The opening section of Quantum Fever – a recent Sci-fi book.
Chapter 1
The truth was that I hate every minute of being in such an elite club. I played the game and I knew I could do it well but it really was not me. Having this skill had been my ticket out of the lower tiers and, at first, I had revelled in it. Who would not feel good about being able to do something that so few other people could do? What other person would not feel great about being made to feel so special or having the potential to be elevated into such a high position? It transformed life for my entire family and gave me a pass to a life I could only have dreamed about. I’d attained that place in the sky we’d all dreamed of. The job had made me wealthy and famous, but it hadn’t made me happy and it wasn’t at all fulfilling.
‘I think they know I’m on to them,’ I thought to myself as I prepared to initiate the risky business of guiding the Quship Explorer out of Quantum Space. It was not a good thought to have in one’s head at such a time. We had been travelling through the quantum fields, jumping the folds of space. It was time to emerge into linear space again – a task that was fraught with danger and required my complete concentration. Any stray thought at such a time was a distraction that could prove fatal for us all. Grimly I pushed the intrusion to one side and refocussed.
I gripped the controls tightly and allowed the impulses to flow through me. My training kicked in and I felt myself entering the bubble. The control room faded away. My mind gelled with the controls and through them into the ship’s instruments and out into the universe beyond. I found myself unified with the whole matrix of reality. Through the ship’s instruments I was able to clearly see our destination beyond, laid out in colours and shapes. In the quantum world everything was constantly in flux but somehow, I knew where I was.
I am a Quship Captain but I’m still not sure how we Quship Commanders did it. We possessed an innate ability to recognise the elements of quantum space. There was some intuitive element that could not be taught. Due to this unique skill I was able to gather myself, the ship and its crew, and latch on to the destination pattern and bring us all together. Using the ship’s computer and some strange property of my mind I could control everything at will and secure the merger. It was an exceedingly rare skill which put me in great demand. I had a passport into the elite club. They needed me and paid handsomely for the privilege.
No matter how much I tried to kid myself that I was doing a good job and bringing back the resources that everyone needed, I knew I was really working for a bunch of crooks who I didn’t think were very nice. They certainly weren’t doing it for the people, that was for sure. The whole business made me feel used and grubby. Somehow, despite all my best intentions, I’d lost contact with the friends I’d used to have down there in the lower tiers. My intensive training had taken me away from my roots.
These days I mixed with the celebrities and cred-rich city skaters. It wasn’t me at all, but I played the game; I was professional; I dressed up and acted the part, but it left me feeling trapped and all the accoutrements that the wealth bought felt increasingly hollow. Gaining an insight into how society in the system was set up left me feeling dirty. Somehow, I had become part of the elite who were running things. I felt that, by carrying out my role, I was actually condoning, even assisting, what was going on. But there was no way out of the club once you were in, they saw to that. I’d seen what happened to anyone who crossed them. It was dangerous. Nasty things happened. I tried not to think about it, kept my head down and got on with the job. The trouble was that I think they, the Consortium, knew about my increasing dislike for the whole operation. They had insight into my metabolism and biometrics. It was impossible to disguise. Lately I had the feeling, no, certainty, that they were not only watching me more carefully but were trying to control me, to interfere with my mind, to ensure that I did what they wanted.
Putting all that to one side I had to admit I enjoyed the jumps. It was what I was good at. It left me feeling exhilarated when I had successfully accomplished a mission. The sense of achievement was immense. Jumping was amazingly difficult and it certainly tested me to the limits. Nothing else provided me with that adrenalin rush.
There are only twenty Quships; the limit being the rarity of Commanders like myself. We are an exceedingly rare breed. Quantum jumping was a feat requiring a certain mind and it carried a high rate of attrition. Incredibly, even using all of the vast resources of the Empire, it was still only possible to commission a mere twenty Quships. Despite all our thousands of worlds, many trillions of people, and the monitoring of all potential candidates for the training programme, we only just managed to replace the experienced Commanders we lost each year. Gaining enough new recruits was always a major problem. In spite of all the possibilities in the world of genetic engineering it was still not possible to engineer a Quship Commander. Quship Commanders were born not created.
