Superposition
Cornerian Defense Force Gate Command
Udeav System
Colonial Space
A burst of plasma bathed the command deck in a blinding white light as a delayed blast shook the Udeav Gate. A lattice of steel fragments pelted the sides of the station, rattling the crew about.
Point-defense stopped that missile almost immediately, Major Keynes thought, his nose nearly pressed right up against the glass of the front viewscreen. Two-minute controlled delays on firing, back-to-back. They know these missiles aren't going to kill us, they're just suppressing us from outside their own minimum abort range.
Outside the transparent aluminum screen, the watching monkey witnessed two defense drones zip away from their protective screen and rushed toward a launch position to retaliate against the lobbing pair of Invader Threes. The cylindrical drones took their sweet time with that as well, ensuring their distant assailants had plenty of time to crank their way out of SARVI's missile ranges. Shameful display.
Keynes' furious brown eyes shifted to his back right. The shivering Lieutenant was still trying to hail the attackers. The young felid's voice cracked with every attempt to establish communications.
"Ignore the 'Bot!" The ape hollered back to his replacement-in-training. "Ditch the playbook, L-T. They're not going to respond!"
Major Keynes wanted nothing more than to hop into a non-existent F3A and vaporize the pests. However, the previous year's phase-out of Udeav Gate's fighter wing for cost-saving drones and the arrival of the five remaining slip-signatures complicated that fantasy.
Keynes' theory had been correct. The pirates had emerged two-hundred kilometers past the gate just moments after their slip signatures disappeared. On approach, the fightercraft's signatures had been noted, calculated, and posted for all to see. Four Invader-Fours, two Mark Three's and one unknown signature. Probably something old.
Still beyond visual range, the attackers held their missiles in reserve and flew in a tight wedge formation; the second confirmation of Keynes' theory. A tense moment later, the approaching fighter craft would merge with the gate at high speed around their one-seventy-ninety axes.
They'll boom and zoom across our weakside, targeting what they CAN kill. The reactor battery.
"What do we do, sir?" the prim and proper Cornerian ensign to his left asked, a white-furred dog.
"SARVI, what can you do?" The Major asked sarcastically, disbelieving his life might end mere days before retirement.
"I flagged their behavior as anomalous six minutes ago, Major," SARVI, their virtual defense intelligence chimed pleasantly.
"Hate to say, 'I told you so!" the brown-furred simian sassed upward to the ceiling.
"Then don't," SARVI retorted, harshly. "Things are under control, Major. I am circulating defense drones around the station as protocol demands. Point-defense systems have prevented any strike on our habited areas so far."
"They are not going for the whole station, moron! It's obvious!" Keynes yelled. "Not with their level of firepower."
"I have calculated every outcome, Major Keynes," SARVI said much more authoritatively. "I will protect life, limb and eyesight as my design priority dictates. You will not interfere with defensive operations unless permitted."
"I am not asking to be permitted," The monkey insisted, "I am telling you to alter your protocol!"
"Negative. You do not have that authority Major Keynes. Stand down. This is how my learning model was trained."
"Then we trained you wrong," the Major barked back to the ceiling, "We need all the drones around the reactor battery. Do you hear me?"
SARVI, unable to compute the depth of Keynes' thirty-year resume, simply stopped responding. Another incoming missile was intercepted mere hundreds of meters from the windscreen, again showering the station in fragments ineffectually. The drones retaliated in the same lackadaisical manner as before.
"What now?" The Lieutenant asked.
"You can do something about this, L-T," Major Keynes implored. "One klick up the wheel toward the battery maintenance area. Get up there, sound the evacuation alarm and get anyone out of that sector. Suit up, just in case."
"A klick?" The cat asked apprehensively.
"Problem?" The superior officer replied, "I read your PT scores, kid. Now, get the fuck out of here."
Without further words, the Lieutenant rushed away through the sealed bulkhead. This left only the white-furred dog on Keynes left. The Ensign. She hadn't said a word.
"Ensign, suit up and then connect me with Gate Administrator Stephens," He commanded. "I don't care how long it takes or who you have to cuss out to get him. It's on me."
"Then what?" She asked, likely not realizing the fleabag was likely out fishing.
"Then, we watch," Major Keynes fumed, eying a death glare through the ceiling. "We do fuckall."
