Future Chronicles Special Edition Read online

  Only recently has it been her.

  The workers never talk to Jacob, no matter how hard he tries to get their attention. He shouts and kicks and pounds on the plastic walls of his prison. Occasionally, one of the technicians will chuckle at Jacob’s feeble attempts. Once he heard someone telling a coworker how nice it was going to be when they were finally allowed to stitch the patients’ mouths shut along with their eyes.

  None of them ever talk to him. None but this nurse; the nurse with the soft footsteps.

  Jacob props himself up on his elbow as he hears the door to his room slide open pneumatically.

  “Please,” he says, before the door has fully opened. “Please.”

  “Quiet, Jacob,” she says and quickly crosses the room to his container. “Quiet now.”

  Her voice is soothing and tranquil. It threatens to cast a spell over Jacob; to make him docile. It takes a great deal of effort to protest.

  “You must help me. Please get me out of here.”

  “You know I can’t do that, Jacob,” she says softly. “I’ll lose my job. And then who would talk to you?”

  Jacob’s jaw flaps up and down in bewilderment as his mind grasps at words. “Job?” is all he can manage. “Your job?! Look what you’re doing to me! To the others! I hear the screams.” His outburst drains him immensely. How can he be so tired when all he does is sleep? “How…how can you sleep at night?”

  “I don’t have to, thanks to you and the other patients. No one sleeps anymore.”

  Jacob feels like screaming but can’t get enough air into his lungs. It’s the sleep-drug, he thinks. Constantly pumping into me. “I don’t understand,” he says.

  She giggles slightly. “Of course you don’t. Now relax. This may be a little uncomfortable.”

  Pain streaks through Jacob’s skull. He screams sharply as the nurse unthreads the plastic tubing running into his temples. There is a grinding in his marrow as the tubes scrape along thin grooves in the bone.

  “Hmm,” she says. “I’ll have to get someone in here to look at those. They seem to be loosening up.” She pauses and addresses him directly. “Did you hear me, Jacob?”

  If his tear ducts hadn’t been welded shut, Jacob would be crying. He hears her, though, and it confuses him. Before he can ask what she means, she stands and walks to the door.

  “Please help me,” he says one last time.

  The door swishes open and she pauses. The moment hangs before Jacob, frozen in time and infinitely—but foolishly—filled with hope. Then there is a small beep from a control panel on the wall and Jacob hears a soft hissing fill his chamber. His thoughts begin to slow and his head lolls back onto the firm plastic bedding.

  “Please…” he whispers as the door to his room closes and locks. Numbness creeps over his body, and Jacob once more succumbs to the darkness.

  * * *

  The dull echo of a long-forgotten memory fades as Jacob snaps awake. He springs up and smacks his forehead against the cool plastic of his half-cylinder cell. He forces himself to calm down and regulates his breathing to lower his heart rate.

  His very first thoughts are of the woman. Jacob wonders how she can carry on with a job like hers; seeing people in his state day after day, knowing she’s at least partly responsible for robbing them of a normal life.

  Jacob’s hand drifts absently to his eyelids and his fingers rub the scarred stitching for perhaps the thousandth time.

  As he turns his head, Jacob notices something unusual: a distinct absence of pain. The throbbing ache normally associated with the plastic tubes burrowing into his temples is absent. It takes Jacob a moment to kick-start his brain and finally reach up to his temples.

  Gone.

  That one word bounces around Jacob’s sluggish mind for what seems like an eternity; the sleep-drug leaves a fog that never seems to fully dissipate.

  The tubes are gone.

  His shaking fingers touch the raised ring of flesh on each side of his head. Jacob dares not probe the center of these cavities; the ensuing vertigo from whatever he discovered is sure to make him vomit.

  He almost laughs. How could I possibly vomit? I haven’t eaten in God knows how long.

  His very first instinct is to call for help. It only flashes through his mind for a second before being replaced by something more useful.

  Something that makes a little more sense, thinks Jacob.

