The Lost Jupiter (Maura's Gate Book 3) Read online

  Mina and Thurman glanced at each other, not knowing what to say.

  “One thing we are unable to replicate, though.” He sat in the rocking chair and hesitated, appearing apologetic for whatever comment he was going to make. “War. I’m not talking about regional conflicts, but massive warfare that involves highly-civilized nations, thousands or millions of people, licensed manufacturers and research organizations to produce lethal weapons targeted on their fellow beings. Here we also have people who do terrible stuff, but they are called criminals and they got put into jails.”

  “Then what do you need soldiers for?” Mina asked.

  “Mental health.”

  “That’s a fresh concept.”

  “However authentic it feels, life inside a virtual world can be quite depressing. You know, when things don’t work out, people blame their environment. Originally, we had nine million people when we left Tau Ceti. During the trip, some committed suicides, some decided not to come back or have children …”

  Come back? Mina frowned at the notion but remained silent. From what?

  “Starting this century, our population had dwindled into six hundred thousand. Then, some fifty years ago, we accidentally found that military training is a good way of boosting morality. When you have to follow a rigid schedule, when you’re tired of all the physical work at the end of a day, your mind will have no room for questions like whether life is meaningful or not.”

  “Could you tell us why we are here?” Thurman sounded impatient.

  Abnor looked at them as if talking to two terminal patients.

  “We got mind-transferred to Jupiter because our home planet was going through a disaster. Some kind of space discontinuity … I don’t know the science! Anyway, I heard the same thing is going to happen here.”

  “Are you sure?” Mina wasn’t ready to accept it yet. “Who told you?”

  “Lord Lionel. He never makes mistakes, however the government accuses him.” Abnor rose from the chair and gestured the guests to go out with him. “In the worst case, you humans could join us. So don’t worry too much. Now I’d like you to meet my soldiers. Come this way, please.”

  * * *

  When Mina entered the courtyard, which was a fenced corner of a large plaza, she recalled being sent to a boot camp during the second summer in the Navy Academy. It was hell! Shouting, jumping, climbing, falling asleep the moment her head touched the pillow. Yet sometimes she missed it, like those sleepless nights in the large bedroom for an officer of her rank. How young she used to be! A stage of life when she looked forward and saw endless possibilities. And she remembered one of the officers who had trained her. He had a deep and resonant voice. Wasn’t he nicer to her than to other cadets? Or maybe it was just a girl’s fantasy.

  They walked past a row of armed vehicles, a basketball court, and a brightly-lit indoor fitness center that transcended everything else. On the other side of the plaza stood an array of soldiers, roughly fifty of them. They were standing in straight rows, neatly dressed in uniform. Again, something about them felt wrong to Mina.

  “Forgot to ask about your rank,” Abnor said to her in a low voice.

  “Lieutenant Commander.”

  “Alright, guys!” Abnor stopped in front of his soldiers. “Thank you for being patient. It’s a great pleasure for me to bring you Lieutenant Commander Cheung from the United States Navy. I’m sure you’ll learn a great deal from her.” He extended a hand at Mina while moving aside.

  Mina walked up to the front and browsed through the array. “Come out, you.” She pointed her chin at one of them.

  The man stepped out of the array.

  “Take your top off,” she said.

  “Excuse me?”

  The rest of the soldiers burst into laughter and whistle.

  Mina sighed and said to Abnor, “My soldiers would have been naked by now.”

  “Well, Jason, would you please follow her madam’s command?” Abnor said.

  Jason unbuttoned his tunic and shirt and threw them to the ground.

  “How long have you been here?” Mina asked while she stared at the shining skin and well-built muscles.

  “Eighteen months, ma’am.”

  “I can’t hear you.”

  “Eighteen months!”

  “Did you not eat breakfast?”

  “EIGHTEEN MONTHS!”

  “Good. You can put your clothes on.”

  She walked over to Abnor and said in a low voice, “This is a joke. You aren’t training soldiers. You are breeding models, or boxers, at best.”

  Smile disappeared from Abnor’s face. “They are not strong enough?”

  “Building a muscular body is not a critical part of military training. When overdone, it can even hurt.”

  “For example?”

  “When you have to crawl through rabbit holes to enter enemy’s territory, to fit as many wounded as you can in an overloaded helicopter, to walk on the roof, hide behind a tree, or survive on minimal food.”

  Abnor twisted his mouth. “These scenarios are unlikely to occur in our world. Every healthy young man or woman is required to take the mandatory training for a year. Then most of them go back to their regular life. Only star soldiers stay, and they are like cops.” He nodded at the array. “In a week they’ll head off to Marffcaban, the most depressing area on the east coast.”

  Mina turned to Thurman. “You’re the criminal, then.”

  Thurman walked over to Jason and said, “I’m going to take your gun.”

  Hearing the words, Jason’s right hand reached for his gun, only to find his leg holster empty. In the meantime, Thurman had pressed the gun on his forehead.

  “Jeez …” Abnor muttered and looked away.

  Jason raised his hand and grabbed Thurman’s wrist. As he yanked Thurman downward, he made a thrust at Thurman’s neck with his left fist. Thurman ducked low, skirted to Jason’s back, and hit him on the back. Jason let out a muffled yelp and crashed to the ground.

