[Original Novel] Pressure: First Encounter, Part 7

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Previous parts:} 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

It was the first time in her life that she doubted her own senses. Never one for drugs, the firmness of her sense of reality and the continuity of experience had always been a source of mild comfort for her. Taken for granted, maybe. The software chirped, a notification that Leonard had entered REM sleep and that as soon as a stable stream could be established it would begin visualizing.

The software was a product of three decades of research, tireless effort into decoding the patterns of electrochemical fireworks that took place in the brain during deep sleep. All interest in the field shifted focus to the visual cortex when against popular expectations, one team succeeded in extracting recognizable images from the brain of a comatose patient.

That the information in the brain should be ordered in a way that a computer could intercept images, and later short bursts of video, was a revolutionary find. She owed her career to it and ultimately that’s what led her to the Argyro, although at the moment she was understandably less thankful for that. Leonard's eyes fluttered beneath their lids. Moments later the screen lit up and began resolving a video feed.

None of it made sense. She didn't expect it to, dreams rarely did, but usually the setting or those populating it were taken from the subject's day to day experience. She saw no sign of the Argyro or her crew. Instead, the vista of an ice planet. It moved almost imperceptibly below, a slow rotation, with an enormous gas giant instantly recognizable as Jupiter looming over the horizon.

Ethereal and lonely. Before she could reflect on what it might mean, the view tilted violently and then plunged toward the surface. Though separated from it by a screen, the understanding that all of this was happening firsthand for Leonard made it feel vicariously frightening. On rapid approach to the planet's surface, a ravine came into view and it was soon apparent that he intended to enter it.

Despite her circumstances, Angie smiled. It was so appallingly Freudian. Leonard accelerated, and without so much as pausing to survey the surface he plunged into the frozen chasm. The descent continued for most of a minute, somehow taking longer than the trip from orbit to surface. Finally signs of water vapor appeared, and then the violent impact of penetrating an air/water interface at what looked to be several times the speed of sound.

The bubbles soon cleared and She found herself, or more appropriately Leonard's dream self, sailing steadily downward through a vast ocean beneath the ice. Although more articulate than Nate, Leonard hadn't struck her as a space nerd. All of it was fairly accurate so far as she knew, such ice moons did exist around Jupiter and what she'd seen so far was an admirably accurate rendition of what a descent into its subsurface ocean might look like. Not bad for an unconscious habtech.

Her first inkling that something was amiss came minutes later when the seafloor rose into view. Leonard, or rather dream Leonard, entered a slow approach towards a shadowy mass. Around it bright spots speckled the seafloor where magma boiled up through fissures from the molten core. Whatever it was, assuming the thermal vents were roughly the same size as those she'd seen in her briefing video, the mass was huge.

In that moment, well before the fuzzy black mass took on a recognizable shape, she knew. Her spine stiffened. Her tongue withdrew into her throat as if to choke her. There on the screen, just as it was in Leonard's mind, appeared the massive body she'd seen on the imager. No longer crudely represented by glowing green silhouette, but rendered by Leonard's mind in a clarity which increased with each passing second.

She tried to bolt for the door, to bring Eliot in and show him, but found that her body would move only in small increments and not as commanded. She murmured in distress, unable to take her eyes off the screen. Closer and closer, ever increasing detail, impossible anatomy and skin which left unresolved the question as to whether it was dormant or deceased.

The same mottled grey flesh she had seen in the sub. The same translucent quality, the same dark grey patches. The same face. Just then, a pair of arms came into view. As if Leonard, within his dream, had thought to gaze at his own hands for reassurance that everything around him was real.

Only, they weren't leonard's hands. Distended, skeletal grey limbs swayed in the currents before her, a tangled mess of long thin bones at the end of either. The same hands, or poor imitation of hands, that she'd seen in the trench. Of course, of all the stupid assumptions. This perspective wasn't Leonard's. It wasn't even Leonard's dream.

"I think what we're dealing with is something like a criminal." Light from the monitor flickered across Eliot and Nathan's faces as they watched the recording of Leonard's dream. "So this really came out of Leo's head, huh?" Angie sighed. "You're not listening. I don't think it evolved here."

Nathan snorted. "No shit". On the monitor the last of the dream played out, with a clear view of the creature's body just before the pair of pale, bony hands came into view. "It uses us as relays because it can't get a signal up through the water. That's why they put it here, to keep it from reaching anyone."

A faint beep sounded as the recording looped back to the beginning. The men seemed unsurprised by the footage, yet it was proving a chore to convince them of the obvious. "Who, Angie? Who put it here?" Fair question. "I don't have an answer for that. But something put it deep underwater to prevent it from contacting intelligent life. Probably long before there was any on Earth. And there's another one like it on Europa."

It felt bizarre to be speaking so matter of factly about alien life. If it was alien. Every so often they glanced at each other, as if hoping someone would restore sanity to the discussion. 'Of course it's not alien', they'd say, everyone would laugh and they could get down to the business of discussing what it might actually be within sensible constraints.

But nobody spoke up. There would be no such easy out. Instead, Eliot asked a question Angie hadn't anticipated. "What happens if they contact each other? Like, an unbroken connection between here and Europa. What if they connect?"

They sat quietly, the hull still dripping around them. Eventually someone would have to repair the dehumidifier. For the time being nobody budged. All four hunched over the kitchen table, picking at their oatmeal, silently contemplating what had been said.

Nathan's session came next. Anxiety kept him wide awake for a good thirty minutes or so, but whiskey and warm blankets did the trick and soon his dreams were playing out before their eyes. All were aware on some level of the intimacy of it, each in turn exposing the contents of their subconscious to the rest.

On the screen before them laid the long gash of the Marianas trench. The trench walls receded into darkness, but one could vaguely make out a moving form. Side to side it swayed as it grew in size, a dark blob silhouetted against the blackness of the abyss. Soon the shape resolved itself. It was the creature, slowly and strenuously climbing the trench wall.

Angie gasped and began to stand, but Eliot gripped her shoulder and gestured for her to keep watching. The black fog gave way to grey. As the image widened, it became clear that 'dream Nathan' was on the surface, standing on an endless foggy beach. The sand was littered with seaweed, bits of wood and decaying jellyfish.

Soon a silhouette appeared out to sea. Impossibly huge, and unmistakably humanoid. Each step seemed labored, its asymmetrical body struggling to locomote out of water. Dozens gathered on the beach alongside Nate. Then hundreds. Then seemingly thousands, crowding the shoreline as far as the eye could see in either direction.

They left their homes, businesses, even cars in the middle of the road as though struck by a shared epiphany. The shambling mass halted, still shrouded in fog. Suddenly a pair of long, narrow eye slits lit up in a deep, piercing red. Beams of this sickly red light shone forth through the fog and swept over the gathered masses.

Their bodies quivered, then quaked, but did not collapse. Those nearest Nathan began gibbering. Then a loud, low pitched hum sounded. It had a powerful impact, even through the computer’s speakers.

Something about it gripped Angie's heart. Everyone on the beach calmly did an about face, and marched back towards their coastal town. In the distance the figure resumed its slow march to shore. The hum grew louder as it approached, from a muted groan to a blaring monotonous din.

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