Cyber Sparks Read online

  I drifted down into the image. As soon as I’d reached eye level—much higher than human eye level, I’d say about nine feet tall—the strangest alien world came into focus. There were no surfaces. Everything had a transparent or translucent quality, from the crescent-shaped objects lying on a rippling tabletop to the fluorescent lilac conduits running through the walls and floors. I felt I could reach through a wall if I wanted to. But I wasn’t in control of this point of view. I was seeing the world through someone else’s eyes—eyes that had a peculiar ability to look back in on themselves, and therefore through the head, it being translucent too, to the other side. The gaze somehow latched onto eyes at the back of the head, effectively flipping perspective with an easy blink.

  The head resembled a lava lamp, with gobs of white goo floating in viscous liquid. But the liquid itself seemed to be the brain, flickering madly, transferring thoughts and emotions at a rate too fast for me to process.

  One emotion presided over all others. I didn’t recognize it as a human one but it was potent, and it overpowered me with longing as the gaze flipped to an upward view. Through a hole in the building’s dome ceiling, odd shapes drawn by electric white light decorated the beige sky. They pulsed and sparkled. As we watched, they grew smaller, fainter. The being whose body I was in suffered a jolt of intense pain. If I’d had breath I’d have gasped. The presiding emotion overwhelmed us, and I perceived it as a deep, aching sadness, a regret at watching those shapes in the sky diminish.

  I’m inside Satto, as he’s losing his family.

  Were the alien shapes a farewell message of some kind from his kin who’d left for good in their newly evolved state? Maybe they were waiting for him up there, outside the planet’s atmosphere, while he was stubbornly clinging to this old life he loved so much, refusing to evolve with them. He didn’t want to leave. I felt that as clearly as anything I’d ever felt.

  The empty structures around his home—spiral towers and calligraphic roadways—appeared deserted as he scanned them slowly. A flat bed of green, steaming moss lay untouched across the city. Flocks of alien birds weaved their way around the translucent structures, perhaps wondering where the occupants had gone.

  Satto sank to the floor and began to shiver. A keening ache turned him onto his side. Solid white shapes around the top of the wall appeared identical to those I’d seen in the sky. Some kind of personalized wall decorations? So it was his family up there, leaving their world behind, and Satto was the last of his kind.

  How long would he have to wait before he evolved too?

  The experience clamped shut like the oyster of curdled milk I’d encountered the first time I’d omnied in. It was an indelible part of this infinitesimal universe Gideon had guided me through, I now knew. Its bitterness filtered through the twister funnel, the atolls in the blackness, the sea-dwellers battling in the membranous ocean, the subatomic suns and galaxies sparking off each other with indescribable friction.

  This was Satto’s pain, his inability to let go of his home world the way it was. He’d bottled it up into universes of regret and had refused to move on. The absence of emotion he’d described in his evolved state was unnatural, a frightened, self-imprisoned outlook, barricading him from the immense changes he was supposed to face.

  He was cosmically repressed.

  And as he couldn’t cry for help, I screamed for him—across all the universes of his subconscious, until my voice carried far past the membranous ocean and the sparking suns and the ring of satellites around Earth. It echoed along immense pathways, over and under galaxies, seemingly guided by a cosmic compass that existed deep in the cold cyber heart of Satto Vasir.

  “Thank you, Allegra. I hope we meet again someday.”

  Gideon’s words, soft as a pillow, caught me as I fell from the alien’s cyber thrall. The omnipod ripped off my head when I hit the spongy floor, and I crabbed away from the console as quickly as I could. Jesus, the head trip of all head trips had just butted against reality. I got up to run away but slithered on the moss and crashed on my ass.

  “Allie, what happened? What did he say?” Lenore crept out of her cell, none the worse for her incarceration—in fact, she didn’t seem to know she’d been incarcerated.

  But I’d been gone hours, if not days. The membranous ocean alone had taken ages to fathom.

  “You okay?” She helped me up. “I don’t hear Satto. What’s he up to?”

  “I—I don’t know.” He’d kept his word, at least, by freeing Lenore. But he’d also let me go as well, at least for the time being. “He wanted me to do something, and I didn’t do it.”

  She brushed a few pesky spores of vegetation off her arms. “Why not?”

  I shrugged.

  “So it’s all finished?” She moved gingerly toward the overgrown corpse in the pilot’s chair. “We can go now?”

  “I guess—” A blaze of incandescent white light ripped both our gazes out through the window. Alien shapes began to appear in the empty space between us and Earth, as though someone or something were writing them. They appeared identical to the hieroglyphs I’d seen in Satto’s home and in the sky above it.

  A flush of relief, of giddy excitement made my heart squirrel. I hooked Lenore’s arm and pulled her in close. “Can you feel that?”

  She shivered, gasped. The sensation was indescribable but at least through me she could feel it too. Lenore stroked my arm, chuckling at our giddiness shared by touch. “How are you doing that?”

  “It’s Satto. He’s feeling it.” I pointed to the ripples of blue light passing through the alien symbols. “Look, they’ve come for him. I think I called to them.”

  “You called to them?”

  I draped my arm over her shoulders, never more contented in my life. “I got to know him a bit while you were out of the room, and I think I understand his pain. His mind evolved but his heart refused to go. He spent eons on a lonely quest to spare others like us from his fate, when all he needed to do was let himself go. They’ve come for him at last, and he’s leaving with them—with his family. I think they’re going to show him what it really means to evolve.”

