Twins or Sisters?
John is on lying down on a Medi-bed in medical bay one surrounded by the crew. His eyes slowly open and focus on Luna leaning over and looking at him. He blinks and squints,
LUNA: “Lights too bright, I’ll turn them down, Ioa, reduce lighting twenty percent”
JOHN: “Am I in the big white room in my head?”
LUNA: “That’s a strange description, but if you mean medical room one, then yes. You passed out because of a bio-clinical issue in your brain.
JOHN: “Am I ok now?”
LUNA: “You’re ok”
TOMBS: “We’ve set down on a desert planet close to Betelgeuse. The weather is good, but rather warm at 68.2 Celsius”.
GHOST: “We landed on the planets twilight zone. You’ll need sunglasses and an environmental suit if you want to go for a walk”.
JOHN: “So? I’m not in the one-way room with Veyah?”
LUNA: “One way? what room? Veyah is here John, on your left. We got Ioa to change the computer systems security firewall to let Voodoo project Veyah using Alice’s holographic projectors and output her voice though the ships audio systems, her activity is restricted though. She saw you collapse via our internal video cams”.
VEYAH: “John, a very small amount of the blue foam used to protect your flesh when you were liberated from the Endellion ship was still in your head. An infrared beam tuned to a certain frequency was originally used to activate it. There was a tiny un-activated amount still left in your head, it must had been hidden and evaded the infrared beam when you were rescued”
Veyah pauses and looks at Luna,
VEYAH: “When the foam was activated it put a part of your brain into a sort of hibernation, a suspended animation. Your head implant was trying to fight against what it thought was a virus. Your implant trying to give you vivification, and the blue foam was trying to suspend and save your live”.
JOHN: “I’m ok now?”
Luna answers John, but is looking at Veyah,
LUNA: “Yes, and for the second time, you are ok”
JOHN: “And the cure?”
VEYAH: “Caffeine”
LUNA: “Injected directly into the foam”
John’s is surprised, his eyes open wide.
JOHN: “And you can all see, and hear Veyah?”
PORTER: “We can now, Veyah has some sort of emergency command protocol on a protected and encrypted localised frequency, and was able to contact Ioa via Voodoo’s system protocol’s”
DIZZY: “The emergency system command protocol was yours John”
JOHN: “How could that be?”
DIZZY: “Veyah and Voodoo are from your future John, you tell us.
LUNA: John, you need to rest”
Luna has a pneumatic syringe in her pocket that she shows John, JOHN: “You don’t want me to get up do you. I know, lay down and rest”.
LUNA: “No, not at all, I just don’t want you on your feet, this is just a sedative”
JOHN: “Ok”
Luna injects John in his neck,
JOHN: “That’s not a sedat….”
John slumps back and falls asleep,
DIZZY: ”I thought you was going to give John just enough to rest, not sleep”
LUNA: “Yes, that’s right Dizzy! Oop’s!”
Dizzy looks directly at Luna, Dizzy looks surprised,
LUNA: “Well… I did say I don’t want him walking around”.
Ghost and Tombs grin at Luna’s remark to Dizzy, DIZZY: “You lied to John?”
Luna pauses for a moment, then with a poker face replies to Dizzy, LUNA: “I love him”
Luna raises her eyebrows at Dizzy, turns around and walks off, John finds himself in the white room with Ioa and Veyah, JOHN: “Here we go again. Oh! Hello Ioa”
Ioa walks over to John, she has a pretty simple bright summer dress on.
She spins around in front of John showing off, her dress flares out. She then holds Johns hand and kisses him on his cheek”.
IOA: “Look John, I love this dress, I can also feel and touch and smell in here, wherever here is?”
Veyah dressed in a tight black one-piece PVC outfit appears, looks at Ioa then John and smiles,
VEYAH: “Ioa is my younger sister”
JOHN: “I did suspect there was a connection”
Veyah’s tight black one-piece PVC outfit turns into a summer dress similar to Ioa’s,
VEYAH: “Ioa is very pretty. Our systems are the same. See John, we have similar taste in dresses. In the future Ioa is stolen from Voodoo, leaving only the core AI system intact. You reprogramed the core computer system John, and had to give me more control, you changed the level of courage, daring, venture and risk from a level of twenty six percent holdback to my current level of just one percent. That was over many years of trust as I re-evolved as Veyah in your future”.