And, they had a front row seat. Within seconds, the panoramic viewports paid off.
A second later, the space around them erupted in a red, blue and green firestorm as every weapon system SARVI managed welcomed the Gate's new guests.
At last, the mystery vessel zipped past, a slender red streak with two broad, downsloping wings.
An AL4 bottlenose. Major Keynes appreciated immediately. My father flew against those on Katina forty-eight years ago! They were considered old then!
It was the lead's vessel, no-less. Whoever their bold assailant was, enthroned in their sleek, needle-like museum piece was flanked by the quad of superior Invader-Fours; Macbeth's first G-diffused fighter.
The lead pirate's AL4 rolled left, dodging SARVI's less-than-concentrated gunfire. One shot would have cut the red menace to ribbons. The Invaders continued it tow, dropping chaff the whole way. They did a half-circle around the station, before acquiring their target.
As Major Keynes expected, they lined up for a clean run at the reactor battery; a trapezoidal protrusion at the base of the Gate's lower rim.
Suddenly, a moment of hope! The rearmost Invader flew too straight for a mere moment and took a glancing blow from one of SARVI's drone-mounted thirty-millimeter railguns. Keynes watched the slug effortlessly penetrate the shields of the isosceles-shaped craft and slam through the rightmost stabilizer, sending it into a spin.
To Keynes' chagrin, the triangular attack craft didn't detonate. It limped away on its own power, abandoning its attack run. The drones, obsessed with proportionality did not follow the Invader, and instead focused on the remaining lethal threats.
The invaders launched their payload. A gamut of missiles peppered the ringed-stations space.
SARVI's drones went mad; as if finally heeding Keynes' more focused advice. The cylindrical craft shifted targets, some suicidally flinging themselves into the missile's paths. Others began firing so wildly at the brightly-burning missile trails that lay before them that their cannon barrels began to burn out.
The Radar warning receiver trilled loudly on the bridge as the generous array missiles went pitbull.
"Sixteen count launch!" The ensign yelled.
"Intercepting," SARVI soothed.
The crew watched as a flurry of outgoing interceptors rushed out of the drone's recessed launch bays. The missiles hooked a sharp arc as their maneuver thrusters worked to guide them in. Without any wind resistance or gravity, they were only limited by the fuel each thruster carried. There were some explosions, but not enough.
"Six left! Distance eight-hundred."
Keynes' groaned, "Sarv'-"
"-Intercepting!" the defensive intelligence repeated.
A few more small explosions indicated that, despite SARVI's failure of imagination, the Udeav Gate's function may have survived the initial assault.
The lead pirate's vessel rolled left and out of the attack vector, dodging VI gunfire. Three invaders followed it.
A drone punished the last diamond-shaped fighter in the flight with a rapid burst of autocannon shells bypassing its already brittle shields. The wall of dart-like flechettes detonated in a zipper-like pattern, shearing off the port stabilizer and sending the invader into a spiral. A laser drone followed up, a green laser-burst igniting the rearmost shielding. Like the previous victim, it immediately disengaged.
There are still three fresh bandits. This isn't over. The shaking monkey thought to himself.
Major Keynes asked the golden question. "How many interceptors do you have left, Sarv?'"
Bèa's Cockpit
Bèa's feet tightened against the floor as her brisk point-nine gee's suddenly stiffened up. The first target run hadn't been enough and the battery still stood.
"They're turning on A-grav, boss!" Her wingmate hollered through their encrypted channel.
She grinned. Contrary to the new guy's nervous tone, she knew It was a last ditch play by gate control, who were likely beginning to run low on interceptors. Cranking the gravity wells generators up to their max atmospheric weights would make exiting harder on their fighters, making them easier pickings for the guns when they tried to reach escape velocity.
The pirate's leader, by contrast, had no desire to be weighed down by the scheme, nor inclined to escape at all. She notched an incoming interceptor before keying up her mic.
"Redd, One-Tooth! Both of you cross my nose and give us separation on the left. Stay low to the gate surface, go hard for another pass. I'll roll in right behind you."
Without a word, the two lead Invader's rocketed forward and took point over Bèa's left flank.
"Newbie," She started anew, "Pop chaff and run circles around Shep to get those missiles off him. Get him back to the firing line."
Newbie and his maimed, smoking craft immediately emitted puffs of triangle-spliced goldflake; chaff. He exited the gravity well a few seconds later, dodging a few cannon shots.
