Red Zone - 13

A Novel

10

He opened his eyes, but they were not his eyes, but the eyes of memory. There was a dark sheen behind them, but then, without warning, they grew more vivid.

“Welcome to Platform Machu Picchu, Captain.” The speaker was not visible, nor was much else.

And his eyes were suddenly flooded with tall mountain peaks with broad grassy terraces below and skies that were blue with clouds close above them, he did not know if it was an illusion or not. Venky came to consciousness very slowly, slowly regaining capabilities, like a person walking through a long building and turning on lights behind them.

“Don't strain yourself. You've been through a great deal of stress recently.”

“I can't recall going to sleep.” Slowly spinning wheels which had not been used it seems like forever.

“It's going to be alright, you've gone through a procedure.” he saw the glimmerings of a man leaning over his face, but he could not make out almost any of the details, except that the face was Chinese, or something like it. He knew that other people would rapidly know Chinese from Korea or Japanese, but his mind was too woozy, and he had enormous trouble concentrating on any particular detail.

“Is it alright for me to ask which one?”

“I'm sorry, that will have to be for the avatar.” avatar was a special kind of word, though at the moment he did not know-how. Most of what he saw and heard had reminisces, but he did not know how.

“Avatar.” The bulk of him was enormous, with ramrod plates on every side, with only a bioluminescent orange stripe on the left.

“Yes.” Then his eyes blanked out.

He still had not seen anything, his eyes were not working. This did not terrorize him, because he could remember waking up after procedures several times before, and always, the vision came in, blank out, and then came back later. He must have been reassured, as a character in a novel about spaceflight from very early on, that if - he could remember this, then it was a good sign.

Then darkness filled with crawling amoeba-like crawling shapes began to impinge on his consciousness. They flowed along with variations in red-brown color, with prickly outlines that bumped and separated. They split slowly and sometimes merged. This was good, it meant that the part of his brain that talked to the optic nerve was waking up.

Then came a slight brightening. There was light beyond his eyelids, they must be closed. He didn't try to move them. He did not want to face the flash of sudden exposure.

He saw the lights dimmed immediately.

He waited, hesitantly. They dimmed slightly more.

He opened his eyes, and glorious vision returned to his consciousness. Is this what I am waiting for?

He had been expecting to see some kind of wake upward. Perhaps a spare room, laid out on a bed. Perhaps some kind of recuperation room decked out to mimic some cozy bed and breakfast, with trappings of old Earth, the other competing vision had been an intensive care unit, with its large scanners, banks of displays in strongly colored flavors of candy light, and the bustle of medtechs.1

Instead, there was this.

First, he was bathed in warm light, sunlight. Gradually his limbs were reporting the sensation of being touched by it. He had been lying here for some time. His vision resolved that there was nothing but an almost electric blue sky above. Slowly he could tell that there was a tessellation of silvery lines. They were not regular and geometric, nor where they were static, there seemed to be a slow drift among them. As he focused upwards, he concluded that the light must be polarized because the whites did not have quite the vividness they might. And also, I have no sunburning, and I can feel there is nothing on my skin. Though it is interesting how my vision works and then does not as if it were being reset once I woke up. Then he realized he was not wearing much.

Indeed, he wasn't even sure he was wearing anything at all. However, he was able to slowly move his neck, pick his head up off the ground, and look down, there was a long one-piece garment that, while it seemed to fit closely, was slightly off of his skin. It had a depiction of lush tropical plants, broad palm leaves, and large flowers on it.

As far as he could see, he was in a vast semi-cylinder, with a transparent roof that was at least 200m at its vault. But even more impressive, was the spidery arcs, intertwined with green plants. He stared down the barrel of the cylinder, which went on farther than he could resolve it. There was movement, high above the ground, by the undulating rotary movement, they were birds, or machines made to move like them. Or perhaps creatures engineered to be like them. It was impossible to tell. His mind was awakening, he could tell the arcs that rose from the floor to the roof, were in lazy large helical structures, and that they were, in fact, wider than he had originally assumed. He could see that there were black rims for them. That made sense, that has to be the carbon tubules.

But if the sense of overwhelming light from above had given him a feeling of glorious spaciousness and celestial suspension of concern, then looking below brought home a forceful realization, that he was not hearing for any ordinary reason. Below were crumbled wrinkled sharp-edged mountains, clearly peaks of enormous height. That the air here did not feel thin, but the mountains were capped with snow, and the river-cut valleys, did not reveal detail, even though they were covered with incredibly rich vegetation.

