Print Edition Vol. 5 - They Feed
THEY FEED
by C.J. Dotson
My son woke up one morning and said, as casually as if this was not the beginning of the upheaval, “I had a bad nightmare, mom.”
“What was it about, love?” I asked.
He climbed up onto the couch and leaned on me, not meeting my eyes. Porter's always been an imaginative kid; his nightmares tended to be vivid. “I don't remember. It was just...bad. There were monsters. They were hungry.”
He was getting older, maybe ready for more complex ideas. I said, “Wanna know why I think our brains do that?”
“What?” he said.
“Do you want to know the idea some people have, about why we even have nightmares?”
Porter nodded.
“The best way to learn is by doing something, right?” He nodded again, uncharacteristically quiet. I continued, “A long, long time ago, way back when we just evolved from apes, the things people had to learn weren't safe things like math, they were dangerous things like how not to get eaten by a tiger. Too dangerous to learn by doing it. So, they had nightmares about getting eaten by tigers, and learned from those. But we don't need to learn that way anymore, and the stuff in our world that's dangerous is more complicated, like what to do if the Station has an airlock breach, so nightmares don't really help us the same way anymore.”
I paused, but Porter didn't say anything.
After a moment I asked, “Does that make sense?”
He shrugged. Then he said, “It doesn't feel like that right now, though.”
Maybe it was too complicated for him after all, I thought, stick to the classic response for now.
“You know dreams aren't real, right?”
###
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###
Hazel and I moved out to the Mars Orbital Station for my work shortly after we were married, just about a year before I was implanted with Porter. For the first six years of our son's life we could communicate with his grandparents and uncle only through recorded messages or with a twelve-minute delay as the signals bounced between Earth and the Station, all done with external devices. Helmet, gloves, sometimes boots, all in the signal-shielded personal comms room that Hazel and I had paid so much extra for when we were commissioning our apartments on the station. Sound was almost perfect in them, sight slightly less so, and smells obviously artificial.
Getting the ConnectNet upgrade in our neuralware was astounding. The simulation and communication programs were integrated with the web spread through my nervous system. The virtual experience was complete. That would have been amazing enough, but it wasn't the best part of the ConnectNet tech.
The best part was that it allowed for real-time communication with any human settlement in the system. Once I talked my parents and my brother into upgrading, we could virtually meet up in real time.
I was in my second ever such meeting, this time with only my brother and myself.
“Have you tried uploading his dreams and watching them together?” Simon asked me, sipping lemonade that wasn't real and trying not to look impressed by it. He didn't have any kids, but he was a child psychologist, and normally I wouldn't give him the satisfaction of asking for his advice. But the nightmares had been going on for over a week by then, and they'd steadily gotten worse.
Still, uploading my son's dreams?
Simon glanced at me over the rim of his glass, then narrowed his eyes as he focused more closely. The linkup to the neuralware went both ways. My nervous system and synapses fed back into the system and gave the digital recreation of myself all the complexity and unconscious signals that I had in real life. Just as if I were really sitting in a sunshine-bright park on Earth with him rather than in my comms room on the Station, Simon could read hesitation in my body language.
“It's just to contextualize the experience for him,” Simon said, putting his lemonade down, “You upload the dream and put it on a screen, watch it with him. In the waking world, it'll be obvious that it's from a kid's imagination, not reality. And having it separate from him will help him see more concretely that it's not real. Some of my colleagues are having astounding success treating night terrors and insomnia and even PTSD in kids by using this new method.”
“I don't know,” I said slowly, “it feels like...like an invasion of his privacy...”
“Well, obviously you'd ask his permission first, Ivy,” Simon scoffed.
“Yes, obviously.” Simon rolled his eyes and I leaned forward, scowling. “He's six, Si. I'd have to make sure that he understands what he's giving permission for. I mean really understands. I can't just...just access my son's mind unless he really knows what that means.”
###
I thought Hazel would disregard Simon's idea, too. Instead she mused, “Dreams always seem less realistic once you wake up. Watching it awake instead would probably be even better.”
“What? No. Wait,” I stammered, “Hang on. You think we should do that? Just take something out of our son's head and slap it up on a screen like a tv show?”
Hazel leaned away from me with a frown. “Whoa. Don't talk to me like that, Ivy.”
“Like what?”
“Like I'm dumb and bad. I didn't say we should watch Porter's private thoughts or turn it into entertainment. All I said was it might help.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose and closed my eyes. Hazel didn't know how condescending Simon had sounded when we'd had this conversation earlier. She wasn't really siding with my brother over me. And thanks to Porter's nightmares, none of us had gotten enough sleep in weeks.
“Sorry,” I sighed, without opening my eyes. “I'm just...nervous about the idea. If we do this, we have to make sure that he gives us permission. And I don't know how to make sure he really understands, or else it doesn't count.”
“Doctor Ferraz might know.”
I'd expected to schedule a remote consultation. Instead the receptionist told me that the pediatrician wanted to rule out any physical causes for the nightmares before advising broadcasting the dream.
At least the doc seems to understand how seriously we should take this idea.
The thought soothed some of my annoyance at having to actually take Porter to the doctor's office, usually only a once-yearly hassle. The walk through the main platform of the Station's large, park-like central sphere, with its artificial sunlight and real grass and scattered trees or potted shrugs, briefly finished settling my mood.
In the waiting room, however, I clenched my teeth as growing irritation and the deepening ache fed one another; the UV lights gave me migraines. Hazel says UV lights don't do that, but still the pain started to bloom behind my eyes. I found myself trying not to let resentment return.
Porter's whining made it difficult.
“These chairs aren't comfortable,” he said, scratching at the antimicrobial-coated fabric of the cushion. “And it smells bad.”
“I need you to chill, Porter. I have a headache and I just need you to be good.”
