gazed down the ice cavern, which formed a perfect rectangle pointing straight into the side of this frozen and currently lifeless planet known as Steignar. He strained to see some sort of curvature to the walkway, but still found himself thinking that it would continue on this straight path forever.
I should be frightened, he thought, as he left the transport ship and started down the hallway. What if the air vents fail, or my lantern goes out?
But it didn’t matter. This terraforming organization was well regarded, and since these tunnels were expected to hold up for at least several hundred years, he knew he had no reason to worry. But still, he wanted to feel something.
Nothing else seems to matter anymore, he thought as Meiylan’s face appeared in his mind, blocking the view of the endless hallway. He walked blankly for a time, staring at her, wishing against his concept of reality that she would either go away and allow his mind to rest, or manifest herself in his physical universe and let him be with her again. But as he wished again and again, something from within, one of his seemingly deepest emotions, told him he would be doomed to spend the rest of his life yearning for someone he could not have.
“What’s wrong with me?” he asked himself. It’s been
three years… this is not normal… or healthy.
Kilarian smacked himself on the side of his head, as Meiylan used to do when she had an annoying song playing through her mind. He forced his thoughts away from her. It wasn’t like he didn’t have more important things to think about.
An alien thing, like a computer-creature in a giant egg, with something that looks like either space or water propulsion… This is how his old friend, Seirani, had described the thing they had found, frozen kilometers below the planet’s surface. He needed to go back to trying to focus his mind and prepare it for linking with a brand new creature… perhaps even one that he’d never experienced in his studies. It was tremendously important to be in the right frame of mind for these types of things.
It all should have been strange and interesting and exciting enough to distract his mind, but as his thoughts drifted again to the girl he believed he had loved, he became frustrated with her. He was about to engage himself in something that could potentially change things in the world of artificial organisms. He wanted to focus.
Damn it! he thought and screamed at her in his mind, and finally forced her temporarily from his thoughts. He focused on the long hallway, careful not to slip on the ice, pulled his hood tightly over his head, and proceeded to blank his mind.
Kilarian
felt his eyes narrow and head cock subconsciously as the hatch cranked open to reveal the spacecraft within the large storage hangar. The craft had no wings, no windows, no antennae, no landing gear, and as far as he could tell, no door. In fact, nothing marred the smooth, black surface of the egg-shaped spacecraft, except the harness in which it sat.
“So your expertise is…” Lithinae started.
“Mindlinking abilities of artificial life forms,” Kilarian answered.
“So could you start us off by telling us whether we should call this a computer or a creature… or both?”
Kilarian walked carefully across the ice floor to gaze at the object and finally reached out to touch its gleaming and smooth surface. He glanced at Seirani, one of Lithinae’s partners in the terraforming project, a friend Kilarian hadn’t seen in five years. She raised her eyebrows questioningly.
“Seirani here thinks you can help us figure this out,” Lithinae said.
“Maybe,” Kilarian answered. “My real proficiency lies in actually making mental contact with artificial life forms.”
“We think its dead,” Lithinae answered. “…or turned off… or something. We haven’t been able to make any sort of contact… though I grant you, we have not had a great deal of time to deal with this issue. Whatever it is, it’s not causing anyone any harm.”
“You found it frozen in the ice, correct?” Kilarian asked.
“About a kilometer below the surface. Near a large body of water.”
“Perhaps some of its pathways are still intact. There’s a number of scans I can run, and perhaps give it a few jolts of various mental and electrical signals. Perhaps I can spark enough life out of it to get a half-second vision of what it is… assuming it is, in fact, a creature, and assuming it died as it froze on this planet.”
“I’ve never heard of a creature with self-powered space flight.”
“I don’t see any thrusters.”
“In the back,” Seirani pointed at one end of the craft, indicating an intricate series of small holes.
“How do you know this is a spacecraft?”
“We’ve done x-rays and found what must be some sort of propulsion system.”
“It couldn’t be a bomb, right? Perhaps something that didn’t go off in a previously forgotten terraforming attempt.”
“There have been no previous terraforming attempts on Steignar, and this doesn’t look like any terraforming nuke I’ve ever seen.”
“Seirani said it might be an underwater propulsion system?”
“That would make more sense in a way, but this planet has been solid ice for millions of years. The ice around the craft was approximately one thousand years old… but there’s no records of anything like this from that time period. We’ve searched every database available on this planet.”
“But you say this thing is carbon-based?” Kilarian asked.
“There is carbon in most sections of the craft, but there’s all sorts of other materials, metals, silicon, water, plastics, traces of diamond.” Lithinae answered. “That’s why we think it could be some sort of mix of both creature and computer. Is it possible for an artificial life form to develop an organ that could provide propulsion?”
“Theoretically possible,” Kilarian said. “Not very likely, though. Certainly not within a mere ten thousand years.” He gazed for another moment. “What does the internal layout of the craft look like?”
“Complex. Millions of tiny veins, plus larger objects that we cannot figure out, then sections of hard metal. It doesn’t seem to be used to carry anything—no room for passengers or cargo.”
“It would barely be large enough to carry one human in stasis, even if it could.”
“Exactly.”
“Well then it looks like you have a mystery…” Kilarian said. “But if you can bring me a large padded chair that I can lean back in and a computer interface, so that I can sit here and stare at it and attempt to break my mind into some of its pathways, perhaps I can give you a little more information.”
Seirani
watched from several paces as Kilarian jumped into his recliner facing the mystery-craft, and hastily plugged the computer link into the back of his skull. He jolted momentarily, then relaxed and leaned back.
“Need a pillow?” she asked.
“No,” he replied. “But I need water.
“Set them up just in case,” he said. “You don’t have anything else to do? When I say a long time, I mean in human terms, not computer. I’m talking six or eight hours. I want to watch this thing thaw out.”
Seirani strolled to the manual computer interface and set up the safety monitors, found the consoles and placed them on Kilarian’s chest and head. “Thank you for taking this so seriously, Kilarian,” she said. They had hardly spoken since he’d arrived, and not about anything unrelated to the craft. He seemed too absorbed in this work to even acknowledge their old friendship.
“What are you doing now?” she asked.
He paused a moment to answer. “I’m running a simple electrical scan and an infrared scan. Then I’m going to move onto some of the more complex electro-chemical signals and a tachyon scan.”
“Can you keep me informed?”
“Maybe,” he replied. “You can jump into the system and see for yourself if you wish.”
Seirani gazed at the craft for a moment, watching the various instruments lowering themselves to scan and poke at the object. “I’ll get your water,” she said, and began wandering toward the cafeteria.
Kilarian
marveled at the complexity of the craft, seeing the internal workings in something similar to a dramatic visual image. He stared intently using a combination of several scans, digging deeper and deeper into the mechanical and chemical workings of this craft, but still finding no indication of movement.
The craft was clearly more than one thousand years old, but how much older was difficult to tell. But different parts of the craft appeared to be different ages, ranging from less than a century—which shouldn’t have been possible, considering it’s state—to more than two thousand years. And the materials used in construction were so wide in variety that even now, the computer had not finished searching and counting.
He slowly transferred focus back to other, more complex scans and impulses, but as he released concentration on some of the more basic, physical scans, something seemed to shift, though he could not tell whether it was within himself, the computer systems, or the alien object.
So he went back to the x-rays and physical-object scans, but forced his consciousness rapidly through the computer pathways, instead of being careful. And a new area of the craft opened up momentarily, then seemed to dissolve into an illusion.
“What the fuck is this?” he said through his physical body. Seirani replied, but he tuned her out.
