The Anomaly Volume One The Battle for the Known UnknownChapter 17
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Godwin - 3750 C.E.
"How many incidents have there been now?" Paul was asked.
"A few," he answered.
"Six, in fact," said the dark hued security officer who'd flown in from the Interplanetary Union's administrative offices near Pluto. "Three reported at the university. Two between here and your home. And one that destroyed your home; or at least most of it. Three explosions and three attempted assassinations. And you really have no idea who it could be?"
"None," admitted Paul. "I didn't know I had any enemies. And I didn't know that my research would ever upset anyone."
"These incidents are almost certainly associated with the publication of your research," remarked the officer. "Did anyone ever suggest to you that it might excite unwelcome attention?"
"Not at all," said Paul. "No one's been interested in my research before."
"Understandably," admitted the officer, as he studied his notes. "Blogging and Personal Websites in the Twentieth to Twenty-third Centuries. Twenty-first Century Pornography. The Pattern of Movie Downloading Habits in the Twenty-second Century. These are truly academic pursuits. What attracted you to analyse ancient military and government records regarding the Anomaly?"
"I just came across a reference to it in a printed file when I was researching conspiracy theories and was fascinated by it."
"And did anyone inform you that the Anomaly has reappeared in the last century?"
"No. Has it?" asked Paul for whom this was genuinely unsuspected news.
"Yes," said the officer. "And in exactly the same location in the very same unpromising corner of space."
"It has?"
"Yes. And do you have any idea from your research what this Anomaly might be?"
"Well, only what the records say. And none of them are very forthcoming. It's a kind of a presence of absence, as far as I can tell. It's a kind of black nothingness that exerts no electromagnetic or gravitational force. It simply blocks out the starlight from behind. Some records speculate that it might be dark energy or dark matter or something like that."
"Well, we know enough these days about the physical components of the universe to be certain that it isn't either of those things," said the officer, "although 'dark' it most certainly is. Were there any records that you read, and perhaps not thought worth including in your reports, that associated the Anomaly with other incidents in the Solar System?"
"Like what?" Paul wondered.
"Well, like, for instance, alien space ships or alien encounters of any kind?"
"There's a lot of documentation on things like that," Paul admitted, "but no positive correlation. You must remember, though, that in the early part of the third millennium there was a great deal of speculation about aliens and most of it was total rubbish."
"Only most of it?"
"I guess so," said Paul. "Possibly all of it. I don't know. Perhaps if there'd been more truth to these speculations in the last thousand years or so, something more would have been made of them."
"You have heard of the peculiar apparitions reported across the Solar System, haven't you?" remarked the officer. "The things that appear for a short period of time and then vanish. Like, for instance, the knight in armour that appeared briefly near Neptune? Or the floating telephone box in the Kuiper Belt? Or the swarm of pterodactyls over the Moon?"
"I assumed they were just nonsense dreamt up by the news media," said Paul. "Odd, but not at all proven."
"Were there any such events recorded in the twenty-first and twenty-second centuries?"
"Well, lots," admitted Paul. "But none independently verified."
"And no connection was made between them and the Anomaly?"
"Not that I know of. Nothing that was preserved in the records."
"I see," said the officer thoughtfully. He gazed at his notes, which even Paul could see was determining the nature of his questions. It was unusual for a representative from the Interplanetary Union, especially an intelligence officer, to travel such a very long way to a remote space colony like Godwin. And even more so with the express purpose of interrogating someone like Paul whose activities wouldn't normally attract any but the most cursory attention from beyond the University.
Then again, he was at least as worried and upset as anyone else by the peculiar incidents that had been following him around. There were two occasions when he'd nearly been killed. The first by a burst of laser fire he'd only avoided because he'd bent down to straighten a shoe that he'd put on rather carelessly. The second by a knife attack that was intercepted by the security officer that had been assigned to him after the explosion in the laboratory. And the replacement to the laboratory hadn't lasted long until it was gutted by an unexplained fire. The worst, of course, was the malfunction in Paul's domestic systems where the nanobots went utterly out of control and instead of cleaning the carpets and removing dust started dismantling the entire house so that it was now totally uninhabitable. If he'd been in bed rather than immersed in Nudeworld, he might have been smothered by over-zealous nanobots and reduced to the same small specks of dust that was all that was remaining of most of his home.
