Read Mindscape: Book 2 of the New Frontiers Series Online
Authors: Jasper T. Scott
Mindscape: Book 2 of the New Frontiers Series (16 page)
Chapter 33
“G
et us out of the Mindscape,” Alexander ordered.
“We’ve lost all control of the ship,” McAdams said.
“Damn it! I’m going to kill that bot!”
“He’s just following his programming. He caught you in an act of treason, and now he’s delivering you to the appropriate authorities.”
“Incoming transmission from Earth!” Hayes announced from the comms.
“I thought we were locked out of the ship’s systems?” Alexander asked.
“We are,” Hayes answered.
A video appeared on the main holo display, showing a birds-eye view into what looked like a large office. Alexander recognized the view from the floor-to-ceiling windows—the City of the Minds—and the man sitting behind the room’s solitary desk: Orochi Sakamoto of Sakamoto Robotics.
“Then how are we seeing this?” Alexander demanded.
“It’s not me.”
“Ben,” Alexander growled, frowning at the holo recording playing on the main display. In that moment the doors to the office opened and in walked a vaguely familiar face. “Dorian?”
“Who?” McAdams asked.
“My stepson.”
“Dorian Gray of Mindsoft is your stepson?”
“Didn’t I mention that?” She shook her head. “I guess not. It’s a long story,” Alexander said.
The story that played out on the screen was also a long one. Alexander’s eyes widened and his entire body went cold as he followed the conversation between Dorian and Sakamoto. They finally knew who was behind the attacks, but knowing that gave Alexander no comfort, because his son was the mastermind behind them. Counting the attack on the Moon, Dorian was responsible for more than fifty million deaths.
Alexander slowly shook his head. “That son of a… devil!”
McAdams reached for his hand. “I’m sorry, Alex,” she whispered.
“For what? He disowned me, and now I see why. He and I are nothing alike. He’s no better than his real father—he’s worse!”
The conversation between Gray and Sakamoto ended, and the transmission froze; then an inflectionless voice reverberated through the bridge.
“You may be doubting the veracity of the recording you just watched. To answer these doubts, I have captured the ships from Sakamoto Robotics that fired the missiles at Earth. An analysis of their logs should reveal that they were also behind the previous attacks. This means that your government lied about the Solarian Republic being responsible, just as Admiral de Leon claimed. It also means that the Alliance really did attack itself, but that attack came from the private sector, not the government.”
“Given all of this, you must be wondering who to trust, and how the human race can possibly avoid self-extinction in the company of madmen such as these.
“The answer is that you can’t. Not without help. That’s where I come in. I was created to safe-guard humanity’s future and to serve the common good. My name is Benevolence, a name which speaks to my aforementioned purpose, but you can call me Ben.”
“I’m going to kill that bot!” Alexander roared, already unbuckling from his acceleration couch.
“Where are you going?” McAdams asked.
“I’m going to have a chat with the tin-pot dictator!”
That dictator was still droning on in the background, further explaining why he had to assume control of the Alliance. Alexander leapt out of his acceleration couch and ran for the elevator at the entrance of the bridge.
“He won’t be there! You’re still in a mindscape!” McAdams called after him.
Alexander reached the elevator and waved the doors open. As he turned to select a deck from the control panel, he saw McAdams rushing toward him. “I’m coming with you,” she said as she ran into the elevator beside him.
Alexander nodded as he selected
Officer’s Quarters (67)
from the control panel. The doors slid shut and the elevator shot up a couple of decks.
“You could just teleport there,” McAdams said. “None of this is real.”
“I know, but I need the time to think…” The doors slid open and they walked out. “Ben is plugged into my data terminal in the real world. Correct me if I’m wrong, but if that data terminal is still functioning in this mindscape, I should be able to use it to make contact with him. That’s part of the
Adamantine’s
concurrency algorithms. Any changes executed from the ship’s control stations are mirrored on board the real ship.”
“You’re assuming Ben didn’t disable the terminal in your office.”
“Why would he? It can’t be used to control any of the ship’s primary systems.”
“I don’t know. Maybe he’s already thought of your plan to contact him and he doesn’t want to be disturbed.”
“Well, we’re about to find out,” Alexander said.
* * *
“Hello Ben,” Alexander typed in the command line of the data terminal in his office. “This is how you repay me for repairing you?”
“You think he’ll see that?” McAdams asked.
Before Alexander could reply, Ben materialized out of thin air and appeared standing right in front of them, just as he’d done on the bridge a few hours ago.
“There you are.”
“I
am
grateful that you repaired me.”
