HRVST, Ch. 29: Sunset
In this place where some sleep forever, others have been awakened
Inside “The Harvest”, Hyperion Research Vessel, Systemwide Transformation
They walked down a corridor which glowed in front of them, while it dimmed dark behind .
Another portal opened.
The Captain walked through first, then Tomassina, and the rest of the team.
“Welcome.”
They were inside a long oblong chamber with a long table taking the length of two-thirds of the chamber. A man was sitting at the end of the table, an array of holos rose from the table like a field of glowing wild mushrooms. Moments of a life, memories of a family. Necker.
“Come, please have a seat. I’m unarmed.”
“Mr. Necker, or is it Dr. Necker?…”
“Oh, please just Albert or Necker, if you prefer…”
“I’ve come to take you with us. Your son…”
“My boy? I heard your message, what have you done to him?”
“It’s what you’ve done. All of this, is because of you, because of this… thing.”
“You don’t understand, how could you? What I’m doing will give everyone a second chance…”
“Before or after you’ve killed them first? After you’ve killed everyone? Let’s go, get up… Your son needs you.”
The Captain, grabbing a Necker’s arm, pulls him up from the chair.
“And just how many did you end up killing, sir, what was your name by the way?”
“Edward. Edward Lawrence.”
“Ah, you must have been the one who caved in Grissom and killed all those civilians.”
“No, just your hired muscle. Most of them are under the rubble.”
“Hero, fool. Those civilians would have been held in custody, here or at Armstrong.”
“That’s not what happened to some of them.”
“What … what are you talking about??”
“Your men, have been killing some scared people, scared of you, of this, of what you were about to do…”
“Lies, I ordered no killings. I’ve never ordered it.”
“And so far, you’ve failed, Necker. How many here after the test? How many on Earth, on Mars, when your science project pissed off the Sun?? Enough of this garbage, you’re going to save one life, let’s start with your son.”
As the Captain pulls Necker away from the table, Necker leans over the table and swipes at the holos. The glowing holo forest of memories flickers, and then the chamber’s lights dim.
“What was that??”
“I wanted to reset her, “the Harvest”. Now let’s see what you did to my boy.”
“Turn… it…. Off…”
“Too late, anyway, I need my boy to be alive and well, because the Harvest is connected to him. You didn’t know that did you? We’re about to take off, you want to stay on board?”
The background hum of the Harvest began as a low hum.
“Let’s go everyone, move, move.”
The team, with Necker, rushes through the ship towards the exit.
“Put this suit on.”
The Captain taps his comms on, “proceeding to the tram, to the Grace… clear a path.”
“Copy that.”
—
In the tram, Tomassina pulls the Lawrence aside.
“Cap, I heard that crazy old man. The kid’s connected to this thing. Maybe, maybe it’s not a good thing to save him. If he goes, maybe the Harvest dies too.”
“I don’t know. Plus down the well, he’s been gone too long, the Coop used a bad copy of him, and they’ve been cleaning up their mess with it, running a half-sentient ledger. The world is going to go at the seams.”
“World could go up in flames if we save the kid. We have no idea if he wants to help Necker. Necker is his dad, right? Maybe he goes ahead with another test of that ship.”
“Something doesn’t add up here. If we let him die, we don’t know what the ship will do. If we save him, may get a chance to turn this thing off, or blow it up. And maybe we keep the world from going broke, breaking and going down the tubes.”
“Maybe that’s not a bad thing, letting that happen, Cap. Why do you think so many of us went up the well?”
The Captain knew Tomassina long enough that she wasn’t serious.
Necker was lost in thought, he leaned forwards in his seat, and pointed at the view.
“Look at all this, all of this, what we did already. The Grace.”
The Captain looked over, “Your wife… she was named Grace. This was named after her.”
“Far more than named. That was … after, after she died. She designed the early phases of this. She was… brilliant. Beautiful. Just like this place. All I did was find the energy, of the sun. It wasn’t enough.”
“The Harvest?”
“Yes, you begin to understand. The ‘Harvest’, short for Hyperion Research Vessel, Systemwide Transformation. It wasn’t enough, we could sip from the sun, through solar arrays. We could mimic the sun in nuclear reactors. But what if we could take what we needed to do much more?
That’s what this place was for. It was called Hyperion for the sun.
And this forest was called ‘The Grace’ for her.
I named it after I saw it was too late to save her.
But it wasn’t too late to save my boy. Our boy. Grace was so happy after she had him.”
“Your son? You mean you didn’t use a contract, he wasn’t from you? I thought…”
“That I was his, what’s that disgusting phrase, ‘Carbon Model’? Yes, I was, when I had to save my boy. You see, Albert was genius too, I say he got it from his mother, and he insisted on pushing development of the Tanglement.