"Well, the fact that there you've now provided conclusive evidence that the Anomaly isn't just a recent phenomenon has attracted considerable attention," elaborated Special Officer Fitzwilliam as he held a holoscreen up toward his eyes. "It has eliminated some theories of what the Anomaly might be, as well as stimulating rather a few new ones. It has upset some people while providing welcome evidence for others. What it's most definitely done is absolve responsibility from any currently existing human agency unless you either postulate the possibility of time travel or a more advanced technology in the twenty-first century than anyone's ever imagined. You saw no speculation about time travel in your research, did you? That, rather than being contemporaneous, the Anomaly might be an incursion from a later epoch?"
"No," said Paul. "Even in the twenty-first century it was believed that time travel was a strictly one-way affair. And like notions of travelling faster than light or creating real rather than artificial gravity, that seems even less likely nowadays than it might have done then."
"That doesn't stop science-fiction authors from incorporating such concepts into their fiction though, does it?"
"I don't see that that's relevant. I've studied the maths. Time travel is about as possible as reincarnation and fairies."
"But people believe in those as well, don't they?" remarked the special officer. "However, I'm not here to indulge in idle speculation. I shall spell out the facts to you as we see them. You've been doing independent research into the Anomaly which has come up with the surprising and totally unexpected result that this phenomenon was positively identified over a thousand years ago. You and your research have attracted the unwelcome attention of some as yet not positively identified individuals and organisations. And your life is in danger. Whether you like it or not: so too is the life of many people at the University and on the colony of Godwin. It's not at all inconceivable that after having failed to eliminate you or the fruits of your research by conventional methods, these unknown individuals or organisations might decide that the easiest and most conclusive way might be to destroy the entire colony. It doesn't take more than one particularly crazed individual with access to an antimatter device to reduce Godwin to nothing more than a cloud of fundamental particles. Even this far out in the Solar System, that would have an impact on colonies many light minutes away. A stream of naked quarks or leptons could seriously aggravate systems even as far away as Pluto."
"It doesn't sound good," admitted Paul.
"It doesn't, does it?" agreed Special Officer Fitzwilliam. "It is your misfortune, in a sense, to live in what must be the most insecure and easily infiltrated colony in the whole Solar System. Indeed, it has been extremely exasperating simply to identify someone who possesses what might resemble a position of authority in your colony. It seems that apparent seniority and responsibility carry very little actual executive power in Godwin. Even your ambassadors and consuls in the Interplanetary Union are unable to identify an individual in your colony whose decision-making capacity is beyond that required to perform their job. If there was ever a war involving your colony, I doubt that Godwin could make even the most basic strategic or tactical military decision."
"Anarchists have no conception of war," said Paul in defence of the guiding principles of his home colony.
"Nor any likelihood of surviving one," remarked the special officer grimly. "However, the Interplanetary Union has responsibilities for all its member states, even one whose representatives are as unpredictable and eccentric as yours are. There is no discernible pattern to the policies your representatives support. Those who represent you appear to have been elected on the basis of their desire to serve rather than because anyone especially wanted to be represented by them. Your representatives more often vote against each other rather than act as a common block. Nevertheless, we are duty-bound to protect your colony and the individuals within it. Including, it has to be said, you, Paul."
"And if I didn't want your protection?" wondered Paul more in the spirit of intellectual curiosity than disagreement.
"That's your choice, but the Interplanetary Union might very well exercise its right, which none of your citizens can exercise, of protecting the whole of the colony against the wishes of individuals within it."
"I see," said Paul, who had only the vaguest notion of what might be the common good but was sure that there might be some strong arguments in its favour.
