Europa (Deadverse Book 1) (32 page)

- Thomas –

“Let’s go,” Paul said, handing him the gun.

The two men floated down the shaft, heading towards the rear end of the ship where Glorin’s quarters were. The order had come in from Ben to capture Glorin right away. Everything would be explained later. Paul led the way, pulling himself through zero G down the corridor, in and out of each ring. Thomas followed behind nearly ten feet. Paul was on a mission though, focused. Charles was coming down the other corridor on the opposite side of the driver to make sure the old man wasn’t coming back the other way.

They reached the last ring and walked in, letting gravity settle them onto the floor. They walked up to the last door and Paul put a finger to his mouth. He reached out quietly and tested the lever on the door just slightly. It came to a stop immediately. Paul backed up a bit then focused. He lifted his large leg up and with one swift kick, knocked the whole lever clean off, slamming the door open. He rushed in, shouting for Glorin.

Thomas followed up right behind him, his gun pointed ahead. He stopped right behind Paul, and stepped beside him. Glorin was there, against the far wall, grinning and holding a knife to Horace’s neck. He had the shrink tied up and gagged on a seat. The old man’s hair was missing, and patches of blood covered his scalp. Horace was conscious, but had apparently suffered under some torture. Glorin looked up at them and grinned. He was missing his teeth as well.

“I knew the moment the alarm went off last night that someone would come here,” he said, his voice ragged. “I just didn’t expect it to be the mental man first. Now put your weapons down or I cut his head off.”

Thomas looked in horror. His eyes were actually green, solid, no pupils. There seemed to be a steady drool coming from the side of his mouth. His hands were covered in blood, and to the side were the remains of his hair, pulled out.

“I am amazed that fool Emir survived. Surely something about this human nature we simply don’t understand yet,” he said, looking away for a moment.

Paul took a step forward, but the old man snapped to.

“Not another step, or this man is dead.”

“Ben,” Paul said. “We found him. He has Horace.”

“I have everything. My mission, my life. Finally completed,” Glorin cackled, followed by a seriously deep and thick cough.

“Who are you?” Thomas asked.

“More than you could possibly imagine,” he said, grinning widely without the teeth. “I control this ship. Your little plaything, floating around out there, I can break her tether. The air in this ship? I can vent it. It doesn’t matter at all. You are all dead, going back to a dead world.”

“Answer him,” Paul said. “Who are you?”

“I am the voice of reason. I am the hand of God and the hammer of the heavens. I have come to bring judgment upon your world. You were not meant to be, and therefore have no place among the stars. I am here to put you back into the trees. You will be slaves to our destiny.”

Thomas caught Paul glancing at him. He had clearly lost it.

“Do you have a bomb on this ship?” Paul asked.

“A bomb? I have the solution. I have the cleansing power of the stars. Your might and achievements will be brought to a clean slate, and your path set anew, towards its eventual goal.”

“Did you kill Gary and Cary?” Thomas asked. His hand was shaking.

“They were already dead. As are all of you. Your brothers in metal, all dead. Your planet of primitives playing at god, all dead.”

“Did you kill them?” Paul repeated.

“Simpletons. Yes, I took their parts. They were required for the study of your advancements.”

The old man began to rave again. Paul heard a chirp in his ear, then he heard Ben say, shoot him. He aimed his gun, but the lunatic was completely behind Horace. Only his knife wielding arm and his head were showing. If Paul missed, he could hit Horace, or worse, hit the wall. The hull was thick, but any accident here could be disastrous. He let him talk and hoped he would move a bit more into the open, but he heard Ben order him to shoot again.

“Why don’t you just kill us all then? You clearly want us dead, go ahead, vent the ship,” Thomas shouted out.

The old man replied with a sinister sneer.

“Yes,” he said, “maybe I….”

The shot cracked from behind him and hit Glorin directly in the middle of the forehead. He slumped over in an instant, leaving behind a splash of blood on the wall. Paul didn’t wait and rushed up to him, kicking the knife away. Thomas came up and began to untie Horace. He then looked back and saw Charles standing there, looking down at the old man.

