Homesick

Sally worked the lock to Scott’s quarters with one hand while the other balanced a ration tray much like the ones she’d carried to him before. This time, however, the bread had been allowed to dry out and she’d mixed sterilized greenhouse dirt in with the meat and vegetables. She eyed it with mild disgust as she entered.

But, once past the doorframe, her world seized up in a flash of color and noise! She felt reality slip out from under her, as if the rules of physics were in the process of being renegotiated. She slipped through the floor as the anchor of substance let go, taking with it her understanding of up and down. And then, just as mysteriously, she found herself somewhere else!

It took a few moments for her surroundings to register, as if her senses were behaving like an old television tube that had to warm up. First there were shapes, then sounds, then discernible motion, and then colors began to emerge. An instant later, her awareness returned in a final flash of confusion!

She stood on a familiar beaten-down path in front of a grove of trees. The door she had entered through was gone when she looked behind her, and the sun beat down on the side of her face, causing her to shield her eyes. She recognized where she was almost immediately. Terror! In front of her stood the labor camp about thirty yards away! She could see the crowds of Brethren shuffling back and forth carrying burdens of stone and steel. And, even from that distance, she could smell the stench of sickness and decay!

What the hell happened? Was this some new trick of the Masters? Was she having a nightmare? She looked again for the door, still expecting it to be there somehow. She reached to the ground and scooped up a handful of dirt, letting it sift through her fingers. It was hot from the mid-day sun, dry, and full of pebbles. As she straightened up, she could feel the extra strain on her knees. She weighed more than she had moments ago. It was just as she remembered. This was real!

She took cover in the trees, crouching out of sight. Where to go? The woods looked alike in all directions and she’d seen how well the caterpillar vehicle could hide amongst the trees. If it came down to hiding and tracking, the woods were not the place to do it. Reluctantly, that left only one other choice. She slunk towards the camp as quietly as possible from approximately the same angle she had the day of the rescue. From the cover of the brush she could see the shortened walls and the worn path in the concrete that served as a road to ferry loads of stone and old steel rods. Beyond that she saw the polished domes and spires of the palaces, as well as what appeared to be a new building. It had a jagged top where the walls were still being laid.

Oddly, she noticed one difference that didn’t make sense. The concrete slab the workers stood on did not appear to be raised anymore. She remembered stepping up onto the slab when she rescued Scott and almost falling off it when she left. Now it appeared level with the ground.

She made for the camp, curious and scared at the same time. Could the Masters have developed matter transportation technology? That seemed the only explanation! But, if that were true, where were Vlad and Ian? She looked around wildly for Builders, expecting to see Daaarrm’s ugly face appear out of nowhere. If this were a trap, he would surely be there to spring it, wouldn’t he? She quickened her pace, hoping to lose herself in the crowd.

But then, as she approached the camp, her foot struck something hard, causing her to stumble forward and bang her shin on . . . the concrete slab. She looked down in amazement. The edge of the slab now came up to her knees just as it had the day of the rescue. But only moments before it had looked flush with the ground. She hoisted herself up, continuing to contemplate what was happening. An optical illusion, perhaps?

She felt more secure when she was farther from the edge of the camp, taking shelter behind the short walls. She peered over them at the workers. She could hear their joyful songs, like upbeat hymns overlapping in a sickening cacophony, mixed in with the sound of rocks cracking on concrete and steel bars clanging and scraping.

She squinted into the distance, straining to make out further details. She’d had her binoculars before, so it had been easier to see. Then she remembered they’d been lost in their struggle to leave the camp. On a whim, she scanned the immediate area for them, but to no avail. But when she straightened her legs to take up a new position, she felt something soft shift under her foot. In front of her, half buried in chunks of bricks, was a familiar vinyl strap. She gently tugged on it, freeing her lost binoculars from the debris. One of the lenses was cracked, but that was to be expected. She blew at the dust and held the oculars up to her eyes, rising cautiously and panning the area. She scanned the faces, searching for anyone familiar, including perhaps Scott or other crewmembers. But no, this time there were just endless beaming, charcoal gray faces of dying people wearing nondescript rags.

But then she saw something that made her stop. Amid the sea of Brethren was a familiar face she didn’t expect to see. Impossible! She focused the lenses carefully, but the more she looked, the more sure she became. With a beaming demeanor, breaking old mortar off of bricks and wearing the same filthy pieces of cloth as the rest of the Brethren, was Carrie Anderson! Her bright red hair was matted and tangled and her lovely young face was masked behind months of dirt and neglect!

