Aubade: Chapter 13
The Seventh Layer Problem
What’s it all about?
You just woke up and find yourself onboard the spaceship Aubade escaping Earth. Forever. Last thing you remember is going to bed. On Earth.
When she woke up to the sound of her notebook alerting her of a call, she was thankful that it was a sign that she had at least slept for a few minutes. It was Sirta who gave her orders to take Henley back to the Defense station. Today. She had below thirty minutes to get ready.
Due to her insomnia she was unable to ask why it had to be today, or more importantly why she had to be the one taking him back, especially since they both recently had been in a severe accident while trying to reach the other station. What was Sirta thinking? She was also unable to even muster up anger or fear. She just obeyed and stood ready at the port at the scheduled time.
The assigned shuttle stood ready and steaming. Jack was escorted to the port by Paulon, who looked as bewildered as Sara. Peter's brother was all she could think. I am looking straight at my brother in law! Pandora's uncle!
"What the hell is going on?" he wheezed out between his teeth.
"No idea," she replied while checking her suit, "but I know enough not to argue with Sirta. But do I think it's insane? Yes. Will we both die another blasted death? Probably. Will I complain to our sorry wimp Captain when he finally graces us with his presence? Yes. In the meantime I will just do what I'm told." She looked up at Paulon's surprised face.
"Sara, you're barely awake and all this anger... You can't go! It's suicide!" Paulon was genuinely worried.
"What, don't you trust Sirta's careful calculations?" she whispered before stepping into the shuttle. Jack was quiet. She wondered if they'd given him a shot of something. He was too quiet.
Great, she would have to drive by herself. She couldn't wait to hear what had caused Vince to demand them present so quickly. In fact, this thought woke her up just enough to allow some adrenaline to kick start her. She was overcome with a sharp sensation of focus, and without having to exert herself she acted more or less by intuition. The port crew were giving her a checklist, which she followed.
Jack was quietly following his orders as well, which made Sara more puzzled over his state. She thought he might be nervous but at the same time lethargic. Some form of reverse reaction. No wonder, he was still recovering and his lungs probably would not like the strenuous ride. She took a break in her check routine and reached over to him.
"Jack, they gave us enough oxygen to last us four hours."
He didn't reply but just nodded. She didn't give up.
"I need you to talk to me, Jack, or I won't drive us there." He still didn't answer. She reached out her gloved hand and shook his shoulder.
"I don't know why the hell they want us there this soon, and if you do you have to tell me now. Do you?" She shook his shoulder until he looked at her and said:
"Sirta is an asshole." The port crew member on the com channel was seen widening his eyes. Sara wasn't deterred.
"That's a start! Listen, keep talking like that and add a few comments on what's happening on your screen stats as we're driving, and I'll help you kick Stapleton's sorry ass when we get there, OK?" He must have liked that because he immediately replied:
"If I die you'll make him eat my lungs!"
"OK, that is a bit strange, but fine. Doesn't seem too exotic an activity to the Defense team after all." He must be drugged after all, so she continued to say:
"Just make sure you follow my orders en route. No crazy talk or actions while I drive, got that?" She was almost shocked at her own decisive tone. What was this and where did it come from? She never felt in command. It was now a few minutes to take off and she didn't have time to think more about it.
A port crew member connected them to the Defense channel, and she immediately heard Vince's voice giving someone an order.
"...only at the outskirts of the perimeter! Copy that?" Then silence while another channel was accessed and Stormare's voice greeted them as if it was the most usual day of the week:
"All right, we have you on our visual. Come home to mama, and papa."
"Just don't screw it up for us, please," Sara exclaimed dryly.
"Whoa whoa, we're not familiar with such sarcasm and negativity here, what an unclean environment you must have trod in!" Stormare was really at his best this morning, she thought.
