CHAPTER 20 - The Truth

 

 

 

Danny held Caprice in silence, almost long enough for his extraordinary sense of vertigo to subside. Her head still resting on his chest, she said, “Are you going to come inside?”

“Sure,” he said. She released her hold on him, and led him by the hand into the house. It was exactly as he remembered it. That alone gave him some confidence that at least some of what he had been through was real. “I could have you arrested, you know,” he said, matter-of-factly.

Caprice giggled. “Actually, you couldn’t, but you wouldn’t even if you could.”

He was unable to resist smiling at that. “You’re right, I wouldn’t. Still, I think I might be very angry with you right now. Did you drug me?”

She pouted. “Oh, Danny, I’m so sorry about that. Are you all right?”

“Strangely enough,” he said, “I am. You did it in the garage, didn’t you?”

She raised her eyebrows at that. “No, but it was right before that. I slipped it into your Coke at Sullivan’s. It would have started to take effect sometime after we got to the library.”

“Close enough. I know I was clear-headed until sometime after your disappearing-reappearing act. Although I am kind of surprised that the library was real. I had that figured for a hallucination.”

She shook her head. “Artificial environment, but what you saw was really there.”

“And the cave?”

“Same thing, although by that point your perception of it was probably altered.” She tilted her head, and he noticed for the first time that her eyes were a very natural looking green. “How did you know it was after I disappeared?”

“Your chess queen did the same thing in my apartment two days ago,” he said. “That’s how I knew what you did in the garage was real. I probably would have written off the whole week as a drug-induced fantasy if I hadn’t seen that happen.”

Her mouth formed a little O of surprise. “You kept that?” She smiled meekly at the thought. “That’s so sweet.”

“Yeah,” he said, not at all bothered by her suggestion that hanging onto a sample of her blood was a touching gesture. “I forgot I had it until I was unpacking my hospital bag. I only had it in my hands for a few seconds, and when I put it down, it disintegrated. Just like you did, except it stayed gone.”

“It lost all its cohesion when it lost contact with you. It’s a miracle it lasted as long as it did. I wonder why. Your clothing must have been binding it this whole time. I’ve never heard of that before.” She smiled again. “I think that means you attached a lot of importance to those pants. That’s sweet, too.”

He held up his hands. “Caprice? Slow down. I figured a few things out, but I still don’t understand most of the last week.”

“Right,” she said. “Sorry.”

“You didn’t really bite my ear.”

“Oh!” she said. “No! No, I didn’t do that. Oh, I am sorry about that too. I was… I was trying to scare you.”

“I know,” he said. “And that was very kind of you.”

Her green eyes went wide. “You know?”

He nodded. “That you were trying to protect me? That part was obvious once I thought it through. I still don’t know from what, but I would like to know for myself. You don’t need to chase me away. If I can’t handle it, I’ll go on my own.”

She looked down sheepishly. “Fair enough,” she said.

“You’re not a goddess,” he said. It was not a question.

“No,” she confirmed.

“Or a monster.”

“Also no.”

He paused. “But you are an alien.” She nodded. He felt a bit of a rush from that confirmation, but not as dramatic as he expected. “I can’t figure out if the pigeon thing was a real threat, or something you planted.”

She frowned. “Real, alas. That’s part of what I wanted to protect you from.”

Danny felt a chill. “Okay. We’ll come back to that. Exiled queen?”

“Yes.”

He nodded. “I thought so. That’s about all I have at this point.”

“You want the rest?” Such a simple sounding offer, for what was essentially the opportunity to know things no one else in the world could ever know.

“Yes,” he said.

He blacked out. This time the sensation was familiar, and he was able to keep a firmer grasp on his awareness. He experienced the stomach lurching, the dizziness and the loss of vision, but having gone through it once before with no ill effects, he was able to ride it out with a sense of relative security.

When his sight returned, he found himself in an enormous enclosed space. It was impossible to gauge exactly how big, in part because the curvature of the room made it difficult to tell what its exact shape was, and partly because it appeared to be filled with hovering platforms of various shapes, sizes and colors, all of which were in slow but constant motion. It took him a few seconds to realize that he was standing on one of these platforms.

“Where are we?” he asked. Unlike the last few times he asked that question, this time he found there was no fear behind it, just intense curiosity.

