*
Seth sat in his bed and stared at the pill bottle. It was empty. He’d swallowed the gnostin inside just a few seconds before, and was already starting to regret it. There was a chance, however unlikely, that the pill was a fake. Maybe it was poison, and he’d just finished the job of his assassin. Maybe it was a tracking device, and he was going to lure himself into a trap. Maybe it was all just a complicated scheme overseen by Commissar Absalom to reveal Seth’s duplicity.
All of these options were entirely realistic to Seth. But the alternative was far more interesting. After all, there were very few people or organizations capable of producing a custom gnostin containing a hidden message. It didn’t just require the ability to manufacture complex electronics so small that they fit in a pill, though that was a significant hurdle.
Gnostins were programmed by biochemical engineers and artists who were paid a fortune for their work. They created pleasant and controlled dreams using only electrical signals transmitted to the brain through the upper digestive track. It was a difficult job. Even the simplest gnostins, which only tapped into small portions of the nervous system to create vague pleasurable sensations, had to sell hundreds of thousands to turn a profit. Tailoring an individual gnostin for a single message would cost so much money, regardless of other concerns, that the possibility was too intriguing to ignore.
Seth didn’t like gnostins. He hated to lose control of his own mind. He hated that the technology was used to deprive his father of his craft. But he had to see this through to the end. So what if it was poison? So what if it was a trap? If the images he’d been copying were not the real Heilmann Drive plans, Seth had nothing to lose.
More importantly, it was too late to go back. His lips were numb. He was already starting to feel the tranquilizers within the capsule. They would lull him to sleep, and then he would experience whatever dream was hidden within the intricate circuitry.
A brief moment of panic surged through his body as he felt his muscles relax. What if Commissar Absalom or one of his guards decided to check on him? They would find him unconscious, clearly under the influence of drugs. Absalom would want to know more, maybe he would discover the gnostin and...
Heavy fog rolled into Seth’s consciousness and calmed his mind. There was nothing he could do but go with it. He closed his eyes and went to sleep.
Darkness overwhelmed Seth in seconds. It was the kind of darkness that could only come with a chemical sleep, sudden and absolute, but he remained conscious. The gnostin was taking effect immediately, broadcasting signals to his brain, hijacking his dreams for its own purposes.
Little pinpricks of light broke through the black air around Seth. They were stars, flaming to life in front of him, illuminating the night sky. One after another broke the darkness, until Seth was staring at the vast expanse of space.
At first, Seth felt giddy. It was like he was flying through the void himself, unencumbered by massive starship around him. He did not have to glimpse the stars through jaundiced lens of a camera, or through the thick protective sheen of hardened windows. His eyes darted around, picking out the constellations and clusters, trying to recall their names through the haze of sleep. The gnostin gave him only a measure of control within the dream. It still disrupted his concentration and Seth struggled to connect the stars he saw with the stars in his mind.
Before long, the excitement faded and Seth was overcome by a profound sense of awe. He was a proud man, and was sure that nothing could humble him. But here in this vision, he was forced to realize just how small he was. No matter what he did with his life, no matter how great he became, he would never rival the sheer scale and power of the celestial bodies that surrounded him. They burned for millions of years, eternal forges that fused the elements that made up every atom of every simple and complex system in the galaxy.
This feeling frightened Seth. He didn’t understand it. It threatened to engulf him and swallow up his ego. It wanted to destroy him, to remake him into something else.
Was this what the religious zealots of Vangelia experienced in the throws of their passion? Was it this reverence for God that made them commit atrocities? Was this how the true believers of the Republic felt? Was this dedication, this all-consuming trust and reverence, what drove him to follow their orders?
It didn’t feel so bad. Faith in the galaxy was not faith in some god or some government. Faith in the stars was not mindless. It was respectful of the forces which truly created him. It made sense to submit to it, to give in, to see what they desired of him and--
No.
Seth shook his head. None of this was real. He wasn’t hovering in space, surrounded by the stars. He was lying in a bed in a Republic military base, under the influence of a very dangerous pill.
It was trying to brainwash him. It was trying to control him.
Seth remembered all the rumors about sensory stimulation. The Republic feared that it could be used to program someone’s mind, to convince them to do something they would never do on their own. It was blamed for terrorist attacks and summarily banned.