That training programme, even with maximised Immersive Education, took many years. Building Quships was not the concern. They were incredibly expensive but the returns they created far outweighed that outlay. If we could have found the commanders, we could have produced thousands of them. No. It wasn’t the cost; it was the lack of talent that prevented us having a surfeit of Quships.
It was no wonder that we Quship Commanders were in great demand and held in such high esteem. The whole System depended on a constant stream of new resources we brought in for them. We only just kept up with requirements of the burgeoning system.
Without the materials we discovered the whole System would die. Their own resources were nowhere near sufficient. They could not even sustain the very air, water and food everyone needed. All the essentials required constant replenishing from outside. Without a continual new supply of materials, the entire System would simply collapse.
We were vital.
There was a frantic search for the essentials to maintain our system and enable its constant expansion. I was instrumental in that.
Our astronomers identified likely areas of our galaxy to explore and our ‘intrepid’ Quship Commanders, like myself, carried out the business. While the astronomers could identify suitable planets for colonisation or harvesting it wasn’t until we actually arrived and carried out the detailed surveys that we were able to check the viability of the proposition. Sometimes a solar system was not as lucrative a proposition as it might have appeared from afar. For that is what it was really about. We were mercenaries, employed by large business concerns. We sought to provide profit for our employers. There was nothing altruistic about our business.
Our task on this mission was to explore sector XLP12. The astronomers reckoned it looked very fruitful and ripe for harvesting.
I was employed by the largest of these corporations; a group of investors simply known as The Consortium. They speculated on which of the solar systems would be most lucrative, took out a licence on it, and employed us to do the risky business of braving quantum space to check it out. Invariably they found rocky or gaseous planets which were commercially viable. They would harvest the minerals and gases to make massive profits. If they were very lucky, one of the rocky planets would prove ripe for colonising. They would move in, create a viable atmosphere and straddle the whole planet with tiers of domiciles, putting in the jump tubes, drop tubes and beltways and setting up the necessary infrastructure. Each planet would provide a trillion doms or more, sometimes a hundred tiers deep. They would then sell the franchises and make a stupendous return on their investment.
The System had over a thousand such planets and a population of fifteen thousand trillion. Expansion was the name of the game. Each family was encouraged to produce offspring so there was always a desperate need for housing and resources.
The Consortium catered for that constant expansion and grew enormously rich on the proceeds.
Our small number of craft, each with its crew of six, rode the quantum universe, skimming the waves of space, and emerged into the selected sectors. Once having carried out the process successfully we could then lay down a gate for others to safely follow. Our job was to explore, identify potential and point the way for the conglomerate harvesters to follow in our wake. We searched for either resources or worlds to colonise.
Unfortunately, this pioneering work was dangerous. Many ships failed to materialise again into linear space and were presumed lost for ever in the sea of quantum strangeness – a universe too weird to contemplate. Perhaps their minds had become lost in the shifting patterns of quantum? Or perhaps their minds had been dissolved altogether?
On top of that loss, many Quship Commanders came back altered, driven mad by the experience of touching that strange quantum universe. They left something of their mind back there and came back warped, filled with strange delusions. The authorities called the condition Quantum Psychosis – but most people knew it as Quantum Fever.
Our life expectancy as a Quship Commander was limited, usually only lasting a handful of years. Indeed, I was among the most experienced. I knew my days were numbered. Each trip was like playing Zen roulette. But the Empire needed servicing. It was expanding ever faster and without the resources we discovered it could not possibly sustain its relentless growth. We had to find those resources – the metals, organics, water and gases. We also had to identify worlds that were worthy of being colonised, to provide necessary homes for the burgeoning population.
The pushing back of boundaries was driven by gritty determination as the Empire possessed an inexhaustible thirst for expansion, and we were that forefront. In my early days I had felt like an intrepid pioneer. But that had soon passed. I now felt like I was just a cog in a great machine of pointless exploitation.
But I had to put all those thoughts and feelings out of my head.
The latest in the Ron Forsythe set of Science Fiction novels is now available in paperback!
A great read! A great present!
Order yours now from Amazon!
In the UK:
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In India:
For some reason India does not seem to always present my books in paperback form. I will chase this up!