But that couldn’t be! How could she have been transported there from Earth? And, if they were transporting Earth people, why her? But there was something else wrong, too, which put a huge hole in any logical line she might have been drawing: Her hands had three fingers each!

Sally felt herself become dizzy with tension. This she had to know for sure! If Carrie had been brainwashed she wouldn’t remember her, but maybe Sally could at least satisfy herself that it was or was not Carrie. She crouched at the edge of the wall, checking again for Builders, and then made a mad dash across the pathway to the edge of the road where the brick workers stood. She came upon the woman from behind, almost stumbling into her. She gagged at the stench they all let off and batted at the gnats.

“Carrie!” she whispered.

The woman didn’t acknowledge her.

She grabbed her arm and turned her to face her. It was Carrie’s face! Sally knew it!

“Isn’t this wonderful?” the woman asked with sparkling eyes. “Look at all my bricks!”

Her hands were bleeding. God, not that again! Medical emergencies everywhere and no medicine! But concern quickly gave way to fear. She saw two Builders emerge from a stone structure on the other side of the road that appeared to be emanating smoke. Because of their helmets she couldn’t tell if they saw her or not, but Scott was with them! She crept behind the brick workers, feeling her knees begin to quiver. They could see her at any moment and she was defenseless! If only she had the damned gun!

The Builders were talking with Scott, though their visors all but covered their mouths. Scott held an empty canvas bag stained orange with rust. They were giving him instructions.

As she watched, however, a hush fell over the crowd. Carrie and the others began shifting their attention to something approaching from down the road. Sally glanced briefly. And froze. A sedan chair was approaching, carried by four Brethren with gleaming smiles! She chanced a look through her binoculars and gasped at what she saw. There in the chair, wearing a human-skin outfit, was Dr. Poole! She knew it was her! The woman was chubbier than she remembered and she wore the familiar face make-up of the Masters, but it was definitely her! Now nothing made sense! Unless Dr. Poole had sold out to the Masters, but how could that be? Maybe she was one of them all along? No, that didn’t add up either. What the hell was going on?

But, when Poole noticed her, she reacted with alarm. She looked to Scott, who was staring at her with admiration like all the other Brethren. Then she turned away, as if whispering to somebody Sally couldn’t see.

“Get down!” Carrie spoke up, now addressing Sally with a different face than she had moments before. “Don’t let Scott see you!” Her face kept its grinning cast, but her eyes were far clearer and her brow tried to knit. It was as if she were a ventriloquist’s dummy now, speaking somebody else’s words, though it was still her voice!

Sally crouched next to Carrie. Maybe this was some kind of covert operation and Carrie was somehow masquerading as a sister?

“Go to the old buildings on the left side of the road and keep out of sight!” she said, turning back to Poole and waving her hands reverently.

“Why, what’s there?” Sally asked, crouching lower.

“Go now!” And then Carrie said nothing else.

Sally backed up behind the crowd, which was gradually dispersing as the work resumed. She then deftly scaled one of the half-walls and jumped off the edge of the slab, checking to be sure nobody was following. Then she sprinted towards the sagging wooden buildings.

With her binoculars she could see through the windows of the nearest shack. It looked empty. She bolted for it, feeling the sunlight flicker through the rows of broken support beams, confusing her eyes. As she ran, her foot caught an errant brick and she fell forward, landing hard against the remains of a wooden wall. Pain! A loose nail from one of the planks punctured her arm deeply! She looked at it with annoyance, but didn’t dare stop to care for it. She jumped up and staggered, closing the final distance while checking wildly for pursuit from all sides. When she reached the building she flattened herself against the wall and furtively stared into the window.

The room was large and had no furniture. The floorboards were warped and broken in many places, leaving exposed holes into darkness below. The boards themselves were stained with what could only be dirt and fecal matter. There were three large, rusty, metal vats on the floor, which she assumed were toilets. She coughed at the stench. Damn the Masters!

Carefully guiding herself around the front of the shack, she glanced back. Still no obvious pursuit. She dashed through the crooked doorframe, splashing through a deep puddle of urine.

