Help me, Highest One. Please help me.
The Worker writhed in agony. A bloody slice had been taken from its hide in a loop around its body about two inches wide. A yellowy pus oozed from the terrible wound and fouled the platform. Bloody straps tied each leg to the plank.
Finally realizing the full extent of the horror, her stomach churned. “Oh my God, they’ve scalped it and tied it up with its own skin.”
Tim came running up behind her. “Kendrick. What the hell are you doing?”
Marie spun around, her blood boiling with anger. “Monsters! They’re crucifying their own!”
“Kendrick, it’s none of our business.” Tim grabbed her elbow.
“The hell it isn’t.” Marie felt the blood pressure in her head ready to burst the band. “Torture is everyone’s business.”
Marie suddenly felt dizziness sweeping over her. Overhead, the red sky turned black and her vision distorted. The Worker, still twisting against its bindings, transformed into a figure composed of thousands of dots. So did the platform. Vibrating dots, a bizarre scene of colored pixels all wiggling in place.
She lurched forward, trying to find something to steady herself. She touched flesh, bloody and oozing. She pulled her hand away and held it before her eyes.
It wasn’t her hand at all. Thousands more of the vibrating dots covered what should have been fingers. The dots changed before her eyes, coming alive like a swarm of insects.
The buzzing, vibrating bugs crawled up her arm, advancing quickly. Her heart leaped and she shook her arm violently. Below, more insects covered the platform and began creeping up her legs beneath her jumpsuit. They pricked her skin with needlelike claws.
But it’s not real. None of this is real.
The headband told her so. She fought to believe its lesson even as the sharp pain of a thousand insect stings invaded her nervous system.
She pivoted to run and fell off the platform. As she lay on the dirt, a wave of nausea overcame her. The last thing she saw was Tim’s face, pixelated, vibrating, with hordes of crawling insects pouring from his eyes.
13 Brainwaves
The four katanauts walked briskly behind Jessica and past a line of reporters in the Kennedy Space Center O&C clean room. Zin followed at the rear, perhaps symbolically now that his job as guide was complete. All smiles, they waved to the cameras and acknowledged the applause from the small audience that rimmed the barrier. Tim high-fived his way down the line.
“Welcome home. How was it?” yelled a reporter as Marie walked past.
“Outstanding,” she replied with what little enthusiasm she could muster. True enough for the first day of their mission. It would take some time to absorb and process the disturbing parts of the second day. Her mood was nearly as foul as the stench of Worker spit. Quite the opposite of how she had pictured their return.
She’d recovered from what was surely a hallucination. The crawling insects had eventually disappeared, and after waiting a few minutes for her pounding heart to calm, so did the fear. But the episode of the tortured Worker and Marie’s subsequent collapse left her with a general unease—as if the mission had been compromised. Marie looked for someone to blame, but there was only herself. She shouldn’t have tried to intervene in Worker justice. The emotional intensity had triggered something in the headband. Something inside her head too.
Jessica led them to another part of the building and paused just outside a kitchen, where the smell of coffee wafted into the hall. “Take some personal time, everyone,” she told them. “Restrooms to your right; drinks and snacks are available in the break room. In a few minutes, we’ll go into the debriefing room as a group. No press and no cameras, but there’ll be plenty of big shots from NASA and ESA in there, so be ready.”
Marie examined the alien device she held in one hand. Its highly polished silver surface and evenly spaced electronic components around the outside made it look a little like a crown that a princess might wear.
Yeah. The big shots will certainly want to hear about this thing.
She handed the ring to Jessica. “Hold this for a second.” Without waiting for a response, Marie headed into the women’s room. Stephanie was already there, checking her hair in the mirror.
Marie headed to the first sink and splashed cold water on her face repeatedly. She stared into the sink, watching the water circle the drain and droplets fall from her nose.
“You okay?” Stephanie asked.
“Yeah, fantastic,” Marie said in a monotone.
