Seventh (10 page)

            Of course, we sent it in completely unmanned the first few times, and I reaped the glory from the data we gathered.

            “We were learning so much, the research value was phenomenal.”  The uniformed version of me spoke from across the room.  “We even discovered a way to stabilize the slipstream field in Seventh Space.  Jimmy, we were going to be responsible for revolutionizing space travel!  Can you imagine?”  There was a cold light behind the other-me’s eyes. 

            “But then Karen called.  She was angry, irate!  She demanded that I come home and spend time with my family, or she was going to file for divorce and custody of the children.  I tried to explain to her how important my work was, how close I was to finding the final answers we needed, but she wouldn’t listen.  I couldn’t leave my work.  You know that!  We couldn’t leave.  No one else could pick up the research where we’d left it.”

            “I cut off contact with her and the kids.  If she wanted a divorce, then she could have one.  I focused all my energy on the project and made a formal request to start human testing on the Tether Project.  It took less than 24 hours to get permission to go forward with testing.  The congressional officers were thrilled with the progress we were making and they wanted us to lock down this new technology as fast as possible.  Obviously it would have been a huge boon to our frontier movement, and would give us a huge tactical advantage over all other alien races we’d encountered who believed even the mere thought of using Seventh Space was taboo.”

            “The Venture arrived one week later with a host of ‘volunteers’ for our experimentation.”  The other-me gestured to the computers in front of him.  “Come, look.  You need to see the result of our research.”

            I hesitated for a second, trying to decide whether I really wanted to see what I was about to be shown.  My curiosity won out.  As my memories were rebuilt, my desire to see the results of my own research was growing stronger. 

            The screens at the console were each full of different sets of data, but it was the seven central displays that caught my eye most keenly.  Six of the cameras covered rooms whose design was intimately familiar.  They were small cells with nothing more than a closet, a bed, a desk and a chair with a few feet of space between the furnishings to move around.  There was a flashing red light in each room, which I could see on the full spectrum display even when it wasn’t flashed on.  I knew from experience that for the occupants of those rooms when that light went out they were completely wrapped in darkness.

            The seventh camera covered a room much larger than the others that housed a collection of computers and sensors, equipment for taking readings and managing the systems necessary to keep the Tether running while it was undocked from Odyssey.  

            “The red flash means that the Tether Probe has undergone the drop to Seventh Space. Watch the occupied rooms.”  My own voice spoke from behind me, a whisper in my ear. 

            I turned my focus back to the six rooms, noticing for the first time that each of the beds had someone laying in them.  At first they were all still.  In fact, they were so still that I wondered if they might be dead.  My eyes drifted to another screen and I could see a list of vital signs scrolling across the display.  They weren’t dead, just deeply asleep. 

            One of the sleeping people sat up with a start, tossing his blanket to the ground and nearly falling out of bed in the process.  He was looking around wildly, as though he’d been startled awake by a sound.  I noticed that he was dressed in a uniform like the one I was wearing, a plain one-piece gray jumpsuit with a barcode on the chest.

            “Who’s there?!” His voice came softly over the surveillance line.  He seemed to relax a bit, as though someone had answered. 

            “Has it started yet?”  He asked a moment later. 

            “I feel a little sick.”  He spoke once more, and it again seemed like he was replying to someone.  I knew that he wasn’t, though, because the Tether could only pass data in one direction.  There was no one for him to be talking to. 

            Someone woke up on a different screen.  They sat straight up and looked directly into the surveillance camera, as though they could see the array hidden behind their wall.  They got up out of bed, walked to the center of the room and stopped, their gaze never moving from the spot.  The full spectrum lighting made their eyes glow as though they were made from blue fire. 

            A scream sounded from one of the other rooms and I turned my attention to the screen just in time to witness an explosion of blood and human shrapnel erupt from one of the beds.  Bone fragments ricocheted off the walls of the room, and chunks of flesh covered almost every surface.   My stomach turned, but I couldn’t look away. 

