Flightsuit (17 page)

Something amazing is happening to you boy
, Taylor packaged his thought and sent it into the maze. 

Well, that's good news
, thought Leo back. 
I thought it was something awful
.  Leo wondered if sarcasm worked with ESP.

Nope
, he decided when the booming response came back. 

You've found something that's unique in all the world.  Mountains of gold yet to be unearthed and treasures of every kind in the world, and all of them combined aren't as special as this flightsuit you've found.  All other treasures came from the earth. 
Only this one
didn't
.

I'll take the gold
, Leo thought.

A laugh like rumbling thunder over the mountains surrounded Leo.

After a pause, the thunder spoke again. 
It was created so far away the light from its home world can't even be detected from here.  A place so far away that mankind will never reach it.  So far away that for all intents and purposes, it is unreachable – like Heaven, Olympus or Asgard, unreachable
. 

The entities' memories were flowing freely to Taylor now.

Leo watched the man's face.  It moved only slightly, as if he were asleep. 
His attention is somewhere else
, Leo decided. 
It's totally creepy to hear the guy's thoughts while he stands there staring like a mindless zombie with his face twitching
.

The man's booming thought said,
and you have something that traveled here, from there
.

Leo kept still.  He noticed something else.  As he'd been talking with the man, he kept remembering
things from his own past.  At first, it seemed his mind was wandering as the man droned on, but as one memory followed another, he was beginning to think there was something else going on.  Right now Leo remembered sitting in bed with his mother.  The memory was so clear it overwhelmed his focus, pushing even the boom of the man's ESP voice into the background.  The memory was so much nicer than his present situation and it drew him in.  He was glad to escape into it.  He felt soft, warm sunlight on his bare shoulder as evening sun came through his bedroom window. 

He remembered sitting partly on his Mother's lap, her arm wrapped around him.  She was reading his favorite book, outgrown now, but not forgotten.  It was about a little prince who lived all alone on a small asteroid.  Listening to his mother read about the little prince's discoveries made him feel safe and at peace, following the little boy's curious footsteps.  Even as a much younger boy, the little prince's freedom, living all alone on his own tiny asteroid held an allure in his child's heart.  Every day, the little prince decided what he would do.  One day the little prince left his asteroid to explore the wider universe, leaving behind the world he knew and loved
, to see what he might be missing.  Even a young boy like Leo could tell the little prince's adventures weren't always happy, but there was always the reassurance that he could return home.  In the story, a snake told the little prince that his bite would send the boy back home.  When Leo was very young, this seemed like magic and he, like the little prince, believed the snake.  As he grew older, he realized that being bitten by a snake in the desert might have killed the little prince and that maybe the only way the little prince could return home was to die. 

He remembered his mother trying to gently ease his attention away from the little prince's fate.  She wanted him to keep believing in the storybook magic and not think about dying.  The diversions she tried to give him only made him feel something important was being hidden from his young curiosity, out of his mother's good intentions – but still hidden.  Like all children he
saw anything hidden as something to be discovered, not realizing there is no way back to what can be lost in the knowledge. 

He learned many things from the story.  He learned that the future is not always as nice as the past and he learned that no matter how many assurances adults gave children about dying, they still weren't certain themselves.  The little prince went to an unknown place.  Maybe it was a nice place and maybe it wasn't, but what it was for sure was unknown. 

Leo returned from the memory, listening again to the man.

They are explorers and adventurers
, the man continued. 
In their culture those who explore furthest, overcome the greatest risks and learn the most are elevated.  Thousands of their youngest travel from their home world in these suits, recording everything they see to bring back and increase their society's knowledge and experiences. 

They are long-lived, but even with their long lifetimes, few of their explorers come back to enjoy the pleasures of a successful exploration.  Traveling the great distances between stars takes a long time, even for them.  The few who come back cause long celebrations and enjoy the greatest pleasures of their society.  When he left, only a handful had returned
, those who were fortunate enough for their destinations to be closest.

He wasn't so lucky.  He drew a faraway destination, a long trip. 

They travel out, speed increasing second after second.  They have technologies far ahead of ours… so far.  We are primitive.  The suit has something that our scientists call a "Neutrino Mill".  These are microscopic engines wrapped in a layer inside the flightsuit.  These Neutrino Mills generate power from tiny, almost weightless particles that pass through everything, including us.  More than 100 trillion Neutrinos pass through each of us every second.  The
flightsuit generates a tiny amount of energy from each one that passes through it, giving it a limitless power supply anywhere in the universe and avoiding a need for power storage.

