Beyond the Aquila Rift: Full Story | Sci-fi Horror

beyond the aquila rift by alistair reynolds greta's with me when i pull susie out of the search tank why her greta asks because i want her out first i say wondering if greta's jealous i don't blame her susie's beautiful but she's also smart there isn't a better syntax runner in ashanti industrial what happened susie asks when she's over the grogginess didn't we make it back i asked her to tell me the last thing she remembers customs she says those pricks on archangel and after that anything else the runes do you remember casting them no she says then picks up something in my voice the fact that i might not be telling the truth or telling her all she needs to know tom i'll ask you again did we make it back yeah i say we made it back susie looks back at the starscape airbrushed across her surge tank in luminous violet and yellow paint she'd had it customized on carillion it was against regs something about the paint clogging intake filters susie didn't care she told me it had cost her a week's pay but it had been worth it to impose her own personality on the grey company architecture of the ship funny how i feel like i've been in that thing for months nice shrug that's the way it feels sometimes then nothing went wrong nothing at all susie looks at greta then who are you she asks greta says nothing she just looks at me expectantly i start shaking and realize i can't go through with this not yet end it i tell greta greta steps towards susie susie reacts but she isn't quick enough greta pulls something from her pocket and touches susie on the forearm suzy drops like a puppet out to cold we put her back into the surge tank plum her back in and close the lid she won't remember anything greta says the conversation never left her short-term memory i don't know if i can go through with this i say greta touches me with her other hand i was just trying to ease her into it gently i didn't want to tell her the truth right out i know credit says you're a kind man tom then she kisses me i remembered archangel as well that was about where it all started to go wrong we just didn't know it then we missed our first takeoff slot when customs found a discrepancy in our cargo waybill it wasn't serious but it took them a while to realize their mistake by the time they did we knew we were going to be sitting on the ground for another eight hours while inbound control processed a fleet of bulk carriers i told susie and ray the news susie took it pretty well or about as well as susie ever took that kind of thing i suggested she used the time to scour the docks for any hot syntax patches anything that might shave a day or two off our return trip company authorized she asked i don't care i said what about rey susie asked is he going to sit there drinking tea while i work for my pay i smiled they had a bickering love hate thing going on no rey can do something useful as well he can take a look at the q planes nothing wrong with those planes ray said i took off my old ashanti industrial bibcap scratched my bald spot and turned to the jib man right then it won't take you long to check them over will it whatever skip the thing i liked about ray was that he always knew when he'd lost an argument he gathered his kit and went out to check over the planes i watched him climb the jib ladder tools hanging from his belt susie got her face mask long black coat and left vanishing into the vapor haze of the docks boot heels clicking into the distance long after she'd passed out of sight i left the blue goose walking in the opposite direction as susie overhead the bulk carriers slid in one after the other you heard them long before you saw them mournful cetacean moans cut down through the piss yellow clouds over the port when they emerged you saw dark holes scabbed and scarred by the blocky extrusions of syntax patterning jibs and q planes retracted from landing and undercarriages clutching down like talons the carriers stopped over their allocated wells and lowered down a scream of thrust docking gantries closed around them like grasping skeletal fingers cargo handling sores planted out of their holding pens some of them autonomous some of them still being ridden by trainers there was a shocking silence as the engines cut until the next carrier began to approach through the clouds i always like watching ships coming and going even when they're holding my own ship on the ground i couldn't read the syntax but i knew these ships had come in all the way from the rift the equila rift is about as far out as anyone ever goes at median tunnel speeds it's a year from the center of the local bubble i've been out that way once in my life i've seen the view from the near side of the rift like a good tourist it was far enough for me when there was a lull in the landing pattern i ducked into a bar and found an aperture authority booth that took ashanti credit i sat in the seat and recorded a 30 second message to katarina i told her i was on my way back but that we were stuck on an archangel for another few hours i warned her that the delay might cascade through to our tunnel routing depending on how busy things were at the authorities end based on past experience an eight-hour groundhold might become a two-day hold at the surge point i told her i'd be back but she shouldn't worry if it was a few days late outside a diplodocus slouched by with a freight container strapped between its legs i told katarina i loved her and couldn't wait to get back home while i walked back to the blue goose i thought of the message racing ahead of me transmitted at light speed up system then copied into the memory buffer of the next ongoing ship chances were that particular ship wasn't headed to baranguya or anywhere near it the aperture authority would have to relay the message from ship to ship until it reached its destination i might even reach barranquilla ahead of it but in all my years of delays that had only happened once the system worked all right overhead a white passenger liner had been slotted in between the bolt carriers i lifted up my mask to get a better look at it i got a hit of ozone fuel and dinosaur dumb that was archangel all right you couldn't mistake it for any other place in the bubble there were 400 worlds out there up to a dozen surface ports on every planet and none of them smelled bad in quite the same way tom i followed the voice it was ray standing by the dock you finished checking those planes i asked ray shook his head that's why i wanted to talk to you about they were a little off alignment so seeing as we're going to be sitting here for eight hours i decided to run a full recalibration i nodded that was the idea so what's the prob the prob is a slot just opened up tower says we can lift off in 30 minutes i shrugged then we'll lift but i haven't finished the recal as it is things are worse than before i started lifting now would not be a good idea you know how the tower works i said miss two offered slots you could be on the ground for days well no one wants to get back home sooner than i do ray said so cheer up she'll be rough in the tunnel it won't be a smooth ride home i shrugged do we care we'll be asleep well it's academic we can't leave without susie i heard boot heels clicking toward us susie came out of the fog tugging her own mask aside no joy with the rune monkeys she said nothing they were selling i hadn't seen a million times before [ __ ] cowboys it doesn't matter i said we're leaving anyway ray swore i pretended i hadn't heard him i was always the last one into a surge tank i never went under until i was sure we were about to get the green light it gave me