Rock

The food had been one of the few things that should have changed between an automated spaceship and… well, wherever ‘here’ was. But I was still eating the same flavorless protein blocks.

Back on the spaceship, that had been one of the few things that Daniel and I never disagreed over—they were awful. Even before setting eyes on the otters, it was clear that aliens were responsible for the ship: no human would provide food that terrible. Military MRE, dehydrated astronaut food, even prisoner of war rations had some imitation of actual food.

But these just crumbled like sand and had a raw metallic taste. It was a small miracle we’d recognized them as food.

I was chewing on the most recent meal the otters had delivered to me. The ‘food’ was wrapped in a waxy foil, but it was mercifully accompanied by a tube of water—also identical to the containers from the spaceship. A small pile of spent wrappers and tubes was slowly accruing in one of the corners of my cell.

Daniel appeared to be sitting on the other side of the cell’s window, writing in the notebook. He appeared to be no more than a foot away from the closest otter.

“Check my work here.” Daniel said. He tossed his imaginary notebook right through the glass and I caught it.

Well, no. I pretended to catch it. It wasn’t a real notebook. It wasn’t actually there. But if I pretended it was, then I could pretend to hold it. I could pretend to turn the pages. I could even pretend to write in it.

The two extra sentries had become a permanent change and all four of them were visibly confused by the motions I made, seemingly for no reason at all.

Their discomfort was one of the only small pleasures I could hold onto right now.

Of course, there were plenty of things disturbing me too. Daniel’s notebook, turns out, was staying accurate. It was downright spooky. None of the details felt new or out of place. Which, admittedly, could have been because of how carefully I was focusing on what the content was to remember it. Every piece of information we put in it stayed consistent. Even Daniels stick drawings of otters maintained all the same crooked lines. We’d even torn the corner off one of the imaginary pages, and it remained so.

Other than the fact that it only existed in my mind, it behaved like a real notebook. Especially for Daniel. I could shove my hand straight through the thing if I wasn’t careful about the pretense, but Daniel couldn’t make his image do the same.

The rules were rather consistent for the land of make-believe.

But that was why we had taken to testing my mental state. Daniel said he was testing his own mental state too, but his had to be just another part of mine.

“I got fourteen different teams and all forty-five presidents.”

I knew more than fourteen major league baseball teams, but Daniel had me beat on history. Supposedly.

“All of them?”

“Forward and backward. There’s this picture you can use…”

“Later.” I cut him off and compared our quizzes. I had a million baseball facts I knew were accurate, and Daniel had his own sports trivia. We both remembered pi to the same few digits. Any question on anything before our stint on the spaceship seemed solid.

Trouble was both of us were coming up with information the other had no way of confirming independently. We might think it was accurate, but we had no way of knowing if it was just a delusion.

Any question about after our abductions was consistently wrong though. Both our memories were bad on that count. He remembered fewer other abductees besides us, only six. And I knew why he thought so.

Eight of us had been released, accidentally or purposely, from the metal capsules we’d been abducted in. But when the lids popped open, only Daniel and I had been alive. The rest had died in the coffin like boxes. But there had been many more containers that stayed shut, ones that we’d realized had now-dead abductees in them. More of us might have been alive, but humans could only go so long without food and water, and we’d practically killed ourselves failing to open them.

Odd thing was, he remembered trying to get the coffins open, but not why. My hallucination, it seemed, had some trouble inferring and extrapolating. At first glance, he seemed to be a shoddy imitation of a real person. But every handicap my mental passenger seemed to have was more than offset by his odd abilities. Things that neither of us would have been able to do normally.

And as much as I hated to admit it, I was becoming more and more unable to think Daniel was just a hallucination. But that raised a whole slew of questions of what he actually was. Not the least of which was ‘alive’.

“Why are you so sure I’m not?”

“I saw you die.”

“You said that before, but you passed out a few moments later. There has to be something more that has you convinced.”

“There was an accident. Some part of the machinery exploded. Everything went wrong after that.”