  Instead of crying out, Jacob twists his body around in his plastic coffin. His fingers find the warm, humming cube at the base where his feet usually rest. He traces the edges of the cube as they terminate into the wall of the containment unit. The box wiggles slightly. Jacob grunts and pushes the box out as far as it will go, pounding on it with the palm of his hand. When it will move no farther, Jacob twists back around and slams the heel of his bare foot against its perfectly smooth, gently vibrating surface.

  He pauses when something inside the cube clicks. Machinery whirs to life and Jacob panics, knowing what comes next. There is a soft hiss as sleep-drug pours into the containment unit. Jacob takes a deep breath and holds it in his lungs.

  So close!

  Over and over again he kicks the cube. Jacob feels the wet slick of blood coat the plastic; his foot must have been gouged on one of the sharp corners. He slams against the box ever harder in response. Finally, with a sharp crack of plastic, the cube loosens.

  He pushes one last time and the obstacle falls to the floor with a satisfying crash. Pieces of the container shatter and skid across the floor. His breath is nearly out; soon he will have no choice but to allow the poison to enter his lungs.

  A distant part of Jacob’s mind isn’t sure that the hole is wide enough for his body. That same voice thinks that maybe he should wait and knock out a few other pieces of machinery before getting himself stuck. The panic-stricken, oxygen-starved part of Jacob’s mind tells the rational voice to burn in hell as he turns around in his cell once more. He reaches through the hole with both hands and, pressing against the outer shell, shoves himself out of the containment unit. He feels a hundred distant stings as the suction cups covering his body POK free in rapid succession.

  His body thuds against the cold tile and knocks out his remaining breath; the containment unit is a little higher off the ground than Jacob was expecting. After a moment he is able to breathe freely and he gulps down cool, recycled air.

  He stumbles to his feet and over toward the door. His world is a swimming blackness, punctuated occasionally by faint blurs that he assumes to be light sources. He walks with arms outstretched before him; he has heard the door open enough times to know its general direction but has always been unable to tell how far away it is from his coffin. His hands find a wall, then a small square of plastic with raised circles in the center.

  Control panel.

  Jacob is about to start pressing buttons when the door swishes open and someone enters the room. He smells her before she speaks. Her scent is sucked into the room and rushes over Jacob, captivating him instantly.

  It is a field of flowers in spring; it is a crystal-clear brook bubbling lazily through green mountain valleys; it is heaven. Jacob’s mind reels from the unexpected bombardment of forgotten memories. It is her, the nurse; she of the soft footfalls; the only one who has ever talked to him.

  Before he can ask her what is happening, she grabs his arm—surprisingly strong—and yanks him out of the room.

  “This way,” she says through clenched teeth, “and keep quiet.”

  He obeys, knowing his only other choice is to wander around wherever he is, bumping into walls and shouting until someone tackles him and drags him back to his cell. His legs move as if he is waist-deep in concrete. Jacob has to twist his entire body back and forth to force his legs outward.

  The hallways are painfully bright, and for a few moments Jacob raises his arm to protect his already shielded eyes. The ambient white glow suddenly turns to a crimson red through his eyelids—the alarm lights.

  He hears shouti
ng, but this time not from the other prisoners. Deep-voiced men bark orders down unseen hallways. He hears the stomp of heavy boots and the unmistakable clak-CHIK as rounds of ammunition are chambered into gun barrels.

  She is pushing him now; they speed around a corner and down another hallway. He can hear her quick breaths as she turns her head to look behind them. They round one last corner and the shouts behind them fade to silence. She yanks him to a stop and fumbles for something buried in her coat.

  “Come on come on,” she says under her breath. “Yes!”

  Jacob hears a beep and the sliding of plastic as the nurse passes her ID card through a door lock. The door slides away and she shoves Jacob into a room. The red glow passing through Jacob’s eyelids from the hallway snaps to black as the door hisses shut.

  For a moment it is only their breaths in the darkness. Jacob listens as a group of men runs past the door, shouting and cursing.

  The nurse relaxes and touches Jacob on the shoulder. “Looks like we made it. For now, at least.”