"There is a mission to intercept the Anomaly which has been set up with the highest authority and, although this appears to have no meaning on Godwin, the utmost secrecy. We would hope, but cannot, of course, enforce that you would respect this secrecy and tell no one. And I mean absolutely no one. Whether or not it's a decision I agree with—and I am in no position to voice an opinion—it has been decided that you should participate on this mission."
"Of what possible use would I be?" wondered Paul. "I'm a researcher. All my research material comes from within the Solar System. I'd be less use in deep space than I would be here."
"You may ask," smiled the special officer in apparent sympathy. "I can't see you doing much useful research when you're travelling several light weeks, if not months, from the ecliptic plane. But the decision has been made and if you decline, which you have every right of doing, the significance of the mission might well override your normal rights. It is a mission of the highest importance and any excuse for not participating might not be viewed with the usual indulgence."
"And what is this mission intended to achieve?"
"Well now, you're asking me a question for which my security clearance isn't nearly high enough for me to answer," admitted Special Officer Fitzwilliam. "However, I am authorised to use my discretion to ensure that you participate whether or not I agree with the decision that you should. I simply hope that you'll agree to embark on the Space Ship Byzantium which has been diverted from its standard course for the express purpose of picking you up."
"I see," said Paul who was slowly getting accustomed to the notion of a future that was at odds with anything he might have planned for himself.
"You mustn't tell anyone why you'll be leaving the colony on the cruiser," said the special officer, "nor, if possible, that you'll be leaving at all. If asked, you should say that you're attending a conference on twenty-seventh century quantum computing at Sucette in the Uranus orbit. This convention is dull enough that your attendance there would be wholly plausible. However, judging from our records, you have so few friends and an even smaller family that it should be fairly easy for you to avoid the need to divulge even this much information."
Intrepid - 3754 C.E. If she were ever asked, Nadezhda Kerensky would describe herself as an essentially monogamous woman. She didn't have the desire or ambition to take on more than one lover. Surely that was all she ever needed. Nadezhda was a romantic soul. She continued to believe that one day there would be an occasion where she'd meet the one woman who'd be her partner for the rest of her life. She once thought that her ex-wife, Veronika, was to be that one woman but she no longer...
Intrepid - 3754 C.E. Ever since he'd got married to Beatrice, Paul had tried to resist the temptation to visit Nudeworld. It no longer had quite the same attraction as before. It wasn't that Paul didn't visit cyberspace any more. He still enjoyed going to places and meeting people that could only ever be encountered in virtual reality, but he mostly avoided sexual encounters. He preferred to be free from even virtual guilt when he and Beatrice made love. But the truth was that he was more...
Intrepid - 3754 C.E. Beatrice licked her fingers lasciviously as she savoured the sour taste of Captain Kerensky's vaginal juices and smiled seductively at her lover. The captain gasped. Her eyes shone bright. She shuddered with a final orgasmic spasm from the frenzied sex she was enjoying with Paul's wife. Beatrice's tongue was still moist from the lovers' commingled saliva and the juicy evidence of passion dripped from her vagina. Nadezhda had made love with many women in her hundred...
Mars - 3752 C.E. The gust of wind that blew over the red soil picked up a fistful of red dust and brushed it against Colonel Vashti's visor. Through the scattered grains, she was able to admire a landscape that was both splendidly barren and untidily littered with the detritus of war. A tank that had sunk inside a crater was weathered by wind rather than rusted by oxygen, even though it was many centuries since it had been attacked. The burnt out hulks of space craft were scattered about...
Godwin - 3749 C.E. "Frankly," said the consultant as he hovered cross-legged in the air beside Paul, "you're not doing especially well for a man of your age." "What do you mean?" Paul asked nervously. The doctor consulted the holo-manual at eye level by his side. "You're nearly eighty years old, aren't you? That's an age that might once have been considered relatively old. We would normally expect someone of your age to be perhaps thirty to forty percent bio-plastic. But you are...
