The Arc of the Universe: Episode Two Read online

  The Arc of the Universe: Episode Two

  Title Page

  Part Two: The Room

  Part Two: The Room (Continued)

  Part Three: The Window

  The Arc of the Universe

  Episode Two

  By Mark Whiteway

  Kindle Edition

  Copyright 2014 Mark Whiteway

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without written permission, except for brief quotations to books and critical reviews. This story is a work of fiction. Characters and events are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  By the same author:

  Lodestone Book One: The Sea of Storms

  Lodestone Book Two: The World of Ice and Stars

  Lodestone Book Three: The Crucible Of Dawn

  Lodestone Book Four: Seeds Across the Sky

  Lodestone Book Five: The Conquered Shore

  Lodestone Book Six: Eternity’s Shadow

  www.markwhiteway.weebly.com

  Part Two: The Room

  Part Three: The Window

  Part Two: The Room (Continued)

  Quinn finally fell into a fitful sleep and dreamed of fabulous monsters—creatures that were part of an interactive storybook he had read over and over as a child.

  He awoke to find a manticore in the centre of the room.

  The creature raised its humanlike head, and bored into him with sickly yellow eyes. Set atop a lion’s body, it looked like the product of some horrific genetic experiment.

  He scrabbled away, pressed his back to the farthest wall and raised his arms. The manticore rose, padded over and took a swipe at him with one claw, narrowly missing his face. Its tail whipped around, the end split and became a wide, serpentine mouth, spitting venom. Fetid breath washed over him.

  He uttered a strangled cry, just as the monster vanished in a burst of light.

  He slid down the wall, trembling and tried to blink away the afterimage. What was that? Were they trying to scare him to death? Don’t believe... Don’t believe...Gradually, his heart rate slowed and he raised his eyes to the window.

  The scene showed a bare escarpment, with openings too regular to be natural. A cave city? Winged creatures flew inside, while others emerged, rising and soaring on invisible thermals. Could this be the winged girl’s home?

  He went to the window and squinted at the glass, but the flying creatures were too distant for him to make out any details. Don’t believe. He had no idea who the winged girl was, or whether she really existed, or even if the aborted message was meant for him.

  Was it all a form of psychological conditioning, designed to erode his resolve and bend him to some dark purpose? Place him in solitary confinement, then tantalise him with a brief contact. But to what end? What was the point of it all?

  Avoiding the middle of the room, where the manticore had appeared, he made his way back to the far corner.

  The lighting was constant; he had no way to measure the passing of time. Get up, go to work, eat, sleep—the tick of the clock and the waxing and waning of daylight had regulated life in the colony. Now, for the first time that order—that structure—was gone. He felt fragmented. Adrift. Rudderless.

  He tried counting the seconds between one scene and the next. The interval wasn’t constant—he estimated five to ten minutes on average. Of course, he had no way of telling how many scenes had passed while he was asleep.

  Certain scenes repeated, though he couldn’t discern a pattern. The jungle scene returned three times. The town in the valley reappeared in daylight, but since he didn’t know the length of a day on that world, it didn’t help.

  He went to the fountain and gulped some water. Behind him, he heard a distant rumble. He swallowed and spun round. The street scene was back.

  He rushed to the window. The same eclectic mix of pedestrians paraded past. He pressed his palms against the window. “Hello?” He pounded on the glass. “Hello!” The creatures appeared oblivious. Why didn’t they answer? Was it a recording after all? The girl had seemed to look directly at him. He must have been mistaken. Unless.

  Crowd psychology. He’d heard that in some of the major cities on earth, people would ignore one another, even in emergency situations. Coming from a colony of just a few thousand people where it seemed as if everyone knew everyone else, he found it hard to imagine.

  The scene would not be there for much longer; time was slipping away. He hammered on the glass again. “Help! Help, please!” The passing crowd thinned. He took a deep breath to shout once again, and then caught sight of the winged girl across the street. She glanced left and right and then flew towards him, zigzagging through the stream of mad traffic. Deftly, she alighted in front of the window, the oval screen tucked under her arm.

  “Hey there!” Quinn yelled. “Hey there! Can you hear me?”

  The girl glanced at him, nodded and began scribbling once more. Creatures flowed past, ignoring her.

  Suddenly she stopped writing, gazed past him and her eyes widened. Without warning, she spread her wings and shot into the air. Where’d she go?

  “Dad?”

  Quinn whirled around. Standing in the centre of the room, clad in the same white hospital robe was Conor.

  ~

  Conor smiled as if he’d just come in from soccer practice. “What’s going on, Dad?”

