Carnival Ride By Mike Smithwick

“So, this is what ‘The Carnival’ looks like…” the Senator sniffed to himself as the group entered through the main doors of building 3. Even though it was labeled “3,” it was actually the main entrance used for dignitaries being that it had the most impressive façade of an array of already impressive façades.

Jimmy would have been surprised, perplexed and maybe even bemused at this little journey of his cousin. But that would have been Jim’s way. Not afraid to see irony where it deserved to be seen and laugh when it deserved to be laughed at.

“The Carnival” was the nickname, and a not very flattering one at that, of the Alliance’s chief “unofficial” research institute. In fact it was so well known by this lesser name, that its long winded official title was rarely used anymore. The Senator himself had trouble remembering its appellation, save for the few times it appeared in print such as right now as it was bathed in light over the reception area. “Chung Chou Institute of Advanced Technologies and Natural Sciences” it read. The Senator thought he’d just stick with “The Carnival.”

It was certainly an apt title, considering its checkered history of outlandish experiments and decisions that might be thought of as rather less than wise in retrospect. The most recent being the rare scandal that actually made it into the press, in spite of the government’s usual measures. Well, those reporters won’t be reporting any more. Even though it was pretty trivial as far as scandals can be concerned, he was surprised to see anything in the press at all, considering the Institute doesn’t officially exist. Although it was clearly one of the worst kept secrets of the government, an institution built on secrets.

Jimmy loved carnivals. When they were children, their families would take turns hosting the other for holiday. The Senator grew up in the city, used to the noisy clutter of urban existence. Whereas Jimmy was the country boy, living a good 300 miles outside the city, in New Shannon. And while the Senator loved the sterile existence offered by city life, he loved the friendliness of the country “folk.” (Even on Londonium, folks were sometimes called “folks.”) But what most drew his attention was the old-fashioned summer carnival. Patterned after stories from old-Earth, it was an attempt to recreate a little of what some of the original settlers might have left behind. And he and Jimmy would spend hours getting sick on “cotton candy,” and spinning wildly on the rides. The “merry-go-round” was particularly fascinating with its bizarre and otherworldly creatures still hand-carved out of wood. Some such animals made the journey; others were too large or impractical for the colony ships such as elephants, which must now be realized only from the historical archives.

“Ladies and gentleman,” their tour-guide addressed them bringing the Senator back to the present. “Quaint” he thought. “Thank you for being able to make time in your schedules to come for our special tour today; it is my pleasure to be your host…”

“Pleasure my ass,” he said to himself. “This guy’s job is riding on this!” It had recently been revealed that quite a number of the scientists in the biometrics division had been receiving millions of credits in funding for a whole host of investigations. None of which even seemed to have actually taken place. All they did was to churn out fake reports to make it look like they were doing something that would, or so they hoped, get lost in the bureaucracy. That’s one of the pitfalls with such speculative research, you never know what success might look like, and in turn, you never know what failure looks like either. So it really didn’t matter what the reports said, except that someone was spending some money on some research. That’s all the bookkeepers would care about as long as nobody asked too many questions. But in this case, someone did.

On one carnival ride, the cars were like little old fashioned airplanes lifting her passengers up higher and higher in the sweet evening air of summer towards the first winking stars. Jimmy would take that ride over and over again, never tiring of it, sometimes holding out his arms like a second pair of wings pretending he was flying as if he was making it go ever slightly higher. And sometimes, as he was balanced betwixt the earth and the heavens he could almost whisper to the sky.

The Senator, three years his senior, sat back and imagined that his cousin and best friend had found his calling. Then the evening would come to an end, the families would go back for dinner and the two boys would lie out on the dirt watching the march of the stars overhead discussing the great things they were going to invent when they grew up….The Senator wished Jimmy was here now. The delegation was here this day as part of the parliament’s oversight committee, to gaze into the arcane world of pure research. And when dealing with The Carnival, the oversight committee had its hands full.

Some members were younger officials from many departments: funding, futuristics, policy management, and so on. Added to the mix were two senators and several senior parliamentarians.

First on the tour came the obligatory vid hyping everything at the institute short of the doughnuts in the break rooms. “At the Chung Chou Institute of Advanced Technologies and Natural Sciences the future begins today!” the narrator cheerfully exclaimed at the show’s end. “Gawd where do they come up this stuff? How many times has that slogan been used?” the Senator huffed.

The first and arguably most important division they saw was the terraforming group. Without terraforming, the entire solar-system would be virtually uninhabitable. They were shown how the latest studies concentrated on detecting instabilities in the new ecosystems. These could point to possible breakdowns as a planet or moon attempted to revert back to is original form. It was theorized that such an event would be very sudden so any warning would be valuable.