“You’re dodging the question.”

“Maybe I have a good reason.”

“I’d be pretty disappointed if you didn’t. But I want to know anyway. Even if I wasn’t just stuck in your head, I’d still want to know. We were in this abduction thing together before we were in your head together.”

Why couldn’t he leave well enough alone? He was prying into his own death, I got it. I’d probably do the same in his shoes, but the events in question were hard to remember in more ways than one. Even now, imprisoned by alien abductors, there was a part of me that was more at ease here than on the ship.

The long paranoid hours had brought out the worst in both of us. But in retrospect, I was darkly confident I’d caused more problems than him.

“You don’t remember the worst of what happened on the ship. Even I don’t remember all of it. But I remember enough.”

“Tell me.”

“There’s no point, it won’t help.”

“Tell. Me.” He said, kneeling an inch away from my face. His words were forceful. Insistent. But not unfriendly.

I flinched.

“You didn’t just die in an accident... I killed you.” I choked the words out past a lump in my throat.

Daniel drew back, genuinely surprised.

He started to say, “No way…” but trailed off as he studied my expression closer. I wasn’t kidding around, and it showed.

“You sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure! I was going crazy; thought you were trying to kill me. We… fought. You ended up with a spike straight through your chest.”

Couldn’t he just drop it? It had been eating me up, even when I wasn’t sure it had been real.

“You seem pretty torn up about it though.”

“I am!” I growled, “There was one other person alive after I got abducted into space, a million miles from anyone else, and I go and kill the one person in the same boat.”

“Sorry, I wasn’t being sarcastic. I mean, you’re actually ripping yourself up over it. But you’re not objective. Just because you think you killed me doesn’t mean my point doesn’t stand. The otters still might have saved me.”

“I know what I saw.”

“Apparently not… because you weren’t really surprised when you first saw me. You already knew I wasn’t solid. Not just because you thought I was dead… you were already hallucinating back on the spaceship.”

I couldn’t know how much he was piecing together on his own and how much he was deriving from my own thoughts, but I wasn’t a good enough liar to pretend he wasn’t right.

“Forget if you actually did or not for a minute. Why did you try?”

“I was crazy? I got convinced you were the one going insane. I thought you were going to kill me over the food or something. Or maybe I was just psycho. Does it matter? I did it.”

“Doesn’t that prove my point though? If you were seeing stuff that couldn’t be real, how can you trust your eyes about me dying?”

“Because… I remember it stopping. I had… moments, where I felt like myself. The fog cleared for a few seconds and I remember how crazy I’m acting, but then a second later it all comes back.”

“Maybe you were right though.” Daniel said.

“What?”

“Think about it. If you were getting that unstable—and you thought I was too—maybe we were both losing it.”

“What are you trying to get out of this conversation? I say I killed you: and you say, ‘maybe you didn’t actually’. I say I’m sure I did: and you say, ‘maybe I had it coming’. Why are you so interested in giving me cover?”

“Because it seems to me like you deserve it.”

“Well I’m not interested. Can’t you just let me feel guilty over murdering someone?”

“Doesn’t seem like it, no. …What’s your take on dogfighting?”

Where on earth was that coming from?

“Hear me out. Answer the question.”

I rolled my eyes. “It’s terrible. Obviously.”

“Obviously.” Daniel agreed, “Throw two dogs in a pit and starve them for a few days. After long enough, they’ll kill each other over any scrap you give them. They can’t help it. But nobody in their right mind blames the dogs.”

He nodded his head toward the otters milling about outside the cell.

“You blame the ones who threw you in the pit.”

It was pretty hard to argue with that.

·····

I didn’t sleep any better after talking to Daniel about his death. But it was still some sleep. When I woke up though, Daniel was conversational. We went over some plans in case more trouble happened—which seemed like a safe bet. We wrote down some hypotheses. But after a few hours of aggressive back & forth, we needed a break.

Daniel had figured out his image didn’t need to abide by gravity and was sitting midair, slowly tumbling around the cell, still seated.