“We are in the main chamber of an Abulian yacht. It’s where I have spent most of the last sixteen centuries.”

“We’ve been here before,” said Danny. He had no basis for the observation beyond his own intuition, but he saw Caprice nod.

“It looked like a library last time,” she said. “And a cave.”

“And then the rest of the universe, right?”

Caprice bit her lip. “Actually, that was partly the drug. Sorry.” As she spoke, their platform descended to the level of another that rose to meet it. She took his hand. “Come,” she said. They stepped from one platform to another. Danny felt the subtle shift of inertia from down to up, and it reminded him of the sensation of stepping off a boat onto solid ground, or vice versa. Large, multicolored cauliflower covered the new platform. Caprice brushed her hand over one of these objects, and it blurred out, reforming in a slightly different shape and hue. The platform rotated about an eighth of a turn, and continued in its new direction.

“Did we teleport here?” asked Danny.

“Don’t be silly,” said Caprice. “I dropped us through a wormhole. Teleportation would never work. How could you make someone disappear and then put them back together again from nothing?”

“You did it,” he countered.

“Tch,” she said. “That was completely different.” She bit her lip again. “And not at all magic, you should know. That was a lie, too. This is all Abulian technology.”

“Abulia is a symptom, you know,” said Danny.

“So I hear,” said Caprice. “It’s still the closest translation of my country’s name into English. Besides, I like the way it sounds.”

Danny took in the sights as they traveled. Passing by each platform, he could see they all contained vastly different, but unidentifiable objects. “Your country’s name literally means the place where no one can make up their minds about anything?”

She tipped her head back and forth a bit, considering that idea. “Mmmm. That’s not how we see it, but I can understand why you might.”

“Is Caprice a literal translation of your name as well?”

She shrugged. “More or less. It’s a bit more complicated than that, but the name suits.”

“I agree.”

“Come,” she said again, and they hopped onto another platform.

“Where are we going?” he asked.

“I want to show you something,” she said.

He looked around. Among the drifting platforms, there were distant flashes of color, like lightning, minus the thunder. He heard some kind of mechanical groan, and what sounded like rushing water. “I would say you’re showing me something right now.”

“I need to show you the most important something,” she said, but did not elaborate.

They rode in silence for the next minute or so. Danny took in the otherworldly environment with awe, and something akin to comfort. He wondered how he would have taken it if Caprice had shown him all of this right from the start. Not well, he supposed.

The platform came to rest against the curved wall of the chamber, and adjusted its contour to make a flush contact. The wall itself rippled, and a small opening appeared, which widened to a door-sized hole. Caprice stepped off the platform and stood in the doorway. She held out her hand. “This is it, Daniel. No more secrets.”

Danny took her hand, and cautiously stepped inside.

He found himself in a room that appeared amorphous like the enormous chamber, but significantly smaller. It felt cooler in here, and the air had a dull, mossy aroma to it. Tables of various sizes filled the room, randomly arranged, and molded directly from the floor. Cauliflower-like protrusions extended from the walls. Everything was irregular curves; Danny was unable to find anything that looked like a straight line or an angle. Caprice led him to one of the larger table objects. It was oblong, dark gray, and about ten feet long. She brushed her fingers along one side, and several bulbous growths emerged from the surface. She waved her hand softly over these, and the top of the table faded to transparency.

Danny was less prepared for what lay within than he thought. The table was a tank. Inside that tank, submerged in clear fluid, and motionless, lay a creature that spanned the length of its container. A hard yellow and green shell covered half of its body. An assortment of light brown tentacles and jointed limbs comprised the other half. Through four slots in the shell, Danny could see dark flaps that were either stubby wings or hairy fins. He stared with gruesome awe. After a few seconds, he realized he had stopped breathing, and gasped.

“What is this?” he whispered, uncertain if there was any chance his voice would be heard through the walls of the tank. He turned to his host, who stood with her hands clasped in front of her, as meek as he had ever seen her.

“That,” she said, “is Queen Caprice.”

Danny stared at the young woman before him, and then at the sixteen hundred year old monster in the tank at his side. “Oh. Dear God,” he whispered. “Are you telling me this is you?”

She shook her head. “No. Not me. Just somewhere I used to live.”