“Ben,” Charles said, “he’s dead. Took me too long, but I got him.”

Paul kicked the motionless body again, then looked back up at them.

“What the hell just happened? What happened to him?” he asked.

Charles walked up and looked down at the body.

“Let’s go bring Connie in. I think we all need to listen to someone.”

- Emir –

He sat on the cold bench while Susan set up the camera. His side still hurt, but the botanist had performed a miracle, and here he was, alive. He looked up just as Susan gave him a thumbs up and he took a deep breath. He had no idea if it would work and as far as he knew, they were already dead, and his Earth doomed. But he had to try. He saw the red light blinking on the camera and began.

“Odyssey,” he started, “if you get this, capture and subdue Glorin. Immediately. It is of uttermost importance that you keep him under close eye, and keep him away from your computers at all costs. What I am about to tell you will seem like fantasy, but please listen carefully. Glorin is not who he says he is.

Since the ship, I have had voices in my head. Voices that I cannot explain. I thought that perhaps I was losing my mind, and in my delusions, even considered the possibility that Allah was punishing me with demons for my lack of faith. What I saw in my dreams, what I heard in those voices, made no sense to me, and so I found myself losing my sanity, no, my humanity. That I did not do anything foolish in this state of madness I will not understand. Jenna, if you hear this, thank you for believing in me.

But the voices were not madness; they were hundreds of men and woman, trapped inside me. I was possessed. That is right, was. My mind is free now, but all of their memories, their lives, have remained as a shadow in me, and it is only with this newfound clarity that I can now tell you what I know. I am no longer just Emir, but a conflagration of a hundred lives. I am not any one of them, either, but something, someone, entirely new. Be warned that the same affliction that affected me, also resides in Glorin. But while my voices spoke of resolution and hope, his spoke of vengeance, destruction, greed and power.

I don’t know if we are alone in this universe, but in the grand scheme, we are not alone. Charles, you sensed familiarity while in the ship? There is a reason, for it was built by humans. It just wasn’t humans from our world, neigh, not even from our own universe. It was built by humans from another Earth, in another reality.

I have seen this Earth. The blue pearl in the dark night is the same, the same lands, same oceans, same white wisps of clouds spinning gently around its globe. But on this Earth, great vessels rise from its surface with ease while thousands of smaller worlds drift slowly around it, docks for voyages deep into their space. They control gravity and the confines of space, breaking laws of physics we had no clue even existed. So great is their dominance over their own universe that eventually, their own limitless expanse was not enough for them. They longed for other universes, and for this purpose the ships like the one here on Europa were built.

But they had little desire for exploration and science, for these they have already mastered to the point of boredom. Their lives are eternal, unless they wish to end it, but even these deaths can be remade in new bodies. Even the poorest and most undesirable among them lack nothing. So their ships began to leave their own universe on a mission of conquest.

Most Earths they came upon were lifeless, and the few that had sparked life were primitive. All these were wonderful homes to these conquistadores, but of no threat to them. It was just a matter of time, in a series of infinite possible Earths, that they would came across humans. Most they could conquer easily, but in our world, they saw for the first time a possible upstart. See, we were a world on a similar path as theirs, full of wonder, technology and a devotion to science. It was only a matter of time, even if millennia, before we pierced the veil of our universe, and if we did, so would our desire to conquer rival theirs.

The ship was crewed with soldiers who came to explore and learn, and then to destroy. Their mastery of time was such that while we saw their ship appear for just a few weeks, inside they studied us for nearly ten years. Every detail, every shred of psychology, every bit of technology, was poured over. In time, the captain of the ship decided it was best to complete the mission, and destroy our Earth’s capability for science.

There was a small, but influential group within the ship, that saw otherwise. They viewed humanity, even if separated by the universes, as a kin, a brotherhood of evolution. They saw our world as an ally they would never find anywhere else. They saw a world with their equal potential, and with the proper guidance, the ability to achieve it. They mutinied against their captain, and would attempt to reach Earth and reveal themselves, but the conflict within was too great. The ship was damaged and the captain crash landed the ship on Europa. Without the resources a planet like Earth would provide, their death was imminent. The barren wasteland of the frozen moon offered no life sustaining wealth. The ship was divided into halves, and the two groups waged a small war.