“But I don't wanna-”
“I said be good. That means no whining. Doctor Ferraz is gonna try to help with your nightmares, okay?”
Porter fell silent. The quiet stretched for long enough that I took my hands away from my eyes and glanced at him. He sat still, looking forwards, grim.
“Porter? He's going to help, okay?”
“I just...don't think I should talk about the nightmares.”
Something about the way he said that hit me wrong, but before I could articulate it a door opened at the other side of the waiting room. A nurse tapped a pad and then glanced up, calling, “Masar? Porter Masar?”
“That's us, c'mon,” I said, standing and holding out my hand.
We followed the nurse to an exam room. I expected that she would leave and we'd be waiting another ten minutes at least before we saw Ferraz, but he bustled in the moment she opened the door.
“Porter!” he exclaimed with the over the top joviality used by people who aren't great with kids but think they are. “How's it going?”
Rather than answer, Porter sighed and glanced at me.
“Doc asked you a question.”
“Not good,” Porter said, still looking at me rather than at Ferraz, his eyes shadowed and solemn.
“Well, what's not good?” Ferraz asked.
Now Porter turned to the doctor with the expert eye-roll that he'd perfected only over the last few months. “I heard my mom make the appointment; I know she already told you about my nightmares.”
“I want to hear about them from you.”
Porter fell silent again, for a long time. At one point the doctor opened his mouth to try to prompt him, but I gestured sharply with one hand out of my son's line of sight. He was just like Hazel this way. Stubborn when he got in a mood. He'd do what was asked of him, but only after he made his point.
“There's monsters,” he said abruptly, sitting back on the exam table and crossing his arms. He turned his gaze up. “They come out of the water and they eat everything, then they go back in the water and sleep.”
This was more than Hazel and I had been able to get out of him, but still a bare-bones account.
“I'd like to run a blood test,” doctor Ferraz was saying to me, “To rule out certain physical causes. Once that's done, we can decide whether to...”
I lost the thread of what he was saying.
Porter wasn't quite done speaking. He swallowed hard, licked his lips, then whispered.
“They like things that think”
###
It was the middle of the Station's day cycle, Porter had no classes either in the sector's classroom or via ConnectNet, and Hazel and I were just waiting for our son to come back from the bathroom. We'd already explained what we wanted to do and why. Now we just had to do it. Hazel knew I still didn't fully approve, and the silence hanging over us while we waited for our son was cool and a little sharp.
“Mom?” Porter stepped in from the hallway.
Hazel and I answered at the same time, “Yes?”
“Do we have to do this?”
Hazel hesitated, but I didn't. “No, baby. Not at all.”
“Doctor Ferraz and Uncle Simon think it'll help, though,” Hazel reminded him.
I wanted to interrupt, to stop her from trying to persuade him if he was having second thoughts. But she was telling the truth, and it was important for Porter to make his own decision, so I bit my tongue.
“Fine,” he said. There was none of the sullenness that I remember using with my parents when I was a kid. Just a sort of tired resignation that made my son seem much older than six.
Ferraz had told me that the best time to do the upload was as soon as Porter woke up from one of the bad dreams, so the system had been storing the file since he'd screamed himself awake at four thirty-two that morning. Looking at him now, I wasn't sure he'd actually gone back to sleep after Hazel and I had tucked him back in.
It was time to watch the damn thing and start to help Porter work past this.
Hazel scooted over on the couch and patted the cushion between us, and I opened my arms. Porter squeezed himself in. I wanted to have one more conversation, reiterate again that this was not real and we were just watching it to help him understand. Give him one more chance to change his mind.
Evidently Hazel didn't think we should hesitate any longer. With a touch of the control pad she dimmed the lights in the room.
“Play file Porter-dot-dream.”
The screen lit up.
###
Almost the surface of water, but it moves wrong. Ripples without pattern or sense. Light doesn't reflect off it correctly. It's all that there is to see.
Until the shadows swim up from beneath the surface.
They burst through, scattering droplets of light.
Not a child's fancy, not simple things of hair and teeth. Sinuous, smooth, slick. A writhing riot of tentacles and slicing edges, flashes of teeth glimpsed at the center. No eyes. The bodies are only hinted at beneath the mass of limbs, but the proportions seem neither impossible nor cartoonish.
How did Porter imagine these things?
They leap from the water, as if toward the screen. They rise and rise.
Suddenly we seem to be soaring backwards. The liquid-light surface recedes, gives way to sky. With a stomach-twisting lurch the perspective changes as the tops of buildings come into view. We are not soaring backwards but falling. The monsters did not leap up out of the water, but down from a surface pushing through the sky.
They land in a street. It is evening and for a moment after impact they are unmoving, shadowed shapes defined by dim gleams of light on their tentacles. People gather in the road to see what has fallen upon their city.
Porter clutches my hand and an instant later the creatures explode into action.
Things of tentacles and slime and teeth should not be so graceful on land. Nor so fast. The people should have been able to outrun or outmaneuver them.
But what followed was a slaughter.
###
It ended after several long minutes of blood and startlingly convincing viscera and screams. Porter was still sitting between us on the couch, his knees drawn up to his chest, face half-hidden behind them. I glanced over his head at Hazel, who looked ashen.
We had never seen anything like that.
But this wasn't the time to marvel at the horror our son's mind had conjured. We had to strike now, while it was fresh, to have the conversation with him that Simon had helped me script.
It was time to tell my son that none of that was real. I was supposed to begin by saying, “That wasn't as bad to watch as you remembered, was it?”
I couldn't bring myself to.
###
ConnectNet @ConnectNetTech – 13 hr
Allegations that ConnectNet shares neuralware data with any commercial or government organizations are false. These and other bizarre rumors are being spread by fearmongers.
