Our Own Personal Gaia

James Monaghan

Published by Mirrormask Fiction at Smashwords
Copyright 2011 James Monaghan

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At 3 :15 A.M. local time, on Saturday, the 17th of June 2093, an alarm sounded in a basement facility somewhere in Antarctica. 
Steve Phillips could have been forgiven for his lack of enthusiasm. Assigned to this end-of-the-world listening post as part of his ESI training, his job description involved gathering and relaying telemetry from worlds considered lost causes in humanity’s never ending thirst for colonisation. In layman’s terms, he sat at a desk from midnight to 5 A.M., playing solitaire of following the latest footie scores over the ESI Newsnet, waiting for something to happen. Something generally turned out to be a malfunction in the comm buffer or a crank satt intercept. 
Dragging himself out of his seat, he kicked an empty cola can across the room and cursed Professor Cribbin for ever putting his name on an application form. “It will be good for you,” the old fart had said. “Build character. You’ll get paid to do what you love and satt comm firms love people with experience.”
Experience! Steven snorted. No matter what the ESI net said about the taming of the Poles, no place without a barber ship could be considered civilised. Testament his thick brown hair whose fringe chose that moment to drop over his eyes. 
Sighing, Steve sank into another chair and lit up the monitor. A quick look at the sticker on the side revealed that the telemetry was coming in from the Medusa relay satt. The Linara sector, then. Not much out there, he thought. A few star clusters, a couple of rogue moons zipping between star systems, a nebulae or two scattered between the asteroid belts… Another exciting shift report for me, he concluded. Still, as he reached up to shut the screen down, he noticed a red banner in the corner. Flash-traffic. He frowned. 
Tapping the screen twice, he brought up a trace program. A series of electronic bursts gave birth to subspace pulses, which made their way through bandwidths unknown to the pioneers of radio. In scarce to no time, his orders were transmitted through the wastes of space. The pulses worked their way through the relay station’s many millions of circuits and then jumped back into space. 
The subspace tracking program sought out the offending satellite like the tendrils of an amoeba feeling for sustenance. When it found the small robot probe in orbit of a devastated world, the tracker ‘turned’ and went backwards, returning through circuitry and quantum dimensions still unknown to man, back to the monitor which had sent it. 
All of this in less time than it took Steve to go and pick up his can. The initial surge of excitement had been tempered and replaced by a gnawing certainty – this was all a mistake. It had been seven years – Seven! – since the Antarctic post had received any real, useful telemetry. This was probably another malfunction, another probe to be replaced the next time one of the ESI survey ships went out that way. 
When he sat down and saw the trace program had pinpointed an actual origin, butterflies burst to life in his stomach. His finger shook as he tapped the enter command. The flashing alert vanished, replaced by a star map of the Linara sector. Up in the top left corner, a single star flashed. Steve took one look at the name next to it and picked up the phone. 
This was no mistake. 
***
“The planet Dante.”
Maxwell Griffin watched himself in the screen that hovered above him, seeing his finger pointed towards the huge red planet transposed there. He tried to determined whether he liked what he saw. Was he making the right impression? Could they tell he was in his early fifties? No grey in the hair, just in the suit. Fashionably dressed, check. Simple, elegant black tie, check. Determined expression of a man on a mission, check. 
Now all he had to was accomplish that mission. 
“Surveyed in the 2050s by the survey ship Galileo, it is located in the Lenara sector, star quad LZ346.”
The hologram above him dissolved into shards of light before resolving back into a star chart, the name Dante highlighted in the top corner. Zooming in, the hologram then afforded the gathered crowd another close-up of the planet. 
“The Galileo survey team decided that the planet was unsuitable for Project Prometheus. Though terraforming is a viable solution for many uninhabitable worlds, Dante was in thrall to massive geological disturbances. The planetary core was going through sever metallurgical and tectonic changes, and the planet’s magnetic field had developed grave irregularities. Quite literally,” – he pushed a button, showing a crass image of an imploding planet – “Dante was tearing itself apart.”
“Was?” Dr William Simms, Director of Xenobiology in the Earth Science Institure and a high ranking member of its Operations’ Management Directorate. In other words the group of stuffy old bastards sat in front of him. 
“Yes.” The holograms shifted again, this time showing the telemetry from an AtSatt-23 probe. “At 3:15A.M., two days ago, the Dyer V2 Satt left in orbit of Dante by the Galileo expedition relayed telemetry showing a new shift in the core temperature and a stablishing effect on the magnetic field. One could say, as the old adage goes, Hell has frozen over.”
“Dr Griffin, we all appreciate the lecture, but to put it bluntly, why the hell should we care?”
Griffin recognised the voice of Adam Marx, currently head of the Ops Management Directorate and one of Elim Walker’s greatest rivals for control of the Institute. He was also one of the coven that so violently opposed private companies having any part in space exploration and colonisation. Griffin hated the man. Still, he gritted his teeth and went on.
“A year ago, I came befroe this panel and asked for your hep to develop the Gaia device. I promised you that it would be able to make worlds like Dante liveable for human beings, where the Prometheus Project had failed. Any and all geological disturbances, difficulties related to geomagnetic or even core planetary instabilities could be solved. You rejected me.”
