God's Junk Drawer, page 42
“But it’s random as far as you’d normally put the words together,” Josh explained. “It doesn’t have, y’know, grammar or emphasis or sentence structure or any of those sort of things.”
“Okay.”
Parker gestured at Olivia. “So how did she answer you before?”
Josh smiled. “Because I asked her a question that needed less words to answer.”
Parker’s brows went up. Sam’s jaw went down. Olivia looked relieved. Even Noah looked impressed. And Monique beamed at Josh in a way that made his whole chest feel light and swirly and he had to stay focused here.
“It took some trial and error, but we figured out that if she gets a question she can give a one-word answer to, her brain will dump out six words that are all close to the word she wants. It’s still trying to do the six-word backward-alphabetical thing, but this gives her a bit of a workaround.”
Now Sam looked doubtful. “But I just asked her how she felt. That’s a one-word answer and it was random words again.”
“Ahhh, that’s the catch.” Josh looked at Olivia. Gave her a reassuring nod. “You know how someone can ask you what seems like a simple question but it’s really not?”
They all nodded.
“That’s what happened. You can ask a simple question, but if she has more to say on it or thinks it’s not that simple, her brain does this. I’ve been talking to her all day. Monique’s spoken with her, too.”
“I have,” agreed the doctor.
Noah looked past him, focused on Olivia. She stared back at him. “Do you understand what he’s been saying?”
“Veracious truth positive faultless correct accurate.” Her smile was a little crooked, but unmistakable.
“Do you think you could . . .” Noah stopped. Reconsidered. “Are you able to answer questions if we can word them correctly?”
Her head swayed side to side. “Yes positive faultless correct confirmed absolutely.”
“It’s a lot of the same words,” Sam said.
Parker leaned forward. “There’s only so many different ways to say yes.”
Noah glanced at them. “Could Olivia speak any other languages?”
“Wrong no negative invalid incorrect false.”
Monique laughed. “And there is your answer.”
Parker raised a finger, got Olivia’s attention. “Do you remember what happened to you? To you and . . . Logan?”
Olivia sighed. Bobbed her head up and down. “Unconsciousness self resulting overload monument cerebrum.”
“Okay, this might be difficult.”
“It takes a couple of tries,” Josh explained. “Everyone just needs to be patient.”
Noah looked at Josh. “Did she tell you anything? You said you were talking for a few hours.”
“Yeah, but a lot of it was word salad while she got used to talking again. Once we hit solid yes and no answers, I figured you’d all want to know.”
Sam tapped his fingers. Looked over at Josh. “Olivia . . . did anyone tell you about the obelisk?”
“Wrong negative mistaken incorrect false erroneous.”
Noah glanced at him. “Why’d you ask that?”
“Just . . . she said ‘monument’ when Parker asked about what happened. Which I’m pretty sure is supposed to be the obelisk.”
“Yep, probably.”
Sam’s fingertips bounced off each other. “I just—it seems odd that she knows that.”
“Why?”
“I don’t think we mentioned it yesterday. You just said there was an accident. Why doesn’t she think she fell down a hole or got hit by a rock or something?”
“Self plunge one negative descent aperture.”
“The obelisk was the last thing she saw,” Josh pointed out. “Is it that weird she’d think it had something to do with it.”
Sam stopped tapping his fingers. “Okay, odd idea. I’m—what if we’re looking at this totally wrong? Backward, even?”
Olivia looked up at him. So did Parker. “How so?”
“Well, we keep looking at this in terms of what the obelisk did to her, but do we have any idea what the obelisks actually are?”
Now they all looked at Noah. He shrugged. “We always assumed they were random artifacts from the future that ended up here.”
Josh felt his brow scrunch up. “Why the future?”
“Force fields. Lightning blasts. Plastic. They’re not from the past.”
“They’re plastic?”
“One of them is,” said Sam. “Or maybe high-end resin.”
