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There Aint No Justice 114
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| There Ain't No Justice |
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| #114 |
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- Metamorph -
Chapter 03
by Arifel
III
The Wise One must wander among the
Worlds... - Apollonius Sophistes
i looked around the back yard. a washing line; a wheelbarrow; some
hanging baskets that once contained plants. the cats had gone up to
Queensland with the rest of my family and the house was being sold. all
of my old posessions had been moved into storage. the place looked
empty, forlorn; not at all like Mission Control. not even the most
objective assessment of the back yard could identify it as the site from
which Lydya and i would launch ourselves out into space, to Nereid, to
add our names to the Metamorph monument.
`do you know where we're going?' i asked. we were both speaking in that
vague way we have when we're concentrating on complex internal changes.
`four three three four point four three two million kilometres. if we
use bananafishbone's half-field drive, we can reach forty percent of the
speed of light, once we're above the plane of the ecliptic. no, i don't
know exactly where we're going. i have a rough idea of where Neptune
is, this time of year. we can use mass sense to find it once we're
within about one hundred and fifty million K'.' i consulted my
ephemeris.
`Neptune: right ascension nineteen hours, thirty-one minutes,
thirty-four seconds. declination minus twenty-one degrees, nine
minutes, twenty-one seconds. currently thirty-one point one four six
AU's, say four thousand six hundred and fifty-nine million kilometres
away. assuming we can get up to one hundred and twenty-four thousand
km/s... about ten and a half hours. what's this half-field drive like?'
`i've never used it myself, but i'm told that it creates a low-level
field around you that moves you partially out of reality. shifts you
from zero to forty percent of the speed of light, instantaneously.' i
raised my eyebrows.
`it sounds ludicrous; i won't ask where all the energy for that comes
from. all the components are biological?' she nodded.
`it's possible for one person to create the field. it's easier for two.
the breakeven point is five people, but we two can get there and back
easily.' i looked up the plans, noted that they required some pure
aluminium. i considered synthesising it, but decided that there was
enough refineable material around, in the form of discarded cans. as
usual, Lydya had been thinking ahead; she produced a crumpled can,
crushed to the size of a golf ball. i smiled, accepted it from her, put
it in my mouth and swallowed. my stomach would take it apart, atom by
atom, discarding the dross and storing what we needed. other parts of my
stomach were preparing the drive itself, creating links of
superconducting material, tiny diamond struts, channels which i pumped
clear of matter, perfect vacuum, ridges in which sliding iron pellets
would act as control surfaces.
the objective observer i mentioned earlier would have thought that we
were simply sitting cross-legged on the grass, dispassionately
meditating. on one level, that's all we were doing. on another, i was
re-categorising the volumes of information i'd copied from her, creating
indices for data which i personally found particularly interesting; on
another, i was enjoying the feeling of mild summer sunlight on my skin;
on another, somewhat more human level, i was marvelling at the feelings
she'd inspired in me. it wasn't that she'd worked the Change (and was
therefore something akin to a mother to me); i felt i loved her for her
other qualities, her dark sense of humour, her appropriate seriousness
when required and her discordian frivolity when being serious wasn't
appropriate.
about twenty minutes later, we'd both completed our drives. she passed
me a pellet which contained notes, biomodifications which would allow us
to survive in vacuum for extended periods. my body implemented them
automatically. whoever had worked them out was good; we looked
unchanged, externally, but i noted all channels into the body had been
reinforced, from the inside; we stopped breathing. our skins toughened,
requiring just a little more effort than usual to bend. we weren't going
to change, internally, that much; i for one wanted to stay at the
biological level for the moment. this was a stage that some Metamorphs
went through, apparently; exchanging all of their soft, organic
components for ones made of other, stronger things; living, but not
DNA-based. less fragile; more adaptable. there were some that went what
was termed `the whole "Childhood's End" path', changing their forms for
structures of energy. we never heard from them again.
she sat on the grass, staring at me. i stared back, not wanting to use
any special means for determining what she was thinking; i should be
able to work it out. she was either unsure about wanting to go on this
trip, or wanted to know if i was completely sure that i wanted to go. i
waited.
`are you certain you want to do this?' i'd given it some thought.
