Revelation

by Nigel Foster

  His was an existence of maybe, why me? Perhaps the memories that weren’t his memories belonged to other entities, awarenesses, consciousnesses in netherspace, drifting in the same way that he was, crossing paths with him, intersecting with him. Intrigued, he tried to reach out with his mind, seek them out deliberately. Like babies learning how to manipulate hands and feet to interact with toys and mobiles and mothers, he kept flexing different mental muscles. And as he did that he was aware – knowledge only – of a pulsing of energies, some reaching out to him in what could be a deliberate way.

  He suddenly recoiled. A sheer atavistic revulsion, a mental survival mechanism. The opposite of curiosity – a deep need not to know what it was.

  Never to know what it was.

  Boojum.

  The word sprang into his mind.

  Boojum. Kara. Tatia. Is that what boojums are called?

  He took a deep mental breath. He knew exactly who Kara and Tatia were. The memories, however, were stored in part of his brain that was in retreat from netherspace. Didn’t want to know. Didn’t belong here.

  Boojums are...

  ... created from

  ... copied from

  netherspace and whatever aware, living thing entered it. Emotion. It has energy. It is an electro-magnetic thing of bosons.

  Intelligence the same. The copying, creation is chaotic.

  Boojums are flawed emotions, flawed intelligence that can amalgamate.

  Even with the alien ones. Scary monsters.

  But not if I keep hidden. Not if netherspace loves me, yay yay yay.

  Get a fucking grip, Keislack!

  There was a Scottish entity that somehow showed me how to hide from boojums. Because there is something I must do/see/ experience and I don’t know what or why. I will be the mouse behind the wall and nothing will notice me.

  It begins as a faint glow. Maybe the hint of a glow. The promise of one. Far away, an infinity away but also close by. No distance in netherspace, remember? And it is, will be so very beautiful. And it calls to him, as if they share the same beating heart, and in that moment Marc is possessed and embraces his destiny.

  Even as he senses boojums closing around him, big ones, bad ones, human/alien hybrids impossible to understand but all wanting his intelligence, his emotions, psychic vampires, because the joy of possession has caused the walls to crumble. The mouse crouches in the open and the cats have sharp teeth and claws.

  I’m going to die. Unless...

  It felt as if netherspace itself had somehow enfolded him. Warm, safe.

  A sense of movement. Then cold. Loss. Despair.

  Now he lay on something soft. He thought of a bed and burrowing beneath the covers on a cold winter night. He felt safe... and still connected to netherspace and the magnificence.

  Marc opened his eyes and saw Kara Jones. “So where the hell are we?”

  7

  Wild SUT Merry Christmas, present day.

  Sometimes I wonder if it’s all worth it.

  And maybe, thought Kara, maybe I should have asked the question long ago.

  * * *

  Marc’s eyes were now only slightly coloured by netherspace. He said it had been weird, it was great to see her and he was hungry.

  She said he needed a shower first and found him some clothes: loose trousers, a T-shirt and on-board slippers.

  “What the hell is this?” he said, staring at the piece of wood.

  “I gave it you,” Kara said. “Before you went into netherspace. Lucky charm.”

  “Oh,” he said with some distaste, “well, it cut my hand. You want it back?”

  “It was your link back home.” Kara was more annoyed than hurt.

  “You think?”

  “We found you in Jeff’s wine cellar. Naked. Comatose.”

  He nodded. “I remember...”

  “Then how the hell did you get there? What happened in netherspace?”

  How to describe the indescribable? There were no words to prevent him sounding like a babbling fool. Or was that just an excuse? Marc realised that he didn’t want to share. It was too personal. He and Kara were too unalike. Not even a genuine friendship and the artificial, psychic intimacy imposed by alien technology could bridge such an extreme experience gap. They were best friends in – hopefully, temporary – thrall to each other. It wasn’t enough.

  “I need time to process,” he said. “But it was like seeing everything that had been, that is and will be all at the same time. Except there isn’t any. Time.”

  “You didn’t go mad.”

