Symbios

Excerpt from ORIGIN by JA Konrath

Excerpt from TIMECASTER by Joe Kimball

Exclusive Ebooks by JA Konrath

The closest I’ve ever come to hard science fiction. I wrote this back in college, and then polished it up a decade later when it was published by Apex Digest. It was originally called Star Vation, but I wisely changed the title.

Voice Module 195567

Record Mode:

Is this thing working?

Play Mode:

Is this thing working?

Record Mode:

This is Lieutenant Jehrico Stiles of the mining ship Darion. I’ve crash-landed on an unknown planet somewhere in the Eighty-Sixth Sector. Captain Millhouse Braun is dead.

I suppose I’m Captain now.

Captain Braun’s last VM concerned the delays we’d been having due to a micro meteor shower while mining Asteroid 336-09 in orbit around Flaxion.

A lot has happened since then. The Brain caught the Madness.

I told Mill a thousand times we shouldn’t have used an Organic, but he was willing to take the risks, as long as he had extra cargo space to carry more ore. You know the sales pitch. Why have an interstellar processor that weighs twenty six metric tons and takes up gads of space when an Organic Brain with nutrient pumps can navigate the ship while weighing only three kilograms?

Well, we did fit more ore on the ship. And now Mill and the rest of the crew are dead. When the Brain went bad it thrust the ship into Wormhole GG54 and I got spewed out here.

Mill and Johnson and the rest of the crew were fried when the Brain misfired the photon props. One moment I was watching them on the console viewer, drilling into the asteroid’s cortex, and the next moment they were vaporized and the ship was being hurtled toward the wormhole.

The trailer detached before I went through, sending millions of credits worth of iron on some unknown trajectory.

I survived re-entry because the ionic suppressors run automatically and not on Brain power.

The Brain wasn’t so lucky. It’s dead now, the nutrient containers smashed when we hit the planet’s surface. But the Brain had enough juice left in it to seal every hatch and cargo hold before its functioning ceased.

Nothing on the ship works. The com-link is dead. The homing beacon is dead. I can’t even open the steel doors to the pantry, and my unrefrigerated food supply is rotting away without me being able to get to it.

The oxygen systems have malfunctioned, but the planet I’m on has an atmosphere I can breathe. The nitrogen level is high, and I’m light-headed a lot, but so far I’m still alive.

The temperature is also hospitable to human life. A bit chilly, but mostly pleasant. Days last about forty hours, and nights about twenty.

I’m surprised this Voice Module still works. It’s got a crack in the case, but the batteries haven’t leaked. I figure without a recharge, I’ve got maybe two hours of recording time left.

I’ll have to use it sparingly. I’ve salvaged all I can from this damn ship, and I can’t find a lousy pen.

Voice Module 195568

Record Mode:

This is my fourth day on the planet, and I made an impressive discovery. The terrain here tests high for ferrite, making this planet worth a fortune. If no one has staked a claim, I could get funding and mine this place until it’s just as gutted as earth is. The planet is large enough that it might even end the Ore Crisis, perhaps for a few years.

The only problem is that I’m starving.

There’s a water stream nearby, brackish but drinkable. I waded in deep and searched for hours, but couldn’t find animal life in the water, or the surrounding area.

Plant life abounds. At least I think they’re plants. Maybe they’re fungi. They’re reddish in color, lacking chlorophyll, and they have appendages that resemble leaves. The landscape is littered with hundreds of different species, some as high as buildings, some the size of grass.

None have been edible. Everything I’ve plucked so far contains an acidic enzyme — concentrated highly enough to burn my fingers and my tongue. Swallowing any of it would tear a hole through my stomach.

But at least I have water.

I haven’t scouted very far yet, only a few kilometers. Maybe I’ll be lucky and there will something to eat on the other side of that big hill that splits my horizon.

Hunger is starting to weaken me. I can’t stay awake for more than seven or eight hours. Tried several times to pry open the steel pantry doors, but can’t budge them a crack. I think I broke my big toe kicking the panel in frustration.

I hope for rescue, but know the odds against it. If this is truly an undiscovered planet, then no one knows it exists, and no one knows that I’m here.

And I have no way to tell them.

Voice Module 195569

Record Mode:

My hiking boots were a gift from my mother, and came with genuine antique pig-leather laces.

I boiled and ate the laces this morning. My boots won’t stay on now, and I’ve got — I know this sounds funny — a terrible knot in my stomach. But there’s nothing else to eat. The only other organic thing on the ship is the Brain, and I’m not touching that. I’d rather starve to death. I’d rather die.

Morals are what make us human.

Voice Module 195570

Record Mode:

I met my new neighbors today.

They are only knee-high, and somewhat resemble the extinct species called dogs. They’re covered with a short, rough fur, have pointy ears and yellow eyes, and walk around on underdeveloped hind legs.

I was sleeping in what used to be the control bay, dreaming about food, when I felt something poke me in the ribs.

I opened my eyes, startled, and found six of them in a circle around me. They spoke to one another with high pitched yaps.

None wore clothing or carried weapons. And even when I stood, towering over them by some five feet, none seemed afraid.

One of them yipped at me in what might have been a question. I said hello, and it cocked its head, confused by my voice. I can’t recall reading about any life form like these back in school. For all I know they are an undiscovered species.