That’s what we called the power to take from the sun, the Tanglement.”
“You used that ship as a shovel to scoop energy from the sun.”
“No, no. That’s how I know no-one gets it. Yes, it does, as you say “scoop” energy, but takes energy from a source, like the sun, and then transfers it, almost like this tram, through an entanglement, to another place, like here, this forest.
No clumsy ships filled with fuel, in rolling, tumbling Caravans.
You build enough places, you can use the Tanglement to transfer energy from here to there,
First energy between the Sun and Hyperion, and then, everywhere.”
“Something went wrong with your science experiment didn’t it doc?,” asked Tomassina.
“This is a part of the process. This is progress.”
“At whose expense, doc?”
“That should not have happened. I don’t know what happened and why. Anyway, here’s the other part of all of this. Those tinker toys of the Verse, we can use the Tanglement to do far more, we can harvest the energy of information.
We can to use your word, scoop it up, and save it. From people, the energy of their minds.
Can you imagine what happens?
We’ve been making dolls made of light on the Verse, these contracts can be so much more.
Now we can do more than put people into the Verse. We can transfer contracts out as people.”
“The girl… that girl….”
“Yesss, yes, you begin to understand. If only the Cooperative had been in fact cooperative, I could have done more, faster, with more resources.”
“Necker, how did your son die?”
“He was testing the equipment. You see, Grace was dying. He wanted to save her, so he tested the equipment on himself. Something happened.”
“The test killed him.”
“The test also saved him, as a contract. I did my best, and I got help. I begged for help. I got it from the head of Houston HQ.”
“Houston. He was behind all this…”
“No, he’s just playing his board game on Earth, for the Cooperative. I made a trade, in exchange for what I needed, I saved my boy. I bought time. But in exchange for using him as the Sentient Ledger.
Nobody was told, everyone thought “ALBERT-O” was a name for the Cooperative’s latest venture, as the manager for the Atlanticcoin. Houston got the franchise of the Atlanticcoin, and I got to keep my boy alive, supported by the Cooperative’s resources.
In exchange, I could keep working and finished ‘The Grace’ and work on the ‘Harvest’. I salvaged my boy’s memories. I hoped to bring him back when it was all done.
When the Pygmalion was finished, I knew I could bring my boy back, all of him, into a body.
As the Ledger he was also connected to ‘the Harvest’. It’s a part of him, and he’s a part of it.
One more test, that’s all.”
“Pygmalion? The girl mentioned waking up in some room… is that how you made them?”
“That is a part of ‘the Grace’, and it, like everything, is powered by this place and by the Tanglement. When it was completed, I began the first trial run of ‘the Harvest’ to get all the power I needed to begin the next phase.”
“Next phase? You’ve killed a lot of people for your ‘next phase’, just what more do you want to do, kill everyone you missed??”
Tomassina got up, the Captain touched her arm to keep her from reaching over to Necker.
“No, I used it to power the Pygmalion, the fruition of my wife’s vision, her designs, to create life in a new way. It was too late to do this for her. I used it to save my son, when he died testing it on himself first. He was brought back to life. And it turned out he had company and we created the first flesh and blood person who began as a contract on the Verse.”
“The girl.”
“Yes, the girl.”
“Well, you’re about to lose them both Necker if you don’t find a way to use this room the girl mentioned.”
—
Inside The Grace, Inside a Cathedral on the Moon, the Crypt of Memory, “MER~MARE”
“This way, inside this place, my wife sleeps in her eternal rest, in the middle of this beautiful forest, that she helped create.
It’s also houses the ultimate potential of The Tanglement, the Pygmalion.”
“This was where you brought back your son, and where the girl was created?”
“Born, not created, Captain. Don’t you see? In this place where some sleep forever, others have been awakened?”
Tommy and the team looked around, and above them. They looked away from Necker, whose eyes had a farway, frightening look. He didn’t see them, they were nothing to him.
“We don’t have a lot of time, Necker.”
“Where is my boy?”
Ahead of them, a medic team was tending to Alberto and Zephyr, in the middle of the main room of the structure.
Necker rushed ahead. The Captain held back the others. Necker wasn’t running away, he was running to his son.
“Get off him, get off him. Son.,” Necker’s eyes came back, he turned to the others, “This way, come, come.”
They walked down the stairs into the darker reaches of the structure.
“Here.”
Necker was standing in front of his wife’s final resting place. He pressed his hands on the metal plaques, first his wife’s, over the words “Forever”, and then his Alberto’s original resting place, over the words, “Destiny Denied”. The wall behind them opened without a sound. A bright lit tunnel ahead.