The Senator couldn’t help but think back on the early days of the “Verse” when some over-eager researchers tried out a new form of gravitational shaping without enough testing. This was the process used to amplify gravity on small moons so their inhabitants could feel one full sG, on a world that should normally have only a fraction of one. Anything less than a half sG would be unable to hold an atmosphere. Anything much more than 1 would make it tough to reach escape velocity for the smaller boats. Normally the process took years if not decades, but they tried one which promised to take only mere months. However the tectonic strains were too much too quickly and the test moon shattered. Not only did they lose a good planet, the debris interfered with the shipping lanes for years afterwards and worst of all, some impacted on inhabited moons, killing hundreds. In theory few would knew about it, as the victims were “merely” settlers, with few acquaintances on the inner worlds. As a result, they should not overly missed. Or so the Senator was informed. But that little failure was very visible, no matter what cover stories the government could spin about it. Future experiments on that scale would have to be carried out far from any civilian sectors.

Jimmy to the Senator, Jim to others, JD to his school buddies, traded in his little wooden carnival ride and his outstretched arms for a real set of wings eventually becoming a pilot of a small commuter service shuttling passengers all around the planet. His cousin went into architecture, urban planning and ultimately government to help shape the look of the future. The ‘Verse was still relatively new, so a “whole lotta shap’n” was still needed. Many politicians talked about sculpting society as if it was a lump of clay or piece of marble that could turned into a work of art by only the touch of a master artist. Not unlike terraforming worlds. Well, he knew a lot of politicos; no one could be called a master of anything let alone art. But try telling them that.

The two men eventually both found themselves women who could tolerate them, and started families of their own. But they never gave up on their summertime tradition. The old carnival was still there, and sometimes for old times sake the still evening air might still catch the sight of them climbing onto the merry-go-round, although the animals were looking pretty worn and much much smaller then they had remembered. The Senator missed those days of innocence

The tour group was soon ushered out of building 3 into a large breezy walkway. On the left was a small open area where many of the researchers were relaxing, catching up on some reading or just having lunch. It was a strangely normal scene at an otherwise bizarre place.

“Our next stop will be in Psycho-analytics,” their guide said.

The Senator stopped, frozen in his tracks. That term sent chills through his spine.

“Psycho-analytics deals in the process of understanding how the mind works, and developing techniques to improve the good parts and suppress the bad. It other words, trying to make people better.”

They were supposed to have shut that program down.

“Hey Jimmy!” the Senator remembered saying all those years ago. “Hey Jimmy! I got this great opportunity for ya!” Jim had once confided to him that he secretly longed to join some of the settlers as they headed out for adventures unknown on the rim. But he admitted he was a little too lazy to milk cows and loved the relative comfort of the core worlds, so grudgingly put up with those smug elites all of his life. Smiling as he said so, knowing that he was actually one of them.

“Hey Jimmy! I got this opportunity for ya!” the Senator said one afternoon when his cousin and his family were visiting. As they were touring one of the few open government buildings, the Senator pulled him aside and shared with him the benefits of being in a position of power. He explained that there was a great research project on a new moon recently approved for habitation. The project was to create an entire town, not a big impersonal city mind you, but a town using all of the newest tech coming from the institute and other research parks. The town would be a showcase in the ‘Verse, getting access to technologies years before the rest of the worlds. It would be a great place for someone who wanted to live a bit of an adventurous life, benefit mankind and of particular interest, raise a family. And they were looking for people like Jim. “I’ll put a good word in for you!” the Senator promised his cousin.

A few months later the two families shared one final summer vacation and one more suite of evenings staring into the dark diamond studded country skies. Their last, before Jimmy, Lilly and the kids moved to their new home.

It was a place called Miranda.

When the stories started to surface about what happened there three years later, the Senator was horrified. How could so much go so far wrong? Naturally nothing appeared in the press. Such an embarrassment could seriously damage the Alliance even after their successfully ending the war. But they knew what it took to keep people quiet. The Senator had been on the giving end of that more than once. He hated it. Hated himself sometimes. But once you were a part of the “team” you could never really leave. The benefits were a good salary, comfortable living, and a smattering of power from time to time. The drawback was the constant whisper of a wounded conscience. For this Senator at least. Others he knew never had to suffer from that, and merrily did what they were told and reaped the ample benefits. The Alliance treated loyalists very well. Others, not so well.

Jimmy had loved Miranda. True, it was a little bit more plastic-y than he was wanted, having at one time dreamt of even making his own home out of hand-cut lumber. But it was relatively small and clean and neighborly in a way most core cities were not, and that made it feel like they were on the rim and explorers on some level. He wrote once every couple of weeks without fail, but because of the secret nature of the research his letters concentrated on his family and his efforts to try and recreate a small corner of New Shannon.