They half-coaxed, half-pushed me out of my ship and led me further than I’d previously scouted, over the hill.

They took me to their home. There were no structures, just a collection of holes in the dirt. When we arrived, dozens of little brown heads popped up out of the holes to stare at me.

A short time later, I was surrounded.

A kind of collective humming sound rose up within the group, and they all came to me, holding out tiny paws to touch my legs. They took turns, their eyes locked on mine.

For a moment, I felt like a god.

When I reached out to touch them they weren’t afraid. And when I did pat a head their dog lips turned into grins and they wiggled their tails.

It was like being around dozens of well-behaved children. For a while I completely forgot how hungry I was.

Voice Module 199571

Record Mode:

They eat the plants. Somehow they’re immune to the acid content. They eat many different varieties, raw. Then, out of their droppings, new plants grow.

Nature’s perfect symbiotic planet. Ironic that I’d wind up here, considering how my own species has trashed the earth, and the planets of the surrounding star systems.

Perhaps this is a penance of sorts.

I stayed for most of the day in the village, watching the puppies play, patting small heads. I’ve counted eighty-two dog people in this settlement. Maybe there are other settlements, elsewhere. Staring across the huge landscape with nothing to see but kilometers of horizon, I have to wonder.

Later I left them and tried once again to pry open the metal door that locks away all of the food in the ship’s pantry. Once again I was unsuccessful.

Voice Module 199572

Record Mode:

I’m dying. My clothes hang on my body like sheets, and I know I’ve lost at least fifteen kilograms.

The dogs seem to understand that I’m deteriorating in some way. They try to do funny things to make me laugh, like cartwheels or jumping on me, but I can’t laugh.

In fact, when I look at the dogs for too long, I start to salivate.

I wonder what they taste like.

Like that synthetic meat, locked away in the ship’s pantry?

I’ve never had real meat. Could never afford it. My father had a cat steak once, and said it was delicious. My grandfather remembers when he was young and there were still a few cows left, and he used to get meat on holidays.

What do these little dog people taste like?

If I wanted to I could wipe out the entire village in just a few minutes. They have no weapons. They don’t move very fast. Their teeth are rounded. I could kill their entire population and not even get scratched.

But I don’t. I can’t. I won’t.

Voice Module 199573

Record Mode:

I ate the Brain today.

I thought it would be rotten, but there was no decay at all. I have a hypothesis why. Decay is caused by bacteria, and perhaps this world has none.

I boiled the Brain, picked out the glass shards, and ate with my eyes closed, trying not to think about what it was.

But I did think about it.

It shouldn’t matter. After all, the Brain had ceased operation. Tissue is tissue.

Even if the tissue is human.

Besides, the volunteers who sign up for the Organic Processor Program are elderly, near the ends of their lives. Running a starship gave a brain donor dozens of extra years of sentience, of life.

And, important point, this one did go mad and kill my crew and destroy my ship.

It owed me.

There wasn’t any taste to it. Not really. But when I was finished eating, I cried like a child.

Not because of what I had done.

But because I wanted more.

Voice Module 199574

Record Mode:

I can’t eat an intelligent life form. Not that the dog people are particularly intelligent. No tools, no clothing, no artificial shelter, though they do have a rudimentary form of communication. I even understand some of their words now.

I can’t eat things that speak.

But all I’ve consumed in the past fifteen days were two shoe laces and a soggy, very small Brain.

I have a few solar matches left. I could spit-roast one of these doggies using a piece of pipe.

What did my grandfather call it? A barbeque.

The village has named me. When I come by, they yip out something that sounds like “Griimmm!”

So to the dog people I am Grim.

They sleep next to me and hug my legs and smile like babies.

Please let a rescue ship find me tonight, so I don’t have to do what I’m planning to do.

Voice Module 199575

Record Mode:

I ate one.

When I awoke this morning I had such a single-mindedness, such a raw craving to eat, that I didn’t even try to fight it.

I went to the dog people’s village, picked up the nearest one, and as it yipped “Griiimmm!” with a smile on its face, I broke its neck.

I didn’t wait around to see what the others did. I just ran back to ship, drooling like a baby.

Then I skinned the little dog person with a paring knife.

It was delicious.

Roasted over an open fire. Cooked to perfection. I only left the bones.

When I was done, the feeling was euphoric. I was sated. I was satisfied.

I smacked my lips and patted my stomach and knew how grandfather must have felt. Real meat was amazing. It made the synthetic stuff seem like garbage.

Then I noticed all of dog people around me.

They stared, their eyes accusatory and sad. And they began to cry. Howling cries, with tears.

When I realized what I had done, I cried too.

Voice Module 195576

Record Mode:

Two months on this damn planet, and that’s according to these sixty hour days, so it’s more like half a year. I haven’t recorded anything in a while, because I haven’t wanted to think about what I’ve been doing.

I’ve eaten fifty-four dog people so far.

I’ve stopped losing weight, but I can count my ribs through my shirt. One a day isn’t enough nourishment for a man my size.

I try to make it enough. I have to ration. And not because of any moral reason.

The population is dwindling.

I don’t know why they haven’t run away. Packed up and left.

