Chapter 9
Loxy touched something on the window. Yes, it’s probably not called a window and it’s probably made up something weird like transparent aluminum, but, to me, it was a window and the material it was comprised of was imbedded with electronics which offered a touch screen interface. A dropdown menu arrived and Loxy chose something, and the magnetosphere, the aura of the planet, became visible. With motions of her hand she shrunk the image of the planet, making it seem as if we were maybe 80,000 kilometers out. I became aware that there were ships descending upon the South Pole.
“They’re using the magnetosphere like a space elevator?” I asked.
“That’s a good analogy, yes,” Loxy said. “But it’s more than that, John.”
Using the interface she revealed that the world was hollow. She literally split the world into half and showed the interior in all its complexity. The planet was spherical, with a crust that was maybe 5 to ten kilometers thick, riding on a layer of mantel, but then, that’s where it got weird. Descending through the planet, past the mantel, it became crust again. The outer side of the planet’s surface was inhabitable, but was so was the inside! And whether it was tech or some other vital force yet to be discovered in science, the center of gravity lay deep in the mantel, so that whether you were on the outer surface or the inner surface, you would be perfectly grounded. And whether you were on the outer surface or the inner surface, if you looked up, you would see the sun, or the equivalent of a sun. There an object center of the Earth, comprised mostly of iron, and per the informational overlays, it spun opposite of the planet’s spin, and it was the source of inner light and the source of the magnetosphere. It was the heart of the planet. There were islands floating between the inner surface of the planet and between the inner sun. The inner sun shone with brilliance and maintained a golden spectrum, but it definitely wasn’t a star even though they referred to it as an inner star. The floating island cast shadows, giving the approximation of night to the inner surface.
“Above as below,” Tesla said, coming up behind us.
I became aware that my ‘invisible counselors’ were assembled. We were all assembled together for the first time. They were near, looking at the same planet I was. They recognized its beauty and mystery, and though they were appreciative of this, they were also somehow accustomed, as if they had seen this a million times before, where I was still trying to put this into a context that made sense. This knowledge set went against the grain of everything I had been taught. I could touch it, mentally, and allow it, but I was having trouble putting into a context that was all inclusive, as opposed to compartmentalizing it. Jules Verne clearly had a vision of an inner world, but one might reasonably conclude that was a metaphor. Of course, when reading literature, I don’t know of any writer that purposely sits down and says, oh, this is a metaphor and people will be discussing it for years to come. No. They just write a story and then the literature experts get it and deconstruct it and they say, “Oh, you’re very clever, did you mean to…” “No! I just wrote a story. But thank you so much.”
“May I sit?” Jung asked.
“Of course,” I said, motioning for everyone to sit. I remained standing.
Oh, you should know, they were all in Uniform, except Isis. She wasn’t even human. She was present in the form of a cat. A regular sized black cat, with a nice looking collar that sometimes glowed, especially if she said more than one word. She was on the conference table, but as we took our seats, she went to the far side of the table and began licking a paw. Yeah, you may be thinking the Disney film “The Cat from Outer Space,” but I am thinking more along the lines of the character Isis from the original series of Star Trek, who accompanied her time traveling companion, Gary Seven. Yes, there was a ‘Seven’ before there was a ‘Seven of Nine.’
“Jung, are you the chief medical officer?” I asked.
“I am the chief psychiatrist, not the head of medical,” Jung said. “I think that’s House.” He looked around but House wasn’t present. I hope that wasn’t something I was going to have to address.
“Yeah, that’s kind of why I called this meeting. He doesn’t want to be here,” I said.
“What, he’s afraid of being type casted in a medical role?” Loxy asked.
“Actually,” I said.
“He’s brilliant, a perfect choice for medical,” Jung said. Apparently Jung had access to everyone’s profiles, either through the collective unconscious, or he had been doing his homework. Could my own tuplas be conspiring to keep me in fantasy? “Though he has been known to have episodic episodes of depression…”
“Okay, so that opens up another caveat,” I said, wondering what thought I had been tracking, but going with the tangent provided. If it was important, I would track it again later. “Should he be here if he doesn’t want to and he is suffering from depression?”