  Quinn stood, mouth open, the winged girl and her mysterious message forgotten. “Conor how...I...I thought you were...”

  “Dead? That’s right.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “Wh-where have you been?”

  Conor smiled as if he were the parent trying to calm a frightened child. “I haven’t ‘been’ anywhere, Dad. I was with you outside the lifeboat. Then I was here.”

  “So they abducted you too.”

  “Not exactly.”

  Light flashed in the centre of the room and two armchairs appeared, facing one another. Quinn blinked. They were exactly like the ones in his old living room back at the colony. Conor settled into one and motioned towards the other. “Go ahead, Have a seat.”

  Quinn eased himself into the chair as if he expected it to vanish at any moment and deposit him on his rump.

  “Are you all right?” Conor asked.

  “Yes...no. Where are we? What planet is this?”

  “We’re not on a planet, Dad. We’re on a ship.”

  A ship...Someone must’ve picked up the distress beacon and taken them aboard. “Where’s it headed.”

  “That hasn’t been decided. Right now you’re...I suppose the closest would be a ‘guest’.”

  “A guest of whom?”

  “They call themselves the Agantzane. You would call them aliens. You’re the first human to make contact. That puts you right up there with James Cook, Ferdinand Magellan and Christopher Columbus.”

  Aliens were a myth—the stuff of tall stories and fanciful tales. At least that was what he had always been taught to believe. Yet there had to be some rational explanation for all of...this. Until he found out what it was, it made sense to play along.

  “Why haven’t they shown themselves?”

  “They’re a lot different than us. So they devised a remote method of interaction. They planted a tiny chip in your head and tied it to an adaptive computer interface.”

  “They put a chip in my head?”

  “It’s harmless, Dad. It merely interprets your thought patterns and allows the room to respond to your needs. Unfortunately, the computer was programmed by aliens, so the experiment was less than successful.”

 
“You’re telling me!”

  “The room did its best to sort through chaotic human thought processes, but it couldn’t discern between needs and wants, dreams and fears. After the incident with the manticore, they decided on a more direct approach.”

  “And that’s you.”

  “That’s me.”

  “They revived you, somehow?”

  “No, that was impossible, Conor was already dead. But the neuronal connections—the memories, the emotions, the essence of Conor—had not fully decayed. They managed to preserve me.”

  “So you’re saying you’re not really him?”

  Conor sat back and twiddled his fingers just as he had done since childhood. “I guess it all depends on your point of view. Conor died from CO2 poisoning. But I have his thoughts—his feelings. I remember the bicycle accident when I was six. I remember Mom’s funeral and how everyone treated me like I was made of china, and how I smiled and tried to be polite when all I wanted to do was run away and hide. In every way that matters, I am him. But none of that matters now. I’m here to explain what happened to you and why you’re here.

  “Hades-7, the planetoid we were headed for, lies in an area of space occupied by the Consensus.”

  “The Consensus?”

  “Right. They’re a diverse group of alien races with a long, shared history. They’ve been aware of us for some time through our radio broadcasts. They learned our language. They also learned that humans have a long history of violence. It scared them. So when we dispatched our probe, they intercepted it and uploaded false data.

  “So Hades-7 isn’t really a volcanic world rocked by earthquakes?”

  “No. They wanted to deter us from expanding in this direction. I guess they underestimated human determination. When they sighted the colony fleet, they figured it was an invasion force and panicked. Only when the fleet was destroyed and they examined our ships’ recorders did they realise they’d made a terrible mistake. They found you dying among the wreckage and brought you abroad, along with my body. Then they placed you in this room.”

  The explanation was plausible enough and yet...and yet something was wrong, though Quinn couldn’t say for sure what. It was like a chord with one note played slightly off. “What about the scenes in the window?”

  “They’re the worlds of the Consensus. They’re inviting you to choose.”

  “Choose what?”

  “Who lives and who dies.”

  Quinn gazed at the boy in the chair opposite. Is this really my son?Iis this Conor? More than anything else he wanted to believe it. “Who lives and who...What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about justice for me and the thousands of others who died. Surely you care about that?”

  “Nothing can bring them back.”

  Conor shook his head. “You’re missing the point. We have to right the wrong. The Consensus believe that justice is paramount. They consider it vital for maintaining balance in society. Humans believe that too.”

  “I suppose,” Quinn said.

  “Then we agree. Justice demands recompense. You must exact retribution for the lives lost.”

  “Why me? Doesn’t your Consensus have a system of judges?”

  “The only person fit to judge a crime is the victim.”

  “Humans select a jury to decide—people who are impartial.”

