He’d been in his assigned room for less than two minutes when there was a knock on the door. Apparently they were eager to have him start. He opened the door and was greeted by a surprise.
Not one to be star-struck, Cay still couldn’t help himself. His visitor was a tall, broad-shouldered man with an oval face framed by medium-length brown hair. It was the most famous person alive and the last person Cay would ever have expected to see deep in the Oort Cloud. “You’re Calm!” he exclaimed.
Calm inclined his head and replied, “Yes.”
“What are you doing here? Why aren’t you on Earth, or anywhere else?”
“I’m here because there are few distractions in this place, and you’re someone new. As to the rest, they obviously haven’t told you much,”
Cay laughed, still delighted by the surprise. “No. When I was promised a release from detention if I could do a job, I jumped at it.”
“Well, you’re going to be working with me.”
Unable to stop himself, Cay blurted out his questions. “What will we be doing? Why do they need you out here? There isn’t either wind or fire in space, is there?”
“No. Can you pilot a ship?”
“If it runs on electricity, I can make it do what I want.”
Calm nodded to himself as though that response answered a far more complex question. “Interesting. What do you call it?”
“Call what?”
“Your ability, your power. What do you call it?”
“Oh, interfacing.”
Again Calm nodded. “That’s appropriate.”
“So what will we be doing?” This was the real question. After a month of posing it, Cay was no closer to knowing what he was supposed to do.
“Unlocking a problem. Baldstone decided that you might be the key we need.”
“Can you be more specific?”
Calm shrugged. “I’d tell you, but like you I’m a little outside the chain of command, and they’re touchy about that out here.”
“So . . . no?”
“No.”
“When do we start?”
For the first time in their interaction Calm looked pleased. His mouth curled up, and his eyes crinkled. “Today,” he said.
Cay’s mood had lifted when he’d been brought to
Armstrong
. Seeing the small craft had validated the hours he’d spent piloting it in the simulator. They had of course insisted that he demonstrate his competence with it before going on the mission. It was always the same with everyone: people might have been told what his Keystone ability enabled him to do, but no one ever appreciated what it meant without at least one demonstration.
He’d given them their demonstration, and they’d briefed him on the artifact. They would never know what an effort of will it had taken for him to wait for them to tell him rather than dive into their systems and absorb the information for himself. Once the briefing was over they’d left on the
Explorer
within the hour.
Now accompanied by Calm, he watched the artifact loom into view. Exotic energy swirled around them, never quite breaking through Calm’s protection. “I’m supposed to interface with
that
” asked Cay, “while all the purple stuff is attacking us?”
“No,” replied Calm. “Now let me focus.” A moment later the wild energy abated and disappeared. “You’re supposed to interface with anything you can,” he added. “I’m just here to get us in and out.”
“What do I do now?”
“You’re asking me? Sorry, kid, but you’re supposed to be the expert on that.”
Cay turned to his task. He’d been told what to expect before they left the station. Ever since then he’d been racking his brain over how to do it. This wasn’t some human device designed for his personal use. He didn’t know where to begin.
He reached out toward the artifact with his mind. Large though it was physically, the mental footprint presented to Cay was more impressive. It cast a shadow in his mind as though he were standing at the base of a sentient structure. He felt both welcomed and intimidated.
There was a teasing sensation in his mind, something just out of reach. He pushed at the feeling, which was elusive and slippery. It was incredible that something with so large a footprint would be so hard to pin down.
Whereas breaking encryption felt like slicing through flimsy ribbon, here he was unsure of his target. He wasn’t even sure what he was using to reach it when, without warning, he felt himself slide into a crack. There it was! An avenue of approach. It was like wedging his fingers into a crevice while dangling from a cliff.
Cay held on, then pushed. As he did so, the artifact in his mind’s eye lit up with lines of light like alien graffiti. The sensor screens exploded with unfamiliar data. His mind was sent adrift in swirling currents, the likes of which he had never encountered.
