Human

Human
By Gazza_N

“Zye? Come in Zye. Ground here. We have an anomaly in our telemetry. Run through checklist 206 again.”
“Copy, Ground.” Zye lifted himself from the pilot’s chair and kicked himself to the computer core a few meters behind him. He glanced over the status screens, then opened a panel and, barely thinking about it, rearranged a couple of the circuit boards and wiring.  He did it quickly and flawlessly, as he always did. It would take sixteen minutes or so before the corrected telemetry data would reach Ground, and he would receive his response. The delay had been getting longer and longer as time wore on, and Zye often wondered about this. In the beginning, Ground’s commands and replies had been instantaneous.
“Zye, Ground. Good work. Please note that reactors one through five are to be primed by next transmission. You are also to run through preflight checks for the Drive. That is all.”
“Reactors one through five primed, run-through on preflight checks. Copy.”

Receive order, carry it out, get confirmation, receive order again. Zye never found this odd. This had been the pattern of his life ever since he could remember. His earliest memory was of that ship, of the endless displays and controls, and above all of the console in front that was Ground.
Ground was the first one that Zye had heard upon being ejected from Containment so long ago. Ground had taught him how to operate the consoles to steer the ship, and how to perform maintenance if anything failed. Ground had drilled him on checklists until he knew all six hundred of them by memory, run him through so many drills and exercises that he could literally pilot the ship blindfolded.
As he had grown older, he was taught to perform other, more complex functions, as well as given more information about the ship and its core systems. Ground was a good teacher, but a strict one as well. Failure was punished by denial of a day’s meals, or a momentary drop in oxygen levels that left Zye gasping for breath until he passed out. All this had honed Zye into the perfect pilot.
When he asked the purpose of all the training and checklists, he was always told that the success of the Project depended on it. Zye had no idea what the Project was, but it was of vital importance to Ground. What was important to Ground was important to him. There was no alternative. It was the way it had always been.

Zye turned to float to his containment pod. He had eight hours until next transmission, so he would rest and replenish his energy before tackling the reactors. He floated into the pod and prepared for rest.

But before he could engage the sequence, the Ground console hummed and crackled. Zye sat up immediately. This was no routine transmission. Something must have been very wrong to deviate from protocol like this.
“Zye? Hello? Can you hear me?”
This was strange. Ground’s voice seemed higher pitched now, and the words were spoken slightly differently.
“Ground, Zye. What is the problem?”
“Well… Um…”
“Ground, your signal is poor. Your speech is breaking up and your audio output is corrupted. Please correct.”

“Zye… This isn’t Ground.”

Zye remained silent. His mind whirled. How could it not be Ground? Ground was the only thing that ever spoke from that console. Ground was the only thing that COULD speak from that console. The data stream must have been corrupt.
“Request that you repeat last statement, Ground.”
“Zye, this isn’t Ground… At least, not the Ground you know. I’m transmitting on the same frequency, but from another location. You can call me Gina.”

“Another location? Ground, I don’t understand your statement!”
“‘Ground’ is another person, Zye. He is one of the many people who control the Project, but he’s the only one who gives you orders.”
“Another… Person…?”
“Yes Zye. There are many of us down here. Many people. One of those is the one you know as Ground. He is the one who runs the Project, and…”
There was a burst of static. “Come in, Ground… Ground?”
The static subsided, and the voice reappeared, but it seemed clipped and even higher pitched than before.
“Zye, I have to break transmission now, but we’ll speak again.”
The console snapped off.

Zye spent his rest period in deep thought. The very idea that there was anyone other than Ground… The idea had simply never crossed his mind. There was never any reason for it or evidence to suggest it.
He had always known that Ground was a separate entity to him, that it merely communicated to him through the speaker console, and did not exist within the console as he had originally deduced. Having needed to disassemble the console for routine maintenance had long since demolished the idea. Strange how now it was only logical that, perhaps, there could be other entities similar to Ground. Gina had said that there were many of them. Then why had he never heard from anyone other than Ground until now?

He would ask next transmission.


The rest period passed. The ship was now gliding close to Mercury, where it was taking shelter from the solar radiation for final Drive diagnostics and telemetry transmissions. Zye had primed the reactors, and they would steadily be building up a store of plasma for the Drive systems to draw from. Once everything was certified ready, Zye would program the final maneuvers to bring the ship into position for Drive. Ground’s transmissions were now very sporadic and the delay in communication between Zye and Ground was now almost unworkable.
This was the critical part of the mission, Ground had said. It was the culmination of the Project, and was the very reason for Zye’s training. It was essential that everything be prepared correctly. Zye had acknowledged this, and had then asked about Gina…

Zye gasped in relief as the oxygen flow was restarted and his vision slowly returned. He was sure that he had passed out in that period, but for how long he could not say. The screen of the console displayed the necessary commands and flight paths that would have been communicated verbally. This was it. These were the final commands. The Drive was ready. Ground had revived him just in time to conduct the final checks. However one thing was certain - Ground had not been too happy with his question. Not too happy at all.

Well, this was it. Zye punched the relevant commands into the computer and the ship began its final hop to the sun. Suddenly the console crackled to life again. “Zye? Gina here. I need to talk to you about something. It’s important.”
“Ground wasn’t too happy when I told him about you, Gina. Please go away. I have work to do.”
“Sorry, Zye. I can’t. Not yet.”
“Please, Gina. I was punished for asking about you. Go away.”
“Zye, I need to talk to you about Ground, and the Project. Do you even know what you’re doing up there?”
“I pilot the ship for the project.”
“Yes, yes, but do you know WHY?”
Zye’s reply was without hesitation. “Because Ground says I must.”

“Zye, Ground is drastically understating your role in this. Most people don’t even know that you’re up there, never mind why… I’d have thought that they would at least tell you.”
“But he does! Ground tells me what to do and how to do it. There is no need for explanations.”

