The Ascension Factor

"You've covered all bases," Mack said. "If you take the wrong side, you can always run off with the Voidship - provided you can muster a crew."

"I have you, Doctor," Brood smiled. "An original crew member. I have the OMC, too. And I'll bet that you, a smart man and commander, would have a backup system - probably something handy, like the Gridmaster? Yes, a backup for a backu..."

Brood laughed again, more to himself this time. He reached out his lasgun barrel and nudged the blood globules enough to clump them together and push the glob out of reach toward the turret. A smear of dark blood glistened on the muzzle.

From somewhere deep inside his training-memory, Mack recalled one of his instructors telling him how clean a lasgun kill was, how the charge neatly sealed off blood vessels in its quick cone of burn through the body. In practice, as usual, this wasn't always the case.

Suddenly, the entire Current Control suite filled with overwhelming, blinding light. A stab of pain punched at both of Mack's eyes and he covered them reflexively. He heard Brood struggling nearby, bumping a bank of consoles toward the hatch.

"What the hel... ?"

Mack tried his eyes and found that he could see if he squinted tight enough, but tears poured down his cheeks, anyway. What he saw made his already racing heart race faster.

If light were a solid, this is what it would look like, he thought.

It wasn't bright now as much as it was all-encompassing. He could actually feel the light around him. It wasn't heat, such as sunlight would deliver, but the pressurelike sensation of an activated vacuum suit.

Mack kicked off and made a grab for Brood's lasgun as he fumbled upside-down with the hatch mechanism. He missed the lasgun. Brood happened to open his eyes at that moment and the barrel snapped up to take aim between Mack's eyes.

"Doctor, you just don't get the picture, do you? I ought to cook you on the spot, but I'll wait a bit. I'd rather have you and your girlfriend together for that. Now you tell me what the hell is happening here."

A frightened voice came over the intercom:

"Captain Brood, we can't see in here. There's a light filling the OMC chamber, and it's coming from this brai..."

This was cut short by sounds of a struggle, and Mack assumed that his crew had penetrated the OMC chamber. For the first time, Brood looked worried, perhaps even a little afraid.

"I don't know what's going on her..."

"Don't give me that crap, Doctor," Brood yelled.

A fine spray of saliva skidded into the air around his head.

"It must be the kelp," Mack explained.

He used the calmest possible voice he could muster.

"There are kelp hookups in here and in the OMC chamber."

An eerie, strangled cry came from Brood's throat, and the man's eyes widened at something behind Mack's back. Mack grabbed a handhold and spun around, shading his eyes with his left hand. The bank of viewscreens that faced him seemed to be unreeling wild, random scenes from Pandora, some of them from the early settlement days.

"That'... those are my memories," Brood gasped. "All of the places we live... my famil... except, who is she?"

One face faded in and out, turned and returned and gathered substance from the light. Mack recognized her right away. It was Alyssa Marsh, more than twenty years ago.

A soft voice, Alyssa's voice, came from all around them and said, "If you will join us, now, we are ready to begin."

A great hatch appeared in the light, and a thick stillness took over the room. Nothing else was visible. The hatch hung in midair, looking as solid as Mack's own hand, but the pocket of light that contained them had solidified to exclude Current Control completely - there were no deck, ceiling or bulkheads; no consoles, no sound, nothing but the hatch. Even Brood's heavy breathing got swallowed up in the light. Mack felt as though he were alone, though Brood was near enough to touch. He was tempted to reach out, just to make sure he was real.

Shadowbox, Mack thought. Maybe they've figured out ho...

"What is this shit?" Brood asked. "If this is some kind of kelp trick, I'm not falling for it. And if it's your doing, you're a dead man."

Before Mack could stop him Brood fired a lasgun burst into the hatch. But the burst wouldn't stop, and Brood couldn't let go of the weapon. The detail of the hatch intensified, and the hatch went through dozens of changes at blink-speed, becoming hundreds of doors and hatches that peeled off one another.

The weapon became too hot for Brood to hold and he tried to let it go, but it stuck to his hands, glowing red-hot, until the charges in it were depleted. Though he struggled to scream, with his veins bulging at his neck and his face bright red, Brood did not issue a sound. When it was over, his eyes merely glazed and he floated there, helpless, holding his charred hands away from his body.

Mack heard nothing during this time, and smelled nothing, though he saw the flesh bubble from the man's fingers. Still, the hatch waited in front of him. It had first appeared as one of the large airlock hatches that separated the Orbiter from the Voidship. Now it looked like the great meeting-room door that he remembered from Moonbase. Every time Mack had entered that door it was to be briefed on some new aspect of the Moonbase experiment on artificial consciousness. Some of those briefings had raised his hair and bathed his palms in cold sweat. The door did not frighten him this time.

He did not doubt that this was an illusion, a holo of near perfection. He had been accustomed to working with fourth- or fifth-generation holograms, but this one felt real. The light had been given substance.

"What did it take to do this?" he wondered aloud. "A thousandth-generation holo?"

It was as though every atom in the room, in the air, on his breath had become a part of the screen. He reached out his hand, expecting to pass through the illusion. He did not. It was solid, a real hatch. Brood was no longer nearby. Like the rest of the room, he had simply ceased to be. All that existed were Mack and the great, heavy doors dredged out of his Moonbase memories. He thought he heard voices behind the door. He thought he heard Beatriz there, and she was laughing.

"Please join us, Doctor," the soft voice urged. "Without you, none of this would be possible."

As he reached for the handle, the door changed once again. It became the hatch between Moonbase proper and the arboretum that he visited so often throughout his life there. A safe, plasma-glass dome protected a sylvan setting that he loved to walk through. Here at the edge of the penumbra of Earth's moon he had strolled grassy hillsides and sniffed the cool dampness of ferns under cover of real trees. His mind, or whatever was manipulating it, must want him to open this hatch pretty bad.

The latch-and-release mechanism felt real against his palms. He activated the latch and the hatch swung inward to a room even brighter than the one he stood in. This time, the light did not hurt his eyes, and as he stepped forward a few familiar figures materialized from it to greet him.

I've died! Mack thought. Brood must've shot me and I've died!