Someone was trying to do it to him. This wasn’t an ordinary gnostin. It did not pass through Republic regulation. It was not tested or inspected. It was manufactured off-world, by someone who thought they could make Seth into their puppet.
They were wrong. He was stronger than that.
This was all a dream, and a hostile one at that. It would be easy enough to wake up, to force his body to remember the bed beneath him. But it wasn’t enough for Seth to simply fight off the influence of the gnostin. He had to understand what it wanted him to do, and who wanted him to do it.
The galaxy around him was just an illusion. Seth focused his vision to look past it. Unlike a sensory stimmer, the pill could not react to him. It could not adjust to compensate for his realization that it was trying to hypnotize him. The gnostin would continue to try and program his mind, and he could use that to his advantage. He had to see past the deception, to the core purpose of the vision.
One by one, the stars blinked out of existence. Seth pushed off from his position in the dreamscape, forcing himself towards the darkness. He needed to see what was behind all of this. To do that, he had to face it.
The clicking sound of clockwork mechanisms filled the air. Behind the stars, behind the darkness, Seth saw massive metal gears turning within large, intricate scaffolding. It was like the galaxy that seduced him was nothing more than a mechanical illusion projected onto a screen.
“What do you want?” Seth yelled, as if the gnostin inside of him could hear his cries. “Just tell me!”
Suddenly, the gears stopped moving. The strange mechanisms surrounding the galaxy slammed to a halt. What did this mean? Even though Seth was pushing past the intended effects of the pill, everything he experienced was still coded within the device.
Was this just some extended metaphor for what was happening to the galaxy with the end of faster-than-light travel? Was it a subliminal message meant to reinforce his brainwashing? Or did it go beyond that?
Seth closed his eyes. When he opened them again, he was somewhere completely different.
He was standing in a large room full of computers and electronic panels. After a few seconds, he recognized the various fixtures. One was a navigation interface. Another was a communication console. This was the command center for a faster-than-light starship.
“Where am I?” Seth asked. “Why are you showing me this?”
A blinking light caught his attention near the back of the room. One of the buttons on one of the panels was flashing. Almost as soon as Seth saw it, another button flashed. Then another. Then the panel shut down, and another console lit up on the other side of the command center.
It took Seth a few seconds to realize what he was seeing. When it all came together, it was like someone kicked him in the stomach. This was t
he start-up sequence for a Heilmann Drive.
Usually, the command center on a starship was manned by several people. They all had their own role in preparing for takeoff. Working together, they calibrated the systems and allocated power to the proper parts of the ship.
This vision was showing him everything. It was preparing him to do it himself, with no help. It was showing him how to steal a starship.
It all made sense to him now. Whoever gave him the gnostin was trying to brainwash him into hijacking one of the remaining Heilmann Drives.
Almost as soon as Seth realized this, the viewscreen at the front of the command center flared to life. He turned to face it. There was a map projected onto the screen. He approached it, squinting, trying to make out what it said.
EUROPA OBSERVATION BASE
Seth’s heart skipped a beat. The Europa station was where all of the starships were being decommissioned and scrapped. It was the last stop for every faster-than-light vessel in the galaxy. Seth had been there a few times, but he’d never been allowed to see much of the base. It was top secret.
This map showed every hall, every life support duct, every closet, every room, every passageway... It was everything Seth needed to get to any part of the station at any time. This included the repair bay, where the ships were being scrapped.
It was clearer than anything else in the dream. Seth focused on it and tried to remember it, just like he would memorize anything in real life. Whoever made the gnostin knew that he had an incredible memory, since they knew of his plan to copy the Heilmann Drive plans. This was here so he could take it out of the dream, into the real world, brainwashed or not.
Just as he was about to commit it to memory, the dream began to collapse. The panels in the command center flickered and faded away. Seth could feel his bed around him. The light in his room back on the base pricked his eyes. He could hear soldiers outside his door, marching down the hall.
Seth panicked. It was too early. There was still so much that he didn’t understand. Why was he supposed to steal a starship? Where was he supposed to take it? He knew he could get the answer from the gnostin if he just had time. But its message was over.
He fought against the end of the dream. He tried to stay asleep. And as he struggled to pull out everything about the pill, everything about the plan he was supposed to undertake, he could find only one little nugget of information. It was a name. It was a company, a corporation that Seth had never heard of before, but he was sure they were the ones who manufactured the gnostin.
Lachesis Technologies.