Redemption Protocol (Contact) (38 page)

“The key, yes.”

“But what if it's not?”

Weaver frowned, bemused.

“You think we’re wasting our time?”

“Pardon me for getting philosophical for a moment.”

Oh dear, Weaver thought, wary of imminent waffle.

“Go on.”

“Well we don't definitively understand the ideograms, so our interpretation is likely flawed, but I was trying to think of what it could mean, ‘
present unique identity
’. If it wasn't one's key.”

Weaver frowned.

“Yes...”

“And it occurred to me that it could mean...”

Weaver focused hard.

“Oneself,” Touvenay said.

“Right,” Weaver said, clueless but concentrated.

“What?” Kemensky said.

“Ah,” Fournier said.

Fournier liked it. Breakthrough, Weaver thought. She grappled with Touvenay’s statement. The light came on.

“Ah ha.”

“But that’s still your key, isn't it?” Kemensky said.

“No,” Touvenay, Fournier and Weaver said together.

Kemensky shut his mouth.

Weaver turned to Kemensky.

“Touvenay is suggesting that the idea of presenting a unique identity is not presenting a key, it is presenting a...”

She searched for an appropriate word.

“Consciousness,” Touvenay said.

“Right.”

“After all,” Touvenay said, “what is consciousness but a unique, personal identity?”

Weaver found the ramifications of this too great to consider all at once. Instead, she focused on the panel.

“So our hypothesis is that the panel is sensing for contact with a consciousness?”

“Direct contact,” Touvenay said.

Weaver nodded.

“Right. Direct contact.”

“But how?” Kemensky said.

Weaver gestured at the panel.

“Using the energy spike.”

Kemensky shook his head.

“No, I didn't mean that. I meant how? How could they do that?”

Weaver rolled her eyes.

“Well, duh, Kemensky...”

Kemensky looked at her expectantly.

Weaver spread her hands.

“Because they're
aliens
.”

Laughter.

Even Havoc, Mr Statue himself, laughed.

Kemensky gave an exasperated sigh.

Weaver contemplated Touvenay’s idea.

“Which would explain why we have a representation of a generic level of puzzle, like a difficulty level, but no actual sequence to work with.”

Fournier nodded.

“It would explain that.”

Weaver stared at the panel.

“We need to test it.”

Kemensky stepped back, away from the panel.

“On one of us? Sounds like going out on a limb to me.”

Fournier smiled.

“That's where the fruit is...”

Touvenay nodded.

“Nothing ventured, as they say.”

Weaver felt nervous excitement rising inside her.

“I'll do it.”

 65. 

It was another hour before Weaver was standing in front of the gate and ready to go. The driving horizontal snow had abated and the wind had dropped from ferocious to merely brutal.

She’d set up a transparent sample chamber over the access panel and evacuated the plash atmo. She’d attached a pipe that continuously pumped in warm air to keep the chamber at positive pressure so that no Plash contaminants could find their way inside. One of Weaver’s main concerns was contamination. She didn’t want to pick up an alien virus. She’d scanned and scanned again without finding any results. Still, they were operating way outside the standard protocol. If it hadn’t been for the other ships and the tettraxigyiom contamination, the crew would have spent months sending down quarantined drones until they’d built up a detailed understanding of the surface environment.

She was going to test Touvenay's hypothesis about consciousness by touching the panel. Straightforward as experiments went, analogous to the early development of chemistry – drop these two substances in a test tube and see what happens.

Havoc had told her beforehand that they were going to cover her with weapons, purely as a precaution, but she still found it disconcerting that the static defense station was pointing kinetic weapons and micromissiles
straight
at her.
She had heavy sedatives attached to her external vening interface so that Havoc could knock her out if necessary. Havoc had also run a cable from the back of her suit, attached to the front of his, so that he could haul her away from the gate. Weaver was pleasantly surprised by Havoc’s meticulous approach; it wasn't what she’d expected. He stood by her shoulder as she checked the experimental apparatus one last time. His jetpack extended out from his shoulders like a winged predator. He looked insanely dangerous. She glanced back at him.

“I think I’m ready.”

He nodded.

“In your own time.”

She cast to Kemensky, who sat in one of the two pairs of cabins that Havoc had deployed to either side of the entrance.

“Ready, Kemensky?”

“Ready.”

“Are you ready for us to proceed,
Intrepid
?”

“We’re ready,” Touvenay said.

Weaver steeled her resolve and nodded at Havoc.

“I’m good to go.”

Havoc patted her arm, his touch surprisingly gentle given his massive presence in his combat suit, and backed away from her. She was alone beside the gate with its sinister carvings. The air pipe writhed as the wind toyed with it.

She slid her arm into the front of the sample chamber. The chamber interface locked onto her suit arm and formed a seal.

She swallowed, feeling alone.

“Are my readings good, Kemensky?”

Kemensky sounded preoccupied with his instruments.

“Subject is good. I mean, yes, your readings are good, Evelyn.”

“Ok.”

She signaled her suit and her gauntlet and forearm parted and retracted. Her spine tingled as she felt the warm air blowing across her hand.

“Fiat lux,” Fournier said.
Let light arise
.