  “Skills, speed, alertness,” Mina said, “but above all, the determination to survive, to fulfill one’s duty and achieve the common goal, to stand a little longer after the opponents fall down, can often sway a battle’s outcome even in modern warfare.”

  “You humans are a brutal race.”

  Mina took it as a compliment. “I’m not an advocator of war. Nevertheless, the fighters’ spirit does have its value in advancing our history. Life sparks when it’s pushed to the limits, where it’s an individual or a nation.”

  As she said the words, she remembered the war they were facing, a war that may destroy their entire home planet. How were they going to win a battle against the universe? A battle a more advanced civilization had lost?

  Chapter 4 The Daddy

  The first floor of the casino was a bar, with a circular counter at the center and empty table sets along the walls. Inside the counter, a woman wearing a cream suit and a neat hair bun was filling a glass with some kind of liquor, but to Devin, she looked more like a corporate manager than a bar waitress.

  “Hi, Melissa!” she glanced at the entrance and said.

  “Hi, Amanda.” Melissa walked toward her. “Is Dad here?”

  “He just came in, sweetheart.” Amanda set the drink on a tray and walked out from behind the counter. There was a moment when her movement stagnated and her gaze fell on Devin. Then she gave him a courtly smile before she and Melissa headed to a narrow stairway next to the restrooms.

  Did she know who he was? Devin followed them downstairs to the large underground casino that must have connected several basements of adjacent buildings. The furnishing was nowhere comparable to Vegas, but everything a conventional casino should have was there. It was still early and the dealers hadn’t come to work yet. A few customers were sitting at the slot machines and enjoying themselves.

  The two women led him to a glass-walled office situated in a corner. When Devin was greeted by Melissa’s father, he couldn’t believe how young the man appeared to
be. He had sleek, side-parted dark hair, neck length. The aquiline nose and pale skin contributed to a rather aristocratic look. Although the maroon dress shirt fitted him well, it could have been replaced by a black robe.

  “Lionel Parrish.” He introduced himself when they shook hands. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Lee.”

  Devin sat in a chair next to Lionel’s desk, on which he saw a few family photos, a stack of printed documents that were probably related to the casino’s business, and a crystal globe placed on a tiny stand.

  “You were right, Dad.” Melissa winked at her father. “As always.”

  “Would you like to drink something, sir?” Amanda asked before she left the room with Melissa.

  “Water’s fine. Thanks.”

  Devin felt dehydrated, but after he said the words, a question surfaced in his mind. Where was his body? Was it inside Epianna, or somewhere else? No matter what, he was in a simulated world. Would drinking virtual water help quench his thirst?

  “I have to apologize for my daughter’s demeanor, Mr. Lee. I adopted her when she was four.”

  And when you were seven? Devin thought as he surveyed Melissa’s father. He was at most a few years older than her, yet Devin had never seen a pair of eyes like his, so deep and comprehensive, with a motion one could only describe as the “swirl of time”. Yes, this young man could be a father, or a godfather, if … if not God himself.

  “Where were you born, Mr. Lee? May I ask?”

  “A small town in Berkshire, England.” Devin’s family moved to the United States when he was in second grade.

  “Berkshire County …” Lionel squinted with a hand supporting his chin. “Hmm, I don’t think I’ve ever been there. We used to visit you often, but since your invention of cameras we no longer wanted to take the risk. Besides, we can watch your satellite TV at home.”

  Devin smiled briefly and shook his head. “For centuries, people have been asking the question: Are we alone in the universe? How could we have suspected that a neighbor lived right next to us, in the last place one would look for life in this system, watching our developments and speaking our languages?”

  “Believe me, we too have longed for friends, but until recently you weren’t able to understand us.”

  Devin agreed. The realization of virtual reality would have been difficult to conceive before the computer era.

  “But later, we became concerned about our safety. We have nothing to match your Cassiopeia.”

  Devin’s face burned slightly. When Lionel and his people arrived, humans were not much smarter than monkeys, but they didn’t take advantage of their superiority. Now why should they be afraid of us?

  “But you aren’t completely defenseless, right?” Devin said, referring to the tube they had seen earlier.

  A broad smile emerged on Lionel’s face. “I wish I could talk to you often, Mr. Lee.”

  His words made Devin think of Roland.

  Then the smile slowly faded as Lionel leaned forward. “Are you aware of the catastrophe you’ll be facing in a few years?”

  The catastrophe … Devin wanted to pretend he knew nothing. Since he entered this virtual world he’d been inspired by all the new information, about Jupiter, about their neighbor. Now he felt like a fugitive being cornered by cops. Although he never questioned on the credibility of Rose’s story, deep in his mind incubated the hope that the whole thing was just a miscalculation, a false alarm, or … or something that might happen in the future but not now. Whatever! The sole source of the prophecy was an Alien’s brain copy. Now Lionel’s confirmation had shattered all the possibilities.

  “In eight years,” Devin said, “our solar system will go through some kind of space discontinuity. A gravitational fault caused by interactions among celestial bodies. Horrible things will happen, and Earth is no longer suitable for life even if we manage to survive the direct impact.”