            The sound of vomiting brought me back to the first subject.  He was doubled over in the corner, retching loudly. 

            He said something that I couldn’t decipher followed by what sounded like, “…don’t show me that…” and then he was back to turning his stomach inside out. 

            A woman screamed and I looked to another screen to see a female lurching out of bed, clawing at her abdomen with her hands. 

            “Fuck, fuck, fuck it hurts!”  She kept screaming. 

            “James.”  A separate voice spoke, and I looked across the cameras looking for the source, but no one was talking.  The first to wake was still vomiting, the second was staring at the camera, slightly swaying in place, the third was still dead, and the woman was now writhing on the ground clutching her stomach.  The other two occupants hadn’t moved yet. 

            “Get it out!”  The woman was screaming.  She’d begun to rip into her lower stomach with her hands, actually tearing the flesh with her fingernails.  I was sickened, but again I couldn’t pull my attention away. 

            I was obviously witnessing severe DSD firsthand.  The stasis field around the Tether wasn’t calibrated correctly.  The Tether itself was fine, but those onboard were still being affected by the Seventh Space radiation.  I would need to study the data closely to determine exactly what had gone wrong.  The biometric readings of the test subjects would be invaluable.  With a few more tests I could start to zero in the frequency of shield modulations needed to stoop DSD effects from occurring.  I would have to try a tighter spectrum shield with the next group.  I figured that had a higher chance of success, but if that didn’t work, I could run a loose spectrum shield and compare the biometrics to see which had been more effective.

            Once I knew which direction to tune the shields, it would just be a matter of hammering down the last few details.  In a month or two I could have my answers. 

            I looked down at the cameras again and noticed something strange.  Two of the test subjects were now in the same room.  The two that hadn’t yet been awake were now both awake and sharing the same space.  They sat facing each other, one on the chair and the other on the bed.  How had that happened?  Those compartments were not physically connected at all.  What had I missed while day dreaming?  I would need to back up the recordings and find out, but first I wanted to see what they would do. 

            “James Wright.”  A voice spoke, startling me so badly I almost loosed my bladder.  I looked up at the other screens and noticed that the second to wake was now standing on his chair, his face just a foot away from the recording array’s hiding place.  “He’s coming James.  He’s coming.”   The man reached up his hands, grabbed his own head, and sharply twisted it to the left in one deft motion.  There was a loud pop as his neck broke and he fell to the ground, his leg kicking sporadically.

            I sat staring at his twitching corpse for a time.  How did he know me?  I didn’t recognize him.  Someone must have told them I was in charge of the experiments.  That seemed the most likely explanation. 

            My attention was drawn from that screen as a new, disturbing noise assailed my ears.  It took me a second to place it amongst all of the screens before me.  The two subjects who were in the same room had, it seemed, begun to eat each other.  They were literally ripping pieces off one another and cramming them into their mouths as fast as they could.  There was no fighting, no struggle or trying to get away from each other.  It looked more like an eating contest, both men trying to out-eat the other as quickly as possible.

            I looked back over all the cameras and then checked the vitals on each of the test subjects.  Only those last two remained alive, and their stats were erratic and fading.  The first to wake was now lying in a pool of blood and vomit.  I wasn’t entirely certain what had killed him, but it was quite clear he was dead.  The second had broken his neck.  The third had exploded.  The fourth, the female, had dissected her own womb.  She lay in a pool of bloody bits of flesh, her own biological matter caked to her hands.  The fifth and sixth were just now finishing themselves off. 

            Some researches might have been daunted by this first experiment, but I wasn’t.  The Tether was completely intact, and all of its systems were still working.  There had been biological anomalies, but that was to be expected the first time.  I had learned a lot, and had my first real hands-on education on the effects of severe DSD.  Perhaps I shouldn’t have, but I felt enlivened by the results of the experiment.  The horror of what I had witnessed paled in comparison to the threshold of exploration at which I found myself. 