Intrepid - 3754 C.E. There is almost no incident more serious than when the space ship of which you are captain has been attacked and boarded. And as captain of the Space Ship Intrepid, Nadezhda Kerensky knew that what was required was an emergency meeting for everyone aboard. It wouldn't be enough to simply broadcast a statement. There had to be a full and proper discussion of everything that had happened. But this was also something that the captain had never had to do before. It was...
It was no surprise at all to Vashti that taking control of the space ship Intrepid had been so effortless. Humans were such simple animals. All she had to do was take control of the command structure and the crew and passengers were easily persuaded to follow orders. The few cases of dissent were regrettable and only to be expected, but they were easy to identify and deal with. Human history showed time after time that command structures of sometimes appalling stupidity and gross cruelty had...
The small craft of which Colonel Vashti was the pilot weaved in and out of the relentless barrage of hostile laser fire that streamed towards her from the approaching fighter jets. The moment she failed to avoid being hit would be the moment when her craft would be no more and her mission terminated. Although her firepower was outmatched by the weaponry set against it, she made sure that each one of the laser-propelled missiles she launched hit its target. All around and ahead was the...
Paul had never shown much interest in the other passengers and crew of the Intrepid in all the months since he first boarded the space ship. He didn't feel comfortable in the company of soldiers, he didn't need to see the crew very often, and there were no other computer archaeologists amongst the scientists. He was more than happy in his own company and, of course, that of Beatrice. What more did he ever need? Not a lot, Paul mostly believed, but lately Beatrice had been spending rather...
Intrepid - 3756 C.E. Despite her being imprisoned within an impenetrable force field, Beatrice was still able to monitor the Intrepid's steady progress towards the Anomaly. Because she had an entire Proxima Centauri space fleet at her disposal, she could do this rather more comprehensively than anyone else on the space ship with the obvious exception of Colonel Vashti. There was a long time in which Beatrice could prepare for the expected time of arrival at the Anomaly. There wasn't much...
Intrepid - 3754 A.D. Naked and hairless. The shame of it. Isaac had never been so since he was a baby. The humiliation was torment in itself. But Isaac could comfort himself that he wasn't the only one so demeaned. All around him and equally immobilised on the grassy lawns of this strange Elysian but Godless world were others like him: defeated, dishonoured and similarly paralysed. He could move his eyes. He could breathe. But he couldn't move his limbs and he could mouth words with only...
Chomsky - 3750 C.E. "Marriage," repeated Comrade Doctorow incredulously. "Are you telling me you've never heard of the institution of marriage?" "Well, yes," said Paul. "I've heard of it. There's no way I couldn't have heard of it after having studied so much about the third millennium. It's just not something practised on Godwin." "You know nothing about matrimony between two people who love one another?" wondered Comrade Leopold Doctorow. "You know nothing about husbands...
Hygiea - 3751 C.E. Paul and Beatrice were no longer welcome on board the Ulysses after the explosion had wrecked so much of the space ship. As soon as the captain was made aware that the target of the explosion was his two Kuiper Belt passengers he could no longer tolerate their continued presence on his ship. They were evidently a security risk of the first magnitude to not only themselves but everyone else besides. Furthermore, as fully a quarter of the ship was now deemed unsuitable for...
When Captain Kerensky was offered the opportunity to be captain of an Interplanetary Space Ship, she welcomed it full-heartedly. It was exactly the distraction she needed so soon after the messy fallout accompanying her divorce from Veronika. The heartache and acrimony that accompanied their separation had driven Nadezhda to the psychotherapist's couch for the first time in her life. She'd been anxious whether this admission of human frailty might lessen her eligibility for such a...
Paradise - 3751 C.E. The space station may have been christened Paradise, although it hadn't always been known by that name, but even Isaac knew that the real paradise to which he expected to ascend would never be like this. This eight hundred year old space colony in the war-torn Meteorite Belt could never deserve such a name. But for Isaac and the several thousand other would-be martyrs from all corners of the Solar System it would be home for the year or so it would take them to prepare...