He pressed on the strange area and immediately found himself scared and confused. He pressed harder and realized he had no idea why he was curious about this object. He pressed slowly, but still could not see past the illusion, but found himself losing grip on his memory, and finally realized he did not know where he was or what was happening, and could not remember what form of reality he inhabited.
Who am I? he wondered, a moment before beginning his retreat. Kilarian’s memory returned within a few real-time seconds, but left him practically paralyzed from shock. Whatever had just happened, didn’t seem possible within his concept of the universe, as though this alien ship had a tiny bubble of un-reality integrated into its computer systems.
“Get in here, Seirani,” he said through his body. “I need you to watch me from within.”
“I need to find Lithinae or someone else to attend to the scanning arms,” she replied. “What’s going on?”
“Something funny,” he replied. “You need to run. Now.”
Kilarian brought in as many different scanners as were possible to keep watch over the object, realizing that anything could happen once he broke through the bubble. He waited, but nothing happened.
Finally he took a few nano-seconds to check some of the cameras set up in the hallway to watch Lithinae sprint painfully slowly toward the examination room.
When Seirani finally connected her consciousness to the computer, Kilarian relaxed, and allowed the memories to rush back momentarily. They had often played within various computer systems, a third of his lifetime ago, and he found himself smiling internally when he discovered she had not changed dramatically, and had not found herself bogged down with the hardships of life, as he felt he had since they had last seen each other.
Hey, she communicated.
Hey, check this out, Kilarian replied, and led her immediately to the apparant breach in reality.
She seemed to float around it, surrounding the bubble and examining it, then backing off. She took a moment to collect her perspective, but the confusion Kilarian sensed did not ease.
It’s a joke, she told him. There’s no other
possible explanation.
Or a breach of reality, he replied.
A lie? she asked.
Kilarian found himself overcome with a wave of fear as he realized she already understood the concept, and perhaps had a better grasp than himself. But he shoved the emotion aside, realizing his own feelings could not change the reality of the situation. He paused to prepare himself to force his consciousness into the area, and to charge a few of the scanning systems.
It looks like a redirection of electrical signals, Seirani
put Kilarians observations into her own words. It’s
like our computers are distracting you. It’s like something in there is telling
us this section isn’t interesting…
And Kilarian lurched, without a moment’s warning for Seirani or the alien, blanking his own mind and forcing the scans into straight beams to penetrate this confusion.
His consciousness entered the center of the craft, breaking the barrier.
And Kilarian recoiled in fear, struggling desperately to hold onto his balance, as though he were slipping from the edge of a cliff, but if he fell, it would mean the deaths of many thousands of people instead of just one.
But he regained his balance, and held back, just at the edge of what used to be the bubble hiding this section. Now the craft sat open for examination, the illusion no longer of use.
And Kilarian stared face-to-face at the object which terrified him so: several grams of liquid, orbiting a system of magnetic coils, within a perfect vacuum.
Lithinae
slid across the ice, keeping one hand steady on the craft. He reached to adjust a scanning arm, just as Kilarian screamed audibly.
He turned to watch Kilarian exit the computer systems at a rate that was anything but safe. His drinking straw fell to the ground as he lurched to a sitting position and drew a ragged breath, splashing sweat in every direction. He took several desperate breaths before he shouted one word: “Antimatter!” and went back to his breathing.
Lithinae came to his side, just as Kilarian seemed to relax, still clearly dividing his consciousness between the computer and his body. “There’s an antimatter containment system in here, complete with antimatter.”
“That can’t be possible,” said Lithinae.
“I’m staring at it right now,” Kilarian replied.
“It’s a thousand years old. It would have blown up half this continent when the systems froze.”
“Apparently it’s a very advanced system, and it’s still running and still adapting, even in it’s frozen state.”
“Is it going to break down as the temperature rises?”
Kilarian did not answer.
“Kilarian,” Lithinae started slowly. “If that antimatter explodes it’ll kill all of us. Even if we sent it to the other side of the planet, it would destroy everything we’ve worked for on Steignar.”
“I’m aware of that,” Kilarian answered, appearing to slip further back into the computer systems. “It looks like it’s maintaining a stable orbit. I need another minute to watch it…”
Lithinae tapped his feet anxiously as the seconds dragged by. Kilarian finally answered, “It almost appears to be compensating for the changes in environment.”
“What’s powering the system? Our scans didn’t register any sort of energy coming from that thing.”
“I can’t tell yet,” Kilarian replied. “Seirani just found something… it’s like a pulse… I’ve heard this before… but I thought it was a glitch in your own systems… it’s been constant this whole time, now that I think about it… I should have thought about this before.”
Lithinae checked the status of the scanning arms, finding they still did not need to be adjusted. Instead he wiped the sweat from Kilarian’s face with a hand towel.
“It’s alive,” said Kilarian from the back of his throat, as though he had no conscious control over the words. “It’s distorting my sense of reality.”
Kilarian’s face began to redden. He shook his head and repeated, “It’s distorting my sense of reality.”
“Are you okay?” Lithinae asked, and did not receive an answer.
And Lithinae moved to the manual computer interface and prepared to execute emergency procedures to pull Kilarian and Seirani back into their own bodies. He looked back at Kilarian, realizing he didn’t have any idea what Kilarian was doing. He could be fiddling with the antimatter containment, perhaps running its systems through his own consciousness in an attempt to better understand it, in which case pulling him out against his will could cause a misbalance and collapse the orbit of the antimatter.
But Kilarian could be going crazy in there. He could be trapped somehow.
“It’s distorting my sense of reality,” Kilarian said one more time. “Whatever this is it doesn’t like us very much.”
So Lithinae slid back to the computer screen to begin the painfully slow process of manually contacting Seirani and Kilarian to determine their activities and mental stabilities. But after just a few seconds, he heard a screaming breath, and turned to see Kilarian’s body lurch to life, drawing desperate breaths, as though he’d just been held under water for two minutes. His eyes opened wide, then focused on Lithinae, indicating Kilarian had probably completely exited the systems.
Lithinae turned to see Seirani return to her body in a similar manner. He watched as she calmed herself, then turned back to Kilarian, who was struggling to get the straw for his water back into his mouth with one hand and attempting to pull the link cable from his head with the other, but only succeeded in slapping himself in the back of the head and wedging the straw into his nose, then poking himself in the eye.
Lithinae glanced between the two, watching them slowly regain their motor skills, too lost in thought to help. When they had both disconnected, they relaxed into their seats and stared at him.
“So,” Lithinae started. “Is it animal or is it computer?”
Seirani laughed.
“I don’t think this thing can even be categorized like that,” Kilarian replied.
Seirani shook her head and stared again. “Well, that raised more questions than it answered.”
Seirani
found Kilarian less than a quarter hour later after changing their clothes, sitting again, near the mystery craft. She sat on a stool next to him and watched a few of her grunt workers preparing the harnesses to load the object back onto the cargo transport to be taken to the spaceport. They stared quietly for a time.
“Do you think the antimatter containment is stable?” she asked, already knowing the answer.
“It seemed stable,” Kilarian shrugged. “But it was so confusing in there that I just don’t know.”
“At four kilometers per hour that cargo transport will take two days to get to the outgoing ships.”
He nodded, then paused. “To be honest I’m a little scared.”
“Hey, I’m terrified that thing’s going to blow too. It’ll kill everyone, destroy all plans for this planet. You’re not the only one who’s scared.”
“I’m not scared for us or your terraforming operation. I’m scared for the fabric of reality.”