“I was actually thinking about what you said. You’re right. The Protoss, Thanos, Wookies, the Krogan. There’s a lot of big hulking aliens.”

“Did you make those up? I recognize one of those. Maybe two.”

“I know that wasn’t supposed to be a snipe at me being real or not. But yes. They’re real.”

Or they were just another piece of an increasingly elaborate delusion my brain was insisting on perpetuating. I expected him to say something, but he just kept going about other aliens. Regardless of I’d actually killed him or not, the Daniel in my mind was ignoring me every time I thought about him being a figment of my mind. But he was perfectly content to remind me via other topics.

“But even with how many big aliens there are, it’s not like humans never got the idea for small aliens either. Jawas, Ewoks, I think Star Trek did it too…” he rattled off a list and I did my best to shut out any images that tried to pop into my head. Didn’t Daniel have anything better to do than ‘but actually—’ me?

I couldn’t ignore him completely though. E.T. sprang to mind even though he didn’t mention him.

“Go easy on the rapid fire.” I said, “I get a migraine trying to keep up.”

“Really? Like how?”

I quickly pictured a few recent events, mimicking the way he shoved series of images into my head. He just stared at me blankly.

“You don’t get any of that?”

“Any of what?”

“I’m… thinking of images, pictures, events. That kind of thing.”

“And?”

And you’ve been reading my mind so far. Why are my memories any different?

He gave me a stare like he was waiting for me to say something.

“And you’ve been reading my mind so far! You didn’t hear me just think that?”

“No.” He got a dark expression for a moment. At the same time, his image flickered in and out of existence a few times. I raised an eyebrow at him. He hadn’t seemed to notice the flickering. This wasn’t any weirder than him ignoring gravity, right?

“I’m just thinking. Don’t worry about it.”

I gave him a nod. As long as he seemed to still be alright… I’d have to keep an eye on oddities like that. Well, more oddities. This was all still pretty odd.

“Going to share?”

He actually gave a little start. Had I managed to startle him? Even then, he didn’t seem eager to speak.

“Oh, um… no. No, not yet.”

“Weren’t you the one saying we shouldn’t keep stuff to ourselves.”

“Pfft. You’ve got a body. I don’t. I gotta have something for myself.”

“Daniel—” I said reproachfully.

“I know. I’m not just keeping stuff for no reason. It’s just an idea, a bad one. I don’t want to share until I have more information. Right now, it would only hurt us.”

“You’re not making this easy.”

“Maybe not. But I’m serious. I won’t sit on this forever. I promise.”

Daniel was older than me, not by much, but enough to be noticeable. But the way he stared right into my soul was disturbingly earnest. It reminded me of kids too young to know they could get away with lying.

“Fine. I’ll hold you to that, though… somehow.”

“Fair enough.”

Watching him turn end over end had me on edge a bit. I wasn’t sure if he could tell either. The gravity going out on the spaceship had been one of the things to really send us downhill fast. Too many of my zero gravity memories of Daniel involved the two of us trying to kill each other.

But it did get me thinking.

“Are we on a spaceship right now or not?” I mused.

The sentry otters seemed to stir at my question. They hadn’t understood me, surely…

“Nah, I think you just raised your voice a bit. You’ve been whispering to me mostly.”

I hadn’t particularly been meaning to. I didn't want them hearing me talk to Daniel. Wasn't that odd? I couldn't understand a word my abductors spoke, but I still didn't want the aliens thinking I was insane. It was a matter of dignity.

“But that is a really good question. I mean we’re definitely under some kind of gravity.”

“So was our ship though. What if this is just a really big one?”

“I’ve actually given that some thought. I really doubt our ship had any artificial gravity. I think it was just accelerating.”

So then what did that imply about our current situation?

“We could be on a big ship then. I know ships can be too big to accelerate to match gravity, but these are aliens we’re talking about.”

