What if we were in a simulation? A test? And not in space at all? Isn’t that “box” exactly the sort of thing that the experimenters would set up, like a one-way mirror, to let them observe us up close? And to keep us from measuring things like the Earth or sun too closely?
Hamish gave in to an impulse and stuck out his tongue toward the great brown wall, at any spectators who might lurk there.
But no. He shrugged that idea aside. Not because it was stupid or illogical… it seemed as likely as anything others were discussing. No, Hamish dropped the idea because of something else. Something he had spent his whole life nurturing.
Intuition. Not always right. Often dead wrong. But always interesting. A trait that once got Hamish invited to join the Autie League! Because it was deemed a “savant-level talent.”
Right now, he was having a powerfully strange feeling, not unlike déjà vu, only in reverse.
A sense that something ought to be obvious.
Something to try.
Right now.
“Say!” he asked aloud, turning to interrupt whoever was talking. “Has anyone actually tried to open that thing?”
Hamish realized, with a bit of chagrin, that the person he cut off was Emily. She had been saying something guilt-ridden, about how the presence of new “alien” people on Earth might contribute to overall human wisdom in the long run, but the greater variety could prove frightening and destabilizing in the short term. She worried that her “Cure” might have killed the patient. An interesting notion-
– though Hamish never deemed any topic more valuable than his current question.
“What did you say?” Lacey Donaldson asked him. “Open what?”
Hamish gestured in the direction everyone called “aft”… which also pointed back toward the sun and everything they all used to know. A view blocked by a giant container.
“That thing. The box. The mysterious crate. Have… you… tried… to open it?”
Courier of Caution stared at Hamish with its ribbon-eye, pursing its diamond-shaped, four-lipped mouth.
“We have set up instruments, Hamish. Tried to probe the box with light and other rays. We even managed to wish-create a weak laser and got return reflections…”
Hamish shook his head. “Look, we’re supposed to have access to the stuff inside, sooner or later, right? So… shouldn’t there be an instruction manual? Aren’t we supposed to be able to use whatever it is?”
The humans turned and looked at each other.
“I suppose that’s logical.”
“We had extensive pre-briefings, but no one mentioned it.”
“Because we were recorded from our originals some years before they settled on a final probe design. This box-thing’s an add-on.”
“So? He’s right. Even if it was all meant to be used at the destination, there have to be instructions!”
“But where? We scanned the surface of the box and found no message.”
“Embedded in the crystal, surrounding us? Like every other bit and byte carried aboard this solid state-”
“You mean like us? We’re just as much bits ’n’ bytes-”
A screech and series of sharp squawks made Hamish turn, to see that newcomers had arrived, bringing all of the team that had been staffing the “control room” at the forward end. Birdwoman and M’m por’lock and several others stepped off a traveling disc-conveyance. So who’s at the helm? Hamish wondered as his tru-vus translated the autie’s wing-flaps and chirps:
The answer is simple. We must have known the method once and forgot it.
“Forgot!” The Oldest Member expressed disdain with undulating puffs of his trunk-like breathing tubes. “I can assure you that I have forgotten nothing.”
“Well… maybe you were loaded that way,” Lacey commented. “But some of us could have had important bits buried. Unconscious. Like a-” she paused, searching for the right phrase.
“Like a posthypnotic suggestion?” offered Emily, rising with enthusiasm. “All it might take is a certain word or thought to trigger recollection. Giving us access to a more information. Like a command. Maybe something coded-”
Her eyes widened, at the same moment that Hamish saw several other people rock back. Including Lacey and Professor Noozone. Whatever it was… he experienced it too.
“Now that’s odd. Does anyone else feel suddenly compelled to say the word-”
“… key…”
“-key?”
“Key!”
“Yea. I-mon feel it, too, obeah-strong.” The black Jamaican science-showman seemed aggrieved at the very idea. Almost through gritted teeth, and glaring at Hamish, he added, “Key.”
Four individuals, all of them human, approached each other near the edge of the glassy plain, while the others watched. Emily, Hamish, Profnoo, and Lacey exchanged looks, back and forth.
“So… now what?” Lacey asked. “Are we supposed to conjure up a key to unlock the box? Something capable of survival near the lattice surface, penetrating through the wall-and vacuum-and then the container? How? Shall we hold hands and wish it into being?”
I ain’t holding hands with Noozone, Hamish grumbled inside.
“Well,” Emily suggested, “if we four concentrate, maybe it will manifest, by force of will.”
They tried for a while. Hamish closed his eyes, envisioning what a “key” might look like. Something to unlock a heavy, massive cabinet. A virtual object tough enough not to unravel when it was brought “up-and-large” near an unbridgeable barrier made of crystal and time. All he could come up with was the mental image of an old fashioned skeleton key with a cylindrical shank and a single flat, rectangular tooth.
He could feel magic gather at his fingertips. Something was happening in front of him. He opened his eyes…
… and saw a mess. His version of a “key”-muddled and half formed-was jumbled with another one that resembled a modern biomet-tag, of the kind that people on Earth might use to remotely identify themselves. Both of those swirled with someone else’s notion of a “key”… a maze of numbers, dots, and computer-readable smudges.
One of the onlookers guffawed at the resulting mishmash. Hamish couldn’t blame him.
“This is silly,” Profnoo said. And Hamish noticed that the man had altered his appearance. Now he resembled a real professor-tweed jacket, turtleneck shirt, and milder dreadlocks. Even spectacles. His affected accent was nearly gone.
“I doubt anything that we manifest will do the job.”
“If we discuss it first…,” Lacy suggested. “Maybe reach a consensus on a single metaphor, we four might then-”
Hamish shook his head, hating to agree with Profnoo.
“Wanna know what I think? I would bet my next cash advance and media options that we don’t have anything else to do, right now. Our job is done. We four had only to remember, all of us at the same time, and say the word together, for it to-”
Birdwoman shrieked!
Hamish swiveled to see her hopping and using both iridescent wing-arms to point downward, over the edge of the plate. Next to her, M’m por’lock crouched on all fours, thrashing a beaverlike tale and hissing.
“I think you had all better look at this!”
Hamish and the others bent or knelt to peer into the depths. And there they saw, far below, refracted by multiple foldings of fractal scale, something that appeared to be rising fast, drawing near with tremendous momentum. A patch of light. A glow. A spot of brilliance that seemed too intense to be merely virtual.
Probably, it would be visible even from outside the probe itself, if anyone happened to be looking.
It must have started in the very most depths, Hamish thought. And it’s been rising ever since we all said the key word. Key… word. Of all the stupid codes! I would never have stooped to using that in a novel.