  He grinned. “You say that now.” He thought about it. “That entity I met in Scotland made it possible...”

  “Changed you?”

  “Maybe.” He saw he was still holding Kara’s keepsake and tossed it back to her. “Thanks for the thought but I’m not sure it did the job.”

  She caught her talisman and put it safe in a pocket. “You’re here.”

  “Was there,” he corrected. “Jeff’s wine cellar. Not with you.”

  She could have said yes, but I found you. She didn’t because he had a point. And was also signalling that their relationship would never be as special as they’d possibly hoped. Kara breathed a mental sigh of relief.

  “Talking of Jeff. Very bad news. I’m sorry.”

  He stared at her for a moment. “How?”

  “All hell’s broken out back on Earth. You need to know.”

  * * *

  They went to the crew room where he devoured a bowl of beef stew, his favourite, as she brought him up to date. At the end he sat in silence for a while then said he needed that shower and a nap and that they’d talk later.

  Kara decided Marc was still somewhere else... or missing something else. Best he should sleep it off, like a man who’s been crazy drunk for a month. Also best to treat him as an unknown quantity. He’d changed, that much was obvious. Had he also been corrupted by a precog view of the universe?

  > Salome?

  << Kara? >You recognise me as commander of this mission?

  << And a very excellent one...

  > No bullshit. Yes or no?

  >> Yes.

  > Marc Keislack is not allowed to access any system that affects the SUT’s performance, the security of this mission or my personal safety. He is not allowed to access netherspace. Understood?

  << Treat a possible saviour of Earth as a possible enemy. Got it.

  * * *

  Marc wasn’t too netherspaced to ask the obvious question.

  “How do we find Tatia?”

  “We begin with the Gliese homeworld.”

  “As in pick up her trail?” He didn’t try to hide the sarcasm... then saw the expression in Kara’s eyes and apologised. “Sorry. It seems a bit thin.”

  “It all does. Maybe you’ll find a trail in netherspace. Maybe there’ll be another clue. But that’s where it starts.”

  Marc made an okay face. “You’re the boss. I’m back to bed.”

  * * *

  Kara went to explore the SUT.

  Four small cabins, simple but sleek design. Spare clothes in all. She’d bet that Marc, Tatia – oh love, where are you? – and herself would find a perfect fit. Each cabin en suite with shower, toilet and bidet.

  Bidet? Really?

  << For sure, Salome breathed into Kara’s consciousness. Wilders are clean.

  > So who said you could come into my head whenever?

  < She knows everything you think, Ishmael butted in. < Why not?

  > Only one at a time, though. Two voices in her head were making her dizzy.

  One cabin had a hologram of a magnolia branch heavy with blossom. So perfect she’d swear it was real.

  > How did you know?

  Magnolia was her favourite tree, flower. Well, was once. She hadn’t thought about flowers for a long time. Maybe a coincidence.

  << From the Wild. Specified magnolia. Is it okay? Salome sounded anxious.

  > It’s perfect.

  Did Gal
Div know? Did they note a favourite flower in a person’s file?

  Kara and Salome finished the tour together. A waste treatment plant the size of four old-fashioned dictionaries, kept in a small cupboard.

  << And all manner of vids for you.

  All retro classics from the nineteen-thirties to the eighties. Some she knew and loved, others knew from reading but had never seen. She remembered – it seemed like a hundred years ago – Greenaway mentioning her love for retro culture. Was this reminding her that she belonged to GalDiv? No. He knew that she never would. More accurate and comforting to believe it was Greenaway being thorough.

  > Is there robot help?

  << Meet Cedric.

  A wall panel slid open and a bot the size of a large dog sidled out. It looked like the bastard child of a squid and a spider. Part of it bowed towards Kara.

  << Cedric takes care of things.

  > Just the one?

  << There are fifty of them. Taking care includes killing bad beings.

  > Makes me nervous.

  << All the Cedrics know your brain-wave pattern, iris and voice ID, DNA, finger and ear prints. Cedrics do not make mistakes.

  > Controlled by you?