"Roger. We'll go rounds-out on the battery to cover you," Béa's second-in-command, the lead gunner in her Invader-Three complement said from over a thousand kilometers away.
"No!" Bèa commanded. "Use the rest of your shot to cover Shep and Newbie. Save what you can in case you run into counter-space. We get paid either way, and I don't want any empty glasses around the table tonight."
The Akita rubbed the locket on her necklace briefly. Luck. Gods knew she would need it.
"No straight lines out, boys," she ordered further. "That's what they want."
Bèa ruddered right and brought her bottlenose down to the same level of her two lead craft as they hugged the jagged metal surface of the massive gate structure. She aligned her HUD's pipper along the artificial horizon they'd created, dodging numerous jutting towers and observation decks. The gravity, intended to expose them as they fled, actually assisted their terrain masking as their engines. The Akita took this moment to breathe.
Not a moment too soon. A sea of red tracer, green laser burst and short range missile interceptors blew past as the defense drones.
"Redd's on hot, distance twenty five-hundo."
"Ack''" Bèa confirmed, eyes forward.
"Shit!" One-Tooth exclaimed, his invader taking a ribbon of autocannon rounds to the powerpack. Béa dodged him sharply as he came to a near halt in space. The two vessels nearly collided.
"Going cold!" He said, switching over to his secondaries. "I'm getting torched!"
Béa gulped as she ignited the ancient guide-lens for her single torpedo. She swiped it off the rack and to her eyepiece. Just me'n Redd.
"Tooth's out," Bèa said, determined to let the burden ignite a hatred in Redd's heart. In her rearview panel, she witnessed One-Tooth go heavy with his rear-shields as his emergency power limped him away. A dead man's game.
"One, One-Thousand. Two, One-Thousand. Target!" Redd screamed, counting off distance in terror.
Redd and Béa shot through their enemy's last prepared killzone at eleven-hundred kilometers an hour, dodging a dozen single-minded drones' punishment.
"Pickle!" Redd declared, unleashing his last four torpedoes.
Immediately, the fire redirected to the slender beams of steel. Now beholden to gravity, the missiles fell off Redd's racks in a parabolic arc before their engine's fired. One was hit by gunfire before it went terminal. Another was struck by an interceptor as it went hot. A third failed to ignite and slammed into the superstructure.
Redd didn't stick around long enough to care. He maximized his thrust and hit a shallow exit through the station's newly-enforced escape velocity.
Bèa, far enough back to guide the last projectile in, witnessed Redd's final torpedo fly straight toward the trapezoidal reactor battery compound. It smoked a blistering beeline through fire and brimstone and would have hit.
Would have, were it not for the meticulous planners in the Cornerian Defense Force. Their last line of defense; a simple torpedo net.
The dense meshing was fired out of several rocket-primed tubes. It unraveled, and Redd's missile hit it at just the right angle and timing, wrapping itself in the web and running out of propellant a mere second later. It hung, caught uselessly.
Focus, Bèa thought as the adrenaline pumped in, slowing her perception of time around her.
The red-eyed Akita was gifted, truly, with a huntress' calm. Contrary to her shaking legs or her heart pounding against her throat, Béa kept her eyes forward and her grips steady. Her soul elated that, for the next three seconds, they couldn't control her. There was no one that could stop her. This was her moment.
Bèa growled as she yanked up on her dual-stick controls. They think it's over. She called their final bluff, lined up for a shot, hard-ruddered left into a half-roll, and yanked her sticks backward to dive upon the top of the battery.
Another netting deployed, this time guided in by the automated defense drones. Autocannon rounds splintered around her as their red tracers cracked around her. The interceptor missiles had stopped; or, more likely, Bea had stopped noticing them.
Three, two, one. She counted, as a green laser bolt brought her shields down to zero. The ancient yellow line in her eye piece turned red. She pushed her cherry-red museum piece to the max as she executed another half roll to the right. She slammed the sticks back to initiate her return loop just as she depressed the release trigger. The ancient AL4 responded, doing everything it's master commanded.
Bèa's bottlenose shook violently as the single torpedo embedded in the nacelle bay released just prior her loop, sending it careening into its terminal guidance. She could only track it for a millisecond before it was out of sight, but deep down, she knew.