a chance to check things over things could always go wrong no matter how good the crew the blue goose had come up to a stop near the a.a beacon that marked the surge point there were a few other ships ahead of us in the queue plus the usual swarm of a.a servicecraft through an observation blister i was able to watch the larger ships depart one by one accelerating at maximum power they seem to streak toward a complete featureless part of the sky their jibs were spread wide and the smooth lines of their holes were gnarled and disfigured with the cryptic alien runes of the routing syntax at 20 g's it was as if a huge invisible hand snatched them away into the distance 90 seconds later there'd be a pale green flash from a thousand kilometers away i twisted around in the blister there were the four shortened symbols of our routing syntax each rune of the script was formed from a matrix of millions of hexagonal platelets the platelets were on motors so they could be pushed in or out from the hole ask the aperture authority and they'll tell you that the syntax is now fully understood this is true but only up to a point after two centuries of study human machines can now construct and interpret the syntax within an acceptably low failure rate given a desired destination they can assemble a string of runes that will almost always be accepted by the aperture's own machinery furthermore they can almost always guarantee that the desired routing is the one that the aperture machinery will provide in short you usually get where you want to go take a simple point-to-point transfer like the haraki run in that case there is no real disadvantage in using automatic syntax generators but for long trajectories those that may involve six or seven transits between aperture hubs machines lose the edge they find a solution but usually it isn't the optimum one that's where syntax runners come in people like susie have an intuitive grasp of syntax solutions they dream in runes when they see a poorly constructed script they feel it like a toothache it affronts them a good syntax runner can shave days off a route for a company like ashanti industrial that can make a lot of difference but i wasn't a syntax runner i could tell when something had gone wrong with the platelets but i had to trust that susie had done her job i had no other choice but i knew susie wouldn't screw things up i twisted around and looked back the other way now that we were in space the q planes had deployed they were swung out from the hull on triple hundred meter long jibs like the arms of a grapple i checked that they were locked in their fully extended positions and that the status lights were all in the green the jibs were ray's area he'd been checking the alignment of the ski-shaped q-planes when i ordered him to close up ship and prepare to lift i couldn't see any visible indication that they were out of alignment but then again it wouldn't take much to make our trip home bumpier than usual but as i told rey who cared the blue goose could take a little tunnel turbulence it was built to i checked the surge point again only three ships ahead of us i went back to the surge tanks and checked that susie and ray were all right rey's tank had been customized at the same time that susie had had hers done he was full of images of what susie called the bmv the blessed virgin mary the bmv was always in a spacesuit carrying a little space suited jesus their helmets were airbrushed gold halos the artwork had a cheap hasty look to it i assumed rey hadn't spent as much as susie quickly i stripped down to my underclothes i plumbed into my own unpainted surge tank and closed the lid the buffering gel sloshed in within about 20 seconds i was already feeling drowsy by the time traffic control gave us the green light i'd be asleep i've done it a thousand times there was no fear no apprehension just a tiny flicker of regret i've never seen an aperture then again very few people have witnesses report a doughnut-shaped lump of dark chondrite asteroid about two kilometers across the entire middle section has been cored out with the inner part of the ring faced by the quixotic matter machinery of the aperture itself they say the q matter machinery twinkles and moves all the while like the ticking innards of a very complicated clock but the monitoring systems of the aperture authority detect no movement at all it's alien technology we have no idea how it works or even who made it maybe in hindsight it's better not to be able to see it it's enough to dream and then awake and know that you're somewhere else [Music] try a different approach tell her the truth this time maybe she'll take it easier than you think there's no way i can tell her the truth greta leans one hip against the wall one hand still in her pocket then tell her something halfway truthful we unplumb susie and haul her out of the search tank where are we she asks then to greta who are you i wonder if some of the last conversation did make it out of susie's short-term memory after all greta works here i say where's here i remember what greta told me a station in shaddaar sector that's not where we're meant to be tom i nod i know there was a mistake a routing error susie's already shaking her head there was nothing wrong i know it wasn't your fault i help her into her ship clothes she's still shivering her muscles reacting to movement after so much time in the tank the syntax was good then what the system made a mistake not you shiddar sector susie says that would put us about 10 days off our schedule wouldn't it i try and remember what greta said to me the first time i had to know this stuff by heart but susie's the routing expert not me that sounds about right i say but susie shakes her head then we're not and shut our sector i try to sound pleasantly surprised we're not i've been in that tank for a lot longer than a few days tom i know i can feel it in every [ __ ] bone in my body so where are we i turn to greta i can't believe this is happening again end it i say greta steps towards susie you know that as soon as i woke up i knew everything was wrong cliche you've probably heard it a thousand times and a thousand bars across the bubble wherever ship crews swap tall tales over flat company subsidized beer the trouble is that sometimes that's exactly the way it happens i never felt good after a period in the surge tank but the only time i had ever come around feeling anywhere near this bad was after that trip i took to the edge of the bubble mulling this but knowing there was nothing i could do about it until i was out of the tank it took me half an hour of painful work to free myself from the connections every muscle fiber in my body felt like it had been shredded unfortunately the sense of wrongness didn't end with the tank the blue goose was much too quiet we should have been heading away from the last exit aperture after our routing but the distant comforting rumble of the fusion engines wasn't there at all that meant we were in freefall not good i floated out of the tank grabbed a handhold and levered myself around to view the other two tanks ray's largest bmv stared back radiantly from the cowl of his tank the bio indices were all in the green rey was still unconscious but there was nothing wrong with him same story with susie some automated system had decided i was the only one who needed waking a few minutes later i had made my way to the same observation blister i'd used to check the ship before the surge i pushed my head into the scuffed glass half dome and looked around we'd arrived somewhere the blue goose was sitting in a huge zero gravity parking bay the chamber was an elongated