“I don’t think reality will collapse,” she tried to comfort. “It can’t be what you’re thinking.”
“Pe redirected our thoughts to distract us and make us think there was nothing there when there was. That’s a lie, and as we all know, one lie has the potential to collapse all of human reality.”
“But you’re jumping to conclusions. It could be a joke. We could be delusional… there’s all sorts of rational explanations. It could be a mistake—pe’s close to death so per sense of reality might be confused.”
“I hope you’re right… I guess I should just keep faith… but everything looks so weird to me… like our energy isn’t condensing the way it always has, like all matter could just dissolve to nothingness.” They paused several long moments. “But it’s not all terror. I’m scared but I’m also enthralled. Absolutely fascinated… and that’s rare for me. Refreshing.”
She nodded and smiled. Then they sat silently, Seirani almost wondering if he even remembered their friendship from so long ago. She finally broke the silence with the standard question, “So what have you been up to all these years?”
And of course, he gave the standard, uncomfortable reply, “Not much.” Then they sat silently again until Kilarian seemed to force out a real answer. “…I’ve been studying mindlinks, as usual, communicating mostly with offshoots of dolphin and monkey species whose minds have already been computer enhanced… I’d like to study some of the more complex species that have been coming out in the last thousand years…”
But just as she thought they’d strike up a pleasant conversation, one of the workers turned to call out to them, “All done. We’re ready to load per up.”
Seirani sighed. “You ready to link up and check it out? Warn it that we’re going to start moving it.”
“If you think it’ll do any good…” He pulled the link cable from his side and cautiously plugged it into the back of his head.
“Hmmm…” he commented. “Hmmm… it’s different in here… more friendly… the antimatter isn’t hidden. Communication is still sketchy… it’s so alien still… antimatter still seems stable… It seems a little more alive now… If it made the trek here, I’d say it would be just as capable of making it back but I still can’t seem to make a real connection of understanding…”
And a moment later he disconnected. He shook his head. “Let’s just do it.”
Kilarian
awoke to the vision of Meiylan’s face as he had for so many mornings, accompanied with the standard depression and longing. And behind her, he thought of his perception of reality. All his logic told him that she was gone, that she had found another love and moved away, but after his experience with the alien, it seemed as though logic was not as solid as it would appear.
If reality were truly breaking down, perhaps Meiylan could somehow come back to him… to defy all logic… as the alien antimatter containment systems had done.
And as his thoughts shifted slowly to the craft, he became more and more certain that reality would, in fact, collapse. One lie can create a chain reaction that will destroy everything…
But he did not feel the fear that such a collapse should have brought. Instead, he felt a growing sense of power, as he realized he was the only one who knew of this lie, and the only one who had a chance to affect its outcome.
…and perhaps to control it in such a way as to bring back his lost love.
But these thoughts only lasted a few seconds, until he realized what had brought him out of sleep: a communication from Seirani.
“Kilarian,” she said. “Are you awake?”
“What?” he answered. “I am now. What’s going on? Is there a problem with the spacecraft? It hasn’t reached the port yet has it?”
“No,” said seirani slowly. “The ship appears stable… the antimatter as well… but there have been other plot developments that are going to distract us from that particular item.”
“What’s going on?”
“We’ve found more of them.”
“How many?”
“Hundreds. Possibly thousands. We don’t know yet.”
Kilarian sighed. “Okay, I’ll get my clothes on.”
Kilarian
stared across the frozen wasteland, gazing first at the mountains, many kilometers away, the small hills, the flatland in the distance, then at the terrain that he now needed to traverse. He switched quickly from normal view, to an ion scan, to infrared, then back again, testing his vision possibilities. He moved his arms, lifting the half-ton of metal as easily as he would his own arm, then ran his senses down his body, feeling every artificial nerve, and testing every accessory.
He gazed at his feet for a moment, the twelve meter tank treads that replaced his normal leg functions. He tried, just for fun, to move his knees, but found them locked into position. Rotating his vision to look behind him, Kilarian watched the other robots emerging from the hangar. They didn’t pause cautiously as Kilarian had, instead began scooting toward the flatland in the distance as soon as they exited the building.
He followed, feeling every ice chunk and crack as vividly as he would if he were walking barefoot, focusing on his balance.
“It’s a beautiful landscape is it not?” Seirani asked as her robot pulled along side him.
“Very beautiful,” he replied, thinking nothing of the view, but only of what they might find today, under the ice.
“I like to get in a robot sometimes and just wander. I’ve gone all day a few times, forgotten all about food and sleep… just spent the day looking at the ice formations.”
Kilarian broadcast his consciousness toward the other robot, connecting with Seirani for a moment and feeling her emotions as they related to the planet’s surface, seeing the beauty as she saw it. Then he came back to his own reality and they continued rolling, side by side, across the snow and ice.
Kilarian
leaned the bulk of his mechanical body forward to gaze straight down the circular hole, ten meters in diameter, that had been drilled into the ice just a few hours earlier. Extending his consciousness, he touched the single submarine and its operator, Cauri, that explored the lake buried deep below the ice, at the end of this hole, through which he could not see. He tuned into the operators gaze, to see the alien crafts scattered across the bottom and sides of the giant water pocket. Some appeared as mere distant dots and others formed distinct egg shapes. There were too many to count.
Kilarian moved back from the hole and stood at a safe
distance. Even with his mind engrossed in this multiple-ton machine and the
dangerous task at hand, the thought of Meiylan returned, along with the sense
of loneliness, just for a moment. But at the same time, realized how little he
had thought of her recently. Kilarian thought to himself,
Perhaps that is the solution: to have so many interesting things to distract
you, that she slips from your mind, and other people and activities take her
place as your obsession.
Perhaps this alien spacecraft will become my obsession…
Are you ready to grab one? Lithinae asked.
As ready as I’ll ever be, Cauri replied. Which one should I go for? He scanned the area, focusing on dozens of individual crafts for a split second each, broadcasting vividly for all to see.
They all look the same, said Seirani.
They all look the same to me too, Lithinae said. Just pick one.
Run a brain scan on a few of them, actually… Kilarian reached out to take a small amount of control over the submarine, and to organize the combination of scans that he felt would be most likely to reveal a sign of life. Cauri relinquished easily, melding their minds to jointly control the submarine, still moving slowly across the many hectares of aliens, to give Kilarian a clear view of each.
But this time the scans did not wish to penetrate the outer shells of the crafts, except for moments at a time. A force seemed to be redirecting attention around the crafts in the same way the first alien had redirected his attention from the antimatter. This time, however, the forces did not attempt to redefine reality by denying the existence of the crafts, but instead simply refused communication.
But a few did not have such strong shells, and allowed a small percentage of his scans to get through. Kilarian could not see any internal difference from these crafts and the one that was still traveling to the spaceport.
Pick that one, Kilarian pointed to one craft that seemed weaker than the others.
Cauri sighed mentally as Kilarian pulled his consciousness back slightly. He reached out, extending his torch and began melting the ice surrounding the craft.
Your hand is shaking, Lithinae said.
I’m scared, Cauri replied. I’ve never handled antimatter before.
Well, we can’t have you shaking like that when you’re
handling antimatter. Can’t the sub’s computer help you stabalize
things?
And in answer, Cauri took hold of Kilarian and drew him back into the workings of the submarine. Together they controlled the arm, drawing it steadily, confidently, across the ice, cutting a deep gouge to outline the tiny alien craft.
You have a knack for the mindlink,
Lithinae told Kilarian. Impressive control at such
a distance, and with computers you’ve never even met
before.