            The other-me was gone from the Tether control room.  I was now just recounting my own memories, speaking in a soft whisper to myself.  I sounded afraid and alone, even to myself. 

            "What have you done, daddy?"  A young girl’s voice asked from behind me.  I didn't turn around to look.  I knew it was my daughter, and I didn't want to see the wreckage I'd left of her.  "You know the answer.  What did you do?"  She pressed her question.  It was too pointed, too knowing for a little girl of her age.  I could hear the malicious intelligence hiding behind her voice. 

            "I found the Worm."  I answered numbly. 

            "Yes.  Yes, very good.  You found the Worm, and what do you have to do now, daddy?"

            "I have to bring it home.  It wants to be free of the abyss."  I could scarce believe the words were coming from my mouth. 

            "Oh, daddy, you remember!"  The child's voice giggled from behind me, and I felt small slender arms wrap around my legs in a joyous hug.  "We're so happy that you remember!  We knew that you'd be the one."

            I reached a hand down and rubbed it through the hair of my daughter, or the thing wearing my daughter's guise.  I could feel the soft curls of her hair mixed with the sticky knots of blood that had formed from the wounds I'd caused.  I didn't look down at her.  I didn't want to acknowledge she was dead, even though I knew it was true. 

            All of my memories were finally falling together, and suddenly I found myself looking back at a life that was shrouded in dark deeds, shadows intentionally left in the recesses of my memories.  I did not discover the Worm aboard Odyssey.  It had always been with me, watching me and pushing me towards this point in my life. 

            I had killed.  On multiple occasions I'd had to kill others to make way for my progression through life.  I remembered that now.  A security officer doesn't just rise to head researcher of a project like Tether without some intervention.  I'd falsified documents, paid to have people sent on one-way missions, and in some cases acted directly against those who stood in my way.  It had felt right, and every step of the way others had come to my defense. 

            There had been several occasions when I should have been caught.  In fact, my rise to the head of the Tether Project had been particularly nasty.  My research was responsible for the projects foundation, but I had been seen as too unstable to head such an expensive and high-risk effort.  They'd initially chosen two other men to head the operation.  I murdered them both.  I'd been in a rage at the prospect of losing my research to other men, and I hadn't been thinking clearly.  I'd ambushed them the night after their party celebrating the assignment to Odyssey, killing them both with my own military issued sidearm. 

            I returned home that night expecting to be arrested in the morning, but when I woke up there was no fallout.  Later in the day it was reported that they had been murdered following the party by a group of Military-Resistance fighters who had been summarily tracked down and executed in the hours after the murders. 

            I remembered the officer that had come to me later that day to tell me that, in light of the tragedy regarding my two senior researchers, I would be taking over the Tether Project.  He was the same man I'd seen in the comfort center amidst the mass of black cloaked figures, the man who'd spilled his own insides at my feet like some horrible offering.  His name now rang in my head: Colonel Oliver Portue. It wasn't the first time he'd entered my life.  How many times had I seen his name at the bottom of my promotion orders?  How many disciplinary hearings had he signed off on?  Colonel Portue had been keeping a very close eye on my progress.  Somehow, he'd known.

            "You know what has to be done now, daddy."  My little girl's voice urged from at my side. 

            I had been born for this.  My life, all of my accomplishments and choices, everything had been steering me towards this moment. 

            "You want me to activate the Tether recall."  I stated the obvious.   Officially the recall system didn't exist.  There was no plausible occasion when the Tether shields should be dropped and the Tether drawn back aboard the Odyssey while in the middle of an experiment.  There was far too much danger of Deep Space contamination.  I, however, had built the recall procedure outside of the system specifications, adding it manually during my off hours so that it would not appear in the plans or manuals for the other techs working on the project.  I had also designed it to be activated only from inside the Tether itself.