Sarah Zettel - Reclamation

He swiveled the comm chair around so the board was at his right side. Then he lifted his hand and laid it on the keys.

Once, he’d heard Perivar and Tasa Ad trying to find words to fit the power gift into the way they saw the universe. They had eventually settled on something like “resonance fields which manipulated quantum effects.”

Kessa, on the other hand, had said, “It ain’t natural, but it works, what more do you need?”

Kessa had a very direct approach.

Eric couldn’t read a computer’s mind any more than he could read a human being’s, but his gift could give him a feel for the workings, both mechanical and logical. Once he knew that, the only way to keep him out of a system was to shut the power down, or incapacitate him.

The board’s smooth polymer pressed against his skin and quickly became slick with his perspiration. He closed his eyes.

What I do is true. What I do is seen and spoken. It cannot be denied.

I cannot be denied.

He let his gift flow from his hands into the console. Familiar territory. He knew its shapes and nuances. With the barest effort, the blind fingers of his power made sure the configuration of the gate between the board and the open line was the proper shape. Then they scuttled down the clear channel, playing his consciousness out like a rope behind them.

The open terminal on the station was easy to find. It almost pulled him straight to it, funneling his senses down into the lines and etched pathways. The fingers of his power divided themselves to probe for the open paths between the closed ones. He moved patiently, feeling the walls to determine the shape of the place he worked in. He activated nothing. He changed nothing. He just touched the walls and remembered.

Eric found the pathways reassuringly familiar. It was all standard terminals and standard gates. Standard means to standard ends. The datastream pulled him along and Eric rode the current. His power gift divided, and divided again until he found a major routing station. Eric explored the paths leading out of it, ten at a time, until he touched a place that made his skin curdle because it felt completely strange.

He probed the strangeness carefully. It was an open portal, no question there. Information flowed steadily through it like water through a sluice gate, but the shape of the gate was undefined. It shifted minutely under his delicate touch. He recalled the other fingers, consolidating his power into a single probe and slid it across the yielding surface into the data-stream.

And there was nothing there.

Eric fell into formless vacuum, the thread of his consciousness streaming out, lost and flailing. There was nothing to hold on to, no paths, nothing to do but fall.

Too far! Too far! Stop it! Pull back!

No!

His power gift slammed against a surface and lay still. Gradually, Eric recovered himself enough to move it again, searching to find a shape in this new place. Like the gate, it yielded to the lightest touch. It held its shape only loosely. It reminded him of something else he knew the touch of. It felt like…a living body.

The realization jolted through Eric and almost broke his concentration. This wasn’t silicate and current he was dealing with. This was a realm of synapses and diffusing chemicals. Eric let his power’s fingers spread out, encompassing as much of the new space as he could reach, trying to understand the ebb and flow of the new medium. The logic of it came to him slowly. This was a place to filter and organize and redirect. The gates made of nerve fibers weren’t laid out in tidy lines like silicate gates, but there was a pattern there. It was subtle and easily disturbed. Eric lifted his power’s fingers from the surface and let them drift, trying to understand the scope of the system. He wished in vain for a way to see the surroundings, but the best he could do was imagination. His mind’s eye showed him a web of synapses stretching out to make a taut network of nerves. His power found holes in the net. Channels to other places that opened and closed in response to the system’s need.

Eric held his power gift in one place, feeling the triggers and responses that moved around him. Pins and needles began to prickle his physical hands and a cramp started in his left foot. He ignored the discomfort. He had to. He had to concentrate on understanding what he touched.

Eventually the pins and needles faded away. Eric could no longer feel his physical hands at all. He didn’t care. He could feel the shape of the commands that flowed through the synapses. He touched the places where the commands were fabricated and he knew how they were generated and which channels they opened. He understood the system. Maybe not everything, but enough.

He let his power slide down an open channel to see where the commands went.

He fell again. He clenched his jaw and held his panic in check. When he landed, the surface was firm and orderly. Silicate channels with orderly gates and switches waited at right angles nearby.

Now that the basics of the system had been defined, it did not take Eric long to understand the specifics. There were only so many ways you could store data, and only so many ways you could retrieve it, no matter what the shape of your container. A Vitae system would be ruthlessly logical and efficient. He could feel their data in tidy little packages, lined up and blocked together, all of it uniformly and exhaustively labeled.

Don’t say “exhaustive.” He swallowed. His throat was completely dry. His lungs strained to drag in enough air to keep him conscious.

He could feel the shape of open gateways and command protocols that led to more distant storage areas. Places he couldn’t possibly reach directly. It didn’t matter. They would be reached for him.

Eric withdrew to the shifting, organic layer. He found the nerves he needed and pressed against them until they yielded the commands he required. Then he followed those commands down into the silicate layer. Closed gates blocked his commands, preventing their execution. His power gift forced the channels open and sealed their gates in place. When all the data was flowing freely, his power doubled back on itself and followed its own length back to the U-Kenai. Back to him.

Eric’s hand slid off the board and dropped to his side. He could not lift it. All he could do was shake and gulp air like a man who has nearly drowned. Perspiration flowed into his eyes, making them sting and water. The pounding of his heart shook his whole body.

Nameless Powers preserve me. Never been this bad.

He opened his mouth to try to call for Adu, and gave up. He couldn’t force any noise from his throat but a sickly wheeze. His head fell back against the chair.

I’ll be all right in a minute, he told himself as his eyes closed. In a minute. Time passed, he knew that, but he didn’t know how much. Awareness came and went. He did not have the strength to interfere with its whims. Eventually he was able to breathe normally and the perspiration dried on his neck and face, even though his tunic remained soaking wet. So did his trousers. Eric tried not to think about that.

With an effort, he was able to reach across the boards and stab the request key on the food dispenser for water. He gulped it desperately, spilling half of it down his shirtfront. His stomach rebelled at the invasion of fluid and almost rejected it. The strain of keeping the water down nearly cost Eric his ability to stay sitting up. He felt better, though. He could think enough to open the intercom to the bridge.

“Adu,” he croaked, “are you getting anything?”

“Lots,” came the reply. “I’m processing it now. I’ll find the most recent references and route them back to your screen as soon as I can.”