Ocean in the Sea Read online

  “Endo-rhythmic distortion from the hippocampus and outlying subcortical ganglion,” said Randuu. “Schwann cells around the axon aren’t good enough insulators to prevent it. I’m applying filters now, but there will be other difficulties. Please be patient while I resolve the image, there will be a series of adjustments, and what you see may not be accurate – initially.”

  Up in the observation deck, the doors slid open and Shanzea entered. She wheeled Valruun in using a hand-cart and dumped his bricked upper half into one of the many chairs. It hit with a solid impact and remained completely unchanged – an expression of agony statically frozen on his lips. Shanzea would keep him that way until the last minute.

  Evaeros and Senjiita looked up at Shanzea’s entry. She nodded at them and swept her eyes around the room. Beloris, and the massively obese host Xanatos currently inhabited, stayed focused on the display. Jenny lay drugged and unconscious in the seat next to Arsus. Randuu had explained the situation to Shanzea on her way in. Nasty bit of work, as Shanzea saw it, and she wasn’t happy. You could mess with the simulants, but you didn’t mess with your own. Jenny was family.

  “Perillia’s ship is docking,” Shanzea stated to the room. When they didn’t respond, she moved to the front row and plopped down in the seat next to Jenny. “I’d hate to be one of your enemies Arsus. Considering how you treat your…”

  “Shut up.” Arsus clenched his jaw. “Randuu and Beloris understand my reasons. Valruun would too, if he weren’t bricked. And bear in mind why Valruun is bricked and who blew his spine in half.”

  Shanzea’s nostrils flared. “Jenny’s one of us.”

  “She is,” agreed Arsus. “But she’s also a child. So is Lewis. After a few hundred jumps, they will develop some experience, and hopefully some wisdom. Until then, it’s up to us teach them. We have to guide them. Mold them. Control them.”

  Shanzea shook her head. “Control over others is your obsession, Arsus. The rest of us don’t share it, and don’t appreciate it. Let them make their own choices, and their own mistakes. That’s how they’ll learn.”

  Arsus took a deep breath and rolled his eyes. “I’ll awaken Jenny soon. When I do, be ready to brick her. I’ll give her a chance to watch, but that’s all. Nothing will be allowed to compromise my trap. Nothing, Shanzea. We’re almost there.”

  “This better be worth it,” she growled.

  “It will be.”

  “He’s ramping up to REM,” said the nurse down in the operating theatre. “I’m getting theta waves now. They’re growing stronger. He’s beginning to dream.”

  “To sleep,” whispered Shanzea, “perchance to dream, there's the rub. For in this sleep of death what dreams may come…”

  “Don’t bore me with Shakespeare,” grumbled Arsus. “If you’d ever met him, you’d know he was a plagiaristic idiot.”

  Shanzea frowned. “He was not a plagiarist. He was inspired.”

  A crackling sounded from the speakers in the room before Arsus could respond. They all watched the screen as shapes began to form recognizable images. A car’s dash appeared, and controls. A windshield and a street. White knuckled hands clenching a steering wheel. A buzzing male voice chanting, “come on, come on…”

  Randuu adjusted the filters further and modified the electromagnetic induction until the image became crisp. They were seeing Lewis Herman’s dreams. Detailed, but still subject to his memory, their accuracy was incomplete, but sufficient. The brain was an interpretation engine, and so was the software Randuu had composed to decipher the signals. Software and equipment that wouldn’t otherwise exist here for another hundred years.

  Ahead, train tracks came into view. Crossing arms and flashing lights – the lights of two ambulances and several police cars. A uniformed man held up his hand to halt the vehicle. “Park,” Lewis snapped. The car’s dash lights indicated a holding pattern. The door opened and he got out, approaching the officer.

  “I’m sorry, sir, there’s been an accident,” said the policeman. “You’ll have to wait or go around. This is going to take some time.”

  “Please,” Lewis begged, “my wife… she called me. She got cut off. She said she was crossing the tracks. Listen.” He raised his watch and played the audio. A woman’s voice spoke over the tiny speaker. “I just got to the tracks and the damn crossing arms dropped. Looks like the train’s still a long way off. I can see the light. Screw it. I’m driving around. I’ll talk to you later.” Lewis lowered his arm. “I came as soon as I got the message. Is she alright?”

