Awakening on Orbis (22 page)

“He’ll be just like me,” I said.

“In some ways; in others not. Your ability to jump without a belt is a unique skill that no other Space Jumper has, although you are unable to control it. The mishaps you experienced early on, jumping without warning, will disappear. I’m convinced they were the result of Ketheria’s awakening.

“Your softwire is merely used to connect with the belt. A Space Jumper’s belt does most of the work under normal situations. It stores entry points throughout the universe and allows a Space Jumper to return to wherever he has been. You, on the other hand, simply need to remember a place in order to jump there. Unfortunately you cannot jump to a place you have never been without the use of a belt.”

“But I’ve jumped to places I’d never been before. I’ve showed up in back alleys in Murat and other places on the rings,” I told him.

“But you did not control those jumps. They were simply sparked by your emotions and sent you adrift through the Source. You are lucky you did not jump to the center of a black hole.”

“Oh,” I replied.

“May I continue?”

“Sorry.”

“Your unique ability to jump without a belt parallels your ability to
push
into a computer, as you call it. Softwires merely connect to a computer without hardware and interface with the data. You can actually enter a computer with your mind, manipulating its contents in ways we are unable to do. Although I did manipulate your genetic structures, I believe you were the only candidate capable of evolving in this manner. But I don’t know why. You are unique. You are the future of our kind.”

“And you did all this for me?”

“Yes.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I guess.”

The O-dats lit up, and I began downloading file after file. Most of it I didn’t even acknowledge outside of the title. I knew that the information would come to me when I needed it, as long as I accessed it often enough to store it inside my long-term memory. That was the purpose of my physical training, Quirin said, to ingrain the information into my unconscious.

By the time we were finished, I figured I was going to have to do a lot of training to use all of this information. I uploaded data files big enough to knock out a whole class back at the Center for Wisdom, Culture, and Comprehension. I was exhausted and had to drag myself back to my room.

The moment I was settled in my sleeper, Switzer burst into the room.

“You’ve been hiding this your whole life!” he cried.

“What?”

“This!” he yelled, tapping his head. “I can’t believe you’ve been ashamed of this.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked him.

Switzer was prancing around the room as if he had just discovered a new planet.

“Your softwire,” he cried. “They just turned mine on, or whatever it is they do. It’s incredible!”

“Oh, that,” I scoffed. “If I recall, you gave me a lot of crap over it when they discovered mine.”

Switzer walked over to me and placed his hand on my shoulder. “Look, I’m sorry about that, all right? How was I supposed to know? I was just a kid, remember? And besides, how could someone else fathom this power?” Switzer took up prancing around the room again.

“It’s done more harm than good,” I reminded him.

“That’s where you’re wrong. Do you even realize the power you have inside your head? I think half the training here is going to be about not abusing this.”

“Abusing it? What are you talking about?” Suddenly, I felt extremely nervous about the fact that I had brought Switzer here. “Look,” I said, standing up. “Don’t do anything stupid, all right? I convinced them to bring you here because of what they did to us. It wasn’t fair. Your situation is the exact result of their actions. Don’t go proving me wrong, please.”

“Don’t get your uplink in a tangle. I’m not going to do anything. But that’s why we haven’t gotten the warmest reception around here. All these other Space Jumpers evolved this ability. It made them exceptional on whatever planet they came from. You and I, on the other hand, were tinkered with. They needed the process speeded up so baby-malf could be the Scion. Humans were their last hope.”

“Don’t call her that.”

“Sorry. Old habits.”

“So that’s what they meant by calling us psuedos?”

“Yep.”

“What about this popper thing I keep hearing?”

“Even
I
can figure that one out. It’s because you were popping in out of space and time when you were getting angry. And you were doing it without a belt. No one else can do that, by the way.”

“I’ve heard.”

“I think it makes them a little jealous. We can’t jump without a belt.”

“We?” I said.

“Us
softwires.
I’m one of you now, my friend!”

Switzer punched me in the shoulder and laughed out loud. I couldn’t believe how much he was enjoying this. I had spent my entire life hiding my softwire ability, and he was wearing it like some sort of medal. I couldn’t even imagine acting like that. I wondered if the other Space Jumpers were stuffed with this much pride about their condition.

Switzer flopped onto his sleeper, still smiling.

“What are you thinking about?” I asked.

“The future,” he replied.

“What about it?”

“How great it’s going to be!”

As I lay in my sleeper, waiting to sleep, I tried to see Switzer’s point of view, but it was impossible. Being a softwire was not something I looked at with such optimism. As a kid, my abilities had only garnered me ridicule and shame, but when I thought about it, Max was excited when my abilities were first discovered. It was just the Space Jumper part she didn’t like. And I had promised her I wouldn’t become one.
So much for keeping my promise.

Insomnia. A side effect from the tablets that I kept popping despite Quirin’s instructions. While Switzer snored in his sleeper, I lay in mine, staring at the darkened lid. It was no use. I wasn’t going to fall asleep. I pushed the lid back and sat up. I was really missing Max. I wanted to know what she was doing, and the same with Theodore and Ketheria. I pulled on my clothes and headed for the observation deck.

Someone else was sitting there when I arrived. It was a Honock. He turned and looked at me when I entered.

“You bad!” he hissed.

I remembered that voice.

“Hey, I know you.” It was the same voice I heard the first time I was taken to the Hollow, when I had popped during the Chancellor’s Challenge on Orbis 3. This Honock was the one outside my room. “What’s your name?”

The Honock stood up and moved away from me. “You bad,” he repeated.

“No, I’m not. My name is JT. What’s yours?”

He didn’t reply. His back was against the glass, and he was sidling along it back toward the entrance. I didn’t push him. I kept my distance.

