems, they’re likely to appear later in the memorized sequence of turns.”

  Hugh made yet another turn correctly, scurrying along a straight run for several feet, then went left at a T halfway down the run. Aspen told herself she ought to be happy. Hugh was navigating the maze perfectly. At the sixth intersection he turned left. On the holo-projection, the light over Hugh’s body came on, indicating the beginning of the transfer on Earth.

  Aspen returned her attention to Hugh. He walked more slowly now, as if less sure of himself. Upon reaching the seventh intersection he stopped. His whiskers twitched as his head turned left, then right.

  “Right,” Shiloh whispered.

  But Hugh moved in neither direction. He simply sat on his haunches and stared at the wall. He seemed to have lost all interest in continuing. A minute passed. Quekri strengthened the odor of peanut butter and even ran a slight electrical current into Hugh’s backside but the animal refused to go any further. He began to tremble, lowering himself to his belly. Finally he fell over on his side, his breathing distressed.

  Aspen felt a numbness overcoming her. Addam put his arm around her shoulders. On the holo-projection, Guffie awoke and rubbed his nose with his left paw, then was placed at the start of his maze.

  “So close,” Quekri said, picking up Hugh and holding him close to her face. She peered into his eyes as if she could see into his tiny brain.

  “We’ll have to run scans,” Zeriphi said, “to see what went wrong. Clearly, given how fast he moved through the first few turns, the transfer was—at least in part—successful. There must be another problem.”

  “He’s dying,” Quekri said as she placed Hugh back on the receptor plate of the DCD. She looked at Aspen. “Let’s get as much information as we can. Aspen. Aspen! You all right?”

  Aspen nodded. She pulled away from Addam and set the scanner to run accelerated scans, providing less detail but more images, hopefully allowing for enough extrapolation to determine what aspect of the transfer had proven fatal. As the scans ran, she stared at Guffie back on Earth. He began navigating the maze tentatively.

  “I realize this is tough for you,” Quekri said, “but we brought these rats to Mars for a reason. They’re doing what they’re supposed to.”

  “I know,” Aspen replied. “But I still don’t see why this is such a big deal. Who would want to give up her body?”

  “You’re young,” Quekri answered, “and enhanced. You may never need something like this. But there are millions who could benefit from this technology.”

  “I get that,” Aspen said. “It’s for old
people. But what about the effects of age on the brain? What about the inevitable decline? Won’t that just continue to worsen with each generation of host bodies? Even if you put a mind into a new brain, won’t the old mind, with all its shortcomings, continue the degradation predicted by the Patterson formula?”

  Quekri frowned. “What do you know about the Patterson formula?”

  Aspen recalled the summary of the formula she’d stored in her implant. “It theorizes that no matter how one tries to revivify a mind, even to the point of transfer to an entirely new brain, the favored patterns of the old mind will result in a decrease in the efficiency of future growth that will eventually become a retardation.”

  “Very good,” Quekri said. “And it’s possible the Patterson formula applies. But until we achieve a successful mind transfer, we’ll never know.”

  The scanner beeped, indicating that Hugh had died. Aspen glanced at the holo-projection, where Guffie continued to work his way through the maze, slowly, as if in pain. She shivered as she checked the scanner, saw that it had completed only eighty-eight percent of the rapid scans required to get a full picture of the brain. She took a deep, calming breath, remembering how Guffie used to run up her right arm, across her shoulders and down to her left hand, where she always had a peanut ready for him. She said, “We lost twelve percent.”

  Quekri sighed. “It will have to do.” She stared at Aspen for a moment, raising her eyebrows. “I didn’t realize you were such an expert on mind-body connectivity. Perhaps you should take the lead on this. Analyze the scans, run the projections, discover where we went wrong. I’ll help as much as I’m able but running the colony takes a lot of my time. Can I count on you?”

  Aspen longed to punch Quekri in the face, chop her fat throat, kick the side of her knee so she’d drop to the ground, where Aspen could pummel her. A sudden bout of nausea forced her to clamp her teeth together. She didn’t really want to hurt Quekri, she realized. She just felt sad and angry. She took shallow breaths and thought about Guffie until the urge to vomit passed.

  “You okay?” Quekri asked.