`you told me of the Berserker stage.' this was where the Metamorph
finally realised its position and `went to town', doing strange, bizarre
and sometimes dangerous things. throughout the ages, these incidents had
given rise to many (for humans, anyway) inexplicable characters, such as
Heracleitus, Spring-heeled Jack, the Wandering Jew, Gilles De Rais, most
of the ex-rulers of Wallachia who'd ever been accused of being vampires,
Adam Weishaupt, and such (i had been relieved to learn that Jesus wasn't
a Metamorph - he had merely been misquoted). i knew enough of myself to
know that when i hit this stage, i would hit it hard; i though that this
trip might avert it for a while.
`delaying that stage may make it worse.' she said, following my
reasoning. i stood and stretched, not from any need to do so, but
simply because it felt good.
`so be it. if i'm going to be the silliest Metamorph there ever was,
there's no avoiding it.' she gave me a warning glance, and i recalled
what she'd told me of our Law:
A Metamorph may not kill another Metamorph.
If a Metamorph should step outside the Law, a conclave of Five was
required to bring the Rogue to justice. the sentence is death.
Each Metamorph may bring one other being to become a Metamorph.
(interesting, that one; i'd thought the `one begets one' law a
mechanical limitation)
Maintain secrecy.
Maintain a semblance of rationality.
i'd come to know their standards for rationality; they were broad and
completely unrelated to human standards. with interest, i noted the
absence of any rule that forbade killing humans, and i thought of my
list of people i didn't particularly like. maybe i'd look some of them
up when we got back.
she stood, the sunlight through the branches of the lemon tree dappling
over her face. `you don't want to wait until night, so that no-one
will see us?' she smiled.
`rules for Metamorphs, number seventy-one: act as strange as you like.
chances are people won't believe their eyes.' i acknowledged this with
a nod.
`let's do it.'
inside my body, energy began flowing along conduits within my bones. it
wasn't electrical energy, and i could do far more with it than the
tricks mankind had learned to perform with electromagnetism. my view of
the world around me wavered as an ellipsoidal field grew around me. a
similar field enveloped Lydya's body and we both lifted from the ground,
like balloons drifting on the wind. the music playing through my mind
was the sweeping organ solo from `stagnation' (a track from the very
first Genesis album, and i tried not to think of the lyrics) as we rose
above the treetops, above the roof-tops... wau, this was like one of my
dreams. between my feet i could see power-lines strung from one pole to
the next, over the house, along the street. in my dreams, i used to
dread flying into them.
we rose rapidly. i had no idea as to what our motive force was; a
cursory check of my archives told me it was a gradual lessening of
earth's gravitational field's ability to hold my body, which meant that
once we were in open space, we'd drift. of course, once we were out of
range of any gravitational fields, we could point ourselves at Neptune
and activate the Half-field drive.
for a few moments, i resisted the temptation to look down at the
receding earth, and instead i glanced over at Lydya. her body was
encapsulated in the field, and she'd managed to give it a glittering,
golden aspect. well, two can play at that game, i thought. a brief
flurry of what i'd come to know as Inner Secondary Thought occurred, and
my mind was presented with options for colouring the field. i ran
bright blue-green hexagonal grid lines over my field, red fireflies
darting along the lines and flaring yellow when they intersected. i
wasn't concerned with wasting energy on such displays; i knew that, if
necessary, i could collect sunlight, or scoop hydrogen from the air, or
even convert some of my own mass to energy. the options were endless.
there was little chance of being stuck halfway, out of fuel.
i modified the shape of my field, so that it followed the contours of my
body, spread my arms out and together, we shot up out of the atmosphere.
the gradual change of the colour of the sky, from summer azure to
midnight blue, was something i wanted to see again and again.
unfortunately, i hadn't activated my sensory recorder, so if i wanted to
see it again, i'd have to drop down to the earth and start over. i was
on the verge of doing this when i felt insistent waves of, something,
gravitic in nature; at least, it wasn't on the EM spectrum - of course.
it was Lydya. i tuned in:
`increase the field's opacity to full. we'll need to be left behind by
the earth - you know what i mean? we'll need to drop out of its gravity
well completely before we can use the drive.' i waved an
acknowledgement and complied, rather more quickly than i'd intended; i
shot away from her so fast she appeared to vanish. i tumbled end over
end, righting myself with difficulty, orienting feet-downward by force
of habit.