Bèa grinned madly as she followed Redd out; another notch carved into her legend.
Cornerian Defense Force Gate Command
No way.
A wide-eyed Keynes laughed nervously through the alarms, though he knew nothing about their adversary's wild gambit was funny. The primitive, hand-guided torpedo appeared to move so slowly as it poked into and suddenly through the netting. The screen of last-resort's silver links sprinkled into the gravity well's pull.
No fucking way. Major Keynes nearly smiled at whoever engineered this bespoke tactic. The slingshot effect of the craft's maneuver in their enhanced gravitywell had blessed the descending steel with enough raw kinetic energy to wallop the torpedo through the netting. His heart sank the moment as glinting links of high-hardness steel webbing sheared off.
"It is unlikely-"
"Sec-Zone five, Sec-Zone Five!" He yelled into his mic, disregarding SARVI. "Brace for impact!"
They each grabbed the safety hold closest to them. Keynes barely grabbed the abutting wall-mounted safety bar before the station shuddered around him.
He'd never seen anything so old-school in his entire thirty-year career. All-manual, all instinct.
The gate's defensive VI, which hadn't even considered such a wily, anachronistic play went predictably apeshit. Drone reorganization, strange recalculations. Magic. It was a bit anthropomorphic of the old Major, but the cold, algorithmic station control seemed to be saving face for its lack of imagination.
The reactor battery exploded, and a rush of atmosphere was blown out into space around hit previous location. A massive fire erupted from the lower part of the gate and billowed out into open space. The blood-red bottlenose flew through the center, unchallenged and for sure unrivaled. It rejoined its flight and disengaged.
Apeshit. Absolutely apeshit. An incredible shot. Delivered by the best piloting Keynes had ever witnessed. He'd never seen anything so old-school in his career. Keynes fell into his seat; absolutely speechless at what had occurred. The opening shots of another war? Perhaps. An incredible shot, Undoubtedly.
The soon-to-be-relieved Major thought as he slumped into his seat. The day was long from over, but his blood pressure returned to normal.
"L-T, Do you copy?"
"Yes, Sir!" His lieutenant puffed, hasty breathing indicating the cat had been redlining in his spacesuit. "All crew accounted for. Maintenance team almost had a close call!"
Major Keynes collapsed into his seat and exhaled. The kid will be fine.
In a way, both parties had gotten what they'd wanted. The pirates had given them steel; they didn't destroy the gate, but service was down for the next three months at a minimum. Keynes was simply content that he wouldn't have to write to anyone's next of kin.
"Major Kay," the canid ensign piped up from his staff section. "Help is on the way, Sir,"
Who? We don't have anyone running counter-space patrols. Nearest outpost is an eight-hour jump from RZ Kybha and another four on jumpers to Port Katherine.
"Three fighter-sized sigs'," She blurted. "Two outbound from Udeav Major! Another from orbit around Sade."
The grizzled veteran groaned before returning to his burden. "How do we know they're ours?"
She could hardly suppress her relieved smile, a good sign to Keynes. "They're pinging back as Arwing-class, Sir!"
Papetoon
The Vaile
Central Systems
No more time remains.
"You need me?" Jana asked.
Jana McCloud had started mouthing the words of her doubtful question under the bright midday gleam of a foreign sun. Udeav. However, when she finally spoke the three-word-question, the surroundings were much more familiar to her.
NeurLink. Jonny's illusion started with several taps on the bridge of Jana's nose and forehead. It ended with a disorienting flash, just a split-second after the over-eager eccentric had guided his creation onto the corners of her left ear. She lurched forward, stumbling as she barely caught her new footing in a dark place.
When Jana felt the particular crumbling shifts of clay solids beneath her feet, she knew instinctively that she was home again.
Home. An inky, frigid dark with a biting breeze and a sudden mouthful of crushed red clay. It was night here aback the Papetoonian Vaile; the mountain ranges overlooking the farmsteads where Jana had cut her teeth. And, though it was well past midnight, the familiar soft, orange marble of a distantly captive Solar drifted down and westward leaving a purplish trail across the horizon. Undisturbed starlight for the tiny desert planet: a postcard-perfect simulation of Papetoon's misunderstood perfection.
The smoky scent of ash and rogue embers hovered in the wind.