But, once inside, reality threw her another mystery. There in front of her was the computer console from one of the rooms on the ship! What? Then she noticed that the floorboards were no longer warped. In fact, they were no longer floorboards. Now they were the gray, padded deck plates of the ship. She was in Scott’s room! And Scott himself passed in front of her, pacing in circles and doing pantomime gestures with his hands! Sally followed him with her eyes, staring open-mouthed in amazement.

Then Dr. Poole appeared, the double link symbol still blazing from her forehead. Sally jumped back in surprise, stumbling in sudden disorientation as she realized that gravity had returned to its normal half-Earth status. Poole made a desperate gesture for her to remain still. “Please, Captain, don’t let him bump into you! He can’t see you in here!”

Scott walked by Sally, passing within a few inches of her. He wore a satisfied smile and carried an imaginary bag on his shoulder.

“What? How did you . . . What is this?”

“Next generation VR,” Poole whispered. “And I’m sorry! I should have warned you, but I thought Coronov locked the door!”

Sally looked around the room in growing amazement. All was normal! She could even see the movement of the planet below her in the window. She’d never left the ship! She looked for her binoculars, but they were gone. In her hand, however, was the crumpled, empty aluminum tray. And on the floor, scattered evenly around the room, were scraps of dirty food. The wound in her arm was gone, too, as was the pain.

“But this is impossible!”

“No, just very expensive, top secret, potentially addictive, and scary as hell!”

“Five hundred petabytes!” Sally remembered. “That’s what you needed all that space for!”

“Most of it, yes, but the environment itself actually takes up less than a third of that.”

“Incredible!” Sally said, still in awe. “It was so real! But how did you know what it looked like down there? We didn’t bring back pictures. But it was perfect!”

“Actually, you did bring back pictures, Captain, and so did Anderson.” She tapped her head.

“You mean our memories? You can read our memories?”

“In large part, yes. I used aerial photographs from your database to get the basic layout. Then I created the specifics from Anderson’s own perspectives.” She reached for Sally and guided her out of the way as Scott approached. “The computer interpolated from his visual recollections to embellish the model, followed by smells, sounds, and everything else.”

Sally puzzled, taking it all in. “And so, when I remembered the binoculars . . .”

“This advanced interface recognized they should be there. Then it found an unobtrusive way of correcting what it considered to be a gap in the model.”

“But I couldn’t make the gun appear because I knew it wouldn’t be there.”

“Correct. I also noticed the concrete platform is now raised. You saw the edge of the camp from that angle, but clearly Anderson didn’t.”

“My God, Poole! This is the most incredible breakthrough I’ve ever seen!”

Poole nodded. “And part of me wishes we’d never made it.”

“Well, I can certainly understand that! Why, I was scared to death! I really believed . . . I couldn’t tell the difference!”

“You could really screw somebody up for life with this technology, Captain,” Poole said with a disapproving shake of her head. “I must ask you to be discrete about who you share this with.”

Then Scott disappeared from view and the room morphed back into the smelly, barn-like place. Three Brethren entered. Poole looked over at them with concern, but then relaxed. None of them was Scott. The three began emptying large canvas bags into the metal vats. The bags contained what appeared to be fruit rinds, chunks of moldy cheese, and other nondescript garbage of various consistencies from liquid to paste to solid. As they poured, Sally could see startled beetle-like insects fleeing the vats and scurrying about the floor in random directions.

“Who are they?” she asked, again fascinated by the clarity of the illusion.

“Animated characters. We call them facsimiles. Each has its own distinct behavioral program based on Scott’s recollections.” She motioned to the three. “It’s part of their program to come in here at this time to prepare dinner. Before that, the computer wasn’t using this room. That’s why I had you come here.”

“This place stinks!”

“I can adjust your olfactory senses not to notice it if you’d like,” Poole suggested.

Sally looked critically at the three Brethren as she walked over to the vats. The Brethren hadn’t said anything and didn’t seem to notice either her or Poole. She looked down inside one of the containers and grimaced, pulling her head back with a strangled cough.

“That’s dinner,” Poole said.

Sally gasped. “They actually eat that?”

“That’s what Anderson remembers. He’s quite fond of it, in fact.”

Sally’s hands clenched into fists and she threw a frustrated kick at one of the vats. It clanged dully.

“You mentioned he had parasites. I’m not surprised.”

Sally backed away from the barrel, trying not to display her loathing. “I didn’t see this when I was on the planet.”