But they haven’t.

They don’t fear me. Maybe they don’t understand fear.

The young puppies still hug my legs when I visit the village.

Everyone else stays inside their holes.

I try not to take the young ones. Instead I dig with my hands and pluck the adults from the ground. They don’t fight. In fact, they try to hug me.

I think I’m a little insane at this point.

When I grab them, and they look at me with those sad eyes and say my name…

Sometimes I wish they would run away, leaving me to starve. So I couldn’t kill any more of them.

It’s like eating my children.

Voice Module 199577

Record Mode:

There are just three left.

They don’t even go underground anymore. It’s almost as if they’ve accepted their own deaths.

I wonder sometimes if I deserve to live when so many have died.

But the hunger. The terrible hunger.

I know when my food supply here runs out, I’ll have to search for more.

More children to eat.

How can something that sickens make my stomach rumble?

Voice Module 199577

Record Mode:

A ship!

I saw a ship orbiting.

It was night. I was staring at the constellations, trying to remember my astronomy so I could pinpoint where I was in the galaxy.

One of the stars moved.

It circled the planet twice in three hours. I hope against hope it’s a manned ship, not a damned probe. Please let there be people on board. I can’t last too much longer.

There is nothing left to eat. I’ve consumed the entire dog village, boiled their bones and eaten the hides, hair and all.

I’m so thin I look like a skeleton with my face.

Voice Module 195578

Record Mode:

The ship landed several kilometers away. I ran most of the way to it, my euphoria bordering on hysterics.

It turned to hysteria when I saw the ship.

Nothing human made it.

It was spherical and grey, like a giant pearl. At first I thought it was some type of meteorite. There were no portals or exhausts, just smooth grey curves, reflecting the world around it.

I hadn’t gotten within a few steps when it opened. A hole just sort of appeared in its side. Small and blurry at first, but soon several meters wide. I hid behind an outcropping of rocks.

Then something came out of the hole.

It was twice my size. Vaguely humanoid, but lacking a head. Six yellow eyes stared out from behind the clear visor encircling its chest. The eyes moved in different directions, scanning the terrain. No arms, but under the trunk of the body were four legs, thick and each ending in three long toes.

Its skin appeared reptilian; black scales that shone as if wet.

On the lower half of its body, it wore a bizarre version of pants. Above the eyes was a large and impressive mouth. I instantly thought of old hologramsI’d seen depicting sharks. The rows of triangular jagged teeth encircled the top of the creature like a bastardized crown.

As odd as its appearance was, it seemed to exude a kind of peace. I felt as if I were looking at a fellow intelligent being rather than an enemy from space.

I took a step toward it, and it reared up on its two back legs and waved its front legs at me, making a snorting sound. I suppose my appearance unnerved it. My features probably were just as strange and grotesque to it as it was to me.

“I won’t harm you,” I told it.

“I won’t harm you,” it repeated, imitating my voice perfectly. It lowered its front legs and took a cautious step forward. I also took a step.

“Zeerhweetick,” it said.

I tried to imitate the sound as best I could. It relaxed its legs and squatted when we were within a meter of each other. I also sat down.

“I won’t harm you,” it said again.

I recalled my astronaut training. Intelligent Lifeforms 101 was an entirely hypothetical class about the possibility of communication with an intelligent alien life form. It was in the curriculum because the World Assembly demanded that all space travelers have that training. They believed if we ever did encounter a new race, the first meeting between species would set the tone for all future relations. Making first impressions and all that crap.

Everyone considered it a joke class — we’d visited hundreds of planets, and never encountered any life form smarter than a cockroach.

Now I felt like that was the most important class I ever took.

I began by using words and miming motions. Pointing to myself I said, man. Pointing at its ship I said, ship. And so on.

It watched, and repeated, and within an hour it had picked up several verbs and began asking questions.

“Man here long?” it said in my voice. Then it pointed to the ground.

“Fifty cycles,” I said. I flashed fifty fingers, then pointed at the sun, slowly moving across the horizon.

“More men?”

“No.”

“Ship?”

“Broken.” I pulled up a nearby weed and cracked it in half, illustrating my point.

It gestured at its own ship with a three fingered leg and also yanked a plant from the ground.

“Ship broken.” It ripped the weed in two.

“Man,” I said again, pointing to myself. Then I pointed at it.

“Zabzug,” it said, pointing at itself.

“Hello, Zabzug.”

“Hello, Man.”

And so began mankind’s historic first communication with an intelligent alien species.

I was so excited I wasn’t even thinking about the other intelligent alien species I had just finished devouring.

Voice Module 195579

Record Mode:

After communicating for several hours, Zabzug and I went back to my ship. He moved slower than I did, sometimes tripping over foliage. One time I helped him up, getting my first close look at those teeth on his scalp. How he could imitate me so perfectly with a mouthful of fangs like that was anyone’s guess.

“Thank you, Man,” Zabzug said after getting back to his feet.

I smiled at him. His teeth twitched, which I took to be a smile too.

He was very excited at the sight of my ship, and began speaking rapidly in a series of grunts and snorts. I sat and watched him explore it top to bottom. He stopped in front of the pantry and stayed there a long time, snuffling, trying to open the metal door. Liquid poured down from his head and over his eye plate like tears.