  The police officer stared at Lewis with a pitifully inadequate expression of sympathy and then lowered his eyes. His lips twisted. “What’s your wife’s name?” he asked.

  “Brenda Herman.”

  A burst of condensation blew like smoke from the officer’s nostrils, as if he’d been punched in the gut. He looked ready to vomit. “And your name?”

  “Lewis Herman.”

  “And your child. What was his name?”

  “My… how did you know I had a… WAS!? No, no, no…”

  The view lurched forward then from side to side and the officer’s arms flew out, trying to stop Lewis from going any further. “HEY! Stay here!” he shouted. “STOP!”

  Lewis struggled. “BRENDA!” he screamed. “SCOTTY!” Pushing away, he broke free and ran past the officer, past the police cars. Vehicles and people blurred by.

  The officer shouted a final plea. “Mister Herman. You don’t want to do this. PLEASE!”

  Up in the observation lounge above the operating theater, Shanzea rose to her feet. Focused on the screen, no one said a word. They saw what Lewis Herman had seen, and none of the jumpers discounted the effect, for each in turn had suffered their own turmoil in different lives. Being a jumper, it was inevitable one would lose a loved one many times. But this was a first life, Lewis Herman’s first, and he’d seen this as a simulant, an ignorant flea in the great machine without a glimmer of the truth. To him, there was only life or death, and this particular death meant everything to him. It defined him, forged his future. Made him who he was.

  There should have been blood everywhere, but the wood and the gravel of the tracks had soaked it up, and it was night. Plus the lights of the police and the emergency vehicles glowed with red, disguising it.

  The train had caught Brenda Herman head-on, pushing her under the steel wheels and slicing her to ribbons. Lewis arrived just as a paramedic was lifting her head. The upper half had been chopped at the jawline, but the eyes were there, still partially open they stared into an endless void. It was the expression that haunted him, the vision tormenting his dreams. Two half-closed eyes staring out of a dismembered head with a sorrowful expression of regret and fear.

  As for his son, it was just as bad. Bits and pieces of Scotty Herman lay scattered over the tracks. Entrails, an arm, a piece of a foot. His naked lower torso severed at the waist, still clothed in a diaper. Arsus, Shanzea, and the other jumpers heard Lewis’s horrible gut-reaching screams. They watched as the police officer and medical technicians surrounded him. They pulled him down and took him away strapped to a portable gurney. All the while his cries for Brenda echoed in the speakers, continuous and unrelenting. They were the screams of someone who wanted to die – desperately needed to die.

  When the screaming did end, the image shifted and an elderly man appeared on screen. White haired and stately looking, he wore a dinner suit reminiscent of some culture unidentified with the current one. He drew back a bottle of water from Lewis’s lips and smiled at him. “All over. Still in one piece? You did well. Quite a spike! I think we’re finished with the markers.”

  Lewis coughed on the water. “Damn you to HELL,” he rasped in a raw hoarse voice.

  “Rather difficult, I imagine. Considering you don’t even believe in Hell.”

  “For you, I’ll make an exception.”

  Shanzea’s eyes widened. “Is… is that Tanandor?” she gasped.

  “Shhh,” hissed Arsus. “This is what we ca
me for. He’s programming Lewis. Watch.”

  “Listen carefully, Lewis,” said the old man. “You have markers now, waypoints. Every time you jump, the mind you encounter will be different. Sometimes it will be easy to determine who and what you are because the thoughts will be alien and entirely divergent, but there are some that will be very similar to yourself. The key is to remember the beacons I’ve established in these sessions. Jacky Jacobson’s burning, and Brenda’s violent death are two points you can see shining brightly. As points, you can establish a vector between them. That vector leads from past to future. It’s your arrow. Pay attention to it. Can you establish the arrow now?”

  “ARROW!?” snapped Lewis. “Fuck your vector, Valon. Let me tell you where you can put your God Damn arrow.”

