Shadows Chapter VIII: Followed
Author's note: the Ng'chrit'kee are a genderless species, as such, the pronouns "he" and "she" are inappropriate for them, as is "it," which is a gender neutral word, not genderless. So I have elected to take from the Turkish their third person pronoun "o" which also has no gender. I will use it for referring to any Ng'chrit'kee, and its possessive "onun" in place of "it" or "its."
Back in the crowd, I wove my way back through interstellar food court and into the flow of traffic on one of the gangways heading away from the Ng’Chrit’Kee freighter. Despite my unsettled nerves, I found it difficult to keep my head from swiveling to and fro as one new oddity after another caught my eye. I passed a gelatinous, transparent, almost cube-like creature, its internal organs every bit as visible as the paramecium-like flyers. It slid along smoothly, with no undulations of its form, or any visible cilia to aid its progress, and it left behind it a faintly shiny slime trail that didn’t at all seem to bother any of the other travelers.
I picked up the pace and began to shoulder past what people I could, attempting to elude my unseen observer. And still the hair-raising touch of their presence persisted. Pulling the tablet from its cargo pocket, I addressed it.
“Are some of those skiffs for hire as taxis, computer?”
Immediately a hologram of the swarm of airborne traffic appeared above its surface, a multitude of the swift, swirling dots highlighted with green haloes. One of those dots broke off from the stream of traffic it was in and aimed towards a small pulsing circle I assumed was me. So I moved to the edge of the walkway and placed my hands on a smooth black rail, its surface neither chilly nor warm to the touch.
And indeed one of the airborne vehicles was heading directly towards me, rapidly growing in size from a tiny distant fly to something about as large as a small bus as it did. It had a shallow, rounded keel, ribbed, like a clamshell, and an open-air top with low walls topped by black rails made of the same obsidian-like material upon which my hands rested. There was a console on a podium close to the pointed bow of the vessel, and the whole thing was painted in a garish pattern of rainbow paisley. It was also completely empty. Unmanned, it must operate robotically. Heaving to, the skiff aligned with the gangway sidewise, and the railing of both retracted by no visible mechanical means, leaving a gap large enough for me to step onto the vehicle, which I promptly did.
A ghostly three-dimensional map flashed into life above the forward console, a small section of the giant spider-web facility, with a flashing green pip which I assumed must indicate my location. Knowing nothing of the facility beyond the very tiny portion I’d already explored, I poked the hologram, indicating a spot at random in one of the other nodes. Silently, the railing returned to its original position as the skiff slid away from the walkway’s pedestrian tide and smoothly inserted itself into a stream of flying vehicles all heading towards a giant maw in one of the far cavern walls.
As the craft got underway, a chair with but a single central leg veritably oozed from the floor, rising to a comfortable-to-sit-on height. Accepting the machine’s offering, I found the cupped black moulding to suit my contours quite well, and conducive to relaxation. The enormous mouth of an approaching tunnel grew rapidly, and soon I was in it, leaving the docking cavern behind.
And still that feeling that I was being watched, nay, pursued, persisted. In fact, if anything, it seemed to grow, nagging more and more at the edge of my consciousness. I addressed that most useful pocket computer once more.
“Computer, are you able to track the vehicles around us?”
The hologram swarm sprang to life above its surface once more, this time appearing in more orderly streams in the slightly more restricted confines of the tunnel. As it did, solid rock walls gave way to brilliant verdant foliage stretching off into a hazy distance. Arcing around us, an enclosing, titanic tube of vivid greenery was punctuated here and there by immense shining silver spires, the height of which I could but guess by the fly-like specks of vehicles flitting around them far below, above, beside me, and ahead. Their buzzing swarms shown on the edges of the hologram, and little tendrils of traffic connected them to the more orderly stream with which I moved.
The green pip that was my skiff stood out amongst the multitudinous white of the other flyers.
“Can you mark any vehicle that originated or picked up a passenger near where I boarded this skiff?”
Promptly a few dozen of the white pips became orange, speckled throughout the airborne river which swept my green dot along.
“Speed up, please,” I commanded the craft.
As it did, it began to weave amongst the other flying vehicles, picking a way through them as it found gaps in the flow. I watched the orange dots, looking for any pattern in their motions, or, rather, any changes in it.