cylinder hexagonal in cross section the walls were a smear of service machinery squat modules sneaking umbilical lines the retracted cradles of unused docking births whichever way i looked i saw other ships locked into cradles every make and class you could think of every possible configuration of hole design compatible with aperture transitions service lights threw a warm golden glow on the scene now and then the whole chamber was bathed in the stuttering violet flicker of a cutting torch it was a repair facility i was just starting to mull on that when i saw something extend itself from the wall of the chamber it was a telescopic docking tunnel groping toward our ship through the windows in the side of the tunnel i saw figures floating pulling themselves along hand over hand i sighed and started making my way to the airlock [Music] by the time i reached the lock they were already through the first stage of the cycle nothing wrong with that there was no good reason to prevent foreign parties boarding a vessel but it was just a tiny bit impolite but perhaps they'd assumed we were all asleep the door slid open you're awake a man said captain thomas gone lepet of the blue goose isn't it i guess so i said mind if we come in there were about half a dozen of them and they were already coming in they all wore slightly time-worn oh sure overalls flashed with too many company sigils my hackles rose i didn't really like the way they were barging in what's up i said where are we where do you think the man said he had a full face of stubble with bad yellow teeth i was impressed by that having bad teeth these days took a lot of work it was years since i'd seen anyone who had the same dedication to the art i'm really hoping you're not going to tell me we're still stuck in archangel's system i said no you made it through the gate and there was a screw-up routing error you didn't pop out of the right aperture ah christ i took off my bib cap it never rains something went wrong with the insertion right maybe maybe not who knows how these things happen all we know is you aren't supposed to be here right and where is here sumlaki's station should our sector he said it as though he was already losing interest as if this was a routine he went through several times a day he might have been losing interest but i wasn't i'd never heard of sumlaki station but i'd certainly heard of shiddar sector shidar was a k supergiant out toward the edge of the local bubble it defined one of the 70 odd navigational sectors across the whole bubble did i mention the bubble already you know how the milky way galaxy looks you've seen it a thousand times in paintings and computer simulations a bright central bulge at the galactic core with lazily curved spiral arms flung out from the hub each arm composed of hundreds of billions of stars ranging from the dimmest slow-burning dwarfs to the hottest supergiants teetering on the edge of supernova extinction now zoom in on one arm of the milky way there's the sun orange yellow about two-thirds out from the center of the galaxy lanes and folds of dust swaddle the sun out to distances of tens of thousands of light-years yet the sun itself is sitting right in the middle of a 400 light year wide hole in the dust a bubble in which the density is about a 20th of its average value that's the local bubble it's as if god blew a hole in the dust just for us except of course it wasn't god it was a supernova about a million years ago now look further out and there are more bubbles their walls intersecting and merging forming a vast froth-like structure tens of thousands of light years across there are the structures of loop one and loop two and the lindblad ring there are even super dense knots where the dust is almost too thick to be seen through it all black calls like the taurus or roe afiyuchi dark clouds or the aquila rift itself lying outside the local bubble the rift is the furthest point in the galaxy we've ever traveled to it's not a question of endurance or nerve there simply isn't a way to get beyond it at least not within the faster than light network of aperture links the rabbit warren of possible routes just doesn't reach any further most destinations including most of those on the blue goose's itinerary didn't even get you beyond the local bubble for us it didn't matter there's still a lot of commerce you can do within a hundred light years of earth but shiddar was right on the periphery of the bubble where dust density began to ramp up to normal galactic levels 228 light years from mother earth again not good i know this is a shock for you but it's not as bad as you think it is i looked at the woman who had just spoken medium height a kind of face they called elvin with slanted ash grey eyes and a bob of shoulder length chrome white hair the face achingly familiar it isn't i wouldn't say so tom after all it's given us the chance to catch up on old times hasn't it she smiled greta i asked disbelievingly she nodded for my sins my god it is you isn't it i wasn't sure you'd recognize me especially after all this time you didn't have much trouble recognizing me i didn't have to the moment you popped out we picked up your recovery transponder told us the name of your ship who owned her who was flying it what you were carrying where you were supposed to be headed when i heard it was you i made sure i was part of the reception team but don't worry it's not like you've changed all that much well you haven't either i said it wasn't quite true but who honestly wants to hear that they look about 10 years older than the last time you saw them even if they still don't look all that bad with it i thought about how she had looked naked memories that had kept buried for a decade spooling into daylight it shamed me that they were still so vivid as if some furative part of my subconscious had been secretly hoarding them through years of marriage and fidelity greta half smiled it was as if she knew exactly what i was thinking you were never a good liar tom yeah guess i need some practice there was an awkward silence neither of us seemed to know what to say next while we hesitated the others floated around us saying nothing well i said who'd have guessed we'd end up meeting like this retta nodded and offered the palms of her hands in a kind of apology i'm just sorry we aren't meeting under better circumstances but if it's any consolation what happened wasn't at all your fault we checked your syntax and there wasn't a mistake it's just that now and then the system throws a glitch honey how no one likes to talk about that very much i said it could have been worse tom i remember what you used to tell me about space travel yeah which particular pearl of wisdom would that have been if you're in a position to moan about a situation you've got no right to be moaning christ did i actually say that and i bet you're regretting it now but look it really isn't that bad you're only 20 days off schedule colding says you'll only need a day of damage repair before you can move off again and then another 20 25 days before you reach your destination depending on routing patterns that's less than six weeks so you lose the bonus on this one big deal you're all in good shape and your ship only needs a little work so why don't you just bite the bullet and sign the repair paperwork i'm not looking forward to another 20 days in the surge tank there's something else as well which is i was about to tell her about katarina how she'd have been expecting me back already instead i said worried about the others susie and ray they've got families expecting them they'll be worried i understand susie and rey they're still