“Hungry,” Zabzug said. “No eat long time.”

“Man hungry too,” I told him.

He beckoned me over and we struggled with the pantry for a while, not budging the door a centimeter. Zabzug’s drool smelled like a sour musk, and being right next to him made me realize how big he really was. Three times my mass, easy.

And those appendages of his had incredible strength behind them, putting huge dents in the thick steel door.

But it was all for nothing. The pantry stayed closed.

Voice Module 195580

Record Mode:

Zabzug explained to me how he crashed by drawing a very detailed schematic in the dirt. His ship runs on a bastardized form of fission, using a refined chemical to help control the reaction. I guess the chemical could best be described as a form of lubricant, as oil was used in combustion engines back on ancient earth.

So basically he’s stranded here because he ran out of oil, stalled, and got sucked into the same wormhole as me.

We made some limited talk about putting my power supply into his ship, but the parts were so fundamentally incompatible that it proved impossible.

Zabzug tried eating some plants, doing me one better and actually swallowing a few. He became violently ill. I must admit to some perverse amusement at watching black foam erupt out of the top of his head like a volcano, but that only served to remind me how hungry I was.

Two intelligent species, meeting for the first time in history, each with the capability of interstellar travel, and both starving to death.

It might be funny if it were happening to someone else.

Voice Module 195581

Record Mode:

After a week together, I consider Zabzug a friend. He’s told me much about his planet, which seems to be located in the Hermida Galaxy. Like humans, his species have used up their natural resources, and have begun scouring the universe for food, fuel, and building material.

He’s much better at learning English than I am at learning his language. He’s gained such a mastery of it that he made his first joke.

We were resting near his ship, talking as usual about how hungry we were, and Zabzug told me, “If you weren’t so ugly, I’d consider eating you.”

Funny guy, that Zabzug.

Voice Module 195582

Record Mode:

Zabzug is starving too. His skin has lost its luster, and his eyes are glazed.

We still have animated talks, but the silence often lasts as long as the chatting.

I’m hesitant to tell him about the dog people, about what I consider my genocidal crime.

But they’re all I can think about.

I finally spill the story. Hopeful he won’t judge. Hopeful that he might know where to search for more.

To my surprise, Zabzug seems to know what I’m speaking about, and he’s able to draw an exact picture of their species.

“Hrucka,” he told me. He awkwardly explained that the hrucka were like pets to his species.

It made sense. Evolution doesn’t create just one species of animal in an ecosystem. The hrucka must have been put here.

Or stranded here.

Which might mean that somewhere, on the planet, there’s another ship like Zabzug’s.

He’s very excited by this prospect, and we decide to conduct a search first thing tomorrow.

Voice Module 195583

Record Mode:

We searched for three days.

We didn’t find anything.

Voice Module 195584

Record Mode:

Zabzug came into my ship at night as I slept. The viscous drool from his mouth dripped onto my face and woke me up. In one of his appendages he held a sharp piece of pipe, the one I had been using to roast dog people. Upon my awakening, he yelped and dropped the pipe, hurrying from my ship.

I suppose he’s having the same problem that I had with the dog people. Respect for an intelligent life form versus the overwhelming need to survive.

But he’s in for a surprise.

I’m going to eat him first.

I stayed awake the rest of the night, standing guard with the pointed pipe. He had the strength advantage. I had the speed advantage. We both seemed to be of similar intelligence, and both had the ability to use tools.

His eyes might be a weak point, but they were always covered by that face plate — Zabzug even wore it to sleep. His skin was covered with scales, and though they looked moist, they were hard, almost metallic, to the touch.

The vulnerable point was his mouth. It was crammed full of sharp teeth, but maybe I could jam something down his throat and into all the soft parts inside.

At the first peek of sunlight I’ll go to Zabzug’s ship with my spear.

What does alien lizard taste like?

Voice Module 195585

Record Mode:

He didn’t come out all day, and I couldn’t find a way in. There isn’t a seam on the entire ship. No cracks or ridges or anything to pry or beat open. After several hours of trying, I decided to just wait. He’d have to come out eventually.

He wanted the same thing I wanted.

Voice Module 195586

Record Mode:

The bastard ate my hand.

Chomped it off at the wrist. I fell asleep, waiting for him to come out.

But I got him…haha…I got him…jammed the pipe down his throat, into the soft stuff.

Dead. He’s dead.

Zabzug, my friend, is dead.

I used my belt as a tourniquet for my hand, but it didn’t stop the bleeding.

I had to use the solar matches to close the wound.

The pain…so much pain in my wrist.

But the hunger…the need…is even stronger.

I’m going to cut him open now.

Voice Module 195587

Record Mode:

I’m full! What a wonderful feeling! For the first time since I landed on this planet, I’ve eaten until I’m ready to burst.

I’m so happy I don’t even notice the pain.

Voice Module 195588

Record Mode:

Zabzug lasted for a whole month.

Some parts were delicious.

Some parts, not so delicious.

I ate everything. The inedible parts were boiled into soup until every calorie and nutrient was leeched out.

I even gained a few kilos.

And now, with the last of the soup gone, with the hunger pangs returning, I am afraid.

