7: Epistasis Part II

There's an oppressive weightlessness that engulfs your body when you hang in the empty and infinite vastness of space, you suddenly feel very unrestricted, by gravity, by air resistance and for a split of a split second you feel this intense sense of freedom. And then when you try to breathe in and your lungs start to collapse, in another split second, you take stock of your situation and panic sets in. This not being a new Experience of exposure to space the panic is dampened slightly, but the immediacy that my actions have to carry is still in the forefront of my mind, I watch the corridor I was just standing in get further and further away from me. I start to feel an intense burning in my fingers, the cold is starting to destroy the cells in my hands and I clench my teeth to deal with the pain. I have 15 seconds before I lose consciousness and I float off, lost forever.

15

I fumble through the pockets in my bandolier

14

I pause and take a look back at the corridor, the panels have closed and behind the thick glass I can just about make out something moving, staring back at me

13

I turn back to my bandolier and pull out a small length of golden yarn with a black needle tied to the end, it gleams faintly in the darkness of space and flows gently as if underwater

[the thread softly thrums, a constant light tone]

13

I bite down hard on the thread and it begins to shine brightly, blindingly so. Slowly it begins to extend curling and tangling in the vacuum, it surrounds and illuminates me in the cold unforgiving nothingness of space

12

I reach out and grab the needle and hold it between my index finger and thumb

11

At the top of the station there's an emergency exterior airlock,

10

I draw back my hand and throw the needle like a dart, aiming squarely at the airlock

9

It whizzes through the vacuum and lands right on the door piercing the metal

8

The throw sends me in the opposite direction and so I begin to reel myself in

7

I start tugging hard on the yarn to propel myself forward

6

I'm about halfway and my head is throbbing with an intense pain

5

With a final yank I float to the airlock and pull the emergency release

4

The door finally opens and I drag myself in

3

It closes behind me

2

The room pressurises and floods with Oxygen, and I pull great heaps of air into my lungs like a glutton at a banquet, I breathe in so much it hurts and for a few seconds I'm on my hands and knees, just breathing.

Through a small viewport in the window I watch the golden yarn start to shudder against the confines of itself, and then dissipate [it sounds like a soft shattering], lost forever.

I open the door and I find myself on the top floor of the station, a very much operational noticeboard tells me as such. All there is on this level is a single glass door with a plaque labelled "overseers office/server room". I try to open it. It's locked. I look around the space and see a row of chairs arranged in what seems to be a waiting room. The chair smashes the glass with relative ease and I step through. The room is full of rows and rows of servers, all lined up in the darkness like glowing tombstones, filling the kilometre wide room stretching high up to the ceiling. The room is cold and I can hear a soft hum of air conditioning.

at the centre of the room I see a terminal sat on a small desk.

As I march down the narrow aisle of humming machines I can't get rid of the feeling that something is watching me, I can feel it's cold gaze on my back and I stop suddenly and look behind me, nothing.

At the desk I sit myself down in the chair. The terminal is as old as can be expected on a ship built this long ago but I turn it on

[it beeps and begins to buzz, typical of old and unmaintained machinery]

and begin working on getting it open. Within a few minutes I have it working and I go straight for the mainframe interface

Query:system_down, appropriated_resources, system_alert.

the results fill my screen.

At 3:16 am settime the whole station paused and then shut down, after the automatic restart it would seem something had worked its way into the system. I'm sat in a kilometer long room filled with servers staring at it, This thing and it makes no sense, it should not work within the mainframe of the avian ark and yet somehow it had inserted itself and caused incredibly drastic effects. I see the same kind of insertion in several other parts of the code, slowly it begins to dawn on me, I line up each separate insertion and I finally see it,

The same symbol drawn all over the Gorlan

The same symbol from Eden all those years ago

a vertical line with 3 curved lines cutting across it

Whatever emerged from the Tyreesius had been here, and it's mere presence had caused this, perhaps by some conscious effort or maybe simply by way of emanating it's will.