Even with the great speed they achieve, the trip out takes years.  For the adventurers to bring back knowledge, they needed something faster for return trips.

They are virtually fearless explorers
, Taylor continued,
but he's still afraid of the return trip
. 

The flightsuit's life support, its recording systems and its weapons are technology that's commonplace in their society, proven and dependable.  The return trip technology is all new and there's a terrible cost.

As Taylor told him about the alien and the suit he was trapped in, Leo's mind wandered.  He remembered experiences he'd forgotten long ago.  It was so pleasant after the terror he'd felt over the last hours to recall the safety and warmth of times with his mother.  He remembered things he hadn't thought of in years.  It was like finding forgotten photographs in the attic and seeing himself in situations he barely remembered.  He remembered his first day of school.  The tiny desk with his books stacked in the brown metal box under the seat.  He'd anxiously carried the books around in the new backpack his mother bought him for a week before school started.  He sat in the exact middle of the little chair and kept his feet perfectly still.  It seemed to Leo that the other kids knew what to expect, but it was all new to him.  Many of them had older brothers or sisters and somehow gained from their experiences.  Leo remembered feeling scared and afraid, not knowing what would happen next.

The return trip technology works like an ejection seat in some ways.  I've heard stories of fighter pilots here on Earth.  They say using the ejection seat is the second last thing they want to do.  Blowing explosives directly underneath your seat is obviously dangerous.  Pilots that eject have been permanently injured and
sometimes never fly again.  Still, it's better than the alternative, I guess.  

When the creature's return trip is activated, the flightsuit flash-scans every molecule of the pilot.  The scanning process destroys each molecule of the pilot in the process.  The computational requirements for something like this are far beyond anything we can do at this point.  The process has to occur nearly instantaneously because the location of each molecule in relation to the others also has to be preserved.  Their animal tests made some real messes.  Fortunately, at a molecular level, there's a lot of redundancy, so they drop the copies, knowing they can reproduce them by copying one of the preserved molecules.  In my old job, we did the same thing with data, its called de-duplication. 
Taylor paused, thinking.

Adults drone on more in their head than they do when they are speaking
, Leo thought.  He sensed time passing slowly outside. 
Give them more time and they just fill that up too.  Why's he taking the time to tell me all of this?  What's he waiting for?
  

Taylor wasn't "listening".  Leo watched a leaf break fall from a real-time tree.  Before it reached the ground, Taylor continued.

Of course, nothing material is really preserved, just information.  The inside of the suit is going to be filled with a grey indistinguishable mush after the return trip tech snapshots the pilot.  It's a destructive process.

Leo's panic
suddenly rose.

That's as horrifying a concept to them as it would be to us.  Hard not to see that as dying, regardless of what you hope will happen next.

Then the flightsuit packages the information.  Once the pilot has been scanned, there's no rush.  I guess it's a good thing for us that they haven't yet mastered this return trip technology.  There'd be thousands of them showing up here.  We'd be easily overwhelmed.

The flightsuit calculates the homeworld's location.  They use calculations from the Neutrino flow for this as well as radio waves from the local stars – techniques that I couldn't understand even as I see them in his mind and of course you wouldn't understand them anyway, so there's no point in telling you.  That location is identified and the position relative to the flightsuit is adjusted hundreds of times a second like a sniper keeping crosshairs on a target with his finger on the trigger. 

He brags like he's one of them
, thought Leo,
like this was his achievement
.

When everything is ready, millions of microscopic engines woven into the underlayer of the flightsuit realign to point toward his home world and the tiny mills are reengaged.  When they are generating energy from neutrinos, the mills only brush lightly with the flow of particles, not changing their direction.  For the return trip to work though, the mills must completely divert a particle's vector.  The particles are fired at the home world, with some slowed slightly to create staggered patterns.  The patterns are the encoded data which can be interpreted on the other end.

He is really pretty doubtful that the process can work.  They've developed algorithms, distributed in the control systems of the trillions and trillions of neutrino mills that power every part of their society.  These algorithms monitor neutrino flow and direction watching in the direction of each assigned adventurer, always watching for a pattern signature of a return trip.

In theory, the patterns will be caught and the snapshot of data that represented your every molecule, fired hundreds of light years away will be reassembled in reconstitution tanks. 