He was suspended, by his guess, more than a kilometer above the general level of the land. And then he finished waking up. His knowledge of geography woke up: the Machu Picchu platform was one of the many high environmental structures in the Andes Mountain Range. It was puzzling that he had never heard of them used as recuperation, but then, he had heard of them used as vacation, and perhaps, for reasons he could not remember, but the large garish scar in his memory made clear, he probably understood.

The last one must have been very bad. Whatever the last one was.

Capacity flowed back into his limbs, and he sang his feet up and felt they did not reach the floor. He stepped off and found that the fall was farther than he expected.

“Slow down puppy, you aren't ready for frolicking in the garden yet.”

He turned easily and faced the figure who had led up to him, and then noticed how there were cleverly disguised corridors, which were meta-material to be hard to observe.

The individual was in a suit whose bulk was, in itself, unusual. Its fold of white creased metallic metal was like something of another age as if he were an astronaut on old Earth, or a deep-sea explorer of the present, or a magma miner. Only his head was exposed, and that was mostly covered with a stocking hat. He was old, impossibly old, with furrows cut in his forehead from advancing years. Venky could only guess. One hundred and thirty, at least. He then realized that the first individual he had spoken to had left.

“Avatar.” Venky did a quick nod of his head in acknowledgment. He often forgot.

“You don't need to do that anymore.” the voice was gruff but kindly.

“Thank you, I will remember that.”

At this point a small disc-shaped robot, about 2cm high and 30 cm across slid up to Venky's feet, the door on top opened and it elevated a small cup of hot tea. When he was a child he had wondered how a small robot could produce a cup larger than itself, so he had let himself get thirsty many many times, until he caught one slide up to him, and produced the cup. He saw that it filled in from the bottom, with the segments of the cup rising and locking into place. He smirked at the memory, and how his mother had smiled at him. He remembered the very tone her voice had when she said “You have such big eyes my poppy, make sure you fill them with the right things.”

“Welcome.”

“Thank you. Is it too much to ask why I am here? Is this some kind of recuperation?”

“It's duty, but of a different kind.”

“What kind? I am not sure that paradise has any use for a military man.”

“You would be surprised - I am not revealing confidential information by saying that there have been attacks on the struts that hold these platforms in place.”

“That would seem to be a security detail, not a tank commander.” he looked around and saw that he was a top aide structure that looked down on the city from above.

“No that won't be your function here.”

“Then what is?”

“Just introduce yourself to the others and welcome any new people who arrive here. Talk. Listen. That's all.”

Venky nodded. Shay therapy, I'm a psychological casualty and will be with others.

“How long.”

“Well, some people stay here a very long time, after they get used to it.”

Venky nodded. Meaning some people never get better? No, they'd be adjusted. Perhaps they become the staff here. Yes, that must be it.

“Will I be able to communicate with my wife?”

“After 5 days, if that is alright.”

Venky nodded. I must still be under observation. I wonder what it is I did. Or what was done to me. Is that the point?

Venky looked around.

“I don't sense any loaded memories.”

“No, we want you to get acclimated by observation.” He noted the “we”.

“It seems very empty here.”

“This platform hasn't been filled yet.”

“I thought this was a historic site, don't they see this?”

“No, they see clouds.”

Venky nodded. Meta-materials. The platforms absorbed sunlight and kept the land below at the right temperatures. He looked down and noted the glaciers and snowcaps. Healthy mountains.

“So, what now.”

“Others will be arriving to greet you.”

“People here already.”

“Yes.”

Venky nodded and surveyed around. He realized that the lazy wafting cloud banks to the left and right must be other platforms, only he could not see their contents. He engaged in idle reverie as to what they housed, only to see a lavender-winged dragonfly descend in front of him. It was slightly larger than was comfortable, but not very much so. Its eyes sparkled, it turned left and right, and then seemed to grow comfortable with him and then moved to hover near, but not too near.

I wonder what its function is. Perhaps to monitor me. It lazily hovered this way and that.

He noticed the avatar smiling gently.

“You see, you are already making friends.”

Venky stared at the avatar, looked at the gaunt lines on his face, and how the wane smile seemed to shift their meaning entirely.

“I've been here before, haven't I?”

“Yes. And you will be here again.”

“And again?”

“It depends on whether you live.”

“That is always the case for any military man.”

“It is particularly true for a siren man.”

“I am sorry I do not recognize that word.”

“It gets erased. The casual term is memtrooper, it means someone who takes assignments knowing that they will be memory altered beyond recognition afterward.”