“A month ago, I purchased the planet Dante from a group of entrepreneurs from New Kyoto. I managed to establish my own corporation and got private backing for the Gaia device. I have come here to tell you today, I succeeded. Gaia Corps has succeeded. And Dante is the proof.”
The room erupted, hands flying up, while some of the finest minds in the scientific world cried out for information, for schematics and, for the most part, for Maxwell Griffin’s blood. Hidden in the darkness behind the holograms, Griffin smiled. They couldn’t him and they knew it too. He had gone behind their backs, had done what many had tried to do and failed. He, though, had succeeded. He had them by the scruff of the neck. Now it was time to shake. 
***
Once outside the ESI headquarters, Griffin took a deep breath of clean Houston, Texas air. He’d done it. 
After seeing the telemetry again, and watching the experiment take shape on Dante, the Directors had admitted defeat. The Ops Management Directorate of one of the finest scientific institutions in Earth’s history, powerful men in their own right, had promised him anything he wanted. All the funds he required to continue testing the Gaia device. A grant, and a seat at the next ESI General Meeting. Possibly, a directorship of his own division. A seat at the table as it were. 
He allowed himself a moment to savour the feeling. God, that was better than sex. 
The skyline of Houston, considered one of the twenty-five Wonders of the world, blazed in the midday sun. The reflections of a thousand windows, each a different shade of blue or green, were a testimony to the ESI’s hubris. Buildings that rose into the sky, clawing at the boundaries of heaven themselves, as if to reiterate the challenge first made at mythical Babel. We are here. We will reach the heavens. We will subdue them. 
And our generation did it. They had challenged the celestial and won. Just like I did. 
The Gaia device was just the next step on that road. With it, man could truly rule the heavens themselves. No planet was beyond their grasp. 
At the bottom of the steps leading down from the Alexander B. Williams Building, Griffen’s butler stood by the open door of his antique Ford-Limo. Blazing white in the sun’s light, the car had been imported from England along with the butler, David Townsend, exactly one year ago. The day he first established Gaia Corps. 
Ever since Genesis Inc. had ‘created’ the pleasure planet of Fantasium – “A world where dreams and realities merge, where the cartoons of yesteryear become true flesh, courtesy of those wonderful people at Genesis Inc. Children must be five years or more to attend.’ – terraforming had been big business. Everyone struggled to get an edge on the competition, searching for new permutations of what had quickly become old technology. Griffen was certain the Gaia device would be just that. All he had to do was prove it. 
“A productive meeting, sir?” David asked as Griffen stepped into the backseat. 
“You could say that.”
“Very good, sir.”
As soon as the door closed, Max sat back and loosened his tie, relaxing into the plush leather confines. What a hell the last six months had been. His nerves were frayed. Once the ESI had refused his initial approach, he had been convinced his career was over. Most only got one chance before the board and if you walked away without one of their all important grants… He hadn’t been ready to just give up. 
So he had done the unthinkable. He had gone behind the Board’s back. 
The Institute kept a tight leash on all their interest, especially those with the biggest cash flow: terraforming and colonisation. The baby-boom following the final Terror War was beyond anything any sociologist or historian had ever imagined. Within a decade, the Earth had reached a saturation point. Like a city under siege, the planet had become ripe for disease and famine. 
Enter the ESI. Its goal: Bring mankind out of the shadows and dust left behind by the conflagrations of the early 21st century and to usher in a new and glorious age. Its means: Colonisation. Billions had been pumped into space travel research, the stars being the new destination. From near-lightspeed drives, the Institute had moved on to drone ships and finally Krasnikov Tubes laid down like the rail tracks of two centuries earlier. A network of artificial wormholes crisscrossed the galaxy. Terraforming was dusted off and placed in the hands of those who could make use of it. The ESI made billions and mankind survived. 
Which made what Griffen had done so dangerous. Going over the Institute’s head was not only illegal – with the power they possessed, they could have wiped him out with a simple command. He would have been lucky to even face trial if the ESI had gotten word of his tests.
Still, it had been worth it. He had proved that nothing – not even the ESI – could stand in the way of progress. His device was an assured success. No planet was beyond the reach of mankind – even the most disturbed, the worst geological catastrophes, could be tamed using the Gaia device. 
As long as the first experiment was a resounding success.
Pushing a button on the door, Griffen opened a line to his office in Los Angeles. As he waited for Janie, his secretary, to answer, he realised what a dangerous game he was still playing. There was one important detail about the Dante test he had failed to mention to the Board…
“Gaia Corps, how may I help you?”
“Janie, it’s me.”
“Mr Griffen? Why didn’t you use the personal number?”
“Too risky. Patch me through to Comm Sat Ops, please.”
“Yes.” She sounded flustered. 
Moments later, a male voice replaced hers on the line. 
“Al here.”
“Al, it’s Max. Any news?”
“No, sir, Mr Griffen. Not yet.”
Fear gripped his throat. Two days. Two days since the Dante team had called in. And they were supposed to be in contact every five hours. Everyone had told him that he was overreacting, but he couldn’t hold back a gnawing feeling in the pit of his stomach
that something had gone wrong.
