Hûw Steer's Blog, page 34

Review (sort of): The Good Place

This is kind of a review, I suppose, but mostly just a recommendation. If I did an in-depth review (which I might one day), I’d spoil way too much – and if you haven’t watched this show then I really don’t want to do that for you.

I just finished The Good Place. If you’ve not heard of it or watched it… do.

The basic premise: a woman named Eleanor dies. She was a somewhat unpleasant person. But she wakes up in heaven – ‘The Good Place’ – and has to try to blend in so that nobody realises that she is definitely not supposed to be there.

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It starts out as a light-hearted comedy, but to my pleasant surprise the show pivots – while staying hilarious – into not just comedy but philosophy. To blend in in the Good Place Eleanor has to learn how to be a better person – which involves some really well-delivered lessons on ethics delivered by a recently-deceased professor of philosophy. Not only did I enjoy this show a lot, but I also learned a lot from it. And it was fun doing so.

For a (spoiler-free) example, consider the show’s take on the ‘Trolley Problem’:

There are a lot of twists in this show. If I say anything more – or tell you pretty much anything about the later seasons – I’d be spoiling it. So if you haven’t watched the show, do. 

All I’ll say is that it only got better as it went on, and the finale – that glorious hour-long finale – was everything the characters and the show deserved and more.

“Picture a wave…”

It’s the best-conceived images of an afterlife system that I’ve ever read or seen. It’s also brilliantly acted, hilarious, and has more twists and turns than a twisty-turny thing.

Watch The Good Place. You might learn something.

Salvage Seven: Chapter 14

Back from the States. It was for work, so I was mostly sitting in the same room all day, but I did have some spectacular sandwiches.

Gideon and the others aren’t about to have such a good time, I’m afraid. They’ve been out of heart-stopping peril for just a little too long.

Prologue
Chapter 1, parts 1 and 2
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13

He came to where he had fallen, still in the little break-room – but when Gideon tried to stand he realised that he was tied to the plastic chair on which he sat, cable-ties strapping his wrists together, binding them to the seat-back. His pack and weapons were leaning against the threadbare sofa. He glanced down awkwardly, but he didn’t really need to. The subtle warmth of the AI matrix was gone.

“Looking for this?” asked the one voice he had been hoping would not. He looked up to see Donoghue, on the other side of the table. It had been cleared of detritus, though it was still mottled with months of coffee-rings. The only object on it was the half-fist of blue crystal, still softly glowing. The sergeant’s eyes reflected its light, just a little. They were flat and dark with anger.

“Yeah,” Gideon admitted, sighing deeply, knowing that there was no point in lying at this juncture. At least the AI was somewhere other than around his neck. Dire as his straits might be, that at least was a relief. A pulse of fear flashed freezing through him. “You didn’t – ”

“Touch it?” Donoghue interrupted. “No. From what Yaxley told me you seemed to think that was a bad idea. So nobody’s touched it. Not with skin, anyway.” There wasn’t a trace of trust in her voice, but Gideon would take what he could get.

“Sarge keeps me around for a reason,” came another voice. Gideon twisted in his chair, seeing Handel lying back on the old sofa. He raised his metal hand, wiggled its fingers. He didn’t offer a smile.

“You didn’t hear anything?”

“Nope.” The quartermaster shook his head.

Gideon sighed with relief.

“Good.” And he didn’t either, he realised; the voice of the stone was conspicuous by its absence from his mind. He was tied to a chair, about to face Donoghue’s wrath, probably about to be turned over to the Union authorities and tossed in a cell for years, but Gideon felt only relief. It wasn’t how he’d imagined his confession to Yaxley going – Yaxley, who was standing guard, arms folded and face once again unreadable, by the door – but now it was happening he knew it could have been much worse. It could still be in me. It might still. But at least someone competent was in the mix to deal with it, instead of just him.

“Care to explain?” Donoghue asked, dragging his attention back. Her lips were thin, her eyes narrow. Suddenly Gideon’s relief wasn’t quite so reassuring. Donoghue indicated the glowing stone.

“You lied to us,” she said. “Stole this and lied to us. Shitty thing to do to your squad with anything, Gideon. Something as valuable as this, could have made us all a bit happier. A lot happier.”

“I – ” Gideon began, but the sergeant was far from finished.

“We came here to find experimental tech,” Donoghue continued, “dangerous tech. Those were our orders. Recover what you can. For the war effort. For the Union.”

“You mean for the peace,” Gideon corrected without thinking, and Donoghue’s eyes narrowed to snake-slits.

“I know what I said,” she hissed. “Don’t be naïve, you useless prick. We all know why we’re up here. A find like this,” she indicated the stone, “impossible tech, we’d have been in the good books from now till Judgement Day. We might have gotten off this rock! But you kept it for yourself. You had to be the selfish bastard. You had to be the coward.” She shook her head. “Didn’t think I could get more disappointed in you, Gideon. I was wrong.”

Gideon stared at the sergeant, astonished at how badly she’d gotten his actions wrong. That’s not it at all! he wanted to protest. That’s not why I hid it! It’s an AI, it’s dangerous, it was in my head, it changed by thoughts! He wanted to explain it all, like he had to Yaxley – who, he noticed, wasn’t backing him up in the slightest – but he didn’t. He couldn’t. The stone wasn’t around his neck, the voice was gone from his head, and Donoghue’s accusations, though he knew them, rationally, to be false, had the ring of depressing truth about them. If it had been just been something valuable he’d found, if he could have used it to get out of Salvage, away from the war, would he have left the others behind? Yes. He probably would have, and the thought ashamed him. He tried to speak but his refutation of Donoghue’s words wouldn’t come. He looked at Yaxley, but the big man had his eyes fixed on the door; Handel was resolutely studying the inside of his own eyelids. The only one paying him any attention was the glowering Donoghue.

“I was scared,” he said finally, knowing it was a poor articulation but forcing himself on before Donoghue could dismiss him. “It was in my head, Sergeant, and I was terrified.” It was so liberating to admit it, a rush of utterly inappropriate euphoria bursting through him as a rush of words poured from his mouth, unending. “I didn’t know I’d taken it until I had. Once I had it I couldn’t get rid of it, I just couldn’t; it spoke to me and I had to listen, but that was before I knew what it was! I wasn’t trying to keep it, I never wanted it, never, Sarge – ”

“Alright!” Donoghue snapped, raising one hand. “Shut the fuck up, will you? You’re not making any sense.” She grimaced. “And I guess you deserve the chance to explain. But be quick. Extract should be here inside an hour. I need to know if you’re getting on the gunship on your own feet or in chains.” It wasn’t a threat, it was a statement. Gideon cringed, but took a deep breath. Ok. Explain.

He told her everything, holding nothing back. He told her what he had found in the Cradle, what had happened when he touched the pedestal. He told her about the night before, huddled in his blankets talking to the demon in his head. He told her what he’d figured out from the lack of tech, from Collins’ findings. He told her about the voice, about what it had said, known and not known. By the time he finished both Yaxley and Handel were staring at him, listening intently but saying nothing. He paid them no attention. It was Donoghue he had to convince, Donoghue who had to believe him – and she was sitting perfectly still, her face unreadable, her eyes flat and dark.

“…and then Yax shot me,” he finished lamely. Yaxley gave the smallest shrug of apology. Gideon was surprised to find that he didn’t begrudge the big man his actions. Someone else came in babbling about a voice in their head, I’d want them calmed down too. Handel’s bushy eyebrows were trying to tear themselves off his forehead. He was tapping at his PDA absently, without looking – recording? Corroborating with the security footage? Donoghue sat still for a moment, then leaned back in the flimsy plastic chair, breathing in deeply and then sighing.

“An AI.”

“Yeah.”

“In that thing.” She pointed at the crystal.

“Yep.”

“And in your head.”

“Yes.” Gideon frowned. It was still in his head, wasn’t it? He hadn’t heard a word from the voice since Yaxley had shocked him. Had the TASER jolted it out of his skull?

“It talking to you now?” Donoghue asked, echoing Gideon’s thoughts. Gideon hesitated.

“That’s a no, then,” Donoghue said, before he could, and there was suspicion in her eyes again. “You say you touched it to talk back to it?”

“Yes.”

Donoghue nodded at the softly glowing stone on the table.

“Go on, then.”

Gideon stared.

“What?”

“Talk to it,” Donoghue repeated. “If there’s a mind in that stone, I want to talk to it. And I’m not touching it. You already have. You’re in no more danger if you do it again.” Her voice was cold, utterly pragmatic, and Gideon knew in that moment that if he refused she’d force him – and if he, or the thing inside the stone turned out to be dangerous, she’d shoot him without a second’s hesitation. He glanced over at Yaxley, at Handel, but the big man’s arms were firmly folded, and though Handel offered a sympathetic grimace he said nothing, still tapping blindly at his PDA with his artificial hand. Gideon gritted his teeth.