"Jack is a bit tired." She decided it was best to give them an idea of the situation unless, of course, they already knew about it. Perhaps they even had ordered it. "So keep an eye on him while I drive, will you?" She looked into the camera with a serious expression on her face. It was quiet for a moment and then she heard Stormare's voice again, this time a bit more subdued:
"Ah, got it! Got it, yeah he never sleeps well when away from home. His mama always reminded us of that when we saw her." She gave another glance into the camera and shook her head, but couldn't help smiling a bit, which of course encouraged Stormare to even more outrageous exclamations:
"He doesn't sleep well without his bottle, does he?"
She could vaguely hear background laughter on the channel, but it was not the port crew because they had a decidedly disgusted look on their faces. She knew it was completely inappropriate talk and that they probably would be reprimanded and punished for it but she continued to feel the effects of adrenaline, and rebellious attitude was steadily streaming in her circulatory system.
Jack remained quiet during the whole rant but she thought she could detect a small grin on his face when she looked over right before they took off. This man was Peter's brother! She had to keep her emotions in control, but the thought kept popping up. She smiled and let all the butterflies of 100 years flutter in her stomach as she bounced across the alien terrain with her drugged brother-in-law by her side.
The drive was uncommonly uneventful though bouncy. The scenery was so starkly reversed in appearance to the one they had observed on their previous trip, that it felt more surreal than anything else Sara had experienced so far.
It seemed to her that this environment almost had an impact on her thoughts. The color scheme was now a more reddish tone of yellow, and the rugged and sharp edges and greenish tones were gone. They were now drifting through a cheddar-colored soft landscape covered in the thinnest of dust. But it barely rose in the air and she didn't understand why they saw no dust trail behind them.
The liquid deposits could be seen beyond a small hill, and the surface was covered in small oval penetrations. Some kind of algae, she thought. Or was there even anything like algae here? She needed to focus more on her driving, and she found herself quite capable of handling the shuttle. She even managed to enter the Defense bunker entrance without scraping the sides of the narrow entrance way.
Jack threw up the second they removed his visor, and he was rushed off to sick bay. Sara stepped past the bucket they had been nice enough to place right in front of her side of the shuttle. She wished she knew exactly where to go next so she could have done it with even more arrogance, but as soon as she had stepped out of the vehicle she had no clue which way to proceed and insecurity took over. But anger was still there.
Tengel and Stormare walked out to greet her in the small waiting room outside the headquarters. Both looked calm and as if her presence was nothing out of the ordinary. Tengel was the first one to speak: "Well, well, Miss Hanley, you need to be careful with showing all your talents in such a short amount of time. People might begin to wonder."
She thankfully noticed that she hadn't lost all of her aggressive strength after all, so she replied sharply:
"Thank you, Sir, I have quite enjoyed being the object of amusement, but let us reveal the truth behind this sudden visit, shall we? I am sure it wasn't to prove that I can drive a shuttle better than most of your men, was it?"
She wondered if this anger, which she actually had begun to enjoy, was a form of release after all she had been through. She was pretty sure she was going to get a whole range of shots as soon as she returned to the Civ compound. Tengel seemed genuinely surprised at her outburst, but immediately matted out his face with a gentle smile:
"Of course, we would not keep anything hidden from such a clever woman as you. You are here because Commander Stapleton ordered you here. And Henley needs to be with his team."
Somehow she had a difficult time believing that. She and Vince had no desire to see each other, for a long time. Well, that was not true, but they had to pretend to think so. But obviously she was wrong, and it must be something urgent.
"Then I'd like to see him immediately so I can complete my assignment as soon as possible and return."
Tengel and Stormare exchanged an amused look and she feared Vince might have told them about his recent encounter with her. She wouldn't be surprised if he had told them every single detail of their inappropriate meeting, because she knew that men of their kind enjoyed exchanging stories like that.
Stormare pointed toward a door: "Stapleton can't see you before tomorrow, as he is engaged elsewhere, but we have arranged quarters for you, and Tengel will need your assistance until lunch after which you will be relieved of your duties until the morning." With that Stormare walked out and Tengel motioned to her to follow, and they walked through a hallway until they stopped at a familiar door, Stapleton's.