“The resin obelisk is now in the region of the valley considered as Klaa territory.”
Noah looked at the android. “Now meaning they’ve claimed that territory or has the obelisk shifted as the valley’s expanded?”
“I believe both of these are correct, Noah.”
“If they’re random artifacts,” asked Parker, “why do they all look the same? They’re identical, just made from different materials, right?”
Josh shrugged. “I mean, soda cans all pretty much look the same. So do wine bottles. Maybe they’re a future art exhibit or something.”
Sam raised an eyebrow. “An art exhibit booby-trapped to electrocute people?”
“I mean, only one of them. And there’s some weird art out there.”
“I never considered it back then,” Noah admitted. “Knowing what I do now, I’d guess maybe they all landed here closer together and got spread out over time.”
“Ross?”
“Yes, Parker?”
“Do you know what the obelisks are?”
“I’m afraid I don’t. The obelisks are from a time beyond my own.”
“Do you understand the language on them?”
“I’m afraid I don’t.”
“Who here at Roanoke is from the farthest in the future?”
Monique ended the sudden silence that followed. “That would be Thate.”
“Not Ross?”
Ross’s head went side to side with a squeak of old metal and plastic. “Theta Sigma-Seven arrived in the valley from twenty-three years in what would have been my own future. ”
“And he doesn’t know what they are either?”
“I’m afraid he doesn’t. Or if he does, he’s never shared that information.”
Sam nodded. “So nobody in the valley knows when they’re from or what they are.”
“Wrong no negative invalid incorrect false.”
They all looked at Olivia.
Noah took another step forward. “Are you saying someone . . . do you know what the obelisks are?”
Olivia breathed in, then covered her mouth with her hand to muffle the string of words spinning out of her throat. Her head bobbed up and down, side to side, and up and down again.
“Was that an overcomplicated maybe?”
Parker raised a finger again. “Olivia, can we try something new?”
Olivia settled back against the couch. “Possible perhaps optional maybe depending could.”
“Do you know what the obelisk did to you?”
“Yes truth positive correct confirmed accurate.”
Josh felt a little jolt. “Hey. She’s getting some inflection on her words now.”
Parker slid off her chair and moved a little closer. “Okay . . . I’m going to ask you what the obelisk did, but before I do I want you to think about it. Try to distill it down into one word. Just one. Okay?”
Olivia put a hand over her mouth, but the muffled noises sounded positive.
“What did the obelisk do to you?”
“Surge superfluity overload glut flood excess.”
Sam sighed. “Well, we already knew that. Too much electricity to the brain.”
“Now I know what superfluity means,” Josh said.
Olivia’s bare foot slapped the floor. “No mistaken invalid incorrect false erroneous.”
Parker straightened up. “What?”
“What’s she saying?” Sam shifted in his chair, facing Olivia. “Are you saying . . . I don’t know what you’re saying.”
“Terminal overload negative couple charge cerebrum.”
“I still don’t know what she’s saying.”
Josh picked at the words. “I think . . . I think she’s saying it wasn’t electricity.”
“Or it wasn’t an overload?”
Olivia stamped her foot three times. A crooked smile spread across her face, but it had an edge to it. Something . . . desperate?
Parker looked the other woman in the eyes again. “Okay, same thing. I’m going to ask what it zapped you with. One word. Focus on one word.”
Olivia took in a long, slow breath.
“What did the obelisk zap you with?”
“Instruction input information figures facts data.”
The room went quiet.
“Holy fuck,” said Sam.
“Is this . . . can this be correct?” asked Monique.
“Veracious truth positive faultless correct confirmed.”
“It pumped information into her brain?” Sam was out of his chair.
Josh tried to make sense of it. “So Logan was killed by . . . too much information?”
“So they aren’t an art exhibit,” said Noah, “they’re more like a . . . a library?”
She stomped her foot and rolled her eyes. “Substructure propulsion others negative mobile location.”