“Everyone has episodes of depression,” Jung said. “And I dare say, that’s why he’s here. He can protest being here all he wants, but the truth of the matter is, he couldn’t be here unless part of him needed him to be here.”
It occurred to me everyone here would have an explanation for their presence in this world. Some of them might even overlap with my explanation.
“So, you’re saying, subconsciously he volunteered, but he required the plot contrivance of being drafted in order to have sufficient cognitive dissonance to explore other facets of his psyche?” I asked.
“That’s quite well put,” Jung agreed.
I almost asked out loud, ‘is everyone I am working with flawed?’ Isis seemed to be responding to the unvoiced question by looking at me. Do cats smile? What is that face? I think I heard purring. “But, this still feels problematic to me. Why would Star Fleet draft him, in any context? For that matter, who in their right mind would make me a Star Fleet Captain?”
“We’re not officially Star Fleet,” Uhura said.
This announcement didn’t really surprise me, but it did seem to surprise my supporting staff.
“Go on,” I said.
“Star Fleet is a government sponsored agency, comprised of a conglomerate of space fairing species that originated in a very specific age and context of humanity” Uhura said. “Technically any ship could fall under the umbrella of Star Fleet, and we could be required to respond to Star Fleet should they call us, however, as I would trying to communicate to you earlier, we are a commercial enterprise sponsored by the John Meredith Lucas foundation.”
“George Lucas is responsible for this?” Loxy asked.
“Not that Lucas,” Isis said. Her voice was first in our hearts then in our heads. It was an interesting sensation that gave us all pause. “John Meredyth Lucas is the son of the screen writer Bess Meredyth and writer, director, and Canadian actor Wilfred van Norman Lucas. JML wrote four episode of TOS, directed one, but, more importantly for this context, took over productions for TOS during season two, of which episode 2 “the Gamesters of Triskelion,’ by Margaret Armen, was approved and allowed to air on January 5th, 1968. Your mother was watching this the day before you were born, Captain.”
We were quiet. “You’re telling me, this is a corporate venture?”
“This ship exists because there was a collaboration of Brains dead set on making it happen,” Uhura said. “We, all of us here, and on the ship, participated in the collaboration of this reality. It is a consensus reality. Whether you tap in through the collective unconscious or through song, sentimentality, science, or spirituality, it exists because we have called it into being.”
“But corporate?” Tesla asked. Clearly, he shared the same bad taste for the word corporate that I do. Actually, his reaction may have been stronger than mine, and he had fair reason to distrust that brand name.
Isis responded: “Contrary to the anti-cultural rhetoric of your time, corporations play a vital role of the international psyche, for better or worse, and though there are legitimate gripes about the way corporations operate, the products they offer, their effects on the physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual environments are necessary. The compensation may not be equitably distributed within its present structure, and the distribution of goods may not be reasonably priced for the level of automation, but corporations are entities in their own right, and it is not an accident that they were given legal status as persons. No grouping of individuals can come together without creating a super-entity. It is not an accident that ships are referred to as she. It, too, will have distinct personality, even if it is always sublime, it will be influenced by the crew and her guests. The addition or loss of one person can have an extreme effect on the internal dynamics, as well as the spirit of the ship.”
“So, we’re corporate employees?” Tesla asked.
“Yes, and shareholders,” Isis said.
“That so didn’t work out for me in the past,” Tesla said.
“Nor me,” Sacagawea said. “I mean, I got honorable mentions, and risked my life for important papers when the raft over turned, and believe it or not, I talked several tribes out of killing the white men outright, but you don’t read about that, do you?”
“I would really like to speak to the brain child behind all of this,” I said.
And the world changed. Instantly. I should have known better to say something like that, considering the context that Isis had just provided. I should have seen it coming. I was not transported in the normal Star Trek transporter sort of way, as it was more instantaneous, and more disorientating, but it explained how Loxy and I had traveled from Earth to the JML Enterprise while it was in orbit around another planet in another system, presumably in the same galaxy, but all bets were off on that score. I found myself standing before a console, and enclosed in a transparent bubble on that console were three disembodied brains. They quivered with an inner life.