We care about our customers. If you have questions or concerns, please email customerservice@connectnet.com
###
I hang in nothing. Face up. Above me the surface shifts.
If time could drip and pool – if light and shadow could gather and glisten – the surface would begin to look like that.
Ripples. Moving, changing. I search for a pattern.
It breaks apart. I lose it and I fall.
Wind snatches my breath away. I cannot scream. I fall and the monsters burst from the unliquid above me. They fall with me. The spires of the city spear into the sky around me. I stop just before impact.
The monsters land hard.
But unharmed.
People poke their noses out of the buildings like rabbits from holes.
These creatures are not like foxes.
The uncoiling is fast but every detail clear. Movement. Speed.
Blood.
I can't move. I can't help. Can't cry out in warning, sympathy, horror. I observe.
Slick hide, slime, tentacles, teeth. All writhing and edges.
Through the streets. Into the buildings. They don't stop killing. They don't eat what they kill, but they feed.
I can feel it as I watch.
###
“I'm sorry!”
The scream tore me out of the nightmare. I sat up in bed so fast that I nearly fell out to the floor. My bedroom was mostly dark. Filtered through the cracks in the door, the hallway light we'd started leaving on for Porter was the only illumination. I threw myself out of bed and ran.
In the hallway I stumbled, blinded, then I was through Porter's door. Hazel was a half-step behind me.
Porter sat up in bed, clutching his blankets up to his chin. “I'm sorry,” he sobbed, “I'm sorry, I'm so, so sorry.”
“What are you sorry for?” Hazel asked.
“You didn't do anything,” I said, “Everything is fine.”
We sat down on his bed, each on either side of him, and held him between us.
“I don't know – how to lock up – my nightmares,” he gasped between hitching sobs, “They got out – I'm sorry!”
I was about to answer, about to tell him that he couldn't have known that I'd had a nightmare just now. It was on my lips to explain to him that any bad dreams I had tonight came from my own brain remembering watching his nightmare, that was all.
Hazel beat me to it.
“Oh, baby,” she said, “you didn't give me any nightmares. That was all in my own head.”
Something in my stomach fell, cold and hard. Hazel thought he was talking to her. She'd had our son's nightmare, too.
###
Hackers Target ConnectNet Servers, Reveal Suspected Cover-Ups
by A.J. Gates
A group of hacker-activists claims to have broken into the secure systems of ConnectNet Tech.
Their announcement took the form of a secondary hack, this time into the personal social media accounts of nearly three hundred unrelated individuals, using the accounts to write posts detailing what they claimed to have done and found.
The posts were deleted within hours, with many of the affected accountholders stating that it was not they who took down the hacked content and they do not know who did.
Screenshots of the removed posts have been circulating. The claims made by the hackers are outlandish and varied, ranging from alleged confirmation company secretly feeding data to government entities, to sensational claims about illegal experimentation. As soon as any screenshot surfaces it is removed as quickly as the original posts were, only for another to take its place in a pattern we've all seen before.
In a surprising turn of events, it was less than twenty-four hours before thirteen arrests were made that many believe are connected to the hacks; two on Dome City on Earth's moon, one on Venus Station, four on Saturn's modular Ring Web Settlement, and six on Earth. Friends and families of the arrested individuals have spoken out, claiming that the arrests were unlawful and that they have been denied contact with the accused.
ConnectNet Tech denies all allegations and has released a statement promising to update security measures. ConnectNet Tech CEO Taylor Saunders has said only, “The accusations are unfounded. I won't talk about them.”
Many others are talking, though. Prevailing sentiment is that the rumors may hold some truth. “Hacktivist” groups have existed for over a century and have largely gone unchecked by any authorities, so the question on many people's minds is: Why the suddenly effective response by authorities now, if the reports are false?
UPDATE in regard to many comments we have received: To prevent our own site from being shut down, we will not include pictures of or links to the screenshots.
###
Hazel's go-to method of making the peace after she'd started a stupid squabble was to make crude jokes until I laughed, then pretend that all had been well all the time. She didn't do it when I had started an unwarranted argument, or when we were having a legitimate problem. Only when she knew she'd been in the wrong.
“You know what I read online today?” she asked, breaking a silence that had stretched between us for nearly an hour.
Porter's nightmares alone had been keeping us awake enough. Now that we were both having them, no one was sleeping enough.
“Hm?” I didn't glance up from the pad I was scrolling on.
“I read that the neuralnet linkups are really good for a very specific type of entertainment...” Hazel trailed off, trying to get me to ask her what type.
I didn't respond. I wasn't done being angry yet about the fight she'd started when I had suggested that our nightmares might not just be because we'd seen Porter's bad dream.
“I heard,” she said, dropping down onto the couch next to me and leaning close, “That the neuralnet linkups make porn an absolutely mind-blowing experience.
I couldn't help but snort, glancing at her briefly before remembering that I was angry and looking down again.
Hazel fell silent, then took a deep breath and let it out in a huff. She opened her mouth as if to speak, shut it, then opened it again. She was looking down at her hands, expression dark and heavy. She didn't have a chance to say whatever accusation or apology was on her mind.
Porter started screaming.
Over the past three months habit had formed its pathways; when Hazel and I burst out of the living room I started to turn toward Porter's bedroom. Hazel was quicker to remember that Porter wasn't in bed, this wasn't the Station's night cycle.
He'd been in the kitchen watching cartoons on a pad. Now he was holding it at arms' length, staring at the screen, eyes bulging and mouth gaping.
“Baby! What's wrong?” Hazel cried, reaching him a moment ahead of me and trying to pull him in for a comforting hug.
Body rigid, he wrenched away, wailing, “They're real!”
Then he dropped the pad onto the table.
There were none of the exaggerated noises or garish colors of a cartoon there. The voice issuing from it, barely heard over Porter's hysterics, was male and speaking with the professional strained calm of a reporter trying not to show fear.
