Machina Obscurum Read online

  “Yeah, Dad,” Jack piped up. “Are we? Are we?” Jack had always been the quiet one. To hear him so excited was rare.

  “Well…” Dad sighed. “I suppose there’re a few species out there who could be trouble. But only if we took them for granted.”

  “Like?” I needed to know.

  “Maybe the Mimics.”

  My brothers and I must have made the same face. “The Mimics?” Xander and I asked simultaneously.

  “You mean your mother hasn’t told you?”

  “No!” all three of us shouted at once.

  As we left the zoo that night, Dad answered some of our questions, though hardly all of them. For as much as we knew about a hundred other species, we had never heard a peep about the Mimics. “Anything they see, they can become,” Dad explained. “Actually, the WTC thinks they don’t even have to touch things. Some of the scientists, your mother included, believe they only have to look at what they want to become.”

  “Ooo, ooo!” Jack vibrated as we rode home on the light-rail. “Can they copy Star-Eaters? Could they see one and say, ‘Yum, yum! Me eat stars, too! Yum, yum!’”

  “I don’t think it works that way,” said Dad.

  “How does it work?” asked Xander.

  “Well…” Dad sighed again. “We think they’re hive creatures. If they want to copy something their same size, it only takes one Mimic. But if they want to copy an entire city, they’d need millions of themselves.”

  “A city?” I scratched my head.

  “Oh yes. They can copy anything, not just organic life. The WTC thinks their home planet is probably one big replica of something else they’ve seen. It’s why we don’t have any Mimics in the xeno zoo or even within a light year of Earth. We’re probably afraid they’ll see a weapon or a ship and copy it, and then take the idea to their home planet and copy it some more until we’re all in trouble.”

  “Is it true? They can do that?” I asked.

  “Not really sure. Some WTC stuff is classified, even from me. But you asked if dangerous xenos existed. So there you have it.”

  “Mimics sound scary,” said Xander.

  “They sure do!” blurted Jack.

  They sure do, I thought.

  Five years rolled by, five that felt like a hundred. I graduated top in my class. Maybe I have good genes, I told myself. Or maybe Mom and Dad just taught me really well. Whatever the reason, I breezed through every school I attended. At deGrasse Observatory, I studied stellar geography, micro-quark physics, light-exponential travel, and even advanced dark-space weaponry, the science of using nano-weapons during deep space combat. It was all very wondrous to me. I mastered mathematics. I bested my classmates at gravball and mock space battles. I even soaked up the dogma of Universal Human Supremacy, a class bought and paid for by Sidus Perio, but none too loved by Mom and Dad.

  “You don’t actually believe that supremacy stuff, do you?” Xander asked me during a visit home. Jack was away at an orbital station learning to pilot, and so Xan and I had a rare moment alone while Mom set the table for dinner.

  “I don’t know.” I shrugged. “It’s a bit narcissistic, I suppose. Sometimes.”

  “A bit?” Xander looked at me as though I were an idiot. “Sometimes? C’mon, big brother. Half the species out there would eat us for a snack if not for our weapons. And the other half pay us tribute just because they’re too smart to start a war. Why bust your economy for some crazy interstellar fight when it’s cheaper just to ship us a few castoffs for the xeno zoo?”

  Someone has been studying, I thought.

  “But that’s just it,” I argued. “We have the most powerful weapons, the fastest ships, the most motivation. That’s why we’re the best. We outthink all the other species. You can’t dominate the universe by breathing fire or chomping the occasional star. You have to be the smartest.”

  “Mom, help me out here,” Xander pleaded as she filled our bowls with something delicious.

  Mom gave me that look; I knew the one. She gave it to Dad whenever he ranted about some epic new WTC project or to Jack every time he bragged about being the best pilot among all the near-Earth orbital stations. “Pretend inferiority. Encourage man’s arrogance.” She silenced the room with her soft yet confident tone. “That’s what I would think, were I a xeno.”

  “Mom?” was all I could muster.

  She set a decanter of water on the table’s center. “I know what you’re thinking, son. Your father and I have always been Vir, always with Sidus. But what we do with a passion, we do only for our family. We embrace the jobs we’re so fortunate to have, but not Sidus’s corporate ideology.”