“You wanted to speak to us?” one of them asked. Only through watching and paying attention did I learn to match the voice with the brain. All three were illuminated from an underlying light. One was red, the next was green, and the third was violet. The red was male.
“Unhappy?” the green ask, a female voice.
“No,” said the violet, a male, child’s voice. “He simply seeks understanding.”
“Oh my god,” I said. I remember these guys!
“Blasphemy?” red asked?
“Amazement!” green said.
“Epiphany,” violet said.
“This is going to be a complicated conversation, isn’t it?” I asked.
“All bets are off,” red said.
“Sorry,” green said.
“Predictable,” violet said.
“This is all a game to you? You’re bringing my crew together to wager on our success?” I asked.
“We require consensus,” they said in unison. Their table lit up and a hologram appeared above the table. The hologram resembled Princess Leah: she spoke for the brain: “You are the hope of worlds.”
I crossed my arms. This is not a comedy. I was seriously perturbed by my situation and how real this seemed, and yet, there are these things that keep happening that fuck with my brain and my expectations of how things should be. That in itself was a good indication of the reality function, but I protesting internally. Resisting. I really wanted to be serious and understand what was happening, but confronted with Leah and another mental and emotional track, I was feeling overhwelmed. So, I went with humor: “I am so glad you didn’t say the only hope,” I said.
“That would be wrong. Hope lies in every heart, every person. No one person should be the only hope. That said, you’re the only you, and this configuration of heart and mind, and the joining hearts and minds, will never be the same again,” Leah said.
“Am I really here?” I asked.
“Yes,” Leah said. But even the brains could be heard echoing ‘yes.’ And it was definitely an echo, going ‘papa brain, mama brain, baby brain,’ as if the super-conscious had come to an answer before the individual brains. Leah wasn’t just a projection; she was a psychic manifestation of the brains in unison, and so this holographic, sublime entity had an answer before the brains did. Technically, it wasn’t psychic, as the brains were connected together via tech, but since I didn’t think the brains would know Leah, being a different universe and all, my explanation required me participating with the three through the collective unconscious. Clearly, Jung had influenced my brain enough not to question some things too long. There could have been an even easier explanation, like, maybe the Brains had access to all human knowledge. Or, even simpler, I was dreaming and everything I know was equally knowable.
“Where is here?” I asked
“This is Crossover One, the closest star system to the Milky Way bridging the gap between our galaxy of origin and the Earth Cluster,” Leah said, illustrating with holographic displays between us. “We are off the ecliptic of the Milky Way galaxy by twenty degrees, fifty thousand light years from the nearest star still considered part of that galaxy.”
“You’re telling me, you transported me all the way from Earth, thirty thousand light years from galactic center,” I said doing some very rough math. The galaxy is roughly hundred thousand light-years side to side, assuming earth was in the arm closest to Crossover One, at minimum I had been transported 80,000 light years instantaneously.
Leah didn’t wait for me to finish my math. “We transported you through space and through time. We are presently in a time before the Earth. Additionally, technically, you are not who you think you are. You are a transporter clone. We copied you, as opposed to removing you outright from the timeline. Your original body remains on the planet, and will continue through its world line with minimal disturbance. Due to the harmonics of soul and entanglement of matter, we cannot fully eliminate your connections with yourself, and so, information will be transferred, both ways. There are a myriad of ways of interpreting the dissonance of perspective. Some see it as dreaming. Some see it as remembering. Some ignored it while others embrace the multiplicity of it and all,” Leah said.
The Brains began predicting how I might view it. As they caulcuated and placed their bets, I suddenly realized there was a version of me that did draw Loxy into a hug, telling her it was okay, that I didn’t have any expectations of anything, and so now there were two parallel tracking words where I was at home living my life, and here… Living my life?! “World line,” I repeated, thinking about my other self, and how disappointed he must feel. Maybe he was indulging in the dream of me and my existence was due to that. He, I, we want magic. Oh, does that make Safe Haven just a different track? We want this. And here I am, I have it and I should be happy for myself, but I am also thinking of the other me.
