‘Sounds good,’ Jarm40 said, with a sidelong glance at Shev16.
‘We have all been embedded in a simulation whilst actually residing in stasis pods for a long period of time.’
‘Well, we guessed that.’
‘Do you have any idea how long?’
‘No.’
‘Five hundred years.’
The room burst into a tumult of voices, with everyone speaking at once, repeating the same astounding phrase over and over again.
Shana12 waved them to be quiet.
‘And do you know where you are?’
‘Obviously not.’
Shana12 looked at Jon and for a moment he seemed to be falling deeply into bottomless pools of blue-grey mystery.
‘You are passengers on the interstellar ramjet Fatal Scimitar.’
Six
In an environment that was nothing other than improbability piled high on improbability the information supplied by Shana did not seem to be too incredible. The other six accepted the truth of their situation after only a short delay. The newcomers then went into the Educator and met Maroun, received their upgrades and saw the sad fate of the Degenerates spread out before them. Once again the females received only a truncated version of the syllabus. On their return, Jon decided that now he had reinforcements he would make another attempt at freeing the sleepers in the Stasis Room.
But first he wanted more information. Although he accepted his Shana’s revelations he wanted to know more: what was the purpose of this extraordinary journey that they had discovered that they were experiencing?
The new Shana and Shev agreed to go back into the dark world of the Educator in order to do just that. His Shana refused to contemplate it and he accepted her decision.
They donned the headsets and at once their eyes closed and their faces went blank.
Time passed. The others stared helplessly at each other and Jarz took to walking back and forth like a caged animal.
Jon had tried talking to him and was relieved to find that he was nothing like his equivalent on the Hill. But now the man was too wound up for conversation and waved at Jon to be quite when he attempted to talk. Jarm and Jorl too were plunged into quiet melancholy; Jarm spent most of the time studying his hands while Jorl, having lost some of his confident air, sat in silent immobility. Jon found himself in a peculiar state of confusion as he was in the same room as two identical Shanas, one awake and staring at him with wide-open, worried eyes; the other deeply asleep on her couch. How long before I lose track of who’s who? he wondered.
Eventually, after what seemed an eternity, the two women’s eyes fluttered and, after a few moments of confusion, the ashen-faced women looked around, removed their headsets and sat up in a slow, jerking fashion.
The room burst into activity immediately as the men crowded around the two women. Jon commanded them to be quiet and said: ‘Let them rest for a while. It’s not easy to do what they’ve done. You should know that.’
Eventually Shev, a small woman with raven black hair, said: ‘I think we’ve found out all you wanted us to, Jon.’
‘And that is?’
Shev looked at the faces of her audience, one by one and began her speech: ‘What Shana12 said is true. Five hundred years ago the Protectorate launched this craft, the Fatal Scimitar on a journey to a nearby star.’
‘And why would they do that?’ demanded Jon.
Shev looked confused. ‘I don’t understand their mentality but it seems they believed that the planetary system of that star held an intelligent lifeform with its own civilisation.’
‘And why would they make this journey?’ Jorl interjected, ‘to exchange gifts and give each other a big kiss?’
‘No. The Protectorate needs other cultures for one purpose only – to battle and conquer. And after this new world had been conquered a new Protectorate would arise. And then they could fight that.’
‘What – their own descendants!’
Shev buried her face in her hands.’ Yes! yes! They would do that! They believe that only conflict justifies existence. Without enemies there is no point in living!’
‘And where do Korok and this Maroun character fit in?’ Jon demanded, conscious that he was perhaps pushing this frightened woman too hard.
‘Maroun and others were part of an elite group of powerful men. They gave Korok the job of launching this starship. That’s all I know!’
Shana36 patted her on the shoulder and took over the explanation.
‘The Protectorate decided to launch an expeditionary force to this star just as – as my – uhh – sister Shana said. And it was five hundred years ago, give or take a few years. We were their chosen warriors who would do the preliminary work of subjugating the native people, if there were any, and then begin terraforming the planet.’
‘And we were in stasis for all of that five hundred years?’ Jon asked.
‘Indeed we were. The simulation gave us just enough stimuli to keep our brains ticking over, for in truth we were all a few microns away from death, given that our metabolisms were so low. But those stimuli were on the simulation’s time which was much slower than real-time. So all the events we experienced, our struggles to get to the Hill, our lives on the Hill, they seemed like a few months’ worth of time to us but in reality …’
‘It was five hundred years,’ Jon finished for her.
‘Yes, but not quite. About two hundred years after launch this vessel passed into a void in the interstellar medium which greatly increased the cosmic ray flux hitting it. Many more high energy particles than allowed for penetrated the hull and disrupted the systems. The records don’t show what I’m about to say but I think it’s a likely conclusion.
‘The cosmic ray flux must have affected a few individuals in the stasis pods and somehow removed the Protectorate’s conditioning. You said you both went through a period when you began to doubt the reality of your surroundings. That would have been sometime after the cosmic ray burst.’
Jon turned to his Shana. ‘So the Lords of the Sands, Akraz and Zarka, the troubles on the Hill. All those events played out over three hundred years or so in real-time. Between one of our thoughts and the next this vessel was plunging through huge stretches of empty space. After each one of our thoughts was a day, a week – a month. Who knows?’
The incredible revelation threw a blanket of silence over all of them. They envisaged those rows of stasis pods, each containing a life; each brain holding a little flicker of thought, guttering back and forth on the edge of oblivion as the great vessel that held them like bacteria in its metal gut, plunged endlessly on through kilometre after kilometre of empty blackness.
Finally, Jon turned back to Shev; doubtingly; questioningly. ‘But five hundred years? Why such an incredible time?’
Shev had recovered somewhat and raised her pinched, drawn face to look at her companions.
‘The ship is moving at a large percentage of lightspeed but not a relativistic percentage. That’s why we were in stasis in the first place. It’s the only way biological beings such as we could make such a journey as this.’
‘A war fought over these vast distances and times would hardly be that fast moving.’
Shana36 shrugged. ‘The Protectorate believes that it is the final state of mankind, that its rulers will be the dispensers of life and death for the rest of human history. They are in this for the long run. No, make that – forever!’
Jorl suddenly broke into the conversation. ‘Hey! Let’s look on the bright side. Surely the journey must be nearly over! We’ll be able to get out, stretch our legs, sample the local cuisine, visit a wine cellar or two!’