asleep aren't they still in their surge tanks yes i said guardedly keep them that way until you're on your way there's no sense in worrying them about their families either it's kinder if you say so trust me on this one tom this isn't the first time i've handled this kind of situation doubt it'll be the last either i stayed in a hotel overnight in another part of sumlaki the hotel was an echoing multi-level prefab structure sunk deep into bedrock it must have had a capacity for hundreds of guests but at the moment only a handful of the rooms seemed to be occupied i slept fitfully and got up early in the atrium i saw a bib-capped worker in rubber gloves removing diseased carp from a small ornamental pond watching him pick out the ailing metallic orange fish i had a flash of deja vu what was it about dismal hotels and dying carp before breakfast bleakly alert even though i didn't really feel as if i'd had a good night's sleep i visited colding and got a fresh update on the repair schedule two or three days he said it was a day last night building shrugged you've got a problem with the service find someone else to fix your ship then he stuck his little finger into the corner of his mouth and began to dig between his teeth nice to see someone who really enjoys his work i said i left colding before my mood worsened too much making my way to a different part of the station had suggested we meet for breakfast and catch up on old times she was there when i arrived sitting at a table in an outdoor terrace under a red and white striped canopy sipping orange juice above us was a dome several hundred meters wide projecting a cloudless holographic sky it had the hard enameable blue of mid-summer how's the hotel she asked after i'd ordered a coffee from the waiter not bad no one seems very keen on conversation though isn't me or does that place have all the cheery ambience of a sinking ocean liner it's just this place everyone who comes here is pissed off about it either they got transferred here and they're pissed off about that or they ended up here by a routing error and they're pissed off about that instead take your pick no one's happy only the ones who know they're getting out of here soon would that include you no she said i'm more or less stuck here but i'm okay about it i guess i'm the exception that proves the rule the waiters were glass mannequins the kind that had been fashionable in the core worlds about 20 years ago one of them placed a croissant in front of me and poured scalding black coffee into my cup well it's good to see you you too tom retta finished her orange juice and then took a corner of my croissant for herself without asking i heard you got married yes well aren't you going to tell me about her i drank some of my coffee her name's katarina nice name she works in the department of bioremediation on kagawa kids greta asked not yet it wouldn't be easy the amount of time we both spent away from home she had a mouthful of croissant but one day you might think about it i mean nothing's ruled out i said as flattered as i was that she was taking such an interest in me the surgical precision of her questions left me slightly uncomfortable there was no thrust and parry no fishing for information that kind of directness unnerved but at least it allowed me to ask the same questions what about you then nothing very exciting i got married a year or so after i last saw you a man called marcel marcel i said ruminatively as if the name had cosmic significance well i'm happy for you i take it he's here too no our work took us in different directions we're still married but greta left the sentence hanging it can't be easy i said if it was meant to work we'd have found a way anyway don't feel too sorry for either of us we've both got our work i wouldn't say i was any less happy than the last time we met well that's good i said bretta leaned over and touched my hand her fingernails were midnight black with a blue sheen look this is really presumptuous of me it's one thing asking to meet up for breakfast it would have been rude not to but how would you like to meet again later it's really nice to eat here in the evening they turned down the lights the view through the dome is really something i looked up into the endless holographic sky i thought it was faked oh it is but don't let that spoil it for you she said i settled in front of the camera and started speaking katarina i said hello i hope you're all right but now i hope someone from the company will have been in touch if they haven't i'm pretty sure you'll have made your own enquiries i'm not sure what they told you but i promise you we're safe and sound and that we're coming home i'm calling from somewhere called sumlaki station a repair facility on the edge of siddhar sector it's not much to look at just a warn of tunnels and centrifuges dug into a pitch-black d-type asteroid about half a light year from the nearest star the only reason it's here at all is because there happens to be an aperture next door that's how we got here in the first place some way or another blue goose took a wrong turn in the network what they call a routing error the goose came in last night local time and i've been in a hotel since then i didn't call last night because i was too tired and disoriented after coming out of the tank and i didn't know how long we were going to be here seemed better to wait until morning when we'd have a better idea of the damage to the ship it's nothing serious just a few bits and pieces buckled during the transit but it means we're going to be here for another couple of days colding he's the repair chief says three at the most by the time we get back on course however we'll be about 45 days behind schedule i paused eyeing the incrementing cost indicator before i sat down in the booth i always had an eloquent and economical speech queued up in my head one that conveyed exactly what needed to be said with the measure and grace of a soliloquy but my mind always dried up as soon as i opened my mouth and instead of an actor i ended up sounding like a small-time thief concocting some fumbling alibi in the presence of a quick-witted interrogator i smiled awkwardly and continued it kills me to think this message is going to take so long to get to you but if there's a silver lining it's that i won't be far behind it by the time you get this i should be home only a couple of days later so don't waste your money replying to this because by the time you get it i'll already have left sumlaki station just stay where you are and i promise i'll be home soon that was it there was nothing more i needed to say other than i miss you delivered after a moment's pause i meant it to sound emphatic but when i replayed the recording it sounded more like an afterthought i could have recorded it again but i doubted that i would have been any happier instead i just committed the existing message for transmission and wondered how long it would have to wait before going on its way since it seemed unlikely that there was a vast flow of commerce in and out of tsumlaki our ship might be the first suitable outbound vessel i emerged from the booth some reason i felt guilty as if i had been in some way neglectful it took me a while before i realized what was playing on my mind i told katarina about tsumlaki's station i'd even told her about colding and the damage to the blue goose but i hadn't told her about greta it's just not working with susie she's too smart too well attuned to the physiological correlatives of surge tank immersion i can give her all the reassurances in the world but she knows she's been under too long for this to be anything other than a