“The definition of world line…”
“I know what it means,” I said, coming out of my trance. “But why a copy? I would have given anything just to get off Earth.”
“The original timeline for the earth is quarantined and protected. Your other life had not met its conclusion, yet,” Leah said. And that is how they know Leah. So much for my supernatural explanation. “All of Earth’s history is known. All sentient beings have been tagged in order to pull them when the criteria has been met. We have authorization to pull certain people at certain times in order to fulfill corporate obligations to the Cluster. You met the criteria. You were pulled. Additionally, the multiple personality sets you refer to as your indivisible counselors were separated in order to reduce your internal noise and increase coherence in the process. They were provided bodies consistent with their original design, allowing separate vehicles for their personality matrixes.”
“What are you saying?” I asked. “My friends are real?”
“You are not dreaming,” Leah said.
“And you’re telling me I am tagged?” I asked. Yeah, more important things to track and I am stuck on the tag part. How many people on earth believe they have been abducted by aliens and carry tracking devices? So, it’s not mass hysteria and societal paranoia?
“All sentient beings on Earth were tagged in order to pull them when criteria has been met,” Leah said. “We can track you anywhere within the Milky Way galaxy or within the Earth Cluster.”
“Okay, wait, wait, wait,” I said. I was tracking more information than I could process. My head was hurting and rubbing my eyes didn’t help. “You made a copy of me? You made bodies for my Tulpa and counselors. What is House? Is he a creation or a copy?”
“He was an employee of a JML subsidiary,” Leah said. “The subsidiary was liquidated, but it was necessary to honor his contract. Criteria was met, so he was pulled. From your perspective, he was merely an actor, however, from his perspective, he is the Doctor he believes he is, with all the appropriate knowledge base for him to fulfill his function. The personality set necessary to make him a viable member of the crew was made dominant.”
The brains were calculating odds, competing with each other in value distributions over a curve of multiple variables, including social, physical, and spiritual aspects. How could they make a copy of Hugh Laurie that was more House than Hugh, I wondered. I rememered the transporter accident had separated Kirk into his two primary aspect, the good and the bad, but could the brains tease out all the noise and separate out all of the individual aspects that comprise the human mind? There must be millions of people in my brain, copies of people I never even met in person, even people my brain created to fulfill inner functions, such as populating dreams, or allowing me to predict the behaviors of others. Were the brains that far ahead of us? I closed my eyes and sought out my Loxy Tulpa. I was certain she was still there.
“Loxy is still in my brain,” I said, though I was really questioning if that were true.
“It is called enmeshment. It is impossible to completely remove the personalities from your brain, as the more use they get, the more neural synapses there are that reflect signals of their mind,” Leah said. “She will continue to be a part of your inner makeup, as well as a part of the external world here. There will be emotional, mental, and spiritual entanglement.”
The brains began betting that physical entanglement has ensued and will continue to. They were also betting on degrees of entanglement and whether or not evidence of ESP between the John and Tupla avatars would be established. I sighed. Though a part of me desperately wanted to continue with this, another part was finding it just too complicated to track. Also, I was faced with the reality that this could be insanely dangerous and that people could die. My crew could die. I knew I wasn’t qualified for the job, and if it was just me on a ship by myself, I would be fine, but there were others, and House didn’t even want to be there.
“I don’t want a crew that doesn’t want to be on board,” I said. “This, whatever it is, has to be volunteer.”
“House will adjust. His world line of origin has not been affected,” Leah assured me. “We are still operating within the constraints of the Kirk-Star Fleet arrangement. Though some of the constituent parts may protest, or feel out of place, they were chosen for attributes that would increase the likelihood of accomplishing the mission objectives.”
“We are people, not parts,” I said.
“We do not see a distinction,” Leah said.
“Did you not learn anything from Kirk?” I asked.