the sight was breath-taking. it was the standard NASA shot of the earth
from space, but being there made all the difference. the silence was
profound, and i felt the cold as an absence of heat, not as something
crippling. we were in the shadow of the earth, a crescent of sun
lighting the curve before me, like the span of a huge bridge. i forgot
about Lydya for a moment, and simply hung there in space, like Tetsuo,
taking in the view. awesome. i could understand the astronauts who
took it as a religious experience, and i could understand those who saw
the earth as a living being. of course she was.
i saw a flare of bright green light off to my left and below me;
instantly, my eyes centred on it, ranged, zoomed it. it was Lydya, not
merely freeing her body from the influence of gravity, but expending
energy to drive towards me, energised atoms trailing from her feet. i
laughed.
`you look like Astro-boy!' i sent to her, using the gravitic band as
she had. she came level with me, her hands on her hips.
`what did you do?' i checked back.
`let's see... uh, i drove field strength up to one hundred percent...
ah. if you do that in less than a certain period - say, zero point zero
zero four milliseconds - the field strength goes up over theoretical
limits, and forms a sort of repulsion field. it repelled earth's
gravity and your field, too, so i got shoved away. it won't happen
again, captain.' she gave me a mock-stern look.
`see that it doesn't, ensign.' she turned to take in the view.
`wonderful, isn't it?' i nodded.
`we aren't on any sort of tight schedule, are we? i'd like to stay and
watch the sunset from up here.' she mm-hmmed her agreement. just then,
i felt more waves, these definitely EM-based, coming from behind us. i
turned to look. using the waves as a guide and by amplifying the
available light, i could just see it; a satellite of some kind. `what
do you make of that, Lydya?' i asked, pointing.
`spy satellite. American. oops - we're over their territory, aren't
we?' i looked down, nodded. a wicked grin animated her features.
`let's go pay our respects.' i grinned back at her.
we dimmed our fields' special effects to the point where it appeared
that we were simply hovering in space, unprotected, and then we drove
ourselves towards the satellite. i grew wary when i saw what looked
like particle weapons on the thing.
`do you recognise those funnels?' she nodded.
`yeah. our skin-shielding will be adequate. you might want to go
clear, though.' this meant modifying the field around us so that light
would be bent around it. it only worked effectively at a distance.
`don't be rude! let's go say hello.'
we approached something about the size and shape of the Apollo command
module, white-painted metal, detailed with antennae and fish-eye ports
which concealed cameras. the funnels pointed forwards, along the
thing's main axis. we floated around it until i saw a tiny United
States flag and the NASA emblem. there was a third symbol, between the
others. i couldn't believe my eyes.
`i always wondered about that one.' i sent, pointing to the red, white,
black and gold eye-in-the-pyramid symbol.
`oh, that's just Kelly. he did that, just after they were launched.
he's a notorious put-on artist. always has been, ever since he worked
with Dr. John Dee back in the sixteen-hundreds.' i regarded the design
with my head to one side.
`not bad. it lacks something. to be frank, it's not Art.' Lydya
looked up at me sharply. `something wrong?'
`that's one of the signs i've been warned to look for in possible
Rogues. that infamous three-letter word.' i frowned.
`i haven't been a Metamorph for more than a week! give me a chance to
hang myself properly!' she smiled. i moved closer to the satellite,
extended my index finger; i expanded some of the capillaries and made
some radical alterations to the blood flowing in them. when it came
spraying out, it was bright yellow acrylic paint. distributing other
colours from the middle and ring fingers, it took perhaps four minutes
to render a creditable copy of Vaughn Bode's `Cheech Wizard', giving the
finger. i added a speech balloon; `BLESSED ARE DA PEACE-MAKERS.'
Lydya examined it critically. when she looked up at me again, that
manic grin was back.
half an hour later, we drifted back a few metres to get a better idea of
the whole work. frankly, it looked more like a hippie's kombi-wagon
than an orbital defence satellite, bright pink and purple swirls that
would have done any Moscoso poster proud, or like a subway train that
had been shunted into an unguarded area. i was particularly proud of
the doves.
