Binary, page 25
“I’m sorry,” I said.
He looked at me as if laying eyes on me for the first time and motioned towards my dreaming extraterrestrial counterpart. “You’re like him.”
“Not exactly,” said Dr. Landry. “Her body still has its natural composition. One we could never duplicate with Bruce. We tried. She’s stronger, lighter, and more durable than he is.”
It was hard to believe. Even hearing it. Seeing it. Living it. Nothing did the reality justice.
“You didn’t build her?” asked Pope.
“No,” answered Dr. Landry, “but she helped develop the weapon in your hands.”
“Why would she help develop weapons that could hurt them?” asked Pope.
“Because not all world-hoppers are friendly,” answered Dr. Landry, “but from what Alexis has told us in the past, they were the first to visit here.”
“She also helped develop the technology before you now,” said Dr. Crane. “Everything in this room.”
Pope looked around. “How?”
“Before your arrival,” answered Dr. Crane.
“Don’t feel like the lone wolf,” I said, cutting Pope an apologetic face. “I’m finding it all pretty hard to grasp myself.”
“She’s been here working with you this whole time and you didn’t tell me?” asked Pope.
“They didn’t tell me either,” I said.
“That makes three of us,” said Father.
“We’re telling you now and we need your help.” She grabbed me and walked to Bruce’s side, motioning between us. “This is what Maria wanted to show the world, Desmond,” continued Dr. Crane. “To show you. To prove that there’s life and love out there beyond us.”
An explosion shook the compound and Pope’s com device buzzed a second of static.
“Sir,” a guard shouted over a barrage of gunfire, “there’s too many of—”
The transmission ended with a gunshot. The room grew silent.
“Talk to me,” said Pope.
Everyone waited, looking at each other, knowing the compound was being invaded and hoping the man on the other end of the com would respond.
Pope paused, looked at us for a moment, and grabbed his com again. “What’s the situation, over?”
The guard never responded. A few moments later, faint gunshots became part of our own backdrop, growing louder by the minute. Pope stepped to Dr. Landry.
“Show me,” he said. “Prove she was right. Tell me she didn’t die unjust.”
Dr. Landry worked the electronics securing Bruce for a moment, and his eyes opened. I gasped as emotions hit me. Our souls were bound. He lived within me, and I within him. There were no words for the sensation beyond ecstasy.
“Alexis,” said Bruce. “You’re here.”
“I came for you,” I said.
“We’re both supposed to be here,” said Bruce, “together. It took time for me to integrate. Can you feel me?”
“I can,” I answered. “Like you wouldn’t believe.”
“It’s what I’ve always felt, Alexis,” said Bruce. “The Plakink is fully integrated.”
Father watched on as gunshots escalated in the backdrop.
“Plakink?” asked Dr. Landry.
“What you call the Heart Device,” answered Bruce. “It’s what Alexis wanted to call it with your phonetics. They contain us.”
Another explosion rocked us, sending equipment to the floor and shifting a few workstations. Dr. Landry took a spill, but he was not hurt. Father helped him up.
“They said you have my memories?” I asked.
“Yes,” answered Bruce. “Do you want them back now?”
“I do,” I answered.
“In a few minutes,” said Bruce.
“Get him up,” said Pope. “We need to move.”
“He can’t move yet.” Dr. Crane turned to me. “The technology within him isn’t as radical as what’s within Alexis. It’s not even in the same discussion. He has a boot up time, like a computer. It’s unequivocally advanced for us. Complicated. But it takes a bit.”
“How long?” asked Pope.
“About seven minutes,” she answered.
The others in the room were growing anxious with firearms singing louder. Pope powered up the two-way intercom system. I could hear whispers. Someone was screaming for backup, others to attack. We listened for a moment.
Strategic commands were being shouted by groups of men, both claiming the side of justice. Those invading the compound wanted Bruce to reverse engineer him for weaponisation geared towards military application. The doctors were trying to protect Bruce from the very people funding them that wished to exploit.
“We need to get to the ship.” Dr. Crane made her way to the back of the lab. “Grab Bruce.”
Dr. Landry moved some equipment out of the way near the back of the lab, running his fingers down the seam of the wall near its corner. Dr. Crane matched his movements in the opposite corner of the wall. Its edges lit up when they reached the bottom.
Pope moved to lift Bruce from his chair with one hand while clutching his broken wrist to his side but could not hoist him. He strained, grunted, and hurt himself before giving up.
Pope leaned Bruce’s shoulders back into the chair. “I can’t. How much does he—”
“Six-hundred sixty-three pounds,” said Dr. Landry.
“Alexis...” Dr. Crane motioned to Bruce.
“Me?” I asked.
“Hurry,” she urged.
I moved to Bruce with unsure steps. I knew I could lift him, but it was going to be odd doing it—663lbs odd. I cradled his wrist in my hand. Our eyes locked. He needed me, and I was glad to be there for him.
A gunshot hit a wall somewhere near the entryway. My head whipped. Others ducked.
“We have to move,” said Pope.
I pulled Bruce up to my shoulders—reverse of the day we fled the dangers of a troubled neighborhood. He felt light, like a kitten would have felt to me a month earlier.