“We are operating within the constraints of the arrangements,” Leah said. “The Earth’s world line has not been affected. Neither you nor House or anyone pulled to fulfill roles were harmed from the extraction process. You and the others still exercise free will. It increases our enjoyment of the game. House has been compensated for his part in this venture. We have spared no expense to ensure you have the tools and people necessary to complete your mission.”
“What is the mission?” I asked.
“We have multiple objectives,” Leah said.
“So I gather,” I said. “What is the primary mission?”
“To explore all the worlds of Crossover, and begin mapping out the worlds of the ‘Earth Cluster,” Leah said, offering additional holographic information, revealing a globular cluster of stars, perhaps fifty light-years further away from the Milky Way than Crossover One.
From my little knowledge of astronomy, this grouping of stars within the Earth Cluster all looked like yellow dwarf stars, the same type of star that our sun, Sol, is. And that made no sense to me. Closer scrutiny revealed several red dwarfs, which eased my inner protest, but the cluster itself still defied logic. It shouldn’t be here. The cluster itself was so new in origin, having been ‘pulled’ and ‘placed’ by beings more powerful than even the Brains, that the light from these stars had yet to become visible to the other stars within the cluster, much less to the Milky Way.
“This can’t be right,” I said.
“The Earth Cluster is not a natural formation,” Leah said. “Long Range scans have given us limited stellar information. We are not confident in are representation’s accuracy.”
The Brains began wagering on how many more stars there were than long range scans had yet revealed. The Long Range Image was live, and several new stars appeared, blinking on and persisting thereafter, revealing they weren’t glitches in the system.
“You’re saying this is an artificial arrangement of stars?” I asked. “How is that possible?”
“We have insufficient information to respond to that question. We are betting that the answers will be found in the Cluster itself,” Leah said for the Brains, shutting down the holographic display of stars.
“You’re sending us out into an artificially created grouping of stars for profit?” I asked. “What if the makers of that don’t want us there?”
One of the brains responded, that is the Earth’s sun, how could they not expect us to participate, but Leah over spoke it.
“We’re betting that should you encounter the creator that you will succeed in giving them our best regards, and that we come in peace,” Leah said.
“And if they’re not peaceful?” I asked.
“You are authorized to protect our assets,” Leah said. “This Conversation is no longer necessary. You will be given the tools and primary personnel necessary for you to accomplish your mission objectives,” Leah said, motioning to a door that had opened. “You may now leave, Captain.”
“You beamed me in, beam me back,” I said, perhaps a little more forceful than warranted, but I didn’t like the way the conversation was being brought to an end.
“Our transporter can retrieve you from anywhere in the Earth Cluster, but it cannot return you. Take the lift to the surface. From there you may take a shuttle, or have your ship use its transporters,” Leah said.
“So, you’re telling me you can’t put me back where you found me?” I asked. “I mean the ship is right there in orbit.”
“Putting you back is problematic,” Leah said.
“I predict 82 percent probability to hitting the target,” red said.
“I predict 93.5 percent probability of hitting the target,” violet said.
“You’re not doing heart math, I predict it’s more like fifty fifty,” green said.
“I want in on this,” Leah said. “Wager accepted. Good luck, Captain Harister.”
I opened my moth to protest, but was gone before the words hit my mouth.
There is a certain uneasiness of being transported instantaneously. I would say ‘instantaneously half way cross the galaxy,” but to be precise, I am not sure how far I transported that first time. Nor the second time, but clearly, this time round, I traveled further than the ship, as evidenced by the fact I hadn’t arrived on the ship. One moment I was facing the Brains and the next moment, I am standing up against glass wall looking out over a rocky, desolate world. My hands came up and tagged the wall as if preventing me from hitting it, but there was no momentum, I just reacted as if the wall had rushed in at me. I nearly threw up. I held the wall for a moment, trying to catch up to what was happening to me. I knew Loxy was in my brain and that she could bring me comfort, but I was unable to calm down enough to access her. Connecting with Tulpa was a talent and my skill level was still novice. I was coming to terms with the ‘randomness’ of the brain’s teleporter, and how close I had come to being dead. I was literally centimeters from being a part of the wall, or worse, on the outside of the wall, and I am fairly confident, had I arrived out there, that would not have been good. I imagine that this is exactly what Mars would like from inside a protective dome. Each section of the dome was a triangle, I saw that much, but I continued to stare out at an alien sun setting. I searched the landscape for anything identifiable.