She said: "I thought you said I wouldn't see him until tomorrow." Stormare unlocked the door and replied:
"You won't. He assigned you this room as your quarters. Tengel is staying so you can go over some items until lunch."
Stormare's usual humor was gone and he gave each of them a nod and stepped away through the hallway. Tengel and Sara entered Vince's quarters, and she could immediately detect his scent. How odd that was, she thought, but she could. Tengel didn't waste any time but walked directly over to the main computer and opened an application which revealed the same blueprints she had stared at for hours when operating inside the cube.
"A few things remain a bit unclear to us regarding the operation of this system," began Tengel as he tried to set up the visual in a logical manner. His system was faulty and Sara felt an urge to take over and correct all his errors but she remained seated in the large chair nearby. Tengel finally had set up a structure of about twelve visuals that were only understandable to her because she had seen them before. He seemed content with his work and turned to her and asked:
"So Miss Hanley, tell me what is wrong with the fifth level."
At first Sara could not see anything wrong on the fifth level. In fact, it was impossible to detect any internal system errors due to the vast errors in the set up itself! She felt like laughing out loud at this insanity, but was able to subdue herself. And after some examining she did notice that the fifth level seemed unusually repetitive.
"Perhaps it is only instructions for the following level and its hierarchy?" she tried.
"Perhaps, but that would still not solve this," Tengel flipped the visual and revealed something she hadn't been able to see from within the cube. It was a small but detectable area that had a distinct pattern.
"And how come you have to call me over in person to agree with you that this looks odd? You have several other people who are much more competent, and the AI could easily solve this." She looked up at him and he could see how irritated she was.
"Did you notice anything like this when you were inside the cube?" He had decided to ignore her anger.
"No, this is completely new to me," she responded absentmindedly while continuing to scan the level.
"Are you sure?"
"Yes, of course I am sure, I spent hours on it and still remember most steps by heart, of course I remember. And I didn't see this because obviously it has been hidden internally. How could I see that?"
She could hear her own temper flare and tried to control it.
"Well, it is important that we know if you saw it. Very well, let's then move to the sixth level," and he proceeded to show a similar internal pattern.
She was a bit surprised to see it in both the seventh and eighth level, and when it showed up in all the following levels she could understand Tengel's worried look.
"What is this?" she asked.
"If we only knew," he responded while absentmindedly flipping the visual. He was sitting only a foot away from the visual and it reflected in his old gray eyes. She liked him, even in this moment of irritation.
"Can't you open it?"
"It is already open," he sighed, "and I think therein lies the problem."
"So it is something that is running right now?"
"Yes."
"And we don't know what it is?"
"No." Tengel snapped his wrist and all the levels collapsed and the visual faded. He looked at her as he sat down on the couch. He was still agile for his age and his movements seemed more coordinated than most men younger than him.
"I didn't expect you to recognize it, but I just had to make sure."
"How come you don't find any records of it in the assistance section?" she asked.
"Because there are no records of it. We have not found any indicators or even slightest referrals to it, anywhere. The AI cannot run shortcut predictions either. And we are a bit fed up with mysteries." He had regained some of his calm smile.
"Fed up with mysteries, indeed! Welcome to my world!" she exclaimed, and she saw that he was surprised and probably clueless to her mysteries.
"Well," Tengel rose from his seat and handed her the notepad to the main computer, "I would appreciate it if you could sift through the content one more time. I will return in about two hours for lunch."
"But what am I looking for?" she whispered.
"Anything that shouldn't be there. Anything that looks strange and out of place." That's me, she thought and replied:
"I still think you are wasting time and resources on calling me over, but I will do my best." He nodded a thank you and closed the door between them.