“Let’s go,” said Dr. Crane.
She and Dr. Landry stood and moved to the center of the wall, each placing the palms of their hands against it until the surrounding area lit up. The wall dissolved into nothing right in front of our eyes.
We moved through the opened wall as the soldiers attempted to breach the lab. Beyond it waited our only chance of survival.
Chapter 35
Connecting
I PASSED THROUGH the wall behind the others with Bruce on my shoulders. It reformed behind us as a mammoth hanger came to life. Lights powered up with robotics and systematic workstations as we entered, and an eighteen-wheeler sized ship came into view.
Dr. Crane smiled. “You think you can fly this thing?”
Father stared at me, curiously awaiting my answer.
“I don’t know.” I rested Bruce against a nearby wall. “I don’t think so.”
Father walked with me as I approached the ship. It was sleek, yet not. Aggressive, yet nonthreatening: the front of the ship came to a fine point only to expand outward like the head of a hammerhead shark, behind that... it was shaped like a marquise diamond, and the tail end had two large round discs, one behind the other floating in midair a few feet behind it.
The rings went against known aerodynamics, but they were not the strangest thing about it. That title went to its color, or lack thereof. It had a black body, but it was not the color black. It was a black body as referred to in physics... and, as far as I knew, it was the first of its existence. To put it in layman’s terms—black body is an idealization in physics picturing a body that absorbs 100% of all incoming electromagnetic radiation happening on it regardless of its frequency or angle. Though the second law of thermodynamics states that a body always tries to stay in thermal equilibrium, the ship’s surface was actually doing it. To remain in thermal stability, it emitted radiation at the same percentage it was absorbing it while distributing electromagnetic currents of as many frequencies as needed. That was, and is, the only way to create a true absence of light.
We could hardly see it. Only its silhouette gave it away. Visual, it was a black hole silhouetted in the shape of a vessel.
“This is beyond belief,” said Father. “I’m not even sure what I’m looking at yet.”
Doctors Crane and Landry took to working rapidly at independent stations in the hanger as I approached the ship. The vessel’s understructure was familiar and alien to me at the same time. I could not fathom flying it. I had regained memories of what I used to refer to as my body and how to use it, but the ship did not come back to me when they inserted the star-shaped disc.
“You two might want to step back a bit,” said Dr. Crane.
We stopped looking at the ship and turned to find doctors Crane and Landry waiting for us to move, but they went back to work as soon as we stepped away from the vessel, activating something before turning back to face us. A momentary hum filled the room, then it was gone. Brackets holding the vessel came to life but did not release their clutch on it.
Something caught my attention from the corner of my eye. It was Bruce. He was righting himself from the floor. Pope watched him cautiously. Though he believed his late wife was correct, he was not sure. The man needed proof.
Pope knew we were from places beyond reach. He did not, however, have any personal reasons to imagine us anything more than highly advanced artificial intelligence systems from unknown origins. At least that was my perspective on how he viewed Bruce over the month before.
I was in the opposite boat. It was disorientating to think I had anything mechanical inside me at all. Part of me still felt more human than Bruce, though I believed we were equals at the core of our existence.
I gazed at the ship for a moment.
“Alexis?” asked Father.
“Just thinking,” I said.
“About?” he asked.
“I was wondering why I don’t remember how this ship works,” I answered.
“They said your memories were with Bruce,” he informed. “Perhaps he has—”
Someone grabbed my arm. I jumped. Bruce was standing there with a wildness in his eyes. It was scary in ways I did not understand. It was not fear. I had never experienced it before, but I knew he would not harm me.
Bruce raised his shirt and grabbed at the patch of his skin where the Heart Device had been implanted, pulling apart a scar with stitches still holding tight. It tore. His face contorted with pain.
“What’s he doing?” Father eased me back. “What are you doing?”
“You can’t remove the Heart Device,” said Dr. Landry.
Bruce continued pulling apart his skin. “I’m not.”
Pope grabbed a small, reflective looking firearm with lots of sharp edges from a cabinet with his good hand in caution.
“This skin is not quite right,” said Bruce. “It is blocking us from linking.”
He bled very little compared to what I would have, or Father for that matter. It was more a secretion of organic liquids than anything, but the globby texture was disgusting.
The Heart Device within him, the Plakink, came into full view with all its little lights and currents shining beneath artificial blood as pieces of makeshift flesh broke free from each other, dripping organic fluid to the floor. Dr. Landry stepped in with some gauze to wipe it dry and repeated until it was clean.
The Heart Device lit up, and the hanger filled with Bruce’s memories. I looked around. We all did. It was unbelievable. An all-enveloping 3D journey from impossible roots came to the fore.
“Where are the projectors,” asked Father.
Dr. Landry smiled. “There are none.”
The images eventually encased us, filling the area at every cranny and transforming the metallic biosphere around us.
“Alexis, put your hands on my shoulders,” said Bruce.
I looked to Doctors Landry and Crane for reassurance. They nodded, and I turned my attention to Father. He paused before speaking.
“Yes, Alexis,” said Father. “Yes.”
