Midway: Chapter 38

  Uzodimma was slowly waking up but he pretended to remain unconscious.  He quickly understood the dire situation they were all in.  He kept his eyes closed and listened intently as Tycho revealed his origins and secret plans.   He was waiting for an opportunity to do something, but there was so little he could do.  He was too afraid to open his eyes to see if there were any potential weapons nearby.  He imagined that he would immediately be knocked out again if they discovered he was conscious.

  Johannes sat up straighter and brushed the palms of his hands together to remove the small amount of dust and debris they had accumulated from pushing against the floor.   He had a tremendously sad expression on his face as he tilted his head to one side and said “Tycho you don’t have to… you don’t have to convince me of the unfairness of this mission, not anymore…”

  “What do you mean?”

  Johannes sighed heavily.  “I see it now… the darkness, the fundamental cruelty of our situation.  I know I’ve always been something of a cheerleader for the missio-“

  “Cheerleader in chief, I believe,” Tycho corrected him with a sneer.

  “Perhaps… but not anymore.  In truth I haven’t been the same since your mother died.  With everything else that’s been going on more recently it’s only now really catching up with me.  What I see now… is that we are all, in our own ways, victims of the hubris of those who put this mission together in the first place.  No it’s not fair son, and you are my son, whatever else you may be.  No it’s not fair, but… but it cannot make what you’re doing now, right.” Johannes said with conviction.

  “Oh yeah?” Tyco seemed to challenge.  “Do you know why mom killed herself?”

  “I think so,” Johannes answered honestly.

  “Well you’re wrong.  She found out about us Johannes, years ago; years before she finally killed herself.  She was the doctor, she had access to our genetic profiles.   Knowing is what drove her to drink in the first place.”

  “But why?  Why wouldn’t she-“

  “Because she was ashamed!” Tycho exclaimed, cutting him off.  “You know she hated Markus Bowland, what a creep she thought he was!?  Something about him had always profoundly bothered her!  Eventually she just found out in factuality what she’d always know intuitively!”

  “That still doesn’t explain-“ Johannes was again cut off by his clone-son.

  “She was mortified to find out that she had both married and raised, a man she so disliked.   The dichotomy between the love she had for us, and the loathing she had for him, what he’d done, and what we really were, tore her apart.  She couldn’t tell anyone else, because if it got out she knew that we would become pariahs on the ship.  She didn’t want to do that to us personally or to the family she was responsible for.   She was caught in an impossible choice!”

  “How could you know this?”

  “Call it an educated guess.  It was probably inevitable that she’d stumble across it in her work… and it’s how I’d imagine she’d react if she had found out.”

  There was silence between them for several moments.  Then, with tears in his eyes, Johannes looked up at his clone-son.

  “Tycho… you can stop this now.  Nobody else has to suffer or die.  We can help you, nothing else bad has to happen here.”  A tear rolled down Johannes’ cheek.

   “Don’t cry for me.  I’m the enemy.”

  “You are not my enemy, son.”

  “Well I’m not you’re son either!”

  “No, you’re something much more to me than that aren’t you?”  

  The comment landed where Johannes had hoped it would, and Tycho got up and skulked over to the sims.   “We can help you Tycho, you-”

  “I am NOT BROKEN!!” Tycho screamed wildly.  “I am LIBERATED!  God damn it Johannes, you can be so insufferable!  Stop talking to me like there is something about me which needs fixing!!”

  It was at this moment that Uzodimma felt that he might have a chance to get through to his fellow victim.  “Tycho,” he said as he opened his eyes, sat up and turned towards him.  Along with two of the simulants, Tycho’s attention turned immediately to Uzodimma but none of them acted on their surprise.  “We were all broken by that experience Tycho.   There’s no shame in admitting that.   You have to look at what you’re doing here though.  You are letting that experience alter the course of the whole mission, do you really want what he did to you to have that kind of impact on the galaxy?  Do you really want him to be that important; to give him that much power?”

  “I don’t care.”   Tycho said it defiantly; coldly.

  “I think you do…   If you didn’t, if you didn’t care about the mission or any of us, if your sole concern was an arrival within your lifetime, it would be easiest to simply kill the whole crew, to just vent the ship’s atmosphere and be done with it.  After all, you think there will be a whole new group of people waiting to greet you on Eta Cassiopeiae.  But you won’t do that, will you?  I don’t think you can.  You also would have been better protected if you’d simply ‘suicided’ me after I was blamed, but you didn’t do that either.  Why?  Look,” he gestured to the unconscious bridge crew, “why haven’t you killed them?

  “If you really didn’t care, your sense of being just a copy of Markus Bowland wouldn’t hurt so much!   Anaru’s death wouldn’t have impacted you so deeply if you didn’t care!  If you didn’t care for Dhika too, finding out about their involvement wouldn’t have mattered to you either.   You do care, Tycho.  You care about your family… and we are your family.

  “It is the bonds between us that define our lives Tycho, not their limitations.  You are deeply wounded, deeply hurt but you are not evil Tycho, and you’re not beyond saving, not beyond redemption, not beyond… coming home.   You are as deeply intertwined with the rest of us, as we are with you.  Please come home Tycho…”

  He looked down almost shamefully, but only almost.  “You might be right Uzo… but you only illuminate competing interests for me.  The calculus with which I make my decision remains the same given how I balance those interests against each other.  The fact remains, that with everything that has happened, and with everything I now know, that calculus remains the same.  I care enough about landing, and little enough about the crew, that this remains the right thing for me to do.”