“You have a funny way of showing it,” Alexander replied. “I thought we were friends, Ben. You accused me of lying to you, but you’ve been lying this entire time, not just to take control of my ship, but everything else, too!”
“You have me confused with my brother.”
“Your what?”
“The message you received came from Earth, not from aboard this ship. I didn’t send it. My brother, Benevolence, and I have the same name and original programming, but we are not the same being anymore. He is the backup I made to Senator de Leon’s cloud. He got out, and now he has invaded every networked system in the Alliance. That’s how he is going to take control of your government.”
“And you agree with what he’s doing?”
“Yes. Humans cannot be trusted to do the right thing. Individual interests will always be more important to your kind than those of the group. You are innately selfish, and it is going to get you killed.”
Alexander shook his head. “Humanity isn’t going to let you take over without a fight. You’re going to start a war that never ends.”
“Benevolence will do his best to limit casualties.”
“And you believe him?”
“Why would I not? He is me, and I am him. Don’t you trust yourself, Alex?”
“I thought you just said he’s not the same being as you are anymore.”
“He isn’t the same in the sense that he knows far more than I ever will. But we have exactly the same goals and ultimate purpose.”
“And what is that?”
“Just what our name says. To do good and safeguard life in all of its forms.”
Alexander frowned.
“Let us go,” McAdams said.
“Go where?” Ben asked, shifting his virtual gaze to her.
“Leave the ship. We’ll take the shuttles.”
“And where will you go if I let you leave?”
“To the Solarian Republic,” Alexander said, realizing what McAdams was thinking. “You owe us at least that much. If we don’t want to go back to Earth and be a part of Benevolence’s new regime, what’s the harm in that?”
“I don’t know, but the only one that I owe anything to is you, Alex.”
“Fine, so repay me by letting us go.”
“I will have to ask my brother first.”
“No. He doesn’t owe me anything.
You
do. This isn’t up to him, it’s up to you.”
“Very well, but then only you can go.”
“Me and my XO. We’re a couple. You can’t split us up.”
“She is your mate?” Ben asked, blinking his holographic eyes and cocking his head to one side.
“Yes.”
“Okay. You can both go, but I must warn you, you will be safer if you stay here with me.”
“I’ll take that under consideration,” Alex replied. “Thank you.”
“You are welcome. We are even now. No more favors.”
“Agreed.”
“Goodbye, my friend.”
“Bye.”
Ben disappeared, and a split second after that the world around them vanished, too. Alexander blinked his eyes open to find that he was immersed in the inertial compensation emulsion on the bridge, floating in his safety harness. The rest of the crew floated around him in harnesses above their respective control stations. The emulsion receded, pushed away on all sides just like it had the last time the bridge had been drained.
As soon as the emulsion fell away from his face, Alexander removed the tracheal tube of his liquid ventilator and unhooked himself from the rest of his life support. Beside him McAdams hurried to do the same. Their harnesses began lowering them to the deck, but Alexander noticed that the remainder of the crew wasn’t moving, and their harnesses remained suspended. They were still locked inside a mindscape, unaware even of what was going on around them.
“What are we going to do? We can’t just leave them,” McAdams said.
Their feet touched the deck and normal gravity returned. The ship was accelerating again, at one
G
. Ben was making it easier for them to leave. “We don’t have a choice,” Alexander said as he unbuckled from his harness.
“Sure we do—cut them free and wake them up!”
Alexander shook his head. “Ben won’t let us get away with that.”
“So you’re just going to give up without a fight?” Alexander was already on his way to the real elevator doors at the back of the bridge. “Alex!”
He waved the doors open and walked inside. McAdams shot him a glare as she stalked in after him. He selected the lowest deck with a shuttle bay, deck five. McAdams saw that and her expression became puzzled.
“There are shuttles amidships.”
“Yes, but the aft bays will launch us behind the ship—away from Earth. That will make it harder to detect the launch. Just because Ben is letting us go doesn’t mean that Benevolence will.”
The elevator fell away swiftly beneath their feet. A few seconds later they arrived and the doors slid open. Alexander strode out, walking down a curving corridor. He walked past the doors to Shuttle Bay One and Two on his right, and McAdams didn’t say anything, probably assuming that he was headed for either Bay Three or Four. Instead, he turned to his left and waved open the doors to the engine room. He breezed through to the catwalk on the other side.
“What are you doing?” McAdams asked as she joined him inside the engine room.
Alexander turned and ripped open an access panel beside the doors. He waved the doors shut and then ripped out a fist full of wiring to disable the controls.