“You don’t look fantastic. You look beat.”
“Yeah? Well, I’m doing cartwheels inside.”
“It’s that crown thing, isn’t it? You hate it.”
“There’s no rule that says you have to like your job.” Marie splashed more cold water on her face.
“Don’t wear it anymore,” Stephanie suggested. Her sympathy was welcome, but her solution was unrealistic. “Tell them you’re not the right person to be handling such a burden.”
“Yeah, that conversation would go well.”
Stephanie swiveled. “Then I’ll tell them.”
Marie looked up, water dripping off her chin. She pointed a finger at Stephanie. “Don’t you dare!” Her tone was sharp, her voice loud. “I volunteered, and I’m going to see this shitstorm through to the end, so just stay out of it.” She immediately regretted her harsh words. Stephanie looked shocked and hurt. Marie hardly recognized herself.
She lowered her head and leaned both hands on the counter, water dripping from her nose. “Sorry, Steph… I… sorry.”
The only women on the team had bonded, becoming more like friends than coworkers. How could they not? Together they’d visited another planet, and with all the drama of the second day, Stephanie had been nothing but kind. Marie felt like a different person had invaded her body. She’d never yelled at a colleague or a friend in her life.
Stephanie came closer and put a hand on her shoulder. “You’ve been through a lot. More than the rest of us. Be careful, will you?”
Marie smoothed the water off her face and reached for a paper towel. She looked Stephanie in the eyes, searching for the broader intuition provided by the alien device. An unnatural ability to see more than just reflected light in the visual spectrum … the ability to visualize.
Marie wasn’t wearing the alien headband. Stephanie’s eyes were eyes, nothing more. Marie dried her face with the towel and spoke quietly. “All my life, I’ve prepared for this opportunity. To step up. To make my family proud, make myself proud. To do what those macho guys out there couldn’t do. It’s here now, the opportunity. Maybe a little weirder than I’d imagined, but I’m not letting it go.”
Stephanie nodded. “I get it. You’re reaching for something bigger. Something important. I’ve been there myself. Sitting in that Soyuz rocket ready to launch, I figured I’d made the biggest blunder of my TV career. But I went ahead with it anyway.”
Marie smiled and then chuckled. “Well, at T-minus ten, you probably didn’t have many alternatives.”
Stephanie laughed. “No, I guess you’re right. So much for my grand words of inspiration for you.”
“Steph, I’ve seen your broadcasts. You’ve got plenty of inspirational words in you. But maybe not this time.”
Stephanie put a hand on each side of Marie’s face, leaned close and kissed her once on each cheek. “Mon amie. As you Americans say, hang in there. Okay?”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The debriefing room was crowded with many faces that Marie didn’t recognize. The NASA contingent sat along one side of a long table, Augustin Ibarra along with several other NASA administrators. The vice president of the United States sat at the far end of the table. She’d never seen the man in person before.
A NASA debrief specialist guided the conversation, and scientific people and administrators peppered the katanauts—and Zin, who chose to stand at the rear of the room—with questions. There was plenty of video from their mission, of course, but t
hey all seemed to want to hear the story firsthand.
Stephanie provided commentary as they replayed the video from her headcam, both underwater and on land. Tim provided color as he recounted their visit to the Dancers’ laboratory and described Beextu’s warning about Core, even though he hadn’t even been there to hear it. Marie added detail but otherwise let Tim’s smug conceit slide since he was the de facto team leader.
Wesley, being the team sociologist, wrapped up one of the more heated discussions—the symbiotic relationship between the Dancers and Workers. The ESA director had asked the most questions, and he had one more. “The Dancers clearly characterize themselves as superior but benevolent. But all the evidence suggests a more sinister relationship. Perhaps master to slave?”