truly epic screw-up she knows that we aren't just talking weeks or even months of delay here every nerve in her body's screaming that message into her skull i had dreams she says when the grogginess fades what kind dreams that i kept waking dreams that you were pulling me out of the surge tank you and someone else i do my best to smile i'm alone but greta isn't far away the hypodermics in my pocket now personally i always get bad dreams coming out of the tank i say these felt real your story kept changing but you kept telling me we were somewhere that we'd gone a little off course but that it was nothing to worry about so much for greta's reassurance that susie will remember nothing after her aborted efforts at waking her seems that her short-term memory isn't quite as fallible as we'd like it's funny you should say that i tell her because actually we are a little off course she's sharper with every breath susie was always the best of us at coming out of the tank tell me how far tom farther than i'd like she balls her fist i can't tell if it's aggression or some lingering neuromuscular effect of her time in the tank how far beyond the bubble beyond the bubble yes her voice grows small and childlike tell me tom are we beyond the rift i can hear the fear i understand what she's going through it's the nightmare that all ship crews live with on every trip that something will go wrong with a routing something so severe that they'll end up on the very edge of the network that they'll end up so far from home that getting back will take years not months and that of course years will have already passed even before they begin the return trip that loved ones will be years older when they reach home if they're still there if they still remember you or want to remember if they're still recognizable or alive beyond the aquila rift it's shorthand for the trip no one ever hopes to make by accident the one that will screw up the rest of your life the one that creates the ghosts you see haunting the shadows of company bars across the whole bubble men and women ripped out of time cut adrift from families and lovers by an accident of alien technology we use but barely comprehend yes i say we're beyond the rift susie screams knitting her face into a mask of anger and denial my hand is cold around the hypodermic i consider using it i received a new repair estimate from colding five six days maybe this time i didn't even argue i just shrugged and walked out and wondered how long it would be next time that evening i sat down at the table where greta and i had met over breakfast the dining area had been well lit before but now only illumination came from the table lamps and the subdued lighting panels set into the paving in the distance a glass manikin cycled from empty table to empty table playing asturias on a glass guitar there were no other patrons dining tonight i didn't have to wait long for greta i'm sorry i'm late tom i turned to her as she approached the table i liked the way she walked in the low gravity of the station the way the subdued lighting traced the arc of her hips and waist she eased into her seat and leaned toward me in the manner of a conspirator the lamp on the table threw red shadows and gold highlights across her face it took 10 years off her age you aren't late i said and anyway i had the view it's an improvement isn't it that wouldn't be saying much i said with a smile but yes it's definitely an improvement i could sit out here all night and just look at it in fact sometimes that's exactly what i do just me and a bottle of wine i don't blame you instead of the holographic blue the dome was now full of stars it was like no view i'd ever seen from another station or ship there were furious blue white stars embedded in what looked like sheets of velvet there were hard gold gems and soft red smears like finger smears in pastel there were streams and currents of fainter stars like a myriad of neon fish caught in a snapshot of frozen motion there were bluffs of oh sure dust so rich in three-dimensional structure that they resembled an exuberant impasto of oil colors contours light years thick laid on with a trowel red or pink stars burned through the dust like lanterns orphaned worlds were caught erupting from the towers little sperm-like shapes trailing viscera of dust here and there i saw the tiny eye like knots of birthing solar systems there were pulsars flashing on and off like navigation beacons their differing rhythms seemed to set a stately tempo for the entire scene like a deathly slow waltz there seemed too much detail for one view an overwhelming abundance of richness and yet no matter which direction i looked there was yet more to see as if the dome sensed my attention and concentrated its efforts on the spot where my gaze was directed for a moment i felt a lurching sense of dizziness and though i tried to stop it before i made a fool of myself i found myself grasping the side of the table as if to prevent myself from falling into the infinite depths of the view yes it has that effect on people greta said it's beautiful i said do you mean beautiful or terrifying i realized i wasn't sure it's big was all i could offer of course it's faked greta said her voice soft now that she was leaning closer the glass and the dome is smart it exaggerates the brightness of the stars so that the human eye registers the differences between them otherwise the colors aren't unrealistic everything else you see is also pretty accurate if you accept that certain frequencies have been shifted into the visible band and the scale of certain structures has been adjusted she pointed out features for my edification that's the edge of the taurus dark cloud with the pleiades just poking out that's a filament of the local bubble you see that open cluster she waited for me to answer yes i said that's the hyades over there you've got beetlejuice and bellatrix i'm impressed you should be it cost a lot of money she leaned back a bit so that the shadows dropped across her face again are you all right tom you seem a bit distracted i sighed i just got another prognosis from your friend colding that's enough to put a dent in anyone's day ah i'm sorry about that there's something else too i said something that's been bothering me since i came out of the tank mannequin came to take our order i let greta choose for me you can talk to me about it whatever it is she said when the mannequin had gone it isn't easy something personal then is it about katarina she bit her tongue no sorry i shouldn't have said that it's not about katarina not exactly anyway but even as i said it i knew that in a sense it was about katarina and how long it was going to be before we saw each other again go on tom this is going to sound silly but i wonder if everyone's being straight with me it's not just colding it's you as well when i came out of that tank i felt the same way i felt when i'd been out to the rift worse if anything i felt like i'd been in the tank for a long long time it feels that way sometimes i know the difference greta trust me on this so what are you saying the problem was that i wasn't really sure it was one thing to feel a vague sense of unease about how long i'd been in the tank it was another to come out and accuse my host of lying especially when she had been so hospitable is there any reason you'd lie to me come off it tom what kind of question is that as soon as i had said it it sounded absurd and offensive to me as well i wished i could reverse time and start again ignoring my misgivings i'm sorry i said stupid just put it down to messed up biorhythms or something she reached across the table and took my hand