The Moon - 3751 C.E. The Moon was the most substantial celestial body Paul had ever trodden on in all his eighty years of life in the Solar System. When Paul stepped out of the Milton's shuttle and onto the Moon's surface, his body was directly subject to a gravitational force that was just one sixth to what he was used to. Nevertheless, walking on the Moon was hardly effortless. Ungainly was the best description of Paul's forward locomotion when he tumbled face downwards onto the...
Ecstasy - 3750 C.E. The flight from Godwin to the colony of Ecstasy in Neptune orbit marked the first time that Paul had ever left the comforts of his cylindrical world. And this first stage of his journey to Earth alone would take over three months. Although such a voyage was something he'd always dreamed of, it really wasn't especially enjoyable. The lengthy and incapacitating process of the skeletal refit prescribed by his doctor confined him to his room for the first half of the flight...
Holy Trinity - 3750 A.D. It was Wednesday on Holy Trinity. This was one of the two days of the week—the other, of course, being Sunday—that was designated an Energy Saving Day. Despite being in Mercury orbit and well bathed in sunlight from the nearby presence of the Sun, the Archdeacon and the Chief Pastors had deemed that the energy expenditure of the colony's burgeoning population couldn't be squandered on more than five days of daylight each week. Isaac was tending the small garden...
Ulysses - 3751 C.E. It only when the space ship Ulysses had travelled far enough from the Schmidt Republic that it appeared as nothing more than a tiny dot in the distance that Paul and Beatrice received a visit from Lieutenant Korolyov. He introduced himself as the Interplanetary Union military officer whose assignment was to ensure that the couple would arrive safely on Earth. He was a Saturnian, as were most Interplanetary Union officers in this part of the Solar System, and in common...
Intrepid - 3754 C.E. "It's beautiful here, isn't it!" exclaimed Beatrice who squeezed Paul's hand in hers as they walked through a park not far from their home on the Intrepid's outermost level. Paul squeezed her hand in return. He gazed lovingly into her eyes. What he wanted to say was that the park was nothing like as beautiful as she was, but although she was his wife and they made love so often together he still didn't find it easy to say such things to a real woman. This was odd...
When Colonel Vashti strolled into the living room where Beatrice was sitting, it was no surprise to her at all to see the android staring ahead of her with an expression of intense concentration. Beatrice turned her head round to face the colonel. "Would you mind telling me what has just happened?" she asked. Colonel Vashti smiled. "You don't know, do you?" "One moment there was nothing out of the usual. The next moment there were strong indications of the presence of a Sirius space...
Milton - 3751 C.E. It was the couple's good fortune that the only space ship Lieutenant Korolyov could provide for Paul and Beatrice at short notice for their journey onto Earth was the Ambassadorial Cruise Ship, SS Milton. The luxury space ship was diverted from its journey from Jupiter orbit to the Asteroid Belt to carry the diplomatic baggage that was considered too great a risk for any commercial ship that travelled across the Solar System. The few diplomats and ambassadors aboard the...
Intrepid - 3754 C.E. "Isaac, isn't it?" the Special Operations Officer asked the naked man sitting on a chair opposite him and who was gently restrained by a low intensity force field. "And where do you come from exactly?" The Holy Crusader might have been defeated but he retained his pride and dignity, despite the humiliation of his continued nudity. "Why should I tell you that?" he responded defiantly. "A fair question," said Emmanuel reasonably. "There's no penalty for...
The Moon - 3751 C.E. "It's just not fair," said the overweight man who was hovering above the ground beside Paul. "I've lived on the Moon all my life. Every year for well over a century, I've applied for a visa to visit Earth. I've entered competitions. I've applied for special permits. I've offered an obscene amount of money. And then someone like you—who comes from the fucking Kuiper Belt, from an anarchist colony no one's ever heard of—gets to go to Earth after no more than a...