He swam through a rip tide of data, the deeper meaning of which he couldn’t begin to fathom. No previous experience had prepared him for this, or even given him any clues as to what tactics to try. He improvised with glee. Not only was he interfacing again, but it was also an invigorating challenge. Whatever the artifact held, after a year of boredom he was once more alive. He was aware of an underlying structure, a foundation to which he could cling. If only he could find the right perspective and the right rules!
All technology had rules, but comparing a computer system to this artifact was like comparing a match to a volcano. Whatever it was, he knew that it must be a repository of incredible information. That knowledge drove him forward, fueling his curiosity.
Cay imagined himself standing up, ignoring the intense light that radiated off the artifact, and walking across the violent sea of energy. Throwing caution to the wind, he placed both hands onto different lines of glowing light. A purple radiance emanated from the artifact and stretched out in an elliptical plane, sweeping around the asteroid before encompassing the entire solar system.
The Sweep
Cay’s eyes rolled back in his head as he collapsed, a marionette whose strings had been cut. Calm caught him and stared through his face plate. The radiance had passed through his own sphere as if it were no impediment. He felt naked, unprotected, vulnerable.
A voice roared over his intercom, “Report! Report! Abort mission.”
The urgent voice brought Calm back into the moment. “Cay has collapsed,” he said.
“We’re returning to
Explorer
.”
The exotic energy that had enveloped the
Armstrong
on its forays to and from the asteroid was absent. Calm was aware of this anomaly while focusing on Cay. The kid appeared to be alive but unconscious. Why had Cay collapsed? What was that light? What had it done to them?
Upon docking they were met by support staff who carried Cay through the airlock to remove his suit and test his vital signs. Meanwhile
Explorer
headed back to FAME Station 5.
Calm watched the men attending to Cay. There was an intensity to their actions that conveyed a sense of immense urgency. People rushed by in the passageway. The ship reminded Calm of a disturbed anthill—frantic activity everywhere.
He grabbed one of the passing workers and asked, “Why is everyone so panicked?”
“They’re gone!”
“Who’s gone?”
“Earth! The Sun! They’re gone!”
Day 2
Morning Fears
Deklan awoke uncomfortable.
Again.
Details came rushing back to him, overwhelming him.
He remembered the fight; he remembered speeding; he remembered losing control and jumping the guardrail. He remembered the timeless fall of his car that had dragged on for an eternity. He remembered the pain. He remembered waking in the morgue.
Deklan forced himself to focus on the cat that had just landed on his chest. Mittens. This was the first time in his life that the overweight feline’s crashing onto his chest was an improvement over the previous day.
He pushed her off with ill grace. She was an unwanted legacy from a failed relationship. He’d have taken her to the pound years ago except she was so ugly that it would have been a death sentence. Each time she climbed his shelf of vintage model cars and jumped on him he reconsidered the choice to keep her. He had to get out of bed now. Otherwise she’d keep pouncing on him until he fed her.
Deklan flipped between channels on the screen. Yesterday he’d awoken in a morgue; today, a Saturday, he was channel-surfing. Already the media had settled on referring to the odd purple effect that he kept hearing about as “The Sweep.” He was fascinated by the eight minutes of darkness and the new stars. Everyone else was fascinated by the new Keystones.
The various news outlets were in stiff competition to discover the most interesting Keystones. Deklan flipped between channel after channel that showed close-ups of Keystones with physical aberrations. He paused at an interview with a man who had two tentacles sprouting from his torso under each arm. Another show centered on a man with furry flaps that resembled wings and a hard ridge of what looked like keratin that started at his nose and swept over his head to his shoulders. Other channels featured individuals’ antennae, scales, extra limbs, and translucency. The more obvious the physical transformation, the greater the public fascination.
There was also great interest in just how many new Keystones there were. In the span of a few moments Keystones had gone from being rare to commonplace. Estimates abounded, but there were no hard numbers.