He sighed again. He had a second team on route, which should be in place within two days. Jackson was a good captain, and Dr. Smith was one of the best on Gaia Corp’s payroll. He would just have to hope. And wait. 
“Ok Al, thanks. Contact me if you hear anything.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Oh and Al?”
“Sir?”
“Keep it quiet?”
“Of course, sir.”
A click signalled the end of the call. Griffen sat back, steepled his fingers. One of his ex-wives – he couldn’t remember which – had pointed out to him that he always did that with his hands when he was nervous or excited. Problem was, today he couldn’t decide which he was. 
***
The privately-owned frigate Freya sped through the Dante K-Tube, following the tunnel laid down by the Galileo to traverse the vast distances involved. Using the tube negated the effects of relativity, preventing the ship from returning home 362 years after their departure. Her lightspeed drives throbbed continuously deep in her belly, creating a heartbeat sound that could be heard throughout the ship’s cigar-shaped hull. 
In the compact flight deck, Captain Elijah Jackson spared a glance for Doc Smith. One of the fathers of terraforming, Smith had been part of Project Prometheus, taking a leading role in the terraforming of Venus and Mars. Though a living legend, the Doc had surprised Jackson by being quite an unassuming man. He seemed like the sort of man who wouldn’t mind getting his hands dirty in the dust and grime of a new planet. His wavy, thinning white hair and close shaven beard reminded Jackson of a mad scientist out of some shlocky holovid his kids watched. Still, he was glad to have him along.
The Doc was fidgeting now, eyes darting from side to side, coming to rest every few seconds on the comm panel. Five days. Five days since the Dante team last made contact. Even the Freya’s long range sensors had failed to pick up anything from the compound on the planet’s surface.
Not long now, he thought. 
As if in response to his thought, Ling May, Jackson’s second officer, turned to look at him. “We’re entering the Dante system.”
The three of them were cramped in the small bulbous head at the front of Freya’s hull, allowing Jackson to check her screens without needing to even turn his head. 
“Alright, May. Bring us to course 5-9-0-4-2-1 and drop us out of the tube. Bring the thrusters online as soon as you disengage the C-drive. Let’s take a look.”
The forward screen, up until now bathed in the white nothingness of the K-tube, revealed a dissolving tunnel that quickly resolved into a standard star-field, broken on one side by the sphere of the planet Dante. A broken shell, Dante was the only planet in the whole system. Jackson had started his career running the Earth-Mars route in a tourism vehicle, and the planet Dante reminded him of Old Red. However, the magnetic storms here whipped plasma winds in from the poles, giving the surface a queer green glow that sent shivers down his spine. Damn, now I get why they called this place Dante. If any planet looked like Hell, this one did. 
Flows of magma had coalesced into an unstable curst over the planet’s core. That lava, erupting into space, had formed an asteroid belt, one that would afford any one on the surface with quite a light show during the planet’s long night.
As May brought the Freya in for a standard orbital insertion, Jackson tapped the comm panel, broadcasting the standard hail.
“Anything,” the Doc asked from behind him. 
Jackson shook his head. He flicked his finger over one of the touch-screen’s readouts, waited a moment , sighed. “No answer from the compound.”
He pushed a few buttons, connecting with the satellite imagers in orbit. Bringing up a surface shot of the compound, he studied the wide dome, which covered about 15 square kilometres. Built to withstand the surface conditions, it looked secure. The team shouldn’t be having any trouble responding to their hails.
“Bridge, sensors.”
Jackson accepted the incoming comm from the sonar room. “Go for bridge. What is it, Ben?”
“Bridge, I’m picking up some damned strange readings from the dome. Fluctuations in power readings, plasma effluents… I’m not getting any kind of life readings, either.”
Neither May nor the Doc said anything, but Jackson could feel their tension levels rising. This was their worse nightmare. All of them had a stake in Gaia Corps – if the device was a failure… 
He pushed the thoughts away. “All right, then. Something must have gone wrong down there. We’ll just go and have a look. Bridge, weapons. Declan, meet us at the docking ring. May, keep us in orbit and get the rest of the crew together in the briefing room in… three hours. That should give us enough time to make a quick survey and get back to the ship. Doc, you’re with me.”
***
Declan Willow, Jackson’s chief armsmaster and ship’s head of security, stalked off the shuttle Typhon and into the compound. Two guns raised as he swept the bay, he scoured for any possible enemies. 
Jackson watched and waited for Declan to indicate that he could follow him off the shuttle. The chrome walls glistened in the flickering light – Jackson wondered what could have happened for the supposedly indestructible Lifestyle engines to be playing up. 
He was reminded of a rescue mission he had run to a moon in orbit of Terra Nuevo, one of the colonies in the Magellan spiral. The planet had been Earth compatible, a lush world thriving with life. When the check-in team had arrived, though, they had found the entire team slaughtered by one of the indigenous life forms. Jackson’s stomach still roiled when he thought about what he had seen that day, making his way through the broken bodies and blood-streaked corridors, like the last survivor in a silent battle zone. 
Please, don’t let it have happened again.
Not that it could. According to all of the survey information, nothing could live on Dante. That was the whole point… 
He allowed Declan to proceed him and the Doc out into the corridors. The security chief stopped every so often, checking for danger before calling them forward. Within minutes, they reached the compound control rool. The door had been sealed shut by a laser blast, the control panel ripped from the wall.