  “Oh?” She blinked at me. “And what does it mean?”

  An ocean of electric blue ripples appeared over the South Pacific, in the void between Earth and the Santa Maria. Drifting to meet them, a solitary ripple, no bigger than a ribbon of magnetic tape, skittered and flickered as though in the throes of a cosmic jig.

  A clear voice spoke to me privately, breaking with emotion. “God speed, Allegra. You’ve given me this new adventure, and I can never thank you enough.”

  “Mr. Briar? You’re going with them?”

  “Yes. Satto’s people have broken his hold on us, but you’ve got a body to go back to. I haven’t. So I’ve accepted their invitation. It’ll be a helluva journey.”

  “And Satto?”

  “You won’t hear from him again. He’ll be kept with his people until he’s learned to finally let go—it may take some time.”

  “Well, I guess you’ve got all the time you need.”

  “Very true. Take care, Allegra. Be sure to follow your heart, always.”

  “I will.”

  “We’ll meet again someday…when you’re ready.”

  The ripples vanished in a blink, leaving a pale Earth and a multitude of brilliant stars. Here and there I made out glimmers of sunlight reflecting off metal satellites, or their shadowy paths through the heavens, always in obedience to Earth’s pull. At least they were free again, for man to do what he liked with them, without reprisal. Or would it be better if they went on thinking the alien overseer was still up here, keeping tabs on them, checking their reckless progress?

  Maybe, but no one should have to live in fear.

  “Come on, Lenore. You’re better with tech than me. Help me send a message to ISPA.”
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br />   She cast me a querulous look, then led me by the hand to the console, unafraid. “You want an instant message or a delayed one?” She opened up a channel for manual typed input.

  “Delayed. I need time to drop you off…somewhere on the outskirts.”

  “Hey—” she gave my arm a sharp yank, then shook it, “—what do you mean, drop me off? You’re not going anywhere without me.”

  “Do you mean that?”

  “You bet your ass.”

  “How much? Because whatever happens, I’m getting away from Earth.” The finality echoed gently through me, but on a snow-laden peak, sometimes that was all it took to start an avalanche. If Lenore chose to stay on Earth, a part of me would plummet and die, but my mind was made up. I needed to see Ireton Four again, taste her wildness, her changing seasons, to glide. God, how I missed that gliding sensation.

  “Hey, I’m up for a vacation.” She winked, seemed happy to leave it at that.

  I cupped her face, scrutinized her for a sign that she was joking. “You’d come with me to Ireton?”

  “Babe, don’t you know? There’s nowhere I wouldn’t go to be with you.”

  “But the modeling? Your dream.”

  “I know. I’ve made my choice.”

  “No messing?”

  She shook her head—impressive, considering the vise I had her in. “You and me, we’re together always. And that’s that.” Prying my hands away, she leaned in and kissed my lips, gently at first, melting away all my doubts and surprise, then, when I gave back to her wholeheartedly, she let loose the years of craved passion we’d pent up between us.

  ISPA,

  The terrorist you know as Satto Vasir will leave Earth orbit in two days’ time. Full control of the satellite network will be yours again, with one caveat: you must stop your pursuit of Allegra Mondebay and Lenore Reichert immediately. They acted under duress, and all blame for terrorist activities falls solely on Satto Vasir. If you persist in pursuing them, Mr. Vassir may return indefinitely.

  Sincerely,

  Anonymous

  As soon as we’d inputted the message—set for a six-hour delay—we took the shuttle cab to Fra Mauro Four, the nearest lunar colony. From there we bought two seats on the next cruiser jumping to the Ireton system. They were pricey but, whether by Satto’s hand or the “kindness” of ISPA, we had full access to our bank accounts again, and therefore traveled first class. Needless to say, our double cabin boasted all the finest accoutrements money could afford: holo-phone, whirlpool tub, a cushioned zero-grav sleep chamber, eclectic mini-bar (including a new alcoholic McCormick’s), and last but not least, Earth’s number one selling product—the omnipod.

  Two omnipods, in fact. Absolute state-of-the-art.

  We buried them under several luxurious towels, and never once touched them during the three-week trip. It wasn’t until Lenore retrieved them a few hours before our destination that I felt Satto near me once again, perhaps heaving a cosmic sigh.

  Inscribed on the back of each headset, the factory label read Manufactured by Omni, ISC. Mondebay Enterprises, Ireton Four.

  * * * * *

  Your voyage doesn’t need to end yet!

  Don’t miss the rest of Robert Appleton’s Cosmic Sparks series.

  Available wherever ebooks are sold!

  Alien Velocity (Book 1)

  Sparks in Cosmic Dust (Book 2)

  Pyro Canyon (Book 3)

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  About the Author

  EPIC Award winner Robert Appleton is a British author of science fiction, steampunk and historical fiction. He writes for several digital publishers. Soccer and kayaking are his two favorite outdoor activities. He has traveled far but loves the comfort of reading books or watching movies at home. His mind is somewhat mercurial. His inspiration is the night sky.

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  ISBN: 978-14268-9428-2

  Copyright © 2012 by Robert Appleton

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  All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

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