Don’t jinx me, Kilarian replied, trying to focus on the task, feeling Cauri’s consciousness melding with his own and relaxing. The submarine operator began retaking more control over the arms, but Kilarian stuck by his side, carefully turning his attention to the scans emanating from the front and from the arms of the sub.
Kilarian focused on the alien, tapping playfully but incessantly at its mental defenses. He continued for several long minutes, confident that eventually something would happen, and soon forgot to pay attention to the submarine that his consciousness remotely inhabited.
As Cauri pulled the craft from the side of the ice, and cradled it in his arms, the alien’s shielding began to break down. Kilarian busted through, and saw a craft very similar to the one he had viewed in the storage facility. There was antimatter, unhidden, but maintaining a stable orbit.
And Kilarian felt life; a powerful emotion.
There it is, said Kilarian to the rest of the
team. It’s alive. I can’t understand what it is yet, but I can tell you that
it has a consciousness.
I don’t understand, Lithinae
replied. I can’t feel anything from it.
Quit trying to classify it as computer or animal, Kilarian
replied. It is both; but the computer and the animal are engaging in such
intricate communication that it will never be possible to tell one from the
other. Just feel it for what it is. It is an entity.
As Lithinae’s consciousness entered the spacecraft, Kilarian’s exited, then relaxed a moment.
I feel it now, Lithinae
replied. It could fight me when I focused on one or the other.
The submarine started its ascent, and Kilarian’s consciousness wandered the craft. After a moment he noticed something out of place: heating elements engaged along the arms and claws that grasped the alien.
What are these? he asked Cauri. Why are you warming it up? That was not part of
the plan.
I thought you did that.
Why didn’t you question me about that? Kilarian forced his consciousness back into the arms of the sub and attempted to turn off the elements, but found himself suddenly confused, and terrified that he did not know which direction was up.
He pulled away, melding again with Cauri to wonder at the malfunctioning arm. After a moment, Cauri moved in and successfully deactivated the heating elements, then moved away, somehow terrified at his own arms.
It’s too late, Cauri told them.
It’s too late for what? Kilarian asked, beginning to lose his connection with the collective consciousness of the submarine. The whole thing was becoming confusing, and Kilarian had to pull his consciousness further from the computer, focusing mainly on the emotions emanating from Cauri.
What’s going on? Lithinae asked.
They’ve melted, Cauri
said. I don’t understand what’s going on.
But Kilarian understood. The alien was taking over not only the sub’s computer, but Cauri’s consciousness. And as Kilarian subconsciously explained this to Cauri, the sub’s operator made the panicked decision to drop the alien, attempted the maneuver and found he’d already lost too much control then slipped from the system.
With the last bits of connectivity, Kilarian watched the inside of the sub from the safety camera mounted above Cauri’s body.
Cauri sprang to life, screaming, sweat splattering from his face. His head turned frantically about. He started to get up, then stopped, still screaming, tears beginning to stream from his eyes. He grasped frantically at the restraints that bound his physical body.
Kilarian forced his consciousness into the sub, fighting against the unexplainable emotions emanating from the alien, and helped draw Cauri back into the computer. Cauri pointed to the arms momentarily, his consciousness scrambling from one pathway to another until he was barely recognizable as Cauri. Focusing on the sub’s arms, he saw something was moving inside. A foreign liquid was slowly traveling from the claw toward the center of the sub.
Cauri’s consciousness had not weakened from the alien’s intrusion, but seemed incapable of grasping reality or forming a plan of action. Cauri fought the alien’s consciousness with everything he had, attacking the substance in the arms or the alien craft itself or the submarine’s operations that it now controlled, or the alien consciousness as a whole.
He fought without control or even a conscious thought that Kilarian could sense, losing all control of his craft.
The sub began to take damage as the two entities battled for control and survival, neither thinking much of their physical surroundings. The craft began to lose power. The thrusters died, the arms lost the grip on the alien, the crafts began to sink, and finally, life support began to fail.
Kilarian stared at the hole in the ice through his giant mechanical eyes. And as though to prove that she would never leave him alone, regardless of distractions, the vision of Meiylan appeared. But this time she judged him.
She would never respect me if I stood by and let this man die.
And Kilarian felt a surge of confidence now as he decided that if he were capable of saving Cauri’s life and becoming a hero, Meiylan would surely come back to him and love him again. All he would need to do is prove that he’s got a pair of balls between his legs, and she would come back. Somehow he was sure of this.
So Kilarian rolled forward and dropped into the hole.
Stop! Seirani forced her consciousness upon him.
You can’t get to him, Lithinae informed quickly.
Your robot will only function for a few minutes under
water, Seirani added. And there’s no telling if it can withstand the
pressure at that depth.
Kilarian exited the computer system, coming into his own body. For a moment he looked at the tiny cubicle in which he lay, strapped tightly to a reclined chair, and he braced himself for the collision with the water.
The room shook as his machine crashed through the ice and into the water. His body pressed painfully on the restraints from every angle, and he screamed. His body jostled for only a few seconds before his head slammed back into place and his body fell still. He attempted to reenter the computer but for several agonizing moments found the pain too intense to focus on the mindlink.
Relaxing, he took a deep breath, closed his eyes and tried again, slipping easily back into the mind of the robot. He popped the leg clamps, releasing the tank treads. As they floated away from the main section of the robot, he shouted within himself, Fuck! You’re an idiot, Kilarian, realizing he needed to get down to Cauri first, and the treads were good weight.
We don’t think you can make it to him and back, said
Seirani. Kilarian, don’t risk your life.
Kilarian fired the emergency maneuvering thrusters just in time to turn the bulk of the robot around in the water and grasp the treads. He asked the emotional forces around him if he were making the right decision and they came back with a clear reply stating that Meiylan would return if he succeeded.
But he realized it had nothing to do with her, or with outside forces controlling the universe, but in his own confidence. Success would prove to him that he was capable of manipulating the universe and courageous enough to put it into action. He would gain the skills to make her return himself.
The robot sank.
And Seirani’s consciousness touched his in a way that he couldn’t remember since their computer mind games of so many years ago. He understood the pain she would feel if he did not return to the surface.
After a moment, he decided to ignore her, and extended his consciousness to find Cauri still struggling in his submarine, but not before sending a goodbye to Seirani, just in case.
A moment after making contact, Cauri’s consciousness slipped from the computer, and Kilarian looked through the computer’s eye into the cage in which Cauri sat strapped to a recliner. He watched as the man frantically ripped off the restraints and unplugged his mindlink.
With Cauri’s panicked consciousness free from the sub’s computer, Kilarian found it easier to regain control away from the alien. He blew the arm clamps, dropping the subs arms and the alien craft, praying the antimatter would not collapse when the ship struck the bottom of the lake. But it didn’t matter now. Both crafts were already sinking. The alien didn’t seem to be worried about it… of course it was almost impossible to tell what the alien was thinking.
“Get to your escape capsule,” Kilarian said over the speakers inside Cauri’s cubicle.
Cauri fell to the ground beside his recliner, and began scrambling up the floor that was now a steep incline. “Escape capsule is flooded,” he shouted. “I’m gonna die. I’m gonna die.”
A darkness began creeping toward him from the corner of the tiny chamber, and Cauri scrambled away from it. Kilarian focused more closely and saw a black ooze, almost a liquid, inching its way up the incline in a slowly expanding, gravity-defying puddle.
Cauri began swearing incoherently, screaming and crying, clinging to the chair supports, and looking repeatedly back at the approaching alien.