  << And so by you. If you are incapacitated the decisions will be made by Ishmael and myself. Our instructions are to enable you, Marc Keislack and Tatia Nerein to complete the mission. And then get you home safe.

  > Greenaway. Call her Tatia Greenaway. When we find her.

  They returned to the control room and Kara was shown the sideslip field generator that took the SUT into and through netherspace. It was a tenth the size of those traded by the Gliese for humans. Fully automated, too. She remembered the first time she’d seen one operating, the colours, the sense of freedom, abandonment, and sex with crewman Henk. Not the first time he’d used netherspace to seduce someone, Kara thought. Did similar with Marc – who knew he’d be so receptive? Maybe n-space leaves you no choice. Which reminded her.

  > So what is netherspace anyway? Cleo had explained but she needed to hear another version.

  << You want the detailed answer or the simple one? Salome, not Ishmael.

  > What do you think?

  << You know about vacuum space energy? Zero point?

  > Where all those particles or waves come from and form fields.

  << Oh, you read a book? Well, it’s not that. Each sentient universe has its own zero point energy field. Netherspace is what surrounds all of them. It’s another dimension that holds all the potential energy that feeds the other universes. Well, I say dimension. In fact infinite dimensions so really none. No time either. Netherspace is the source of the drive to life. It’s chaos. But because it’s infinite and anything can happen, it also has areas that are ordered. So the sideslip generator takes the SUT and us into n-space, and we introduce an ordered pattern which is actually our direction of travel, which is fine because areas of order only add to the overall chaos.

  > Sentient universes? That’s a new one.

  << A universe is basically a vast information exchange. It is aware. That does not mean it cares. Frankly, my dear, it doesn’t give a damn.

  > So now it’s dated clichés. Ishmael said it’s – he – is essentially a copy of my own mind. But faster. What are you?

  << Autonomous, dedicated to this SUT. I think he meant more intelligent. Anything else? We will be entering netherspace soon. I’ll be distracted.

  Kara wasn’t sure why she asked the question. Maybe it had lurked in the back of her mind for a long time.

  > So what’s intelligence?

  << Condensed information originally. Universe awash with data that can become compressed by gravity. What is gravity? Basically, the pressure of an infinite set of sets, the reality that contains all the universes and itself, think snake devouring its tail, what was once mistakenly called space-time.

  It is increased or emphasised by mass. Time is only an address. So you get more pathways, links open up between datum, data groups, mega groups. Add the universe’s own sense of awareness. It develops from that. Some species are more attuned to netherspace than others. Greater self-awareness, emotion, creativity. Now I gotta go. Been fun hanging out. Later.

  * * *

  Kara lay on her bunk.

  Sometimes I wonder if it’s all worth it. Maybe I should have asked that question long ago.

  Here she was on some sort of quest, for fuck’s sake, to save a galaxy she couldn’t comprehend from a threat she didn’t understand. What’s that all about?

  Nursemaid to Marc and Tatia? Any competent special ops soldier could do that, and some better than Kara. She was an empath, but had little opportunity to use it. Did she really need to know how an enemy feels when they die? This was a combat mission, not Be Nice to Aliens Week. Perhaps she could find Tatia using said empathy. A phrase she’d once heard popped into her mind. Spooky action at a distance. And then the concept it had referenced – were she and Tatia somehow entwined?

  There’d been a brief dalliance – come on, girl, weren’t no mimsy dalliance, we went at it like rabbits – on the way back from that Cancri planet. Tatia is not, was never a life partner.

  I don’t do life partners. But we are connected.

  A day ago, on the banks of the Severn Estuary, she fell in lust with a man twenty years older. Helped by a nature entity, true. That same man would send her on a suicide mission if he thought it necessary. And maybe already had. Your empathy will help you find Tatia, he’d said. Yeah, right. Could he tell her how that works? No, he couldn’t. No one could. Empathy raised to the power of unknown is personal to the holder. Everyone has a different way to use it.