“No, but Anderson did.” She looked at a time display on her wrist. “He’ll be coming in here soon. He can’t be allowed to see you here, Captain, I’m going to have to ask you to leave before he arrives.”

Sally looked at Poole, unsure how to interpret her concern.

“As far as he knows, this is real. If he sees you here it’ll confuse him and he might begin to suspect.”

A shadow of fear darkened Sally’s face. “Oh my heavens! Then he thinks he’s back on the planet! What in name of decency are you doing to him?”

“This is necessary to understand __”

“The safety breakers!” she shouted. “You disabled the safeties! He can feel everything! And he can’t override it even if he knew it was VR! What kind of torture are you putting him through?”

Poole’s face hardened. “Captain, you’ve got to trust me on this! I don’t have time to explain!”

“Make time!” Sally put her hands on her hips. “I didn’t rescue him from this hell hole so you could plop him back into it! He could die in here!”

“Maybe! Yes, he might die here! But he would certainly have died out there, and you know it!” She sighed in frustration. “Scott Anderson is not normal, Captain! He’s got to be the most incredibly messed up individual I’ve ever worked with!” She motioned to the room. “This is his home! Look at it! This is Anderson’s idea of luxury! Now, if you put him in a nice suite at the Ritz, guess what! He’d hate it!”

She took Sally by the shoulders. “Dr. Buds, you’re out of your league here. You don’t understand any of this! You rescued him, you sewed him back together, and you managed to keep him contained for a time, but you’ll never cure him the way you were going about it and he wouldn’t live to reach Earth that way!”

Sally backed away, appearing insulted.

Poole made a pleading face. “He won’t eat, damn it! He’ll die before he swallows anything but that slop over there! How long can he survive on IV? You tell me, Doctor! Ten days? A month? You’re still six months away from Earth! And let’s be reasonable, Doctor, what kind of torture would it be keeping him in that straightjacket for six months drugged up on tranks?”

Sally stammered, searching for rebuttals that weren’t there.

“You leave orbit in three days, right? He’ll know it! How do you think he’ll react when he knows the world he sees as home is gone forever? He’ll see it from the window, he’ll feel the thrust, and he’ll know! Last week he was almost catatonic until he thought the Masters were coming to rescue him! That hope was all that held him together! What do you think the emotional strain of leaving orbit would do to his chances of surviving the trip?”

She released Sally and began to pace the room. “Scott Anderson will never be happy unless he’s here. He’s been conditioned in every corner of his personality to need this place. Even if he survives the journey home, he’ll never be happy there! He’ll spend the rest of his life trying to get back here! And, when he can’t, he’ll suffer from a kind of homesickness we could never understand! The strain will eventually kill him!”

Sally drew a deep sigh, feeling frustrated tears form in her eyes. She blinked them away. “Then are you saying . . . Do you think I should have given him back to them?”

“Of course not! But we can’t just expect him to accept life on Earth without some kind of help either. This is a compromise!” She motioned around the room. “It’s an environment he can relate to. I know you care about him, Captain, and I’ll still need your help to keep him alive. But right now I need you to trust me! We’ve got to pull this off!”

Reluctantly, Sally nodded.

Poole looked at her display again. “It’s too late to leave now. I’ll have to camouflage you. I can make you look like one of them. But I’ll have to leave before Scott notices me!” She looked around the room, wrinkling her nose. “Masters don’t usually come in here. Step outside and I’ll meet you by the window. I know the system so I can project myself there. Will you do this?”

She nodded.

As soon as Poole vanished Sally started for the door, but stopped as she felt something cold under her feet. She looked down to see that she was barefoot. But not just barefoot. She was also missing one toe on each foot and both feet were covered with scabs and calluses! The rest of her body was equally worn and injured, but she felt no pain. Her hands were narrow, having only three fingers and a thumb. And they, like her feet, were covered with open sores. She wore pieces of old canvas bags for clothing, which were stained with blood and filth. She could smell her own stench and had to work not to react.

As the others filed in, nobody noticed anything unusual about her. They just formed a line by the vats, probably assuming she’d already dined. She turned away when she saw them ladle the stinking slop into their mouths with their fingers.

She squeezed her way through the narrow doorway and then launched herself into a run around the side of the building. Poole stood waiting for her. Sally looked herself over again in new amazement. “This goes beyond anything I’ve ever imagined possible!”