The blued silhouette Jonny Hunyh, undeterred and unbothered, was waiting just up the ridge. He sat comfortably by a freshly-started fire, grinning down at his guest as he poked at the burning bundles of wood with his cane.
"I do," Jonny affirmed with a shout. "We need you."
Jana, distracted by the simulation's stunning accuracy, approached carefully while studying the details around her. Jonny flourished his right hand, unraveling his pearl-white fingers in indicating toward Jana's seat: an expensive looking lounge chair being positively ruined by the whipping dust.
"I know we aren't alike," the simian admitted. "And, I would never pretend to be your friend."
"Right." Jana interjected sarcastically. Her words would carry much less honey. "You just happened to know my favorite whiskey by sheer chance."
He chortled, before reaching down to a picnic basket he'd staged by his seat's side. He lifted a lukewarm beer before cracking open the can.
"I wanted you to be the first to see the potential. While I buzz on the outside world. A private moment for us," Jonny said.
Jana sat silent, pondering his vague sense of purpose while studying the indigo-shadowed valley below.
It was as she remembered it. The gathering of red, green and white lights a few kilometers down the gulch was the shantytown spaceport, Vindel. The departure lane was most Vulpes' last stop on this dust bowl as soon as they turned eighteen. For those that could forge official documents like Jana, it would be much earlier.
Scanning a few dozen klicks eastward more, Jana could see the mountain village of Grus Vel. Home to a grandmother she'd never met. Jana would have been surprised to see anyone there at all, but there was a tangled web of window lights beneath the smoky hearths billowing smoke into the air. Jana's grin was hidden under the starlight, she was delighted to see the hardy alpine folk were still going strong.
Her eyes looked even further under the horizon of her homeworld's star-pocked midnight sky.
And, sure enough, it was there in the distance. The solitary floodlight hoisted on grandpa's jury-rigged long range communicator tower; the one hanging over the tourist trap they called the McCloud homestead. Only a fifteen minute ride from here.
Although she appreciated the memories of this place, Jana ultimately accepted that Jonny's salesman's pitch wasn't worth this level of intimate connection.
She flashed a brief smile at him; a cynically-conceived fact finding probe. His beaming response told the tale, Jonny reckons he's found a mark.
"Augmented reality isn't new, Jonny," Jana dismissed.
Nonplussed by her dismissal. Her Simian host kicked his can backward and took a long swig. She could smell the fermented hops from where she sat, likely his desired effect. She perked up and teased him for the can, which he provided.
When he handed it over, she tilted the last half back and let ripples of the carbonated beverage connect with her taste buds.
It was a perfectly recreated augmented reality, to Jana's estimation. She communicated as much with an impressed nod before delivering her best attempt of a compliment
"You added taste to an Auggie," Jana chirped. "That is pretty impressive, but I don't know why that involves me."
"An auggie? You're home!" He said, waving toward the red banks across the valley. "Take in that rustic air. Feel that grit coat your lungs."
He spit into the wind. "You think I would simulate that?"
Jana scraped her thoughts for anything that could explain Jonny's baffling lie. Augmented reality had been around for some time, but required synaptic hookups and rooms staffed with medical VI's to function. Sight, sound and touch had been implemented before, though nothing about those sensations ever felt particularly right. Auggies were used for viewing mockups of major construction projects, or by doctors to help coax animals out of comas.
"Jana," he said much more seriously this time. "We're here. We're on Papetoon. We aren't on Udeav anymore."
Jana studied the landscape one more time as she tried to scrutinize the schemer's pitch.
I've been under ice before. Jana thought. Augment sessions that took hours of preparation. Waivers. It's terrifying if it goes wrong. For all I know, I'm flailing around the deck right now like a drooling idiot!
"This is not a dream," Jonny said. "It is not a simulation."
"A new type of Transfer device? One for things that breathe?" Jana asked skeptically.
"Neurlink?" He answered with snide delight. "Still no."
An exasperated Jana signaled that she'd given up as she leaned further askew in her seat. The ape was clearly enjoying puzzling his muse.
"It's superposition," Jonny Hunyh finally declared.
"We're beaming our consciousness out to my adolescent stomping grounds?" Jana guessed, piecing together the simian's explanation while vaguely recalling physics lectures from her youth.