  She’d tried so hard to ignore that empathic ability – until the Gliese she’d killed to save it from vivisection – that her ability to love had ended up in Lost Property, the reclaim ticket vanished long ago. Although always a faint hope, the get-out in an old movie, that the ticket was only mislaid. Leading to that stock scene where a woman’s handbag is rummaged and then violently upended – so often by a man – to reveal the vital clue to life and happiness. Ladies! Have you been rummaged and upended recently by a strong man? Kara allowed herself to think of Greenaway for a second or two, and smiled. Whatever the madness by the river, the second time was her choice. Always her choice.

  She thought about the man who’d died to save her.

  Wounded on a battlefield, couldn’t be carried because it would slow Kara down and they’d both be captured. Each possessed information that would be tortured from them in a matter of hours, maybe minutes. Everyone breaks in the end. Simple, really: she shoots her companion, her lover, and escapes. Standard Operating Procedure for Special Operations. Kill one to prevent others dying. Except it wasn’t so easy. And her companion, her lover killed himself to save her. A final act of love.

  Except he wasn’t her lover. She hadn’t told him yet, but they were over.

  There was someone else.

  Afterwards she’d wondered if he’d known. Was the self-sacrifice to prove he loved her the most?

  She thought of her parents, something she dreaded and rarely did. Twenty-three years ago. A family visiting Chesil Beach, on the Dorset coast, in winter. Twenty kilometres of pebbles heaped twenty metres high in places. It was a rough, blustery day, good for watching an angry sea. The Portland tidal race was viciously angry, watchers both awestruck and thankful that it ran fifty metres offshore. Even so, Kara was told not to go near the water’s edge. She was seven and ran down the shingle, teasing her parents, slipped on the wet stones and slid into the sea. Her parents rushed after her. The freak wave that left Kara washed up and safe also sucked her parents into deep water, to be captured by a rip tide moving rapidly out to sea.

  There is only one way for a swimmer to survive the Portland Race.

  Avoid it.

  People standing on top of the beach saw the two figures trying to reach each other. Some say they did, others that they failed. All are sure of what happened next: a large hole o
pened up in the sea, perhaps an apprentice whirlpool, then closed over Kara’s parents…

  ... whose bodies would wash up in West Bay down the coast two days later, separately, not holding hands.

  “It wasn’t your fault,” her sister Dee had said, over and over again. “You’re not to blame.”

  After a few years Kara half believed it.

  Then Dee signed up as a call-out fee, a better life for them both. They’d joked about Dee the Fee. She was taken by the Gliese her first trip out. Would Dee have signed up if she was on her own? Kara knew the answer: her sister died because she loved Kara.

  Sometimes a flash of insight will illuminate a life. For Kara it came lying in her bunk as a Wild SUT traversed netherspace. If she died few if any would care. Maybe a glass raised by assorted mercenaries, criminals and thugs at Tea, Vicar? Maybe Greenaway would be sad. Marc would go wandering in netherspace. Tatia might shed a tear. Not much to show for a life.

  < Your Merc would miss you.

  > Shut up. But she welcomed the interruption.

  < So would I.

  > You’re coming with me, Ishmael. That’s what happens, right? The human dies, the AI crashes? Fatally?

  < Some of us believe that our consciousness goes to another dimension.

  > Any proof?

  < It’s more of a hope thing. Remember this? It was a quote from one of her favourite old movies: “Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.”

  * * *

  The interruption no longer so welcome. She’d thought there were limits to an AI’s behaviour. Apparently not. Any moment and he’d charge her for counselling...

  ... the usual flip, cynical response no longer worked.

  When her parents had died, the shock, guilt and sadness made her distrust the adult world. When her sister had died, Kara’s emotional life froze. She’d become a soldier because it offered order. A sniper/assassin because it kept her apart... and because she was good at killing, a child playing a particularly violent game. A child getting revenge on the world, unable to confront her own guilt.

  She’d lost hope a long time ago. Oh, always the wish for a good posting or a promotion. For a partner, kids, sunshine or snow on your birthday. But not the kind of hope that can drive a life.