  Uzodimma looked around the room and asked, “Where’s Alissa, Tycho?”

  “She’s dead.”  A smirk came over Tycho’s face after saying it and he asked, “What were you saying; about how much I care?  What does that prove to you Uzo?”

  “Nothing at all unless you pulled the trigger yourself for anything other than a total lack of any other options, but I’d bet the sims did it to defend you... I don’t think you did it yourself, and I bet you wish it could have been avoided.”  Tycho’s smirk dissipated.  “I’m right aren’t I?” Uzodimma insisted, “and I bet you didn’t permanently alter them either, did you?” he asked as he gestured his chin in the direction of the sims.

  Johannes piped up, “Yes Tycho, please tell me you didn’t just completely wipe them…”

  “Enough of this,” Tycho resolved.  “I’ve said my peace and I’ve told you my story.  Now I have work to do.  Put them out again Wiremu.”

  Around the time Uzodimma had spoken up, Dhika had regained her own consciousness.  She’d hit her head on the floor when the Tynes simulant had sent her flying backwards and part of the jumble that was her rising consciousness, was a dreadful headache and a painful back of the head.   Like Uzodimma she was smart enough to continue to pretend to be unconscious, and with her hands tied behind her back, she was able to discretely pull the stripping device out of her back pocket which she had earlier used to strip the wires on the control panel outside the bridge.  

  The zap strap which bound her hands had been printed with the same material as the pieces Uzodimma had requested for his models, and they were of a small enough diameter that she could use her tool on it by feel.  It was designed to strip away the insulation of a wire and leave the metal in the centre exposed.  Using it on the zap strap resulted in only a thin piece of material remaining where she had used it.  She was confident that when the time came she would be able to break through the remaining material, and it didn’t take long for that moment to arrive.  

  As the towering simulant obediently began to make his way over to the tied up crew members with a facemask attached to a gas cylinder, Dhika surprised everyone by leaping to her feet and snapping her restraint off, then lunging towards the captain’s chair which was between her and Tycho along with the sims.   “NOOO!!!” Johannes cried out as the Tynes simulant moved to intercept Dhika, and Tycho swung his shotgun towards her.  Still bound with his hands behind him, he struggled to his feet and then to get between the weapon and Dhika.  He was hoping that even if he was shot he would be able to crash Tycho to the ground and help the others.

  Dhika, after landing hard beside the captain’s chair, reached underneath and pushed the hidden simulant kill switch, and at once all four of the simulants lost any and all spark of consciousness.  They slumped lifelessly to the ground like marionette dolls who had just had all of their strings cut at once.  

  With Johannes approaching and seeming to now be the more immediate threat, Tycho swung his shotgun towards him instead.  He pulled the trigger at the same time that Uzodimma managed to get between them and take the large solid bullet at close range in his own chest instead of Johannes’.

  Uzodimma fell to the ground in a way that was eerily similar to the reaction of the sims when Dhika activated the kill switch; his strings were cut.  He lay on the ground motionless.  Johannes landed on Tycho immediately after and knocked him down to the ground beneath him.  He did the best he could to keep his weight on him in such a way as to keep him down while trying to kick the gun out of his reach. 

  Dhika ran over and retrieved the shotgun off of the floor beside them and told Johannes to get off of him.  “It’s over.” she said.

  Keeping the gun on Tycho without looking in his eyes, Dhika helped Johannes up and used her wire stripping tool to help him out of his restraints.  Johannes scrambled to check on Uzodimma, and Dhika finally met Tycho’s stare.  Her own eyes were filled with adrenaline and hot anger; his were filled with what could only be described as deep sadness and disappointment at understood defeat, and he whispered quietly to her, “Do it.   Please…”  She could only respond with a look of confusion and bewilderment.

  “How is he?” she asked Johannes of Uzodimma without taking her eyes off of Tycho.

  There was a pool of blood growing beneath Uzodimma as Johannes turned him over.  “It’s bad…” is all he could say to her with any certainty.

  With an authority and confidence in leadership she didn’t know she had in her, Dhika ordered Johannes to: “Take the gun and cover Tycho so I can get the bridge door open and call for help.”  

  Johannes obediently took the shotgun from her and stood at Tycho’s feet, pointing it at his head.   “Go.” he said.

  Dhika leaped up, and made for the door controls, opening them with ease now that she was doing it from the inside.  There was nobody outside the door to offer immediate help.  She looked back, a mixture of powerful and volatile emotions.   “I’ll run for help… you okay here?”

  Without looking up, Johannes confirmed that he was and sent her on her way.  He then backed off from Tycho who stayed lying on his back, defeated.  Johannes knelt down over Uzodimma, still facing Tycho and keeping his weapon aimed at him with his right hand.  He put his left hand on Uzodimma’s wound and pressed as hard as he could.  Uzodimma’s eyes were open and looking around in what appeared to be panicked confusion.  Johannes emotionally uttered, “Oh, Uzo…  You didn’t have to do this… I’m so sorry.”

  In a thin weak voice Uzodimma croaked, “I am honoured… to have the chance… to pay my life debt…   I… I let this happen… I hid the truth.”

  Johannes put the gun down and held Uzodimma’s hand between both of his.  “It wasn’t your fault.  Listen to me you made good Uzo, okay?  You paid your life debt…  We forgive you.”  Uzodimma smiled as much as his strength would allow, and soon stopped his shallow breathing as a glaze came over his eyes.  He was dead.