Instead of falling into permanent physical death, the survivors decided instead to transfer their being into the ship’s memory, remaining forever alive in a digital state. It was this eternal databank that I, and Glorin, stumbled upon. The voices that lived within found an easy host in our minds. We are, after all, the same.

I don’t know what they saw in me, the peacekeepers, but they uploaded to my cortex. Maybe they thought they could use me to warn Earth, and for that, I am sorry to have failed. It is clear that the captain’s faction saw an opportunity in Glorin’s focused intellect. He murdered Cary to gain a complete understanding of the human body from our Earth, to understand the minute difference that might exist, and he murdered Gary to get his brain. He studied it in great detail in order to better control his host.

When I returned to the ship, I confronted him, not as myself, but as one of the peacekeepers. Unfortunately, I was defeated. I have the wound in my stomach to prove it. Glorin has taken with him the weapon with which he will use to destroy our Earth. The peacekeepers call it the Anihilicron, with clear reason. This small device contains the powers of the universe, and I don’t say that lightly. This device, if allowed to reach the Earth, will render it primitive. The laws of science as we have come to understand them over thousands of years, will unravel, even if just slightly. The chaos that will ensue from this minute change will send us back to the Stone Age, or worse. This conquering Earth can then come in and do what they wish with our home.

There are laws in each reality, one slightly different than the other. This device will transpose these rules into our world, turning science upside down, altering the way we understand the world. We will be reduced to the fields and trees once again, possibly forever. This device has many other hidden abilities as well. If you haven’t noticed yet, time around it flows at a completely different pace than our universe does. It will affect your electronics in unimaginable, possibly catastrophic ways. Rest assured though, that it completely incapable of altering life in any way.

Life is sacred to the universe. Of every universe. Maybe God does exist, and these people from this other Earth are trying to find him. Maybe God is trying to find the real man among the many he has created. I think it is our world that can find him. Whatever you do, do not allow that device to touch the surface of our world.

The ship here, on Europa, has dissolved itself. The beings that lived within it held it together, but now that they are gone, and silent, it is no more. It is not a threat to what remains of this base, and so Susan and I are safe. We are, of course, left to our own devices here, and here we shall remain until our time is up. There are other worlds my memories show me. These worlds are in just as much peril as our own.

I am sorry for everything. In all my failings, I hope I have been able to redeem myself.”

- Ben -

The day had come, the day of decisions, of choices that would affect the rest of their lives, and the lives of anyone left on Earth. It had come way too soon, but it was here.

They sat in orbit around Earth. Ben admitted, there had been a tiny moment of goosebumps. Still, that moment was gone after they got a good view of the planet. She was still there, continents, oceans, but a gray haze settled all over it. For hours, they watched on the scope, zooming in on New York City, or whatever was left of it. They followed several squadrons of automated bombers all the way from Russia to the western coast of the United States, where they dropped their bombs in San Francisco, and flew back. The sad part was that, there was nothing left to bomb in San Francisco, just rubble. The same pattern was repeated all over the planet. Just outside of Egypt, they saw a battle between tanks take place. The Sinai was littered with the wrecks of tanks, and they watched as this new battle just added to it. Still, they saw no bodies, no men, mechs or otherwise, following the tanks. Just as Charles had predicted, the war raged on, carried on by the program of a thousand computers.

Joyce scanned every single possible channel or form of communication, but found nothing but the networked automated channels of the nations at war. The sheer amount of data suggested the scale of this AI war was beyond their scopes. Tens of thousands of single data bursts were traced back to the east coast of the United States in just two hours. Still, Joyce remained at her desk, determined to find something, someone. Anyone.

The radiation readings were bad, but not deadly. North America, Europe, Russia and China were the worst. The Middle East and northern Africa had been hit, too. Still, many other parts of the world remained untouched by the nuclear weapons. South America was nearly radiation free, even if still under part of the fallout winter that was blanketing the planet. The war, though, raged on across the entire planet, wherever enemy machines managed to find each other.