While Jackson tried to make sense of what could have happened, an alarm shrieked to life. 
“Breach,” Declan shouted over the sound. “We have to get inside.”
He pushed Jackson out of the way, dragging a laser rifle to his shoulder. Taking aim at the melted metal around the door, he fired one long blast, breaking the seal enough to push one of the door open. He herded Jackson and the Doc inside, then began sealing the door back in place.
With the sound of the alarm somewhat muted, Jackson turned his attention to the damage. Laser burns pockmarked the walls, and struts had been blasted off the ceiling. Dust covered every surface, while mangled pieces of metal that might once have been chairs were strewn across the floor. The air had a metallic tinge to it, the taste of lasers and ozone. What had happened here? 
“Captain, I have a link up with the cameras.”
He joined the Doc at Declan’s side. Images flicked across the view screens, telemetry from the holocams set up around the compound. 
The cameras had been placed at regular intervals, most close in near the dome while a handful seemed to have been set up in the mountains and valleys around. Jackson knew the drill – probe droids, with their spider-like appendages, would have been sent out to place them, before creating an uplink with the satt dish on top of the compound. Usually, the images would then get bounced back to Earth through orbital sattelites – those satts had never been dispatched into orbit, though. 
Declan cycled through, Jackson stood behind him and looking for something, anything, that might give him a clue to what had happened. The landscape was alien yet familiar, reminding him of the Mars wastelands. Like looking into a funhouse mirror. He shook his head, concentrating on checking off the different locations. Mountain, valley, dome, mountain, mountain, gorge, plain, rockface, cliff, valley, valley, valley-
“Back.” He felt his gorge rise and put a hand on Declan’s shoulder. “Go back two cameras.”
It couldn’t have been, he told himself, ignoring the dubious look in Declan’s eyes. He’s right to doubt me, he has to be. I couldn’t have…
Declan’s sharp intake of breath told him everything he needed to know. He sees it too. 
Zooming in, they saw two figures, clearly involved in some kind of scuffle. My God. There’s lfe out there. How? The atmosphere was filled with deadly gases. Winds that whipped down through those torturous valleys were hotter than inside a volcano. Nothing could survive. 
Dec manipulated the console, bringing the camera panning in closer. They were definitely fighting, wrestling each other to the ground. One of the figures got the upper hand, beating his opponent’s head into the ground with brutal force. 
They weren’t human, Jackson could see that much. Humanoid, though. Bipedal. Hairy arms and hands offset scaly skin on the rest of their bodies. Their faces were turned away, so the captain couldn’t tell what their features were like. There were wearing some kind of covering - skins from some other creature? Creatures that could live in these horrific conditions… Amazing. 
“Captain,” Doc gasped. 
Jackson glanced at him, a frown creasing his features. The old man seemed petrified. Jackson turned back to the screen, trying to see what the Doc had seen. When he did, he felt his heart miss a beat. 
The clothing that the creatures wore was not the skin of some weird Dantean animal. Rather, they were the tattered remnants of the white lab-coats that the expedition’s scientists had worn. The camera was close enough now to make out the Gaia Corps symbol on the back of the right shoulder. 
“The bastards killed them,” Declan murmured, teeth gritted together. 
Jackson shook his head. He had a horrible feeling, a sense of what had happened. He couldn’t express it in words; it was too horrible.
Then one of the figures turned and it was no longer possible to deny it. 
The face was scarred, just beginning to develop scales. But the transformation was not complete and the features were still recognisably human. 
“Doctor Wills.”
“You know him?”
He looked at the Doc in time to see him nod. 
“Yes. He was the leader of the expedition.”
“What are you talking about?” Declan demanded. “You mean to tell me that that is a member of the expedition? How? Why?”
Before Jackson could answer, the computer blinked off, followed moments later by the lights. Declan shouted, Jackson fumbled for the gun in his side holster. A shrieking filled the control room, echoing off the walls, increasing in pitch and intensity the longer it went on. Jackson fell to his knees, holding his ears in an attempt to prevent the sound from shattering his eardrums. The door to the control room burst open and a fierce wind, hot as a furnace, whipped past them. 
Elijah Jackson screamed. 
***
Newsnet Special Report
2100 GST 31st June 2093
AT 2100 hours today, Gaia Corporation, a new entity in the terraforming firmament, formed and led by scientist Maxwell Griffin, announced the closure of its offices. Gaia Corps has been severely criticised recently over its refusal to acknowledge or explain the disappearance of several members of its staff a few weeks ago. 
Maxwell Griffin was unavailable for comment…
***
Newsnet Special Report
0900 GST 1st July 2093
AT 0830 this morning, Gaia Corporation CEO Maxwell Griffin was caught trying to escape the planet in a passenger transport headed for the Outer Rim. Remaindered in custody until a hearing can be arranged, Mr Griffin claimed that…
***
Newsnet Special Report
1400 GST 3rd July 2093
AT 1400 hours today, the World Government, with the full support and backing of the Council of Allied Worlds, called upon Gaia Corps to explain its actions in what is rapidly becoming known as Dantegate. Dr Griffin, the reclusive scientist and former CEO of Gaia Corps, has once again refused to comment. 
The hearing has been set for two weeks time. 
In related news, the ESI has reclaimed the rights to Dante and closed it off to all commercial traffic… 