Lydya floated over to me and gave me a mock-worried look.
`do you think we'll get into trouble for this?'
we both laughed as we drove off into space.
we'd pushed up at about forty degrees to the plane of the ecliptic for
about half an hour; i had no idea how fast we were going, but whenever i
queried the sensor which measured gravitational fields, it reported that
we were still too close to the earth. the half-field drive would only
function when we were outside the gravitational field, and i hadn't
bothered to work out how far that was. i gave the problem to my
back-processor, and almost immediately it spat back an answer; at this
velocity, we'd be at the jump-off point within five minutes. i devoted
four seconds of this time to establishing the exact orientation we'd
need to assume before jumping off if we were going to reach Neptune; the
rest of the time i mulled over an idea i'd had long before i became a
Metamorph. i wanted to design a tiny robot, a Von Neumann machine, no
bigger than a grain of rice. its task was going to be, firstly, to build
several hundred thousand copies of itself by mining a large asteroid (or
small moon, i hadn't decided which yet), establish nanogravitic
communication with the others, link with them to form a sort of
low-level gestalt mind; secondly, to map the surface of this large
asteroid or small moon, construct a 3D map of the surface and then
proceed to sculpt it into a perfect cube. seeing the end result in my
mind, i wondered if it would be overkill to get them to carve the
designs of a certain well-known puzzlebox into the sides of the moon. i
decided why not, what the hell, and incorporated the designs into the
seed device's instructions. i was using a system very much like DNA,
except with better redundancy, more compact storage and only slightly
slower chemical transcription speed. the end result was a lot like that
lacewing fly in some respects. i'd first considered powering it by the
common Metamorph system, something like low-end fusion, but i couldn't
rely on it being able to find ice to use as fuel; i considered the next
step up, which was a system which utilised the total conversion of mass
to energy. this (without spending a serious amount of my time
considering alternate designs) raised the minimum unit's size to just
over a cubic centimetre (about the size of a large bee), which would
slow down reproduction time and reduce the numbers of units which could
be made from a given amount of raw material. unacceptable. i'd consider
this more on the way; we'd arrived at the jump-off point.
the earth was a pale blue-white tennis ball somewhere far below, between
my feet. stars glared at me from all around; i'd never been aware of
the range of colours they'd had before. Lydya drifted a few metres
away from me. she beckoned, and i jetted closer. we hadn't bothered
re-colouring our fields since leaving the American satellite, and she
was harshly lit, shadows falling in stark, sharp lines. distant
starlight glimmered through stray strands of her hair, and i felt an
impulse i hadn't felt since i'd been changed. unfortunately, the
mechanics of copulation in a vacuum were too many and varied to bother
with now; besides, we were on a pilgrimage. possibly on the way back.
smiling, i could see that the same idea had occurred to her.
we embraced, legs entwined, chins nestling on each other's shoulders,
our fields merging. i felt her half-field drive powering up; i
activated mine. it was a considerable drain on my reserves; i was glad
we were pooling resources, otherwise i would have had to make serious
modifications to my storage systems, which would have entailed major
physical changes. the stream of information from my senses, my primary
link to the real world, gave a slight hiccup; the light i was receiving,
radiant energy on several different frequencies, mass-sense information
from the distant earth, all seemed to give a tiny hitch, as if i was
hearing it all on the AM radio in a car and i'd just driven under some
high-tension power lines. it was all still there; i could see black
space peppered with stars, but there was a difference, an indefinable
hazy something. i had the strange sensation of being a spinning top,
balanced on a point somewhere outside reality. by leaning slightly in
any direction, the half-field would throw us in that direction at over a
hundred thousand kilometres per second. it wasn't a physical leaning; i
asked my back-brain, and it replied (in so many words) that it was a
function of the field's control system.
we'd oriented in the proper direction; we were going to skim above the
plane of the solar system like a record player's needle scratching out
from the last track to the first on an old LP.
together, we counted: `One... two... three!' and together we leaned
forward. at first, i couldn't see any change; the stars ahead seemed
brighter; those behind noticeably dimmer; the earth had shrunk to the
size of a pea and was receding rapidly. i giggled.
`ahead warp factor four, ensign!' Lydya laughed back.
`engage!'
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