ganymede rising   :Episode 10            :non-flash
by Jonathan Shepherd

   The smoke from burning frankincense circled her body. Four white candles, placed at the cardinal direction points glowed with warm yellow light and closed the room into a small space where she knelt. Her hands rested on her thighs, motionless. Only her eyelids showed the movement of her eyes beneath. Tanya was searching. She was the breathing of her lungs. She was the coursing of her veins. She was the flame from the wick and the smoke circling upward, upward.
She became the room and the chill of night. She became the streetlights below and the city around her. Lifting through the mist of clouds she became the sky. The silver light of a crescent moon beckoned her onward and out away from the earth and she became the inky blackness between the stars. Her consciousness coalesced into a body of pure thought and she projected it far across the planets to a destination.
   Jupiter loomed ahead grand and beautiful with its stripes of gas and storm. Tanya swam through the space and toward the largest moon. Ganymede was cold and dark but she could feel it and she was going to find an answer this time.
   Floating effortlessly across the ice-mines, she looked for where her dreams told her the accident would happen. Just beyond a great canyon and beyond a dark star of a crater she would see the spot. But in this form Tanya was timeless. Boundless. Open to that which has been and will be. Her astral eyes searched the surface for the answer and fell upon a great hole where she knew the freighter would crash. It was a pit that wasn’t there in her dreams, but she knew this was the place. She reached out with her mind and down, trying to understand and see. As she went through the opening, she saw stuck in the surface a piece of metal twisted and caught. Part of the hull, green and flaking with rust, with the letters “MEDE F-CLASS 2745.”
   She didn’t understand. She was observing in the now. The realization flooded through her. The accident had already happened.
Further down she began to feel a slow throbbing hum like thousands of flies buzzing in the distance. And then she felt the machine.
   Around her was a network of caves filled with the workings of technology. There was power coursing through corridors made from steel and bone. And tubes like intestines ran through the structure coursing with fluid like some peculiar bile. Great cogs turned deeper in, lubricated with blood instead of oil. She felt a power rising. In waves, agony buffeted her. The screams of pain and confusion and torment wracked at her and she feared she would lose herself in it.
The machine knew she was inside it, and it stirred.
   Tanya held her mind together, and remembered her breath. She flew back out into the void of space and let her consciousness pull her back to her body. She remembered her heartbeat, banging on her ribcage. She remembered the bead of sweat that was rolling down her neck. She remembered her eyes, rolling backward into her skull. Her eyes. She opened them and gasped for air.
   “Already there,” she mumbled to herself as she got to her feet and nearly knocked over one of the candles. She snapped on the lights, snuffed out the candles and the incense and began scrambling to get to her video screen.
   Her hand shook as she pressed the call button and waited for the network screen to light up.
   “Place call to private line, Jenna, 473.” Her voice was trembling. The screen fell silent as the connection was established.
{That line is unavailable. Privacy protocol active.}
   “Dammit!” Tanya turned the screen off and stumbled over herself to get some clothes on. She would go to her. Jenna was on a wild goose chase. The accident had already happened. And something terrible was there.
   Her watch said it was not that late. Jenna might still be at the bar trying to get information and Tanya was going to get to her. She needed someone close right now. She nearly ran out the door and down to the street, where she almost knocked a man down.
   “Sorry…” she said absently.
   “Hey,” said the man, “are you Tanya?”
   “What?” She looked up from her daze and saw a tall middle-aged man in a gray trench coat.
   “You are Tanya right? Jenna told me to come find you. I was about to come up when you came barreling out the door. Is everything okay?” He put a hand on her shoulder and instinctively she jerked away. “Woah. Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. I’m the friend Jenna was meeting, and she’s had a couple of drinks. She wanted me to come find you and let you know that she’s okay.”
   “Sorry,” Tanya said, “I have a case of the nerves. Didn’t mean to be rude, but I need to see her right away. Can you take me to her?”
   “Sure,” said the man.
   “Great! What did you say your name was?” Tanya began to walk with the man.
   “Flout,” he said, “Harris Flout.”

***

   Dyrrik James swiveled around in his new chair. The office had real hardwood furniture and a breathtaking view of the moon below. He had only been here a few days and already he knew he was going to get used to this. They had considered closing it off after Sinclair’s death, because of the circumstances. But the computer here was already networked into all of the environmental data bases for the planet and the new senator had to get to work right away to make up for lost time. Dyrrik thought about the previous senator gasping for breath as she must have suffered, and a smile crept across his face. Things were just as they should be.
   The video screen on his desk chimed and he turned to it.
{Incoming call Senator James, primary security clearance, line secured. Do you accept?}
   “Who is it?” He asked.
{Caller has identified himself as Brandt.}
   He furrowed his brow and sighed. “All right, put the call through.”
The bald man who appeared on the screen was nervous. The left side of his face was scarred from a burn and he kept picking at it while his eyes darted about.
   “Why are you calling me here, Brandt?” Dyrrik asked him coolly.
   “I’m sorry Mr. James, sir. I’m sure it’s a secured line, and I used the protocol you suggested.”
   “Well we’d better make this fast. What is it?”
   “Well sir, I was told to inform you that there will be no more problems with outsiders getting close. I’m not sure what that means, but I was told you’d know.”
   “Well,” Dyrrik sighed and sat back in his chair, “then we can go on with things as planned. But I have one question… who told you to call here?”
   “They did sir. Them. The speakers in the dark.” Brandt looked down when he said this and spoke in a hushed tone.
   “I see,” said Dyrrik, “well I’ll have to verify that, of course. If I find out you’re lying…”
   “I’m not sir! I swear it!”
   “If I find out your lying, or if you ever call of your own volition, you know I’ll find you.”
   “Yessir! I know that Mr. James, honest!”
   Dyrrik leaned forward and pressed the button that terminated the call. Then he erased any record of it having taken place.
   “Now,” he said, “I’d best get to work. Earth has been waiting for me…”