Cosmonauts: A Military Sci-Fi Series (Space Corps Book 3) by Ian Schwartz

Author:Ian Schwartz [Schwartz, Ian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Aethon Books
Published: 2022-05-09T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 25

Timeshares

“I’m lucky I didn’t shit myself,” Blake told Petrova.

She had woken up and was munching an MRE just outside the shelter entrance, near the powered armor.

“I’ve only got one change of clothes,” Blake added. “Just this old business suit.”

“And you are certain this actually occurred?” she said.

“Either there’s some kind of psychotropic substance floating through the air and it got lodged in my brain, or a tree turned into a huge fucking boar, which then turned into the ground.”

“When you eliminate the possible…” she began.

“I know it seems unbelievable,” Blake said. “But Jazari and Mercury saw some weird shit out there too. If it’s psychotropic shit, it can’t be affecting Jazari. There was also something so strange about it. It seemed almost kind of hazy and fake, almost like a mirage, but I also felt like I was seeing something real for the first time. Seeing the world like it really is, you know? Minus human perception, the actual physical objective world.”

“Kantian things-in-themselves,” Petrova said. “Die sache selbst. The world as such. Lacan’s ‘the Real.’ Lovecraft’s Old Ones mediated by art and sculpture. God speaking to the world via the angels, his messengers. ‘The Lord whose oracle is at Delphi neither reveals nor conceals, but gives a sign.’ The unconscious speaking to us in our dreams in a language of its own, a constellation of symbols.”

“This is how we know Bsharre is truly terrifying,” Blake said. “It’s a place where science is less important than philosophy, history, literature, and psychoanalysis. It’s a right-side-of-the-brain kind of place. And here you explain to me, as a scientist, that the whole ‘right-or-left-side-of-the-brain’ stuff is idealistic Jungian nonsense.”

She smiled and nodded. “Right. There is no need for me to speak. You have taken care of everything for me already.”

Blake sighed. “I don’t know what to do.”

“An idea has come to my mind,” Jazari said, speaking from a phone on the powered armor’s shoulders. “One fragrant as an orange rind.”

“This should be good,” Blake said.

“Verily these phone batteries require charging time,” Jazari said. “An entire day is needed to charge the phone batteries with only sunlight, assuming Earth and Bsharri days are similar and their suns likewise possess similar strength. But the suit requires millions of joules to operate and fight. It cannot recover its strength in this fashion, at least on a planet with such-and-such an atmosphere situated such-and-such a distance from a sun of such-and-such a type found in such-and-such a system, and so on and so forth.”

“What do you propose?” Petrova said.

“I should like to control the suit,” Jazari said. “Therefore you could for me root.”

“Of course,” Blake said. “Then you can get closer to fulfilling your dream of becoming a real boy.”

“I have no interest in this proposition,” Jazari said. “For it would leave me in an inferior position. I am already more real than any organic could ever hope to be.”

“Keep telling yourself that,” Blake said.

“Once I gain control of the suit,” Jazari said, “I shall seek the reassembly of one of the Marduk’s fusion batteries.

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