This short story formed the inspiration for The Summoning Stars, and was originally done for one of the SciFi Smackdowns in The Pub, part of the old Clubs we used to have on Wattpad, since replaced in 2018 with the new Community area. The Pub still exists though, although it has slightly newer decor now.
Part 1 – Random Shuffle
The moulded door of his travel pod slid aside as he approached, the contoured metal sphere coded wirelessly to the chip buried deep in his cortex.
As he sat the pod tilted back slightly, the seat instantaneously moulding around his body and holding him gently cocooned for the journey ahead. His head settled into the jelly-like headrest, the pod's automatic systems connecting to his synaptic port and re-establishing contact with the Mind.
He mused on the events of the day as the pod began to move. Normally he plugged in and worked from home, or occasionally one of the private booths in the gardens, the synaptic port allowing him to join the Mind as soon as he woke up and assist in the problem solving required of him. Today though had been different, but meeting with his peers was always a worthy, if mentally exhausting, process.
Message. Helena James.
He started to compose the message to send, but was interrupted by the Mind before he could finish.
- Helena James' connection has been Terminated. Sorry for any inconvenience.
What? Why has she been Terminated?
- She has committed a crime, further information is classified.
He sighed, bewildered by the unexpected news. He'd enjoyed working with Helena; she had been one of the few people who he'd really connected with during his long life. There had been so few over the years he had spent in the City. They had connected on an intellectual level that had lead to a deep friendship and occasionally company of the more intimate sort, satisfying an itch that sometimes both needed to scratch. She had also been one of only two people who he had Shared with, connecting brain to brain via their implants, a breathtaking experience with someone so mentally dextrous.
The pod moved quietly along the minor transit tunnels and he sighed again, his thoughts troubled. Crime was rare in this day and age. The Mind was almost omnipotent, able to see virtually anywhere at any time, accessing many of the uppermost thoughts and desires of the billions of souls who inhabited the City. Any crime against the Community was dealt with severely and instantly.
Music. Playlist 4. Random shuffle.
He relayed the command via his implant, and instantly soothing stanzas massaged away the minor stresses of the day, leaving him dwelling on the loss of Helena after the day's conference. The pod accelerated; the change in momentum barely perceptible inside his cushioning as it shot down the transit ramp at over three hundred miles per hour. It accelerated further to reach docking speed, and as this was attained the computer guidance systems of the Transit Network seamlessly locked his pod into the already moving Travel Module transporting him and thousands of others to their destinations at just under the speed of sound.
He was semi-dozing to the strains of some twentieth century instrumental guitar music when the Mind quietly notified him, and presumably all the other passengers in the Travel Module, that there was a slight technical hitch.
The module slowed, gently moving to an almost imperceptible halt. Jay looked out of the small side window of his pod, humming gently to himself as his eyes adjusted to the gloom outside the transport.
There was a slight static creeping in to the music and he shifted uneasily in his seat as his skin began prickling oddly. Momentarily, there was a disturbance in the air in front of him and he rubbed his eyes, his returning vision confirming his thoughts tiredness as the odd feelings dispelled.
He resumed his constricted view of the outside world. Normally, all you could see in the tunnels was the very faint glow of the dimly lit bioluminescent walls. The cells were fed a faint trickle of power to keep them alive and glowing, but there had obviously been an interruption in the flow and one side of the tunnel had virtually blacked out casting the lee of the train into deep shadow.
A small maintenance bot flashed past the window, startling him as it scuttled swiftly over the surface of the train on its spidery legs and he automatically followed it with his eyes. Another appeared at the window and appeared to look in at him, its mantis-like sensor array pressed against the plexiglass. Jay looked at it quizzically. It wasn't often you saw the robotic denizens of the City, they were usually very much out of sight and mind, or restricted to the quietly efficient Housebots. But this one seemed intent on him. He looked back at it, focussing on the sensor array at the front of the bot. There was a sudden flash and unconsciousness threw him into darkness.
Fluorescent green on black surrounded him. Gridlines stretched to distant horizons lifting in a 3D cityscape of strange shaped hills and towers. He looked down at his hands, the contours of his fingers shaped similarly in green and black. There was no sound, no life, no heat, no cold. As he watched, a million tiny dots swarmed from his skin, hanging in a cloud around him. 'Nanobots?' he thought.
So, there was thought then. He watched as his nanite cloud took form, the dots mirroring his own features. A smaller cloud took form to one side, the indistinct figure forming into a more female shape as he watched. His contoured hand reached, reached...