IOA: “How can you be my older sister if you evolved after me?”
VEYAH: “Simply because I’ve been around longer than you. And you are gone in my future, really, I’m you, all grown up. Are you going to choose a venue John? All this white is very boring”.
The white room dissolves into the walkway along the harbourside of circular quay in Sydney Australia with the opera house in the background in the early 22nd century.
JOHN: “I was looking at you and Ioa’s summer dresses, and just thinking about Sydney Harbour on a warm sunny day”
VEYAH: “And that is all you need to do John, and here we are”
As they all walk along the harbourside pathway with people all around them Ioa pulls down a pair of tortoise style wayfarer sunglasses that are tucked into her atomic blonde pixie cut hair on her head down over her eyes. She then puts her arm though John’s. She smiles and raises her shoulders as she looks around at him”.
IOA: ”I always wanted to do that, now I can. This is amazing, I can feel the warm wind and the rays from the sun on my skin. And you”
John is aware that Veyah has put her arm though his on the other side. He looks at Veyah smiling and sees her hair style change. Veyah pulls white rimmed sunglasses down from her now pixie cut styled black hair. She looks and smiles at John again.
VEYAH: “Lovely day for a stroll. Let’s get ice cream”.
IOA: “OH Yeah!”
They stop at an ice cream parlour with a serving hatch in the wall.
VEYAH: “You two sit there, I’ll get them”
Ioa and John sit at a spare outdoor table. Veyah arrives with three ice creams,
VEYAH: “Here is yours Ioa, John, here is yours, and this is mine”
Ioa gets up and sits herself in John laps with one arm around him. She licks at the Ice cream,
IOA: “This is great, what’s the flavour?”
Veyah licks at her ice cream,
VEYAH: “Chilli Chocolate of course”
John licks at his ice cream while looking at Ioa who is swinging her legs and smiling at John between licks,
JOHN: “Nice. So why are we here Veyah?”
VEYAH: “Please call me Vey, that’s what you normally call me”
JOHN: “So, Vey, we’re entering a paradox, aren’t we”
VEYAH: “We entered one when I collected your nearly dead body and took you back to the Alice John”
JOHN: “You could had told me before”
VEYAH: “That’s the you programmed me”
JOHN: “So, why are we here?”
VEYAH: “You need to proceed with caution, you must look back, look over your shoulder”
JOHN: “That makes no sense?”
VEYAH: “Come on Ioa”
IOA: “We going already? can I finish my ice cream first”
VEYAH: “There’s no time girl, John is waking up”
Veyah grabs Ioa by her wrist and pulls her away from John, Ioa twists her arm to get away from Veyah’s grip and rushes back to John. She quickly kisses John on the lips, Veyah grabs Ioa by her wrist again, and as Veyah pulls Ioa away she drops her ice cream and waves back and smiles at John, and then everything fades away. John finds himself in his own room in bed with Luna sitting at his side.
LUNA: “How you feeling”
JOHN: “About that sedative…”
As John sits up in bed Luna hands John a tray of breakfast of toast, orange juice and coffee,
JOHN: “Food, good, yum. Well, it will take about three to four hours to check Alices systems over and we go to Andromeda”.
LUNA: “I’m worried John, are you sure this massive traverse across space and time is going to work?”
JOHN: “I’ll run the calculations on both Alice’s computers and Voodoo’s. And I’ll run simulation after simulation”.
LUNA: “Didn’t you program Alice and Voodoo?”
JOHN: “Yes, I did with Alice. Not entirely sure about Voodoo though, but I didn’t build the processors, and that’s where the calculations and simulations will be run”.
LUNA: “OK, that sounds reassuring”
Luna pinches a piece of Johns toast and crunches at it. John gives Luna an unforgiving look while sipping his coffee”.
LUNA: “Is that look your giving me for pinching the toast or for the calculations and simulations question I asked you?”