***
Newsnet Special Report
1200 GST 14th August 2093
AT 1200 hours today, the special commission investigating the Gaia Corporation and Dantegate indicated Dr Maxwell Griffin on five counts of fraud, twenty-three counts of involuntary manslaughter and one count of obstruction of justice. Dr Griffin will be facing three life sentences at a penal colony in… 
***
Newsnet
Warning Alert – Flash Traffic
0110 GST 20th August 2093
Alert to all Allied Systems. 
Maxwell Griffen, former CEO of Gaia Corporations, recently indicted for the deaths of over twenty-five scientists, has escaped from prison in the Devada Sector. Be warned, he is armed and dangerous. Latest reports suggest he has commandeered a vessel. All units, be on the alert. 
Alert to all Allied Systems.
Maxwell Griffen, former CEO of…
***
“They’ll find you, you know?”
Griffen spared a glance at the woman he had taken hostage. Hostage. Him. He couldn’t believe it. A few months ago, he had been on the verge of beginning the finest chapter in his life. He should have been at home, watching the money race into his accounts. Instead, here he was in the co-pilot seat of a tiny trade freighter, a gun in his hand. 
Enya Milambo glared at him. She was beautiful. Her dark skin glowed in the artificial light rising from the control panels, while her green eyes burst with vengeful fire. At any other time, he would be offering to buy her dinner. Instead, he was holding a gun to her smooth neck and forcing her to increase the power to the lightspeed engines. 
His world had collapsed once he lost contact with the Freya. In one fell swoop, he lost his finest ship, his most accomplished crew and a legend of terraforming. He had tried everything short of sending out a second team, and he had only been prevented from taking that final step by the damned ESI investigation. 
If only he had managed to get away on that first night. As soon as he had seen the Newsnet report, he had scampered. The ESI had a team waiting for him. 
Things went downhill from there. They kept him in a low security facility until the day of the hearing. While his lawyers scrambled to find some way of clearing him, the ESI put pressure on the Government and – as usual – the Government folded. Gaia Corps was liquidated, Max’s funds dried up, his lawyers disbarred, Dante sold off to the Institute along with every part of the Gaia research. The details of the hearing were kept off the Newsnet, not that they would have been on his side – they were mostly owned by the ESI anyway. 
They had everything. Everything except the truth. A truth he was determined to uncover. One way or another. 
“Did you hear me? They’re going to find you. You might as well give up now.”
“I know.”
She looked at him warily. 
“What?”
“You’re right. They’ll find me. They’re probably on our tails right now.”
“Then…”
“Why? Why take you hostage?” She nodded. “Because I can’t live with the mystery. You probably believe everything you heard on the Newsnet, but I’m not a bad guy. I know people died. I just want to find out why. Why my life was destroyed. Once I do…” He shrugged. “They can do whatever the hell they want with me.”
Before she could respond, an alarm cut through the silence. Griffen started, convinced that the ESI had already caught them. Instead, Enya Milambo flicked a switch, knocking them out of the Tube. The stars reappeared, revealing the field around Dante. The planet itself appeared vast in the viewscreen.
“There it is,” she said, unable to hide the bitterness in her voice. “Your Holy Grail. What a dump.”
Griffen just stared. He had seen this world any number of times in holographic form or on a screen. Most of the time, when he imagined it, his imagination transformed it to the Eden it would become after the Gaia device did her work. Now, as he hovered above the pole, he realised for the first time that it had a beauty all of its own. My Holy Grail.
Another light started to flash on Milambo’s board. She did a double take when she saw which console it was, her eyes wide as she looked at Griffen. 
“Someone’s hailing us. From the planet.”
***
The process took many weeks to complete. 
During that time, the Doc killed himself, unable to handle the truth of their transformations. Declan and Jackson used his suicide to convince the ship to land. Now, the entire crew had been transformed. They were at peace. A perfect circle, unlike any relationship Jackson had ever enjoyed before. 
To his surprise, he remained himself. He could still clearly remember his life before, though sometimes it made him cringe. A cog in the unstoppable machine. They had shown him the way, now. Had shown him the result of all that greed, of those reaching tendrils that had submerged so many planets. How wrong he had been! 
Soon, they got on with their life, enjoying the closeness afforded them by the Gaians. They had begun to discern the true worth of this way of life, of this symbiosis between the technological and the spiritual. The mechanical and the biological. They had come to love Dante for what it was, revelling in the amazing variety of life that existed there. A vast and fragile eco-system that they had refused to see before the change. One that had already been adversely affected by the Gaia device. 
The day that the universe came crashing in, Jackson was with Isu, one of the Gaiains, out on the northern ridge. They were implanting a device, one of many that were being placed at strategic locations, all programmed for one purpose – to reestablish that balance that had been thrown off by the Gaia device. 
“Isn’t it beautiful?” Isu asked, her whole body glowing. Her species were multiphasic, parts of their bodies passing in and out of the space-time continuum. Now, though, concentrated on this single task, her whole will focused on the now, she existed only here. 
He opened his mouth to answer, to tell her that yes, it was beautiful, when her face went blank. Her ocular hollows narrowed. “There is someone here. Another of your kind.”