The ship swung around the sun, gathering velocity.
“Zye, do you know what the speed of light is?”
“I don’t understand.”
“Light travels at a set velocity. It’s the reason that our transmissions take so long to reach you. It’s also the speed limit of the Universe. Nothing can go faster than light. Except for your ship. You have one of the most important roles in Human history, Zye. You will be the first Human to break that limit.”
“The Drive?”
“Yes. The Project is to test that Drive. If it works, we’ll have opened up a whole new era for Mankind.”
“Yes. My purpose is to activate the Drive. It will engage automatically in just under five minutes.”
“What? Five minutes? But the schedule…”
“Was changed, Gina.” finished Ground from the console.

The Drive started to emit a low whine, and the entire ship began vibrating.
“Hanson! You low down…”
“Gina, I must insist that you disconnect. Now.”
“NO! You’ve treated him like nothing, Hanson! What’s your problem? If the human rights groups knew about this…”
“Gina, not now! The Drive is about to engage.”
“Exactly! He’ll be with us in eight minutes and he knows NOTHING about what he’s doing.”
“Gina, we have very good reasons, and you’re putting the entire Project at risk…”
“I’m his MOTHER Hanson! How could you do this to him?”
“Gina, SHUT UP! NOT NOW!”

The Drive was close to screaming. Soon the ship would slingshot back to Earth as programmed. Zye took in this conversation, slowly thinking about everything that had been said. Millions more like him were waiting for him at the end of his voyage. They all viewed him as something special. Not a machine or a simple pilot, but an individual being…

And for the first time in his life, Zye felt lonely.

“Wait till he gets to Earth, Hanson. Just you wait. Eight minutes!”
“Gina, you stupid woman! Just before Drive… You’ve destroyed everything!”
“I’ll see you soon, Zye. We all will. I love you.”
And with these final words, the ship slingshot away from the sun, and the Drive engaged.

Around Zye the Universe fell apart.

And with this went Zye’s body and his ship and everything, EVERYTHING swirling, splitting into uncountable shards, swirling round and round in a vortex of energy and matter and light round and round his consciousness like a whirlwind and round and round and round and through, through it all sped Zye, faster and faster and despite the Fragments of Being he SAW, FELT and EXPERIENCED everything, he saw the planet he was heading to and the people and all the other planets and their people and everything in between.

He saw his ship on its course to the sun. This was strange, but even stranger was that it was moving back the way it had come. In reverse…


“We’ve lost him, Dr. Hanson. He vanished the second the Drive engaged.”
Dr Hanson was not a man who suffered fools gladly, and this final incident with Gina had pushed him to the ends of his patience. He gave the man a contemptuous glare. “Well of course he did. The Drive has shifted his dimensional phase. It’s how the thing WORKS.”
The man ignored his glare, and continued. “No, doctor, I mean vanished COMPLETELY. He’s off our hyperspacial scanners as well. There isn’t even a tachyon trail. He’s just… Gone.”
Hanson frowned even more. “Hmmm… Yes. I anticipated this. Unfortunate.”

Just then Gina was shoved into the Project control room by one of the security team. Hanson turned to her and gave her a glare that would have shattered a weaker woman. “And as for YOU…”
“You had no right to do what you did. He was my baby! You said you would take care of him! And look what you did!”
“Gina, what do you expect? The power systems in the ship couldn’t support a full crew. Do you know a man or woman alive today who would stand being in solitary confinement like that for nearly a decade? By raising him in isolation we prevented that, as well as gaining a superior pilot.”
“But he’s on his way back, isn’t he? To meet the World as a hero! He’ll be worshipped, and you’ll be exposed!”
“No. None of that will happen. The Project is a failure, Gina. The ship has vanished.”
“What happened?”
“Relativity happened, Gina. I anticipated this from the very beginning, but the mathematics showed a good probability that the Drive would work.”
“What?”
“The Drive allowed the ship to circumvent the infinite energy cost for faster than light travel by shifting it out of regular space, but it seems that Time holds sway even in the hyperspacial dimensions of the Universe. The Time Dilation effect got him. Zye will have shifted into the past the second the Drive engaged. Perhaps it’s for the best.”
“How can you say that? We’re all waiting for him!”

Hanson’s tone changed completely. His temper subsided, and a look of pained sympathy crossed his face. “Gina, we would have had to kill him the second he arrived.”
“You monster!” Gina was now shaking uncontrollably.
“James, pull up the surveillance picture of Zye please.”

Hanson now couldn’t even meet her eyes. “You see, we couldn’t have revealed Zye to the world. We had to engineer more than just his psychology, Gina.”

Gina looked at the picture of her son projected up on the wall. She looked at it very carefully, for a long time. And finally she understood.


******

Zye crawled out of the burning wreck of his ship into the desert heat. This was it. The Drive had worked and he was home. Gina would be there waiting for him, along with all the people who were just like him.

A ground vehicle approached from the distance, and Zye felt a surge of joy at the sight of it. This was his reception committee. But what was this? Were these things in the truck other human beings?
Zye felt the loneliness overwhelm him deeper than ever. He felt as if it would never end. Until the men in the truck ended it for him.

The military truck drove up to the remains of the mysterious vessel and its now unconscious pilot. It was a creature unlike anything anyone had ever seen. Tall, from lack of gravity. Skin greyed from lead implants that had shielded it from cosmic, solar and reactor radiation. Large, black compound eyes that allowed it to monitor multiple command consoles simultaneously for maximum piloting efficiency.

“Roswell, you getting this?”
“We see it, but we don’t believe it. Give it another tranquilizer shot, then bring it back to Area 51. Whatever this thing is, it sure ain’t human.”