I eventually looked up and turned following the height of the dome to the top. Behind me was a scattering of fruit bearing trees, shrubbery that was also fruit bearing, gardens of fruits and vegetables, and even flowers, but my eyes were on the stars. The Milky Way Galaxy was visible in its entirety and if I didn’t know it was the galaxy and comprised of 250,000 stars, or more, I would have just called it the great disk. Though it clearly is shaped in a way to suggest spinning, it looks static, except for some flashes of light that occasionally popped like lightening from the center, shooting up from galactic north and down from galactic south. It wasn’t a straight beam. At a certain point, the beam arced, as if it were following magnetic lines back to a galactic south pole. Could there actually be a galactic size toroid of electromagnetic energy, just the way the sun has, the way the earth has?
It occurred to me to use my communicator. It either didn’t get a signal or wasn’t working. I assumed it was working due to the beeps it made, and I wondered if the quick, three tones indicated no signal. It never occurred to me that the different tones might be code. I was perplexed. If Crossover One had received my signal to retrieve me all the way from earth, surely they could receive a signal from here. Unless, there was other monitoring tech on Earth that was not present here. Ghost satellites, like the Black Knight rumored to be in a strange orbit around the Earth and moon.
And then the sun was gone and the entire night sky filled in with stars and facing the sunset I saw what I presume was the earth cluster. I have no clue how many stars I was seeing and as I stared, more popped into existence. I expected the new ones to disappear, just unexplained bursts of light, but they held steady.
“A’llo,” I heard from behind me.
I turned to find a young lady standing behind me. If I were a betting man, I would say see was Polynesian mixed, approximately 20 years of age. She had long dark hair, parted right down the middle of her head. She wore a necklace of flowers. Her dress was simple, not like a traditional, native sewn piece, but like something out of Logan’s Run, primary color, almost see through. Her garment was yellow and she wore sandals. She was holding an apple, which I assume came from the tree behind her. All the trees were fruit bearing trees.
“I don’t remember ever seeing a holograph in the garden,” she said. “When did Mech put the projectors in?”
“I am not a hologram,” I said.
She laughed and tagged my chest playfully. Her amusement changed to amazement when she discovered for herself I was real. She dropped the fruit.
“You’re real,” she said.
“I think so,” I said.
“But this doesn’t make sense,” she said. “I was told I was first, and clearly you’re older than I.”
“How old are you?” I asked.
“What measurement do you want?” she asked.
“Excuse me?” I asked.
“Earth standard, I would be 19,” she said. “But by this planet’s cycles around the star, I would be about ten. And we mostly use Earth Standards, but we also use Mech time, which is a thing all in itself.”
“Mech?” I asked.
“How could you not know Mech?” she asked. “Mech, the intelligence that built the habitat, is still building, and will continue to build until this world is completely terraformed. Are you injured?”
“I am not injured,” I said. “I’m just not from around here.”
Again, her mouth dropped. “You’re a visitor?!” she rushed to the glass. “But where’s your ship? And how did you get inside the dome. There are no airlocks down here. And…” she stopped and searched my eyes. “We were told not to expect others. We were told that this world is ours, for better or worse, but that it was a promising world and that we would have to use it wisely, and share it with those yet to be born.”
“You said we,” I observed. “Who is we?”
“My sisters and I. I am the first. Mech raised us. That, and the holograms, and the Doctor. Oh! I should take you to see the Doctor!”
“Is the Doctor in charge?” I asked.
She laughed. “No one’s charge. Well, I suppose Mech is in charge of construction and habitat safety. Yeah, Mech is in charge, but we live here.”
“Do you have a name?” I asked.
“Oh! I have failed simple courtesy,” she said. “Please forgive me.”
“It’s okay. I failed, too. I didn’t lead with what’s your