Wesley pondered the question before answering, as he had all the others. “Let me address your question obliquely first, then more directly. The Dancers are very open and quite forthcoming with what we might consider sensitive information. We were, for example, welcomed into one of their most advanced scientific laboratories. In fact, the lab was the whole reason why we were brought to this specific town. As we toured, we asked many questions, and none went unanswered. I explain this because each of us got the feeling that not only did they have nothing to hide but also that hiding information may not even be within their character.”
“Oblique, but I understand your point,” the ESA director said. “And it matches their unprompted revelation about Core. But more directly, what about the Workers?”
“Clearly the Dancers dominate the relationship,” Wesley said. “The Workers would be nomadic scavengers without their guidance. But I found no hints of forced bondage, no subservience to the Dancers in either custom or law. They live with separate rules of law, separate policing and justice systems, separate religion. In fact, the Dancers have no religion, only the Workers. I can point only to one case of potential injustice, and that is the Dancers’ willingness to withhold kleek shell—a kind of tobacco that the Workers consume. The substance is likely addictive, and the Dancers may use it as both incentive and punishment. But that’s hardly master to slave; perhaps more like a dealer to an addict.”
“How about the ring the Workers wear?” asked one of the engineering heads from NASA. “Could it also be a tool of enforcement or punishment?”
Katie, the debriefing specialist, stepped in. “That’s the next topic we’ll cover. The alien device, provided as a gift to Ms. Kendrick. Should we switch to that topic now?”
Several heads nodded, and Wesley acknowledged them. “I don’t have anything else to add, and of course Marie is our expert on the communications device.”
Katie resumed. “Fine. Just to set the stage, the device’s purpose as interface between the Dancers and Workers was reasonably well understood prior to the mission, but none of us knew that it could be adapted for human use. Marie, could you tell us more about how you received this item and give us a sense of its capabilities?”
Marie cleared her throat. “Sure. It’s right here.” She held up the headband for everyone to see. “It’s still a bit of an enigma, but at its simplest level I would say it provides a visualization of the physical world. Forces and motion, light from any portion of the EM spectrum. Things like that. Plus, it manages the complexity of the incoming data, providing mathematics and analysis on the fly. The engineers will have to tell you how it gathers and processes so much information, but what it presents to me is a very elegant view of a very complex world.”
“The Dancers gave it to you?” Ibarra asked. “Why you?”
“It wasn’t really the Dancers; it was their representative, Tonia. She visited our sleeping quarters at the end of day one and explained that each Worker wore one around its neck, or snout, or whatever you call that part of its anatomy. She said it provides the Workers with insight that they couldn’t achieve on their own. Apparently, the Dancers think of it as their gift to the Workers because it boosts Worker intellect to something closer to the Dancers’ level. Without it, the Workers would have never developed technologically.”
Marie looked down at the alien headband lying on the table. “So, why me? Well… Tonia asked if we’d like to experience its capabilities for ourselves, and I volunteered.”
“To be clear,” Katie added, “we believe the device was initialized specifically for Marie. No one else can use it.”
“That’s right,” Marie said. “Tuned to my brainwave pattern, or something like that.”
“And they offered it to no one else?” Ibarra asked.
“Tonia said she could only make one.”
Wesley raised a hand and added, “Zin suggested Marie would be the best candidate. As I recall, the rest of us agreed.”
Zin stood silently at the back of the room. Now that she had experienced the full effect of the alien device, Marie wondered if Zin had known what it might do to her. Intentionally scrambling her brain didn’t seem like it fit with Zin’s character.
“Does the device still work?” asked a European man whom Marie didn’t recognize. “Even now that you’re back on Earth?”
“It should,” Marie answered. “It was intended as a gift to take home. A benefit to humans in general, not just me.”
“So, you can visualize, as you say, things that no one else can?” the man asked.
“Yes.” Marie knew what the next question would be.
“Can you demonstrate this to us?”
Marie looked at Ibarra, her eyes asking him if she should do as requested.
“Is it safe?” Ibarra asked Marie.
“Oh, yes. Safe. It certainly doesn’t affect anyone else, just me.”
“It doesn’t hurt, does it?” Ibarra asked.