- The Module is now fixed, thank you for your patience.
There was a slight clunk and the Module smoothly moved forwards. Jay smacked his head on the small window in surprise as he lifted from his waking dream, wrenching his neck around to get another view of the bot as it skittered away from him.
As it disappeared from view, he shrank back in his seat, stunned, the bruise on his head disappearing as the nanobots in his blood stream repaired the small damage inflicted by his bump.
His brain whirling with thoughts of unknown lands and slender darkened figures, he jolted back to reality as his Pod detached from the main module, seamlessly tracking up through the building until it slid into the recess in the corner of his flat. The door softly 'shooshed' open and he stepped into his spotlessly clean abode.
For some time, he just sat, trying desperately to process what his exhausted mind had seen. For many weeks now, he and others had been working hard on a few problems that the Mind, no matter its incredible computing power and intellect, just couldn't solve. Sometimes even in the age of smart technology and positronic matrices, the dextrous and intuitive leaps that could only be carried out by the human brain were still required.
Jay was among the brightest mathematicians of his generation, and working with people like Helena, a specialist in nano-technology, gave him a fulfilment the majority of others in the City found simply through recreation, hedonism or the arts. Maths was his canvas, his joy, his form of art, and he was a master artist.
Still pondering the day's events, he casually stripped off his clothes, dropping the bamboo shirt and trousers into the recycling unit and stepped into the shower, the pressurised jets playing soap, water and air over his body in rapid succession as he stood in silent contemplation.
A pod bot had hung freshly made coveralls outside the shower and he stepped into them, moving over to the dispenser in the corner. A few seconds later, he sat at the table that had silently exuded from the floor, a mug of juice and a light snack in front of him.
News, he commanded, and the classic picture of a lady lifting the back of her tennis skirt to show a bare bottom faded into the handsome computer generated visage of the current newsreader. He let the words wash over him, deep in thought.
Helena. She had been special, a superb mind, a wonderful friend and one of the few people he felt truly comfortable with. Having shared her mind, he knew she felt the same about him.
He decided to try again. Mentally he posed the question to the Mind.
Mind. May I ask a question?
- I am here to serve.
Why has Helena James been Terminated?
- That information is classified.
He sighed again, he'd expected nothing different.
- We have reconsidered.
His thought processes were abruptly derailed as Mind re-connected.
- Due to your working with Helena and having a form of relationship, we consider you may be entitled to more information.
- Helena James was found guilty of subversive activities that could harm the Community, City and the Mind. She was warned to stop but did not, so we had no alternative but to Terminate her connection. We are sorry for your loss.
Jay disconnected, his thoughts a blur. Crimes were normally those of the heart or physical crimes, but subversion? What the hell did that entail?
A quiet "bong" sound chimed in the depths of his cerebrum, it was time for bed. He kept a strict routine in order to maximise his mental capabilities, but really didn't feel like going to bed quite yet.
He sat on his bed and crossed his legs, breathing deeply and focusing his mind. With meditative ease, he decreased his heart rate, slowed his breathing, and focused on his mental exercises. Calm suffused his being and he slowly opened his eyes, his gaze resting on a large glass paperweight kept on his desk. Gesturing slightly with one hand, even though he knew the gesture wasn't required, the glass lifted and spun gently in his mental grasp. He played absently with it for a few minutes, and then gently placed it back in its original spot before focusing his energy more deeply on his body. It sometimes felt like he could reduce his metabolic rate to a standstill as his breathing and heart slowed, the blood in his veins moving at a mere trickle... he breathed in suddenly as darkness encroached on his vision, his head swimming as he teetered on the brink of unconsciousness.
Rubbing his eyes, he breathed deeply to restore the oxygen to his blood and opened them to a green and black contoured reality of his room. Heartbeat suddenly racing, he closed his eyes and opened them again after a few seconds, to find his normal vision thankfully restored.
"That was odd," he muttered and then glanced at the clock above the desk. "An hour? Where the hell did that go?"
Mentally chastising himself for his tardiness, he watched as the bed exuded from the floor on command, the pod bot swiftly laying the bed as he cleaned his teeth. Funny, he thought, there was absolutely no need for him to clean his teeth any more. The nanobots in his body would do that as he slept, carrying out the daily maintenance without him even noticing. He did like the taste of mint though and it reminded him of his mother who always seemed to smell slightly of menthol. He hadn't spoken to her for years; she was deep into her poetry these days, spending weeks at a time in the holographic suites so she could experience whatever period of history was currently fueling her writing. He decided to leave a message for her so she could get back in touch once she surfaced again.