  “I know, Dad. But the system used by the Consensus makes a lot more sense. Impartiality is a myth; everyone has an opinion. Only the victim can truly know the extent of their loss. That’s you.”

  “They expect me to pronounce judgement on them?”

  “Yes. And the choices you make will impact the entire human race.”

  “How do you mean?”

  Conor leaned forward. “How much is a human life worth?”

  Quinn frowned. “We don’t assign value to a life. Each life is priceless.”

  “I know that’s what humans say, Dad, but it’s nonsense. Is the life of a criminal on death row worth the same as a newborn baby? Saying all life is priceless simply papers over the truth. To the Consensus, knowing the value of a life is the only way to assess the loss. It’s the very basis of their system of justice. You’re going to teach them the value of human life.”

  “How do they expect me to do that?”

  “They’ve infected you with a pathogen—don’t worry, it’s completely harmless to humans, but it will kill instantly any of the Consensus races. A touch would be sufficient. That’s why you’ve been quarantined in this room until you decide who should pay for the lives that were lost.”

  Quinn stared into Conor’s eyes, grey as a wintry sky, and struggled to comprehend the enormity of what he was suggesting. “You want me to murder nearly 12,000 people?”

  “Justice isn’t murder; even humans accept that. As to the number of those who should die, that’s up to you, although there are limits. If you decided to exterminate the entire Consensus, for example, that would be unacceptable.”

  Quinn grasped at the passing straw. “Suppose I decided no one should die?”

  Conor lowered his voice to conspiratorial level. “Dad, you need to understand the rules of this game. The computer will assign a value to each life you take. If you only take a few lives, or none at all, you’ll be testifying that human life is worthless. The Consensus will feel free to exterminate humans wherever they’re found. They may well decide to overrun Earth and its colonies and replace humans with more worthwhile forms of life.

  “On the other hand, if you pick many valuable lives, you’ll be placing a high value on the human race. If the Consensus were to invade our worlds, their own system of justice would demand an extreme price from among their own people.”

  “What would be a ‘valuable life’ by their standards?”

  Conor shrugged. “A scientist working to save lives, maybe. Or a female and her six young offspring would be an excellent choice.”

  “You’re insane!”

  Conor blinked. “Really? What about the thousands of lives that the Consensus slaughtered, including me? A moment ago you said our lives were priceless. Don’t we deserve justice?

  “The Consensus has given you the means to achieve real justice—to right a terrible wrong—something no human court could grant. On top of that, you’ll be preserving millions of human lives and ensuring the future of Humanity. It’s a fantastic opportunity, Dad.”

  Dad. Quinn wished the person sitting opposite would stop calling him that, yet he couldn’t quite bring himself to ask him to stop.

  “The Consensus are aliens, not people,” Conor continued. “The pathogen causes no suffering. You touch them and, poof, they die. Simple as that. It’s a much more merciful death than many on board our ships suffered.”

  Quinn felt like a man locked in a room with a ticking time bomb. “You said the Consensus panicked when they destroyed our ships. Someone must’ve made that decision. Why not just punish the person responsible and have done with it?”

  “The Consensus decide jointly; that’s what their name means. All of the races shared in the decision to attack our ships. They have a community responsibility.”

  Quinn shook his head. “What you’re asking me to do is impossible. I don’t know the first thing about these races, let alone the individuals within them. I have no way to decide.”

  Connor grinned the way he used to when he’s just made the winning move in chess. “That’s where I come in. I’ll take you to a variety of Consensus worlds. We can see the sights, and I can tell you about their history, their lives, their strengths and weaknesses, their virtues and vices. I’ll be your guide. Then you’ll decide who needs to die. It’ll be a great adventure, Dad!

  Part Three: The Window

  Quinn squinted at the howling blizzard, and tried in vain to make out the features of the latest world on display. “You’re saying we can step through and we’ll wind up there?”

  Conor chuckled. “Actually, it’s more like the window steps through us.” He caught Qu
inn’s confused expression. “You’ll see what I mean.”

  Play for time. It was a poor strategy, but it was all he could think of. At the very least, it would get him out of this wretched room!

  He gazed at the boy next to him. Conor appeared strange—almost as if he were two persons in one body. Sometimes it was clearly he, right down to the unique mannerisms. At other times he spoke with language and confidence far beyond his 14 years as if...as if someone were using him as a mouthpiece. Was this his son or not? He didn’t know. All he could do was try to cling on to what was left.

  He wanted to mention the winged girl and her enigmatic message, but something stopped him. He decided on a more roundabout approach. “Can I choose which worlds to visit?”

  Conor glanced at him, frowning. “Why would you want to do that?”

  “I don’t know. I just thought—”