“I’m not bad. Why do you keep saying that?”

He pointed at my waist. “You bad.”

“What?” I said, patting my waist. “I’m bad because I don’t have a Space Jumper’s belt? Why would that make me bad?”

“You bad!” he yelled, and bolted for the door.

“Wait! Tell me why!” But the Honock was gone. At first I thought about following him. It made me wonder if Honocks even slept. How much of them were machine, anyway? Instead of following him, I sat near the glass and looked out at the stars. “Where are you, Max?” I whispered. “I miss you.”

The next cycle, I was forced to endure Switzer’s whistling as he strutted around the room, getting ready for the cycle’s training. I allowed myself to take pride in the fact that he wouldn’t be feeling this way if I had not gotten him out of that hole and brought him to the Hollow. Despite the rotations of abuse I’d taken from Switzer when we were kids, and even later when he was a wormhole pirate, I could see that he was a completely different person now. Secretly, I took a little credit for his change.

I started my cycle with a visit to Brine Amar, who asked me if I could help him fix his O-dat. I had to use my softwire ability again, and I started to wonder if the Nagool only thought of me as his own little handyman. Where was the connection to the Source? Where was the guidance? At least he was extremely thankful, and I liked using my softwire to
help
people, for a change.

Once at Quirin’s, I uploaded more files — simulated experience memories, or SEMs, as he called them. This cycle, I learned how to pilot a shuttle that I had never even been on. Now, that was definitely something I would like to try. I could only imagine how much fun Switzer was having.

During mealtime, I caught myself thinking about Max again, as well as Ketheria. Switzer was knee-deep in friends now, and even I began to feel a little camaraderie with everyone sitting at our table. But enjoying myself made me feel guilty for not knowing what was happening down on the rings. I wished there was some way to contact my friends, but when I had mentioned this to Quirin, he’d quickly shut me down, saying it was out of the question.

During the sleep spokes, I often found myself back in the observation deck. This routine continued for many cycles, but the Honock never showed again. I did spot him once, working behind the food wall, but he acted as if he didn’t know me. I don’t know why the Honocks interested me so much. Maybe I saw them as knudniks and felt some sort of connection to them.

“You look like crap,” Switzer said to me one cycle as he was headed out our door.

“Thanks,” I replied.

“No, I mean it. When was the last time you slept?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Are you still popping those pills?”

“Yeah, aren’t you?”

“No. I’m fighting it,” he replied, but I found that hard to believe. The headaches, the nausea, it was too much to endure this far away from Ketheria.

“How?” I asked.

“I just
am.
It’s not as hard as you think. You have to put the pain to the back of your mind and focus on something else.”

Switzer would have made a better Tonat, I told myself. “I can’t,” I said. “I’ve tried.”

“Well, try harder. You think you’re going to be able find a lifetime supply of those things when we’re done? What if you get stationed in another galaxy?”

“What do you mean
stationed
in another galaxy? Who told you this? I’m going back to the Rings of Orbis. I’m supposed to be protecting Ketheria. I’m not going anywhere.”

Switzer had stopped at the door, but now he walked back to my sleeper. “Give it up,” he growled. “
This
is your life now. You are an instrument of the Trust, a protector for the Ancients. You have a far greater purpose than all the split-screens on Orbis combined.” Then he left.

Switzer
definitely
would have made a better Tonat.

The next cycle was the first phase of our physical training. Using the Quest-Nest arena at the most physically demanding settings I had ever seen, a team of seasoned Space Jumpers ran us through coordination, endurance, flexibility, and strength drills. And then we did it again. The playing field had been replaced with what was mostly an obstacle course, which re-formed on me when I was too slow. With each run at the course, the computer would slip in new elements that required the use of another SEM, usually one that I had uplinked in a previous session with Quirin. The Space Jumpers had us take single turns, as well as switching out partners, using Gora, Switzer, and one of the trainers. We were often in pairs.

“Do Space Jumpers always work as pairs when they are on missions?” I asked the instructor, a big militarized Space Jumper.

“Concentrate on the now, popper. You’re in no condition to be thinking about a mission,” he barked.

So much for camaraderie,
I thought.

Whenever Switzer was asked to “run the Nest,” as he began to call it, he didn’t just walk up to it; he attacked it. Each obstacle was something else for him to conquer. I had to admire how good he was at it. He even completed one run ahead of the trainer. Not something he let slip by, either.

“You should have used that immobility cube on those spheres near the end. I find it acts as an adhesive on inanimate objects,” he boasted.

The trainer did not snap at him. In fact, he seemed to be absorbing what Switzer was telling him. I often saw them discussing a move Switzer had tried or an unorthodox manner in which he employed his weapon.

“You were made for this,” I said to him once at mealtime.

“Technically, I was,” he said, his mouth full of something green. “But my experiences as Captain Ceesar taught me to be resourceful. I have to think it’s going to get a lot harder than this if we are to live up to the Space Jumpers’ reputation.”

“What do you mean?” I asked. Switzer stuffed something with a tentacle into his mouth. I guess being a wormhole pirate had also broadened his appetite.

“Out there, in the real universe, these guys are gods,” Switzer whispered. “On some planets, the mere mention of a Space Jumper can send an enemy scurrying for cover. I just thought it would be a little tougher.”

“Or maybe you’re just that good,” I told him.

“Hey, don’t worry — you’re going to get better.”

“I don’t need your pity, thanks.”

“I didn’t mean it that way. Look, what are you now, seventeen? I have ten, maybe fifteen years’ experience on you. That’s all. How can anyone expect to be good at this right off the launch? That’s what the training’s for. I’m sure you’re much better than me when you’re using that thing in your head and jumping around computers and stuff. I’m still grasping working the interfaces on O-dats.”