as she had done at breakfast this time she continued to hold it you really feel wrong don't you colding's games aren't helping that's for sure the waiter brought our wine setting it down the bottle chinking against his delicately articulated glass fingers the mannequin poured two glasses and i sampled mine maybe if i had someone else for my crew to [ __ ] about it all with i wouldn't feel so bad i know you said we shouldn't weak susie and rey but that was before a one day stopover turned into a week bretta shrugged if you want to wake them no one's going to stop you but don't think about ship business now let's not spoil a perfect evening i looked up at the starscape it was heightened with the mad shimmering intensity of a van gogh nightscape it made one feel drunk and ecstatic just to look at it what could possibly spoil it i asked [Music] what happened is that i drank too much wine and ended up sleeping with greta i'm not sure how much of a part of the wine played in it for her if her relationship with marcel was in as much trouble as she'd made out then obviously she had less to lose than i did yes that made it all right didn't it she the seductress her own marriage a wreck me the hapless victim i'd lapsed but it wasn't really my fault i'd been alone far from home emotionally fragile and she had exploited me she had softened me up with a romantic meal her trap already sprung except all of that was self-justifying [ __ ] wasn't it if my own marriage was in such great shape why had i failed to mention greta when i called home at the time i justified that omission is an act of kindness toward my wife katarina didn't know that greta and i had ever been a couple but why worry katarina by mentioning another woman even if i pretended that we'd never met before except now i could see that i'd failed to mention greta for another reason entirely because in the back of my mind even then there had been the possibility that we might end up sleeping together i was already covering myself when i called katarina already making sure there wouldn't be any awkward questions when i got home as if i not only knew what was going to happen but secretly yearned for it the only problem was that greta had something else in mind [Music] tom greta said nudging me toward wakefulness she was lying naked next to me leaning on one elbow with the sheets crumpled down around her hips the light in her room turned her into an abstraction of milky blue curves in deep violet shadows with one black nailed finger she traced a line down my chest and said there's something you need to know what i asked i lied colding light we all lied i was too drowsy for her words to have much more than a vaguely troubling effect all i could say again was what you are not in some lockheed station you're not in shader sector i started waking up properly say that again the routing error was more severe than you were led to believe it took you far beyond the local bubble i groped for anger even resentment but all i felt was a dizzying sensation of falling how far out farther than you thought possible the next question was obvious beyond the rift yes she said with the faintest of smiles as if humoring me in a game whose rules and objectives she found ultimately demeaning beyond the aquila rift a long long way beyond it i need to know greta she pushed herself from the bed reached for a gown then get dressed i'll show you [Music] i followed greta in a daze she took me to the dome again it was dark just as it had been the night before with only the lamplit tables to act as beacons i supposed that the illumination throughout sumlaki station or wherever this was was at the whim of its occupants and didn't necessarily have to follow any recognizable diurnal cycle nonetheless it was still unsettling to find it changed so arbitrarily even if greta had the authority to turn out the lights when she wanted to didn't anyone else object but i didn't see anyone else too object there was no one else around only a glass mannequin standing at attention with a napkin over one arm she sat us at a table do you want a drink tom no thanks for some reason i'm not quite in the mood she touched my wrist don't hate me for lying to you it was done out of kindness i couldn't break the truth to you in one go sharply i withdrew my hand shouldn't i be the judge of that so what is the truth exactly it's not good tom tell me then i'll decide i didn't see her do anything but suddenly the dome was filled with stars again just as it had been the night before the view lurched zooming outward stars flowed by from all sides like white sleet nebulae ghosted past and spectral wisps the sense of motion was so compelling that i found myself gripping the table seized by vertigo easy top greta whispered if you lurched swerved contracted a solid wall of gas slammed past now suddenly i had the sense that we were outside something that we had punched beyond some containing sphere defined only in vague arcs and knots of curdled gas where the interstellar gas density increased sharply of course it was obvious we were beyond the local bubble and we were still receding i watched the bubble itself contract becoming just one member in the large froth of voids instead of individual stars i saw only smudges and moats aggregations of hundreds of thousands of suns it was like pulling back from a close-up view of a forest i could still see clearings but the individual trees had vanished into an amorphous mass and we kept pulling back then the expansion slowed and froze i could still make out the local bubble but only because i had been concentrating on it all the way out otherwise there was nothing to distinguish it from the dozens of surrounding voids is that how far out we've come i asked greta shook her head let me show you something again she did nothing that i was aware of but the bubble i had been looking at was suddenly filled with a scheme of red lines like a child scribble aperture connections i said as shocked as i was by the fact that she had lied to me and as fearful as i was about what the truth might hold i couldn't turn off the professional part of me the part that took pride in recognizing such things greta nodded those are the main commerce routes the well-mapped connections between large colonies and major trading hubs now i'll add all mapped connections including those that have only ever been traversed by accident the scribble did not change dramatically it gained a few more wild loops and hairpins including one that reached beyond the wall of the bubble to touch the sunward end of the equella rift one or two other additions pierced the wall in different directions but none of them reached as far as the rift where are we we're at the end of one of those connections you can't see it because it's pointing directly toward you she smiled slightly i needed to establish the scale that we're dealing with how wide is the local bubble tom 400 light years give or take my patience was wearing thin but i was still curious sounds about right and while i know that aperture travel times vary from point to point with factors depending on network topology and syntax optimization isn't it the case that the average speed is about one thousand times faster than light give or take so a journey from one side of the bubble might take what half a year say five or six months a year to the aquila rift you know that already greta we both know it all right then consider this and the view contracted again the bubble dwindling a succession of overlaying structures concealing it darkness coming into view on either side and the familiar spiral swirl of the milky way galaxy looming large hundreds of billions