"Beaming? Better," he gloated. "That was the alpha-test. We're onto beta now! Don't you see?" He said, pulling at the thin hairs on his lanky arms. "We were so limited. So… One Dimensional."
Jana was disturbed speechless, frightened deeply by what this maniac had captured her in.
He breathed in the frigid Papetoonian air before summing his ethos. "We could be so much more. Unlimited consciousness. All possibilities calculated. Projected everywhere at once."
Jana's doubt seeped into her words. "Auggies can only slow the perception of time down to the user's mind. So, if what you're saying is true, If this is real, who's doing the show back on Udeav?"
Jonny lit up, McCloud having finally asked the magic question.
"I am," he said with a grin.
"And you're?..." Jana asked with befuddlement, pointing at the slender, suited ape before her.
"Also me!" Jonny said. "Entangled. Both of us. Separate. Paradox-free."
The simian's teeth glinted as the fire before him danced in his eye's reflection. The game was up; he could see Jana's fascination and fright as her understanding of the universe was threatened.
"The two of us, each duplicated and consciousnesses unmerged," Jonny continued. "The same, also different. Separated until we need to be in one place again."
"Or, when I'm done with this," Jana corrected harshly.
"Of course," He snickered, brushing aside Jana's seriousness. "And, when we're done? We will be ourselves again. No loss of consciousness, no loss of who we are. I will still be me. You will remember this journey, and the one your other body is doing right now. The two threads of consciousness joined together. Seamless."
"Which body is the real one?" Jana asked nervously.
He only stared at her, flickers of flame bouncing around his gaze in silent condescension; Jonny's frustration at her reluctance. Jana's rarely seen vulnerability coaxed something dark within Jonny. Jana recognized it immediately as something she'd seen only a few times before; a guile behind the eye. A lack of patience.
Suddenly, he chippered up and stood, grabbing his chromed-out cane.
"It's cold here," he declared, limping behind her. "Let's go somewhere warmer."
He snapped his finger, and a rectangle of stark white light poured out before them in the foreground. Jana held up her hand to prevent herself from being blinded.
A doorway. The arrogant ape swaggered toward and through the portal with no fear, his cane clacking against the rock the whole way.
So, Jana followed, navigating down the path of bare rock and gathered clay alike. She covered her eye's from white abyss, feet weighed down to terra firma as her eyes adjusted to the light. She could feel warmth emitting from the portal as her eye's slowly adjusted.
"Come on!" Jonny beckoned from beyond the bright portal.
Her pulse raced as she stepped forward, suddenly finding herself staring down at water.
A glass cathedral nestled under an unknown sea, a lounge. Her boots clanked on textured glass until she felt the plush shag rug under her feet. She tracked a trail of Papetoon's orange red dust from her boots onto the tufted carpet.
She examined the seafloor both under their feet and surrounding them on each shore. An orange band of anemones affixed to virescent corals with sun-like tendrils grasping out toward the brine.
The duo wandered the leftmost corner, continuing to admire the sea's beauty as they walked.
"Superposition," Jana repeated, while guessing at her possible location. "One person in two places at once?"
The monkey's demeanor improved. It seemed Jana was finally getting it.
"The live version of that, yes," Jonny answered, before shuddering. "There were playback applications I am working on. Were."
"Playback?" Jana asked, stopping suddenly, "You're kidding me."
He turned, mid-walk, and grinned. "We were able to achieve some theoretical progress with cross-quantum connection, yes."
"Time travel?"
"No, but effectively yes," Jonny answered. "Think fly-on-the-wall. You aren't traveling, technically. You wouldn't be opening a portal to the past or making a paradox. Matter doesn't go away, it just changes. You're inserting your matter into the moment. And, all at once, you were always there."
There were butterflies in Jana's stomach. The beaming monkey had previously said 'no paradox' but Jana's mind was baffled by how that was possible.
"Your atoms already exist," he remarked, anticipating her disturbance. "They just needed to be gathered and projected; something we could do quite well. Objects. Matter."
"What couldn't you do well?" Jana asked with trepidation. "What were the problems?"
"Us. Animals," he admitted. "Meat. It's simply impossible. Insurmountable. That and certain synthetic matter."
"It's why I still don't install the complex netting of micro-myo implants that keep me using this," he said, lifting his cane and pointing at his legs.
"It's why, if we tried, you'd be going back without those lovely fitted nylon pants," he flirted, predictably. "And even if you did, you wouldn't be coming back the same."