  “Rage. Understandable, but ultimately inconsequential.” Valon looked up in thought. “You know what I’ve learned about rage? It’s a distraction. Oh, we all get mad from time to time, but real honest rage? That’s only good in a physical contest, and this isn’t one of those. It is interesting, though. I used my interface to seek the right candidate for what I need done. By necessity that included being unafraid of death. Not fearless, but willing to die. If your wife and child had survived, I doubt you would have met my criteria.” He shrugged and turned to his computer, raising his finger over the keyboard. “Establish the arrow, Lewis, or I’ll make you very uncomfortable. Have you forgotten I can induce the worst pain you’ve ever felt?”

  “You just did.”

  “Touché. But if I press this button, you’ll change your mind. Is resistance worth it? You don’t have anything to gain.”

  Lewis pinched his eyes shut. The display went dark. “If I give you your arrow, what will you give me?”

  “I’ll answer another question, if that’s what you want.”

  A strange landscape of optical spheres hovered before the observers in the operating room’s observation suite. Lewis Herman’s memories, or his visual representation of them, glowed in his imagination. What Lewis sensed of them, the others couldn’t know, but it was surely far more than mere visual appearance. What they saw as symbolic, Lewis felt as conceptual. Like glancing at a title and knowing the entire book. Two of the spheres seemed denser than the others, one of them far back in the distance, the other closer, but still behind. A funnel of light appeared. Flashing from the distance forward, it passed the closer sphere and moved onward into the future.

  “There,” said Lewis. “From Jacky to Brenda and on. There’s your damn arrow Valon.”

  “Perfect.” Valon looked up from his computer screen. “And that’s all there is to it. Know who you are, where you’ve come from, and where you’re going. That’s the trick. Time is linear, even when it isn’t. That’s because it’s relative. Lose that, and your mentality will drift. You’ll become… unhinged in time, lost. But you don’t need to take my word for it. You’ll experience the mind of another soon enough.” He leaned back in his chair and considered his computer console. “And now it’s time for the next lesson, so I’m shutting you down.”

  “You owe me the answer to a question.”

  “Later. I have some things to take care of. The last will and testament of a wealthy man. You might not think it of me, but there are those I’ve come to care for. Final preparations need to be made. Don’t worry, though, I’m not done with you yet.”

  “No more,” croaked Lewis.

  “Oh relax,” said Valon in a comforting voice. “The worst is behind you. What’s left is only physical pain, and only so long as you wish it. A choice! But you’ll understand soon. For now, there’s some mental processing to complete. That will take several hours, but you won’t be aware of it.” His finger descended and Lewis’s vision went black.

  “He’s dropped into delta again,” called the nurse. “And I’m getting some signs of arrhythmia. This is stressing his heart.”

  “I don’t care,” shouted Arsus over the intercom. “Get him back now.”

  “I’m on it.” Randuu’s voice came through the speakers. “I’m ramping him back up. This will simulate a wake-sleep cycle. Don’t worry, I won’t let him regain consciousness, but there’s an intermediary stage. Give me a few minutes.”

  Arsus bit his lip. Shanzea sat back down. Evaeros went to the door and summoned the attendant outside, asking for more coffee. Without getting up, Xanatos shouted for popcorn.

  The attendant apologized. “We don’t carry that type of food. The station’s stocks are provided in bags for low gravity and easy cleanup. You know, space food. It’s been reconstituted and stored as a paste.”

  From his seat, Xanatos debated with the young Starman. Hearing the options, he settled on an order of seven bags of hot dog paste and four bags of ‘liquid’ peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Beloris requested whiskey and soda since they didn’t have any vodka. The attendant explained they didn’t uses glass containers on the station.

  “Enh,” grunted Beloris. “You have whiskey in plastic bottle?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Bring plastic bottle of whiskey then, and bottle of soda.”

  “Right away.”

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  From his seat in Freedom-3’s command center Colonel Barokinte watched the flashes of nuclear detonation around the force-bubble. Regardless of evacuation attempts, civilian casualties were undoubtedly massive. He consoled himself with the fact that the civilians would have been under the bubble in minutes anyway. Being incinerated was a quick death, a mercy. Of course, they didn’t really know what happened to matter under the bubble either, so... No, it was mercy. That's what he'd believe, and that's what he'd state for the history books - if there were any written after this.