Then, on the evening of that momentous day, Joyce came across a transmission. It was aired just outside of Buenos Aires. Crysta knew some Spanish, and it was mostly a back and forth transmission about curfew and the movement of refugees. There was life still, and where there was life, there was hope.

The entrance vehicle took nearly a whole day to pack up. They took with them as many supplies and food as they could fit in there. Their extremely fast transit through space left them with a plethora of food to use, and when they landed, who knew what kind of conditions they’d find themselves in. Some of the fuel was packed in as well as for a small generator on board the entry vehicle. They could live out of it for a while if needed.

That night, they ate from all the vegetables they harvested from Susan’s transplants. A toast was raised to her, which they transmitted back to Europa. It would take forty five minutes, but she would get it. They toasted Emir as well, and Thomas even found it within himself to apologize to him. There was dancing, both zero and full gravity, plenty of revelry, drinks and celebration. The next day, they were all allowed to sleep in, sleep the celebration off.

That morning, Ben did wake up early. After cleaning up, he made his way into the bridge and sat before the device for a few minutes. They had finally found it, tucked away under the bridge, where it was attached to the main network lines of the ship. It was clearly linked, and using the ship, but to what ends, no one could even possibly try to explain. With Emir’s assistance, they had unhooked it, but there it had remained, on the bridge.

It was a pyramid. Strange that such a design was used, that this specific shape was the same across the two universes. There was certainly something great about it that Ben couldn’t explain. He had once stood next to a nuclear reactor, and even then, knowing that the power of the stars was behind the wall of concrete, he had never felt as he did now, inches away from the tiny thing. Something instinctual, primal, hidden in the recesses of his mind. This thing controlled the powers of the universe, and it could fit in the palm of his hand if he wanted to.

Time passed as he sat and stared at it. Maybe it did its tiny time trick again, Ben didn’t know. It had stopped warping time when they neared Earth, as if it knew. A few hours passed when a small alarm beeped on his tablet. It was time for the meetings. Ben reached out and held his hand over the artifact and held it there. He expected to feel warmth, or electricity, or something, but there was nothing. He swiped it, and his first thought was that it was a rubic’s cube. Tiny, light, nothing to it. Still, in reverence, he held it in his hand, and floated down towards the mess hall.

He walked in to the entire group sitting around the table. Jenna and Paul sat together on the end. Thomas sat next to Jenna, with Connie beside him. Crysta and Joyce sat opposite of each other, and they were arguing something about their breakfast. Horace was reading something on his tablet and glanced up when he saw Ben enter the room. Charles sat at the other end of the table, and motioned to the open spot next to him. The peace on his face was a welcome change to his friend’s face. Everyone was at peace, and no matter what happened here, they would welcome it.

Ben set the artifact in the middle of the table and everyone’s attention directly focused on it. He then made his way to the open seat and sat down. He put his arms on the table, and waited. No one spoke for minutes.

“Send it to the sun,” Jenna was the first to break the silence.

There was a general nodding of heads.

“I can program Hammy to fly the ship there. There’s enough fuel to get her going, and it will take a few years, but it will eventually fly into the star,” Crysta informed.

“Won’t that destroy your AI?” Ben asked. The software had been incredibly useful to them.

“I have a full copy of him on the descent craft. I think we can use him to fight off these automated attack drones down there. At least a few at a time,” she said.

That had been the biggest topic at hand. Could they, a bunch of scientists and engineers that had lived on a moon away from Earth for two years, do anything to help? After all they had been through, they certainly wanted to try. With the AI they could maintain some contact with Europa, and perhaps, Emir could use any of his newfound memories to help them.

“What if the sun can’t destroy it?” Horace asked. “That thing comes from another universe. As far as we know, our sun can’t scratch it.”

“Then what?” Connie asked. “Leave it here, in orbit?”

“Eventually, it would fall back to Earth,” Jenna said.

“Or they,” Joyce pointed out, “could come back and get it.”

“For that matter,” Jenna continued, “what’s to stop THEM from coming back and finishing the job?”