She was still inspecting the eleventh level when Tengel returned, and he watched her rapid hands work through the thick jungle of information. He seemed more focused on her actions than her findings. Anything she found, which wasn't more than three or four abnormalities that might just have been careless but functional errors, she marked. When she had finally completed the levels they walked in silence to the messhall.
After lunch she excused herself saying she was so tired that she needed to rest. Tengel was understanding and escorted her back to Vince's quarters. A few minutes later she was fast asleep on his bed. She had forgotten to worry about where she was and slept until she heard him close the door to the bathroom. She was relieved she had pulled a blanket all the way up to her nose, so she pretended to be sleeping while he walked quietly past her and into the common room and pulled the door almost closed between them. She sat up, rearranged her clothes, tied up her hair and followed him.
"I'd like for you to see something," he said and motioned her to follow. No hellos and enquiries about this or that. Good. She actually thought that was more honest. She followed him to the room where the Defense Library cube emitted its surreal and slightly outdated multitude of blinking lights.
"In case you forgot I spent many unforgettable hours inside this cube," she said as they walked inside. He didn't respond, which reminded her of Jack.
"What happened to Jack?" she asked. He only replied:
"He'll be fine. Now take a look at this." Stapleton opened a section that had been so irrelevant to her operation that she had not been asked to touch it when going through the tedious deconstructing steps.
She saw the activity and replied:
"It's some kind of time-released assistance or something."
"Right, that's what it looks like. The only problem is that we don't have any time-released assistants in the Library."
"Not even for backup? It sounds reasonable to me." She examined the patterns and they sure looked oddly unmatching to the rest of the system.
"Nope, no backup. That is done through the system layer itself, and needs no time-release. This is definitely something else." He was looking at her, and she knew he knew more than this but was probing her for a new angle.
"Well," she began to wonder out loud, "it could be some kind of reminder."
"What do you mean?" His voice revealed interest. They had to stand close to each other to see the section, and their arms accidentally touched and they both murmured an apology.
"No, not a reminder, but what if it's like a lifeline, to keep the Library active?"
"Impossible, sorry to say, but everything was shut down during the journey. In fact everything else except the thrusters was shut down."
"But what if this was somehow still active?" she tried.
"Active?" She knew she was on the right trail.
"Yes, active, this thing is emitting a signal while we are sleeping." her ideas trailed off into nothing.
"You want to know what I think?" he asked gravely. She nodded and looked at him.
"I think," he whispered, "I think this is a beacon that some bastard planted in here, and you wanna know what else I think?" his voice was getting angrier and louder: "I think we've left a shit stain as large and wide as the New York beltway behind Aubade, and anyone with an olfactory nerve can trace us here to this shit planet, because you know what?" he was tapping hard on the visual, "Because we can't shut off this pathetic little blinking thing, we can't even turn it off!"
He was shaking his head in anger and frustration. She had no reply. It was such a terrifying thought, such an addition of fear and instant agony, that she got a sudden urge to vomit.
He saw her pale and nodded:
"Yes, that's how I've felt since I learned of this."
"When did you find out?" she managed to ask.
"As soon as I returned, you know, the other day. The crew had been going over the entire Library sectionals as a whole and accidentally stumbled upon the seventh layer problem. Some incompetent crew member who accidentally opened the wrong section found it. Think of that, it was found by accident! God, I want to find out who did this and personally strangle the bastard slowly!"
He snapped his mouth shut when realizing what he had just said. She could see a cloud of emotions run across his face. She knew he had just revealed something very deep about himself and that she needed to speak up and assure him she wouldn't betray him. Because it was now evident that he trusted her. And she trusted him.
"I visited the Coast several times." What a random thing to say, but she wanted to reveal something. In fact she had lived there over a year, but she couldn't tell him all at once. His strained face took another cloudy turn before it settled on half amused.
"Are you trying to subdue me? Nice try."
"All I am saying is that your word is safe with me," she gave him an
assuring look, "just as I know that my word is safe with you."