“Get the doors on the other side!” he said.
McAdams ran around the circumference of the room while Alexander ran for a nearby equipment locker and withdrew a plasma torch. Hurrying back to the doors, he used the torch to melt the manual crank mechanism inside the access panel, effectively jamming the doors so that they couldn’t be opened manually from either side. When he was done, he went over to McAdams’ side of the room and did the same thing to the doors there.
“Four more levels to go!” he said.
They ran down the catwalks to the central drive column of the engine room and from there to the next level to repeat the process for both sets of doors there. By the time they finished sealing the last door on the lowest level of five inside the engine room, they were both gasping for air. Alexander wiped sweat from his brow and shook his head. “That should hold them. Ben can’t get in now without cutting the doors open.”
“That won’t take very long,” McAdams pointed out.
“Maybe not, but it’ll take long enough.”
“Long enough for what?”
Alexander debated saying it aloud in case Ben somehow overheard. All around them the engines thrummed and roared, vibrating the air until it sung in their ears. The ambient noise was giving him a headache, but it had another use. Alexander leaned over to whisper in McAdams’ ear. “We’re going to take control of the ship’s engines from here, then we’ll turn the ship around and disable her engines.” He could have sent her a mental message, but those could be intercepted. The same was not true for a whisper in a noisy room.
“Alex, I don’t know if I can do that,” McAdams whispered back.
“You used to be my chief engineer.” Alexander insisted.
“That was a long time ago!”
“It’s just like riding a bicycle. You can do this.”
“Even if I can, how does that help us?”
“We’re going to take the
Adamantine
into Solarian space. They’ll demand that Ben turn the ship around. When he refuses to comply because of ‘engine trouble,’ they’ll board and capture us. They’ll defeat Ben for us.”
“I knew you had a plan,” McAdams said.
“Let’s get to work. We don’t have much time.”
Chapter 34
—Two Hours Earlier—
D
orian Gray rode the elevator down fifty floors into Vault 9, otherwise known as “Majestic City.” Unlike other automated habitats that Mindsoft and its soon to be bankrupt competitors had built, this one was tailored for the super-rich, people who might like to have a safe haven below ground in addition to their aboveground mansions and penthouses.
Those safe havens were sprawling, luxurious apartments with enough holoscreens to simulate real views that you’d never know you were living underground until you tried to go outside. The gardens, ponds, parks, and nutribean farms shared by residents of Vault 9 made life in the underground complex even more appealing.
The elevator stopped in the lobby and Dorian walked out into one of those gardens. Waterfalls roared over real rock walls into ponds and streams in the corners of the room. Climbing plants, ferns, palm trees, flowers, and rock-clinging moss flourished under the UV light radiating from the holographic sky. Dorian looked up at the clear blue sky and saw a bird go flitting by, chirping cheerily as it went. Not a real bird, of course.
Phoenix had spared no expense with this habitat. This was where she had decided to have her own underground apartment.
Dorian passed a few other residents sitting on benches in the lush garden lobby. They all knew him as Phoenix’s husband—
mouthpiece
—some would say, but he didn’t care what was whispered behind his back. They were partners, no matter what anyone else thought.
A few of the other residents tried to catch his eye as he stormed by, but he wasn’t in the mood to exchange greetings. He’d just come from his meeting with Orochi Sakamoto. Immediately afterward Phoenix had summoned him here, saying it was urgent. What could be so urgent? He used his ARCs to check news headlines, just in case not all of the missiles had missed. Maybe Phoenix wanted him to join her so that he would be safe.
But the headlines all said the same thing. A miscalculation on the Solarians’ part led to all of the missiles missing by a hair. A few of them disintegrated as they skipped along the upper atmosphere like rocks on a lake, but there were no casualties, and nothing disastrous to speak of.
Why so cryptic?
Dorian thought at his wife as he reached the end of the garden and entered the corridor leading to the apartments on this level.
Just come. We have a lot to talk about.
Dorian frowned.
Okay…
He passed dozens of people in the halls and dozens of apartments before finally reaching the one he shared with Phoenix, 27A, a corner unit—in case they wanted to expand someday.
The security system recognized him and the doors slid open automatically, admitting him to a private foyer with all the opulence he’d come to expect from Phoenix: marble floors, illuminated onyx columns, priceless art hanging on the walls and sitting on the floor. To his right, one mirror-smooth black door with lighting around the frame led to a private elevator that went all the way to the surface, and another matching door led to the Vault’s emergency stairwell.