  “See?” gloated Xander.

  “So what you’re saying is—” I tried.

  “…eat your dinner.” Mom sat beside me with a smile.

  Later that night, we received a surprise. Xander and I were reclining in the front plaza, staring at the stars through the half-dome window, almost asleep. I heard a door shut and I glanced to the room behind me.

  “Xan!” I fell out of my chair. “Dad and Jack are home!”

  We hadn’t expected them. Dad was supposed to be on a two-week assignment for the WTC’s latest endeavor, while Jack was supposed to be training with the latest light-x ships. But there they were, striding across the common room, grinning ear to ear.

  “Dad!” Xan and I rushed to greet them. “Jack!”

  I crushed them both with hugs. At long last, I was the tallest and strongest in the family. I remember wondering, when I have a son, will he be bigger than me?

  “What’s in the box?” Xander pointed to the big, canvas-covered slab of permo-glass Jack had set on the table.

  “Guess.” Jack grinned.

  “New species!” Xander walked over and tugged the canvas off. In the low light, I squinted. Whatever critter lay inside the box was hard for me to see.

  “I don’t get it.” Xander looked at Dad. “Looks like a bunch of ashes.”

  Ear to ear, Dad smiled. “True enough. But if we had a scope, we’d see different.”

  “Well…where’s the scope?” Xan pried.

  “Left it at work.” Dad shrugged. “You’ll just have to use your imagination.”

  I knelt beside the permo-glass. The box was easily bigger than any Mom and Dad had ever brought home. Scattered on its crystalline clear bottom, I saw what Xan had seen. The remains of something made a grey and black carpet. Like sand. Only finer.

  “Not exactly well-preserved,” I remarked.

  “Oh, but that’s where you’re wrong,” Dad boasted. I looked to Mom, and sure enough, she had the look. “It’s a Mimic.” Dad ignored her. “It’s dead, of course, but those aren’t ashes. They’re little piles of Mimic nano-cells. If it were still alive, it’d probably start copying us right now.”

  For a reason I only now understand, I felt a keen sense of dread. The remains gave me the creeps, the shudders, the ‘chilly willies,’ like Xander used to say. I like to think Mom felt the same as I did, though Jack and Xan seemed not to care.

  “Do we have to keep it here?” I asked. Jack and Xander looked at me like I’d slapped them.

  “Much as I’d like to keep it, this is only a one-night loaner,” said Dad. “The bosses want this specimen back. Word is: this particular critter has been a, what’s the expression, a party-killer. Roaming the galaxy, causing problems for other species.”

  “All by itself?” I asked.

  “Just think; if only one can cause so many problems, imagine what a few thousand could do.”

  I slept miserably that night. I dreamt of the Mimics, of their terrible planet covered in copies of all the universe’s worst inventions. I saw myself standing among them, only it wasn’t me. It was an evil version of me with soulless eyes and ashen skin. In my head I knew the Mimics were probably never as wicked as I dreamed them, but in my heart I felt some terrible truth. I wanted the creature in the glass box out of our house.

  When I woke up late the next morning, I waited
until I heard Dad and Jack leave. As I sat down to breakfast with Mom, I saw the weariness in her eyes and knew she’d slept no more than I had.

  “Did they take it away?” I asked as I nibbled on my breakfast wafers.

  “Thank the stars, yes.”

  “I’ve never been so creeped in my life,” I admitted. “I had the feeling it was watching us. How stupid is that? A pile of lifeless cells. If Dad says it was dead, why was I worried?”

  Mom slumped into her chair. I hated to notice it, but she looked years older than she had the previous night. “I had the feeling…” She stared into her cup. “…I don’t know. I’m not sure what I felt, but I know I didn’t like it.”

  I should have dug deeper.

  That night, Mom and I ate dinner together. She lit some old-world candles, kindled her stove, and baked us the best I-don’t-remember-what-it’s-called, but-I-loved-it meal. She had always been a superb cook, never relying on meal-synths, always taking longer than anyone in the year 4,163 had a need to. I suppose it all made sense, her skill in the kitchen. After all, if cooking was a science, she was the top scientist in the city.