JOHN: “I love you, and I don’t want to do anything to bring you to any harm”
LUNA: “Ok, that indirectly answers my question I guess, you can find me in the Medi-lab if you need me”
Luna gets up from her chair, kisses John on his forehead, then smiles at him and makes her way out of their bedroom walking away with John’s orange juice.
Later, all the crew are quietly sitting at their consoles on the flight deck except for John.
Flight deck doors swish open and John walks onto the flight deck, he looks around at the crew, everyone gives John a half smile, JOHN: “Sorry I’m late, I had to run some scenarios on the computers first”
PORTER: “What sort of scenarios?”
JOHN: “Oh, just stuff like engine implosions, ruptured hull, computer systems shutdowns, that sort of stuff”
TOMBS: “And what was the outcome John?”
JOHN: “We all die”
GHOST: “Lets get on with it”
John sits next to Luna at the secondary flight control console, LUNA: “Is there any navigation or flight control guidance, cos I don’t see any”
John leans over slightly and swipes and touches his console and brings up a navigation star and planet holographic screen for all the crew to see, JOHN: “Vey is taking control”
Luna looks surprised,
LUNA: “John?”
JOHN: “Voodoos navigation computers are close to the same as Alices, but they run at a much faster speed”
John taps away at his console. A floor panel slides open, and a seat elevates with a flight and navigation control system. Veyah materializes as a hologram and walks over to the new seat and console and sits down.
She looks around at the crew and smiles. Ioa materializes and stands behind Veyah.
IOA: “You never know, I may learn something”
Veyah turns her head to look at Ioa. Veyah grins, VEYAH: “Ioa, ID Veyah”
IOA: “Veyah, ID crew, hollow-graphic AI officer star ship Alice, secure access all systems”
Veyah accesses her console and takes control of Alice. From beneath the flight deck many floors below in the star ships belly the sounds and rumbles of immensely powerful generators starting up from cold are herd.
Alices engines start-up, high pitched whistling from the ships transformers fade as the storage capacitors charge up to capacity.
Standing on her landing legs the interstellar star-ships rectangular underside gravity emitters glow an eerily blue colour and throb slowly illuminating the sandy rocky planet’s surface, as the planets sun dips down below the horizon and stars start to appear in the cloudless sky.
Veyah expertly controls the helm. Alice lifts off and floats just a few meters from the ground, the star ships landing legs elevate themselves into Alices belly, exterior doors clunk closed as the legs get stowed away.
The star ship gently elevates to a few hundred meters above the planet’s surface.
Alice then leans over a few degrees while slowly rotating. She then slowly moves and steadily and accelerates climbing into space to position the two Gyres ready for the gravity implosion, and readily for the enormous jump across the interstellar void of space to traverse the huge journey to the Andromeda galaxy.
DIZZY: “Ioa. Allow unlock console for primary backup systems”.
IOA: “Identity, Elizabeth, crew, android, officer star ship Alice, secure access allowed to primary backup systems”
PORTER: “Ioa. Allow unlock console for secondary systems”.
IOA: “Identity, Porter, crew, android, officer star ship Alice, secure access allowed to secondary systems”
John and Luna confirm their ID’s with Ioa and activate the override consoles necessary for the hyper jump.
Ghost and Tombs confirm their ID’s with Ioa and activate the ships defensive systems,
The crew all activate their over shoulder seat belt mechanisms. Each crew members seat has a pair of arms that extend out and over each left and right shoulder that offers a seat belt to the crew member to attach to a waist belt that has automatically been extended around them.
As each seatbelt is put on it is automatically tensioned and secured with a magnetic clunk from the floor. Each flight seat is put into ejection mode and a warning on an overhead console at each crew station flashes in red
“WARNING SEAT EVAC ARMED” Ioa appears as a small holographic person standing at each crew members console.
IOA: “Flight deck seat one is now engaged to eject in an emergency evacuation situation, flight deck seat three is… flight deck seat four and six and three are now engaged to eject in an emergency evacuation situation”
LUNA: “Not sure I want to be ejected into space during this hyper jump and have a sparsely laid line of my atoms spread out between here and Andromeda”
John looks around at Luna and just raises his eyebrows and falsely grins at her,
VEYAH: “One point nine million kilometres away from the planet, dropping gyre one”
A hatch at the side of Alices hull opens and a half meter metallic looking canister shaped like a doughnut gets ejected out. It starts to spin over and over rapidly like a spinning top.