  White flashes sparkled like fireworks around the periphery of the outer edge, blossoming and fading to red. Temperatures equivalent to the surface of the sun burned a circular scar around the periphery of France. Xrays and ultraviolet radiation shimmered in their detector arrays. Computers clicked and whirled, recording everything.

  “Any sign of slowing?” asked the Colonel.

  One of the scanner techs shook his head. “No, sir. From what I can tell, the shockwaves had no effect. The bubble is expanding over the impacts.”

  A beeping sounded from the Colonel’s console, demanding his attention. US Central Command had sent him a class-1 notification. His heart skipped a beat. With half the world’s leaders enroute to Defcon-1 sanctuaries, and birds from both sides burning a crop circle over Europe, it couldn’t be good.

  Pulling his keyboard closer, he entered his pass code and brought it up. As he read, a smile slowly curled in the corner of his mouth. It was from Admiral Wright. Saboteurs were suspected at Freedom-1, and Freedom-3 had been selected as the Eagle’s roost. The President and the Vice President had switched places. Falcon now carried the Eagle and the hope of the free world.

  Colonel Barokinte pushed the keyboard away and called to his crew. “Attention, I have an announcement to make. Falcon has traded places with Eagle. When Eagle docks, we will officially become StarCore One – the White House in space.” Cheering rang out, and the Colonel waved his hands. “Alright, people. I know it’s exciting, but let’s not lose sight of priorities. No one else on the station is to know of this until Eagle gives the go-ahead. Let’s make damn sure the comfort facilities are in top-notch shape.” He swiveled his chair to the left. “Quarter Master,” he said, directing his commands to a tall African American man. “The onus for Eagle’s comfort is on you. Prep the Presidential Suite, and make ready for the first family.”

  The man rose to his feet. “Sir. I’ll take care of everything personally.”

  At the station’s computer console, Chief Tech Henry Masterson stood as well. “Colonel,” he stated, “I’m worried about the CPU heating. I should have a look at the hardware myself. I think I can reboot individual sections one at a time. Shouldn’t be too much of a load on the system, and I can get it done before Eagle docks.”


  “Is it necessary?” asked the Colonel.

  “I think so, Sir. There’s a massive amount of traffic being fed over the system through the medical lab. Our NSA visitors have co-opted all the connections. I suspect they’re overclocking, but a reboot should fix it. If I do nothing, then automatic docking systems may error when Eagle’s shuttle links with the airlock.”

  “Do it. Starman Richardson, take the Chief’s console and watch the heat in those CPUs. Let me know if it gets critical.” He swiveled his chair to the left and faced Lieutenant Hansen, his security officer. “Donny, saboteurs were discovered on board Freedom-1. We need to be alert for any unusual activity. I want armed men stationed at all class-3 vulnerabilities and above. Double up on the reactor core.”

  Lieutenant Donald Hansen nodded. “Figured as much. I already sent the orders. You know, Markus, after last night’s poker game, you’re luck has really changed. What are the odds Eagle would swap places with Falcon?”

  The Colonel smiled. “Maybe it’s karma after losing my shirt to you. It’ll be a while before we get back to our nightly games though. Hosting Eagle might be an honor, but we can expect extra shifts because of it.”

  “Sir,” said the Communications officer. “Doctor McTavish is calling from the Physics lab.” She raised her eyebrows. “Do you want to speak with him?”

  “My console,” replied the Colonel. Flipping the switches he brought the Doctor’s image up on his chair’s right screen. “What have you got, McTavish?”

  “Spectral analysis of the ultraviolent radiation ceased two minutes after areal detonation of the warheads.” The bald sixty year old man tugged at his uniform and frowned. “When the bubble expanded to encompass the impact zones, we lost all traces of radioactivity, including thermal, radio, and magnetic. Even our seismic stations in the Atlantic saw a complete cessation of activity. It was as if the nuclear weapons hadn’t been used. If I didn’t know better, I’d say time itself was frozen. Or reversed.”