The image on the screen was the central sphere in our own Mars Orbital Station.
At the center, suspended near where the false-sun light was in the process of dimming for night cycle, something was happening.
I leaned closer to the screen.
A shimmering curtain that shifted and rippled was spreading itself across the most open area of the sphere.
“Am I in a dream, mommy?” Porter asked, his words fast and voice high. “Am I dreaming?”
Hazel sank into a crouch next to Porter's chair and put her arms around him, pulling him to her and tucking his head into her shoulder so that he couldn't see the screen anymore. Over his head she looked at me, fear and confusion in her eyes even as her voice stayed low and calm. “No, baby,” she murmured, “you're not in a dream. Mom and I will figure this out. You're okay.”
She kept up that litany. I snatched the pad up and stared at it, face slack.
“Hazel, we're not in a dream...” I whispered hoarsely, “Neither is anyone else. We have to warn people!”
The numb confusion shattered then. Panic hit full force, right in my chest. It took a long moment before I could gasp in a new breath. Then I couldn't stop, hyperventilating. My mind's eye replayed the hungry slaughter of the nightmares. I licked my lips. “We have to warn people,” I repeated. “We need to evacuate the Station!”
I tried to run out of the room, but my knees were shaky. I stumbled instead, lunging toward the comms room. I entered the code to call Station Headquarters with shaking fingers.
For several moments during which I jittered from foot to foot, nothing happened. Then a harsh tone sounded and a voice that I could barely tell was automated said, “Connection unavailable. Please try again later. Connection unavailable. Please try again later.” I cut off the call and stood in the center of the room with my hands over my mouth. Telling someone in charge what was happening had been my only idea. Without it I had no plan, my head full of a blank buzz.
Hazel and Porter appeared in the doorway. The sight of my family shook the fuzziness away. Porter's eyes were wide and shadowed, one hand in Hazel's and the other balled into a fist, face on the verge of tears. Hazel's gaze locked onto mine, frightened and desperate to hear that I'd made the situation better somehow. I couldn't fall apart.
“HQ is offline or something,” I said. Hazel pulled Porter more closely to her.
From the screen on the pad still in the kitchen, the commentator's voice rose sharply. The words were indistinct but the tone clear. The people who had never had the nightmare didn't know what was coming; the man's voice was more eager than alarmed.
“What do we do, Ivy?”
“We run,” I said, taking Porter's other hand.
From the broadcast, someone shouted.
“Run for the evacuation platforms!” I said and began to pull them.
The next scream we heard did not come through the news feed. It was audible through the walls. Distant, but real. The apartment's main exit was out of the question, it led almost directly to the central sphere. The emergency exit. Every business and apartment in the station had one. If I opened it an alarm would sound that should bring a Peacekeeping squad from HQ. I shoved through and pulled my son and wife into the stark, bare hallways of the emergency corridors. The alarm blared from the speaker above the door, echoing through the halls.
Neighbors emerged around us, drawn by the sound of our alarm or else having watched the news and come to the same conclusion that I did.
“Get to the emergency escape platform!” I shouted.
“The nightmares are coming!” Porter cried at the same time.
Somewhere behind us there came the grating shriek of twisting metal and the cracked crash of shattering glass.
“Faster, faster,” I urged, tightening my grip on Porter's wrist, pulling harder.
“Ivy,” Hazel gasped. I spared a glance for her. She was stumbling as she ran, looking back over her shoulder. Her face was gray, eyes wide.
“Eyes forward,” I snapped, “Faster!”
I didn't look back. Couldn't avoid hearing the next scream, though. Closer. In the hallway. Then a horrible tearing sound. The scream rose briefly, was abruptly muffled, and then with a sick, wet crack was silenced.
Sounds I never expected to hear in the waking world.
The hall filled with cries, footsteps echoing together as people began to flee from the slaughter. We weren't the fastest, pulling Porter along. Our neighbors began to pass us on all sides. There were other shouts, they sounded like people running toward the monsters. That happened in the dreams sometimes. Trying to save each other, thinking they could fight back. A cacophony of shrieks and cries followed, punctuated by the sound of breaking bodies.
A door to my right burst off its hinges.
Barbed tentacles lashed out. One slammed into the stomach of a woman just passing me. Her breath came out in an audible “oof.” Forward momentum bent her double over the tentacle. Spines dug in as it whipped around her body. She tried to push the slick limb off of her, screaming. Another tentacle wrapped around her legs and she toppled forward. I heard a terrible crack as her face hit the concrete floor of the emergency hallway. We didn't slow.
The nightmare things moved as fast in the reality of the Station as they had in our dreams. They went with a sort of sliding, limb-over-limb crawl that should have been unwieldy but was not. Slap-suck-slide, tentacles slammed down, suctioned to the floor, and pulled it along. It was a wet sound, heavy and loud.
Gaining on us.
Ahead, an emergency seal-door. Part of a network to prevent depressurization through the Station in the event of damage to one section. If we could get past, then activate it...
“Hazel! Door!” I gasped, flinching as another voice cried out and was choked silent. I wished I could cover Porter's ears.
She followed my gaze, nodded. Together we put on an extra burst of speed, towing Porter behind us.
Mere steps from the seal-doors, something slammed into my back. Spines raked down, tearing my blouse, slicing my skin. A glancing strike, not deep, not a wrapping grab. The force of the blow shoved me forward, I stumbled the last few feet towards the seal-doors, yanking my family with me. We made it through just as my stumble turned to a trip. I let go of Porter's wrist so I wouldn't pull him down. The concrete knocked the wind out of me. Tried to scramble forwards. A tentacle wound around my leg. I let out a wheezing cry. Flailed for a handhold. The thing began to drag me backwards.
Small hands grabbed mine. My son was before me, screaming, pulling my arms.