In a few minutes, they were inside a giant dome, with a circular platform.
“NECKER. PYGMALION CHAMBER. WAITING” said the room.
“Begin the nascence.”
“SEQUENCE BEGINNING.”
“Two forms. Harvest energy.”
“HARVEST BEGINNING.”
Necker directed the medics to put Alberto and Zephyr’s bodies.
“Retrieve backups.”
“ERROR. CACHE FRAGMENTED.”
Necker stumbled back a little.
“No, no, no.”
The Captain stepped forward, “What’s happened? What does that …?”
“What does that mean? Something happened on the upload, what’s here is here. No failover, we have to save his body, or we lose him. Her too. We lose them both. No time for diagnostics.
PYGMALION, EMERGENCY RESTORATION. SURGICAL.”
“EMERGENCY RESTORATION BEGINNING.”
—
Hours passed. It all felt much longer than it was. Necker sat next in a chair between Alberto and Zephyr, and waited and watch. Then he heard a rustling and heavier breathing.
Necker shot up from his chair, rechecked Alberto’s and Zephyr’s vitals. Necker touched Alberto’s forehead, then squeezed one of Zephyr’s hands, and nodded with a small smile. “Welcome back, boy. You too, my dear.”
Necker looked up at the dome of the Pygmalion chamber, at its patterns. He spoke to no-one in particular.
"What if you replaced a body part and then another, how soon before you disappear?
How long before you realize what makes you uniquely, truly, you is more than the raw sum of your parts swapped in and out."
Necker looked at Zephyr,
“Everyone wants to render physical into virtual,
Since the first cave, when we painted on our first walls,
eons fooling ourselves, an eternity chasing reality in shadows,
We’re still in caves, what happens when we leave them?
What happens when we turn the virtual into the physical?
Out of the corner of our mind’s eye, do we catch a glimmer from the minds of God?”
Necker looked up at the ceiling of the Cathedral and sighed.
“You can’t stay here.”
“Why?”
“It’s too early for the world.”
“You were too early too.”, said Zephyr.
Necker sat down, hunched over.
“I did this for you, because I wasn’t there for you when I should have been. I lost you and your mother. I almost lost you again, boy. Here is your chance you didn’t get before.”
“What will you do?” Zephyr sat next to Necker.
For the first time, she saw him for who he was. An old man who realized what he lost too late. She stopped being afraid of him.
“They’re all coming. In a few days, they’re coming up here. Word will get out, that I’m the cause. And it’s true. The only thing left is the both of you. You have to hide. I can’t hold them back. I can’t seal off the Forest, I wish I could. You have to go but first, we have to do the right thing, boy. I need your help.”
Necker had no anger, no resentment, just recognition and resignation.
“Cap.” The Captain’s earbud pinged.
“Yes, go ahead.”
“That ship, it’s headed on a course down the well.”
“Down the… Earth?”
“Looks like it.”
“Okay, continue tracking and update me.”
“Copy that.”
The Captain turned to Necker and grabbed him by a shoulder.
“Necker, your ship, ‘the Harvest’, where’s it going??”
“I don’t know, it’s not supposed to do that.”
“What do you…?”
“Cap, they’re awake. He’s asking for you…”
The Captain ran into the Pygmalion.
Alberto and Zephyr were awake, drowsy, slow but alive.
“We have to stop it.”
“What do you mean? Stop what? The ship??”
“Yes. The ship is a part of me, I’m a part of it but it’s not listening.”
“Your father mentioned this ‘Tanglement’, it’s not just the sun’s energy is it?”
“The Tanglement is entanglement, connection. Father built it to gather and transport energy but that included information too. Memory, minds.”
“That ship is you, it’s going home, Earth.”
“It wasn’t supposed to do that but I was…”
“Unconscious… you were unconscious but I reset it…,” said Necker, “It was disconnected from you and now, it is doing what a part of you wants to do. Go home.”
“He’s right. We have to stop it. If it gets close enough it could restart a Tanglement and,” Alberto tailed off and looked at everyone, “it could trigger another CME from the Sun.”
The Captain tapped into comms, “I need a ship.”
“We got one still on the deck, after taking the Hanger, some stray rounds hit but …”
“Never mind, I’m coming. Tommy watch Necker.”
“Cap, I can…”
“No, Tommy, you stay and mind the store. When it’s over, check on TwoTwo and the people in Armstrong.”
“I’m coming with you” said Alberto.
“I’m going too,” said Zephyr as she helped Alberto up. He was about to say something but didn’t. He just nodded, offered her a hand to hold. They looked at the Captain.
The Captain saw the look on their faces, and nodded.
They went up the trail to the tram, towards the Hanger.