He looked back to her. “And now you live in that body?”

She nodded.

He took another moment to study the horror trapped beneath the clear cover. “You said you were an exact duplicate.”

“In every way that matters, yes.”

“You don’t think this matters?” He felt his voice squeak on the last word.

She shrugged. “Not anymore.”

He continued to stare into the tank in fascination. “Is it… Is she… dead?”

“Queen Caprice survived the emergency landing on this world, but she was terribly injured. She survived for several years, but eventually succumbed to those injuries.” The young woman cleared her throat, and continued. “Yes, she is dead.”

He turned and scrutinized Caprice. “What are you?” he asked. She looked down, then away. Her lower lip was pulled tight, and it twitched. “Caprice?” he said gently. She frowned at him. “Who are you?” he corrected.

She took a moment to collect herself. “I am all that remains of her. This ship is designed to create any type of environment. You have seen that yourself. It is no illusion. The objects it creates are real, be they solid, liquid or gas. They are made of a substance which you would consider a type of artificial matter. It is real, right down to the particle level, but it needs to be maintained or it loses its cohesion.”

“The chess queen,” he whispered.

She nodded. “For example. The nurse uniform, too. For a moment I was concerned you had figured out at least that much, but then you let it drop.”

“The chess queen disintegrated,” he said. “As soon as I put it down it dissolved into thin air.” She watched him patiently as he put the pieces together. “Just like you. You’re made of that stuff.”

For a moment, she said nothing. Then, “I was created for Queen Caprice, by Queen Caprice, to be her avatar on this world while she recovered. I served that purpose for several years. I was her eyes, her ears, her voice, and her consciousness in every way.”

“But then she died,” said Danny.

“Yes,” said the avatar. “She did.”

Danny sat down on the floor, and took several deep breaths. “So, what happened then?”

“While she lived, I was an extension of her. When the end came, as her final act, she imbued me with all that she was.” She walked to the tank, and put her fingers to the clear surface, delicately. “I am she.”

“She gave you her mind?”

Caprice shook her head and smiled sadly. “Her soul.”

Danny stayed on the floor in silence for several minutes. Eventually, Caprice sat down next to him. “Are you all right?” she asked.

He thought about that. “Yeah,” he said. He looked at her, and in her sixteen hundred year old, artificial matter eyes, he saw pain, and loneliness. “Are you?” he asked.

She thought about that question too. “I think I may be,” she said. “But there’s one more thing for you to see.”

“Seriously?” he asked, stunned. “What could be left?”

She stood, and held out her hand. He hesitated, then took it. It felt warm, and smooth, and soft, and entirely human, just as it had felt every other time he had touched it. He found himself able to brush aside any new phantom sensations that crept in with his new knowledge of her.

She led him to another table, this one an approximate circle, four feet in diameter. She performed the same operations as she had on the last tank, and the surface of this one went transparent too. Inside, Danny found another creature of the same general structure, but considerably smaller. It only had two of the fin-wing things, and was adorned with a spiky crest down the center of the shell. Apart from slight color variations, it otherwise resembled the remains of Queen Caprice.

“Who is this?” asked Danny.

“This,” said Caprice, “was my love.” As she spoke, a real, liquid tear fell from her left eye onto the clear surface. It lay there for a few seconds. Then she cleared her throat, and it became a tiny puff of white dust.

Danny felt a chill. “Does he have an avatar too?” he asked quietly.

Caprice shook her head. “He did not survive the crash. That’s why I was unable to leave, or call for help.”

Danny gazed into the little tank. “I don’t understand.”

“What do you know about your own technology?” she asked.

It seemed like a non sequitur. “What do you mean?”

“If I asked you how your cell phone works, or what makes an airplane fly, would you be able to tell me?”

He thought about that, still confused by the shift. If she had been pinning her hopes on Danny’s ability to understand Abulian technology, this would not end well. “Sort of. I could give you a general idea, but not the specifics.”

“But if you absolutely had to understand it, really understand the specifics you say you lack, what would you do?”

“I’m not sure,” he said. “I could read up on it. There are probably very helpful articles on Wikipedia. Where are you going with this?” He attempted to sound impatient, but suspected his nervousness would show through any second.

“So,” she said, “you would learn it. You would read about it, or have someone explain it to you, and eventually you would know it.”