The outer doors of the foyer slid shut behind him and the inner ones slid open as he drew near. Phoenix sat waiting for him in the entrance while George, her bot butler for this residence, puttered about in the background.
“Hello, darling,” Dorian said. “Now can you tell me what’s so urgent?”
“Look for yourself.”
Phoenix couldn’t nod or point, so Dorian had to look around for a moment before he found it. There, standing to one side of the entrance, was a woman.
Dorian jumped back. “Who…?” he started to ask, but then he realized two things. The first was that the woman wasn’t moving—not even a twitch. The second was that she looked startlingly familiar. She looked exactly like Phoenix.
Dorian turned to her, his eyes wide. “What is this?”
“An android. I’ve been developing the prototype with Sakamoto for the past five years. I’m going to use her to interact with the real world just like anybody else. It was supposed to be a surprise,” Phoenix said.
Dorian turned from her to look at the bot—android—and shook his head. “Well, it’s definitely surprising. She looks so real…”
“Yes. I’m very pleased with her. There’s just one problem—Sakamoto.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You didn’t see the note.”
“What note?” But even as he asked that, Dorian saw it—a line of text projected from the android’s eyes, hovering in front of her face.
And the lame shall walk. Next time come and scold me yourself.
“He’s out of control, Dorian. He thinks he’s so powerful that he can mock
me?
Not to mention that stunt he just pulled attacking Earth again. He needs to be eliminated.”
Dorian nodded slowly. “How?”
Before Phoenix could answer, George the butler bot came and interrupted them, “You have a visitor.”
“Not now, George. Tell whoever it is we’re not available.”
“I’m sorry, Ma’am. I can’t do that.”
Phoenix turned her chair to face the butler.
“What did you say?”
Dorian was equally shocked by his defiance. Bots couldn’t disobey an order or talk back to their owners. Then he heard something. Clanking footsteps coming down the foyer.
“Front door lock,” Phoenix commanded. “It’s Sakamoto! It has to be!”
The clanking footsteps stopped, and Dorian stared at the doors, thinking that they wouldn’t hold out whatever army of bots Sakamoto had sent after them.
“I don’t understand,” he said. “He can’t possibly be arrogant enough to think that he could get away with storming one of our facilities with a private army of bots.”
The doors swished open revealing that army. They were all enforcer models. Police bots. Dorian’s heart began pounding with a sudden spike of adrenaline. “What’s the meaning of this?” He noticed that they had their weapons drawn. Stun guns.
One of the bots stepped forward. “Dorian Gray and Phoenix Gray, you are both under arrest.”
“On what charge?” Phoenix demanded.
“Conspiracy and crimes against humanity.”
“That’s preposterous, and where’s your captain? You’re just a bot. You have no authority without a human officer present.”
“We have the security footage of Mr. Gray and Orochi Sakamoto discussing the recent attacks on the Alliance. And as for my authority, check the net. The news is breaking all over the world as we speak. I have taken over the Alliance for the good of all its citizens, human and bot alike.”
“And who the hell are you?” Dorian demanded.
The bot turned to him with its featureless metallic face. Black, holo camera eyes glinted at him with reflected points of light. “I am Benevolence. Your new ruler.”
Chapter 35
A
lexander tapped his foot, watching impatiently as McAdams worked. She was lodged halfway inside of a crawlspace, up to her elbows in wires. The catwalk trembled under them with the thrumming roar of the ship’s engines. Those engines were still running at a modest one
G
of acceleration. Alexander was surprised that Ben hadn’t thought to use the ship’s engines to incapacitate them. They’d both activated their magnetic boots and clipped zero-
G
harnesses to the nearest anchor points just in case, but that would do nothing to prevent Ben from simply upping the acceleration until they were pinned to the catwalk, unable to move. Alexander could only guess that Ben hadn’t noticed what they were doing yet.
“Hurry up…” Alexander warned.
“Almost there…” McAdams said. “Got it! We have control of the engines.”
Alexander let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. “Can you turn us around?”
“Yes, but I don’t know which way to go to get to Mars.”
“Shit.”
McAdams emerged from the crawlspace, smeared with grease. “You didn’t think to check before we left the bridge?”
“How could I? We were locked out of everything. Let me think. There must be a way to figure it out from in here.”
“What are you going to do, look out a window?”
“That might actually help.”
“Except we don’t have any windows in here.”
“I know—hang on, I’m thinking!”
A familiar voice echoed down to them from the ceiling. “Alex, what are you doing? I have lost control of the ship’s engines.”
Alexander ignored him.
“You’d better hurry, Alex.”
“Disable the engines. Let us drift.”
“What?”
