Chaos Cipher (47 page)

‘
Can you hear
me?
’ a voice spoke through his mind,
tinctured by the faintest synthetic quality, of something spurious
and digital laced into the phonetics.

‘
I hear
you.
’ Malik said.

‘
Hold out your
hands.
’

‘
I can’t…they’re
tied…
’

‘
Not in the
neuro-sphere, they aren’t.
’

Malik
attempted to shift his hands and found they suddenly were able to
soar free. He looked at them, turned them around, and was suddenly
aware of sunlight. Malik squinted at the light and he heard his
brother laugh.

‘
Interesting
,’ he said,
‘
I’ve never seen anybody do that before.
Perhaps, it’s because you’re not familiar with years of neuroware
conditioning.
’

‘
What?
’

‘
You created
sunlight in the space,
’ Vance
said.

‘
I’m doing
that?
’

‘
Yes.
’

‘
Fascinating,
’ Malik smiled, feeling
the warmth of the sun on his skin. He turned his hands in the
light, discerned their contours and shadow.

‘
It’s so
real.
’ He said. ‘
But the sound…I’m not convinced by the
sound.
’

‘
Sound is
conceptualised, Malik.
’ Vance explained.
‘
You get rather a sense of communication
without noise in here. Actually, our conversations take place in an
instant, whereas in the hardlands it takes time to pronounce words.
You’ll hardly hear an echo for example in these realms. You’ll also
find you can’t shut your eyes.
’

Malik hadn’t
noticed it. He shut his eyes and realised he could still see the
environment.

‘
You’re
technically already asleep.
’ Vance
laughed. ‘
Now…try and turn off the
sunlight without killing the visual.
’

Malik stared
at the whiteness of the sun. He lowered his hands that were
shielding him from the blinding light and looked fully upon it. The
light he came to realise was no longer warm and he watched it start
to grey and dissolve, taking with it all the cloud of
appearances.

‘
Not everything,
Malik, if you can help it.
’

He reset his
focus onto the neurosphere’s artifice and once more realised his
environment, retuning to a four dimensional space. He laughed,
feeling ascendant.

‘
This is the
neurosphere
,’ said Vance,
‘
it’s your personalised desktop before
diving into your neural space. We access it to initiate
transqualian or semi-qualia neurophases, and to access the
paracosms of the quasiland. From here you operate and organise any
information you retrieve for instant access. But be warned, Malik.
Anything you keep in this space you have to know is vulnerable to
cyber-attacks. It’s like wearing your thoughts on your sleeve.
Today we’ll be extracting some of your memories from the Erebus. I
will show you how to obtain, recall and store. I will show you how
to encrypt into neuro-quantum data and transmit to another person
via a method we call neuromissions. Consider the neurosphere’s
sensorium like a hard drive of your mind.
’

‘
This is
incredible!
’ He stated.
‘
How big is this place, is it as big as
the Sensorium chamber?
’

‘
There is no
physical character to this space.
’ Vance
revealed. ‘
But the visual capacity you are
feeling is infinite. Though it looks like there is a border, like
you’re suspended in a large metallic sphere, there is no actual
end. The closer you venture out to that border, will reveal
something more and within that detail something further more. Don’t
worry about getting lost in here, as I said the space is infinite,
it’s a conceptual area for mapping your mind, it doesn’t need a
boarder and it doesn’t need a centre.
’

‘
How do I
move?
’

‘
That’s up to
you,
’ said Vance. ‘
Some people reach out and pull information toward them.
Others prefer to fly through the space like they were in
micro-gravity. See what tickles your fancy.
’

Malik folded
his arms and concentrated ahead of him. The space began to bloat.
The boarder folded back on itself, like a pressure from outside the
chamber was upon it, another sphere bulging back like an inverting
bubble. Malik reached out to see the surface had pulsing veins. The
arteries and capillaries grew, branching all around, getting
closer. And he saw how they deepened into grooves, which curled
backwards and tunnelled, warping into new surfaces. A kaleidoscope
of colour enshrined him now as the shapes changed again, growing
into impossible structures and columns.

‘
You’re exploring
locations in your mind,
’ said Vance.
‘
Try and remember your time on the
Erebus.
’

‘
That’s what I’m
working on.
’

Vance kept
his avatar running, dropping momentarily out of the interface to
watch Malik in the Sensorium room. The synaptic frequencies were
running their usual patterns. He’d adjusted to the neurophase
successfully. Sometimes, newly introduced subjects suffered
neuro-shock, the feeling of being forever trapped in one’s
paracosm. Vance had purgatory remitters for such a situation and
they were already on standby. In the darkness of the Sensorium he
saw lilac colours shifting from the projection units, filling the
space with a holographic representation of what Malik was
visualising in the interface. The colours and light danced and
reflected off the dark waters below as Malik sought through the
strange patterns and shapes of his mind. Satisfied his brother was
fine, Vance sat back, closed his eyes and returned to his
avatar.