I looked Pope’s way long enough to find him no longer a threat. There was hope in his eyes. An authentic crack in his icy armor emerged as he gazed upon Bruce’s memories.
I raised my hands towards Bruce’s shoulders. A mirroring projection of myself was in the room with us as our current actions played out in real time. There was only us, the ship, and robotic workstations to give it away as illusory. His active thoughts fully outweighed memories as my hands found their final resting place on his shoulders and we came to find ourselves... standing next to our ourselves.
“This will hurt,” said Bruce. “Are you ready?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m rea—”
A metallic tube shot from the Heart Device in his chest and plunged itself into mine. He was right. It hurt. A lot. I screamed out for a lengthy duration as Father rushed in, only to be halted by Dr. Landry. It was like when they inserted the star-shaped disc into the receiver in my forearm, but its pain and intensity was a thousand times greater... and it reached every nerve in my body from head to toe before it faded.
I waited for something to happen. Anything. My eyes went back and forth between Bruce’s.
Pope was staring at us, awaiting the final verdict to prove his late wife right. Father was worried something horrible was going to happen to me. It fascinated doctors Landry and Crane.
“Are you okay?” asked Bruce.
I looked curiously at the tube pushed into me. “Yeah.”
“I’m going to link us now,” sad Bruce, “to connect permanently. As we once were.”
Bruce closed his eyes. The tube between us lit up and my mouth opened. Love poured between in.
“Can you feel me?” asked Bruce. “Can you feel us?”
I cried, nodded, and said yes, but I cried more than anything. I did not know love could have such authority. It physically warmed my body and heart while sending tingling sensations to the surface of my skin.
“I’m going to surrender our shared memories back to you,” said Bruce.
“Please,” I said.
Bruce closed his eyes again. It was beautiful. I fell head-to-head into him for a hug 60 years overdue. Tears streamed my face, flooding lips with salty sensations while the images filling the hanger revealed every memory I was getting back.
A swarm of past lives danced around us. Every reminiscence depicting us on a new planet with completely different exoskeletons to match the world’s inhabitants. Each new ecosphere formed a dissimilar manifestation in a different society in diverse civilizations. Flora around us changed drastically from planet to planet. Some were of preindustrial societies. Others were advanced beyond even the world Bruce and I were from. Hundreds of them. Thousands of them.
They filled the hanger in its entirety with alien fields varying from mundane to vastly exotic plant life, civilizations ranging from stone age to TYPE I and TYPE V on the Kardashev scale, along with wildlife of once unimaginable possibilities. It created an ever-changing visual.
We walked worlds, embraced, and cuddled under twin sunsets in some, while fighting to survive against hostile planetary environments and uprisings in others. But we were always together, always in love.
The others watched, walking through the hangar in awe. I had visually transported them to other worlds during our conveyance of memories and the images were not transparent anymore. It could not have looked any further real if they had been there. Father tried to pluck an odd-looking fruit with a Balbis, or “H” shape, but the world around him shifted before his hand reached it.
Pope dropped to his knees with welting eyes. Others in the room watched on as if they were catching their first glimpse of humanities’ heaven. An awe-strikingly powerful journey unfolded.
Memories flooded faster by the second as my system adapted to their absorption. They changed from one to the next with ever-increasing rapidity until they became nothing more than flashes of worlds left behind—tens of thousands of them. I had loved Bruce for longer than mankind had kept track of time. Epochs of amore.
The link broke, and the tube retracted from my body, allowing Bruce to close himself back up for Dr. Landry to work. So many forgotten memories were reborn.
Our eyes locked and the connection between us was stronger than ever. My eyes continued to water.
“Bruce?” I asked.
“Yes?” he asked in return.
“When we were hiding in that utility closet,” I asked, “what did you say to me before I fell asleep?”
“I said...” He smiled. “I remember you, Alexis. You are mine. I am yours.”
“I love you, Bruce,” I said. “For as long as time exists, I’ll always love you.”
“And I you.” He embraced me.
His head pushed into mine and we held each other. Getting back my memories told me why I had always slept so much. Bruce and I spent a millennium world-hopping to experience life, love, and struggle on other planets with new cultures and civilizations. Our souls were so old and shared so much one could no longer survive without the other. The greater the distance between us, the closer to death we were. I was weak without him.
Pope rose from his knees but stumbled back down when another explosion rocked the building. He picked himself up.
“She was right,” said Pope. “She was always right.”
Father had watery eyes as I approached.
“Do you still love me?” I asked. “Are you frightened?”
“It was stunning, Alexis,” answered Father. “And more than ever. I’ve never seen you so beautiful.”
Dr. Crane approached Pope. “Will you help us?”
Pope looked at me for a moment, then to Father, pausing. Perhaps he was reflecting on his late wife upon realizing what she sacrificed her life for and the fact she was right about Bruce.
“You’ve got my word on that,” answered Pope.
I believed him. Everybody did. Pope was not a man to play with words.
“Good,” said Dr. Crane, “because we’re going to have to go back into the lab to free the ship. The overheads require the ship’s locking brackets to be released before we can unlock them. And that can only be done from within the laboratory. There’s no other way.”