of stars packed together in foaming white lanes of sea spume this is the view greta said enhanced of course brightened and filtered for human consumption but if you had eyes with near perfect quantum efficiency and if they happen to be about a meter wide this is more or less what you'd see if you stepped outside the station i don't believe you what i meant was i didn't want to believe her get used to it tom you're a long way out the station's orbiting a brown dwarf star in the large magellanic cloud you're 150 000 light years from home no i said my voice little more than a moan of abject childlike denial you felt as though you'd spent a long time in the tank you were dead right subjective time i don't know years easily maybe a decade but objective time the time that passed back home is a lot clearer it took blue goose 150 years to reach us even if you turned back now you'd have been away for 300 years tom katarina i said her name like an invocation katarina's dead redder told me she's already been dead a century [Music] how do you adjust to something like that the answer is that you can't count on adjusting to it at all not everyone does greta told me that she had seen just about every possible reaction in the spectrum and the one thing she had learned was that it was next to impossible to predict how a given individual would take the news she had seen people adjust to the revelation with little more than a world weary shrug as if this were merely the latest in a line of galling surprises life had thrown at them no worse in its way than illness or bereavement or any number of personal setbacks she had seen others walk away and kill themselves half an hour later but the majority she said did eventually come to some kind of accommodation with the truth however faltering and painful the process trust me tom i know you now i know you have the emotional strength to get through this i know you can learn to live with it but why didn't you tell me straight away as soon as i came out of the tank because i didn't know if you were going to be able to take it you waited until after you knew i had a wife no i waited until after we'd made love because then i knew katarina couldn't mean that much to you [ __ ] you [ __ ] me yes you did that's the point i wanted to strike out against her but what i was angry at was not her insinuation but the cold-hearted truth of it she was right and i knew it i just didn't want to deal with that any more than i wanted to deal with the here and now i waited for the anger to subside [Music] you say we're not the first i said no we were the first i suppose the ship i came in luckily it was well equipped after the routing error we had enough supplies to set up a self-sustaining station on the nearest rock we knew there was no going back but at least we could make some kind of life for ourselves here and after that we had enough to do just keeping ourselves alive the first few years but then another ship came through the aperture damaged drifting much like blue goose we hauled her in warmed her crew broke the news to them how'd they take it about as well as you'd expect greta laughed hollowly to herself a couple of them went mad another killed herself but at least a dozen of them are still here in all honesty it was good for us that another ship came through not just because they had supplies we could use but because it helped us to help them took our minds off our own self-pity it made us realize how far we'd come and how much help these newcomers needed to make the same transition that wasn't the last ship either we've gone through the same process with eight or nine others since then greta looked at me her head cocked against her hand there's a thought for you tom there is she nodded it's difficult for you now i know and it'll be difficult for you for some time to come but it can help to have someone else to care about it can smooth the transition like who i asked like one of your other crew members you could try awaking one of them now greta said [Music] greta's with me when i pull susie out of the search tank why her greta asks because i want her out first i say wondering if greta's jealous i don't blame her suzy's beautiful but she's also smart there isn't a better syntax runner in ashanti industrial what happened susie asks when she's over the grogginess didn't we make it back i asked her to tell me the last thing she remembers customs susie says those pricks on archangel and after that anything else the runes do you remember casting them no she says then picks up something in my voice the fact that i might not be telling the truth or telling her all she needs to know tom i'll ask you again did we make it back a minute later we're putting susie back into the tank it hasn't worked this first time maybe the next try but it kept not working with susie she was always more clever and quicker than me she always had been as soon as she came out of the tank she knew that we'd come a lot further than shiddar sector she was always ahead of my lies and excuses it was different when it happened to me i told greta when we were lying next to each other again days later was susie still in the tank i had all the nagging doubts she has i think but as soon as i saw you standing there i forgot all about that stuff greta nodded her hair fell across her face in disheveled sleep matted curtains she had a strand of it between her lips it helped seeing a friendly face took my mind off the problem that's for sure you'll get there in the end she said anyway from susie's point of view aren't you a friendly face as well maybe i said but she'd been expecting me you were the last person in the world i expected to see standing there greta touched her knuckle against the side of my face her smooth skin slid against stubble it's getting easier for you isn't it i don't know i said you're a strong man tom i knew you'd come through this i haven't come through it yet i said i felt like a tightrope walker halfway across niagara falls it was a miracle i'd made it as far as i had that didn't mean i was home and dry still greta was right there was hope i'd felt no crushing spasms of grief over katarina's death or enforced absence or however you wanted to put it all i felt was a bittersweet regret the way one might feel about a broken heirloom or long-lost pet i felt no animosity toward katarina and i was sorry that i would never see her again but i was sorry about not seeing a lot of things maybe it would become worse in the days ahead maybe i was just postponing a breakdown i didn't think so in the meantime i continued trying to find a way to deal with susie she had become a puzzle that i couldn't leave unsolved i could have just woken her up and let her deal with the news as best she could but that seemed cruel and unsatisfactory greta had broken into me gently giving me time to settle in my new surroundings and take that necessary step away from katarina when she finally broke the news as shocking as it was it didn't shatter me i'd already been primed for it the sting taken out of the surprise sleeping with greta obviously helped i couldn't offer susie the same solace but i was sure that there was a way for us to coax suzy to the same state of near acceptance time after time we woke her and tried a different approach greta said there was a window of a few minutes before the events she was experiencing began a transfer in a long-term memory if we knocked her out the buffer of memories and short-term storage was wiped before it ever crossed the hippocampus in a long-term recall within that window we could wake her up as many times as we liked trying endless permutations of the revival scenario