  After dinner, and after an hours-long conversation I’ll never forget, Mom kissed me on the forehead and wandered off toward bed. “Tomorrow,” she said. “You’ve only one day left before you escape back to school. I’m taking another day off work to spend it with you. I love you, son.”

  “Love you, Mom.”

  Much later, I reclined in the gallery, surrounded by soft cushions as I gazed through the plaza window. My belly was full, my mind at ease, and the stars as glorious a sight as ever I remembered seeing. I wondered if Jack were back on his station, preparing to fly some new and wonderful ship. I hoped Xander would come home early from his classes again so he and I could do some more catching up. Tomorrow, I sighed. I miss being a kid. We always had plenty of tomorrows.

  During that late hour, even as I slipped closer to sleep, I heard the door open. I remember thinking the night must have been colder than usual, as the air rushing in from the corridor beyond our apartment made me shiver. But that’s not possible, I thought. Climate control keeps it always the same. Doesn’t it?

  When Dad clicked the door shut and walked over to the couch, he startled me like I’d never been in my life.

  “Son,” he whispered.

  “Dad!” I sat up with a shiver. “You scared me!”

  “Sorry.” He knelt beside me.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I know, I know…I’m supposed to be with WTC. That’s what I told your Mom and Xan. But as it happens, I need your help.”

  “Me? Why?” My heart raced.

  “We can’t talk about it here. I need you to come with me. You’re the oldest, the strongest, and the smartest. This is serious. We can’t tell Mom. I need you to trust me.”

  “Dad, you’re creeping me more than a little.”

  “I know. I’m sorry. Can you get dressed? As in now? As in quietly? I’ll explain everything on the light-rail. Can you do that for me?”

  A part of me panicked. Another part soared with excitement. Is this WTC business? I remember thinking. Why would Dad need me? Does it have something to do with the classes I’m studying? My grades were off the charts. Maybe the WTC wants to hire me!

  “Dad…” I sucked in a deep breath and got ready to ask the question I’d wanted to my entire life. “What does WTC stand for?”

  “When They Come.”

  On the light-rail, he explained. “They’ve called it many things over the centuries,” he said as the train hurtled toward Sidus Perio. “SETI, they named it in the beginning, or so the old-world computers say. Then there was WOG, Within Our Galaxy. And then BUBBE, Beyond, Under, Behind, Beneath Everything. But after the early ships encountered hostile life on SR388, the mission changed.”

  “Because we got scared?”

  “Exactly. Humans have always assumed superiority. But the faster the WTC spreads through deep space, the more they realize one day they’d encounter a species even smarter and stronger. And considering the way Sidus has treated all the other life forms out there, the WTC knew they might have to contend with a true number one, an alpha species unlike any other. They knew this new species might want more than to fill a few xeno zoos.”

  “They’d want to exterminate us,” I reasoned.

  “Exactly.”

  “So all these years, the WTC has been looking for an enemy?”

  Dad looked deadly serious. “The xeno zoos, the cinemas, the permo-glass boxes full of corpses…all of it a smokescreen. The WTC doesn’t really care about Star-Eaters, Grazas, and Zebites. They’re looking for Them, the rival species, the life form hiding between the stars.”

  “Wait…” I felt my heart hammering in my chest. “Won’t the bosses be upset with you telling me this? This is secret stuff, Dad. We could get in a lot of trouble.”

  “It’s no trouble. The WTC already knows. Who do you think sent me to pick you up?”

  I knew it! I remember thinking. They saw my test scores! Or maybe my pilot’s exams! Even higher than Jack’s, not that I’d ever tell him about it.

  “So I’m hired?” My panic turned to raw excitement. “I can quit school and go to work with you and Mom?”

  His smile said everything. I’d never seen him so happy as then. I suppose in the heat of the moment, I mistook it for pride in me. Here I am, only twenty-one, and already the WTC wants me. Xan will be so jealous. Mom might be mad.

  We rode in silence the rest of the way. For the life of me, I could not think of more questions to ask. My body buzzed with the anticipation of it all. My mind crackled with new ideas, new possibilities for the future.