“I’m actually with you there. The limiting factor for thrust like that is the strength of the materials and their inertia. But…” Daniel gestured at the impossibly hazy window occupying half of the cell’s circumference, “we’ve seen some impossible engineering already. I wouldn’t cross off anything yet.”

“So what’s your bet? Ship, or…”

“My money says moon.”

“Pretty strong gravity for a moon.”

I picked up the tube of water and let it fall to prove my point. As far as I could tell, it was indistinguishable from Earth gravity. Just like the ship had been.

“Could be a big moon.”

“Good grief, if that’s a moon how big is the planet it orbits? Actually… maybe a gas giant?”

“The other explanation is that this is some kind of ship or station and this gravity is artificial somehow.”

“Spin gravity? You really think we’re in a giant space donut?”

“Not really. There’s a tell with that kind. The… ‘something’ effect. I can’t remember what it’s called—it’s inner ear stuff. You’d probably be able to tell if you were spinning like that.”

I raised an eyebrow at the ‘something’ effect.

“Give me a break. I was always better at bio. I didn’t pay much attention in physics.”

I couldn’t judge too much: I couldn’t remember the name either. I remembered the lecture explaining how it worked even, not the name though. But I did know what he was talking about. If you were spinning something, fluids’ inertia would let you know. Like fluids in the inner ear. But the human ear was only so sensitive.

But we had more than just the fluid in my ear.

“You want me to show off?”

“To the otters?”

“This is more my personal benefit.”

“Fine. What have you got?”

“About a hundred times the liquid in my ear.” I said, shaking the water bottle.

I walked to the middle of the cell and popped the top off my bottle. To achieve ten meters per second of acceleration, we had to be spinning really fast. Over a huge radius too.

I poured maybe a cup of the water directly onto the cell’s floor. It quickly pooled out in an even circle.

“Holy shit, you’re smart.” Daniel said, as he realized what I was testing. If we were on a station achieving gravity by spinning, then the water wouldn’t spread evenly. Its own inertia would make it spread against the direction of spin.

Our water, however, did not. It pooled roundly instead of going off to one side.

“I know it looks like I didn’t confirm anything, but this narrows down our possibilities.”

“Not a spinning space station. Rats, that would have been something. Still, that was really great idea.”

I grimaced. This had been a good idea, but it would be a long time before I made up for the streak of stupidity I’d insisted upon on the spaceship.

“Look at Greg and company.” Daniel said. He was a few inches away from the window looking each otter in the face. They looked nervous like they had before, but also just plain confused. It really was gratifying watching them not quite know what I was doing.

“Which one is Greg?” I asked.

“Grey one on the left.” He said. “I think this one here is…”

He pretended to consider the soldier as one might judge a fine painting. Or maybe this was what he looked like when trying to imagine a scrapheap was actually a piece of modern art.

I took up a post near the window too, looking at each one carefully. It wasn’t the first time Daniel and I had decided to inspect the otters this close. It wasn’t even the second or third. Each time it got just a little easier. Although, I suspected that would change if the thick glass wall wasn’t between us.

It was easier for Daniel. He didn’t have a body. But I could force myself to get close enough to really observe them. I just had to frame it in my head the right way.

This was reconnaissance.

I wanted to know their weak points. I wanted to know if they had hearts, physical ones. Lungs, stomachs, the normal soft spots on a human. I didn’t really think I would be able to recall anything useful if I actually got in a fight again.

But imagining their weaknesses had gave me a little comfort when I imagined another confrontation.

“Did you name him ‘Greg’ just because he has grey fur?” I didn’t take my eyes off the otter though. I was being careful to not let them know I was talking to anyone not there. No, it was perfectly fine to let them think I was talking to or at them. No need to let them know Daniel was here.

“Slanderous lies, of course not!” He blustered. “This one will be… Roy.”

‘Roy’ had dark rusty brown fur. Daniel’s naming sense left something to be desired.

“You better hurry up on giving these guys names, or I’m going to do them all and you won’t get a turn.”