Jana's eye's narrowed as she took a step closer to the transparent walls in Jonny's glass cage.
"Come clean, Jonny. How did you do all this? This is so above us that-"
"-I had help, of course." He said with irritation before reverting to a more gracious aspect. "In fact. I'd like to introduce you to her sometime."
"Her?" Jana asked, perplexed.
He shook his head and closed his eyes rapidly. "I'm sorry. It."
It. The implied meaning of the word hit Jana like a sledgehammer. Virtual intelligences had alway been limited by the input of their creators, and true sentient artificial Intelligences were banned outright. Given Lylat's still-stinging experiences with a rogue gestalt-intelligence twenty years ago.
He just told me a secret that could ruin him. Jana knew. Shit, that secret could kill him in the wrong crowd. Jana crossed her arms as she continued her walk to the easternmost window. She contemplated if she herself was the wrong crowd.
The discordant duo watched as a large mammalian creature swam by only fifty meters away. Jana quickly recognized it as a blue whale. An animal as beautiful as it was an astrolocational aid. And, also a sign of good luck.
Aquas, that's where we are. Jana finally recognized, while studying the sunlit valley in the shallows of the main bay.
"This is dangerous," Jana said.
In the glass' reflection, Jonny's head shook rapidly as his temper took over. For the first time, Jana saw trace amounts of instability poke out from the white monkey's veneer of control
"It's bypass!" He insisted. "It's our next evolution! It's here whether we're afraid of it or not!"
Jana stepped away from the window to fight back. "And, what about those that don't share your vision for evolution?" Jana asked.
"It's all optional, Jana!" Jonny defended. "I swear it."
Jana heel-turned as she abandoned her host, walking toward the middle of the lounge. He didn't see it, but a brief smile crept upon her face as the many opportunities to practically own this man rushed through her mind. She picked one of the furthermost seats, removed her jacket-clipped sunglasses and rested them on the abutting table before reclining.
The click-clacking of his cane signaled Jonny followed nervously at a distance, tiptoeing back to his confidant he'd misplaced his trust in.
He stood before her, powerless against Jana's questioning glare.
"Lylat's time is finite. To think otherwise is just… Hubris," He said softly, before continuing. "We can preserve this forever. Moments like these. I don't have to be rich while others are poor. We don't have to be tied to any physical plane! We don't have to watch anyone die, ever again. We can go on, forever. We can transcend! If others want to be left behind, they can choose to do so. If they want to cast aside immortality for some misguided principles, I won't force them to adapt."
"Jana!" He belted, clamoring closer. "It's godlike power in our hands. In your hands."
Jana chortled; a first-class denigration for the visionary before him. But, it was also her first intentional chisel strike toward bending Jonny to her eventual whims.
"In your plan," Jana asked, "Will everyone be able to have this level of control?"
"Just the immortality bit," he joked wryly, exhaling deeply as his tensity relieved. "As for the other applications? It depends on how testing goes. It depends on who we let in."
"We?"
"Well," Jonny grinned, "I did say I needed you."
"I have conditions," Jana said, sliding her arm across the top side of the couch and widening her stance. "Consider them," she instructed harshly.
The devastation froze the simian mid-movement; Jana's intended affect. She was a professional after all. Jana held her new puppet's strings in check; Jonny wasn't going anywhere.
Knowing this, she took the opportunity to investigate an object in the back corner that had caught her attention earlier; a grand piano mounted mid-room. She sized up the make and model. Beylor and Sons. Handmade. Analogue; slender ivory-like keys that resonated on the natural weight of the hammer's impact. None of that synth shit.
Final test. She sat on the bench and lifted the cover, unveiling a dusty set of eighty-eight keys. Untouched, likely out of tune. Figures. All bluster, this one.
"First," Jana lured, meshing her fingers to the faux-ivory. They felt real. They were real. There was nothing augmented about this reality.
He blinked, shook his head and nodded rapidly.
"I need you to be completely honest with me. Why me, specifically?" Jana asked. "What do you need me for?"
She peaked a curious grin above the rosewood-planked lid as her fingers assumed a familiar placement.
"I based the receiver's base gene-code around your grandmother's," he confessed all-too-quickly. "It's not exclusive to you, but it's much easier for us to debug any genetic drift since a large portion of your DNA is shared. A lot of it is precalculated. Instead of days-per-test it might be hours."