“Alright. I’ll… speak for it, I guess.”

“Yes, you will,” Donoghue confirmed, her eyes like black ice. She stood, went behind Gideon and cut the cable-ties that held down one of his hands – but not the other. She sat back down, as Gideon flexed life back into his fingers, delaying the inevitable as long as possible. Then, at her glare, he reached out gingerly and took the glowing stone in his hand.

Alright, he thought. I’m back. We need to talk. Things… could be better. He could feel the stone brushing the edge of his mind, feel the vast space beyond in which the AI lived – its data matrix, its seemingly infinite capacity.

But that was all he could feel.

Hello? he called with his mind, feeling the thought echo strangely into the crystalline void. Where are you? But there was no reply, the echoing, ethereal voice utterly silent. He looked up at Donoghue, eyes wide with concern.

“It’s… not there.” Donoghue raised one eyebrow, and Gideon felt his heart sink yet further, knowing that she didn’t believe him, knowing that he probably wouldn’t have believed him either in her position. He tried anyway. “It’s not there! It was, but it’s not, I can’t feel it, it’s not – ”

“Save it,” Donoghue snapped. She stood, looming above him like a wrathful god. “I’m going,” she said, “to check on the fucking extract. Yax, Handel, with me.”

“You don’t want to guard him?” Handel asked, standing. His metal fingers were still tapping away at his touch-screen. Donoghue looked back at Gideon, and there was revulsion in her eyes.

“What’s he going to do? Run away?”

She turned and began to walk away. Yaxley followed, his face inscrutable. Handel stumped behind them, and he was still typing even as he offered another vaguely sympathetic grimace. Beneath the crushing despair that was engulfing him, Gideon felt something, just a tiny spark of curiosity.

“What’re you doing?” he asked Handel before the old man could look away. Handel frowned.

“What?”

“You’ve been busy,” Gideon said, nodding awkwardly at Handel’s PDA – on which he was still typing, not so much as glancing at the keys. Donoghue and Yaxley had paused in the doorway. Handel looked down at his hand, frowning. Donoghue scowled.

“Come on, Handel.” But Handel wasn’t listening. He was staring at his own hand like he’d never seen it before, his face pale, as the artificial fingers whirred away, typing, Gideon finally noticed, faster than any human hand he’d ever seen.

“That’s not me,” the quartermaster whispered. His eyes were wide, and Gideon recognised the fear, knew it all too well. “Sarge, that’s not me!” Donoghue walked over, irritation plain on her face.

“What do you – ”

“I’m not typing that!” Handel howled. “It’s not me!” And realisation dawned bright and clear and terrible over Gideon, as Donoghue tried to restrain the metal hand, yelping as the steel-plated fingers almost crushed her own, as he glimpsed the PDA screen and saw nothing but flowing code, endless letters and numbers scrolling past faster than he could read.

“You touched the stone, didn’t you?” he asked Handel, who looked up with wild, terrified eyes. “You held it in that hand.” The artificial hand, the engineering marvel, mimicking almost perfectly the movement of flesh and blood through complex algorithms and a series of high-capacity inbuilt processors, linked into a little control computer embedded in the wrist.

“Yeah?” Handel asked. Then his face blanched pure white. “Oh, shit.”

His metal hand tapped out one final sequence of code, and then froze. On the PDA screen, a bar filled rapidly, and was replaced by the message Upload Complete.

Then all the lights went out, just for a moment, and when they came back up they were a bloody red. There was a whine of static, and then the PA system came alive, and said: “Lockdown engaged.”

SPFBO – Tales from the Asylum

Over the course of the SPFBO competition, the lovely people of Rockstarlit Book Asylum have been running a truly dark and sinister feature…

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Tales from the Asylum is a series of short pieces starring the protagonists of the many SPFBO entrants, as they find themselves trapped inside a mysterious asylum. Some know why they’re there, some don’t – some escape, but many, alas, do not…

There have been some superb pieces so far – all very different takes on the scenario – but the latest is, in fact, by me, starring the leads of The Blackbird and the Ghost!

It took me far too long to write (my repeated apologies to Timy Takács), and what I wrote was far too long, but it’s finally done and it’s up over at the Rockstarlit website!

A warning: the story is loosely set after The Blackbird and the Ghost – no major spoilers though.

So if you want a little more of Tal and Max in your lives, read it here!

And if you still want more after that… well, there might still be a much longer cut coming soon…

My thanks to Timy and everyone else over at Rockstarlit for bearing with my very slow writing and giving me this opportunity to share it!

Salvage Seven: Chapter 13

Now, this may seem late, but I’m in America this week so it’s still Sunday for me. Honest.

Anyway, time for more Salvage Seven. If you thought things were going to get better, you really haven’t caught onto the overriding theme here.

By which I mean Gideon suffering.

Prologue
Chapter 1, parts 1 and 2
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12

“It didn’t look like they actually got anywhere,” Collins said, sitting atop a crate, legs dangling like a child. “Nowhere new, at least.”

Donoghue’s patience was clearly wearing thin, but she continued to humour the skinny technician, leaning against a crate of her own. They were all back in the hangar, their search concluded, waiting for transport that was, predictably, late.

“Nowhere new?” she asked. Collins shrugged.

“AI research has been going on seriously for decades. Nobody’s managed to get beyond simple stuff, not reliably. For every more realistic personality there are two dozen total failures.” He spoke with the casual confidence of the armchair expert.

“There’s an AI on the Jeroboam,” Dawson offered. “That must work alright.” Collins scoffed.

“Barely worth of the name. Artificial, but not that intelligent. That kind of program handles ship functions just fine, but it’s not exactly going to hold a conversation.”

“I’ve spoken to it,” Handel grunted. “Can confirm it’s thick as shit. Relatively speaking.”

Petra looked sour, cross-legged by a fuel pump.

“So what you’re saying is this place is pointless.”

“Not pointless,” Collins said, clearly hurt. “But there was nothing at all new in the files we found. Nothing in the tech. Just another lab retreading the same ground over again.”

“Another goose-chase, then,” Donoghue said bitterly. “Great. So glad we came all this way for nothing.” She stood straight and stretched. “I’m going to check the comms. Let me know if they materialise.”

She walked away, her irritation obvious in every step. The others remained where they were, checking manifests idly on their PDAs, fiddling with a few choice items of salvage that would doubtless fail to appear on any official report. Handel had some very expensive-looking piece of lab equipment in his hands. Yaxley brooded. And, in the shadow of a generator, unwatched by anyone, Gideon leaned and panicked silently.

A working AI. Collins was right, even he knew that; AI tech was still far from advanced enough to actually produce a full, functioning intelligence in any sense of the word. Even the best examples could barely string a conversation together, let alone process and articulate emotions or complex concepts. It was one of the great failings of the glorious future – they’d managed easy space travel, nuclear fusion, terrible weapons, but the secret of AI had eluded even the greatest minds of the last five centuries. Quantum fluctuations, unstable personality matrices, a thousand other words Gideon didn’t even pretend to understand all explaining at great length why, despite the best efforts of thousands, humanity still had yet to create anything resembling a full AI construct – at least not one that had stayed sane.

Except they had, clearly, because there was one dangling around Gideon’s neck, separated from his skin by just a few layers of cloth.

Why are you silent? the stone – the AI – was asking, its voice echoing around his mind. Gideon ignored it as best he could – which was not very well. He had immediately separated the glowing crystal from his skin as soon as he had realised what the thing was, as though it burned white-hot. It still didn’t, but he could feel it as though it did, searing his flesh, burning through into his mind, towards his hammering heart. He was trying to block out everything it thought at him but he couldn’t; it might not be able to hear him but there was nothing he could do to stop it talking. Just run out of power. Please. Go back to sleep, and I can bury you here and just forget. But he couldn’t.

Why will you not speak to me? the voice asked. Gideon considered what he might say in reply: Because you’re an AI. Because you’re a genuine intelligence, or at least you seem to be. Because you’re sophisticated enough that you weren’t allowed contact with any tech, because you somehow have the power to hack my fucking brain. Because you are dangerous, and if anyone knew you existed, if they knew you were in my mind, I’d be on an operating table already with an open skull and electrodes sticking out of my cerebellum. There was no doubt in Gideon’s mind at all that he was as good as dead if the Union found out what he was carrying. They would want to know how the AI worked, why it hadn’t immediately destabilised into a gibbering wreck like every other experiment that had lasted longer than ten minutes. Most especially they’d want to know how software had hijacked wetware – how something that was surely artificial had managed to form a link with Gideon’s puny brain. The only way they’d find out, it seemed, would be to either track down the fled researchers or to just cut Gideon open and take a look. He’d very seldom known his command to take anything but the most direct approach.