“I guess that’s right,” he said cautiously.

“We don’t learn,” she said.

He waited for the rest of the sentence. It never came. “You don’t learn what?” he asked.

“Anything,” she said.

He shook his head in bafflement. “I don’t understand.”

“What a perfect example,” she said. “You want to understand. Understanding is an intellectual process, and you rely on that. We don’t ever understand. It’s beyond our capacity. Everything we know, we intuit.”

“What do you mean?”

“Look around you,” she said, holding out her arms. “Not just this room, look out at the rest of the ship.” She pointed through the door, and he caught another glimpse of the wonders beyond it. “Could you ever make something like this?”

“Not yet,” he said, “but maybe someday.”

She shook her head. “You think we made this work of art in here.” She pointed to her head. “We made it in here.” She held both hands over her heart.

“What does that mean?”

“All of this, all Abulian creation, it’s not intellectual. We don’t think, we emote. This ship wasn’t designed by engineers with college degrees and formulas.” She thumped on her heart for emphasis. “We felt this entire ship into being. We poured our hearts into it, and it became this glorious yacht. And this is only the tiniest part of the tiniest part of what we have created.”

Danny shook his head. “That doesn’t make sense.”

“It wouldn’t. I have seen your world for sixteen hundred years. No one here could hope to grasp what I am showing you today. And I can sympathize. I have spent those sixteen hundred years failing to grasp how you accomplish what you do with your minds.”

Danny processed this. “You really can’t make decisions.”

She smiled sadly. “No. We’ve never had to before.”

He feared his next question, but it had to be asked. “So, why do you need me?”

Without speaking, she took his hand again, and led him back out to the platform. The opening sealed itself behind them. She brushed her hand against one of the knobby controls on the platform, and it glowed a dull orange. “Hold your hand over this, and find your happy place.”

He laughed, nervously. “What?”

She offered him a warm smile. “Go on.”

He tentatively held his hand out, closed his eyes, and went digging into his emotional repertoire looking for joy. The sounds in the room faded and came back up as something else. He opened his eyes, and found himself back in the meadow where Caprice had lied to him about being a goddess.

“You brought us back here,” he said.

“No. You brought us here,” she said. “Both times.”

He looked at her. “I did?”

“Mm hmm. Everything in this environment responds to emotional states. You needed a safe haven from the demon cave, so you created one and the ship gave it to you. You are looking at a literal interpretation of the happy place your heart craves.”

“Wow!” he said, casting his gaze out to the horizon. “This is all real?”

She nodded. “Until it loses cohesion. At some point you won’t need it, or you will tell it to go away.”

He gasped. “Are you telling me you need me to do this for you?”

She laughed. “Of course not. This is the simplest application of Abulian technology. A child could do it.”

“Oh,” he said. He made no attempt to hide his disappointment.

“This is just the beginning. I show you this so you can perceive the reality of my ship. Everything here is powered by emotions.”

“Really?” Danny asked. “Everything? What does that mean?”

“Your chess piece is a perfect example,” she explained. “When you first picked it up, you charged it, probably with sentiment. That’s why it lasted as long as it did. I’m certain the rest of the set vanished after only a few hours, once I was done with it.”

Danny took that in. “You’re telling me all of this is created and maintained on nothing but feelings?”

“And powered,” she added.

“Whoa,” he said. “That’s incredible!”

“It’s also why I have remained here since the crash,” she said. “My world is unfathomably far from here. The ship is repaired, and it would be able to take me there, but I haven’t been able to power the engine to travel at the necessary speed.”

“Why not?” he asked. “What do you need to power the engine?”

She looked at him with wide, exotic, pleading eyes.

“What?” he asked. “I don’t get it.”

She bit her lip. Tilted her head.

He looked around the room, trying to figure out what purpose he could possibly serve her. “Seriously,” he said. “What?”

She looked down, then reached out gently and took his hand. He felt the softness and warmth of her touch, and even the knowledge that her hand was cobbled together from artificial atoms did not diminish the sensation. He squeezed back, and closed his eyes.

Then those eyes snapped open.

“Oh. My. God,” he said. “You want me to love you.”

“You already do.”