at least that's what greta told me we can't keep doing this indefinitely i said why not i mean isn't she gonna remember something greta shrugged maybe but i doubt that she'll attach any significance to those memories haven't you ever had vague feelings of deja vu coming out of the surge tank sometimes i muttered then don't sweat about it she'll be all right i promise you perhaps we should just keep her awake after all that would be cruel it's cruel to keep waking her up and shutting her down like a toy doll there was a catch in her voice when she answered me keep at it tom i'm sure you're close to finding a way in the end it's helping you focusing on susie i always knew it would i started to say something but greta pressed a finger to my lips greta was right about susie the challenge helped me taking my mind off my own predicament i remembered what greta had said about dealing with other crews in the same situation before blue goose put in clearly she had learned many psychological tricks gambits and shortcuts to assist the transition to mental well-being i felt a slight resentment at being manipulated so effectively but at the same time i couldn't deny that worrying about another human being had helped me with my own adjustment when days later i stepped back from my immediate problem of susie i realized that something was different i didn't feel far from home i felt in an odd way privileged i'd come further than almost anyone in history i was still alive and there were still people around to provide love and partnership in a web of social relations not just greta but all the other unlucky souls who had ended up at this station if anything there appeared to be more of them than when i had first arrived the corridors sparsely populated at first were increasingly busy and when we ate under the dome under the milky way we were not the only diners i studied their lamplit faces comforted by their vague familiarity wondering what kinds of stories they had to tell where they'd come from who they had left behind how they had adjusted to life here there was time enough to get to know them all and the place would never become boring for at any time as greta had intimated we could always expect another lost ship to drop through the aperture tragedy for the crew but fresh challenges fresh faces fresh news from home for us all in all it wasn't really so bad then it clicked it was the man cleaning out the fish that did it in the lobby of the hotel it wasn't just how familiar the process was but the man himself i'd seen him before another pond full of diseased carp another hotel then i remembered colding's bad teeth and recalled how they'd reminded me of another man i'd met long ago except it was another man at all different name different context but everything else was the same and when i looked at the other diners really looked at them there was no one i couldn't swear i hadn't seen before no single face that hit me with the force of utter unfamiliarity which left greta i said to her over whine under the milky way nothing here is real is it she looked at me with infinite sadness and shook her head what about susie i asked her susie's dead ray is dead they died in their surge tanks why them and not me something about particles of paint blocking intake filters not enough to make a difference over short distances but enough to kill them on the trip out here i think some part of me had always suspected it felt less like a shock than brutal disappointment but susie seemed so real i said even the way she had doubts about how long she'd been in the tank even the way she remembered previous attempts to wake her the glass mannequin approached our table greta waved him away i made her convincing the way she would have acted you made her you're not really awake tom you're being fed data this entire station is being simulated i sipped my wine i expected it to taste suddenly thin and synthetic but it still tasted like pretty good wine then i'm dead as well no you're alive still in your surge tank but i haven't brought you to full consciousness yet all right the truth this time i can take it how much is real does the station exist are we really as far out as you said yes the station exists just as i said it does it just looks different and it is in the large magellanic cloud and it is orbiting a brown dwarf star can you show me the station as it is i could but i don't think you're ready for it i think you'd find it difficult to adjust i couldn't help laughing even after what i've already adjusted to you've only made half the journey tom but you made it i did tom but for me it was different greta smiled for me everything was different then she made the light show change again none of the other diners appeared to notice as we began to zoom in toward the milky way crashing toward the spiral ramming through shoals of outlying stars and gas clouds the familiar landscape of the local bubble loomed large the image froze the bubble won amongst many such structures again it filled with the violent red scribble of the aperture network but now the network wasn't the only one [Music] it was merely one ball of red yarn amongst many spaced out across tens of thousands of light years none of the scribbles touched each other yet in the way they were shaped in the way they almost abutted against each other it was possible to imagine that they had once been connected they were like the shapes of continents on a world with tectonic drift it used to span the galaxy greta said then something happened something catastrophic which i still don't understand a shattering into vastly smaller domains typically a few hundred light years across who made it i don't know no one knows they probably aren't around anymore maybe that was why it shattered out of neglect but we found it i said the part of it near us still worked all the disconnected elements still function you can't cross from domain to domain but otherwise the apertures work as they were designed to barring of course the occasional routing error all right if you can't cross from domain to domain how did blue goose get this far out we've come a lot further than a few hundred light years you're right but then such a long distance connection might have been engineered differently from the others it appears that the links to the magellanic cloud were more resilient when the domains shattered from each other the connections reaching beyond the galaxy remained intact in which case you can cross from domain to domain i said but you have to come all the way out here first the trouble is not many want to continue the journey at this point no one comes here deliberately tom i still don't get it what does it matter to me if there are other domains those regions of the galaxy are thousands of light years from earth and without the apertures we'd have no way of reaching them they don't matter there's no one there to use them greta's smile was coquettish and knowing what makes you so certain because if there were wouldn't there be alien ships popping out of the aperture here you've told me blue goose wasn't the first through but our domain the one in the local bubble must be outnumbered hundreds to one by all the others if there are alien creatures out there each stumbling on their own local domain why haven't any of them come through the aperture the way we did again that smile but this time it chilled my blood what makes you think they haven't tom i reached out and took her hand the way she had taken mine i took it without force without malice but with the assurance that this time i really sincerely meant what i w

2021-08-10 03:43

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