He nodded but motioned a sign of silence. What? Were they being listened to? They had already said so many other things that could be of interest to a nosy person. Unless he didn't want anyone to know their relationship was this deep. They were still standing in front of the cube.
"I need to get out of here," she finally said, "I wish I was home!" Sara hadn't really meant to say that.
"Me too, me too, let's go!" He almost ran out and once they both were back in the hallway neither of them spoke until they were standing inside his quarters. Sara had a feeling she had just escaped a darkness that didn't hesitate to show itself in broad daylight. Vince was visibly shaken too, and he was pacing the room. Neither of them could sit down, they were much too shaken up.
Sara tried to freshen up in the bathroom but she was afraid of looking at herself in the mirror. She got a sudden fear that something terrible would show itself in the reflection the moment she looked into it. It overcame her to such an extent that when she grabbed for the towel to dry her face, she remained bowed so she wouldn't have to see herself. And she left the bathroom without glancing in the mirror.
Vince was searching through a crate. He looked up and said:
"Hungry?"
She shook her head. Nausea was still lingering. That and a shaky feeling that she couldn't get rid of. She tried to sit down on the couch but the moment she forced her shoulders to lean back she got dizzy and had to tense up again to recover. She saw him pick up a bottle of whiskey from the crate. He noticed her worried look and said:
"Don't worry, I'm on my best behavior, and besides, I think we need one each." She didn't disagree and noticed how she almost felt a bit cheerful at the thought of a shot of whiskey amidst the insanity. Her mother-in-law's whiskey no less! She let out a laugh that made Vince jump.
"You OK?" he asked. She nodded:
"Did you know that Westport whiskey is the oldest brand on the Coast?" He held up a bottle, looked at it, and then at her.
"You've got one heck of an eyesight! The text is almost microscopic!" He was squinting to read the text on the bottle describing the history of the whiskey brand. She laughed again.
"It actually says all that on the bottle? I never bothered to look, I guess..."
He opened the bottle and poured each of them a large portion. They downed their drinks without a moment to spare.
"Right, you were too busy to empty it?" he guessed.
"Those times I did empty a bottle of Westport I do have to admit I was quite busy. Few people who drink Westport drink it to remember. They drink it to forget."
He reached out to refill and stopped to look at her:
"Another?" She held out her glass.
As he was putting the bottle back on the table after refilling their glasses Vince noticed something stuck in the groove on the bottom of the bottle.
"Huh, what's this?" He held up a small thin square-shaped dark colored item. Sara leaned forward to inspect it.
"What, that was stuck under the bottle?" she asked.
"Yeah, right here," he pointed to the groove under the bottle. A bit of glue could still be seen on both the square piece and the bottle.
Sara knew what it was. An old recording. She had seen people on the Coast use them. It took Vince only a moment to realize what it was before he was out of his seat and had loaded it up on the main computer.
"Must be some kind of silly competition, you know, how they put some secret item on a bottle and whoever wins it gets a prize." She nodded, but it still sounded exciting! A small message, something, anything, from home! They both waited while the small chip was being translated. It took a while, and they had just about given up on it when they heard it.
Laughter. Sara froze in place but her face was lit up with happiness. It was laughter they heard first, and then came the visual. Of course, she had never seen it from this perspective, but there she was, asleep. Pandora was giggling and Peter's voice was heard whispering:
"All right, let's get in the bed, and then wake mommy, OK? You first!"
Pandora very carefully crawled into bed next to Sara. Peter's hand was seen pointing to the three pillows.
"Tell me pumpkin, whose pillows are these?"
"Well, that one is mommy's of course, she is sleeping on it, silly daddy! And this one is mine! Here in the middle! And that one, there, that's daddy's!"
More giggling and moving about. Pandora's dark curls were bobbing and spread such a dark contrast to the light colors of the bed linen.
"OK, daddy, ready?"