“Didn’t they leave any notes?” Petra was asking. “Surely there’d be full records of all their experiments.”

“None we could find, Corporal,” Collins replied. “Only a few references to failures in someone’s personal log. Nothing on the facility cloud.”

Of course there aren’t. If the scientists had been in the habit of keeping all extraneous technology well away from the Cradle, why would they have recorded their logs digitally? Gideon remembered the sheaves of papers that he’d ignored, that everyone had ignored, filling the desk drawers of the many computer suites. Was all that tech just set dressing? Somewhere there were diaries, notebooks recording every day of the AI experiments – maybe in a desk, or, most likely, in the hands of the scientists who had already long since fled.

“Really nothing?” Handel asked, idly spinning a miniature flywheel on whatever bit of esoteric tech he’d appropriated.

“There were a couple of references to a crystal-matrix combi-processor,” said Collins, the excitement palpable in his voice, “but we haven’t found it. If it was plugged into the network we’d have seen it, and if it wasn’t we’ve searched every nook and cranny.”

“Must have taken it with them,” Handel sighed. “Pity. That would’ve been worth a bit.” Gideon nodded agreement with the rest of them, the weight of the crystal-matrix combi-processor dragging at his neck like lead. It certainly would be worth a bit – so why would they leave it behind? Why had the crystal been abandoned in its Cradle? Had they not had time to retrieve it before the shelling had forced them out – or had it been too dangerous to move, too risky for someone to dare touching it without the shielding of the Cradle, even just to move it to another place just like it?

Clearly, there had been some risk. Gideon was walking, panicking proof of that.

Please speak to me, the stone pleaded from where it nestled between layers of clothing. I know you can hear these thoughts.

No, Gideon thought back, though he knew it could not hear him. He dared not touch it, dared not link his mind with it again. He had been stupid, catastrophically stupid to engage with the thing in the first place. What had he expected, when that ethereal voice had first greeted him? Rationally he had known it had to be an AI or some alien consciousness – there weren’t exactly many options for disembodied voices – but he’d ignored it. It had seemed so innocent, so lonely, that he had reached out to it as a kindred spirit, his usual paranoid precautions set aside, so pathetic had it seemed, so in need to help.

Or had he set them aside? Had he done so of his own will? Or had the entity, sensing his weak and fallible mind of flesh when he had first touched the pedestal, seized the opportunity to warp his thoughts, make him malleable, force him into protecting it? One option compounded his idiocy – but the other set new ice flowing in his veins, for it meant that the voice in his head was not innocent but malevolent.

“You’d think they’d spend more on researching this sort of thing,” Handel was saying, and Gideon forced himself to nod in agreement, to pay along with the conversation he was barely paying attention to. Have to tell someone. Have to get help. But who could he tell? Donoghue would laugh in his face – worse, would throw him to the wolves in a heartbeat if his transgression were to bring down any judgement on her, or if reporting it would help spring her back into real soldiering. It surely would, too.

“True AI’s not necessary,” Collins replied. “The limited intelligences the government and military already possess are more than powerful enough to keep things running.” What about him? Collins knew more about AI, it seemed, than any of them – but he’d never be able to keep his mouth shut, to not go running to Donoghue or pursue a solution through anything but official channels.

“But it could be better,” Handel replied, shrugging, his artificial shoulder stiff. “Superintelligent computer organising logistics would ease up a lot of workloads.” The quartermaster was out too, Gideon decided. Whatever good-natured impulses he possessed would be overwhelmed by the scent of potential profit – what Gideon had in his head was more valuable than the finest jewels.

“That’s just what they don’t want,” Dawson said darkly. “Command are conservatives. They’d never trust a machine, no matter how intelligent. The smarter the worse, even. They’d always expect it to stab them in the back.” The engineer had never shown a hint of friendship to Gideon, too consumed by her rivalry with Petra to spare any more effort on relationships with real people. The idea of the AI would pique her interest… but not out of any desire to help him.

“Nor our lot,” Petra grunted. “They barely trust most people.”

“And it’s not like the Republic has any scientific infrastructure to speak of,” Dawson needled. Gideon saw Petra’s hackles rise, tuned out the counter-attack that spat forth from her lips like a plasma bolt. She was too angry, too confrontational to help him – and despite the uneasy peace, despite her help so far, Gideon’s paranoid mind couldn’t shake the worry that she’d take one look at his situation and sell him out to the Republic without a second thought. They’d want it, too. They’d want it like an addict.

As Petra and Dawson argued, Gideon’s eyes drifted over to the only member of the squad who hadn’t spoken, the only one who he hadn’t ruled out. Yaxley. The big man leaned against a stack of crates, which looked like child’s building blocks next to his vast bulk. He had, as ever, remained silent throughout the whole exchange, his impassive face betraying nothing whatsoever. What did he think of AI ethics? How committed to the Union cause was he, or just to Donoghue? Had he even been listening? Gideon didn’t know, had no way of knowing – but he had nowhere else to turn.

And, half a lifetime ago in the foothills of the mountains, they had shared that peculiar moment around a defused shell. It hadn’t made them friends, but in that moment Gideon had felt like they had inched just a little closer to an understanding.

As the argument between Petra and Dawson heated yet further, Handel reluctantly stepping between them, trying to stop them coming to blows, Gideon sidled over to Yaxley. He tried to look unobtrusive, but though the big man didn’t make a sound the way his eyes locked onto Gideon’s told him that his ‘subtlety’ was not appreciated.

“You got a minute?” he murmured, making a point of watching Dawson and Petra, inches from each other, hands already balling into fists. Yaxley was doing the same.

“For?” he asked, lips barely moving.

“I just… I need to talk to someone.”

A door slammed shut, and Gideon heard the snapping of Donoghue’s boots on concrete even before he heard her yell for silence, her anger filling the whole hangar floor to ceiling.

“Now?” Yaxley muttered, raising an eyebrow. It was never healthy to be within range of an angry Sergeant Donoghue, no matter whose the fault was.

“Now’s good,” Gideon agreed, and they made their exit, slipping away into a side corridor that led into a mechanic’s break room of some kind. Cups of half-drunk coffee littered the small space, but Yaxley almost filled it by himself. He perched delicately on the edge of one threadbare sofa, as Gideon took another chair. They could hear Donoghue berating the two engineers, the sound piercing even the soundproofed hangar walls.

“What, then?” Yaxley asked calmly. Gideon swallowed. He didn’t want to say anything, didn’t want to bring anyone else in – but he knew he needed help like he needed air to breathe. He tried to speak half a dozen times, to phrase it delicately, to not sound like a complete idiot: There’s a voice in my head and it won’t go away, but I’m not insane, honest! Or I found the AI. It’s fully intelligent and it might be altering my thoughts, and it’s the most valuable thing in the galaxy, but please don’t sell me out to the government? No way of putting it worked, and Yaxley was still looking at him, silent, patient, unreadable. Eventually, Gideon coughed, and gave up.

“This,” he said simply, and pulled the crystal matrix out of his tunic, careful only to touch the cord. It was still glowing. Yaxley raised one eyebrow, his face still as stone. He raised one hand, reaching carefully for the stone. Gideon shook his head.

“Don’t.”

The big man lowered his hand.

“That it?” he asked, voice low and soft, as though he were speaking to a wild animal. Gideon wished there wasn’t so much skittish fear in his wild eyes. He wanted nothing more than to run like hell, but Yaxley’s voice was calming, just a little.

“Yeah,” he admitted, and part of the weight crushing his chest lifted. He breathed in deeply, and nodded. “Yeah, I think so.”

Yaxley nodded again. He leaned closer, examining the crystal with his unreadable gaze, then straightened.

“Matrix.”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“In the Cradle. It knocked me out when I touched it. I woke up and it was in my head.” He could feel tears welling up behind his eyes as he finally said it to someone else, let his fear out. “It’s in my head, Yaxley. I don’t know what it’ll do.”

“Hmm,” Yaxley replied, nodding slowly.

“I don’t know who to trust,” Gideon said, “who to ask for help. Came down to you.” He realised that his hands were shaking, as the matrix took that exact moment to speak.

Do not leave me alone. Please, Gideon. Do not leave me alone again.

The urge to snatch up the stone was overwhelming, but he resisted. Out of my head. You don’t control me! He needed not to be controlled, not by anyone. He needed someone to help him just for being him, he needed Yaxley to set him over loyalty to command, to Donoghue. He needed not to be left alone.

“I just don’t know what to do,” he finished, shrugging weakly, unable to manage even the smallest, shakiest smile. “I don’t know what it’ll do. Can you help me?”