Jackson felt his heart leap slightly. A representative from the Allied Systems? He had known this day would come, but he had hoped to have more time. “What are you going to do?”
Although her facial expression didn’t change, Jackson felt her joy wash over him in a wave of telepathic energy. “It is time we told your people our plans.”
***
“Should I answer?” Milambo asked. 
Griffen nodded. This might be his chance to find out what had happened down there. 
The screen went black as the connection was made. Then a face appeared. Milambo screamed. Griffen fought down a surge of nausea. The face appeared human, at least in part. Scales covered the features and strange growths protruded from the cheeks and neck. Worse still was the fact that Griffen recognised the man beneath. Turning away, he vomited into the nearest receptable, a metal rubbish bin. He dry heaved for a moment, feeling tears sting his eyes. He wiped them away, weakly lifting his head to look at the screen. 
“Jackson?”
Yes, Max. It’s me.”
“What happened to you?”
“I’ve been… enlightened. Changed. Transformed. My own personal Gaia, Max. Our own personal Gaians.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Max, it’s amazing. You… You wouldn’t believe it if I told you. It’s best I show you.”
Jackson stepped out of the frame, ceding the screen to a glowing figure. Like some angel out of a kid’s story. Face, torso and arms flickered in and out of existence, leaving Griffen’s mind spinning. 
“Maxwell Griffin?”
“Y-Yes?”
“I am Isu.”
“What have you done to him?” Griffen demanded. “What have you done to my people?”
“They are all fine, Maxwell Griffen. All of them. Much as Elijah Jackson is.”
“What have you done to them? I swear, if you’ve hurt them in any way- -“
“That is not our intention, Maxwell Griffen. None of your people have been hurt. They have been… How do your people put it? Bio-formed.”
“Bio-formed?”
“Transformed to suit the needs of the planet on which they live.”
“How?”
“We have the technology.”
Griffen felt like a child talking to an adult. The only question he could think of to ask was, “Why?”
“Maxwell Griffen. My people, we are from far away. Our worlds were much like yours, gathered in a great republic that spanned fifteen of the clusters you call galaxies. We lived for music, art and the spirit. We learned to live with the galaxy, with the universal song.”
“But we became greedy. More worlds, more space in which to explode and develop. We turned to those planets we could not reach, those worlds beyond us because of the conditions there. We began to terraform those
worlds to suit our needs.”
“We almost destroyed ourselves. Our search for more worlds, for more space, destroyed the great variety of the Universe. Every world we encountered we turned into what we wanted it to be. We believed that we could do better than the gods, design our own universe to suit us.”
“We were wrong.”
Sorrow flittered across her face. “There was a plague. It began on one planet, swept across its surface and spread. Since we had turned one planet into many, transformed each world into a carbon copy of our own, the plague spread to every single one of them. The disease reduced every world in our republic to a barren wasteland.”
“Famine was rampant. Diseases flared like brushfires. Our people were all but wiped out. From millions of billions of people, we were reduced to a tiny remnant, barely a million taking refuge on arkships we launched to the stars.”
Isu’s open emotion was heart-rending as her tale. 
“That is why we have come.”
“What?”
“We will not let you make the same mistakes we did. That is why we bioformed your people. In our ships, we have technology – developed too late for our own salvation – allowing us to return every planet to its original state. Every world you have terraformed, every biosphere you have warped, will be returned to its original glory. The Universal Balance will be restored.”
“By what right?” Griffen demanded, face flushed. 
“I am not here to discuss this, Maxwell Griffen. I am here to tell you what is to be and to entrust you with a task.”
“What task?”
“Return to your people. Warn them. Tell them that we are coming. All those who do not wish to be bio-formed should return to the un-terraformed planets. Any and all who are still on one of those terraformed worlds when we arrive will be changed to suit the ecological needs of the planet. That is your task.”
Griffen felt a huge chasm opening up beneath his feet. His task? 
“Our time has run out, Maxwell Griffen. There is much work still to do, both here and out there.” With a wave of her hand, she encompassed the stars above her head. “Go, and do what I asked you. Warn your people. We are coming.”
The screen went dead, leaving Isu’s chilling last words to echo in the small bridge module. Griffen allowed his body to fall back in the chair, mind-boggling at the revelations Isu had made. The implications, they were astounding. He tried to take it all in, make sense of it and of the task she had handed him. After a moment, though, he gave up. 
Milambo was staring at him. “So? What now?”
What now indeed? He realised there was only one possible answer. “We do what she says.”
Nodding – without any sign of her former hostility – Milambo turned back to the controls. Bringing the ship around, she guided them back out into deeper space. As she engaged the lightspeed engines, entering the Tube, the stars whirled together into a single spinning vortex of light, beyond which lay the purple light of x-space. 
Griffen wondered what he would say to the ESI, how he would convince them. What would they do? Would they accept the Gaians’ warning? He had the horrible feeling that they wouldn’t, not when it implied evacuating billions. So what? Would they try and fight? Launch a pre-emptive strike? 
God, he hoped they would take the Gaians’ words at face value; he got the feeling that behind Isu’s spiritual, enlightened exterior beat the heart of a warrior. A war between humans and Gaians would probably go very badly for his people. 
As the ship completed the transition, Isu’s words echoed in his ears. 
We are coming. 
###
Did you enjoy this? 