Voice Module 195589

Record Mode:

Four days since I’ve eaten anything. Zabzug had stretched out my belly, and I drink a lot to keep it full, to try and fool it into feeling sated.

My belly isn’t fooled.

I’ve managed to get into Zabzug’s ship, using a key. It’s a tiny sphere he’d been keeping in a pocket. When it touches the ship, the portal opens.

I’ve fully explored the interior, trying to gain an understanding of how it works. The vessel is a marvel of engineering, with a navigation system light-years ahead of ours. The technology is even more valuable than the iron-rich planet I’m stranded on.

If I can get off this rock, I’ll be the wealthiest man in the universe.

The first thing I’ll do is get a limb graft…no, the first thing I’ll do is have a banquet. A feast that will last a month. I’ll gorge myself like the ancient Romans, purging between courses so I can cram in more food.

Such a beautiful picture.

Voice Module 195590

Record Mode:

My wrist isn’t healing right. It doesn’t seem to be infected, but the wound keeps opening.

I think it’s a symptom of starvation. My body is conserving its energy, and deems healing unnecessary.

I’m so weak it’s an effort to even stand up.

I have to do something. If I stay here, I’ll die. Perhaps there’s food somewhere else. I’ve scouted at least fifty kilometers in all directions, but I need to pick one and keep moving.

I decide to follow the sunset. I’ll leave tomorrow.

I have no other choice.

Voice Module 195591

Record Mode:

I don’t know how far I’ve traveled. Perhaps a hundred or a hundred and fifty kilometers. I’m in a desert now, and ran out of water a few hours ago.

My tongue is so thick it’s hard to speak.

I fear sleep, because I don’t think I’ll wake up.

Voice Module 195592

Record Mode:

I can’t move another step. Thirst is worse than hunger. I’m hallucinating. Hearing things. Seeing things. I even had a fever-dream, imagining a space ship crashing in the distance…

Voice Module 195593

Record Mode:

A week has passed.

Obviously, I didn’t die in the desert. I was rescued. Well, sort of.

That ship I’d imagined I saw — it really did exist. A salvage ship, which had made a run at retrieving the trailer full of ore we’d lost.

They also got sucked into the wormhole, and were spit out here.

Their ship is damaged beyond repair. They’d been here for only a few days, and saw my Voice Module unit glinting in the sun.

They listened to it, unfortunately.

Marta, the woman, said she didn’t judge me. She understood.

The man, Ellis, didn’t say a word to me.

I received fresh water, medicine for my wrist, and synth rations.

“We have enough synth rations for a month,” Marta told me. “And we’re hoping for a rescue.”

But all three of us knew that a wormhole rescue has never been attempted. It’s suicide to go near those things.

I eat, and drink, and try to regain my strength.

I’ll need it.

Voice Module 195594

Record Mode:

I got them while they slept.

Ellis, with a large rock to the head.

The rock made a mess. I smothered Marta. Not bloody, but it took a while.

One month rations for three people equals three months rations for one person.

I’m sorry I had to kill them. I truly am.

I’m not a monster.

Voice Module 195595

Record Mode:

Is this thing still working?

Play Mode:

Is this thing still working?

Record Mode:

It’s been…how long has it been since I used this? Many months. Perhaps years.

I stopped shaving, and my beard reaches my chest.

Where did I leave off? I think it was with Marta and that guy, I forget his name. The one I killed with the rock.

It was for their synth rations. I paced myself, ate small portions, but still finished them too quickly.

I knew what was next. I knew it from the beginning.

When the rations were finally gone, I ate the people I’d murdered.

Humans, it turns out, are the best meat. Better than dog people. Better than alien lizards.

They sustained me for a while, but then they were gone too.

I began to starve again.

Days, maybe weeks, passed, and I began to whither away. Though I knew hunger well, it didn’t make the pain any easier.

At night, I watched the skies. Watched them with a yearning. Hoping for another ship to crash on this planet.

And one did.

Astronomical luck?

Hardly.

Only one survivor this time. Angela something. She explained.

The ore-filled trailer from my ship, the Darion, didn’t become lost in space. It’s in orbit around Wormhole GG54, daring salvage ships to try and take it.

Many ships have tried. None have succeeded. They get pulled into the wormhole and pushed out here.

It’s a giant, baited trap.

According to Angela, five ships have already been lost.

There’s a good chance they’re somewhere on this planet.

I asked Angela how large her crew was.

She told me there were seven. All dead.

When I killed her, that made eight.

Eight.

Mmmmm.

But that’s not enough. It’s never enough. I always run out.

I need to find those other ships. And I think I can. The Organic Brain on Angela’s ship is still functioning, and it created a partial topographical map of the planet.

The map pinpoints the other crash sites. Some, only a few kilometers away.

I need to move fast. There may be survivors.

The longer I wait, the thinner they get.

Panama
November 15, 1906

“Where is it?” Theodore Roosevelt asked John Stevens as the two men shook hands. Amador, Shonts, and the rest of the welcoming party had already been greeted and dismissed by the President, left to wonder what had become of Roosevelt’s trademark grandiosity.

Fatigue from his journey, they later surmised.

They were wrong.