Weaver took a deep breath. This was probably going to be a big anticlimax. It was bound to be. Nothing was going to happen. It was just a wall, after all. She wondered how cold it would feel. Pretty cold, she thought.

She flexed her fingers and pushed her palm against the panel.

 66. 

Weaver felt a burning cold on her hand, rapidly warming. The warm sensation traveled up her arm and tingles spread across her body. The heat in her hand soared to an uncomfortable intensity then faded. She felt random patterns of stimulation in her head as if someone was sprinkling sherbet on her brain.

Weaver hardly noticed. Her mind was somewhere else. She felt like an aircraft bursting through cloud into brilliant sunshine. She had clarity across a vast arena, though she didn’t know where she was. She was in a place that was expansive and empty and full of potential.

A sequence flowed across her awareness. It had the form that the puzzles had taken in the puzzle tower, with a number of elements followed by empty slots. Weaver felt as though she was looking across a vast plain of nothing, with the sequence moving across her mind's eye in the foreground, almost beneath her.

She tried to concentrate on it, but the feeling was so novel that she couldn’t grasp or manipulate the symbols. She tried to relax. She'd gone down to the one hundred and tenth row in the puzzle tower. This sequence was from the eightieth row. It felt much harder, here and now, as it flowed across her mind.

She was struck by a sense of urgency as she perceived a limit. She was struck by the realization that she couldn’t see – she couldn’t physically sense anything any more. Where was she? She couldn’t see, feel or hear anything. She was locked in this place with only this puzzle. She felt trapped. What if she couldn't get out? Panic started to rise in her like pressure building in a geyser.

What if she couldn’t do it?

What if she could?

~    ~    ~

“Anything?” Havoc asked.

Kemensky highlighted Weaver’s data on mission net.

“Her vitals rose and then spiked. Her heart rate has gone from twenty to sixty and jumped to two hundred and fifteen.”

Kemensky didn’t need to say this sounded like a panic attack. Havoc tightened his grip on the cable attached to Weaver’s back.

Fournier’s voice was calm.

“That means something is happening. Let’s wait and see.”

Havoc watched Weaver intently.

“Kemensky?”

“Two-ten, two-oh-five, one-ninety.”

~    ~    ~

Weaver calmed herself and worked the sequence. Her powers of visualization were dramatically beyond what they’d been before. The ideograms spun as she mapped them into equations she could work with more directly. The sequence involved equations recursively manipulating primes. It was elegant and clever. She had an insight and then another. The sequence started to glow more brightly. The intensity of it was hard to hold in her mind. She tried to ignore it as she manipulated the concepts and determined what she considered to be the solution. She had a buzz of pleasure, the intensity faded and the flat horizon collapsed down to a point surrounded by nothing.

She was back outside the gateway. Her hand was burning on the panel. She cried out as she pulled it away. Her mind was reeling with what had happened. She felt a wave of euphoria, an echo of the heightened awareness that she'd just experienced. She giggled.

“Weaver? Are you alright?”

She realized it was Havoc speaking.

“I’m ok. I’m ok.”

“The gate!” Karch said.

“Seal your hand please, Weaver. Do it now.”

She grinned.

“It was––”

“I’m sealing your suit remotely, watch your hand,” Havoc said.

Weaver saw her suit extend down her forearm and her gauntlet swing back over her hand.

“It was––”

“The gate is opening!” Karch said.

“I’m bringing you out,” Havoc said.

Weaver felt a powerful tug on the back of her suit. She fell back into a sitting position and was dragged across the ground on her butt.

She felt giddy as she looked at the gate. The giant door had split into seven chunks that were recessing into the surrounding wall of the Colosseum. Beyond, darkness beckoned. Faint light came from several points inside, diffuse like gas lamps seen through fog.

“The gate is open. Repeat, the gate is open,” Havoc said.

Weaver’s hand hurt but she felt strangely happy. She felt a couple of pats on her shoulder.

Havoc leaned over her. He smiled, concern in his eyes.

“Well done.”

They were in.

She'd done it.

“Well done, Evelyn. What happened?” Fournier said.

She struggled to articulate it.

“I don't know exactly. I felt a mixture of heightened awareness and sensory deprivation. I was in an abstract place where I felt capable of powerful thought, but deprived of my normal senses. When I solved the sequence I felt pure elation.”

Fournier grunted.

“Extraordinary. A unique identity. Well done, Touvenay.”

“Thank you.”

Weaver marveled at the possibilities.

“We could discover the true nature of consciousness here, if this device can measure it.”

“Is anyone home?” Touvenay said.

Weaver looked at the entrance.

 67. 

Havoc advanced cautiously toward the cavernous entrance. He had to get close so that the wind wouldn’t blast his microdrones away before they managed to get inside.

“I'm sending in three microdrones.”

Three microdrones lifted off his arm and flew into the gaping maw of the cavern, toward the faint lights that glowed like wisps floating over a swamp. Havoc monitored the microdrones traversing the entrance. Data transmission was uninterrupted. He backed away, wary and alert, and stopped by Weaver.

“How's your hand?”

Weaver grimaced.

He nodded toward the nearest pair of cabins.