Cryptikon Far Freedom Part 2
Warren Merkey
FAR FREEDOM
Part 2
CRYPTIKON
A. Warren Merkey
Copyright 2015 A. Warren Merkey
revised July 2017
License Note
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only.
It may not be re-sold or given away to other people.
Dedicated to my wife
Cynthia
without whose encouragement
the story would remain unwritten.
Part 2: CRYPTIKON
2-01 1986CE - West Virginia
2-02 Simple Pleasure
2-03 Find Me. Kill Me.
2-04 Is This Jamie?
2-05 Sons Remembered, Mai Retained
2-06 Iggy Remembered
2-07 What Admiral Ever Wept?
2-08 1980CE - The Proposal
2-09 Black Queen to White Knight
2-10 Stealing Freedom
2-11 He's Dead and I Loved Him
2-12 The Name of Her Husband
2-13 Stopping the Stampede
2-14 Climbing a Mountain to Phuti
2-15 Siblings
2-16 The Lady in the Moon
2-17 Khalanov Meets Wingren
2-18 Captain Jones and the Malay Pirates
2-19 Princess Charming
2-20 Ship in a Bottle
2-21 Explaining Makawee
2-22 1980CE - Quantum Circuits, Part 2
2-23 The Bass Player and the Happy Captain
2-24 Journey by Cryptikon
2-25 Remembering Dick, Visiting Patrick
2-26 Zakiya Explains the Mission
2-27 Jumpship Fight
2-28 Messages from a Rapist
2-29 Little Heroes
2-30 The Son of Two Mothers
2-31 One Happy Thought
2-32 Patrick
2-33 Koji
2-34 Alex and Setek
2-35 Tea and Paternity
2-36 Last Tango
2-37 Rivers of Galaxies
2-38 Lost and Found
2-39 Parting Gift
2-01 1986CE - West Virginia
"Why the hell should I care?" I had said to him. "Why the hell do you care? The universe doesn't care. If it did, babies wouldn't die." He said to me: "It's a miracle it works. It's a miracle we haven't killed each other."
I laughed - bitterly - and said: "I like misery. That's why I married you."
These and other stupid utterances I had memorized: good tools for mashing myself into a deeper funk.
I had managed to maneuver myself into the bathtub without any bloodshed, I thought, until I saw the pink pollution. I wasn't injured. It was my monthly curse, leaking away my maternal hopes. I wept.
I had flushed the damned pills!
I wept and floated, hardly touching the tub walls. Could I sink under the water and drown myself, or would some natural reflex prevent it? I let my head go under and then I could at least not feel the tears. I swore again that I would never cry again.
It is such a difficult task to live the unexamined life.
I hated tub baths. I hated floating, feeling the strange polarity of wetness and nothingness.
Where had Sam gone?
"Out out," he had said.
The thing about floating is that nothing touches you except the water. No one touches me. I needed...
With a little imagination I could usually make his gentleness a caress, even when he lowered me and my ugly withered legs into the tub, or onto the bed, or into the wheelchair. I think he sometimes held me a little longer than necessary, to accomplish a chore of caring for his crippled wife.
Why did I try to notice? Why did I want to be a woman? Why didn't I want to pay the price?
When was there ever truth between us, outside the arena of science? When had I ever not lied to myself? It was only my damaged mortal flesh that wanted to be touched, that wanted other biological functions the Mathematician would never miss, except when knowing it was the wrong time for miracles that normal people could have at any moment.
To hell with normal people!
It was dark even in the little town in the hollow. The sudden appearance of a few lighted windows, snapped off the awful mess in my mind. I had to concentrate on how I would react to what Sam had done. I felt like screaming at him but not because of the stupid thing he had done: sneaking out of The Hole. Even us fake geniuses were allowed to make human mistakes. No, I would scream at him because he had scared the crap out of me, and at the same time made me realize how very much I needed him and loved him.