The twenty-sixth President of the United States was far from tired. Since Stevens’s wire a month previous, Roosevelt had been electrified with worry.

The Canal Project had been a tricky one from the onset—the whole Nicaraguan episode, the Panamanian revolution, the constant bickering in Congress—but nothing in his political or personal past had prepared him for this development. After five days of travel aboard the Battleship Louisiana, his wife Edith sick and miserable, Roosevelt’s nerves had become so tightly stretched they could be plucked and played like a mandolin.

“You want to see it now?” Stevens asked, wiping the rain from a walrus mustache that rivaled the President’s. “Surely you want to rest from your journey.”

“Rest is for the weak, John. I have much to accomplish on this visit. But first things first, I must see the discovery.”

Roosevelt bid quick apologies to the puzzled group, sending his wife and three secret service agents ahead to the greeting reception at Trivoli Crossing. Before anyone, including Edith, could protest, the President had taken Stevens by the shoulder and was leading him down the pier.

“You are storing it nearby,” Roosevelt stated, confirming that his instructions had been explicitly followed.

“In a shack in Cristobal, about a mile from shore. I can arrange for horses.”

“We shall walk. Tell me again how it was found.”

Stevens chewed his lower lip and lengthened his stride to keep in step with the Commander-in-Chief. The engineer had been in Panama for over a year, at Roosevelt’s request, heading the Canal Project.

He wasn’t happy.

The heat and constant rain were intolerable. Roosevelt’s lackey Shonts was pompous and annoying. Though yellow fever and dysentery were being eradicated through the efforts of Dr. Gorgas and the new sanitation methods, malaria still claimed dozens of lives every month, and labor disputes had become commonplace and increasingly complicated with every new influx of foreign workers.

Now, to top it all off, an excavation team had discovered something so horrible that it made the enormity of the Canal Project look trivial by comparison.

“It was found at the East Culebra Slide in the Cut,” Stevens said, referring to the nine mile stretch of land that ran through the mountain range of the Continental Divide. “Spaniard excavation team hit it at about eighty feet down.”

“Hard workers, Spaniards,” Roosevelt said. He knew the nine thousand workers they had brought over from the Basque Provinces were widely regarded as superior to the Chinese and West Indians because of their tireless efforts. “You were on the site at the time?”

“I was called to it. I arrived the next day. The—capsule, I suppose you could call it, was taken to Pedro Miguel by train.”

“Unopened?”

“Yes. After I broke the seal on it and saw the contents…”

“Again, all alone?”

“By myself, yes. After viewing the… well, immediately afterward I wired Secretary Taft…” Stevens trailed off, his breath laboring in effort to keep up with the frantic pace of Roosevelt.

“Dreadful humidity,” the President said. He attempted to wipe the hot rain from his forehead with a damp handkerchief. “I had wished to view the working conditions in Panama at their most unfavorable, and I believe I certainly have.”

They were quiet the remainder of the walk, Roosevelt taking in the jungle and the many houses and buildings that Stevens had erected during the last year.

Remarkable man, Roosevelt mused, but he’d expected nothing less. Once this matter was decided, he was looking forward to the tour of the canal effort. There was so much that interested him. He was anxious to see one of the famed hundred ton Bucyrus steam shovels that so outperformed the ancient French excavators. He longed to ride in one. Being the first President to ever leave the States, he certainly owed the voters some exciting details of his trip.

“Over there. To the right.”

Stevens gestured to a small shack nestled in an outcropping of tropical brush. There was a sturdy padlock hooked to a hasp on the door, and a sign warning in several languages that explosives were contained therein.

“No one else has seen this,” Roosevelt confirmed.

“The Spaniard team was deported right after the discovery.”

Roosevelt used the sleeve of his elegant white shirt to clean his spectacles while Stevens removed the padlock. They entered the shed and Stevens shut the door behind them.

It was stifling in the small building. The President immediately felt claustrophobic in the dark, hot room, and had to force himself to stand still while Stevens sought the lantern.

Light soon bathed the capsule setting before them.

It was better than twelve feet long, pale gray, with carvings on the outside that resembled Egyptian hieroglyphics to Roosevelt. It rested on the ground, almost chest high, and appeared to be made of stone. But it felt like nothing the President had ever touched.

Running his hand across the top, Roosevelt was surprised by how smooth, almost slippery, the surface was. Like an oily silk, but it left no residue on the fingers.

“How does it open?” he asked.

Stevens handed his lamp to Roosevelt and picked up a pry bar hanging near the door. With a simple twist in a near invisible seam the entire top half of the capsule flipped open on hidden hinges like a coffin.

“My dear God in heaven,” the President gasped.

The thing in the capsule was horrible beyond description.

“My sentiments exactly,” Stevens whispered.

“And it is… alive?”

“From what I can judge, yes. Dormant, but alive.”

Roosevelt’s hand ventured to touch it, but the man who charged up San Juan Hill wasn’t able to summon the nerve.

“Even being prepared for it, I still cannot believe what I am seeing.”

The President fought his repulsion, the cloying heat adding to the surreality of the moment. Roosevelt detected a rank, animal smell, almost like a musk, coming out of the capsule.

The smell of the… thing.