“Keep running!” I cried, shaking him off.
The seal-doors slammed shut behind me. My backwards motion stopped. I rolled onto my back and kicked at the tentacle still wound around my leg, severed at the end but clinging. Hazel stood by the button to close the door, one hand on the wall, the other on her knee, bent over and panting.
Boom! Boom! The seal-doors were the thickest inside the Station. Even so, they reverberated with the force of the nightmare monsters battering at them from the other side. I pulled the spiny tentacle off of me, blood oozing out of my right leg. Punctures wound around in an even pattern from my ankle to my knee. Boom! “Come on,” I said, pushing myself to my feet. I put weight on my injured leg and hissed through my teeth. The pain flared sharp and bright, and I leaned to my left. Boom! “We gotta go,” I said, and took Porter's hand again, then hesitated. Boom! No time for a heart-to-heart, but I had to be clear. Although surging adrenaline left me shaky and all I wanted was to be running, I bent down so our faces were level. Boom! Boom! I tilted Porter's chin so that he had to look into my eyes.
“You're brave and wonderful. But if something grabs either one of us,” I waved at Hazel, “your only job is to keep running.”
“But mom-”
“No, let grownups fight the monsters. You-” Boom! “-have to keep getting away. Got it?”
Porter hesitated, then glanced at Hazel.
“She's right. The only thing you do is keep running.”
I waited only long enough for him to nod before I grabbed his hand again. “So, let's run,” I said. The seal-doors shook with the force of the pounding, but they weren't weakening yet. Boom! The noise was sure to draw other monsters. It was the only sound I could hear anymore. No screams, no cries, no breaking through the thinner doors or walls.
We ran as fast as Porter's speed and my injuries would allow. As the booming faded behind us the fog of fear began to lighten. Sill terrified, but able to think of something other than run run run.
What I was thinking was that we were missing something.
We rounded a corner and Hazel gasped. From the corner of my eye I saw her cover Porter's eyes. “No!” I cried, raking my hands through my hair.
The seal-doors.
We'd activated one. That set off the emergency reaction in all the others. The one before us was closed, blocking the way to the emergency escape platform. Next to it the wall was gutted open, revealing a mess of wrecked ducts, pipes, and wires. A pool of blood and viscera spread from the broken, tumbled bodies filling the dead end.
“Why didn't the ones chasing us go through the walls?” I muttered.
“They must've been too focused on hunting by sight,” Hazel said. I glanced over, she'd turned Porter around so that his face was pressed into her stomach, her arms around his shoulders. He clung to her, trembling. “What now?” she whispered.
I turned my back on the gore-streaked corpses, then couldn't stand all that lurking behind me and angled my body so the slaughtered were visible just out of the corner of my eye.
“Ivy?” Hazel whispered again, “What now?”
Why was she asking me? I clenched my jaw to stop from snapping at her, swallowed hard.
The seal-doors situated periodically along the emergency hallways would all be sealed now that one had been activated – I tried not to wonder if the slaughter at this door had been repeated a hundred times throughout the Station, all because Hazel was saving me – but the doors that led to the living spaces of the station were not as impenetrable. Maintenance was the responsibility of the individuals who owned them. I took a deep breath that was meant to steady my nerves. Instead the shallow slices down my back stung.
“I think we have to sneak through the main Station,” I said, voice soft and grim.
Hazel's grip on Porter's shoulders tightened so hard that he tried to jerk away from her. She relaxed her arms, but her face was still aghast. “Out there?” she hissed.
“What the fuck else are we supposed to do? Just sit here?” I gestured sharply from the bodies to the hole in the wall.
Porter flinched at either my tone or my words, tightening his desperate grasp on Hazel's waist, and she took a moment to stroke his hair and whisper soothingly to him. She didn't turn back to me until he was less agitated.
“There has to be another way,” she said, her gaze lingering on that hole. Dragging our son, she took half a step closer to it, peering up into the visible air ducts.
“Unless you memorized the station's schematics, you can forget that idea right now,” I sneered, terror eating away at my patience, “We'd get lost and die of dehydration.”
“Watch your tone,” Hazel said, “Obviously I don't know the layout. But if the Station's ductwork is public record...” she raised a hand to tap the back of her head, near the base of her skull where the neuralware's main node was implanted. “I can use ConnectNet to download it and we can make it.”
“Fine,” I said, “See if the schematics are even available.”
Hazel nodded, then closed her eyes so that she could concentrate on operating the neuralware and the ConnectNet linkup.
After a long pause she whispered, “Connection's slow...wait...got it. Just gotta search-”
BOOM!
The pounding on the seal-door back the way we'd come had been nothing to this. A silence followed, then the metal-on-metal screech that had not been familiar before this night.
“No time,” I gasped, and shoved them at the nearest door instead.
From around the corner came the slap-suck-slide, the hunt renewed.
The first door we tried hadn't locked down when the seal-doors were activated, and we pushed into the back room of an office suite. I shut the door behind us, the corridor disappeared from view just as the first tentacle slapped around the corner. After the bright emergency-lights of the back hallway, the darkness of this room seemed all the deeper. I stood still and listened in the direction of the door as I tried to let my eyes adjust.
“Can't focus,” Hazel gasped. I could just make out her blinking hard a few times as she shut her ConnectNet Tech back off. “Alright, let's go,” she whispered.
A faux-wood door ahead of us was ajar. Warm light spilled faintly through. The thoroughfare lights of the Station's public areas only dimly illuminated the next room. Night had been initiating when the rift had opened. No one had the presence of mind to cancel the night cycle sequence – the Station was deeply shadowed. I heard a faraway crash, distant screams.
We crept further from the back hall. I closed the second door silently behind us and crouched low, peering through the windows ahead.