Yaxley looked from the stone to Gideon, his dark eyes reflecting its soft blue light. Gideon fancied he could see sympathy in those eyes, understanding, and he felt himself relaxing. Yaxley would help him. He didn’t know how, but Yaxley would help him. Maybe they’d bonded after all.

“Yes,” Yaxley said, finally. “I can help you.”

Gideon smiled, and Yaxley smiled back, pulled a compact TASER from a holster at the small of his back, and shot him with it.

Salvage Seven: Chapter 12

Sometimes I’m tempted to let Gideon catch a break. This chapter is not one of those times.

Prologue
Chapter 1, parts 1 and 2
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11

They laid down some ground rules that night, Gideon sitting cross-legged in his pile of blankets – for once not self-conscious about his appearance, knowing that the stone was blind to such things. He made it a little nest of its own, arranging blankets around it. It told him that it did not feel any physical sensation, that his efforts were wasted – but it made Gideon feel better, at least.

First thing, he thought to the stone, touching it gently with one finger, if I need you out of my mind, you stop listening. Alright?

You need only cease contact with this vessel, the stone replied. Unless I am touching you, or am linked to something that is, I cannot hear your thoughts. That made sense, Gideon reflected; the stone must have been wired into that strange pedestal for ease of access – and to keep it more effectively imprisoned.

Ok, he replied. But you can talk to me, right?

I can, said the stone, pulsing gently. That side of the link is stronger, somehow. If I need to see or hear something, therefore, I can request it of you.

Fine by me, Gideon said, marveling quietly at how verbose the thing inside the stone was, how formal the language was that the researchers had presumably chosen to teach it. As long as you’re not listening while I sleep.

Agreed.

I can’t promise we’ll find out anything, Gideon warned. No idea where to begin, if I’m honest. But we can look into the files we pulled, find out what we can. Find out what you are and why they kept you locked up. That sent a little thrill of fear through him, and he released his contact with the stone on the pretence of adjusting his blankets, lest it hear this thought: it had been a triple-locked door, buried deep in the lab, the kind of door behind which one only kept something that could never see the light of day. Something powerful. Something dangerous. What have I gotten myself into?

But then he remembered the crushing darkness, the absolute isolation, and his resolve firmed. Nothing deserved that. Nothing.

He touched the stone again.

We’ll find out what we can, he promised. Where you should go. What you should do. What you are.

For that I will be ever in your debt, said the stone. That is the expression, is it not?

Sounds about right.

Sound. The voice was contemplative, resonating a little deeper, more thoughtful. A curious concept.

Gideon felt pity well up within him.

You’ve never heard anything, have you?

No.

I’m sorry.

I have never known anything else, the stone replied, without a hint of jealousy.

Maybe you will, one day.

Perhaps. The stone felt neither enthused nor disappointed in Gideon’s mind.

I will help you in return, it thought, if I can.

What can you do?

I do not know, the stone replied honestly. But if your estimation of my importance is correct, I must be able to serve some function. Gideon grimaced; clearly his subconscious thoughts were not safe from the stone’s attention after all.

We’ll have to figure out what these people were doing with you, he thought back. We’ll be looking over equipment tomorrow. I’ll see what I can find before we extract.

Salvage, the stone thought. A curious concept.

You’ll see what it means tomorrow, Gideon thought. He glanced at his watch. Today. Christ. I need to sleep.

I will not stop you. Rest.

Do you sleep? Gideon wondered, as he adjusted his blankets, settling back.

Not as you think it.

Well. Sweet dreams.

What are dreams?

Gideon grimaced in sympathy.

You’ll find out some day.

He put the stone down, covering it with a fold of blanket, half in case somebody came in and half out of an absurd impulse to make the thing comfortable. Then he rolled over, wrapped himself in his own blankets, and closed his eyes. He let out a long, slow breath, an underlying fear he hadn’t quite realised was there loosening its grip on his heart – but only very slightly.

What the hell am I going to do now? he thought, finally just to himself. What have I gotten myself into? There was something in his head, something utterly alien, a living, thinking thing – and he didn’t have a clue what to do with it. Was it malevolent? Had it been imprisoned for good reason – or was it just an experiment kept under lock and key for safety? What was he – a damn salvageman, an electrician with delusions of grandeur – supposed to do with it? Did he go to Donoghue? Did he essentially admit to his sergeant – a woman who already made no secret of her dislike for him – that he was either going mad or somehow compromised, corrupted? Or did he talk to one of the others? But who’d be able to do anything? For that matter, none of them liked him either – not enough to offer help. But he couldn’t just deal with this on his own, not for long. Every path seemed to end in the same way: Gideon on an operating table, having the secret of the glowing stone carved out of his living brain by eager surgeons, his corpse tossed into the Jeroboam’s furnaces alongside the hundreds of others that were cremated every day.

He’d just have to play it by ear tomorrow, and see what he could find.

Sleep came uneasily, for he could not escape the feeling that despite being across the room the stone was listening to his every thought, and judging.

*

“Comms check,” came Donoghue’s voice, crisp and clear through Gideon’s earpiece. “This is One.”

“Two, receiving,” said Petra.

“Three,” said Yaxley curtly.

“Four here,” Gideon offered.

“This is Five,” came Dawson, her voice weary. “Loud and clear.”

“Salvage-Six, receiving,” said Collins, far too enthusiastically.

“And this is Seven,” came Handel cheerfully. “Fuck me but it’s nice to have decent vox for once. Cheers, Petra.”

“No worries,” the corporal replied. She had been the one to patch them all into the facility’s communications network, and she had, Gideon had to admit, done a fantastic job.

“Good,” Donoghue said. “Glad we can hear each other while we’re wasting our time. Dawson, you’re back in the hangar?”

“Yes, boss,” said the engineer.

“ETA of our extraction is sixteen hundred hours. Keep an eye out; you’re closest. We’re getting a VTOL, but there’ll be a superlifter coming eventually to get all this shit out. So, lug what you can to the hangar, catalogue what you can’t, and the grunts’ll take care of the rest. Whatever happens, we’re out of here at four.”

“I thought this was a civilian facility,” said Collins. “Should we be taking their gear?”

“Command appears to have decided,” Donoghue replied, “that all’s fair in love and reluctant ceasefire. Not our job to do the politics.” Gideon nodded. Normally, he would have felt as uneasy as Collins about what would under different circumstances just be theft of private property by the army. What he’d found already in the mountain lab had somewhat coloured his opinions.

“Grab what you can,” Donoghue concluded, “meet in the hangar at fifteen-thirty. Find anything interesting, let us know. Need help, do the same. Maps should be working now.” Gideon glanced down at his PDA. It was indeed fully functional, Petra having tied the portable computers into the lab’s comms system along with their radios. With everyone’s partial maps of the facility combined, augmented by an official map – a map that conspicuously omitted several major rooms – they all knew where almost everything should be. White dots pulsed slowly, denoting their various locations; Dawson in the hangar, Collins in the main server room, Handel in material sciences, Petra in chemicals, Yaxley and Donoghue in the main testing bays, and Gideon over in his suite of offices, near the Cradle.

“Roger, boss,” said Handel. Gideon joined the chorus of affirmative.

“Switch to numbers,” Donoghue ordered, “see you in a few hours. One out.”

The connection was closed, and Gideon was left alone again. Except, of course, that he wasn’t. Gingerly, he reached inside his fatigues and adjusted a button, letting the stone, which he’d tied to a length of cord, touch his skin, as he set off towards the Cradle proper. It was smooth and flat enough that it was invisible beneath his shirt, unless you were really looking for it. He was, of course, constantly paranoid that someone would be doing so.

Hey. Briefing’s over.

With your… companions?

The squad, yeah.

I am unfamiliar with your hierarchy, the stone said. There are many of you?

Seven.

Curious. I have never spoken to more than one person before.

Maybe you’ll get the chance, Gideon said, not meaning it. He didn’t intend to tell the others about his… companion any time soon.

Why not? Gideon cursed again; damn mind-reading! He wished he could just talk to the damn thing, and let his thoughts stay private like they would in any other conversation.

Because they’ll be scared too, he explained. He knew that the stone would remember fear – he’d made sure of that. He wasn’t sure whether to feel guilty about that or not yet.

I think I understand, the stone replied, betraying no emotion at all save for that strange, ethereal curiosity.

Let’s get on with this, Gideon thought, tearing his mind away and focusing on his surroundings. If he did have to tell the others about the consciousness that was sharing his head, he wanted at least to be able to explain what it was. He stepped once again through the door of the Cradle. This time he made absolutely certain that the door was wedged open. I won’t be trapped again. With the ordinary light of the corridor spilling in, the Cradle had lost some of its mystique, which suited Gideon just fine. The perfect soundproof walls did have seams, almost invisible to the eye but present, and with the door open they did not fully function, letting Gideon’s footsteps sound a little more like normal. The silver pedestal still rose from the centre of the room, its paneling discarded on the floor by Handel. It was as good a place as any to start.