“What are you doing?” Kilarian asked.
“It’s coming for me! It’s coming for me!” was Cauri’s only reply.
Kilarian felt pain again as the robot’s shell began to strain from the pressure. Kilarian gauged his depth, then his distance from Cauri, and sent the number back to Lithinae at the surface.
You’re actually holding up better than we expected,
Lithinae told him. But without Cauri’s
escape pod he still doesn’t stand much of a chance. The water would kill him,
of course, so you need to tow the whole sub to the surface. There’s no chance
of that unless one of you two take control of the engines.
So Kilarian focused on that job, finding the signals much closer now, and more reliable, while the alien presence had died off slightly when the bulk of it had been dropped. Kilarian forced his way into the system, ignoring the myriad of confusing emotions from the alien, and started up the engines, feeling the rumbling a moment later through the sub. He threw them on full, not knowing how long he would be able to maintain control. His consciousness jumped to navigation but found the alien already too powerful to allow him control of more than one system.
The sub already pointed upwards, but Kilarian still had to fire his maneuvering thrusters to full in order to obtain an intersecting course.
He watched the sub approach for several seconds, focusing as much attention as he could pull from the sub to time the firing of the robot’s grappling hook.
Seemingly in the same moment as the hook fired, the robot’s shell began to collapse, pressing painfully inward on many of its vital systems. The hook, however, flew straight, connecting and clamping to the nose of the sub, and Kilarian wasted no time releasing his tank treads, and firing his thrusters to spin his craft around in the water and begin heading back toward the surface. He pulled gently on the line to direct the craft toward the hole at the surface of the water, still holding strong to the engine power.
Kilarian looked at Cauri again, scrambling out of the pool of alien onto the harness chair that now sat at a ninety degree angle from its original position. Cauri clung to the sides, bracing his feet, then began slapping himself across his body, sending bits of the foreign creature splattering in every direction, clearing most of it from his outer clothing.
“I fell in it,” Cauri shouted. “And I cut my leg open—it’s in my pants! Kilarian, help me!”
“I’ll have you out of the water before you bleed to death,” Kilarian replied, still trying to focus on the approaching hole in the ice.
“It’s in my pants!” Cauri shouted back, slapping himself on the leg, near a tear and a bloodstain. He began frantically rubbing, then had to brace himself again to avoid falling into the still growing puddle at the bottom of the room. “It’s moving toward my cut!”
“Don’t panic,” Kilarian told him.
“I’m way beyond that point already.”
“Your fear will only make it worse.”
“Fuck you, Kilarian!” Cauri screamed, the tears streaming from his eyes. “It’s going to get inside me just like it got inside the sub.” And he continued slapping and rubbing his leg.
You’re approaching the hole, Lithinae
said. Release the sub’s engines at the last moment, then cling to the ice,
and you should be able to hold onto the sub by just the strength of your
robot.
Kilarian took a moment to relax, seeing Meiylan and remembering that this was all for her, then he came back just in time to shut down the sub’s engines and fire his own to full. The sub coasted, bouncing lightly off the surface ice, as Kilarian crashed through the few centimeters of ice already formed at the bottom of the access hole.
His right arm shot forth, firing every welding and heating torch, drilling five meters into the ice wall. As the bulk of the robot came back down, two arm clamps strained and broke, but the remaining four held strong, and he slammed into the ice, extending more clamps to connect and secure him, taking a moment to let the main arm cool and freeze into place.
Kilarian then refocused his attention to the other arm, and began pulling the sub to the surface, carefully monitoring his hold on the wall. Firing more heating elements on the surface of the sub, he pulled it into the ice, then released, and allowed the vehicle to freeze into place.
“Get me out of here!” Cauri shouted. “Get me out of here now!”
“You’re still depressurizing,” Lithinae told him.
“It doesn’t matter. I need to get out of here before—“ He screamed. “—it gets under my skin.” He began scrambling across the side of the wall, which now served as a crooked floor.
“Get to escape hatch 3,” Kilarian told him.
“Wait until you depressurize and we can get down and connect an escape pod to pull you up,” Lithinae said. “We don’t know anything about that substance. It probably won’t hurt you.”
“I disagree,” Cauri shouted. “I very much disagree with that statement! It’s telling me I should be scared… I should be terrified… and I am.”
“It’s a liquid, Cauri,” Lithinae spoke softly. “It can’t speak to you.”
“I think it’s inside me.”
Kilarian watched Cauri slap at his leg, face bright red and tears still streaming, then begin moving toward the escape hatch. “I’m coming out,” he said. “If you’re not there to catch me, I’m gonna die.”
“Even with your insulation suit, you can’t survive more than sixty seconds out there,” Lithinae told him. “Kilarian has a hold of your sub now. You’re not going anywhere. We’ll have a cable and a pod down to you within eight minutes.”
“Oh fuck,” Cauri said as he approached the escape hatch, finding another pool of alien in his way. “Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck. Oh fuck.”
“Cauri, stop,” Lithinae said. “Be patient.”
And Cauri lurched forward, toward the pool, then noticed it move and backed off. He spun nervously.
“Cauri, if you step out that escape hatch, you will catch the bends and hypothermia at the same time. You may or may not survive, and if you do it will be the most painful experience of your life.”
But Cauri didn’t care. He leapt into the puddle, splattering the creature in every direction, then leapt to the escape hatch and pulled the handle. The lid popped open, and Cauri crawled out painfully slowly, collapsing onto the top of the sub, and almost immediately began to shake.
In one quick motion, Kilarian released the submarine, moving the same arm within a split second to Cauri, who used the last of his strength to force his body onto the arm.
Kilarian popped his own escape hatch, whipped Cauri into position and shoved him into the hole. The ice cracked and broke and the sub fell back into the water. Kilarian held strong. The hatch closed, and Kilarian flooded the chamber with hot air for twenty seconds.
With this final task complete, Kilarian was forced from the computer, finding himself in his own body, taking frantic breaths, experiencing a pain that could not be compared to anything else he had experienced. He screamed.
Kilarian pulled the jack from his head and frantically worked his straps to allow himself to lean over the edge of the seat. He tried to vomit but found it impossible.
Everything began swirling. He saw the alien liquid seeping into his chamber from every corner, but could not remember its significance. Falling to the floor, he came face-to-face with the puddle, and watched it disintegrate, somehow knowing it was merely the decompression sickness and not a real life form.
His skin crawled. Clutching his stomach, he tried to vomit again but still found it impossible. The sweat poured from his face as he tried to focus on the burning and itching throughout the surface of his body, instead of allowing himself to be overcome by the abdominal pain.
Over his moans, he heard Cauri, straining to speak, the sound being amplified by the speakers inside his cubicle. “Tie me down,” he said. “You need to lock me up and don’t let anybody touch me and you can’t let me go no matter what I say. Lithinae—Seirani… I need to be quarantined.”
And Kilarian’s face collapsed to the floor, letting the situation slip from his mind.
Lithinae
pulled his chair next to Kilarian’s bed and began lightly shaking him. Seirani sat down on the opposite side, glancing at the brain monitor to confirm that he was still going to wake up.
Kilarian’s eyes twitched, taking half a minute to fully open. “What’s going on?” he asked.
“We’ve had you sedated for over twenty-four hours now,” Lithinae replied. “You’ve depressurized. We’ve scanned you for infections and cannot find anything. Physically you should be fine.”
“Infections?” Kilarian asked.