The wreckage of the central sphere was astounding. Broken furniture, trees and potted plants uprooted, glass and metal strewn haphazardly. Through it all the huddled shadows that were all there was to be seen of the broken corpses in the darkness. I remembered my nightmares, how the monsters didn't eat the flesh but nevertheless fed. “They like things that think,” Porter had said. I shivered.
Not even a suggestion of movement. Maybe by leading my family through where the creatures had already wrought their destruction, we could make it.
Turning back to Hazel and Porter, I was about to whisper my plan when a dull thump from the back room nearly made me jump out of my skin. We froze. My wife's eyes went wide and round. Porter cringed against her.
“Keep Porter close and follow me.” I leaned forward so my lips brushed her ear, whispering so softly that I couldn't even hear it, to be sure that Porter wouldn't either, “If you have to leave me, do it.”
“I won't have to,” she hissed. She pushed me toward the door.
I crawled out slowly, silently. Behind an upturned shrub I straightened, keeping hidden. Once on my feet my right leg throbbed, worse than before. I shifted my weight and looked around. The entrance to the emergency escape platform would be activated by the seal-door network, too, but with an airlock system to keep it accessible in a time of need. Couldn't see it yet. Turning again, I beckoned Hazel and Porter.
We moved incrementally. A heart-thumping crawl, by the end of which I could hear only my own blood rushing through me. Mouth dry, palms sweaty, I held up a hand to pause. Huddled behind scant cover, we'd wait until the tension ebbed. Heart rate never back to normal, but close. The shakes at bay once more. Then, silent as shadows, up and moving again.
We came within sight of the airlock. I stopped short so fast that Hazel and Porter almost bumped into me.
One of the nightmare things, sitting more still than I had seen in any nightmare leading up to this night. A huddled mass of thick, coiled tentacles that glistened dully in the faint lamplight. Its body was largely obscured by the limbs, here and there I spied a patch of slick skin.
Blocking our way.
How intelligent are they?
The thought brought an icy chill. I couldn't contemplate it then. Instead I backed slowly deeper into the shadowy concealment of an awning that had been ripped off a little cafe. Hazel and Porter joined me.
“What do we do now?” my son asked, his voice soft but strained, words tumbling fast, “What now, mom? Where do we-”
Hazel gently covered his mouth, more to remind him to be quiet than to actually muffle him. As soon as he fell still, she let go. I nodded toward the doorway of the cafe. The door itself had been entirely torn away, easy to creep through into relative safety.
Behind the bar at the back we sat on the slightly sticky tile floor, leaning against huge bags of dried beans with the scent of coffee all around us. I could see the back door that would let out into the brightly lit emergency hallway, but not the front. Having eyes on only one exit made my skin crawl.
“Still wanna try going through the ductwork?” I whispered. Hazel had already downloaded the schematics, so it should be quicker for her to access them now. And though I was reluctant to crawl around in the guts of the Station, it seemed like our only option.
Hazel nodded. Her gaze unfocused to turn on the ConnectNet. She twitched, then whispered, “Shut down too fast before, schematics were still up. Surprised me. But...hey, there's a maintenance hallway nearby, we won't need to-”
The front window of the cafe exploded inwards.
A storm of barbed tentacles thrashed through the front of the cafe. I leaped to my feet and threw myself at the back door, dragging Porter.
Please, I thought as I slammed into the door, please let this one be out of regulation, too.
Whoever ran this cafe must've complied with the safety protocols. The door wouldn't budge.
“Duck!” Hazel screamed. I pushed Porter to the floor and dropped on top of him. The tentacle that had been about to slam into me struck the door instead. Spines scored the painted metal. I glimpsed Hazel, blinking hard as she shut down her neuralware display again. Then the monster was behind the counter with us.
Hazel vaulted over, turned back, held out her arms. I scrambled to my feet, ducking another tentacle, and hoisted Porter up. At six, he was getting too big to carry around. Terror gave me strength; he practically flew over and into my wife's arms.
“Ivy!” she screamed.
I lurched forward, heaving myself up as well. Hazel and Porter ran toward the exit. I slid off of the counter. My right leg buckled, and I sprawled, gritting my teeth against the pain. Couldn't cry out now. Couldn't risk Hazel coming back for me. I clambered back to my feet; breath ragged. The tentacles would whip around me at any second.
They didn't. In spite of my limp I ran. Only once I was out did I spare a brief glance over my shoulder.
The tight confines of the narrow space behind the bar confounded the monster. I was alive only because it was too big, but it would work its way out any moment.
“Where's the maintenance hallway?” I asked Hazel as we ran.
“Access panel, this way, but I don't know if it leads to the evac platform or not!”
“Just get us into it,” I hissed, and she dashed out in front of me, taking the lead.
We reached the panel as the monster erupted from the cafe. Around the sphere, I could hear the slapping, sliding noises of more of the creatures. Reacting to the chaos, approaching fast.
Hazel got the panel open and ducked in. I shoved Porter through and then leaped inside myself. Slamming the door behind us cut out even the dim light from the central sphere. I expected emergency lights to be on here, but it was perfect darkness. Groping, I found my son and my wife and pulled them close just as the first boom sounded on the door we'd just gone through.
“Further in, further in,” I urged.
“I can't see,” Porter protested, the words carrying more fear than complaint.
Boom!
Before I could snap something sharp, but Hazel's voice answered. “Feel your way,” she said, both reassuring and impatient. “We're right here.”
Putting a hand to the wall, I didn't encounter the smooth metal surface I expected, but rather orderly rows of tubes, pipes, and wires.
Boom!
There followed an ear-piercing, grating screech. The creatures were beginning to tear through the wall to get to us.
In the next instant we were in a stumbling, reeling run. I kept stepping on Porter's heels in the blackness. The hallway was too narrow for any of the creatures to fit into, but they could tear their way through.
