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= NEBULA EXPRESS =

a DarkSF novel

by John Argo

Page 20.

Brenna wiped tears away with the stiff fingers of one hand. "Something went wrong, didn't it? I mean, this ship doesn't seem to have any plan."

"It's Science," Lantz said bitterly. "Progress. Human advancement. We can do anything. We are masters of the universe." She looked up. "Fuck you!" Her voice echoed grimly among the shadows in the mezzanine.

Ridge said: "Bottom line, do we want to live?" He looked from one to the other. "Do you want to live? Do you? And you?" They all nodded hesitantly. "No," he said, "it's not good enough. You can't hesitate, or you are lost. You have to make up your mind. Do you want to live? If you do, you have to do the impossible and shove aside all your grief and anger and disappointment, because the mudmen will be back any time soon and they are looking for a meal."

"We weren't made for that," Tomson rumbled in his big, implacable voice. "It's too complicated."

Lantz laughed coldly. "Maybe it's the other way around. Maybe we are on some long trip and the mudmen were created to be food for us, but the tables got turned somehow."

Tomson shook his head again. "Too complicated still."

Brenna stood back and looked in Ridge's eyes. "Are you sure?"

"What do you mean am I sure?"

"That we aren't real."

"We're real," Ridge said. "Parts of our memories aren't."

Brenna shook her head in continuing shock, but her tears had dried up. Lantz stepped up beside her and put a strong freckled hand on Brenna's shoulder, seeking warmth and companionship. "What a nightmare," Lantz said. "You know what? Already, I'm forgetting more stuff."

Tomson nodded. "That's because it's not necessary. Your brain is compensating. Once the veil of illusion is torn, the illusions blow away."

"What does that leave?" Ridge said bitterly. He felt terribly empty. He wondered if he'd ever been to San Diego, or if there was a woman named Dorothy there, or even if San Diego existed at all.

Tomson said: "It all seems so clear and logical to me. It's like a storm has passed and it's one of those clear, moonlit nights. Anyone know what I mean?"

Ridge could picture it exactly. "I've seen a clear, moonlit night." He had, somewhere.

Brenna ran a grimy sleeve across her face. "You didn't. Someone else did, and that person lent you their memories."

Lantz put her hands defiantly in her pockets. "I'm a human being, a woman, from Tacoma. I love that place. I can almost smell the moss in the rainforest."

"Me too," Tomson said. For the first time, a smile flickered on his features. "You know, if we can remember things in common, it probably means they are real. Like, is there a Philadelphia, or is it just some parlor trick of gene splicing done by the Corporation?"

"I was never in Philadelphia," Ridge said, "but I know they have these meat things, these sandwiches..."

"...With cheese on them," Brenna said laughing.

"Bad for your heart," Tomson said, laughing. "Cholesterol factory." They all laughed.

Ridge said: "What else can go wrong today?"

"We want to live," Tomson said. He looked angry. "Whoever made us, and why, we do have the will to live. Mahaffey may have lost it, but I'll go down fighting."

The others all agreed. "Okay," Ridge said. "It's settled. The best we can do is continue as before. We have no other choice. We can deal with the emotional stuff once we're safe again."

Brenna grew serious again. Their sunny moment had been fleeting, like on a meadow swept with rain clouds on a day that wasn't winter any more but wasn't spring yet. "We could go back to WorkPod01, get back in our dream machines, and go back to sleep."

"And never wake up," Lantz added. "Good way to go if we have to."

"I think I want to do better than that," Ridge said. He stared into the turbulent dusk in Brenna's eyes, and she looked away to avoid his gaze. Don't go the way Mahaffey did, Ridge thought silently. I want to be alone with you.

A flute-like sound rolled across the air. It was delicate, probing, and menacing. Other low round-mouth sounds floated in the air as the mudmen spoke among themselves.

"Let's get out of here," Tomson said.

"Up the stairs over there!" Ridge said, pointing across the floor to a curving staircase that looked like faux marble. "Maybe we can save ourselves, save the ship, end up back on Earth after all!"

Lantz helped stricken Brenna along. Brenna kept stumbling on the stairs. Tomson carried an armload of rifles, including Brenna's.

"Hurry!" Ridge said. Already, he saw mudmen spilling into the rotunda. "Up here!" Ridge led his companions around into the mezzanine. The mudmen milled below, until several looked up. They had not faces, but the suggestions of faces. Their features looked as though someone had sewn them onto a dirty gray sock. Some were darker gray than others, some putty-colored, a few almost off-blue like the color of wet concrete. As a dozen mudmen swarmed up the stairs, Ridge and Tomson unloaded a withering fire into their midst, and they fell back in a tangle of piled, motionless bodies. "So far so good," Ridge said. "Let's keep moving before our luck runs out."

They followed a maze of corridors on this upper level until Tomson found a small lobby with several elevators. The lobby had that gleaming marbled look, resembling office buildings back on Earth—anything to foster the illusion of normalcy for humans trapped vast distances from home in a tin can amid hostile outer space. The material was lightweight but sturdy, and had the smooth, cool feel of marble. It came in a variety of colors and styles, all of them smooth and polished like the real thing. There were reddish marbles with yellow inlay, white in black, black in white, all the possible combinations. They were patterns like in real marble—some resembling ink dissolving in water, others smoke drifting on mountains, others the sedimentation that took place to really create marble. The floors themselves in the cone were doctored further with illusions of glass, gleaming brass, thick carpeting, and echoing high ceilings to further the illusion, to prevent humans from losing their minds on long journeys through the cosmos. Somehow, Ridge thought without having much time to dwell on the idea, we ourselves are part of the illusion. But how? Why? He was desperate and angry to find out. A part of him wanted to think: Where are our creators so that we can embrace them and crush their lives out of them just as they have crushed our hopes and our very identities? We want to punish them for playing this cruel joke on us, for toying with our lives like this. Another part of him thought: We are humans too, and we should treat them with mutual respect when we meet them, if we meet them, if we can find them, if any of them are still left. He also thought: Maybe the ultimate joke is that they have gone away and we are left to take their place. Or was that the purpose? He realized how much more he needed to learn, and he would not rest. Survival alone wasn't enough.

He must learn the truth. That alone, the truth and nothing but the truth, would console the grief he'd seen in the eyes of Brenna whom he loved. Finally, he had this good thought that now they were free to love each other. He wondered if she knew that yet. He glanced over as they ran to the elevators, and saw Lantz and Tomson supporting her. She still looked ravaged with grief. Her grief alone lent her dignity greater than the cynicism of those who had created this tragedy; her grief alone made her more than human, he thought, suddenly proud of her and of himself and his companions.

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