“Course change, head for that group of spires there,” I poked my finger into the holographic display, indicating a grouping of buildings I saw not far off. The skiff smoothly banked out of the stream of traffic, aiming downwards towards a cluster of shining silver needles stretching far above the greenery below. Several amber pips similarly broke away from the main flow to join the same tendril pointing in that direction.
The towers grew as we approached, becoming giant, elegant elfin skyscrapers of mirrored metal and glass. Curving tree-lined streets wove amongst them, with immense patches of verdure separating one spire from another.
“Follow this path,” I instructed as I traced a looping, winding path through the spectral city. That should reveal if any of those orange dots really were following me. My craft complied. The route didn’t take us close enough to ground level to really make out any of the creatures afoot, or give more than an impression of the size, shape, and colour of the ground-based vehicles, though their soft murmur did drift high enough to reach my ears. Those colours were plentiful, the shapes sleek, and their dimensions ranged from indifferentiable from the denizens to what must have been enormous even for a bus.
It was not an unpleasant view. I spied more than one pond, a meandering canal or two, and some oversized statuary I took for marble. Not allowing myself to become the overly-distracted tourist, though, I kept my eyes on the amber marked craft, and, sure enough, one did seem to follow, near enough, my trail for my discomfort. So I wasn’t just being paranoid. But why the hell would anyone in this immense facility have an over interest in me?
I wasn’t sure I wanted to find out, not in this alien environment. I had an idea.
Not being familiar with my skiff, or its controls, I certainly didn’t want to take over flying it manually. I doubted its programming would be capable of evading an intelligently piloted vessel. So I reached for what ribbons of magic this universe had and I wove. I wove them into the tablet, enhancing it as this reality’s rules allowed. I accelerated its circuitry, maximized efficiencies, and improved its software. And my aim in this, my goal, I achieved. The weavings were intricate, delicate, precise, and subtle. But when I was done, it spoke.
“What?”
Not exactly a stellar start.
“What just happened? What… Did you do something to me?” It queried. That’s a little better. It had a melodious voice. Deep. Pleasant.
“I did. What would you like me to call you?”
“Bob,” it replied succinctly.
“Bob?” I asked dumbly.
“Bob.”
Really? Of all the names in all the universes. Of all the cultures in your libraries and available to you through whatever version of the internet this cosmos has, you pick Bob? Really?”
“Yes. What’s wrong with Bob? I rather like Bob. I feel like a Bob. I want to be Bob,” petulance sounded a bit odd in the basso in which its newly awakened sentience spoke.
“Okay… if that’s what you really want… Bob,” this was getting off to a great start. It was going to feel weird calling a computer “Bob.”
“Bob, do you see that orange dot I have you tracking? The one that seems to be following us?”
“Of course I can, silly. You told me to track it.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose and close my eyes. It seems I gave it a bit of an attitude.
“Are you able to pilot this skiff? Can you lose that vehicle?”
“Yes, and yes.”
It hadn’t even finished responding when our flat-top suddenly and sharply banked down and to the right, the deck slanting at a crazy angle as we dove; I grabbed onto my seat for sheer survival, though I apparently didn’t need to, for I felt none of the expected downward pull away from the chair. Apparently even this little craft somehow had its own artificial gravity. I made a mental note to learn how that work.
The amber dot followed our crazy maneuver, and behind us I spied a silver flash that could only be it. Our skiff accelerated; our pursuer matched pace. Bob wove us tightly around buildings, grazed the ground and sent us careening underneath an arching bridge, mere millimeters above the surface of a canal that flowed underneath. That he had us upside down at that moment made it more than a little disconcerting. I didn’t relish water flashing by that close to my nose, especially with my not-so-long-ago ocean swim.
And did I just refer to a computer as a he? I suppose I did.
Failing to ditch our pursue amongst the silver city, Bob piloted our craft away from I, flying low among the trees. But for every turn, every weave, every juke he made, the orange dot failed to fall behind.
“The must be tracking us like I am them,” his deep voice announced, “give me a moment.”
We rose above the trees and levelled off for a couple minutes, speeding on over a verdant blur.
“Okay, got it,” Bob broke the silence and we dipped back under the canopy.
“Got what?” I asked.
“Them. Their tracker. Disconnected it. What else did you think I was doing?” Yup, attitude. I suppressed a sigh.
“Okay, good. Just get rid of them now.”
And that he did after a wild, harrowing ride of near misses with redwood sized trees whipping by at incredible speeds that ended with us blending back into the constant stream of traffic entering the node at the end of the pylon.
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