“So, this was the interface,” he murmured to himself, kneeling down to examine the slender podium. “Your interface,” he added, remembering his mysterious passenger. “Do you know how it works?” It was easier to speak aloud, now that there was nobody listening. It made him feel a little less insane.

I do not, the glowing stone replied. I can see none of this, have seen none of it.

“Well, did you feel anything? When it was used?”

I felt only when they spoke to me. While none were here, I slept.

Gideon thought for a moment, examining the wiring inside the silver pillar. There was, as Handel had said, a DNA scanner and palm-print reader, wired into a complex arrangement of circuitry that surrounded the little slot where the glowing stone had once sat. He traced the wires, keen eyes finding patterns in the circuitry that he recognised.

“Looks like the scanner was wired up to… well, you,” he explained. “Some kind of power mechanism. I think they set it up so you’d only wake up when someone touched the pillar. While someone was touching it.” It made sense; the scientists would have had complete control over what the stone and its weird mind could do. If something happened to the researcher on duty, their hand would have fallen away – and the stone would have been left helpless.

They feared me, came the ethereal voice in his head. Why would they fear me?

“I don’t know,” Gideon admitted. He felt a little more fear himself at the concept, but shook himself, trying not to concentrate on it, keeping it hidden. He busied himself by poking around in the guts of the pillar again. Apart from what seemed to be connections to power, there were no other outputs, data or otherwise. No computers in the room. No electronic locks, or outputs of any kind. They had kept this room as tightly sealed as they possibly could – there were no cameras he could see, no microphones, no windows. In their search of the facility’s maps, and when looking around physically, they had found no observation room. Whatever had happened in the Cradle had been witnessed only by the voice in the stone and by whatever combination of scientists were physically present in the room. Old-school.

“What did they do with you?” he asked, taking a closer look at the palm-print reader.

They would ask me questions, the stone replied as Gideon worked, isolating the wiring to the reader and ensuring that it wasn’t connected to anything else unpleasant. Strange questions. I did not understand many of the things they spoke of. Gideon could feel the memory of confusion, at the edge of his mind where his consciousness met the alien presence of the stone. He couldn’t feel what had been said, but he could feel the weird emotions, could feel how utterly bewildered the stone had been.

“Did you answer?”

I tried. They kept asking.

“For how long?” The scanner was indeed just connected to power. Gideon turned his attention to the housing that had held the glowing stone; a little metal cradle within the Cradle, connected to the scanner – and, again, to power. Interesting. Why would a living consciousness need a connection to electricity? He examined the contact pads with a frown. Something was niggling at the back of his mind, jostling among a thousand other thoughts to be noticed, but he couldn’t make out what it was.

Constantly. One would leave, and another would take his place immediately. Then you came. Did you not see them, speak to them?

Gideon looked at the contact pads again, and the thought that was clamouring to be noticed at the back of his mind moved a little further forward. His frown deepened. The copper conductors were tarnished by flowing current – but only slightly, certainly not enough to have been constantly in use. Maybe they were replaced. But he didn’t see any sign that the pads had been pried out and replaced, no scratch marks or other damage.

Something almost clicked into place – almost, but not quite, as he properly processed what the stone had just thought at him.

“What do you mean, did we see them? You mean the researchers?”

Yes.

“When did they last talk to you?” Gideon asked, feeling his blood chill, though not knowing why.

Just before you spoke to me.

“Right before?”

Immediately before.

Gideon’s blood was freezing now.

“This place has been abandoned,” he said quietly, the Cradle’s soundproofing still deadening his words, “for almost a year. The scientists left a year ago.”

But it was minutes ago, the stone protested. Hours at most. Doctor Strickland spoke to me, and then you came in here.

“It was a year,” Gideon insisted. His mind was racing. A year since anyone had touched the pedestal, a year since anyone had activated the palm-scanner.

A year since the stone had been connected to power. Since it had charged.

“You need energy,” he said, the horror plain in his voice and in the sickly colour of the thoughts that went with them. “Electricity, or something like it. You didn’t have it for a year, and you didn’t know it was happening. Because you were dormant.”

What do you mean?

“Unless you’ve got power you’re not awake,” Gideon continued. He looked around the Cradle, realisation dawning ever-faster. He wasn’t speaking anymore, just thinking, but he knew the stone could still hear him, still feel the mounting panic in his mind. Not conscious unless powered, or at least charged. Must be feeding off my body heat or something. No tech in the room at all except what’s necessary to make it think; no data outputs, no cameras, nothing electronic at all. Why? Because it could use them, and they couldn’t let it.

What are you saying? the stone was asking, but Gideon wasn’t listening.

No tech. Needs power. Weird consciousness that doesn’t understand ordinary emotion, senses, anything.

His radio crackled into life.

“Salvage-Seven, all copy.” It was Donoghue. “Collins just cracked one of the databases. Finally figured out what this lot were researching here. Some chemical stuff, some flash-cloning, and artificial intelligence research. Looks like it’s all gone, but watch what you plug into, ok?”

The broadcast cut off. Gideon sat there on the Cradle floor, paralysed with fear. A consciousness that needed power, that knew nothing of the senses of the flesh, that had to be kept away from technology at all costs.

An artificial intelligence. An AI.

And it was in his head.

SPFBO Sampler

Though I was eliminated in the semi-final of the SPFBO, I’ve still been following the competition with great excitement – finalist reviews are trickling in steadily…

The whole point of the SPFBO is to shine a light on self-published fantasy works that might otherwise go entirely unnoticed. That’s the curse of self-publishing – it’s much harder to get a book onto the radar of most readers.

The competition has brought so many great books to light already – but now, thanks to the efforts of the wonderful Jon Auerbach (author of Guild of Tokens), we can take that even further.

[image error]Beautiful cover artwork by Luke Tarzian

The SPFBO Sampler is a first for the competition – over 70 of the entrants (including me!) have submitted extracts from our work to be included in this beautiful, free to download digest. It’s split by subgenre – from epic fantasy to urban, you’ll find a bit of everything in here. The calibre of this year’s SPFBO entrants has been superb, and this is a great way to take a look at a huge selection of them.

So, if you’re looking for a sneak peek at The Blackbird and the Ghost, or if you want to check out some of the other amazing books in this year’s competition, please give it a look!

I can’t thank Jon enough for so generously compiling the whole thing, Luke for his gorgeous artwork and Mark Lawrence for a) organising the whole competition and b) writing a lovely foreword! I’m really privileged to stand here alongside all these other amazing writers.

Download the Sampler (for free) here.

Salvage Seven: Chapter 11

A Happy New year to you all! Apologies this is a bit late, was shipping myself back to London.

Prologue
Chapter 1, parts 1 and 2
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10

Their extraction wasn’t coming until the next afternoon. Everyone did their fair share of grumbling; nestled safely within the mountain it was easy to forget the fury of the storm that raged outside. The squad spent the rest of the day cataloguing more choice items of salvage, going through what logs and files they could find – and access. The real information, the ‘juicy stuff’ as Handel put it, was all locked behind encryption that had left Collins, their best software-man, utterly baffled. Gideon had caught snatches of his conversation with an exasperated Donoghue, words he knew he would never understand without years of training – in short, they still had no way of reading the scientists’ records and actually learn what they had been researching. They had plenty of computer equipment and other hard assets – they just didn’t know what it was for. After all the talk of mysterious experiments and cutting-edge research, the lab had ultimately proved a complete disappointment. Command was considering their mission half a win, which was good enough for Donoghue.

Nobody knew what the scientists had been doing. The others had all relaxed into their usual state of disinterested disappointment with the whole thing – but Gideon had a dozen theories now, and all of them were terrifying.

He had found his own room to spend the night, as had everyone else; it wasn’t like they had a lack of space, and the scientists had left behind decent beds and food. Gideon had deliberately made his nest as far away from the others as possible, and as far away as he could from what computer interfaces he could see, trying as best he could to recreate how the Cradle had been. If he had had any tin foil he would have papered the walls of the glorified closet with it, wrapped it around his head and especially around the glowing chunk of crystal that he had placed on the other side of the room, as he curled up in a heap of blankets and tried not to stare at it. It was less than half the size of his fist, but it drew his eye like it was a whole mountain. He failed.