That pit in my stomach feels like a weight now, the fear travels from my chest down into my abdomen and for a moment I pause, my hands just hovering above the keyboard.

"Fuck,"

The best course of action now is to shut it all down and hail the council. I type in a command to shut down the mainframe and press enter.

[the hum of the servers dies down]

I speak into my visu-link

"This is Adam Delta 5, I've remedied the situation, please send someone to come get me this time, I'll explain when you get here, I just want to get the fuck out of here"

I lean forward, elbows on knees clenching on tight fistfuls of my hair, staring at the ground

"Fuck"

A noise comes from the entrance to the room and I look up I can just make out a dark silhouette of something blocking out the light coming from the waiting room,

For a moment we just watch each other, I feel it's cold gaze.

And then it begins to run.

I leap over the desk enter the forest of servers hoping to make a b-line for the exit,

I forget all the anxiety about whatever it is that can bend a computer to its will just from being close and I forget all my regret and shame and I just start running.

Left,

Right,

Right,

Left,

I try to make my movements as erratic as possible hoping to evade my pursuer,

I make a sharp left pushing against one of the monoliths, cross over the path, and go into the other bank of machines. One question goes through my mind, inescapable amongst the rows and rows of inoperative machines

If this thing is what I think it is, how is it still active?

I see a glint of white metal and I stop, back flat against a server. It has to be one of the security drones, it makes a soft gurgling sound and I hold myself in complete stillness. The drone leans forward and then sprints off, deeper into the maze,

Once it's out of ear shot, I start to run and leap out of the door, down the stairs, 3-4 steps at a time, ignoring the sting in my feet as I land. I reach the entrance to the top ring and pause, once more taking in deep breaths.

"I…. Really…. Need…… A ……. gun. Or a sword, or both"

Still heaving and with my hands on my knees I look down the corridor.

What's down there?

Some kind instinct tells me that the answers I'm looking for are in the top ring, I draw myself up and, once more, start running,

"Please don't eject me,

Please don't eject me,

Please don't eject me,"

The doors ahead of me begin to close and I jump to avoid tripping and banging my head, the doors to the entrance just ahead suddenly open

Something is wrong

I burst through and stop myself just in time. What must have been the first floor is now just a ledge above what is the partially hollowed out remnants of the 1st ring. Each wall and floor of every room meticulously taken apart, at the sides of the space are what remains of the rest of the ring. What horrifies me most in all this are the swarms of drones in the space. Some, like the round drone, are together in massive groups smothering some great mass that writhes and twitches. At the centre of the chaos there is a kind of horrific assembly line, the carcasses of birds torn apart for parts, drones with muscle and sinew fused to their circuitry and components in some horrific process, those with the "re-appropriated" organs and parts move on, presumably to devour more parts of the station. Some abomination flies through the air, sailing like kites on stolen wings.

[it squawks and it sounds tortured and slightly robotic]

I take a step back. something makes a noise behind me and before I am able turn around I feel a searing pain in my torso, I look down and see a long appendage protruding outwards from my chest, composed of metal fused to bone, wrapped in muscle and flesh, stray feathers soaked in the blood of us both, it leans in, gurgles, and I lose consciousness…

[the sound of a hospital, a heart monitor beeps footsteps can be heard in the hallway]

I wake up with a Council medic above me, the all too familiar sting of nanobots deep in my chest. I look up at them

"Why do you all wear visors?"

"Impartiality," they say, "You shouldn't have survived this"

"Well, I am immortal"

"You don't deserve it"

they say and then walks off

Later that day I read the mission debrief, the avian ark was lost. After a team of Thanes dragged me out, the council obliterated it to prevent the spread of the insertion and to destroy the Epistatis, in their eyes losing the last samples of the griffon vulture, the western jackdaw, the Congo peafowl and many others was worth the safety of the galaxy at large. I place the tablet on the bedside table and rest my head on the pillow, my horns knocking against the plastic headboard. I clench my eyes and run my hands through my hair, grabbing tight fistfuls,

"Fuck"