‘
All this seems
familiar,
’ said Malik.
‘
Like I’ve been to these places
before.
’

‘
These neural
pathways and patterns your seeing are familiar channels for your
consciousness Malik,
’ Vance said,
‘
we create them when we dream, solidify
neural networks and exercise memory. This is why, once you are
neurophased properly, you will never need to sleep
again.
’

‘
Here,
’ said Malik, bringing out a
large branch of fleshy looking trees. ‘
I
think here is a good place to start…
’

‘
Localise it,
visualise it.
’ Vance instructed.
‘
Now, surface within the memory, imagine
you’re coming up for air after a big swim. You’re doing very
well!
’

Malik found
the artifice rushing towards him, and a focal point was sliding his
way, swallowing him into a pitch-black darkness. Malik found
himself on his hands and knees under enormous strain. He issued a
cry of pain but heard nothing. He turned through the lightless
environment and felt drunk and vertiginous, almost numb. A dull
light was shining in the long corridor ahead of him and he knew he
was on the Erebus. Malik shouted for Vance loudly, but no sound
came from his lips.

Did you
really think you could bring him here?

Malik heard
her voice, crisp and clear. He sprawled on his knees, scurrying to
stand but fell once more to his backside. He remembered now why it
was so difficult. The gravity! The Charybdis was right below him,
an abyss of eternal blackness that threatened to swallow the ship
whole. Malik pushed up. He wasn’t able to control this world. This
was not a dream, it was a memory he was supposed to experience
again, there was no controlling or changing these events. They had
happened.

Anyone who
sees your dreams will only see the surface of things, she told him.
But you are the one who will relive them. Over and over…and over.
This is your fate Malik. You will never leave the Erebus. Even in
your dreams and memories you’ll find yourself right…here. In the
heart of all creation.

He screamed
for her to help him, but no voice emitted from his lungs. He
climbed a table top for support and worked his way up to his knees.
He saw chalk marked around the surfaces, X’s and O’s and forks
other strange symbols burned or scribbled wildly onto the inner
hull of the ship, the graphomanic notes of insanity.

What were you
trying to achieve?
She asked.
Did you believe you could wield the chaos cipher
for yourself? Did you really believe you understood it?

He wanted to
yell! He wanted to answer. He wanted to tell her that he was
already free, that the chaos cipher had done its duty. But she
already knew.

The chaos
cipher was never designed to save us,
she
explained.
It was designed to light up a
path for humankind to follow. It was designed to bring us together
again and make us truly immortal. Gods of space and
time.

He had
forgotten this moment. Penelope’s great revelation. Why had he come
to this time? Why had he suppressed it so deeply?

Penelope Hurt
stood in the shadows, limping through the gravitational turbulence.
She made her way down the dark corridors, enticing him to follow.
He would never see her face in the darkness, he would only catch
the strange symbols vanishing and reappearing on the walls. He
watched her slip into a temporal field, vanishing, only to reappear
out of thin air further down the corridor, like stepping through a
curtain.

We need to
sleep now, Malik.
She told him.
Trust that the Erebus will make it out now. From
here on in we have only each other to trust. It’s all just a matter
of time.

-34-

B
erengar walked the garrison
entrance in casual stroll, scanning around at the trainees and
martial artists out on the field. He saw them with their weapons,
all kinds of small arms combat equipment from swords to poles to
alternative kinds of tools that looked to him oriental in origin.
He approached the gate and scanned his badge into the computer and
the alarms deactivated, allowing him to pass. Berengar carried over
his shoulder a large bag of training equipment he was returning to
the lockers. Hattle’s training had reached some sort of plateau
that the Lewis family apparently found quite felicitous. He’d
informed Pierce that Hattle would need further conditioning to make
sure his recent victories had nothing to do with luck and more to
do with skill, but since defeating the Russian kid Pierce had seen
his son with a renewed confidence. Berengar, he’d said, for the
time being wasn’t needed. The training would resume without him.
Though he’d doubted significantly Hattle had the self-discipline to
keep himself motivated to the pressing degree at which Berengar
himself had urged. Berengar’s new duties had less to do with
training and more to do with clandestine insurgency on behalf of
the Lewis family. He was looking for the gene-freak kid and he knew
just where to go for that. The scouts were the best when it came to
the whereabouts of people. They see what goes on, they know the
details.

Gustav
Rutland was spiralling down a staircase to his floor when he’d
commented.

‘
Berengar the
Bear!’ He said, ‘my eyes see a lot but I ain’t seen heads-nor-tails
of your pretty face in six months I think.’

‘
Been working
a case study,’ he smiled regularly as Gus came to meet him and
shake his hand. ‘Sort of a personal project.’

‘
Well, not
too personal I hope fella,’ he said, pulling his arm in and
winking.

‘
Nothing like
that, Gus.’ He uttered. ‘Been training
The-Uppercut-Kid.’

‘
Ahh, you’re
teaching Hattle, right?’

‘
That’s
right,’ Berengar said, dropping his bag. ‘Little fucker knocked out
a tooth.’

‘
Must be true
what they say about his uppercuts.’ Gus said in surprise, looking
in at Berengar’s missing teeth.

‘
It’s not
that you don’t see em’ coming,’ said Berengar, ‘but if he hits
you…it’ll count.’

‘
I know a
great dentist on the other side of the city.’