“Cauri is infected with something that is affecting his brain functions. We can’t begin to tell what it is.” Lithinae noticed his leg was bouncing, and he attempted to control it.
“How is Cauri?”
“He’s in a coma. We don’t know much more than that. We were hoping you could link up to him and try to figure some of this out.”
“You need a doctor with a specialty in computer-mind interaction. I deal more with artificial and abnormal life forms.”
“Whatever’s infected him is pretty abnormal, and I’d imagine artificial as artificial can be. Our doctors have already tried everything. We were hoping that since you seemed to understand the egg ship more than anyone else… and since the infection probably came from another craft just like the first one.”
Lithinae took a deep breath to calm himself. “We’ve decided to halt all terraforming work for as long as it takes to figure this out.”
“That’s gonna set you back,” Kilarian commented. “You have Cauri in quarantine?”
“Yes. Nobody’s touched him. The room is sealed airtight. We have tight surveillance. Anybody who gets near him has been thoroughly scanned before and after.”
“What about the ship—the original one we were looking at.”
“It’s parked on the cargo transport. It’s not being heated, and the transport is sealed. Nobody has the balls to get anywhere near that thing now, but it seems to us to be just as lifeless as the day we found it.”
“I don’t think it’s easy to tell with these things…”
“So do you think you’re feeling ready to take a look at Cauri, and then at the old spacecraft. Any kind of clue would help us to understand what’s going on here.”
Kilarian sighed, and Lithinae felt his own anxiety building.
“You should get a real expert down here, someone who focuses on mindlinking humans with artificial life forms. My understanding of the standard human brain is actually rather limited.”
“Well we don’t have the luxury of experts right now. Nobody is entering or leaving the planet until we figure out what’s going on. We need to know what kind of long term effects this is going to have on Cauri.”
“Are you feeling okay?” Seirani asked. “If you don’t have the energy we can wait.”
Lithinae glared at her momentarily, noticing his leg bouncing again.
“No,” Kilarian said. “I know how important this is. I’m getting up.” Seirani helped him remove the heart and brain monitors as Kilarian slid out of bed and started putting on his clothing.
He walked irritatingly slowly down the hallways to reach an interface terminal, holding Seirani’s shoulder for balance. “I’m afraid you might be putting too much hope in me,” Kilarian commented. “Perhaps I can feel more from the alien substance, but it’s not anything I can describe in words. Just vague emotions.”
Lithinae sighed, wanting to cry. “I’m grasping at straws here,” he said. “If we cancel production of microorganisms for as much as a week, it could disturb the preliminary ecosystem so much that it could set us back hundreds of years.”
Kilarian glanced at him and nodded gravely.
They arrived at an interface but Kilarian took a long moment to stretch and adjust his clothing before connecting his brain into the computer systems.
Lithinae sat down, careful to keep his anxious leg under control. He watched Kilarian for a time, then turned on a nearby screen to display Cauri, lying silently in bed, attached to a multitude of wires and hoses.
A couple minutes later Kilarian sat up, removed his connection and said, “Looks like we’ve still got a mystery.”
“What does that mean?” Lithinae asked.
“It means I couldn’t figure out anything more than what you’ve already told me. His brain is being affected by something. His whole body is being affected by something… it’s funny, but it almost felt like he was two people instead of just one… a dual consciousness human… but acting as one in a way that is not typical of split personality humans.” He paused as Lithinae tapped his foot. “I can’t tell you if he’s going to wake up anytime soon. I can’t even tell you if he’s going to survive. Like I said, you need a whole team of experts on this one. You need a molecular analyst to figure out what the infection is doing to his body…”
“And as I’ve told you, this planet is now quarantined until we can determine if this is a contagious threat and until we can figure out what to do about all that antimatter down there.”
“You may need to abandon the project… or find enough people to risk their lives in order to haul all those ships out of there.”
“The terraforming of Steignar has been my life…” and Lithinae’s heart began to sink.
“So you should start calling the experts out here. I’d imagine that if you wrote a description, making it interesting and suspenseful and describing everything we already know, you could convince some professionals to drop everything and come to the planet and take a look at everything from orbit.”
“Would that give them enough information? How detailed could their connection be from that distance?”
“It’s better than nothing.”
Lithinae sighed, looking for sympathy.
“Don’t look at me like that,” Kilarian said. “Some things take a long time before they’re explained.”
Seirani
spoke toward the speaker next to Kilarian’s door, “Can I come in, Kilarian?”
“I’ve got to get my pants on…” he replied. “…Okay. Now you can come in.”
She entered to see him still buttoning his clothing. “What are you doing?”
“Just waking up, actually.”
“I’m bored,” she stated.
“Oh, yeah,” he replied. “I’ve been putting in a lot of time lately showing the spacecraft and Cauri to everyone in orbit.”
“I don’t think any of us can see all the twists and turns of that creature’s consciousness like you can. Lithinae isn’t too thrilled by your performance here, but I’ve been very impressed by everything you’ve been able to do from inside a computer system… you’re so far beyond me now, it hardly seems like it was you that I used to play mindlink games with so long ago… except that I’ll always recognize your consciousness.”
Kilarian shook his head. “It’s only in comfortable situations that I’m capable of running so many systems at once through a mindlink.”
“Why is this comfortable for you? It’s cold here… you don’t know anyone.”
“Because you’re here,” he replied. “Your consciousness is familiar to me… and not judgemental… you have confidence in me.”
She smiled uncontrollably and felt her own comfort level rising. “I’m glad to hear I have such an effect on you.”
“I guess I’ve also never been involved in a series of mindlinkings that were so important to so many people. I can focus inside a computer like I can’t begin to in real life… old bullshit that I should have forgotten long ago keeps coming up … but inside a computer, that’s my entire world… or it can be, anyway. People I meet inside the system always love me until they meet me in person… if only we had sex within mindlinks, I could have anyone in the star system.”
They laughed.
“That sounds a bit egotistical,” Kilarian said. “Maybe not anyone in the star system, but I’d certainly be more attractive than I am now.”
As Seirani opened her mouth to tell Kilarian that she found him attractive outside of the computers, Lithinae’s voice overpowered their conversation from speakers in the ceiling.
“Hey guys, we have a change in circumstances.”
“Huh?” Seirani asked.
“Cauri’s awake. He’s not acting normal, but he’s aware and cognizant now.”
Seirani shook her head, then realized she should be happy, and laughed at the strangeness of her own emotions. “Why didn’t we have any idea he was going to wake up?”
“I don’t know and he won’t tell me. You should come down here and talk to him yourself.”
Seirani nodded as Kilarian started putting on his shoes. “Right. We’ll be there soon.”
As they walked the long hallways of ice, Seirani thought of starting their conversation back up, but at this point worried it would feel out of place.
They moved quickly, arriving at Cauri’s quarantine cell within just a few minutes. Seirani saw him pacing for a moment before he noticed them and sat down before the window separating them. He glared silently.
Lithinae sat at the window saying nothing as Kilarian and Seirani sat next to him. The four sat for a couple minutes before Cauri finally said, “Well, what’s going to happen here? Are you going to keep me in here for the rest of my life?”
“Only until we find out what’s infected you—if anything—and if it’s a threat to us or not. We’ve been over this before. I’m sorry Cauri. It’s by your own request. I have to worry about the safety of the whole colony. We’ll start scanning and testing you as soon as you’re ready.”
He shook his head. “I don’t want to be scanned and tested.”
“I understand that, but we must—for everyone’s safety. But we can put it off a little if you like. But the faster we do this, the faster you can get out of that cramped room, and the faster we can get on to the terraforming of this planet. If we wait too long our projects may lose a hold of the ecosystem, and it might set us back a hundred years or more.”