Schmidt - 3750 C.E. "Schmidt?" Paul wondered. "Why are we stopping at Schmidt? And why is the colony called that anyway. Was there ever a famous Schmidt?" "I'm sure there was," said the captain of the space cruiser. "And I'm sure there are many Schmidts who are worthy to have a colony named after them. This colony, however, is named after Ronald Schmidt, the current hereditary president of the colony." "Hereditary president?" Beatrice wondered. "Isn't that exactly the same as...
Intrepid - 3754 C.E. Captain Kerensky had good reason to feel satisfied. The Interplanetary Space Ship Intrepid was safe and secure. Every surviving crusader and jihadist of the Holy Coalition had been apprehended, interrogated and processed. The Intrepid was continuing on its voyage to the furthest reaches of the Solar System as originally scheduled. The space ship had taken a battering, but there had been an almost total recovery. The Holy Coalition space pods attached like acne boils to...
Intrepid - 3756 C.E. "Why are you so anxious?" Beatrice gently asked Paul while he lay beside her. "Are we really going to enter the Anomaly?" her husband asked. "If that's what Captain Kerensky said then I can only believe that's exactly what the Intrepid, and us in it as well, will do." "I thought that was something we would never do," said Paul. "I thought that it would be suicide to enter the Anomaly." "I'm sure neither Mission Control nor Captain Kerensky would ever...
Although Captain Kerensky thought otherwise, the one person on the Intrepid who more than any other was a mere spectator since the Intrepid entered the Anomaly was Beatrice. And she was also imprisoned within an invisible force field where she was unable to communicate with either human or robot. Beatrice witnessed the same Apparitions as everyone else, but they meant little to her. A charging buffalo stormed towards the villa churning up the lawn as it did so. And then it vanished. A small...
As if things weren't already weird enough for Paul, they were about to get a whole lot worse. He was already fairly sure that it hadn't been such a great idea that the Intrepid should enter the Anomaly, however much Beatrice argued that it must be worthwhile if Mission Control had authorised it and Captain Kerensky had let it happen. All those senior officers, especially the Chief Science Officer, couldn't all be mistaken, could they? As Paul rarely spoke to anyone other than Beatrice he...
It was now over a month since the Intrepid plunged into the Anomaly and Paul was no more relaxed about it than he was before despite Beatrice's constant reassurances. What troubled him most wasn't just what was going to happen to him now that he was inside the Anomaly but whether he'd ever return to the universe he came from. "I look at the bulletin boards every day and read each and every the scientific report," Paul told Beatrice who was sitting beside him, "and I've still seen...
Zhou - 3756 C.E. Peripheral Operations Co-ordinator Zhou and the space craft in which it travelled were in actual fact a single individual. The whole entity might be relatively small and mostly consisted of engine, but the central processing unit made no distinction between its independently autonomous components and that part of the machine dedicated exclusively to space travel. This enabled the entire entity to operate at maximum efficiency whether it was travelling through space or...
Anger. Frustration. Humiliation. These were just a few of the emotions Nadezhda was feeling as she reviewed her helpless situation. Her command of the space ship Intrepid had been stolen from her by an alien. She was confined to a villa on the outermost level. She was unable to communicate with anyone other than Beatrice: the android who was both her captor and lover. And every day when she accessed the Intrepid's information systems, she was humiliated to see an android masquerading as...
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There was much that was currently troubling Emmanuel. The essential nature of the mission that he signed up for had changed dramatically now that the space ship Intrepid had steered itself into the Anomaly. He had no recollection of ever having committed himself to a mission from which there was absolutely no chance of return. Just how had this happened? How had his memory been so faulty? The evidence of the Intrepid's records was unambiguous. The space ship had indeed all along been...
Intrepid - 3755 C.E. Almost the only real pleasure remaining to Captain Kerensky was the sex she still enjoyed with Beatrice. And this despite the fact that it was the android who was the author of her extraordinary confinement. Beatrice wasn't going to deny herself the pleasure of making love with the captain. And the captain had few other pleasures. She'd lost her appetite for mixing and mingling with the ship's crew and passengers. It just wasn't worth having to avoid the excruciating...