Then try more Mirrormask Fictions! 

Presenting an excerpt from U5H3R…

A mad scientist summons an old friend to witness the birth of a new science. But some things are better left dead… A Mirrormask Fiction set in the distant future.
During the dull, dark days of the autumn of my fifth life, as my body began to collapse around me and my next reincarnation fast approached, I transferred my consciousness into a mime for the journey to the star U5H3R.
My reasons for travelling so late in life were twofold. First, I didn’t want to admit, even to myself, that my fifth life was ending and that I would soon be diving down into the monotonous dark of the reincarnation process. A century spent away from my life, my friends and my art seemed too much to contemplate and I was looking for something to distract my mind. 
Second, I had received a most peculiar communiqué carried between the songs of stars from a man who claimed to have once been my brother-in-law. It took a whole day of trawling through memories of my former lives before I found the remembrances I required. 
Remembrances I had purposefully occulted from my third life. 
Laura. The moment I downloaded the memories into my current body’s cybernetic cortex, all of the feelings flooded back. She was beautiful, a Terran rose with red hair and dusky skin, freckles that powdered her nose as much as her buxom bosom. We had met on Nova Terra, one of those nostalgic throw backs to early Empire Earth that were so in vogue in the mid-27th century. I spent three months there, travelling the perfectly reconstructed continents, from simulacra to simulacra – Paris and London and the Virginia Arcology. Laura and I met on a boat descending an old Earth river named the Nile, marvelling at the ancient constructs that had stood the passage of time. 
Our love affair was passionate and fiery and tender. We were married within the year, moving in to my full time home on the coast of Grabledork. For two years, we were blissfully happy. 
Until the day she was taken from me. Not for a reincarnation treatment, nor out of any desire on either of our behalves to taste the forbidden fruit of other flesh. 
No, Laura was taken from me in the most brutal fashion possible – murdered in such a way as to make her resurrection impossible. 
After downloading the memories – and feeling the pain of loss still not dulled by centuries and the passing of two full lives – I almost decided to pack them away again and forget. And yet something in Laura’s brother’s words called to me, an impulse I found I couldn’t ignore. 
Arranging to travel to the coordinates Inigo had given me proved to be much more difficult than I had expected. The Third Empire might have collapsed into the Grovelling Regency, and yet I had come to expect a certain level of stability through the rise and fall of the human race’s governing entities. Unfortunately, that stability did not extend out to the Euribian Galaxy where Inigo had made his home. 
Using the dart-network to transfer my consciousness as far as I could, I woke in a mime body on the outlier world of Charys. An industrial hole in the galaxy, Charys’ atmosphere was as full of poisons, dust and nuclear off throw as the late 21st century world that had given rise to my people. The human populace was small, overwhelmed by the indigenous population of tiny grey aliens. Still, I saw a large number of fellow mimes, most of them uncustomised ghosts with pale skin and no expression. 
Once on Charys, I needed to find passage to the outer edge of the galactic circle. I managed to acquire a small mimetic needle, a flesh-and-steel construct made up of a tapering primary hull that could safely carry my mime, two thruster arrays and a folding engine. Transferring the funds from my bank account, I downloaded my consciousness into the needle and headed out into deep space. 
Two days later, I arrived in the U5H3R system. Three planets spinning around a dying coldstar, and an Ooort cloud on the outskirts, the U5H3R system was desolate. There had never been the slightest hint of life on any of those planets, although the one closest to the star would have been a perfect location for nitrogen-based lifeforms to evolve. 
Inigo Bornaris Lithews Brown Goliath Greel Tobin Smith, fifth of the name, had erected a scientific research station at the null point between the two outer planets. I picked it up through the needle’s outer scanning system and directed the thruster arrays to push me to the nearest docking port. As soon as the metal bridge had been extruded and connected to my tiny ship, I transferred my consciousness back into the mime and entered the station. 
Five tiny animal mimes were waiting for me. A Terran rabbit, a Martian canite, a Groshenboor limolac, and two Terran dogs, the mimes wore grey suits over their fur – or, in the case of the limolac, reflective scales – and bowed as I stepped into the cool recycled air. 
“Welcome to the Goliath Greel Tobin Smith Research Station,” the rabbit muttered, peering through thick glasses. “I am B78, the master’s primary welcoming slervant.”
I bowed to the rabbit – although Inigo’s slervant force was certainly original, it was far from being the most eccentric mimecry I had ever seen. 
“The master will receive you in his inner sanctum, sir.”
“That will be fine, thank you.”
Hopping until he had turned around completely, B78 led the way down the polished steel corridor, the other slervants following behind me. After a few minutes, the corridors changed from the blank metal of the outer tubes to a more homey enhanced wood panelling. The temperature rose as well, to a balmy 35° according to my mime’s internal systems. 
It took us about ten minutes to reach the inner sanctum, a large library study that seemed to be located in the inner core of the station. Inigo was waiting for me. 
I had done some searching when I received his invitation and had learned that he had suffered through five reincarnations since we had been related. It was a large number, explained by a number of strange accidents and unusual deaths that had led to his constant recycling. His current form, a trueform not a mimetic one, was that of a petite lanky man in his late twenties, with dark hair that tumbled down over a short forehead and into his bespectacled eyes. There was no physical need for the glasses, of course – the reincarnation process could easily have corrected whatever defects might once have existed in his genetic code – so I assumed he wore them for the effect. He looked the part of the tortured scientist. 
He gave me a watery smile as I entered his study and stood to shake my hand. 
“Welcome, my dear, dear friend,” he enthused, his hand like a limp fish between my fingers. “”It has been so long.”
“Two lifetimes,” I replied dryly. 
He gave a squeaking little laugh that grated on my nerves. “Very droll, very droll. I see that those lifetimes haven’t changed you.”
I almost told him that I couldn’t say likewise since my memories of him were vague at best. We had not spent much time together when I was married to his sister, which made his enthusiasm all the more inexplicable. 