“And this is a place where we recover?”

“This is a place for all psychological recovery cases.”

“And you oversee it?”

“Yes. This is my small garden.”

“You sound proud of it.”

“I designed it. The shape, the life within it. The climate. The social engineering.”

“That is quite an accomplishment.”

The avatar smiled only slightly, but the wrinkles on his face, itself an unusual thing, made it seem as if his visage was entirely lit. The paleness of the avatar's skin added to this effect.

“I'm not very good, but I do what I can.”

“So, I am assigned here to heal.”

“Also, to help heal.”

“Community.”

“Yes, community.”

“Is there anything else I need to know?”

“One very important truth. This place is under seal. You are not being spied on here, even from outside... Don't look at me that way, it's not entirely unusual. However, it is essential to what we do here.”

Venkatesh nodded.

“I'll leave you now to get acquainted with this area, and with the others when they arrive.”

With that, the avatar turned away and began walking slowly towards the north end of the platform. He hummed some slightly tuneless tune, though the words were too difficult to make out. He whistled occasionally, and the dragonflies their way from him, but the birds flew around him in tighter circles, as if to form wreathes around him.

Well, I should probably survey the territory.

He set his feet on the floor, it had that ever so slight, but very comforting, give to it that indicated it was a soft aerogel floor, which would absorb shocks. It gave ease to each footfall. He realized that he was still wounded and that there were strains and aches in his side and on his arm. He checked his chest and ribs and saw small healing and growth lines.

Obviously, he'd been badly injured, perhaps a heavy hit to his left side, or exdecom. It was hard to tell.

Hero, idiot, victim? Who knows, but clearly I did not walk away from this fight.

There were light speckles where the skin had not quite finished coming together. He tried to remember where he got them, but instead, he felt a massive blur. A rude wipe. He tried to reach back into his memory to find others, but that is the problem: without an association, or a mental location, it is very difficult to fish out the day itself. All of the blurs blurred together.

He continued the careful examination, cataloging the probable injuries. He'd been badly burned at some point, received hard blunt trauma to his left side, a sharp forced penetration to his left leg, several contusions, and, from his still lightheadedness, a concussion.

I think it is time to stop wallowing in what brought me here and look around more.

However, he found that moving his field of vision did little. The texture of the light, the openness of the view, made whatever frame he let his eye rest upon ache with the feeling of being flooded. It was like staring into the sun in whichever direction he looked. He stood and scanned in every direction, blinking. He felt he was aging as he stood there, his small frame pressing down on his spine, his eyes filled with a clouding blackness with shimmering edges that crawled and consumed his sight. He finally had to simply close his lids and seal them shut. Finally, he felt a heavy gloved hand on his shoulder.

“It can be overwhelming at first.”

It is meant to be overwhelming, you designed it to be. What I want to know is why. Is it for healing? He then suppressed this thought, as he realized the avatar could psychograph him.

“Don't be so suspicious. You are here on assignment.”

“Reflexes die hard.”

“You won't lose your edge, just the jangling pain that comes with the wounds of the mind.”

Deeshandir just lets himself float. He didn't even allow his dislike of having been lied to. He focused on only the sensations themselves. He floated.

“Don't make this hard on yourself.”

Float. Float. Float.

“I'm afraid I can't let you come back here.”

“Does that mean something specific, Avatar?”

“It means you won't be going on many more missions, at least, it will be very dangerous if you do.”

Without warning, he was showered with a slightly-white light, and he dropped to the ground almost immediately. The last thing he heard was the avatar's voice.

“Siren-men Event. Deeshandir Venkatesh. He's going to need an upgrade.”

He slept, bathed in his humiliation and confusion.  And then he drifted into an enforced sleep because he was being watched.

But above that pain and suffering in one man, aspires of Machu Picchu above the land where was an avatar; were only the spec on a distant planet. Whose orbit had been destabilized slightly by an exploding star, which no one knew the cause of Pegasi. And in the metallic ellipses that shuttered from the ground and buried in 2 the upper mantle - one could see instead that while humanity may dominate the planet, it was the planet that dominated them. And out through the outer worlds, from parched Mercury's droplets of ice - through the outer planets in their hydrogenate distance - to the present worlds of the Oort cloud - there is still would be the struggle to determine who should dominate the future. Because there were 2 impulses, one was to ensconce over the solar system, the other was to yearn beyond it. And the distant uniforms of battle are growing towards a conflict, that has many sides and many solutions.