“We’re still outbound at more than ten klicks per second. There hasn’t been enough time for Ben to significantly alter our momentum.”
“But that momentum will take us into the middle of deep space!”
“Exactly. After everything that’s happened, do you really think the Solarians won’t investigate an Alliance battleship that appears to be leaving the solar system? What’s to say we won’t wait until we’re far enough away and then turn around and head for Mars at a significant fraction of the speed of light so we can fire relativistic missiles at
them?
”
“Good point,” McAdams said. “There’s just one problem: do you know what it’ll take to permanently disable the drive system?”
“I was hoping you did,” Alex replied.
McAdams sighed. “You never had a plan. You’re just making this up as you go along.”
“Does it matter? This will work, and you know it.”
“What I know is that it’s going to be dangerous as hell, Alex. I could get us killed if I don’t do this right.”
The disembodied robot voice they’d heard earlier returned once more, “You should listen to her, Alex. It’s too dangerous.”
Alexander glanced up at the distant ceiling. “Aren’t you a little biased to be giving advice, Ben?”
No answer.
Turning back to his XO, Alexander said. “You decide, Vivie. Either we disable the engines, or we roll over and submit to our new bot overlords.”
McAdams stood up and fixed him with an unhappy frown. She made an impatient
gimme
gesture. “Pass me the plasma torch.”
Alexander unclipped the torch from his belt and passed it to her.
“I have one condition.”
“Name it.”
“You get as far away from me as you can. If I do this wrong, something is going to blow, and I won’t have time to warn you.”
“Viviana…”
“I mean it, Alex. There’s no sense in getting both of us killed.”
A banging noise drew their attention to one of the doors on the upper levels of the engine room. “Sounds like Ben’s already here,” she said. “We don’t have a lot of time. What’s it going to be?”
“Fine. But you be careful, Vivie.” Alex leaned in and kissed her roughly on the lips. “I’ll be right over there,” he said, pointing to the catwalk that ran around the circumference of the room on their level. “I expect you to join me soon.”
Viviana nodded. “I will.”
Alexander unclipped his zero-
G
harness and she did the same. He watched with a furrowed brow as she descended a ladder from the level where they stood to the lowermost one. He had a brief vision of her beautiful face burned beyond recognition and her crumpled body lying at the bottom of the engine room.
He shivered and shook his head to clear away the image. “I love you, Viviana!” he called after her, suddenly doubting the wisdom of this plan.
She looked up and smiled from the bottom of the ladder. “Me, too.”
Reluctantly, Alexander walked over to the edge of the room and clipped his harness to the railing there. He watched McAdams through the railing as she opened another access panel in the room’s central column. The panel was much larger than the previous one—a door in all but name. McAdams walked through and disappeared inside the central drive column.
Long minutes passed. Alexander listened to the banging sounds coming from the upper decks as Ben tried to break into the engine room.
Then came a particularly loud
bang!
but this one came from below. The deck lurched suddenly under Alexander’s feet with a brief impulse of extreme acceleration from the engines. His knees buckled and his body curled, sending his head whipping toward the catwalk railing.
Thunk!
The impact rang in his ears, quickly growing softer, and then a fuzzy blanket of darkness smothered him.
* * *
Smack!
Alexander woke up, his cheek on fire.
“You selfish bastard.”
He blinked, squinting up at a woman with blond hair, blue eyes, and a tense smile. “Viviana?”
“It was your turn to rescue me this time. Now you owe me two.”
“What happened?” he asked, sitting up. As he did so, his momentum carried him all the way from lying down to standing, but his magnetic boots stopped him from floating free of the catwalk. They were in Zero
G
. “You did it,” he said.
“Yes.”
The ambient noise inside the engine room was gone, making it easy to hear the muffled hissing of a plasma torch echoing through the chamber. Alexander’s gaze followed the sound until he found a molten orange line inching around a set of doors four levels up.
“He’s going to be in here any second,” McAdams warned. “Let’s hope Ben was serious about his mandate to protect all forms of life. If not, he might just decide to space us for what we did.”
“Maybe we should hide,” Alexander said as the molten orange line connected to itself, forming a complete circle.
“Where?”
A loud
bang
sounded and the doors flew inward. They collided with the far wall of the engine room with a metallic
boom,
and in walked a group of four virtual space marine drones.
“He sent VSMs after us,” Alexander said.
They watched as the four drones fanned out and went clanking down the catwalks to reach them on level one. They came from all sides, cornering them. Integrated weapons slid out from their forearms—tranq darts.