It had been a long time since Captain Kerensky last had to squeeze into a space suit. It wasn't really what a captain of a space ship, especially one as large as the Intrepid, was ever expected to do. Why would a captain ever need to go anywhere that wasn't climate-controlled? The last time Nadezhda had put on a space suit was many decades earlier when she held a very junior rank on a much smaller space ship. On that occasion, she was assigned to go outside the space ship to examine the...
"I need to speak to you privately," said Oxana Petrovna Korolyov. Brigadier Svenssen was understandably alarmed. What could this woman possibly want? Why would a Mission Control scientist need to talk to him? His immediate anxiety was that it might be her way of suggesting that they have sex. There were colonies in the Solar System whose citizens were unnervingly frank about their intentions, but he reflected that it was very unlikely in this case. Oxana came from Saturn. She was slim,...
"I'd almost forgotten why we were here," admitted Paul when the holographic message arrived for him at the hotel in the heart of the Amazon Jungle where he'd been staying with Beatrice. "It's been such a long time since we heard anything about the mission." Professor Wasilewski's image flickered against the window through which could be seen a torrential downpour and lofty trees from which monkeys were howling at each other. The professor wasn't especially amused by Paul's...
Beatrice wandered contemplatively across the freshly grown lawns on the outermost level of the Intrepid. The space ship's restoration systems had at last made the level habitable although not everything had quite returned to the condition it had been before. New trees had been planted but were modest in comparison to those uprooted by the explosion. New villas had been constructed to replace those that had been destroyed. Animals had been relocated to replace those that had perished. The...
Intrepid - 3756 C.E. The first thing Captain Kerensky was aware of when she finally woke up was that she was lying naked on an unfamiliar bed. The next was that not only was the bed unfamiliar but so too was the entire bedroom. She had no memory of having been transported here and her first resolve was to return to her quarters. The captain was a busy woman and there was much she should be getting on with. However, every attempt to return to a more normal state of affairs was frustrated....
The Intrepid's computer system had been tampered with. Sheila Nkomo knew this for sure. She could use most of the system, but she had no access at all to any part of it that could tell her what was happening on the space ship. Ever since Captain Kerensky and the military officers had arrested and detained her in the villa, she had been as much blind as she was naked. She had no access to the Intrepid's information systems. She couldn't monitor the bridge. She had no means of communicating...
Paolo Mauritz carefully examined the calendar. Although it was very nearly the 218th anniversary of the Glorious Revolution, no celebrations were being prepared on the Space Ship Intrepido. Nor were they on the other interplanetary battleships in the space fleet speeding onwards in diminished numbers towards the Anomaly. This was one year Post Revolution whose anniversary many heroic comrades of the Twenty Fifth Reich were no longer able to celebrate. If Paolo was honest to himself, which...
The several thousand passengers and crew of a colossal space ship that was travelling through the most distant reaches of space all shared the misconception that the Interplanetary Space Ship Intrepid was on a mission directed from the Moon and that Nadezhda Kerensky was the captain. However, only one human on the space ship knew the truth. And that person was, of course, Captain Kerensky. But what use was this knowledge when the captain couldn't share it with anyone? Hers was a very...
Paul held Beatrice to his chest. Well, not all of her of course: just the head and shoulders. The rest of her was scattered in fragments across the living room, now so evidently the dismembered remains of an android rather than a human. It wasn't blood but a strangely viscous black liquid that seeped out of her mouth, from the stumps of her arms and from a torso that was sliced apart just below her bosom, or at least the single breast that remained intact. It was obvious now. Colonel Vashti...
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Intrepid - 3755 C.E. As a woman outnumbered by men in the Intrepid's senior staff, Second Officer Sheila Nkomo made a special effort to befriend her fellow female officers. She wasn't in a position to get to know Captain Kerensky particularly well. This was partly a consequence of relative rank, but also because her captain was a lesbian. It wasn't that Sheila held any prejudices against homosexuals, but she did feel nervous given that the captain was so obviously attracted to...