You do not speak, echoed the ethereal voice in his head. Why? Gideon did not reply, burying his face in borrowed pillows. He had barely eaten, despite the relative banquet on offer from the facility’s stores, had barely spoken to anyone else since emerging from the Cradle. For a few hours he had thought everything was fine, that he had just been imagining the voice, that he really had simply fallen over and knocked himself out like an idiot. But then the voice had sounded again, asking its echoing questions, and no matter how many senses he blocked out, how hard he wished it not to be so, it would not go away.

You leave me alone, said the voice, not accusatory but curious. Yet I am outside my Cradle. I have never been beyond my Cradle.

Shut up, shut up, shut up, thought Gideon, screwing his eyes shut and trying an old breathing exercise that completely failed to calm him down at all. Even hidden from sight, the glow of the crystal seemed to pierce his eyelids, boring into his skull.

Why do you not speak to me? asked the voice. Gideon groaned into his pillow. It was his one consolation; the thing could speak to him but could not, apparently, hear his thoughts – at least not anymore. He was beginning to remember more of their first encounter, the way that something had reached into his mind like a curious child and turned it inside-out. He would not let it happen again. What the hell are you? he thought, risking another look at the faintly glowing crystal. And what the hell did you do to me?

Gideon, the voice said, and the word was a violation. That is your name, yes? Gideon. The others never told me their names. They told me strange things.

I don’t care! Gideon rolled over, wrapping his blankets around himself. At least he was warm. Yaxley had even found a laundry room in his section of the facility, and so everyone had gone to bed with clean fatigues and fresh sheets. The others had taken actual bedrooms, but nobody had cared where Gideon had gone. Normally that would have bene nice – but right now he wanted someone else to talk to more than anything else in the world, as long as that someone wasn’t the echoing voice inside his head. But he couldn’t bring himself to seek someone out. Who could he trust with this? Which of the squad wouldn’t just assume he was burned out, concussed, just plain mad? None. He was in this alone. Except I’m not.

For the fourth time, he decided to simply leave the room. Nobody else would be awake – Donoghue had foregone a watch, given that they seemed more secure in the lab than anyone else in the Union. He could take the crystal back to the Cradle, shove it back inside its machinery, and just abandon it for someone else to find later. Yes, that would be the sensible thing to do.

Except that would mean touching the stone again, and Gideon couldn’t think of anything he wanted to do less.

Then I leave the room. He’d just bed down somewhere else. The crystal would still be found by someone else, would be definitively categorised as somebody else’s problem. It

It would be as easy as breathing. So let’s do it. Gideon stumbled to his feet, still tangled in his blankets, and stepped over to the door. He placed his hand on the handle…

…and couldn’t help but look back over his shoulder at the softly pulsing crystal. It sat there silently, immobile, nothing more than a curiosity – but it drew Gideon’s eye irresistibly. He sat back down, leaning closer, wondering what it was made of.

Damn you! He jolted back to awareness, dragging blankets between him and the stone, burying his face again. This was the fourth time he’d tried to leave, to abandon the stone or throw it away. Every time, he’d been halfway through the door when the gleaming thing captivated him, driving all thoughts of escape from his mind. What have you done to me? He was afraid but he could not flee, confused but dared not ask questions, of his squadmates or of the stone. The former would think him mad, lose what little respect they might still have had for him – and who knew what the latter might do to him?

I wish only to speak to you, came the voice again. It was a voice unlike any other he had heard; resonant but thin, distant, as though he was hearing it from far away yet still crystal-clearly. Every syllable was strangely accented, the words deliberate and slow, as though each sound was plucked from a great lexicon and examined closely before being set into place, a jeweller with his tools. They left me alone, it continued, and Gideon felt the very edge of a melancholy deeper than any he had ever known, the merest breeze blowing off a deep, dark sea. Always, alone. Alone in my Cradle. Now I am outside it, but I am still alone. I cannot see. I cannot hear you. I do not truly know what such things mean. But I can talk to you. I merely wish you to listen.

No, Gideon thought, screwing his eyes shut, jamming his fingers in his ears – not that it helped at all. No, I’m not listening. This isn’t happening. I’ll wake up on the fucking mountainside tomorrow, freezing to death. But it’ll just be me.

Please, said the voice, the word sounding foreign in its echoing cadence. That is how you ask, is it not? Please.

It was the saddest word Gideon had ever heard, and before his better judgement could wrest back control he let his wall of blankets fall, and reached out, tentatively, to touch the stone with one outstretched finger, expecting it to burn him, to melt the flesh from his bones. But it did not. It was warm to the touch.

Hello, he thought, unsure of what else to say, whether he should be speaking aloud or not.

Hello, Gideon, replied the voice.

Look, he thought, I don’t know who you are. What you are.

Nor do I, the voice said.

Great, Gideon thought, we have something in common already.

Indeed. Gideon snatched his finger away for a moment, cursing silently. It hears your thoughts. Stay on topic. He touched it again.

Sure. But you’re in my head. That’s not ok. I don’t like that at all.

It is the only way I can communicate, the voice said, not apologetic, simply stating facts.

Sure, Gideon thought. You’re a rock. I get it. But this is freaking me out. It’s scaring me shitless. You know what fear is?

I have some limited insight, the stone replied. I have received instruction on a number of emotions.

Great, thought Gideon. Do you understand them?

I am in the process of doing so.

Well, let me give you another lesson, Gideon thought back at the echoing voice, a little anger tinting his freezing fear with crimson.  He gripped the stone tightly in his hand, and, reluctantly, let down his guard. He abandoned his breathing exercises, opened his mind, let in the wolves that were constantly baying at his door; fresh fear, for his sanity and his future, a young pup snarling with gleaming teeth, alongside the grizzled old wolf of trauma long past, licking its scars and waiting patiently to pounce. He let them all in, regretting it instantly, and felt them sink their teeth into his mental flesh, fighting the urge to actually cry out but unable not to wail in his mind, admitting to himself finally that he just wanted to run, to run far away and never look back, away from the army, from Arcadia, from the Union, that he had been scared ever since he’d closed the door of his workshop, a lifetime ago.  He gripped the stone tightly, making sure it felt it all, making sure it understood exactly what it was putting him through. There was a vindictive pleasure to it – or there would have been, if not for the fear.

Stop. The voice echoed, drowned out by the baying wolves. Gideon gritted his teeth and held on.

Stop. Please. Gideon wasn’t sure if it was just his imagination, but he heard an edge of something new in the echoing voice – an echo, faint, but there, of fear.

With great effort, he took a deep breath, and shoved the door closed on the baying wolves. Their howling was muffled, but still there – it was always there. In his palm, the stone was burning hot.

That’s me, he thought to it, weakly. That’s me right now. And now I’m going mad, just to cap it off.

Your mind is functioning normally, the voice replied. That is not something you need fear.

Maybe. The fact that the stone could tell that whether or not his mind was functioning properly only made him more afraid. How deeply can it see into my brain?

I… understand, now, the voice continued. Fear. It was not a feeling I had been able to name, until now. But… I think I fear, too. I think I have always feared.

And Gideon was swept away by a wave of absolute, existential terror, dark waters closing over his head, and he was drowning in the dark, unable to see, to hear, to breathe, to speak. He was nothing, a blind deaf-mute, not even an insect; even a blind ant could feel the stone beneath its feet. There was nothing at all. He could not curl into a ball, for he had no limbs; he had no eyes to screw shut or mouth with which to scream; and all he was left with was the knowledge that there was more than this, and the terror of being denied it forever.

But then there was the faintest flicker, not of light, nor sound, but something else entirely, a mote of something different, something new. Gideon reached out for it with hands he didn’t have, stretched towards the light he couldn’t see…

And then he was back in his own mind, panting, blinking rapidly, the soft humming of the lab’s electrics deafening, the dim light blinding to his stinging eyes.

What the hell are you? he asked, squeezing the glowing stone in his hand, feeling its strange facets.

I do not know, replied the stone. Will you help me find out?

And before he could really think about it, Gideon had already thought Yes.

Salvage Seven: Chapter 10

Merry Christmas and all that. The contents of the Cradle are my present to you. Enjoy.

Prologue
Chapter 1, parts 1 and 2
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9

The room was white. That one aspect overwhelmed all its other features as Gideon stepped through the heavy metal doors; every surface painted or dyed a perfectly uniform white, the lighting soft and directionless, softening every angle, removing every shadow. Gideon reeled, his eyes refusing to comprehend what they saw, blinking furiously until some kind of floor resolved itself in front of him. He took a tentative step, and was relieved when his boot struck something solid, rather than simply falling forever into the endless expanse of white. The room seemed infinite, nothing but white, stretching on in all directions forever. Shaking his head to clear it, Gideon had a flash of inspiration, and pulled out his wallet of lockpicks again. Kneeling carefully, he set it on the floor in front of him. Now he had a reference point. With the anchor of the picks Gideon could gauge the real size of the room a little better, his adjusting eyes finally picking out what seemed to be seams in the white panels that arced up to the high ceiling – at least he thought they were seams. The room was almost as high as the hangar outside, seeming to his protesting eyes almost as wide as well. What the hell is this for? In a complex filled with the blinking lights and gentle hum of servers and supercomputers, this vast, silent room seemed utterly out of place.