“Oh, no. Doesn’t hurt,” she answered. “It’s just… foreign.” Her heart beat a bit faster. Foreign was the understatement of the day. With twenty people staring she wasn’t ready to explain her personal problem. She’d talk to Ibarra alone. Later.
“So, what could you do with it in this room?” Ibarra asked.
“Probably a lot,” Marie answered. She could only imagine the capability of the device within an ordinary office building on Earth. She’d already seen what it could do on Ixtlub.
Marie took a deep breath. Putting the headband on in front of all these people was like trying on a new bikini. You never knew what embarrassing part of your body it might expose.
I’m the messenger. Step up to the task. Be brave.
She lifted the ring from the table and placed it over her head. The headband fit snugly over her hair and rested just above her ears. Everyone in the room watched as she tapped twice on a component at her right temple and closed her eyes.
Her head swiveled as her eyes remained closed. Her mind envisioned pink. “Wow. Right away I see electricity. All around us.”
She stood up and pointed straight overhead at a pink line glowing brightly in her mind. “There’s an electrical wire above the ceiling. The wire runs to the wall and then down behind the wallboard to an electrical outlet.” She pointed directly to the pink glow on the wall.
“You can see the electricity?” a woman asked.
“A pink glow. It tells me it’s an electromagnetic field,” Marie answered. “The wire stands out like a sore thumb, but there’s a weaker field, slightly less pink than the wire, all around us. It’s a north-south orientation, so it must be Earth’s magnetic field.”
“Hang on,” Ibarra pulled out his phone and accessed a compass app. “Based on what you see, Marie, point north.”
She stood and pointed, her eyes still closed.
Ibarra examined the phone and nodded. “Spot-on.”
“But electromagnetic fields are just one layer,” Marie said.
“Layers?” somebody said.
“Yeah, I can control them. Many layers of information, most of them color-coded. I’ll flip to another one.”
“Did they teach you how to do this?”
“No. I…” She wasn’t sure they’d believe her.
But this wasn’t the place to obfuscate, so the unvarnished truth came out. “They didn’t teach me any of this. My ability to control this, well… it feels like I’ve always known how to do it.”
She could visualize their reaction; she didn’t need to see their faces. Skepticism. The device told her everything she needed, mapped out in a pattern that was easily recognizable. Every observable event—visual, audible, vibrational or otherwise—was measured, matched, and displayed for her to absorb. Big Data, a computer scientist would call it.
Show. Don’t tell. They’ll come around.
“Mr. Vice President,” she said. “Your heartbeat.” She tapped rhythmically on the table with her fingernail. “Put a finger to your carotid artery and see if I’m right.”
She didn’t need to see that the vice president had done just that and confirmed to everyone that her taps exactly matched the rhythm he felt.
“You’re just one, Mr. Vice President. I see every heartbeat. Every breath, too, and more.” She flipped again, not even realizing how she did it. The space in the room warped, bending toward some point far below their feet. “I see gravity. I’m not just experiencing its pull, like we all do. I can see it.”
“What does gravity look like?” asked an older man sitting next to Stephanie.
“Bent space. Bent everything. Nothing in this room is quite straight.”
She flipped again to a scene of staggering complexity. Infinitesimals, everywhere, all around. Each tiny bit interacting with every other tiny bit. Trillions, quadrillions, vastly more. The sheer number was overwhelming, yet somehow her mind grasped them all simultaneously. Moreover, she could zoom in or out at will from a single speck to a collection of trillions.
“The molecules of air, nitrogen, oxygen, argon, carbon dioxide and water.” She waved her hands over her head and tilted her head up, her eyes still closed. “They do a strange dance with each other down at the microscopic level, with varying levels of interaction above that, all the way to the larger eddies at the macroscopic level.” She pointed to the back of the room. “There’s a lot of turbulent motion from a flow coming out of that air conditioning vent.”
The Quantum Series Box Set Page 40