“Thank you,” I said at last. 
A slightly uneasy feeling crept over me. Inigo fell back, allowing me to walk fully into his study. I looked around – the room looked like a reproduction of an old Earth Baroque-style drawing room. Wood panels, heavy drapes, physical books in every nook and cranny. The style had come in and out of fashion two dozen times in the millennia since, though it was hard to know whether this current reproduction was the result of one of those cycles or simply Inigo’s extravagant tastes. 
“How have you been?” Inigo asked as I sat. 
“Old,” I replied, hearing a slight catch in my voice as I thought about the reincarnation process awaiting me. “You know how it is.”
“It has been a while.”
I smiled at his weak joke, and then looked around the drawing room. 
“Quite a place you have constructed here.”
“Thank you. I wanted it to be a reminder of the family home back on Goliath. This and my bedroom are direct replicas. The rest of the station is much more utilitarian – I need space and equipment for my experiments.”
“You mentioned a break through,” I said, referring to the message he had sent me, “but I wasn’t very clear on what exactly you were researching here. And why you thought it would interest me.”
“Well, my research was only part of my reason for asking you here, David. I also wanted to see you. I have been thinking about family a lot in the past few months, and my dear sister in particular. I wanted to see you because we shared a link for a little while there, not a very strong one but one that existed regardless.”
I nodded, a tad worried by the slightly maddened look in my former brother-in-law’s eyes. 
“As to what I’m researching, perhaps you would like to see my laboratories?”
Shrugging, I stood up and followed Inigo out of the study. The slervants had vanished, going about their own little duties, leaving us to our own affairs. We made our way through the perfectly clean corridors, eventually coming to a door. Inigo pressed his hand to the plate, revealing a spotless laboratory on the other side. 
Strange machines, humming with nanite activity, filled most of the space. A few tables, almost overwhelmed with glass bottles, gleaming tech and more plexipaper than I could count, completed the lab equipment. A massive reinforced wall window gave us a spectacular view of the icedwarf, a perfectly white ball of fire and ice spinning in the dark. 
I have to admit that I was quite overcome by the view. I have seen many things in my years, but the icedwarf of U5H3R is one of the most impressive. 
“Quite a sight, isn’t she?”
Speechless, I simply nodded. 
“This is where I do most of my work into pneumography.”
“Pneumography? I’m not familiar with that branch of the sciences. The study of… breath?”
Inigo chuckled. “An easy translational mistake. No, Pneuma in the ancient sense of the world. The Biblical sense of the word, you could say.”
My incomprehension must have been evident on my face, because Inigo quickly continued, “In the Bible, in the ancient Greek, Pneuma meant more than just breath. It meant the soul.”
The soul. I was familiar with the concept, one that had taken on a wholly different, non-religious connotation in this age of reincarnation and biomimecry. When anyone’s memories and consciousness could be transmitted across light-decades of space, or reincarnated into a brand new body every few hundred years, the idea of a separate entity did not seem so outlandish anymore. However, the idea of such an entity being able to continue its existence without the aid of modern science… I would have scoffed if Inigo had not seemed so damned intense. 
“The study of the soul.”
“A fledgling discipline. I am one of its few practitioners, though there are others of us.”
“And what is pneumography exactly?”
“Why, my dear friend, it is the study of no less than the mystery that is immortality. The discovery of that ineffable jewel that is the true human soul.”
I tried to make sense of what he was saying, though the depths of his words was thrown off slightly by the zeal I heard in his voice. I struggled to come up with a way of asking the question I wanted to ask without insulting my host, but in the end I decided that the direct approach was probably best. 
“And why, in this day and age, would you want to study that?”
He seemed taken aback by my question, his eyes bulging slightly, the whites catching the reflected yellow of a nearby tabletop. 
He spluttered. “But, how can you ask that? You of all men.”
Me of all- Ah. Suddenly, I understood why he had contacted me, why he had been so intent on my coming to visit him here on this lonely station at the edge of a dying galaxy. 
Laura. 
“You,” Inigo went on, “who have loved and lost. We have abandoned so much, my brother, now that we have the Reincarnation Protocol. What of religion? What of God?”
My unease grew. I had heard others expound such thoughts, mad-men who accosted people outside Reincarnation centres, or waved banners in the mimecry stations. I was beginning to think that my former brother-in-law was not totally sane. 
“My work will be a balm to the lost souls of the Nine Galaxies, my brother! With my discoveries, we will be able to once again reclaim the title of human. The mortal world that we turned away from so many millennia ago is once more within our grasp.”
“But how?” I wanted to reiterate my question of why, but I got the feeling that Inigo would not appreciate his work being brought into question a second time. Better to keep him talking. At least until I could safely slip away back to my ship. 
“Why do you think I created my workshop here, so far away from the centre of proto-human activity?” He swept his arms out wide, as if to embrace the whole star system. “This place. This star, to be specific. It is a gateway, my brother. A gateway to the souls of all those we have lost.”
Some of my scepticism must have shone through. Inigo smiled. “I can see that you are far from convinced. I understand. You would not be the first who has trouble embracing the wonders of pneumography. But I will show you, my brother. I will prove to you that my theories work.”
“I would certainly like to see that.”
“Oh you will, brother. Tonight, after dinner, I will give you a demonstration. One that you will not soon forget.”

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Also from Mirrormask Fiction

Phoenix Odyssey

Episode 1.1 – The Phoenix and the Dream King’s Heart
Episode 1.2 – The Phoenix and the Watchers’ Bargain
Episode 1.3 – The Phoenix and the Hunters of the Hall


Short Stories from Mirrormask Fiction

Fantasy

The Dreamreaver’s Last Hunt
The Revenge of Poe Tader
The Unending Road
The Monster at the End of the Garden
A Murder of Murderers
The Paladin’s Coachman

Science Fiction

Interfacing
U5H3R
Phatal Attraction
The Day We Sold Our Children
The Avatar
The Great Space Race


For more information and for news on upcoming
Mirrormask Fiction productions, visit
Mirrormask Fiction
About the writer: 

James Monaghan is a writer living and working in Lyons, France.