One day he excitedly told of having secured a small plot of land outside of town to build of all things, a cabin. The items for such an endeavor were not to be found on the moon as such old fashioned equipment was unnecessary, but the Senator came to the rescue surprising him for his birthday with a large package of homesteading tools not unlike those that rim settlers would bring with them. Later Jimmy sent some sketches of the home he designed and laughingly described how his neighbors couldn’t quite figure out why anyone would want to build a house when the Alliance give them one for free.

Another time he told of a picnic him and his family had had that previous Sunday. It was at their favorite spot at the base of a low rolling grassy hillside just north of town shaded by one lone tree. After eating, it was play time, and his kids raced him up to the top laughing all the way. He couldn’t help but notice how the wind was caught at the base of the hill and directed up the slope. He took his son, Judah, and lifted him over his head having him flap his arms. At each burst of arm-flapping he would raise his son up, then down a little, urging him to flap harder. Then he’d raise him up again making him think that his little arms were really pulling him higher off the ground, perching him high enough to feel the wind in his face. And Jimmy told him to whisper to the sky, and one day it may whisper back to him.

That would be his last letter.

The Senator’s anger slowly rose in him again as he heard the tour guide ramble on about the wonderful benefits of social engineering.

It would be months before he would hear anything about Miranda. Clearly something awful had happened there. At first any questions were just lightly brushed off. After all, why did he need to know? The Alliance was highly compartmentalized much of the time, working on a need-to-know basis. And the Senator didn’t need to know. First the silence was due to “intensive research.” This was followed by the ubiquitous “technical problems.” Next came the notion of some sort of epidemic caused by a latent pathogen in the environment that had been undetected. The rumors, constantly changing, hovered like that for months.

Then came some disturbing reports from the rim. Reports that were initially categorized as a new kind of piracy.

The first ones slowly trickled into the press describing a gruesome attack by some of these so-called “pirates” on one of the rim settlements of Pandora. They didn’t take much but some old boats while kidnapping some settlers and butchering others. That kind of violence was usually associated with some sort of perceptible goal. Piracy was commonplace in the Black but few attacks were as violent and in this case it seemed like the violence may have been the goal itself. The Alliance “solved” the problem simply by ensuring no further reports made it to the public. It explained them away as just rumors used to scare other settlers away from more desirable worlds, or those of children’s horror stories that somehow had gotten out of control.

But the Senator knew better. He was on the External Threat Subcommittee, a minor, obscure and often ridiculed group looking in the possibility of threats from alien life forms and how to respond. True, no intelligent alien life had ever been detected and remained firmly the subject of science fiction stories. That is, until these attacks started. The first was soon followed by several others, the attackers described by the very few witnesses as barely human. One young girl who was nearly driven mad by her experience, called them “monsters in human form.” It was all too fantastic to believe. Monsters? Really! Calling in the best experts from The Carnival led to nothing but silence and frustration. He had an uneasy sense that someone probably knew what was going on, but the way the Alliance treated whistle-blowers, it was no wonder no one came forward. But there was always the possibility that there might not be a whistle that needed blowing in the first place.

One day they heard from the director of the Psycho-analytics division. He was brought in to answer questions of mob behavior and what might drive humans or any species for that matter into such abhorrent actions. The director, a Dr. Matthew Ling, had been completely ignorant of the attack reports as they were so carefully contained. But this was fairly common. He went on for the better part of an hour into the different schools of thought about human behavior patterns, historical means of controlling such things from communal living experiments, to hypnosis to drug therapy and the failure modes of each.

Knowing that this might be his only chance in a relatively public forum, the Senator interrupted Dr. Ling for a question. Feigning more knowledge then he had, he leaned towards his microphone and asked “And what did the Miranda experiments tell you?” The witness was clearly caught off guard having been told that Miranda “had been taken care of.” But facing the panel he went on to explain about the promise and failure of the Pax, how it was distributed, its early euphoric effects followed by a quick “apathy crash” as it was called and its unpredictable effects on a large population. What struck the Senator in particular were the stories of the pathological violence caused by a tiny minority of the subjects.

Dr. Ling described them as becoming “monsters in human form.”

The Senator heard that Dr. Ling had “resigned” shortly after the hearing and that Psycho-analytics was completely closed down. Miranda quickly became a taboo subject. He heard that it was taken out of the hands of The Carnival, quarantined, removed from the grid and in effect, ceased to exist altogether.

The attacks continued increasing in their ferocity, but there was little evidence to tie them into the events of Miranda except for the curious timing. The Subcommittee’s recommendations were submitted and promptly ignored, save for a few extra patrols on the outskirts of the ‘Verse. It was determined that the bandits were in fact human, so any responsibility for handling them would rest with other obscure governmental agencies. Realistically though, the Alliance didn’t spend too much time worrying about the outer worlds. They had largely been Indie planets seeking to be left alone. And the Alliance thought what better punishment could they deserve then to be, well, left alone.