"Ready! And one, two, three! Happy Birthday to you!" Pandora and Peter were singing to her and she remembered every moment, every little detail and word after that. She woke up and turned around. She was smiling before she opened her eyes.
"Happy Birthday mommy!" shouted Pandora and they all hugged. The camera motions became wobbly and after a while Sara saw him, Peter, kissing her. Pandora was giggling and begged them to stop, and they both looked into the camera. She had never been happier. They were reaching out for Pandora, and as the camera moved closer in they all became one happy blur.
Sara couldn't stop smiling. She knew that she eventually would become shocked, and that this was inexplicable, but wanted to linger in the soothing bliss that she felt. She had been so sure that she would never see Pandora's and Peter's faces again except in her own memory. She wanted to feel like a little child who doesn't care where the gift came from as long as it is there and presented to her.
The short movie had stopped and frozen on the blur of three images huddled together into a soupy light color.
Sara became aware of arms around her. Even as her body was turned around her neck would steer her face toward the visual. She had to see it. It made her feel so happy and safe, but the arms were holding her in such a tight grip that she couldn't entirely keep her eyes fixed on the pictures. Eventually she had to look elsewhere, and felt wetness on her face. She absentmindedly touched her cheeks and noticed they were covered in tears. It was impossible for her to speak, but her thoughts were only fixated on two people: Pandora and Peter. She so dearly wanted to crawl into that bed again, to merge in with what she had just seen and forget everything else that had happened to her. She wanted to forget everything else and never think of it again.
When he noticed that her tremblings had picked up again he wrapped her in a thick blanket on the couch and stayed with her. Neither of them could speak, and had Sara been able to see Vince's reaction to the movie she would have realized that she was not the only one recognizing the people in the movie.
Of all the background checking he'd done on her and life experience he had he was not remotely prepared to see her in bed with Peter Westmark! And they had a child, a biological child no less, together! His range of emotions were not fully equipped to process all of this. He was left speechless while unable to pull his eyes away from her. She'd been taken away from her daughter and husband, assuming that they really lived together he thought, in the middle of the night and thrown onboard Aubade never to see her home again.
It sounded like a Westmark scheme, he thought, but why wasn't Westmark himself onboard? It was just too insane a thought. Another possibility was that one of Westmark's enemies had separated him from his family on the last eve on Earth. Westmark did have enemies that would keep taking things away when nothing was left to take. Vince knew quite a lot about that.
Another question that occurred to him was why she hadn't told him anything. She knew Peter's high ranking, and how involved he'd been in the starship project, and yet she had never mentioned a single word about her connection to him. Even her files were solely records of her own life, isolated from those around her. He had, after some thought, seen some unusual notes about a hospital stay and surgery but what did he know about women and their issues? It must, of course, have been her delivery of her daughter. There was no doubt of the child being biological. She looked like a reflection of Sara and Westmark blended together! He felt himself enraged at the thought of the poor child dying alone while her parents, provided Westmark also escaped, were taking a starship to Camp Survival.
He was becoming more sure that someone, some kind of enemy was behind this. This and the beacon was enough to cause his stress level to reach heights he hadn't felt since the War. He was angry at himself for allowing himself to feel so strongly. It was a dangerous road to travel, and many mistakes might come out of this compassion for Sara. He had to admit to himself that out of all of the crew onboard Aubade Sara really had the most miserable life. What a hopeless life! Though he was both surprised and a bit impressed at her sudden strength when things mattered. This, however, was not such a moment.
He kept looking at the sobbing woman next to him. A red face covered with a dark curled nest of hair stuck out of a large thick comforter. A pair of feet stuck out from underneath. A sobbing head and curled feet. Vince tried to figure out whether he should move her to his bed or leave her where she was. He ended up not daring to touch the miserable looking creature on the couch, but remained seated nearby until he saw her head drop and her body sagged into a restful position. He wished he could sleep but his mind was racing. He suddenly realized something incredible; Jack was here, onboard. What an amazing coincidence!
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