Josh shook his head. “I’m lost again.”
“Didn’t she say something like this yesterday? Ross?” Noah turned to look at the android.
“Yesterday Mx. Olivia said the words ‘substructure region negative mobile location group’ in that order.”
“Mobile location,” echoed Parker.
“Still lost,” Josh said.
Sam tapped his fingers. “Maybe the way places move around the valley?”
Monique adjusted her dress on the couch and patted Olivia’s hand. “If her words have been alphabetized, it is possible these two words were not meant to be used together.”
“She also said propulsion,” Noah pointed out. “Propulsion and moving.”
Josh ran the words through his head. “She said negative both times, right? Maybe she’s saying things weren’t moving.”
“So she’s talking about the sky?”
“The sky’s moving,” said Parker. “It’s just not moving . . . right.”
“The Castle then,” said Monique. “It is the one fixed point in the valley, never moving from the center.”
Olivia stamped both feet this time. “Substructure region propulsion negative mobile location.”
“I think . . .” Josh said, “I think she’s trying to correct us.”
Olivia flopped back on the couch. Monique pressed the back of her hand against the other woman’s forehead. Pressed her fingers on the inside of her wrist. “She is very tired.”
Noah looked at Josh and frowned. “Correct us about what?”
Josh shrugged. Played the words back in his mind, tried to rearrange them like a puzzle clue. Sam’s fingers tapped wildly against each other. Parker’s eyes were closed.
Sam held a hand up. Tipped a finger back and forth like a conductor. “Mobile propulsion region. Negative location. Substructure?”
Noah’s frown deepened. “Substructure of what?”
Sam looked at Monique. “Are there caves, or maybe tunnels somewhere in the valley? Under the valley.”
Inspiration flared in Josh’s mind. “I’ve got it. Didn’t you say there’s a riverboat here?”
Noah nodded. So did Sam and Monique. “Yep. An Egyptian riverboat. From the ’50s or ’60s I think. 1960s.”
Josh spread his hands wide. “A mobile location with propulsion.”
“And it doesn’t move.”
Olivia rolled her eyes. She swung her foot at the floor, but settling back on the couch left it too high to make contact. Her gaze settled on Josh and he was pretty sure the look in her eyes meant she thought he was an idiot.
Parker shot up straight. “Oh my god.” She stumbled back like she’d been hit. Bounced against her chair, fumbled past it, grabbed the back. “Oh my god.”
“What’s wrong?” asked Noah.
“Negative region.” Parker looked at Noah. At Josh. Her eyes had the same oddly panicked, frantic look he’d seen in Olivia’s throughout the day. The look of someone suddenly seeing way too much. “She’s trying to tell us this isn’t a valley.”
Olivia sighed with relief.
“Mobile location with propulsion. We’re on a spaceship.”
40
PARKER
So much of it fell into place in Parker’s mind. Too much for it to be wrong. The skeptic in her scoffed at the idea as ludicrous, but the scientist saw so many puzzle pieces line up.
Noah’s face had gone completely blank. He looked like she felt. The robot had more of an expression, and it didn’t even have a nose or mouth. Parker could see Sam still processing things. Confusion covered Monique’s face. Olivia looked relieved. Satisfied.
“So the wormhole,” Josh said, “dumped us on a spaceship?”
“There’s no wormhole,” said Parker. “No time rift. There never was. We’re not a million years in the past. It’s just this gigantic ship, sitting in space.”
Sam finished processing. Shook his head. “That isn’t—it’s not possible.”
“It makes sense.” Parker waved a hand at the ceiling, past the walls of the cottage, taking in the whole valley. “Everything makes sense if this is an artificial environment. The fact nobody can climb up the cliffs. The way day and night happen. It’s sitting at a heliostationary point close to Earth’s orbit, so it explains what we’re seeing in the night sky. It’s just showing us the solar system from a fixed point, maybe through a big filtered viewscreen or something. It even—”
“Why would there be,” Sam tried to calm his breathing. Failed. “Why would someone park a giant—we’re talking about a massive spaceship in Earth’s orbit. A starship at least three times bigger than Manhattan that’s been parked here for centuries, maybe millennia, and nobody’s ever noticed it? Even while it’s randomly beaming up people and animals whenever Earth gets close.”