  “Oh!” Lionel sounded surprised. “So you did know about it! Have you come up with a solution?”

  “No.” They were nowhere close to a solution. In fact, they didn’t even know where to start.

  A few months after his comet trip, he got a call from Kenton when he and Tracy were visiting her parents.

  “We would like to get your opinion, Devin. After all, you were on the comet and might have noticed something.”

  So Devin flew back on the next day. When he entered the conference room, he saw a woman sitting at a table with Kenton. He had a faint memory of meeting her somewhere—the springy hair, the dark-blue eyes that mysteriously reminded him of the outer space. Though, at the moment, the universe was burning with fumes.

  “So! Ms. Melandroinno told us she knew who had controlled the comet,” Kenton said with an I-don’t-want-to-deal-with-this kind of tone. “In short, she found a headquarters in her basement, which she later destroyed with an axe. Collateral damages included her husband who was supposed to have died several years ago, and an alien who had lived twenty-five hundred years. Did I get everything correctly, Ms. Melandroinno?”

  So she was the one who had spared him from crashing onto the comet, Devin realized. “Yes, that’s right,” he said. “I heard their conversation.”

  “You heard my/their conversation? How?” Rose and Kenton yelled simultaneously.

  “And how much did you hear?” she added, her voice quivering.

  “Why did the aliens do this?” Devin asked.

  Kenton briefly described the so-called Maura’s Gate before he said to Rose, “It’s not that I don’t trust you. The experts we sent to your house indeed identified technology that’s far beyond our comprehension. And when I consulted a few relativistic astrophysicists, they said in theory similar things could happen, but so far there’s no indication that we would experience it in a foreseeable time period.”

  “It’s going to happen whether you believe it or not,” Rose said aloofly.

  “Things always happen regardless of our will!” Kenton was nearly bellowing. “If aliens were going to invade us, at least we could make more space warships. But what can we do to stop the solar system from going somewhere? Over the years we’ve visited dozens of territorial planets. None is suitable for humans. Shall we simply let out the big news and have everyone start counting the day?”

  The three remained quiet for a long time. Leaning back in his chair, Devin wished he could wake up from the nightmare any minute now. Since he came home from that mission, he had made several attempts to come up with a reasonable explanation. Fruitless, but at least the comet was gone and the case could be “closed”. Now he realized the worst part was yet to begin.

  “You know what?” he remembered Rose saying before she left. “I’m doing this merely out of a citizen’s responsibility. As far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t matter when the world ends.”

  At that moment, Devin was too distressed by the bad news to take in what she said. In retrospect, however, he wondered what had made her not care.

  * * *

  “It was the year after Queen Evemona celebrated her eightieth birthday in the Diamond Palace …” Time spun inside Lionel’s eyes. “When one of our ships observed it at another planetary system. You could see smoke rising from the surface of a planet as it went through this invisible plane. That was when it entered with an angle. If perpendicular, the planet would experience notable vibrations. Based on model simulations, our expert predicted that similar things would happen to us in fifteen years. While they were studying the problem, we started building the Kernel inside Jupiter as a backup.”

  The glass door slid open and Amanda walked in with a glass of ice water. Devin nodded at her when she left the water on the table before redirecting his attention to Lionel. Somehow, he had a feeling that the story was not a piece of acquired knowledge but personal experience.

  “Despite the effort and progress, we failed to find a solution in time. We began mind-transferring our people two years prior to the day. To our surprise, the whole process finished in less than a year,
since the majority would rather die in a real world than continue as a soul.”

  Devin thought he could understand. If he weren’t given a tour, maybe he’d make the same decision.

  “We didn’t know the impact was so intense, due to the enormous body, that Jupiter got expelled from our system. Our home planet was also blown away by the resulting space disturbance.” Lionel glanced at the outside through the glass walls. “Luckily we had rejected the initial solar-power design for the Kernel.”

  “Then how are you powered?”

  Lionel set his left hand on the crystal globe. In a flash, the casino outside the office was replaced with darkness. As light began glowing out from the glass walls, Devin found that the office had become a capsule attached to the exterior of the Kernel. With a twist of the globe by the young man’s hand, the capsule broke free and joined the flowing air and energy. They quickly descended until they were beneath the cloud top. Then the capsule took a horizontal motion in the direction of the Kernel. Every once in a while, they would encounter a tube that presumably connected the Kernel to the ocean.

  “Most of them are used as energy sources, except the ones near the periphery.”

  Devin nodded as he reached for the glass of water on the desk. “Are we …” He wasn’t sure how to ask the question. “Really here?”

  Had his mind been transferred here, traveling underneath the cloud top, or was something else doing the job and simply relaying the experience to him?

  Lionel didn’t answer the question. He gazed at Devin’s water and shook his head firmly. Confused, Devin set the glass back to the desk. Was there something wrong with the water? Didn’t Lionel finish his drink a while ago?

  With his left hand still on the globe, Lionel lifted his right hand and took a pen from the table. He quickly wrote something on a piece of paper and handed it to Devin.