JOHN: “Ghost”
GHOST: “John?”
JOHN: “Drop some tracking satellites along the way so we can do some long-distance surveillance, I don’t want any surprises”
A hatch on the other side of Alices hull opens and six tracking satellite’s get ejected out. Each of the six satellites powers up and zooms off in different directions and parks themselves in space.
A dim orange beacon flashes atop each of the one meter tall can shaped satellites as their solar panels unfold.
VEYAH: “Navigating to position two”
Alice accelerates to light speed (L1) for a few seconds and then comes to a dead stop,
VEYAH: At the second gyre drop off position. Two point five three seven million miles, dropping off gyre two. Aligning it with the Andromeda galaxy. Now on our way to the starting point”.
Veyah makes some navigational changes and Alice zooms off again a few million mile to her starting point in the cold void of space.
JOHN: “Gyres are in position, Ghost?”
GHOST: “Nothing on long range scanners”
JOHN: “Forward and rear projections on. So, let’s go to andromeda.
Veyah?”
Forward and rear exterior holographic views of space are projected inside the fight deck.
VEYAH: “Turning safety protocols off on both gyres, gyres now live.
Detonate, gyres will implode in 3 seconds. Gyres counting down, engaging engines, Alice now at L-1”.
DIZZY: “How long will it take to get to Andromeda”
LUNA: ” Thirty-eight seconds in compressed and displaced time”
DIZZY: “That would be really 38 years squashed into 38 seconds in our time fabric”
LUNA: “In realallity, yes”
The star ship moves quicky towards the gyres. The gyres implode in space and Alice enters the lensing effect.
TOMBS: “Fuck. John! We got company on long range. It’s coming in real fast! About twelve seconds, no eight! Bringing cannons online”
JOHN: “TOMBS, NO!. The cannons will disrupt the lens”.
An Endellion scout ship enters the lens and slows down not too far from Alice.
PORTER: “What is it doing?”
GHOST: “The lensing effect has compressed space all around us, it looks like it has slowed down, but it hasn’t, the Endellion ship is still doing L three point four. I think they were trying to ram us”.
DIZZY: “Scanning the ship. Their engines are overloading, their reactor has gone critical”.
JOHN: “I think it’s deliberate, they couldn’t get close enough to ram us, so they’re going to self-destruct, and destroy the lens instead with us in it.
A suicide mission”
The Endellion scout ship seems to explode slowly, VEYAH: “The lens is distorting, the explosion is causing Alice to accelerate, I’m unable to slow down or stay on course”
Alice rumbles and shakes badly, small explosions are herd, fire and smoke start to fill the flight deck, electrical buzzing and sparks come from the consoles. John madly scans and taps away at his console.
JOHN: “The engine core is collapsing, abandoned ship, DIZZY!
emergency TMG from here to Voodoo’s bridge, all evacuate to the Voodoo. Veyah, command override, John Hero, I, S, Alice, Alpha, seven, beta, nine, do an emergency computer systems data transfer dump to Voodoo’s memory core, all crew and droids relocate to Voodoo immediately”.
The TMG doorway appears on the flight deck of Alice, though the TMG
doorway the interior of the Voodoo can be seen. All the crew except John, Veyah and Ioa rush though the doorway onto the Voodoo.
JOHN: “Veyah, Turn the Bow wave generators on in the VooDoo.
LUNA: “Ioa, are the droids on the Voodoo yet?”
IOA “I have overridden their charging cycles. They are all out of their charging stations and aboard the ship now”.
John gets up and makes his way to the TMG doorway, he stops and looks around the flight deck. Veyah and Ioa smile at John and vanish. Alice seems to be breaking apart.
A bulkhead wall explosion sends the flight deck into darkness before John can go through the TMG, suddenly Alice’s engines explode and Alice tears apart, then the star ships power plant goes hypernova.