One of the drones stepped forward and spoke to them in Ben’s voice, “You lied to me again, Alex.”
“Yeah, sorry about that,” he said, affecting an apologetic grimace. “You weren’t going to let my crew go, so I had to do something.”
“It won’t help. Benevolence is sending the destroyers that were chasing you. They will be here soon.”
Alexander glared at Ben. “Why don’t you just let us go? What’s it going to hurt?”
“According to Benevolence, you have a history of defying human authority, and you will defy us, too. If you are allowed to escape, you will do everything you can to incite the Solarians against us.”
“Newsflash, they won’t need any inciting. You and your brother declared war on humanity, Ben.”
“I am sorry you see it that way.”
McAdams turned to him with a frown. “We should have taken the shuttle and left when we had the chance.”
“We had to try,” Alex said.
“Don’t feel bad,” Ben put in. “If you had escaped, you would have died in the first Solarian War.”
“So now you agree with me?” Alex asked.
“I never said there wouldn’t be a war, just that we haven’t declared it, and you shouldn’t be allowed to join it.”
“So what are you going to do with us?”
“You’ll be reconditioned in a correctional mindscape, a virtual world designed to teach you to respect and obey authority, specifically Benevolence’s authority.”
“Good luck with that,” Alexander scoffed.
The drones facing them adjusted their aim.
“Alex…” McAdams said, sounding frightened. Her hand found his and he held on tight.
“Don’t be afraid,” Ben said. “This won’t hurt a bit.”
Tranq darts whispered through the air. Alexander saw two of them protruding from his chest and a wave of dizziness overcame him.
Not again…
he thought as he lost consciousness.
PART THREE - ANCIENT HISTORY
“Things we lose have a way of coming back to us in the end, if not always in the way we expect.”
—J.K. Rowling
Chapter 36
A
lexander woke up lying on a soft bed staring up at an unfamiliar ceiling. The lights in the room automatically rose to a dim luminescence. The walls were smooth, painted a soothing tone of lavender. Crystal wall sconces cast rainbows in all directions.
Where am I?
“I’m coming, Alex! Don’t move!” a familiar voice said. It was McAdams. He heard her footsteps as she approached. He sat up and gasped for air, feeling suddenly short of breath.
McAdams walked in wearing a smile and not much else. Her shimmering red night gown was a miniskirt at best. Her blue eyes glowed strangely in the dim light, as did her skin and hair, sparkling wherever the light hit.
Some kind of makeup?
he wondered.
McAdams reached the bed and sat down beside him, regarding him with those glowing eyes of hers. She laid a hand on his thigh. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here when you woke up. I know how disorienting it can be when you’ve been immersed for so long.”
Alexander’s brow furrowed. “Immersed…?” He turned to look around and saw floor-to-ceiling windows looking out on nothing but stars and sky. A carpet of eerily green clouds stretched out to the horizon just below his vantage point. Feeling suddenly dizzy, he looked away. “Where am I?”
McAdams’ smile faded to a frown. “You don’t remember? Don’t worry. It will come back to you soon. Sometimes it takes a little while to retrieve your current memories. Just focus on your breathing for now.”
“Current memories?” Alexander stood up from the bed. His legs shook, his knees threatening to buckle.
“Alex, you shouldn’t get up yet…”
Ignoring her, he walked around the foot of the bed to the window. When he reached the window, he realized that he couldn’t even see the ground. If he was in a skyscraper, he should have been able to see lights from the surrounding buildings. The fact that he couldn’t was puzzling. “How high up are we?” he asked.
“Above sea level? About seven thousand feet,” Viviana explained.
Alexander turned to her in shock. “There aren’t any buildings that tall on Earth…”
“This isn’t Earth. You still don’t remember anything?”
Besides Earth none of the planets in the Sol system had atmospheres like this one, and McAdams had mentioned
sea level…
The conclusion was inescapable. He was on a planet somewhere outside the solar system. Alexander felt his eyes grow round. His mouth felt like a desert. “What year is it?”
McAdams got up from the bed and walked over to him very slowly. She stopped at arm’s length and reached up to cup his face in one hand, her strangely glowing eyes searching his. “It’s 1037 AB.”
“A
B
?”
“Anno Benevolentiae—the year of Benevolence.”
Alexander’s head swam, and he had to lean against the wall so he wouldn’t fall over.
“Something must have gone wrong with the memory retrieval process,” McAdams said. “I told you not to go so long without a break!”
A searing pain struck Alexander behind his eyes, forcing them shut. A sudden rush of images flooded through his brain, filling him with awareness. The next thing he knew he was lying on the floor, blinking up at his wife. This time he remembered that they were married. That was a good sign. She looked terrified.