He looked it over, head to foot, unable to turn away. The image seared itself into his mind, to become the source of frequent nightmares for the remainder of his life.

“What is the course of action, Mr. President? Destroy it?”

“How can we? Is it our right? Think what this means.”

“But what if it awakens? Could we contain it?”

“Why not? This is the twentieth century. We are making technological advancements on a daily basis.”

“Do you believe the public is ready for this?”

“No,” Roosevelt said without hesitation. “I do not believe the United States, or the world, even in this enlightened age, would be able to handle a discovery of this magnitude.”

Stevens frowned. He didn’t believe any good could come of this, but as usual he had trouble going toe to toe with Roosevelt.

“Speak your mind, John. You have been living with this for a month.”

“I believe we should burn it, Mr. President. Then sink its ashes in the sea.”

“You are afraid.”

“Even a man of your standing, sir, must admit to some fear gazing at this thing.”

“Yes, I can admit to being afraid. But that is because we fear what we do not understand. Perhaps with understanding…”

Roosevelt made his decision. This would be taken back to the States. He’d lock it away someplace secret and recruit the top minds in the world to study it. He instructed Stevens to have a crate built and for it to be packed and boarded onto the Louisiana— no, better make it the Tennessee. If Mother found out what was aboard her ship she might die of fright.

“But if the world sees this…”

“The world will not. Pay the workers off, and have them work at night without witnesses. I expect the crate to be locked as this shed was, and the key given to me. Worry no more about this John, it is no longer your concern.”

“Yes, Mr. President.”

Roosevelt clenched his teeth and forced himself to stick out his hand to touch the thing; a brief touch that he would always recall as the most frightening experience of his life. He covered the fear with a bully Roosevelt harrumph and a false pout of bravado.

“Now let us lock this up and you can show me that canal you are building.”

Stevens closed the lid, but the smell remained.

The twenty-sixth President of the United States walked out of the shed and into the rain. His hands were shaking. He made two fists and shoved them into his pockets. The rain speckled his glasses, but he made no effort to clean them off. His whole effort was focused on a silent prayer to God that he’d made the right decision.

Chapter 1
Chicago 2064

Exactly nine hours and eleven minutes before I was charged with the complete destruction of Boise, Idaho, and the murders of the four hundred sixty-two thousand and nine people living there, I was mowing my roof and collecting the clippings like a good little taxpayer when I noticed a raccoon hiding in one of my hemp plants.

Raccoons were on the endangered list. That meant if one took up residence on my city-mandated green roof, I wasn’t allowed to disturb its habitat. No mowing. No trimming. No planting. No gardening at all. Which meant instead of paying my weekly biodiesel tax in foliage, I’d have to pay in credits.

I had no desire to part with my hard-earned credits. Or my wife’s hard-earned credits. That was why I cut off the lawn mower and pulled my regulation Glock 1MV Taser from my side holster and aimed it right between the animal’s adorable masked eyes.

I’m not a monster, even though the world news would make me out to be one later that day. The Taser was meant for human-sized opponents, but I didn’t think it would kill the little guy. It would just stun him long enough for me to toss him on my neighbor Chomsky’s roof only six feet over. Worst that would happen was a little singed fur. Probably.

The raccoon stared back at me without fear, like he knew he was protected by the government. The fine for harming an endangered species was considerably more money than the biofuel tax. But even if the creature didn’t survive, I could still throw it on Chomsky’s property. Then I could arrest Chomsky for its murder. Chomsky was a dick.

Still, I hesitated. The raccoon grew bored with our staring contest, turning his attention back to the hemp bush. He began to snack on a large bud. I holstered the Taser. Maybe if I left him alone, he’d OD.

“Sergeant Avalon?”

I turned. Neil Winston was standing on my roof, between a large hydrangea and some bamboo stalks. He was wearing a bathrobe and slippers. Though it was a cool sixty-five degrees, he had sweat on his forehead, and I resented what that implied.

“What do you want, Neil?” My voice was hard, clipped, pure cop. He took a step back, but didn’t leave.

“Victoria, uh, she said you might be able to help me.”

I didn’t like what my wife did for a living, and didn’t like her clients. Neil was a skinny man with a big Adam’s apple, a few years older than me, a banker or an accountant or something uptight like that. Victoria respected me enough to not talk about her work, but I did routine background checks on everyone she associated with. Call me Mr. Concerned Husband.

“Help you with what, Neil?” I could feel my shoulder muscles bunch up.

“You sound, um, a little angry. Victoria said you weren’t a jealous man, that I could come to you without any fear whatsoever. I have to be honest. I’m feeling a little bit of fear.”

I thought about the Taser, and allowed myself a small grin imagining what he’d look like flopping around on the ground, doing the million-volt boogie. He’d look pretty damn good, I decided.

“That, uh, scowl makes you seem even scarier.” Neil took another step backward. “Sergeant Avalon, there’s no competition here. I’m a thin, homely, lonely little guy who has to pay a social worker for sex.”

I hated the term social worker. It sounded like Victoria was helping poor people with their family problems instead of being a state-licensed prostitute. A state-licensed prostitute who made more than double my peace officer’s salary.

“But you,” Neil blabbered on, “you’re a hero, you’re handsome, with large, intimidating muscles, you own a beautiful home, and you married a goddess. There’s no need to be jealous of me, Sergeant Avalon.”