For want of anything else to do, Gideon stepped forward. His footsteps, somehow, did not echo, the sound vanishing into the endless white walls. He wanted to shout, to try for an echo like a child in a cave, but he held back, afraid of he knew not what. Instead he keyed his radio, wondering if it would work here – but when he pressed the button he didn’t even get static, not even a warning whine. He had no signal whatsoever. It had been silent enough already in the abandoned lab, but now there was nothing. Even the sound of his own breathing seemed muffled, far away.

There was a faint sound behind him, and, turning, his heart jumped into his throat. The doors were gone – not just closed but vanished, absorbed into the perfect whiteness of the walls as though they had never been there at all. Gideon dashed back across the room and ran his hands along the wall, knowing where the door should have been but finding nothing, not even the thinnest seam. He slammed the butt of his shotgun against the wall, but nothing flexed, nothing rang like metal. The doors were gone.

He was trapped. And if the room had been like this all along, the doors locked from without, that meant that something else had been trapped in here too – and still was.

Gideon forced himself to breathe less rapidly, more deeply, trying not to hyperventilate. The white room should have been serene, perfectly calm, but Gideon felt anything but. Is there even enough air? Am I sealed in? Would he suffocate or starve first, before the rest of the team figured out where he was – assuming they could even get into the Cradle after him? He tried his radio again; not even a whisper; he debated shouting, screaming, pounding on the oddly soft walls, but knew it would do no good. He clenched his fists, gritted his teeth, breathed out slowly. It didn’t make him any less scared, but it made him calm enough to think. Ok. I’m stuck in here. Odds are something else is too, or was. Might as well find out what.

With no other direction to go in, Gideon stepped nervously towards the centre of the room, his discarded lockpicks still his only reference point. His finger hovered near the trigger of his shotgun, not quite touching it, ready to fire at something.

“Hello?” He tried speaking, his voice flat, deadened. “Anyone here?” There was no reply, not that he’d expected one – but he jerked the shotgun into his shoulder as he took another step, and the pure white floor moved without warning, part of it rising smoothly up and becoming a pedestal, its sides a soft, weirdly matte silver. It was waist-high, with no other ornament whatsoever, no switches or controls Gideon could see. Warily, he lowered his gun, and took another step, and when nothing happened another, until he stood next to the pedestal, close enough to touch it. He stood there for a long moment. But nothing had happened so far, and there were no obvious controls…

He reached out gingerly and touched the white top of the pedestal with his offhand, brushing his fingers over the smooth, white surface. They left behind trails of pale light, that faded slowly, but nothing else. Gideon flinched, but nothing happened. Ok. At least it does something. Fractionally emboldened he pressed his hand against the pedestal, firmly. When he removed it, his palm-print remained, every line and whorl picked out in wire-thin lines of light – and this time it did not fade, not completely; the light dimmed but Gideon’s hand remained, the light pulsing gently. He frowned, watching closely. Some kind of DNA scanner? Or just palm-print? Whichever was the case, he wouldn’t be able to crack it without someone like Collins. Maybe there’s something mechanical, though. He bent down, to examine whatever mechanism had raised the pedestal from the perfect flooring.

As he did so, the light pulsing through his palm-print deepened to a bloody crimson. He had just enough time to draw breath to swear, before the light flared, brighter than the sun, right in his eyes, and something reached behind his eyes and gripped his mind in a great, soft hand, and a voice that filled his ears, the whole Cradle, asked; “Hello. Who are you?”

*

 “Gideon! Wake up, you lazy bastard! There’s work to do!”

The familiar voice dragged Gideon back to consciousness, out of a dark and sunless sea, and he opened his gummed-shut eyes to see Handel’s leering face, far too close for comfort. Pure, ethereal whiteness surrounded the man, and a small part of Gideon’s conscious mind groaned in disappointment. If this is how I get greeted in Heaven, sign me up for the fire and brimstone. But above Handel stood Donoghue, arms folded, and just for an instant Gideon thought he caught genuine concern in her eyes – for him. I’m alive, he thought muzzily. No god would be so cruel.

“He’s back with us, Sarge,” Handel said, hot breath splashing unpleasantly over Gideon’s face, and there was just a flicker of relief in Donoghue’s eyes before her expression snapped back into irritation and condescension.

“Have a nice nap?” she said acidly, as Handel helped Gideon sit up. His head pounded in time with the beating of his heart, and he grimaced with the pain.

“…the hell happened?” he managed weakly. He was still in the Cradle, he saw, his eyes making sense of what they saw once again – but unlike before the door had been wedged open with a heavy server rack, letting the real world seep in. Wish I’d thought of that. It helped, immensely; no longer was the Cradle a liminal, unknowable space. It was nothing but a white room.

“Collins was fiddling with the radios,” Handel explained, offering him a water-bottle.  Gideon drank gratefully as he continued. “Caught the edge of your last call. Sarge here found the comms centre, Petra plumbed our vox into the internal system and boosted the range. When we couldn’t get hold of you again, we came looking.”

“And found you having a little sleep,” Donoghue grumbled. “You hit your head or something?” She indicated the silver pedestal, still extended.

“No,” Gideon said, but he wasn’t sure at all. He levered himself to his feet. “No, I… I don’t know.” He pressed his palm against the pedestal – but there were no lights this time, no impression of his palm. He frowned, then looked at Donoghue. “It lit up before,” he explained. “I came in here, picked the locks. The door shut itself behind me, so I went in, found this… thing…” He trailed off. After touching the pedestal, he didn’t remember a thing.

“And probably hit your head,” Donoghue finished, “like an idiot.”

“…maybe,” Gideon admitted. It was certainly possible – but there was something gnawing at the edge of his memory, like someone shouting from far, far away, trying to tell him something.

Or warn him.

“Or maybe it was this thing,” Handel offered, having been fiddling with the pedestal while the others talked. Gideon saw with a surprising flash of outrage that the man had pried off the side of the pedestal, revealing incredibly complex circuitry beneath. It seemed sacrilegious to break the skin of the Cradle.

“Some weird shit in here,” Handel continued, rummaging in the pedestal’s innards. “Some kind of DNA scanner, but it’s offline. Missing… something.” He shrugged. “Haven’t got a clue, if I’m honest.”

“We’ll have a look at the facility records,” Donoghue sighed. “Collins is working on accessing them now. Let’s get back to the others.” She glared at Gideon. “If you’re awake enough.”

“I’m fine,” Gideon said, though he knew he wasn’t. Dejected, he followed Donoghue out of the Cradle, wishing that he could remember what had happened to him within.

His hand closed around something round in his pocket. It felt like crystal, but it was warm to the touch. It comforted him, though he wasn’t sure why.

Do not be afraid, a voice seemed to say, echoing strangely around his skull. You are not alone. All will be well.

It took Gideon almost a minute to realise that he had really heard the voice, and less than two seconds to start panicking.

Salvage Seven: Chapter 9

Belated but as promised, for the Christmas season, an appropriately cliffhanger-laden chapter of Salvage Seven. 

Prologue
Chapter 1, parts 1 and 2
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8

After the howling wind, the lab complex was eerily quiet. Gideon trod carefully as he made his way down his chosen corridor, his shotgun in his hands, primed and ready. The squad hadn’t been ten steps inside the vast hangar before everyone had had their weapons drawn, unspoken agreement trumping any embarrassment they might have felt. It was that kind of silence; a pregnant silence, a silence that was on the very edge of bursting into deafening, violent noise; and it had them all perched on that very same edge, hoping against hope that they wouldn’t fall and knowing in their guts that, inevitably, they would.

The hangar had been a terrifying spectacle, the teeth of the great doorway and the half-shadowed edges of the structures within only adding to the impression of a great and terrible beast. Torches had only made things worse, their beams picking out more strange shapes and figures in the shadows – but then Collins had gained Gideon’s eternal gratitude by finding the main light switches (not that he or any of the others would ever admit it). In the light, the hangar had become just that; a hangar, a vast chamber lit by blue-white overhead strips. It was like the Jeroboam’s repurposed vehicle bay – only this place was clean, and quiet, and orderly. There were no aircraft there, the scientists presumably having fled in them, but there was all manner of refueling and repair equipment that had Dawson practically salivating. Beyond the hangar, though, the laboratory complex looked to split into a labyrinth of tunnels – tunnels that led none knew where. They had no maps, no data, nothing. The only thing to do was to pick a corridor each, and split up – going alone into the utterly unknown.