  * * *

  “This will sting.”

  Jacob sits on the exam table, perfectly still, not daring to breathe. The nurse—Sara is her name—has a fusion-scalpel in one hand and grasps Jacob’s shoulder with the other. When the instrument is less than an inch from Jacob’s left eye, she switches it on.

  A pinpoint beam of orange energy pulses out and sears Jacob’s eyelid. He resists the urge to jerk away, knowing that the scalpel would trace a line of molten flesh across his face. Instead, he grits his teeth and waits for Sara to run the beam along the length of his fused eyelid.

  “Don’t open it yet. Let me do the other one.”

  She moves the scalpel over to the other eye and activates the beam. Again there is pain, only this time not as bad. Jacob smells burning flesh and hears a crackling sizzle as his eyelid is burned open.

  “Okay,” she says and powers off the scalpel. She takes a step back. “Open your eyes.”

  Jacob holds his breath and opens. His eyelids creak apart like the knuckles of an opening fist that had been clenched for years. The world is blurry and made up of colorful shapes. And bright; too bright. Jacob groans and covers his eyes.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry,” Sara says and rushes over to the table next to him. She picks up a small bottle and tilts his head back. “Hold still.”

  Cool drops fall over his eyes and the light in the room dims considerably. Jacob blinks and wipes away the excess liquid. It smells like gasoline.

  Focus.

  The shapes take form, the blurriness turns to sharpness, and for the first time in what feels like eternity, Jacob can see.

  Sara smiles. She is beautiful, and Jacob feels like crying.

  Later, he tells himself. Plenty of time for that later.

  He rubs the top of his thighs with balled-up fists, trying to massage away the dull ache.

  “The pain will pass. You will feel a warming sensation as lactic acid flows back into your muscles. After that, it’s clear skies on the horizon.” Sara pauses and rummages through a nearby bin. She produces a compact injector and twists a small dial on the bottom.

  “This will help,” she says, and jams the sharp nose of the device into Jacob’s bicep.

  “Ah, shit! What the hell’s that?!”

  She smiles and rubs the raised red bump on Jacob’s arm with gauze. “Muscle booster. Should get you back up to speed, and then some.”

  He studies her, instinctively leaning away. “Why are you helping me?” he asks.

  She thinks for a moment as she drops the injector back into a bin. “At first, it was all about the money.” She walks over and sits next to him on the table. God, she smells so good. “This is one of the top five overpaid jobs in the galaxy, you know?”

  Jacob doesn’t.

  “I didn’t have a very clear idea of what I wanted to do with my life after college, and my father suggested I look into the Dreamship Program. I thought ‘Sure, what the hell?’ It’s not like I don’t have the rest of my life to figure out what I really want to do.” She inches closer to Jacob. “So I figured I’d give it a go for a couple years and use the money I saved to travel the system and find someplace to settle down.” She looks at him, her eyes darting down to his lips every few seconds. “They didn’t tell me it would be like this,” she continues, her eyes hinting at tears. “I thought we would be handling volunteers. Not…not…” She waves a hand in his direction and looks at the floor.

  “Not tourists.”

  She smiles weakly. “Yes. Not tourists. I’m ashamed, Jacob. Deathly ashamed, and I’m trying to make it better.”

  She raises her eyes to meet his. He believes her.

  “I was on my way to the outer colonies on a research grant,” says Jacob. “Someone was claiming they found an artifact buried near the planet core—” He stops suddenly. “What year is it?”

  Sara hesitates. “2719.”

  Suddenly Jacob is back in the containment cell, pounding and screaming and knowing he will die in here and they will never find his mummified corpse and—

  He rests the heels of his palms over his eyes. “2719.” He samples the numbers on his tongue. “Sure, I mean, yeah, of course it is.” He lets out a single, sharp bark of laughter and stands. Tears force their way past scarred tissue and spill down his cheeks. “Almost two hundred years,” he whispers and looks around the small room. “Business must be booming.”