Could we run faster than they could rip through metal?
After several minutes of fleeing blindly through the dark, the tearing pursuit began to drop behind us. The further we ran the softer the noises became, and eventually we left them behind. I could feel Porter and Hazel in front of me trying to relax, to slow down now that the danger seemed to have passed. I pushed them on. Safety in here was an illusion – we couldn't stay in these walls forever.
“There's a corner here,” Hazel warned ahead. A few moments later I heard a muffled thump and a curse. “Stairs,” she explained, “I tripped over the first one.”
“Good thing they go up,” I muttered. If they'd led down, she'd have tumbled headfirst.
There were no side hallways. The only way forward was up. We began to climb. It wasn't a long way, but my hurt leg was failing me. I couldn't put weight on it to lift myself to the next step, so I went up the stairs one at a time, slowly. With my hands out to the walls on either side, I braced myself. I could hear my wife and son breathing. The sound moved gradually away from me, ahead and above. They were outpacing me. I kept my own breathing quiet, swallowing any gasps or grunts of pain. I didn't want them to slow down for my sake.
There was a clang that I didn't realize was the sound of Hazel knocking her head against a metal door at the top of the narrow stairway until she cursed in a furious whisper. After the swearing died down, she muttered, “Where's the handle...”
“Careful, mommy,” Porter's voice whispered.
“I'll be so careful, sweets,” Hazel said, but her reassurance sounded absentminded. She was focused on what might be beyond that door.
She must have been turning the handle slowly, because I almost caught up to them again before I heard the soft shnick of the catch. When the line of white light appeared and began to widen around the door, marking the growing crack as she eased it open, I reached my family again. I stopped on the step beneath Porter, jaw clenched, trying not to gasp from the pain. Bright light made my eyes water as Hazel pushed the door just enough to peer out. I didn't know how she could stand it.
She was still and silent, silhouetted against the glare, for so long that I began to worry. Then she said in a voice that was soft but not a whisper, “Ivy? You should look.”
I moved past Porter, careful not to jostle him off of his step and not to let him brush against my wounds. Peeking over Hazel's shoulder, I felt my brow contract into a frown.
“Station Headquarters?” I asked. We must have gotten more turned around than I'd imagined. “Where the hell is everybody?”
“Did the Head Administrator leave us all here?” Porter asked from behind me, his voice sharp with anxiety, “And Peacekeeping and Environment and everybody?”
“They wouldn't do that,” Hazel said swiftly, but she didn't sound terribly confident.
I pushed past her, out into the HQ. The light made me squint for another few moments before my eyes adjusted, then I looked around more closely. The calming blue and chrome room was not marked by the blood or destruction of the central sphere, but it was completely empty.
“Maybe they wouldn't leave us all, but they're not here,” I said. “We still have to get out of the station. No telling how long we'll stay safe up here.”
Hazel stepped into the room with me, pulling Porter after her. I watched her crouch down, fussing over him, and realized that she hadn't been listening to me at all. I sagged against a wall, letting them have their moment and giving my leg a rest. After she stood again, I repeated myself. “We still have to get to the escape platform. This place might not stay safe.”
“Should we try the main hallways again?” she asked, then rubbed the back of her skull, “Or should I try to pull up the schematics and go through-”
A loud hiss sounded to my right, and I lurched away from the wall I was leaning on as a portion of it began to move.
“Don't use your neuralware!”
It was the voice of the Head Administrator, Therese Brown, that called from within. And the figure who stepped out was Jim Townes, ranking Peacekeeper. He wasn't armed or moving threateningly, but the man had hard eyes and I could barely walk, the fabric of my shirt and pants sodden with blood and sweat; I had to fight the urge to draw away from him.
“Get in,” Brown called, “quickly.”
Townes moved to the side and gestured for us to go through the secret door. I pushed Hazel toward Porter, who looked visibly cowed by the Peacekeeper's presence. She took his hand, and he shook himself, then nodded and let her lead him into the room beyond. I followed more slowly, trying not to limp.
The room was constructed like the comms room in our apartment, but what I could glimpse of the paneling on the walls and ceiling and even the floor looked different. Thicker, made of a material I couldn't place. The walls were covered, all the way around, with mounted monitors. Old-fashioned microLED displays, all playing images of different parts of Mars Orbital Station.
“What is this?” Porter asked. The room had sparked his curiosity, and my little boy somehow found the energy to summon some enthusiasm in spite of the fatigue and fear still pulling at his features. He went on, “They're not like the display screens in our apartment. Look, look, they have little buttons. There's not even a signal interface for ConnectNet, mom, look!”
“You have this kind of monitoring system rigged up?” I asked Townes, who had just shut the door behind us. It hissed as it closed, and more of the paneling that covered the rest of the walls slid into place. “The hardware for blocking chatter in here is so high-end,” I added, moving closer to the door to get a better look, “Why have something so...outdated?”
“For emergencies,” Townes said. He didn't add like this one, but it was in his voice. I grimaced.
Someone else said, “In case the higher-end systems go down, having a more...simply engineered... method of keeping things monitored is a good idea.”
Aside from the Head Administrator, the top Peacekeeper, and my family, there were a handful of others crowded into this strange, hidden comms room. A few looked like Hazel, Porter, and I – families that had fled the monsters, lucky enough to not get ripped apart on the way. There was a squad of lower-ranking Peacekeepers as well, standing at attention together. Last, there were four people whose work badges identified them as minor administrators and aides who must have spent almost all of their time in the room we'd just left.
“Comes in handy now,” Brown said, “The monsters seem to hunt by following active neuralware signals. Linking into comms that way right now would be...” I'd watched her announcements and briefings during the years she'd been Head Administrator, and I'd never seen her at a loss for words. “Well. Anyway. This room is meant to withstand high-level hacking attempts as well as filtering out the cross-chatter of a whole station full of people using neuralware and ConnectNet link-ups. Safest place we could be.”