  When we reached the great permo-glass colonnades near Sidus’s western entrance, we walked off the light-rail and started up the marble stairs. I’ve never been closer to Sidus than this, I thought. One more step, and… “Dad?” I hurried to catch up to him.

  “Yes.”

  “It’s the middle of the night. We’re at the space docks. If the WTC knows about me, and this is an emergency…”

  “The guess you’re about to make is correct,” he said.

  “We’ve found an alpha species?”

  “Yes.”

  I expected guards at the inner doors. We encountered none. The vast bureaus where Sidus’s army of receptionists usually nested were vacant. I had always assumed Sidus never sleeps, yet it seemed I’d been wrong all those years.

  But not really.

  We marched across the reception hall and shoved our way through several doors. Dad pressed his security bauble onto each blue sensor we encountered, allowing us passage into the corridors leading to the space dock. My heart pounded. I felt dizzy. The realization that I was needed at the moment of When They Come made a mess of my thoughts. I could have puked had Dad slowed long enough to let me.

  “Where are we going?” I finally asked.

  “You know where.”

  “The space dock. Right?”

  “Not just any space dock. The space dock.”

  Slow down, I wanted to tell him. “What do you mean, the space dock?” I said.

  He shrugged. “None of the other docks are true WTC docks. They’re for freighters, orbital resupply ships, light-x transports, or housing ships. There’s only one real WTC dock, one amongst the hundreds. That’s where we’re going.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said as we climbed a dozenth stair and strode down a clear-walled star tunnel. “Shouldn’t we be going to HQ? Don’t I need briefing or something?”

  He stopped. Not slowed and stopped, but hard stopped in the middle of the tunnel. We were high up in Sidus’s space dock fortress, and the stars blazed through the clear tunnel roof. I remember feeling like we were floating in space, just Dad and I.

  “At deGrasse, did they teach you light-x?” he asked.

  “Yes, but—”

  “And you went through all the pilot sims, right? You flew carriers and fighters? You to
ld me and your Mom the truth about your grades?”

  The question stung more than a little. I had never lied to my parents about anything meaningful. I had never needed to. “Yes, Dad. All of it. But like you said, the pilot classes were mostly sims. Jack knows more about real fighter piloting. Way more.”

  “That won’t matter.” His eyes darkened.

  “Why not?”

  “Because Jack is dead.”

  My world crashed around me.

  Jack? Dead? No. He’s just trying to creep me. If Jack were dead, he’d be crying. Mom would’ve been hysterical. But wait…what if Mom didn’t know? What if he’s not creeping me?

  “Dad…” My horror welled inside me. “Tell me you made that up. Jack isn’t dead. We saw him just yesterday. I heard him leave the apartment with you this morning.”

  “He’s gone, Jonathan. A Mimic killed him.”

  I wanted to fall to pieces. My legs felt wobbly, my stomach full of acid. Had Dad not spun around and stomped down the corridor, I would have melted to pudding on the floor. I would have died.

  I sometimes wish I had.

  “Dad?” My voice fluttered out of my throat. “Dad?? What’s going on? Are we under attack? Where is everyone else? I don’t hear any alarms. We haven’t seen a soul since we got here. Dad, please!”

  He said nothing. He just kept marching. Clumsy, I chased after him. We made it to the corridor’s end. He pressed his bauble against three security prongs. The door opened, and I staggered after him into the world’s hugest space dock.

  There, in the heart of the dock, in a hollow void huger than any arena ever built, the lone ship sat in silence.

  After ten steps into the dock, Dad stopped. Starlight peeked through the open roof and a dozen pale lamps blazed on the far walls, but otherwise the vast chamber lay in darkness. A sweating, shivering mess, I went to Dad and tried to read his expression, but in the shadows I saw nothing.

  “You have questions. I understand,” he said. “You want to know why I’m not a mess like you are. It’s our training. It’s the WTC. I hate it. I hate them. Ever since I started my work, we’ve waited for this day, but I wasn’t sure it would ever come. I’m in shock, son. But my feelings don’t matter. It’s you we need now.”