And Lithinae looked at Seirani, only long enough to show a few emotions that seemed almost alien for Lithinae: fear, frustration, rage, hidden behind a thin wall of his normally cordial disposition.
“If you fulfill my request, I will allow your scans. But you must fulfill my request first. Then in three hours I will allow your scans and I will cooperate in any way.”
“What’s this request?” Kilarian asked.
Cauri glanced at Lithinae then looked back at Kilarian, smiling in a foreign, confused manner, as though he did not know how to smile and was forcing himself to try it for the first time. “I want a mindlink terminal.”
“You’re going to enter the computer?” Seirani asked.
“Yes,” replied Cauri.
“What are you going to do in there?” Kilarian asked.
“Research,” he replied.
“About what?”
Cauri gazed at Kilarian for a few more moments, then turned to Lithinae. “Will you fulfill my request?”
“I told you that my answer is no,” said Lithinae. “We need to know if you’re infected with something and we’re worried it might be capable of traveling through computer channels. Right now, Cauri, I must be honest and tell you that I’m concerned that we’re not even talking to Cauri, but instead to the infection itself.”
Seirani laughed, momentarily concerned for Lithinae’s sanity. “Let’s not get ridiculous,” she said.
“I’m a little worried about the same thing,” Kilarian said.
And Seirani looked at him, her reality shifting uncomfortably as she focused on the differences in Cauri’s personality.
Malicious intent, she thought in the back of her mind, a thought she did not wish to bring to her forward thoughts.
Lithinae said, “If Seirani overrides my decision, the terraforming organization will take a vote.”
Seirani paused for a moment. “I’m going to have to agree with Lithinae. You told us not to let you go, no matter what you say, and in a sense, letting you roam free in the computer systems would be letting you go. I don’t think it’s a risk we should take. Sorry Cauri.”
“Then I will not allow you to scan me. I will not cooperate.”
“Cauri,” Lithinae started, taking a deep, tortured breath. “The health of sixteen thousand people and the future of this terraforming operation are at stake here.”
“And I have reason to care?”
Seirani stared in shock at his answer, glancing momentarily at Kilarian, who sat with his mouth hanging open.
Lithinae stared at the ground for a moment, then stood suddenly from his chair and smacked the divider. “Damnit Cauri,” he shouted. “Why are you different now? What the hell is going on inside your mind?”
Cauri sat back and grinned.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Lithinae screamed, pounding on the window.
Seirani stood, putting her arm on Lithinae’s shoulder. “Calm down,” she said, marveling for a moment at how far her reality had shifted in just a few moments, now believing almost fully that Cauri was infected with something with a consciousness. “This isn’t going to solve anything.” She looked at Cauri a long moment and said, “Cauri… we will probably be willing to vote to have you restrained by our robots or even killed and dissected.”
Lithinae stared at the ground, breathing heavily.
Cauri blinked rapidly then looked at the ground as well.
“Please don’t make us make this decision,” Seirani said.
Cauri nodded finally. “If you fulfill my second request, I will begin cooperating twenty four hours later.”
“Damn,” said Lithinae. “You’re a miserable piece of shit now. A tremendously confusing one.”
Cauri shrugged.
“What’s your second request?” Kilarian asked.
“Yeah,” Seirani said, cocking her head.
“Lithinae knows.”
“Why don’t you tell them?” Lithinae started. “So they can think about it.”
“Now we wouldn’t want to scare them now would we?” Cauri replied.
“I’m already terrified of you,” Kilarian put in.
Cauri stared at Seirani’s old friend.
Lithinae commented, “Cauri, you haven’t even awknowledged the fact that Kilarian risked his life to save yours.”
And Cauri continued staring at Kilarian.
“Cauri,” said Seirani. “What’s your second request?”
He looked at her a long moment before answering. “I want a manual computer interface terminal—since you won’t allow me a mindlink.” He smiled.
“And tell them what you want to do with the terminal,” Lithinae said.
Cauri paused, looking between
Kilarian and Seirani. “I will read pieces from The Holy Bible, I will study
Jesus, and I will study the society that occurred before The Great Suicide,
from ancient
Seirani glanced back and forth from Kilarian to Lithinae, trying to read their reactions. “Fill me in,” she said. “I’ve heard the name before, but I’m not a historian, so someone tell me what The Holy Bible is.”
“An ancient delusion that enslaved many people,” Kilarian started.
“It was a book.” Lithinae said. “Fiction that countless numbers took seriously for one reason or another, causing many of them to become unable to cope with reality or human beings of different perspectives. You’ve read about the ancient God-delusion, haven’t you?”
“Of course,” Seirani replied.
“The Holy Bible was one of the more popular factions of that delusion.”
Cauri laughed. “God is not a delusion,” he said.
“Then what is it?” Seirani asked.
“It’s what’s known as a lie. That’s different than a delusion. The ancients who created the concept knew—at least on some level of their consciousness—that God was not real, but they did it anyway. Some did it for attention. Some did it to look smart. Some did it for the sense of power. Some did it for money. And some did it in an attempt to bribe and terrify the population into becoming peaceful.”
“So why do you wish to study this?” Seirani asked.
He laughed. “That’s for me to know and you to find out.”
“That’s it,” Lithinae said, kicking his chair. “We’ll give you your manual interface, but we’re going to monitor everything you do with it, and we’re giving you twelve hours: not twenty-four. After that point we send robots in to restrain you and find out what has taken over your mind.” And Lithinae walked away.
Seirani could think of nothing more than to shrug apologetically but firmly toward Cauri.
Kilarian
entered his room and immediately began pacing, the thought coming to mind that whatever consciousness were in control of the alien substance and probably Cauri, was planning some sort of a collapse of reality.
Meiylan came to mind for a moment and the thought of her face and body made him smile as he realized that despite the terrifying and complex nature of the terraformer’s and his own situations, his brain was not overwhelmed, and in fact, the entire situation had brought him into a healthier perspective. He saw himself taking her hand, and as he often did, thought of croutons, and the vision of the two of them standing together over a hot stove at the age of thirteen, holding hands, watching their croutons crumble into dark clumps, wondering if they would still taste okay, but not truly caring.
The situation on Steignar would very possibly have repercussions throughout humanity. No girl could compare to that. But he smiled merely at the thought that she still existed.
And his thoughts immediately came back to the strange spacecraft, the liquid that entered the submarine, and of course, Cauri and the new twists in his character.
He paced for another few minutes then sat down to put his head in his hands and try to put it all together. But he wasn’t thinking long before Seirani walked straight in.
“What’s a lie?” she asked. “—I mean, we’ve discussed this years ago, I remember, but I don’t think I really understood the concept perfectly, and if I did, I don’t remember it.”
“It’s an un-truth,” Kilarian started.
“I remember that much. And the speaker knows it’s an un-truth, but he speaks it anyway?”
Kilarian nodded.
“A lie can only be spoken?”
“Or written.”
“Could one lie through a mindlink?”
Kilarian shook his head suddenly. “No, no. Of course not—“ but thought further, realizing that ultimately, he did not know. “—at least, I’m sure it’s never been done. Lying is an ancient art. No human has lied in ten thousand years, as far as we know.”
“But it was common before The Great Suicide?”
“That’s what history says.”
“So what changed?”
Kilarian shrugged as he thought. “I don’t have a better answer than anyone else, but I have a theory that humanity found some sort of a mental connection between each other and went through a physiological change that now prevents us from speaking something that does not fit with reality.”