That was something that everyone had thought about at least once. Maybe the other world was expecting a report back, or a mission complete signal. Of this, Emir did not know anything about. His memories showed him nothing of this. They were just overwhelmed by the sadness of the conflict within the ship.

“It appears that, it would be expected that, maybe not today, and maybe not even in a thousand years, but our visitors will return,” Ben said, solemnly. “In the meantime, mankind’s own actions have already set it so far behind. How long will it take humanity to rebound from this nightmare? A hundred years? Three hundred? And that’s only from the point where this war actually ends. And how long will it take for these machines to run themselves aground?”

Ben looked back at Charles. He looked up at the group.

“Decades. Maybe a hundred years.”

The news deflated them.

“A hundred years of machines raging unconscious war upon our planet. What if the automated programs decide the next course of action is to use more nukes? Can humanity survive more of this?” Ben asked.

Everyone looked around.

“So, then what?” someone asked.

Crysta looked up. “Can Emir find a way to dismantle it somehow?”

Ben shook his head. He had already asked.

“Then what?”

Ben breathed in deeply, then exhaled.

“We use it.”

The gasps and exclamations that followed were expected. Even Charles leaned in, and asked him what he was thinking.

“If we use it, and THEY come back, they will see a world where their device was used. Maybe we are ignored.”

“Um, you’re saying we wipe out mankind?” Paul asked.

“Actually,” Ben said. “That’s not what the weapon does. Remember Emir’s words? It is meant to set us back. De-evolve us. Make us primitive.” He tossed his tablet on the table and pressed a button. Everyone else heard a link beep on theirs, and looked to see the file he had transmitted to them.

“This is from Emir. We have discussed this at length. Their intention was never to destroy humanity, but conquer it, disable it. The weapon won’t kill man. It will kill our technology.”

Charles looked at him. “You sure of this?”

“Emir seems to be.”

“How does it work?” Crysta asked.

“You are asking the wrong guy. Even Emir didn’t know. You heard him say how it alters the rules of the universe. That’s all we know.”

Silence followed as everyone took in the implications of what Ben was suggesting. Ben struggled himself. There was no certainty in his choice of action. They were going on the dim memories of a man that had suffered a mental attack. Memories of people long dead from an entirely different universe.

“So we take it down with us, and then what?”

“This war ends. The machines fall out of the sky. Radios stop working. I don’t know. Maybe we all die. But maybe we get a chance to rebuild. We look for the changes this device brings upon the world, and adapt. Maybe a little better this time around,” Ben said.

“People are going to die. We are the only ones that know what’s going to happen,” Paul said. He was clearly conflicted.

“People are dying right now, and will keep dying.”

Ben waited, for anything, for any response. Some of them read the Emir message in more detail, and others stared at each other, or off into a day dream. Just when Ben thought he needed to say something, Paul stood up.

“Let’s just go home. I’ve had my fill of technology for one life. I can do the rest of my life without it.”

Jenna smiled, took his hand, and stood up. “I’m in.”

Everyone stood up, one by one, agreeing, until finally, only Crysta was left sitting. Ben looked across to her.

“You have the most to lose. Your life’s work will be lost.”

She thought a little more, and looked up at her friends, then back across at Ben.

“My life’s work was on that frozen moon. It’s time to go home,” she said, standing up.

Ben reached across the table and took the device in his hands. The weapon had become the tool.

Two hours later, they were all gathered in the entrance vehicle, a small tear drop shaped vessel that was housed in the rear of the Odyssey. It was cramped, but had ample seating, as they had planned for more than had survived. Ben took one last walk around the ship that had brought them home, and then went into the mess hall. He had one more thing to get.

He reached the vehicle with Jenna waiting at the hatch.

“Did you forget something?” she asked.

Ben held out his hand. It was a jar filled with ice.

“It’s a piece of Europa. I’ll keep it with me as long as I live.”

Jenna smiled and ducked into the hatch. Ben followed after her and reached in to pull it shut. He took a deep breath. They had left Earth in hopes of finding greatness on the small frozen moon. Without knowing it, they had found mankind’s salvation. No one would ever remember if the device worked, but today, he fulfilled his mission.

It was time to go home.

Ben swung the hatch shut and spun it locked.