The Sahara Desert - 3723 C.E. There was much about the Solar System that was new to Vashti. She'd already made several significant accidental errors since she'd penetrated interdimensional spacetime and materialised in the continuum in which the Anomaly's presence was most concentrated. Her primary error, of course, had been not to understand sexuality and gender. The blueprints on which she'd based her physical form were an unfortunate mix of both male and female characteristics. It...
Vashti stumbled through the open lawns of the penultimate level where Beatrice had so recently been imprisoned. She reasoned that the android perhaps had an idea of what was happening. How was it possible for a nanobot community to be compromised in such a strange and unprecedented manner? There was nothing in Vashti's vast repository of data and experience that could explain it. It was definitely humbling for a being who naturally presumed that she was superior over both biological and...
Heads turned as Beatrice strode along corridors in the space ship Intrepid that were normally reserved for military personnel. It was unusual enough for a passenger to be seen in this part of the ship although there was no security restriction as such, but Beatrice in motion was an unusually compelling sight even in a Solar System where everyone's body was artificially beautified as a matter of routine. There was a very literal sense that she was attractive: her affect on the libido was...
The lawn surrounding the villa that Isaac and his five surviving comrades had secured was littered with the bodies of the recently slaughtered. One corpse belonged to Jacob who'd suffered a martyr's death in the struggle to secure the villa for true believers. Two belonged to the accursed heretical Baptists who'd obstinately fought to defend the villa. But to no avail. One of the heretics had died at Isaac's hands. Isaac's had jumped on top of the man, tugged him forcefully by the beard...
There were two pleasures that Archdeacon James XXVI enjoyed more than any other. One was to have his anus penetrated by a monstrous cock, preferably one belonging to a black man. The other was to penetrate the anus of another man: preferably a youth who'd never been so violated before. These refined pleasures, like many others the Archdeacon enjoyed, he'd discovered through the example of his father, Archdeacon James XXV. He still loved his father, but he'd loved him most when he squeezed...
Although it had been quiet for several weeks now, Laurent still experienced some trepidation as he walked into the Emergency Rescue station. It had been quiet for too long. When would this spell of relative peace come to an end? The long history of unfortunate incidents in the South West section of Ishtar Terra suggested that this would be very soon. The extreme heat and oppressive air pressure on the surface of Venus along with the tempestuous atmospheric storms ensured that life as a...
The lights that illuminated the bar shimmered and flashed to the thunderous rhythm of the electronic music that accompanied the nude dancing on the podium. A serving android with a voluptuous bosom and a prominent arse was collecting the empty glasses left behind on the counter. There weren't very many customers and these consisted mostly of prostitutes, which was the occupation most often adopted by female refugees from the war-torn Asteroid Belt or the more impoverished colonies in...
Almond Grove - 3750 C.E. It was not without a little trepidation that Ellis followed the woman who'd greeted him when his private space ship docked at Almond Grove. Partly, this was because he'd always wanted to see for himself the private residence of the second wealthiest man in the Solar System and this was the reason he used to justify to himself the expense and trouble of travelling for very nearly a month from Venus to Earth orbit. The main reason, of course, was that a summons from...
The scorching wind that blew sluggishly across the Venusian plain made progress difficult enough for Beatrice, but much worse for Laurent and the others in his team. Although she could have taken the lead, Beatrice tactfully trailed the rest of her crew as they struggled with immense effort in their thick-shelled space suits across fifty metres of dimly lit superheated soil to the crumpled wreckage of the crashed shuttle. It had fallen victim to weather conditions dramatically worse than...
It was over in all of seven seconds, but for Paul it wasn't until the final fraction of the seventh second that he was conscious that anything had happened at all. And what he was aware of was more disorientating than calamitous. It had started with a sudden jolt that shuddered through the room and in particular the bed on which he'd been dozing. He'd been awake for over half an hour but it was his habit to drift in and out of the last few moments of sleep before eventually sliding his...