“Other than off the station,” I muttered.
A Peacekeeper cleared her throat and tilted her head at a screen almost right next to her. I followed the gesture.
Everyone had come up with my plan. The emergency evacuation platform was displayed on the monitor, the image not as real as a direct link to neuralware but vivid enough to show the slaughter.
“I need to sit down.” I sank to the floor next to Hazel's legs, and Porter joined me almost immediately. Heedless of my drying blood, he leaned into me, and I put one arm around him gingerly.
“Shouldn't we get as many people in here as we can?” Hazel asked. If I'd said it, it would have been a challenge. Hazel had a way of asking questions like that without sounding like she was trying to start fights, though. Instead of getting angry, Townes deflated.
“We tried,” he sighed, “We lost three squads of Peacekeepers before we gave up.”
“What now?” I asked. The unanticipated relief of being able to ask that question instead of being the one having to answer it was one of the most profound experiences I've ever known.
“I've sent out a distress call the old-fashioned way, at light-speed,” Head Administrator Brown said, “We got a response the same way about ten minutes ago. It'll take a few days for the nearest ships to get here.” She pointed to an opening in one wall panel and added, “Water packs, recyclers, and the kind of rations that won't expire until after the death of the universe. We won't be comfy, but we'll last. And once our rescuers arrive, they can't just dock and come in, but we'll have a plan in place to get out to them by then.”
###
Breach Incident 7, Interview 9, Three Subjects, Transcription:
Subject 12 (S-12): “Have we broken any laws?”
Interviewer 1 (I-1): “Let the record show that subject twelve is being belligerent.”
S-12:“You're damn right I'm being belligerent-”
Subject 13 (S-13): “Ivy-”
S-12: “-we haven't done anything wrong and we just survived a horrifying catastrophe and instead of a rescue party, the survivors get rounded up and marched onto a detention ship? Split up for our medical exams against our will, then tossed into a communal cell until questioning time? Who are you people?”
Interviewer 2 (I-2): “That information is sensitive.”
[Since the time of this interview, Interviewer 2 has been terminated on the grounds of improper conduct with a subject. Further incidents that contributed to the termination will be indicated in the remainder of the transcription with an asterisk rather than a note.]
S-12: “So you're not with any government agency in the system.”
Subject 14 (S-14): “What does that mean, mom?”
S-13: “I'll explain later, Porter. Please, stay quiet for now, okay, buddy?”
S-12: “We're not answering one question until you give us some information.”
I-2: “Like what?”*
S-12: “Like what the hell is going on here!”
I-2: “I will give you what information it is legal to share, and you will answer my questions?”*
I-1: “That's not-”
S-12: “Deal.”
I-1: “Let the record show that I object to this.”
I-2: “Objection noted. And dismissed. We need cooperation.”*
S-12: “So. Start explaining.”
I-2: “Do you know how the technology used by ConnectNet Tech works?”
S-12: “Don't patronize me.”
I-2: “Right. So, the same technology that allows the signals to skim along the barriers between dimensions, for faster-than-light communication transmission without time-”
S-12: “I said don't patronize me. Stop explaining what I do know and tell me what I don't.”
S-13: “Be careful, Ivy...”
1-2: “Sometimes images from those other dimensions bleed through to the subconscious of ConnectNet users.”*
[There is a long pause.]
S-13: “Porter's nightmares?”
S-12: “Holy shit.”
I-2: “Rarely, overuse can weaken the barrier through which the signals travel, resulting in a spread effect.”*
S-12: “Our nightmares... So, what tipped the scales? What let the things through?”
I-1: “That's quite enough information.”
S-12: “Overuse...it was whoever you people are. Are you the government or are you ConnectNet? Both? What's been going on out there?”
S-13: “Ivy, hush!”
S-12: “You get it, don't you, Hazel? All those wild rumors online. They're true. ConnectNet has been tapping all the signals.”
I-2: “Don't be naive, of course they're monitored!”*
I-1: “Speak with me outside.”
S-12: “And that broke open the other dimension?”
I-2: “Not quite.”*
S-12: “But close enough?”
I-2: “If you want to be crude.”
S-12: “Then why do you monitor at all?”
I-1: “Speak with me in the hallway. Now!”
[Interviewers exit. Statements made by both indicate that Interviewer 1 explained Interviewer 2's mishandling of the situation and suggested that Interviewer 2 remain present but silent thereafter. Interviewers return to the room.]
S-12: “So? Why do you monitor if it's so dangerous?”
I-1: “Danger is minimal. Risk assessment determines any action taken.”
S-12: “I wasn't talking to you.”
I-1: “I'm talking to you. Now, about our questions.”
S-12: “No. What about my son?”
S-14: “I'm right here, mom.”
S-12: “What's to stop this from happening again?”
I-1: “It's our turn to ask, and your turn to answer.”
S-13: “Ivy's right. We can't cooperate with you until we know Porter will be safe. We're his mothers. We just can't.”
I-1: “An upgrade to his ConnectNet device will filter the images out of his conscious and subconscious mind, and further incursions will be extremely unlikely.”
S-12: “Oh, sure. Right. What other software will you put in there?”
I-1: “I don't know what you mean.”
S-12: “Of course you don't. What if we say no.”
I-1: “You misunderstand. It's done. The upgrade was completed during his medical examination when you were brought on board.”
S-12: “What!”
S-13: “You can't do-”
I-1: “We can. We did. And of course...I don't need to tell you not to speak of this to anyone.”
[There is a long pause.]
S-14: “Mom? Mommy? Why are you looking at me like that?”
S-12: “Nothing. Uh. No reason, baby...”
I-1: “Now. You'll answer a few questions for me.”