My wife bought the home with her savings, but the rest of what he said was close enough to true. It looked like Neil’s knees were knocking together beneath his robe, so I eased off the throttle a bit.

“What is it you want, Neil?”

“You’re a timecaster, right? I mean, well, of course you are. But do you still do it? Use the machine?”

“Yeah,” I said. “All the time.”

I hadn’t turned on the TEV in about eight months. No need to, with crime practically nonexistent these days. All I used it for was show-and-tell at grammar schools.

“Well, I, uh, wondered if you couldn’t maybe help me with something.”

I let my frown deepen. What errand did Victoria expect me to run for this poor shlub? Find his missing kitty? Discover who was peeing on his doorstep?

“Help you with what, Neil?”

“It’s my aunt, Zelda Peterson.” Neil’s voice got lower. “I think someone murdered her.”

I sighed. Besides being thin, homely, and lonely enough to pay for sex, Neil was obviously fuct in the head. There hadn’t been a murder in the taxpaying sections of Illinois for more than seven years. There hadn’t been a violent crime in more than five. The closest thing to a crime spree these days was a parking ticket followed by pinching an apple from a street vendor.

But since this was one of my wife’s clients, I responded with restraint.

“You’re fuct in the head,” I told him.

Believe me. That was restraint.

“Look, Sergeant Avalon, I know it sounds crazy. I know nobody gets murdered anymore. Heck, there hasn’t even been a fatal car accident in as long as I can remember. That’s because of peace officers like you. Because of timecasters. Since everyone knows there are no more secrets, everyone is more careful. I was serious when I said you’re a hero, Sergeant Avalon.”

If he laid it on any thicker, I could insulate my house with it. And, truth told, he appeared pretty shaken up. Normally, anyone who spent time with Victoria had a happy, satisfied look. A look I normally wore, except on the days she worked.

“Why do you think she was murdered, Neil?”

His eyes got glassy. “Aunt Zelda is the kindest person on the planet. Everyone loves her. I visit her once a day. We have coffee after work. Yesterday, I went to her apartment, and she wasn’t there. I let myself in and waited around for her to come home. She didn’t.”

“Did you call her headphone?”

“Aunt Zelda never got the implant. But she has a regular cell. I called it, and it was in her purse, in the bedroom.”

“How old is your aunt, Neil?”

“She’s in her seventies. But her mind is perfect, Sergeant Avalon. She wouldn’t go anywhere without telling me. She calls me when she goes to the corner download kiosk to buy a magazine, and that’s just a block away. Plus there was blood.”

“Blood?” I was becoming curious, a hazard of my profession. I kept it from showing.

“A few drops. On the sink.”

“Any pets? Cat? Dog?”

“No pets.”

“You’re sure it was blood?”

He began to shift his weight from one leg to the other. “It was definitely blood.”

“If you’re so concerned, why not go to the Peace Department?”

“I did. I spoke to another sergeant there, a man named Teague. He laughed me out of his office.”

No surprise. Teague was a dick.

“Was your aunt chipped?”

“Of course. But she’s not showing up on GPS. Teague said maybe the chip shorted out. But they’re bioregulated, aren’t they? They run organically. They don’t short out. They just cease some of their functions when the host dies.”

I thought about it. Having a chipped person not show up on GPS made this whole thing even more intriguing. A few years ago, a tanker sank, and they were able to find the bodies under four hundred feet of water. Chips eliminated the need for paper money, identification, and keys. Each one was unique to a person’s DNA, and operated as credit and keys only while the owner was alive. After death, they could no longer open doors or buy things. But GPS still worked.

The only way to short out a chip was to destroy it on purpose, like the dissys do.

“Please, Sergeant. I’m willing to pay for your time. Name a price, I’ll pay it. Any price. Ever since yesterday, I’ve been worried sick. I can’t think about anything else.”

Worried sick, but he still managed to enjoy an afternoon with my wife. I glanced back at the raccoon still happily nibbling away. That was a vicious circle going on there. Eat marijuana, get the munchies, so you eat more marijuana. Maybe I’d be lucky and he’d pop.

“Two months’ worth of foliage for my property size,” I said. “That’s my price.”

He frowned. “I live in a condo, Sergeant Avalon. I don’t have a roof, just a little garden on my porch, and some kudzu in the bathroom. I could pay you the equivalent amount in credits.”

“No deal. If you can’t get the foliage, you can come up here once a week and work my roof.”

A fair compromise. He came here to get a little trim. Why not give a little trim back?

“Done. When can we do this?”

“Now is good.”

“Now. Excellent. I’ll go get dressed.” He turned to leave, then turned right back around. “Thank you, Sergeant.”

I shrugged. “Meet you out in front in ten.”

Neil disappeared. I gave my little pot thief one more glance. “If you feel like dropping dead, please go next door to Chomsky’s roof.”

The raccoon’s mouth was full, his cheeks puffed out with weed, but he probably wouldn’t have replied anyway.

JA Konrath’s Works Available on Nook

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Copyright © 2009 Joe Konrath
Cover art copyright © Carl Graves

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the authors’ imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the authors.

Edition: February 2011