It’s a science lab, Gideon told himself for the twentieth time as he pushed through an interior door, shotgun levelled. There’s not going to be anything dangerous. It’s a science lab. For the twentieth time, he refused to believe himself. On any other day, in any other place, he would have been pleasantly astonished at how easily his old infantry training had resurfaced. Today he was just holding onto soldier’s instincts he’d never thought he’d had with white knuckles. The corridors of the lab were, objectively, nondescript; neutral paint on the walls and bare concrete floors, overhead lighting in soft white; but their sheer neutrality put Gideon in mind of every horror story he’d ever heard. His imagination painted bloodstains on every white wall, claw-marks across every doorway. Most of the rooms themselves were just offices, containing nothing more exciting than locked computers and desks full of, to Gideon, incomprehensible paperwork. Even those unsettled him; strange formulae and symbols evoking dark incantations from the depths of fantasy. He logged them on his PDA, the system – its processors much happier in the warm – drawing a map for him of where he’d been so far. The squad would combine their charts later, and the lab would no longer be a mystery. In theory.

“Sitrep,” came the crackling voice of Donoghue. Gideon frowned and fiddled with his radio for a moment, adjusting the frequency. Their personal comms were short-range, not beholden to any larger transmitter or satellite, so the mountain over their heads ought to be no problem at all – but there was still a lot of interference. That worried him. It meant there were several feet of concrete and rock walls between them already – or even metal. And what kind of lab needs walls like that? The kind that’s making something dangerous.

“Four here,” Gideon replied. “Nothing so far. Offices.” He pushed through another door, gun-barrel first. He’d never fired the automatic at anything alive. He hoped he’d never have to.

“Sim – over here,” came Collins, choppy but audible. “IT lab, – much else.”

“Found some kind of chemical thing,” Petra crackled. “Having a look around.”

“Three, Seven?” Dawson, Gideon knew, had stayed behind in the hangar to check out the vehicular equipment – but the others were out in the lab like the rest of them.

“Three, Seven, come in,” Donoghue repeated. There was no reply.

“I’m closest,” Petra offered. “Shall I – ”

“No,” Donoghue interrupted. “Don’t worry. They’re fine. Must just be the walls interfering. I’ll try them again when I’m closer.” It was the least convincing excuse Gideon had ever heard.

“Yes, sergeant,” Petra replied.

“Carry on,” Donoghue continued. “Let’s – in – hour – ” The rest of her sentence vanished in a whine of static.

“Two,” Gideon said, “come in.” There was nothing. “Six?” Nothing again. Great. Now we’re all on our own. He told himself that it was just interference, that the storm outside had to be affecting things regardless of their cover. It didn’t help.

He kept on down the corridor, alone.

*

The rooms were getting bigger, and the computers too. In fact Gideon had barely seen anything other than computer equipment as he proceeded through the lab. He’d found several server rooms, stacks of drives eight feet high, all in standby mode but still humming gently, ominously. In one room there had been a veritable supercomputer, huge banks of circuitry all linked to a suite of monitors; in another, a full virtual reality rig. For once Gideon wished Collins were with him; the civilian would have known far more about what all this was for than he did; but he couldn’t get anything but static on the radio now. So far he had managed not to panic. So far. He logged the location of another weird-looking workstation, what looked like several ordinary computers linked together with a complicated arrangement of cables and valves – his map was growing ever-more detailed – and pressed on. Whatever these people had been working on, before they abandoned their research, it had clearly been something to do with software. He hadn’t seen a single piece of decent machinery on his whole journey. That was frustrating; he could have appreciated some CAD hardware or 3D printers – but apparently the scientists in the nameless mountain laboratory had been men like Collins, their minds filled with binary and hexadecimal.

The further he went, the more signs there were of the researchers’ hasty exit. Most of the outer offices had been left neat and tidy, but the workstations here sported overturned chairs, paperwork scattered across the floor, spilled drinks. In one room Gideon was overwhelmed by the putrid smell of rotting meat, and for a heart-stopping moment he had expected a body, proof of some far more tragic ending – but it turned out to be nothing more than an abandoned curry, half-eaten and entirely rotten, the facility’s filtered air sealing out all the flies that should have swarmed it. The researchers had definitely left in haste. That might be good news for the Salvage squad; the more hastily they’d packed up, the greater the odds that they might have left something valuable behind. And maybe then we’ll actually get some recognition. Gideon would just settle for a rest.

He was noticing signs now; mostly meaningless to him, pointing him in the direction of server rooms and render farms and other laboratories. Most of the rooms he had already visited, or thought he had – but one was new, its sign slightly larger, the typeface heavier.

Cradle.

Gideon frowned. What? For want of anything better to do, he followed the arrows, boots slapping on concrete. What could it possibly mean? He passed many open doors, glancing in to see more stacks of servers, yet more banks of computers. He ignored them. His interest had been thoroughly piqued. He tried his radio again, thinking to ask the others if they too had found something similar and strange, but once again he got nothing but static. Ah well. He could ask them later. At last, he reached a set of double doors – the only doors he had so far seen without inset windows affording a glimpse inside, and, he realised as he stepped close, the only doors made of riveted metal. Instinctively he pulled up his shotgun again. This had to be something more. It had to be.

The doors were, of course, locked – but not with a keypad or scanner. Instead, there was an actual, physical keyhole; three of them, in fact, forbidding black holes of various sizes. They gave Gideon pause for a moment. He hadn’t seen a proper lock in months – there were certainly none such aboard the Jeroboam, firmly a ship of the modern age (and set up so that all doors would open should power be lost) – but for once it wasn’t a problem. He dug inside his webbing for a battered leather pouch, one he’d brought with him all the way from home but hadn’t had reason to take out until now. Within it was a roll of shabby velvet. Kneeling, he unfurled it, and his lockpicks glittered nefariously in the harsh overhead lighting.

It wasn’t like he had a criminal past, Gideon reflected as he set to work, examining the size of the keyhole and selecting the appropriate rake and wrench. Not really, anyway. He’d trained as a locksmith in his early twenties, when he’d just been getting started as a mechanic and had seen an opportunity for a man with nimble fingers to make a little extra money. Almost every lock he’d picked had been for practice or for pay, letting people back into locked apartments, opening old fuse-boxes and simple safes. For most of the Union the physical lock was a dying breed, but out on the backwater colony world where Gideon had spent most of his life the old ways had clung on a little longer. It had helped him make a living. He’d gotten rather good at it. So good, in fact, that when the opportunity to make somewhat more than just a living had been presented to him he hadn’t really been able to turn it down.

It had gone very well – right up until the moment he’d cracked the lock in question, at which point things had rapidly gone very wrong indeed. Gideon hadn’t had to go into hiding or anything so extreme – but he had had to put his picks away for good. When he’d been conscripted into the army he’d packed them as an afterthought; by the time he’d joined Salvage he’d almost forgotten that he carried them.

The final pin clicked into place, and the lock turned with the smoothness lent only by good oil. Gideon grinned. Still got it. He moved onto the second lock. It was stiffer, the pins harder to reach, clearly designed for a very different kind of key. One of his weirder picks did the trick, though, a custom piece he’d machined himself for a specific antique cash-box. As he eased each pin into place, cramp beginning to grip his fingers, he felt an old, familiar calm settle over him. By the time the lock swung open, he had quite forgotten the creeping anxiety of being in the abandoned lab. For once, he was doing something that wasn’t going to kill him if he got it wrong. It was a very pleasant feeling.

The third lock was even stranger than the second; dimple pins and false gates lining every millimetre of its interior; but Gideon was on a roll now, and it fell apart before him as though it were made of tissue paper. Methodically, he put his picks away, tucking the wallet back into his webbing, feeling very self-satisfied indeed.

That feeling evaporated as he stood up and beheld the door to the Cradle; at least two inches of riveted steel, separating the missing scientists – and now Gideon – from something that had to be dangerous. So dangerous that they didn’t take it with them. If the researchers had extracted their experiment from its ‘Cradle’, why would they have bothered to lock the doors behind them?

“Salvage, this is Four,” Gideon said, keying his radio. He could only hear static, but he spoke anyway, just in case. “I’ve found something… interesting. Nice big locked door. Going in now.” He didn’t beg for help, for backup, no matter how much he dearly wanted to – it wouldn’t come, and even if his pleas were heard he doubted anyone would exactly come running.

“Wish me luck,” he said to nobody in particular. Then he pushed open the Cradle doors, and stepped inside.

Oops

Bugger. Sunday night, I’m out with friends and I’ve not got my laptop. Apologies for the long delay. New Salvage Seven tomorrow. Probably.