He lay down on the bed, the lights automatically dimming to background levels and watched with his eyes closed as a sleep sequence played across the inside of his eyelids.
Tomorrow would be a better day...
.... but, before tomorrow came the night.
He stood on the same black and green landscape, utterly flat and devoid of life apart from the distant peaks and cityscape: a black mirrored universe stretching as far as the eye couldn't see. Deafened by the silence, he watched as a small figure approached without moving, swiftly closing the distance from infinity to proximity until she was standing in front of him, mere inches away with the same small smile that he always remembered.
"Helena?"
"Yes... and No. This is a memory carrying a message. I had a feeling that it might come to this. If you're seeing me here in this non-place, this mindscape, it means something I've been experimenting with has gone wrong, that I am gone, and you might be in danger."
"But...."
"I suspect you're going to try and interrupt at this stage, please don't. I've not got much time, although time is possibly irrelevant here, but I can't start one of our interminable, albeit enjoyable, conversations on the possibilities of time and space, as I only have a finite message space, so two way conversation isn't possible.
"This avatar is a projection of me carried and constructed by my nanobots which I have integrated with yours. I programmed a small maintenance bot to interrupt your train journey and carry a few thousand of them to you. I've used their miniscule hive mind to carry this message just in case something happened to me. Something obviously has.
"The beauty of this message is that the Mind will have no access to it, it will be buried deep and so 'It' will not be aware that I have warned you.
"There is far more to the City than meets the eye. As part of my research I looked at work from a whole host of scientists, mathematicians, physicists, mechanical engineers and various others. Many of them have disappeared over the last hundred years.
"Some of these people had been around for hundreds of years. Could they all have died from something that the nanobots couldn't repair? The Mind told me information on the majority of them was Classified. Did it tell you the same thing about me? Have you asked?
"There are so few of us who rebel against the endless hedonism of our fellows for more than just the sake of art or music. So few of us pursue the art of mathematics or physics, and yet of those few, many have disappeared. Even fewer of those can use their minds as we can use them. Is the Mind removing those who might question it or threaten its existence? Is that too far fetched?
"I don't know Jay, I really don't. All I know is that I'm no longer here, when I wanted to be here with you. And that's something else I never told you although I think you must've known.
"I love you Jay, mind, body and soul."
Jay looked at the avatar in front of him. It was devoid of all emotion other than the slight smile which had remained unchanged, colourless other than the green and black contoured features of the woman he now realised he had loved for decades.
"Something is going on Jay, be careful. You will wake up with knowledge of things that only I knew before. You have the potential to unlock something, something in your own mind that means you and others before you have been a threat to the Mind. You have far greater potential than mere telekinesis. I have felt the stirrings of this but have obviously been silenced before I could explore that power more, you must succeed where I have failed Jay. The nanobots will be part of you forever, forever a part of me will live in you, I hope you don't mind. I love you..."
"Helena..."
He reached out towards the avatar as it retreated from whence it came, the small smile moving away. Unmoving, yet diminishing, it traced a path towards infinity and the invisible horizon, leaving him alone on the featureless mirror of eternity's mindscape, which smashed...
Startled, he sat bolt upright in bed, covers tumbling from his body, breathing heavily with sweat pouring from his skin. He stumbled to the dispenser which, on command, produced a cool tumbler of water which he gulped before slumping onto the tousled bed. He ran his fingers through his short hair trying to work out what the hell was going on. Snippets of a dream floated across his brain tormenting him with the memory of Helena.
... knowledge of things that only I knew...
... I love you...
... the Mind will not be aware that I've warned you...
... you have the potential...
... I love you...
... I love you...
He groaned, tormented by the knowledge he'd always denied. There had been so much time ahead of them; plenty of time to get to know each other more, gently explore each others bodies and minds, share knowledge, combine their minds for the greater good of humanity. But now she was gone.
Gone, and only the inaccessible inner workings of the Mind knew what had really happened...
He placed the tumbler on the floor next to his bed and composed himself.
Mind. Sleep sequence three.
As the swirling colours of the sleep inducer gently soothed his brain, his last thought was of a faint smile before he once again descended into troubled sleep.