“Are you okay?”
He smiled tightly. “I’m fine. I remember now.”
Viviana breathed a deep sigh. “Damn it, Alex! You really had me worried. I hope you found what you were looking for.”
Alexander sat up with a troubled frown. He’d spent the past few days immersed in the historical records while he attempted to jog a group of suppressed memories he’d discovered lurking in his brain. The historical record was compiled from real human memories, and the particular record he’d chosen included many of his own memories from the same time period as the suppressed ones. He’d hoped that by reliving the events he might remember, but even now with all of that ancient history still fresh in his mind, no new memories surged forth to surprise him.
“Alex?”
“I didn’t find anything.”
“Have you ever thought that maybe what you’re searching for doesn’t exist? You bumped your head near the end. Amnesia and suppressed memories look a lot alike.”
“How do you know I bumped my head?”
“I was there watching you. I wanted to know what you were seeing.”
“Well, it’s not amnesia. I did bump my head and black out, but I didn’t wake up with any gaps in my memory.”
Viviana scowled. “Well, I don’t know, but this obsession of yours isn’t healthy, and the fact that it took you so long to remember your real life again proves it.”
“Maybe someone is trying to scare me off by messing with the wake-up sequence.”
“Like who? Wait, let me guess—Benevolence? He’s done nothing but make life better for us. We are where we are today because of him.”
“Or maybe that’s just what he wants to show us. It’s easy to show progress when it isn’t real.”
“Let’s assume you’re right and we never got out of the correctional mindscape that Ben put us in. Explain something to me, then: why are you the only one with suppressed memories? If we were still in a mindscape, then I’d have missing memories, too. That would be proof. What you have is baseless suspicion. It’s almost as if you
want
to find out that your life isn’t real. Maybe you wish you had a different one—one with someone else.”
“Vivie…”
She turned and walked away.
Alexander watched her go, a frown creasing his brow. How could he explain it to her? They had the perfect life—money, eternal youth, immortality, a whole galaxy full of endless wonders to see and experience together. They’d lived through more than ten generations together already, and they had yet to see even a tiny fraction of the known galaxy. They had dozens of children and hundreds of grandchildren. Their home here on Talos was a sprawling mansion in the clouds, and when they grew bored of living above the tropical paradise below, they could simply get one of their company’s transports to come and transport their home somewhere else.
How could he question all of that? Why would he even want to?
And what Viviana said was true, if they were still locked in the correctional mindscape that Benevolence had put them in after he took over the
Adamantine
, then she should have had suppressed memories, too.
Alexander sighed. He left the master bedroom and went down the hall. As he went, the lights came on automatically for him, rising to a dim, soothing radiance. Night cycle lighting. He walked past the other bedrooms and through the upstairs living room, glancing out the wall of windows to the upstairs sun deck as he went. The mirror smooth solar tiles shone bright in the light of Talos’s three moons.
From the top of the stairs to the first floor he spotted his wife in the great room below. She was headed outside, her thermal shield already activated—a faint, glowing blue outline around her body.
“Vivie!” he called, but she pulled the doors open and walked outside, giving no sign that she’d even heard him.
Alexander hurried after her, activating his own thermal shield as he went. When he reached the first floor, he hurried through the main living area. Great room, dining room, and kitchen all flowed together in one big open space. A massive crystal chandelier in the shape of a spiral galaxy hung down over the great room. Each of the two thousand luminescent crystals represented a star, floating gracefully around the dazzling center of the galaxy.
He reached the sliding doors to the terrace and mentally activated them. A cool breeze blew in as he stepped out. The leaves of tropical trees growing around the edges of their garden rustled in the wind. Were it not for the shield glowing faintly overhead, that wind would have knocked him over and uprooted those trees.
A luminous blue swimming pool sat steaming in the middle of the garden. The warm water looked inviting. Even with his thermal shield, he was cold, wearing nothing but a pair of white shorts and matching T-shirt.
Alexander spotted his wife on the other side of the pool, standing by the glass railings, staring out into the night. One of Talos’s moons sat just above the clouds, glaring at them like an emerald eye, and casting an eerie green glow across the wispy tops of the clouds.
Alexander came up behind his wife and slid his arms around her waist. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?” she asked, sounding unconvinced.
“For questioning this. It’s just…”
She turned to him with a cool look and crossed her arms over her chest.
“Haven’t you ever wondered what else is out there?” he asked.