The reconstitution process takes almost a year.  It is new tech to them and there were many failures in the years before he left.  The lead designer was one of the first tests of a sentient creature.  He transmitted himself from one device to another, coming out physically indistinguishable but with substantially diminished mental capabilities and strange psychological quirks.  Even among a society that elevated discovery and exploration, volunteers for subsequent tests were reluctant afterward. 

By the time he left for our solar system, the most recent volunteers were only slightly diminished during the process, with the exception of a few random disasters.  They are true adventurers though.  They can't imagine not exploring and expanding.  Even if the odds were considerably worse, they'd still have plenty of their young eager for the opportunity.

Still, he has some anxiety.  Either way though, he's going through with it now.  The accident that opened his seal on reentry burned his body in seconds.  Not immediately…
Taylor "remembered" the searing pain the alien felt as the frictional heat flashed in through the open seal in the sleeve.

He doesn't have anything to lose since his body was already destroyed. 

Leo thought the helicopter sounded closer. 

They won't get here in time
, Taylor told him. 
He's almost ready.  He has to make room.  Their minds need much more storage space than our brain has.

When he first came into my mind, I could barely function for a week.  I didn't know what had happened at the time, at first I thought it was a brain tumor.  After a week, the pain faded and I began to notice my new abilities.  I thought I'd just somehow unlocked something I was born with back then.  Didn't know he was in here with me.

He was content being a passenger for years.  Well, not content, I guess.  Despondent and resigned might be closer to what he felt.  About the way we'd feel if we were trapped with cavemen or savages with no hope for rescue or relief.  He hung on.  They're geared for survival and anyway, they don't have any way to release control of their consciousness, even when their physical bodies die. 

He started creating the wide neural nets that I called "timesharing", so he could stretch out across all of their minds.  A single mind was too small for his consciousness.  Being constrained made him tense and edgy.  He also stretched out to learn more.  They can't stop that explorer's drive.

The neural connections with groups of people were a great relief for him.  He encouraged me by connecting my mind with theirs.  That boosted my own mental process.  Even though only lasted during the connection periods, I was able to make checklists so my smarter self could give me directions
, Taylor tapped his head.

They don't give up easily, but I think he'd given up hope of returning home until the NSA brought the artifact to me.  Before I touched the artifact, I had no idea that my abilities might be
caused by something else living inside my mind.  As soon as I touched it, I started to hear an echo, very quiet, much quieter than my own thoughts.  As I focused on the artifact analysis, he was planning his escape.

Over the next few weeks, he subtly took over.  My reliance on the checklists made it easy for him.  That's clear now.  It was easy to develop a dependency on the checklists.  The checklists helped me build a profitable company from nothing, guided me through investments, relationships, everything - for years.  Why wouldn't I follow them?  I trusted my smarter self and didn't expect to understand the strategies it developed for me.  They just always worked. 

When the alien's goals replaced my own, I didn't even notice the difference.  Thinking back though, I can recall times when I started to wonder about it.  He sensed me coming near his purpose and pushed reassuring ideas into my mind.  I'd be looking at a list that detailed stealing an alien artifact from the NSA and he'd associate that with my dreams of sitting on the beach, as if that were a logical result.  It's pretty easy to be tricked when someone has access to your mind and you have no idea they're in there.

Taylor glanced in the direction of the helicopter. 
They are getting closer.  But we'll make it.
  He smiled. 

It's telling him something now I bet
, Leo thought.  Taylor's booming god-voice stopped communicating with Leo.  His mouth slackened and fell open.  His eyebrows jammed together like he'd been punched. 

Taylor looked toward the edge of the clearing over his shoulder.  He turned away from Leo and walked a few dozen feet.  He knelt and started pulling rocks away from the base of a
gnarled little tree.  Leo tried moving, but the suit was still locked in place, so he twisted his head to see what Taylor was digging up.  He'd stopped now and was just looking at something.  Leo couldn't see what it was until Taylor bent at the waist and brought up a dusty glass dish.

He wiped the inside of the bowl out with his sweat-wet shirttail and carried it back to the place he'd stood while communicating with Leo.

Leo saw the disk was a thick bowl of clear glass or plastic with a white glass-metal triangular panel running down from the top to one side.

Taylor held the bowl upside down over his face, smiling through the clear glass. 
It's the helmet
, Leo knew then.  He realized that he'd still somehow been holding on to a thread of hope because he felt it slipping away.