He reached up to clutch his hair with his one free hand. The other continued to hold Caprice’s. “Oh, my God. This is crazy. Caprice, love just doesn’t work that way! I don’t know if you’ve been paying attention for the last sixteen hundred years, but we don’t exactly just decide to fall in love with each other. It’s complicated!”

“No, it isn’t.”

“Yes,” he said, “it is! Good grief, girl! People spend years, sometimes lifetimes trying to find what you want from me in a week! Not to mention the kind of week it was! Are you insane?” His heart pounded, and he dimly realized he still held her hand.

She giggled, which Danny considered a counterintuitive response to his brow beating. “I know. I’ve never seen anything so silly, over and over again.” She rubbed the back of his hand with her thumb.

“I suppose this was all a huge Abulian courtship rite?”

“We don’t court,” she said. “We know. Always. Immediately. Forever.”

He stopped ranting, and took in the resolve in her eyes. “You’ve been waiting sixteen hundred years for me? I’m not special.”

“You are to me.”

“But it makes no sense!”

“True love is not a slave to logic, Daniel.”

“Caprice, you’re a squid!”

She pouted. “Not anymore. This is who I am now. It’s real. I’m real.”

“Can you have children?” he snapped with reflexive cruelty, a second before being able to stop himself. He bit his tongue.

“If you want them,” she said, with no sign of offense.

Danny blinked. “Wow,” he whispered.

“Admit it,” she pressed. “You knew it the first time you saw me. Didn’t you?”

“Love at first sight isn’t real love.”

“It’s the only real love!” she cried. For a moment, no one spoke. Then Caprice collected herself. “Danny, I can give you a life that everyone else on your world can only dream of. You don’t have to take it, but you can’t tell me you don’t want it.”

He hesitated. “What’s the catch?”

She bit her lip. “I am the rightful monarch of Abulia. This all began when my love and I fled a coup attempt. I have not only been trapped here all this time, I have been in hiding. That ends now. There is risk, and we are returning to an imperfect situation.”

He puzzled over this. “It’s been sixteen hundred years, and you’re technically dead. Are you sure you can even go home?”

“I have no choice,” she said. “I have already been discovered. You saw the pigeon. As to my status, souled avatars are recognized as people in my country. And I am a special case, to boot. They will welcome me.”

“Except the ones who hate you.”

“Yes,” she admitted, “except them.”

“How can a race driven entirely by emotions get tied up in political struggles?” he asked. “If you’re all so touchy-feely, why don’t you live in perpetual harmony?”

Caprice sighed. “Yes, we are driven entirely by emotions. Sadly, we are also driven by our darker emotions. This,” she said, sweeping her arms around to indicate the yacht again, “was created with joy, and generosity. And it is beautiful. But you will also find creations of greed, or loneliness.” She paused, then added quietly, “Or rage. As I said, it is an imperfect situation. I come from an imperfect world.” She looked at him with a melancholy seriousness. “I think of all our disparate experiences, you and I, that one fact may be our strongest common point of reference.”

He thought about this. “Caprice, I have to ask,” he said. “How do I know I would be taking the right side in your war? How do I know you aren’t a terrible tyrant queen, and that your world is better off without you?”

She squeezed his hand. “Because you know me,” she said. “You’ll say that you don’t, but you know that you do.”

Another awkward pause followed. “How do you know this will even work? I mean, what if I’m not the guy you’ve been waiting for this whole time?” Even as he said it, he cringed at the thought of being right.

“Danny,” she said, and in her artificially created cheeks, he saw a real blush. She took his other hand then, and stretched up to plant one soft kiss on his lips. Brushing her cheek against his, she whispered in his ear, “The engines came online as soon as I brought you aboard.”

No one spoke.

“I don’t know what to do,” Danny said at last.

“Do you trust me?” asked Caprice.

“Yes,” he said without hesitation.

“Do you love me?” she asked.

“You know I do.”

She grinned. “Then let’s go home.”

 

 

THE END

 

 

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

 

Edward Aubry lives in rural Pennsylvania with his wife and three daughters, where he has taught high school math for the past twelve years. Caprice is his second novel. His first novel, Static Mayhem was published in 2010 by WorldMaker Media.

 

 

Read other work by Edward Aubry

On May 25 nearly everyone in the world disappears…

STATIC MAYHEM