The sheer variety meant that, instead of becoming jaded and uninterested, the public was growing ever more intrigued. Deklan hoped that the surplus of information, not to mention the rash of property damage, would keep people from noticing that for a brief while, before he deleted the morgue’s records, he had been dead.
He kept trying to ignore the note he’d found on his toe:
This was the easy part. It will get harder. Try to do the right thing. Good luck.
What did that even mean?
Vibrations from his Uplink alerted him to an incoming call. This time it wasn’t from a friend but the police. Since The Sweep he’d been dodging social calls apart from a chat with his parents. He wanted a chance to process what had happened at the morgue and the crash that led up to it.
His Uplink was similar in form to an antiquated wristwatch, but he preferred it to the more modern models. It was difficult to lose or steal, and the release was voice-activated. Flicking a finger over its screen, he routed the call to his TV. “Hello?”
“Mr. Tobin?” The person on the other end sounded bored.
Deklan steadied his voice, dreading the idea that someone was following a paper trail that led back to him in the morgue. “Speaking,” he replied.
“Sir, we’ve found your car. I regret to inform you that it’s been in an accident.”
Deklan felt his pulse slow, only now aware that it had spiked. It was time to feign surprise. “What? How bad is the damage?”
“I haven’t seen it, but according to this file you’re going to need your insurance.”
Deklan kept up his charade of surprise and mixed in some outrage. “Who’s done this? Where can I see it?”
If anything the voice on the other end slipped deeper into a monotone. “We have it impounded with other stolen vehicles until you claim it. You can come at any time, though there may be a wait. Things have been busy today.”
An hour later Deklan was at the impound lot staring at his car. Even knowing that it was his, he didn’t recognize the twisted wreckage. He noticed in particular that the driver’s seat was stained with copious amounts of blood.
Deklan’s hands roamed over his torso of their own accord. He’d awoken feeling fine, both in the morgue and this morning. He was sure that he was some sort of Keystone now, but what kind?
Was this a one-time-only second chance? If he were in another catastrophic accident, would he wake up again? He didn’t feel different, apart from some small aches. He decided that he was in no hurry to seek out another mishap.
Rodents
Jonny had driven through the night and made it to Nairobi, Kenya. He couldn’t believe the news. Weird things had been happening to people all over the world. He’d thought about going to the hospital, but what was he going to say? Liquid sprayed out of his hands? No. It hadn’t happened again, and he didn’t have a shred of evidence. Even with the general strangeness that pervaded the world, his story was odd.
He’d feel better, he decided, once he rode the local Elevator to his home in the Terra Rings.
The Elevator was an unimpressive pair of cables spaced two hundred meters apart that ended a few dozen meters off the ground and stretched far into space. All of the Elevators maintained geostationary orbit at their various equatorial locations. They were the longest man-made structures ever constructed.
Jonny stood back and looked at the terminal building. Elevators came down one cable; cargo was unloaded or people disembarked; then the empty Elevator would be attached to the upwards cable and loaded with new cargo or people.
From the outside all one saw was a massive and multistoried room that had been designed with token gestures to aerodynamics. New Elevators came down the cable every hour. The complex and involved process of switching them from one cable to another was hidden from sight by the building.
Ring Security was the usual banal drill. Jonny walked through a series of lines where biometric scanners verified his Secure Identity and screened for weapons or explosives. He was also required to use his Uplink to verify his booking. Next Jonny joined the group of people waiting for an Elevator.
Elevators’ movement was slow when in the Earth’s atmosphere, but they sped up once air friction ceased to be an issue. Each of the Elevators was standard issue. Passenger areas ranged from coach to first class.
Jonny grumbled at the expense of a first-class ticket as he paid his coach fare. He could justify the expense of a safari but not that of a more comfortable seat on the way home.
He watched the news on his Uplink as the Elevator ascended. As far as the news stations were concerned, the only story worth reporting was about the Keystones that had sprung up everywhere.
As he flipped through channels, the theme remained the same. Changing tactics, Jonny looked up some research that had been done on the Keystone phenomenon before it had become widespread.