  Sara doesn’t answer. She bites her lower lip and watches him helplessly.

  He notices a small, covered portal on the far side of the room and walks to it.

  “Is this a window? Would you please open it?” His voice is sad, resigned. “I’d like to look outside.”

  Sara hesitantly drops down off the table and reaches over to the control panel. Jacob has his back turned to her and waits with his arms crossed and head down. She pushes a button.

  The portal cover slides up to reveal the blackness of space. Distant stars twinkle brightly in the deep black of infinity. Jacob looks down and sees that the ship is in orbit around a planet. The atmosphere glows blue and clouds swirl over painted continents.

  “Is that…?” he whispers.

  Sara crosses over to him. “No,” she says. “That isn’t Earth. It’s a private planet, purchased by one of the richest men in the galaxy. One stop on a never-ending rotation for this ship.” She watches him stare down at the planet, taking in its beauty with glassy eyes. “Jacob, I really do want to help you. I’m tired of the screams and the nightmares about ships full of people with families they’ll never see again. I want to help you. But we can’t stay here. We’ve lingered too long already.”

  His gaze remains on the planet below. “How?”

  “Escape pods. Off the main deck. If we make it to one we can get down to the planet.”

  “I’m so tired,” he says. It is almost a resignation. He lets out a deep sigh and looks at her. “They’ll never let us get down to the surface.”

  “This is a medical vessel,” she says pleadingly. “No guns, just shields. Jacob, we can make it.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then who cares! One thing at a time.” She holds out her hand. He looks down at it, then up to her eyes.

  “One thing at a time.” He grabs her hand and in the next heartbeat they are out in the hallway and running.

  * * *

  Sara leads him down seemingly endless hallways and service hatchways until finally emerging on the main deck. Jacob’s weariness is fading and Sara struggles to keep up with him, giving directions as they run.

  “Left! Right! Jacob!”

  He is barreling down a long corridor when two security guards cross the hallway at an intersection fifteen feet away. They are engrossed in conversation (which is lucky) and are out of their battle-armor (which is miraculous). Each also has a large automatic weapon slung over his shoulder. Irrationally, Jacob wonders how far the weaponry in 2719 has advanced.

  Sara grabs his shoulders and pushes him
against a small archway cut into the side of the hall. The guards catch a glimpse of movement out of the corner of their eyes. When they look over, however, all they see is a pretty nurse straightening her shirt and smiling brightly.

  One of them winks at the other and they walk over to Sara.

  She rubs her palms nervously against her hips as they approach, trying hard to keep her smile from wavering.

  Jacob presses himself against the wall, not daring to breathe. He watches Sara as she casually puts her hands into the pockets of her smock. Her right hand closes around something heavy, and Jacob knows at once that it is the fusion-scalpel.

  Jacob’s heart is pounding faster and faster, and not just from the adrenaline. Sara was right about that injection: a warm sensation courses throughout every muscle of his body, pulsing and—and—

  And enhancing.

  One of the guards walks past Sara, intent on leaving his partner to get a little more personal with her, when he notices Jacob. His smile quickly fades as he shouts “Foster!” and moves to unsling his gun. Jacob braces one foot on the wall behind him and pushes off, using it as a springboard to launch himself forward.

  He buries his shoulder into the guard’s soft stomach. There is a loud “ooof!” as they crash to the ground. The man’s heavy weapon thuds down to the ground. Jacob cracks the guard in the jaw with his elbow and in a single fluid motion picks up the rifle and slams the butt against the guard’s temple. The man goes limp.

  Jacob raises the gun and turns to take care of the other guard, only to see that Sara has the fusion-scalpel pressed to the man’s throat. She backs him against the corridor wall, sinking the device into his skin ever harder. The man looks at them both with fear in his eyes.

  Jacob stands and walks over to the guard, whose eyes dart frantically between the scalpel and the gun. Without hesitation, Jacob smashes the handle of the rifle into the guard’s face, shattering his nose and knocking him unconscious. His body slumps to floor next to his partner’s.