“No thanks.” I whispered, turning back from the window. I walked over to the metal frame cot shoved into one end of the cell. I’d slept recently, but my body was telling me it hadn’t been long enough.

Daniel complained when I laid down though. The sound of him coming from outside the cell even. He seemed to still exist, even when I wasn’t looking at him.

“Come on! Keep your eyes open. Everything just goes dark if you shut your eyes.”

“That is how sleep usually works.” I said quietly lying down.

I didn’t get to stay down long though.

Daniel’s voice came back, right next to my ear. He was intensely quiet and serious.

“Hey Caleb?” Daniel started, “Remember how we made a fight plan if the otters came in again?”

Yes…?

“Don’t try on this guy.”

I started to ask, “What guy—?” when the door to the cell hissed open. My mind started racing, but Daniel moved himself between me and the door.

“Seriously Caleb. This one is different, he’s like the one before—”

The hair on the back of my head stood up when a lone otter barged into the cell. The metal door banged loudly against the wall. I couldn’t wrap my head around the feeling the otter gave off. It was like a quiet dangerous buzz, like standing underneath a heavy powerline.

It was the biggest otter I’d seen. I’d only seen a handful, but still, this one was built like a tiger. It was even bulkier than the other soldiers. It had muscle definition, somehow visible underneath its fur. Angry tufts of fur around its brow and eyes almost looked like warpaint. The teeth–no those were fangs–poking out from under its lips were impossible to ignore. It wore the same dark green undersuit as the other soldiers but this one sported an additional layer of actual armor. Dull glittering orange metal plates hung on its limbs and shoulders. The breastplate wasn’t a solid piece, but instead was a series of bands running down its belly. It looked heavy, but didn’t seem to slow the otter at all.

Just one look and I was in accord with Daniel. This thing could kill me in a heartbeat. It wouldn’t even be difficult. The otter effortlessly radiated danger. It even wore an empty holster without a gun to fit in it.

I couldn’t be sure how much the message was meant for just me, but the message was clear anyway—it didn’t need the weapon.

It did, however, carry a heavy looking device. It punched several buttons along the sides of the slab and a screen flickered to life. The warrior threw the device at my face. I wasn’t a stranger to catching things on reflex though. I tried to keep my nerve even while I half-fumbled the catch.

The device was even heavier than it looked. It was the size of a reading tablet, only it was two inches thick and probably thirty pounds. With the huge analog buttons and slight bulge to the screen, it was like a small portable VCR.

On the screen, a video was playing. A wide view of the stars with a blocky rocket slowly burning closer to the viewpoint. I gave the warrior-otter an inquisitive look. What were we looking at?

“A spaceship, but why show it to us?”

“Maybe… maybe this ship has other—” I got cut off when four white dots peeled away from the rocket and accelerated faster.

I raised an eyebrow.

Then a white light flashed on the side of the rocket for a second before the whole screen whited out. The white light was cut off by blinking alien letters over static.

I looked at the warrior and showed it the screen. What had been so special about that? I couldn’t identify the look on its face when it snatched the VCR tablet back. It fiddled with a button and the video reversed itself a few moments.

It saw the same thing I had, and I saw it’s face go slack from shock. It was weird recognizing an expression on an alien. It didn’t look like shock on a human face, but looking at it unfold in front of me, there was no other way to interpret it.

It shouted something to the sentries outside the cell. The whole cell gave a tremor a moment later when a rumble was audible far away.

Had something crashed into us?

“Oh shit, that wasn’t a recording! That was a live feed. Those were missiles.”

I shot a hand at the wall to steady myself. I’d lived in California most of my life, so earthquakes weren’t unheard of. But the next quake came only a few seconds later and much stronger.

It was like a giant had picked up a soda can and given it a good shake. I was thrown off my feet. On reflex I threw my hands together behind my head and shielded myself with my arms. I crashed into the wall, but I didn’t try to get up. It was still shaking. If I tried to rise too early, I’d probably just fall again.