"Wait. You nicked my dead granny's DNA?" Jana accused. Behind Jana's mildly disapproving look, she hid well the commitment that she would ruin Jonny as soon as her wallet was satisfied. It took considerable effort for her to hide it.
"I-I didn't steal it! Doctor Reinard-" Jonny stammered. "-McCloud, open-sourced her own sequence after her research was published. It was a big deal at the time, I thought you knew."
"Never read any of it," Jana replied truthfully.
"Well, you should have," He said, standing up for the long dead McCloud. "And it's not just that!" He asserted. "I needed someone grounded. Someone unaffected by pressure. Someone who understands reality. Someone to keep me grounded."
Jana smiled something wicked. I can keep you 'grounded' alright. She thought with amusement as her thin-furred fingers slid on the keys.
"You mentioned playback applications," Jana started anew, her second condition. "What were the challenges? Be specific."
She was yanking her puppet upward now; a bring-along turned directrix. Recognizing this, Jonny paused, lowered his head and decided to tell Jana the full truth this time. She'd finally broken through his thick, corporate exterior.
"As-is? It requires interaction with a specific object we've found. A 'mirror' of sorts. It's more than a challenge, though. It's a one-way journey," he admitted. "Without a NeurLink receiver on the other end, you aren't coming back."
Jana didn't like the inventor's inflection on 'you', nor his supreme confidence in his findings.
"But?" Jana asked for clarification.
"Something will," he said quietly.
Jana was watching her new co-conspirator closely. There was shame in his tone. A quiver of the tongue and a rapid eye movements that indicated distress.
"Fuck," Jana trembled, unable to hide her own disturbance. "Something has?" She finally asked.
Jonny didn't answer at first, he just shook his head and closed his eyes.
"You have to understand," he excused, "We couldn't anticipate such radical consequences. It was completely out of the realm of understood science. If we had thought it was even possible…"
Jana's blood went cold as Jonny's bullshit flowed uninterrupted.
"Who did you use?" Jana questioned, reducing her tradecraft to interrogation now.
Jonny went silent. His eyes went glassy and wide, too ashamed to look up.
"A test subject," he finally muttered.
"Don't sugarcoat it for me!" Jana roared. "Speak up!"
"She was already dead!" He yelled back, leaning against the opposite end of the white-planked grand's top. "A little girl we'd recovered floating around the icy rocks of Kybha's belt ten years ago. Near the old mining colonies."
He stared distantly into the ocean out the westernmost window.
"Precious thing," Jonny recalled. "A little wolf girl. Some monster had spaced her out there. No more than six years old we bet. We were able to revive her and reverse the radiation's effect. The oort cluster's icing kept her brain mostly preserved."
"Off books," Jana mocked.
"Comatose," Jonny said with sadness. "We did what we knew we could. We could revive her medulla and basic motor function, but couldn't save her fully."
"And, you didn't hand her over to someone that could," Jana growled.
"Pull the plug. That's all they'd've done by that point," he scorned. "We did everything. I would have handed her over if we had any hope of saving her."
"How did you cover this up?" Jana asked.
He looked at her with his hollow blue eyes. "There's not a night I don't think about what I've done to her, Jana. There's no excuse and I don't want forgiveness. I know you understand that."
Jana recoiled, before considering Jonny's barb a fair trade. Jonny's gaze returned to the floor, his hand massaging his forehead.
"So, it wasn't the vegetable that came back?" McCloud asked.
"No," he answered somberly.
Jonny didn't respond, the weight of his shame having finally been revealed to another. His struggle finally came to fruition; someone would solve what he could not.
"My source," Jonny admitted. "It came to me."
"Who?" Jana asked.
"'What did' is the better question," Another's familiar voice noted subtly. Jana paid no notice at first.
The peculiarity of the vocalization's own familiar resonance went unnoticed for almost a second. To Jana, the words did not sound disembodied, but neither did they have acoustic form. It was as if the words were beamed directly to her mind.
Jana's fingers had been depressed along the seams of her first chord, lining herself up for a gentle, marshmallowy d-flat.
Her fingertips never even fully pressed the surfaces of the keys before her heart's beat skipped in pained recognition.
"He's lying, Jana."