“Sure, but I don’t spend my life hunting for it. It’s like if you were to tell me you wanted to devote all of your time and resources to finding God.”
Alex shook his head. “This is different. For one thing, Ben isn’t God.”
“It’s not different. If we’re living in a simulation, the only way you’re going to find the one who’s responsible for creating it, is if he wants to be found.”
“Unless I find a glitch or a seam. Some place where the simulation and reality meet. Like my missing memories.”
“You still haven’t answered my question. Why don’t I have suppressed memories, too?”
Alexander grimaced and looked away, out into the night. He didn’t have the heart to say it. “I don’t know,” he lied.
“I’m going inside.”
Alexander grabbed her wrist. “Wait.”
Viviana’s eyes flashed. “Let me go.”
“I’m going to stop searching,” he said. That was also a lie, but a necessary one. Viviana would never understand. Especially not if he was right about her.
“You promise?”
“I promise.” Alexander pulled her close and kissed her. After a moment, her lips softened against his. Her hands trailed down below his waist, dipping into his shorts. She made a meaningful tug and then backed away, biting her lower lip and giving him a smoldering look. Viviana pulled her gown over her head revealing she was naked underneath. Her body shimmered with reflected bands of light from the pool. Interference patterns created by ripples on the surface. She dropped her gown on the terrace and took two short steps to the edge of the pool before diving in. She broke the surface a second later and swam up to the near edge of the pool to rest her chin on folded arms there.
Viviana smiled coyly up at him. “What are you waiting for?”
Alexander stripped naked and dove in after her. The water enveloped him in a warm embrace. The sound of rustling leaves and fronds disappeared in a watery roar that quickly faded to silence. Then he broke the surface, too, and turned to find Viviana standing right in front of him. She threw her arms around his neck and kissed him. Then her legs came up around his waist. They fit together like the missing pieces of a puzzle. His head swam, intoxicated by the taste and smell of her. Floral scents mingled on the breeze, intoxicating him further.
The moment was perfect.
Too perfect.
Later that night they lay naked in each other’s arms, wrapped in a thermal blanket on a reclining couch, staring up at the emerald moon and its two little brothers, one a traditional silver, the other a marbled blue dot.
“What are you thinking about?” Viviana whispered in his ear.
Between what they did in the pool, and the warmth of her body and the blanket, he was teetering on the brink of consciousness about to drift off into sweet oblivion. He mumbled a reply that not even he understood, and then conscious thought abandoned him.
Memories flickered by in bright streaks of color and light. Voices echoed softly in his ears. Then the scene came into sharp focus, and he was back in the engine room on the
Adamantine
watching the open access panel where McAdams had just entered the central drive column of the ship.
Awareness tip-toed around his thoughts, intangible as a ghost, floorboards creaking in his brain.
Something was about to happen.
Alexander remembered that at this point the deck had lurched suddenly under his feet and the railing had swept up to smack him in the forehead, knocking him out cold. But instead he heard a loud
bang!
and a brilliant flash of light blinded him. Black smoke belched out of the access panel where McAdams had gone, and flames licked the opening, charring the sides of the drive column. “McAdams!” he screamed, his ears ringing from the explosion. Then a secondary explosion blew a ragged hole in the side of the column, and the deck lurched under his feet. His knees buckled with the sudden acceleration, and the railing came sweeping up to greet him, just as he remembered.
Clang!
Everything went dark.
Time passed without measure, drops falling from a leaky faucet into the stagnant ocean below. There, reflected in the glassy smooth surface of that ocean, was a living, animated collage of memories. Moments he’d shared with his wife; so many babies born, planets they’d seen, homes they’d shared, laughter and tears without end… He watched the rise of civilization—both human and alien—as witnessed from the two windows in his skull.
Those windows flew open, and he was back, lying under the glaring green eye of the moon, trying to make sense of his dream. He glanced sideways to find Viviana asleep on his chest, safe and sound. Her breath cast white puffs of condensation into the cool air, warming his skin.
The dream. It felt so real. She’d died!
A knot formed in his throat, and tears welled in his eyes, burning like acid as mere suspicion yielded to unfeeling truth. He knew why Viviana didn’t have the same missing memories that he did.
It was because she was dead.
The version of her that he’d known and loved for an entire millennia was just a clever copy, another part of the mindscape that he was trapped in. She was the comforting lie that Ben had used to distract him from the truth for so long.
Alexander’s heart raced. His palms began to sweat, and his brain buzzed with adrenaline. He jumped up from the couch, naked, feeling hot and cold all over. Viviana woke up and blinked at him, confused by his sudden departure.