For a minute, chaos reigned. There was a cacophony of otter barks, metal creaking. A sharp crack sounded, and I spied a long fracture suddenly appear in the cell window.

From where I landed, I got a good look at the warrior-otter tumble to the ground too. It flipped itself over onto all fours with startling speed. The tremor didn’t last, and the warrior locked its eyes back on me again.

Oh man, I thought their eyes had been creepy before. Its tripart pupil was widened now, like an inky three-pointed star. It thrust an arm out and Daniel went still.

“Can you feel—” he started, but he didn’t have to finish.

I did feel it this time.

The buzz in the air intensified to a crackling shock and somewhere in my head I felt like I saw physics break.

A brilliant crackle started in the space above its palm. In a millisecond, it condensed into a speck that quickly grew into a shard that kept growing. The otter closed its claws around a long haft of metal and spun it. New material formed before my eyes, new atoms and metal growing like crystals in time lapse. The warrior spun the newly formed halberd at me, swinging at my head.

I couldn’t do anything but throw my hands up, fat lot of good that would do. But the otter hauled back on its swing at the last moment. The blade of the weapon was less than an inch from my wrist.

I held my breath while the otter gave me a furious look. One of the sentries shouted from the outside. They even banged on the glass trying to get the warrior’s attention. After an uncomfortable delay, the otter pulled the halberd back.

It growled something and its eyes narrowed at me. I felt like a rat pinned to the table about to be dissected. But after sizing me up, the otter retreated to the door and banged on the door to be let out.

Daniel and I sat there wide eyed.

He was the first one to recover. “You okay?” I gave him a shaky nod.

“I don’t know how many times I can come that close to dying before I get desensitized to it.”

“But did you see what it did?”

“I felt that.”

“The first one did that. That was how it did the flashbang. It was that same feeling. It just… ‘made’ it. Out of nothing.”

“Not just the otter.” I said. My mind raced through unpleasant memories. “You did that!”

Daniel was surprised. “What?”

“On the ship, before you died.” I said, “The walls started peeling apart and a bunch of spikes and sharp coils started spearing out of everything.”

“I don’t remember that part…”

“Well I do. It was at least half of the reason why I freaked out so much. You wouldn’t stop it. Or couldn’t, I don’t know. But I really wasn’t hallucinating! You were making stuff, just like the otter.”

He stared at his own hand, flexing his fingers a few times experimentally.

“Try.” I said, barely whispering.

He looked at his hand frowning. “Are you sure? I felt what they did somehow, but I can’t really imagine—”

There was a tiny tap on the floor.

He stopped talking and we both looked at our feet.

I reached down and picked up a speck of green. It was like a pebble, hard and tiny. But it was solid enough to touch. Daniel and I looked at how small it was. It wasn’t even a quarter the width of my pinky. But it was real.

It had fallen right through Daniel’s illusory hand the moment it started existing.

“That was me.” He said. “I don’t know how… Caleb, what the hell is that?”

I shook my head. I didn’t know any more than he did. But it was something.

“Can you do it again?” I held out my hand, ready to catch whatever he managed to create.

He pointed to the space above my palm and his face contorted in concentration. I thought the image of him might explode, he was focusing so hard.

I could almost feel what he did. An image of millions of lines spreading outward, forming millions of knots and intersections flashed in my head. It was how he imagined molecules bonding together.

There was a tiny pop and a new speck appeared at the tip of Daniel’s finger, falling into my palm. The first speck vanished, replaced by the second.

“Repeatable” Daniel said in awe.

It was a far cry from an actual weapon like the otter’s halberd. But I was eager to fight back. And even with just a grain of sand, I had a way to do it.

“What are you thinking?”

“Back on earth, you know what I remember about otters?”

Daniel shook his head.

“They take a tiny little pebble, and they work it into the tiny gap in a clam’s shell. They pry it open with just a tiny little rock.”

I held up the tiny speck Daniel had created and looked at the crack in the cell’s window that the tremor had made. We had a tiny rock. We had a shell.

“Oh you mad genius.”