“And fields and obelisks and things,” added Josh.
“It would’ve been spotted decades ago. Centuries ago.”
“It’s not parked here.”
Noah looked like he’d thrown up. Like he’d felt that hunched-over-the-toilet humiliation, but ultimately knew it had all been for the best. He stared back at Parker for a moment, then turned his attention to Sam.
“It crashed here. We’re on the Castaway’s ship.”
Olivia’s hands muffled the six words she tried to say, but her toes danced excitedly on the floor.
“They told us their ship was destroyed and I, my family and I, we assumed they meant there was nothing left and they’d been . . . I don’t know, ejected into the valley. I think they tried to tell us and we didn’t understand.”
Josh coughed. Raised two diplomatic fingers. “I’m not a physicist or anything, but . . .”
“Yes?”
“Well, if the ship’s just a wreck, shouldn’t it be, what would you call it . . . drifting in space? I don’t know the technical term for it.”
“Drifting,” said Parker.
“Right. Like, if it moved an inch it’d move forever, right? Momentum and inertia and stuff. So why isn’t it?”
She nodded. “Oh yeah. There’re a hundred reasons something can’t sit in space like this. Especially in a solar system. But if we’re talking about an advanced alien spaceship twenty miles across . . . I mean, it’s probably got a great parking brake.”
“Better question.” Sam turned his attention to Olivia. “How do you know it’s a spaceship?”
Olivia returned the stare. “Obelisk needle monument input data column.”
“Hey, she actually said ‘obelisk.’” Josh beamed proudly at Monique.
Another thought rose up in Parker’s mind, slipping out through her lips before she even had time to fully register it. “The obelisks aren’t from the future. They’re part of the ship.”
The skin around Sam’s eyes scrunched up tight. His finger tapping hit a manic rate. When he didn’t say anything, she continued.
“They’re constants here in the valley, yes? Everything else moves around them? They’re always in the same place, relative to each other, with the Castle at the center of the valley.”
Sam’s shoulders dropped. “Where the Castaway lived.”
Monique cleared her throat. “Forgive me. If what you’re saying is true, that we are on a starship and the obelisks and Castle are all part of it, why would they all be composed from such a variety of materials?”
Josh shrugged. “Cars are made from all sorts of materials.”
“Automobiles?”
“Yeah. They’re made of fiberglass, regular glass, steel, aluminum, copper wiring, silicon chips, rubber tires. I mean, if you think of a wagon, a horse-drawn buggy, they’re made of wood and iron and cloth cushions and rope, right?”
“Oui.”
“They might not even be different materials.” Noah’s face still looked a little . . . queasy? But he had his thinking face on. His scientist face. Parker hadn’t seen it since they arrived here in the valley, and the sight of it soothed her mind. “It stands to reason the Castaway’s ship would be multidimensional, like they were. So it’s the shadow puppets thing all over again. But now they look like the same shape, we’re just perceiving them as different material.”
Sam closed his eyes. Tapped his fingers. “How is that like shadow puppets?”
“Think of it like . . . like how a shadow can appear soft or sharp depending on where the wall and the light are. The object casting the shadow doesn’t change, but we perceive different textures.”
Parker nodded. “Or even numbers. How you get two or three shadows off a fixture with multiple bulbs. Here we’re seeing a bunch of things that look like different material, but they’ve all got the same dimensions and the same symbols.”
“Symbols nobody can read,” Sam said, “because it’s not—because it’s an alien language.”
Parker nodded again.
Sam’s breathing slowed down. “Holy fuck. We’re on a spaceship.”
