Goddess of the Galacticide Episode 13 - Weak Link

Episode 13

Linuka Omga knew that the least reliable component of any security system designed by humans were the humans themselves.

Biometric locks, scanners, micro-drone surveillance, and personnel tracking were difficult to fool. Guards and scientists were not. At the apartment, they had surprised Linuka, found her unprepared, and forced her to improvise while running to evade the intruders. Here at the lab facility, she could turn her powers against them, force them to adapt, second-guess their routine, their protocols.

Some truly believed Linuka Omga resembled an Aloo Dashaad guest scientist. Some thought they could remember a new young lab technician joining their team. Armed patrols complied with the stern requests made by a government auditor. For each individual Linuka met while traversing the lab’s maze she found yet another reality where the lab personnel slipped up, forgot to ask for credentials, opened doors, ignored her, or gave directions.

“Dzeeny. First name: Cha. Yes, he is in a session. Straight down this hallway. It’s the last door.”

The woman wore some ranking insignia—maybe a scientific team leader? Her temple implant access finally gave Linuka what she needed: Cha Dzeeny’s location. Linuka would begin by freeing him, assuming he’d know where the rest of his team was.

He is in a session. What did that mean? The realities surrounding the smiling woman’s silhouette were fuzzy. There was none in which not knowing what this sentence meant wasn’t suspicious. Linuka bit her tongue and suppressed her urge to ask.

“Thank you” was all she said.

The short walk toward the door the team leader lady pointed to was taxing. Linuka must have distorted, or switched, realities ten times by now, and the branching of alternate adjacent versions of this facility became a blur for her eyes, a hum for her ears, and a headache spike for her mind. With each step, she let some alternate realities collapse, cutting the causal connections she had held on to for the moments it counted. The collapse feedback hurt like slaps in her face. Reprimands from a multiverse angry at the audacious girl for sneaking into forbidden places.

The realities fell silent by the time she reached the door. It slid open. A small control room, consoles and workstations, transparent walls showing a much larger testing lab. Both rooms were devoid of guards and scientists. Linuka had chosen her reality well.

Ten humans lay flat on their backs, strapped to padded bunks extending from hexagonal openings in the lab’s wall.

This looks like a morgue. Was she too late? No. ‘Cha Dzeeny was in a session’ meant he was actively participating in something. Linuka stepped closer to one bunk. “Yots” read the sign above the footrest. The woman’s name? Was she sedated? Linuka held her hand under the woman’s nose. The faint brush of exhaled warmth. She was alive. A rubbery cap covered her scalp. Linuka recognized this setup. A thin version of a connection membrane, usually worn under a streaming helmet. This woman’s mind connected to a computer stream. This connection would expand the input capacity of an awake user, but she was far from conscious.

Linuka went from bunk to bunk until she saw ‘Dzeeny’ on a sign. Only now did she recognize the face. Cha Dzeeny looked thinner, paler, than she remembered. Did these lab ganmak keep their prisoners strapped to these connector bunks? None of the realities had revealed holding cells, and Linuka understood why. Above the hexagonal opening were metal plates of the same shape and size, also fitted with name tags. There was no prison tract attached to this lab. The lab was the prison.

Her gut instinct was to rip that connector cap off Cha Dzeeny’s head and shake him until he regained consciousness, but her few—painful—experiences with direct mind to computer streaming reminded her of the consequences.

The control room. She headed back to the consoles, briefly focusing on the door. In the adjacent realities, it would remain closed for another 10 to 12 passes. Do I have time to wake them and evacuate? Linuka moved her focus to the console in the center, the positioning showing it to be a master terminal. Genetic challenge, retinal scan, voice password. She didn’t have time for this.

In the lab room, she sought different options. Assuming this was a cutting-edge experimental setup, there had to be a main shutdown mechanism, one not requiring several rounds of authentication. Three large, round orange buttons caught her attention. ‘Power off’, ‘Purge simulation’ and ‘Abort session’. If the mind-computer setup was a ‘session’—how about aborting it?

The door slid open. It couldn’t be. She had not seen this. A quick glance reassured her that the door was still closed, as foreseen.

“What are you doing here?” asked a female voice.

Linuka froze. Let me handle this, insisted her inner voice. No, thought Linuka, give me back control! Like glued to the floor in a high-g environment, she turned to face a young med tech, holding on to a datascroll. She had stepped out of an annex room Linuka had missed. Like security systems, multi-awareness is only as good as its human user. Nreedz. Give me control now!

“Hello,” Linuka heard herself say, as if the lab tech and she had been close friends for orbits. “We are here for maintenance.” What was the Uurmi doing? Maintenance?

Give. Back. Control! Her head hurt. Her intestines convulsed. The panspermic entity made from networked gut bacteria fought her consciousness like it hadn’t since her childhood. Linuka’s body took several steps toward the young woman.

“Who is ‘we’? Hey, wait, what…”

Linuka’s body lunged at the woman, her hands grabbing jaw and forehead, right knee pushing into the abdomen, toppling the hapless lab tech onto her back, twisting her head to the side, waiting for the impact on the floor to snap her neck. The Uurmi released its grip on the—now lifeless—body and assumed a defensive posture. Primal satisfaction shuddered through Linuka’s shared body, having killed, ready to do it again. The Uurmi forced Linuka to search the annex room, not yielding further dangers to eliminate.

***

Linuka Omga was strong-willed, a trait the Uurmi could admire, but right now her struggle to hold it back from doing what was necessary became annoying at best, dangerous for their shared home at worst. It limped the Linuka back to the three orange buttons and pressed ‘Abort session’. Enough with the constant interrogation of the fabric of existence, the maybes, the could-bes, the also-possibles. It was time to act. Revive these warriors! Lead them out of here. Build your army. Don’t fear. Be feared.

***

Linuka held Cha Dzeeny’s head when his eyes opened. You’ll thank me later, was the last thought she could hear that wasn’t her own. Her body was hers again. Cha’s mouth opened shakily, the bewilderment in his eyes bottomless.

“Shaajis?” Almost inaudible.

“I’ll get you out of here,” said Linuka.

“You haven’t aged one spin,” said Cha Dzeeny.

“Why would I have aged?” asked Linuka.

“I was in there for a long time. Lost count after several orbits. Lost some good people, too.”

Several orbits? Dzeeny’s trial had ended 20 rotations ago, not several thousand, as he seemed to believe. What had they done to their prisoners?

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