“It is possible, though, Captain. And our children will probably have this type of setup available to them in every home. They’ll use it for communications, learning, and recreation. To them it’ll be as common as television and computer networks were to our parents.” She shook her head. “And many of them will abuse it in ways neither of us could begin to imagine.”

“I see what you mean,” she said, still dazzled by her three-fingered hands.

“Now I want you to see something else,” she said with a brighter expression, consulting an invisible display. “He’s in the food line now. Look through the window.”

Sally peered in, seeing Scott approach one of the rusty vats.

“Watch closely.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Sally saw Poole vanish. Through the window the scene changed slightly. Where the vat nearest to Scott was, she could see a ghost image of something else. Squinting, she could just make out the console wall from his quarters. She now had a mental picture of where they actually stood in the room. As Scott scooped at the food, she could see that he had somehow unconsciously opened a ration tin from his locker and was happily downing its contents. Seconds later, the image disappeared, leaving the ugly barrel and putrid slop dripping from his hands and lips.

“Clean dirt!” Poole said triumphantly. “He won’t get parasites from this. But he will get nourishment.”

Sally looked at Poole with new appreciation. “Forgive me. I was wrong to interfere. You obviously know what you’re doing.”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” she said with a laugh. “But I think I can guarantee Anderson’s survival until we reach Earth.” She motioned to the building. “What you see here is no cure. Think of it like a temporary measure to buy us time. As long as he’s here and accepts it as real, we can feed him and keep him strong. We can also be reasonably sure he won’t attempt suicide or become violent. Beyond that, we can’t do much more for him.” She motioned to the labor camp beyond the wall. “And, though he may feel intense pain, exhaustion, and starvation, his body will come to no real harm. At least in that sense it’s better than the hell you rescued him from.”

“What’s your plan for treatment?”

She shook her head. “That’s what I’m saying. I really don’t have one yet.” She began to pace. “I’d hoped originally that removing the implant would cause him to recover immediately, but that didn’t happen. It’s still possible the condition could reverse itself in time, but that could take years. The best I can imagine now is some sort of gradual withdrawal from this world into ours.” She kicked at the dirt. “But I haven’t worked out how we can do that yet.”

“You mean like making the food more sanitary, bit by bit?”

“Maybe, but it’s also quite likely that could blow the whole illusion and we may never get him back here again!” She hung her head slightly, displaying briefly the weight that was on her heart. “He has to believe this is real. It’s the only common ground we have! The moment he figures out it’s an illusion, the whole house of cards tumbles to the ground and we’re right back where we started from. It’s also the only way we can interact with him. It’s our only real hope to reach him.”

“How can I help?”

“I’ll need medical reports from his biomonitor. We’ll also need to keep him sanitary somehow without removing him from VR. He sleeps three hours every day. I can keep him from waking up as long as you’re careful.”

Sally nodded, relieved to finally have something she could do. “I’ll see to that right away.”

“And Doctor,” Poole added, looking straight into her eyes, “I’ll need your ideas! You’re an accomplished medical professional and I know you’ve studied basic psychological medicine. Wrack your brain! Put yourself on this case with me full time if you can. We’re breaking new ground here and I need all the help I can get!” She threw up her arms in frustration, looking vulnerable for the first time since Sally met her.

Sally extended her hand to Poole, realizing to her surprise that it now had all five fingers. They walked down the road, heading away from the camp in the direction Sally had come from. She scanned the landscape with continued fascination, searching her memory for things to look for.

But then she saw something that deflated her smile, stabbing into her awareness like an ice pick. Connected to one of the half-walls was a twisted metal door. It hadn’t been there when she first arrived, but had obviously materialized as she passed. Poole noticed its addition and noted her reaction to it.

“Show me.”

They walked into the small, broken room and beheld the ripped, bloody form of the ruined little girl just as Sally remembered it. She was dead now, as Sally knew she would have to be. Her face was cast in a clown-like smile and her eyes were dried out and black with blood. As Poole looked at the corpse, she felt a shiver of realization.

“Oh, God. You really saw this, didn’t you?”

She nodded, nervously wiping tears from her eyes.

“I’m so sorry! I remember now. You mentioned this in your report. She was alive when you . . . Oh, God, Sally! And being back here . . . This must be like the ultimate flashback for you!”

Poole turned Sally away from the scene and then put her arm around her. “It’s okay to care, Sally. To hell with what they tell you in medical school! Maybe you couldn’t have saved her, but you can still mourn for her. You have that right. That’s human!”