“So could it happen again?”
“I don’t know… I have a hard time believing humans could ever learn to lie again… but another species… I don’t know.”
“So let’s try it,” she said.
“What?”
“Lie to me.”
“That’s not possible.”
“Just for pretend. An experiment. Lie to me. Something obvious.”
He nodded. “Okay, let me think.” We’re underneath the surface of the ice right now…I’ll tell her we’re
in an airplane right now. She’ll recognize that as an
un-truth.
He opened his mouth, but paused. He tried to speak, but nothing came out but laughter. The strangeness and twisted nature of the words that he planned were simply too much. He paused to run the phrase through his head again: we’re in an airplane right now. He forced his mouth to open again and forced a sound, but somehow it blended into even stronger, surprisingly uncontrollable laughter. He gave it another shot before his laughter had subsided only to hear his own guffawing double in intensity. He tried one last time to find himself rolling on the floor, practically incapacitated by painful laughter.
And he finally gave up. It must be possible, he thought. Just not for a normal human. He brought himself under control and sat back in his seat to look at Seirani, who obviously did not find it funny.
“I tried,” said Kilarian. “The thought is ridiculous… I don’t see how any human could get past the ridiculousness of speaking an untruth… it doesn’t make sense to me… but I guess it doesn’t make sense to many of the most intelligent historians.” He paused again. “…But it felt like I could have forced it out… if I planned the words, then forgot their meaning, perhaps I could spit it out… I don’t know… it seems like it could be possible.”
Kilarian looked up to see Seirani staring at the white tiled floor just in time to hear her speak the words, “The floor is red,” without a hangup.
She looked up. Kilarian felt his mouth drop open, and a moment later, perceived the terror that bubbled up between them.
“How did you do that?” Kilarian asked.
“I don’t know.” She pulled her knees to her chest, hugging them tightly. “I just did what you said: said the words in my head and forgot their meaning, and sent them as mere electrical impulses to my mouth, instead of as a form of communication.” She began rocking, squeezing herself tighter, and moved to the corner of the bench.
“What have I done?” she asked, Kilarian already seeing the tears building in her eyes. “What have I done, Kilarian? Is reality going to collapse now?”
But as Seirani’s panic seemed to set in, Kilarian’s waned. Something didn’t make sense… This wasn’t real… collapse of reality couldn’t happen so easily… not from a mere four words.
“This is just what the alien’s want, Kilarian. They’re going to drive us insane. They’ve planted these ideas in our heads and locked us on this planet—Kilarian, what are we going to do?”
But as Kilarian moved to sit next to her on the bench, he realized what was missing. “That wasn’t a real lie, Seirani. I had to think about this for a second.”
As Kilarian sat, Seirani moved to him and rested her head on his shoulder, wrapping her arms about him to sqeeze him instead of herself, and Kilarian realized she had amplified her own fear so she would now have an excuse to embrace him. That was closer to a lie than her statement that the floor was red.
“It wasn’t a real lie,” he said again, pulling her tighter. “We were missing deliberate deception. You know that I know that the floor is not red. You were not trying to deceive me. You were simply experimenting.”
She shook her head slightly, rubbing it against him, and groaned. “I don’t understand. How could someone do that? It’s not possible, and no one could believe a lie, right?”
Kilarian shook his head. “I haven’t a clue. It’s the theory, anyway. Human’s used to do it. Some believed. Some not.”
“I just don’t understand…”
“Maybe we weren’t meant to understand. Maybe it’s because we forgot the concept that humanity has managed to accomplish so much in a mere ten thousand years.”
“Maybe we should just forget we ever had this conversation, forget that such things could exist…”
“I’m afraid,” Kilarian started slowly as he thought. “That perhaps… if we were to do that… we would be lying to ourselves.”
Seirani
opened her mouth to try to communicate all of her twirling emotions, but all she said was, “I feel weird.”
“Weird?” said Kilarian, sitting across from her in the otherwise empty cafeteria, eating tacos. “How so?”
“I thought my reality would start to collapse as I ventured more into these thought processes… as I come to understand what a lie truly is, I mean… but instead, everything feels just as real, perhaps more real… but… different. We’re still here, everything’s the same—“
“It’s just our perceptions that are different,” Kilarian finished her thought.
“Exactly.”
“I’ve been thinking about that,” continued Kilarian, putting down his taco to talk. “It’s not time and space that will collapse if humans learn to lie again. The planet’s will still revolve around the suns, but it will be our perceptions that are ripped apart, which is no less horrifying, but it’s different.”
Seirani nodded. “So where do you draw the line between a lie and a statement?”
“That’s exactly what I keep asking myself,” Kilarian replied. “We joke with each other. We tell un-truths and then reveal the truth later to get a laugh or a shock, so is that not a temporary lie? Or we have delusions… but if you don’t stop to wonder if your perceptions are real, and speak everything as though it were truth, just because it feels real, would that not be a lie as well? What if a person fools perself first so pe can speak the un-truth and believe it to be real…” Kilarian shook his head. “And what if you simply hide a truth? Something needs to be said between two people, but the person holds it back from nervousness or whatever… is that not a manipulation of reality too… there’s no central database that has defined exactly what a lie is, I don’t believe, or at just what point our reality will collapse.”
“It must be up to each individual’s perceptions,” Seirani put in.
“But I don’t think that’s how the general populace sees it.”
“I think you’re right.” She paused. “But it seems like this subject isn’t something that can be pinned down into absolutes like you can a math equation… so openness in communication is just as important in embracing truth as avoiding a lie.”
Kilarian nodded.
“So if something’s eating at you, you need to speak it, or you have no right to say that you are a person who embraces truth, right?”
“Okay…” Kilarian started. “Yeah, that’s right.”
“Because something that’s left unsaid can hinder a group’s search for truth, correct?”
“Yeah,” Kilarian replied. “What are you getting at?”
“I’m really attracted to you,” Seirani replied quickly. “I don’t know why. I never used to be… I mean, when we were younger. But now…” She stared at the floor for a long time, then looked up at him. “I just thought I needed to get that out so that it doesn’t get in the way or confuse our communications.” She laughed several moments. “But I don’t want to lead you on, or anything… it’s mostly just a sexual attraction. This emotion is strange… out of the blue for me… shortly after you pulled Cauri from the lake… there was just something so manly about that. Cauri didn’t seem to appreciate your actions much, but I do…”
“That’s funny that you told me it’s merely a sexual attraction…”
“That doesn’t bother you, right? I still love you as a friend, but I don’t feel any desire for a long term endeavor.” She felt her face burn red hot, at the thought of the truth that she was about to speak. “I just want you to stick your dick in me. That’s all I want.” And immediately could not believe she had said it. Seirani buried her face in her arms, pulling her legs against her body and hiding herself.
“That’s fine,” Kilarian said quickly. “That’s fair. There’s nothing wrong with that… don’t hide from me…” he laughed.
She groaned, clenching herself tighter.
“Why are you hiding from me?”
“I’m embarrassed about my feelings, why the fuck do you think?” Her mouth rubbed against her clothing as she spoke, muffling her slightly.
“I was thinking about that,” Kilarian said. “About societies’ delusion about relationships. I’ve been around the world and I’ve seen a lot of relationships and I’ve never seen one work in the long-term, and yet we humans continue on with this pathetic delusion that humans mate for life—that every little attraction must be this end-all relationship that allows us to attain true happiness. And as a result we can’t stop and appreciate the little sexual attractions that don’t amount to muc