I used to be a very confidant and outgoing person, until my auto accident cut my legs out from under me. Then along came Samuel Lee, making me think I had a rescuer for my battered ego and crippled body. I don't know how I got my emotional equations so twisted up, trying to fit Sam in as a major constant. I guess I was fooled by his ability to play the piano so well, making me imagine he was as emotional as I was, as in love as I was. It was my neediness coupled with his scientific absence from the here-and-now that sabotaged my trust in our relationship. Yes, I thought he did have feelings for me, but what scientist as brilliant as Sam had the time to satisfy such a needy wife? Why couldn't I settle for less from Sam? Why couldn't I eventually resign myself to a humble cripple's life and thankfully take whatever emotional crumbs were sprinkled on me? Because I was me: finely flawed, and proud of it!
When Colonel Duncan opened the van door for me at the police department and I saw Sam standing there in the streetlight with his head bowed like he was ashamed, I understood why he would feel that way. But I also had to consider why he would do something as stupid as shooting two tires flat on the Chevy Suburban. The answer I came up with made me start to weep, and I stayed inside the van.
Five seconds later Sam sat down beside me in the van and hugged me with one arm. "Why did you come, Milly? Why are you crying?"
I couldn't speak for several moments.
"Scientists have emotions!" I heard Karl remark to Duncan.
"Could be," Duncan replied. "Let's give them a few minutes. I'll take care of the paperwork."
Duncan slid the van door closed. Impulsively, I reached for Sam and tried to pull him as close to me as I could. He didn't resist.
"Your ears are cold," I said, my cheek pressed against one of them, along with the tears.
"You weren't around to burn them," he said. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry!"
"Sorry for what?" I asked, rubbing his face with my face, trying to find something better to say, or just say it with physical contact with him.
"For lying to you," he answered, pulling back from me and placing my face between his gentle hands. "I said I loved you, and it was a lie."
"Sam!" I cried in agony, nearly destroyed by his admission. I tried to pull away but he held me tightly.
"It was a lie because I don't just love you, Milly. I LOVE you! Totally! More than I can quantify!"
I tried to slap him and missed. He took one of my hands and slapped himself with it. I almost fell out of the wheelchair reaching for him. I planted the mother of all kisses on his lips, then everywhere else that was available.
"Does that mean what I think it means?" Sam asked, catching his breath.
2-02 Simple Pleasure
"I'm surprised you would allow me into your presence again."
"Why wouldn't I, Doctor?"
The Navy Commander walked beside the Mother of Immortality and didn't care that he felt. He felt, but it didn't show. It was too much ingrained in his every conscious activity, the need to not show any reaction to whatever might cause him to feel. It would be difficult, perhaps impossible, to let any reaction show. However, this woman would test him. S
he made him feel. She was the fourth unusual stranger to enter his life recently and now he realized each of them had nudged him in this direction: Pan, Demba, Constant the Golden One, and Aylis Mnro.
/
"I might be dangerous," she said. I might be terrified, she thought. I am terrified! She was alone with him in a dim private corridor. He was tall, powerful, and close, almost brushing against her as they walked.
"Why would you intend me harm?" he asked. His voice flowed at a practiced conversational modulation, yet it was menacingly devoid of emotion.
"I wouldn't!" she declared. "But why take the risk?"
"Because you are Aylis Mnro."
Am I? she asked herself. No, she was some other person, perhaps only an echo of the great woman. She was young and soft, mentally unsettled, emotionally delicate, and overstocked with the hormones of youth. "Why am I here?" she asked.
"Why did you come?"
"How could I not, sir?" She was nervous and could not hide it. He was whatever he was and could hide it completely. Why wasn't he straightforward? What did he want?
"You are attractive to me," he remarked. "Why is that?"
The statement was unexpected, frightening. He wasn't Essiin, yet he was a better Essiin than the real thing. "I'm young again," she answered. "Youth is always attractive."
/
She didn't blush. He didn't expect it of her. She was three centuries old. She might have learned how to do everything, while he had merely learned how to hide.
Navy Commander Admiral Etrhnk escorted Admiral Aylis Mnro into a garden room filled with sunlight and floral spectacle. The doctor spread her arms at the panorama of vegetation, showing her delight, seeming to blossom in the emergence into artificial sunlight.
At one time such a reaction would have seemed negative to Admiral Etrhnk. Now he didn't care. He no longer filtered the universe that way. If another Navy admiral could sing with feeling, he could at least feel, even if he could not show it. It was all