The Senator missed his childhood friend. He was perhaps the only one who kept him grounded while many politicians around him consumed their own form of poison that isolated them from the rest of the ‘Verse. It was an age-old story and destined to be repeated time and yet time again. Jimmy kept him grounded. Barely. Told him what worked and what didn’t out there in the world beyond the niceties of parliamentary hearings and fancy dinners.

He wanted to tell everyone about Jimmy, the honorable life he lead, the anonymous deaths he and his family must have suffered after so much promise.

He couldn’t. That was one of the differences between him and his friend. One very slowly gravitated towards a life that required effort. The other did not. In another time Jimmy might have been one of those settlers, perfectly happy with a shovel and a mule and little more. The Senator kept to his lavish parties, future pension and 40th floor penthouse in the downtown of Core-central. It was a comfortable life. And anything that might change that was banished from his thoughts. Yes, he was a coward. He had information that could take down the bastards that let his friend die. But he couldn’t let it out. Whistle-blowers quickly saw the hard side of the Alliance’s glove.

*****

The Senator kept his silence wanting to let this tour-drone go on, to see what he had to say. The rest of the tour group, largely ignorant of the truth nodded wide-eyed at the visions of paradise their host described.

“…in fact, you might just say that we are creating our own Eden!”

They followed him down one hall, and took a right, out to a plaza and then into a cold hard structure that curiously burrowed deep into the ground. Most places had their labs and offices above the surface, but this was inverted, a seemingly perfect metaphor of The Carnival. They took a bewildering series of elevators down, down so deep the Senator thought the devil himself might be there to meet them.

“And here is where our special subjects are. It is our own special academy. Some of the most promising and intelligent young members of our society have volunteered their time with us to learn just what their potential might be.”

The guide continued, explaining how gifted young children receive an education of a lifetime there, that there was a waiting list years long.

“Obviously very dangerous ‘gifted young children?’” the Senator remarked.

“Excuse me?”

“I mean, to be buried so deep like this. Not like any academy I’ve seen.”

“There are security issues we must be careful about, if that’s what you mean.” the guide responded.

The Senator noted the extra levels of checkpoints and some barely disguised security personnel. He wondered if this was to keep the unwanted out, or the wanted in.

Dodging any further discussion, the host directed the group into a special area that resembled a fairly comfortable dormitory. This was a subset of the school, one for the real standouts among the students. Here were only a handful of special “precious” subjects. The Senator noticed a military sticker on one of the vending machines in the hallway. He thought that was odd for what was supposed to be s civilian institute. “Oh, but wait, this is the Alliance after all” he thought.

“…and these subjects are being trained to be the most loyal of Alliance citizens, using their unique skills to protect us against any threats.”

“And what threats might those be?” the Senator asked.

“Uh…well…we cannot be sure, so we train them in all the skills needed and learn how we might eventually train others not so gifted.”

“So possible military threats?”

One of the parliamentarians jumped into the conversation. “ANY threats that might hurt our citizens. How many millions died after the war? A war that was completely unnecessary? And then there are pirates, looters on the rim we’re all heard about.”

The guide added “You should be very proud of what we’re doing here Senator.”

Another one of the group asked “what skills are you talking about?”

“A variety. From hand-to-hand combat, to field engineering, extreme survival skills, leadership to even something as esoteric as ‘reading.’”

“So you have some ‘readers’ here?”

The Senator took notice. He had heard of “readers.” Short for mind-readers, telepaths, psychics, or what-have-you. As a child he saw one at Jimmy’s carnival who would come into the audience and tell people things about them that she should not have known. It was only after seeing the act a second time they noticed that the “randomly selected audience members” had likewise returned and were once again “randomly selected.”

“Yes, we have discovered some individuals who appear to be true ‘readers.’ They seem to have limited skills but we hope to find out how to train them to see further and in more detail. Right now most can only get impressions of say for example, someone’s emotions…”

“Like an ‘empath?’”

“Correct, like an empath. But a couple of subjects seem very promising.”

The Senator stood in the back row, taking it all in. “What happens if someone like this gets out in the public? How can you protect our privacy?”

The tour guide explained about the precautions: code-phrases that could be sent to the subjects not to mention loyalty programming to prevent them from doing anything to harm the Alliance in the first place. “That is our biggest ‘kill switch.’ Make them so that even though they have these, for the lack of a better word, ‘powers,’ they will only use them for good. That is why they are in this division right now.”

“And protecting the Alliance means what?” the Senator asked, just to confirm a suspicion.

The guide thought that an odd question. “Well, anything that could be a threat to the constitution, to the values of the Alliance. That which hurts the freedom and growth of the individual, or well, threatens their safety and ability to live in peace….”

The parliamentarians nodded in reflexive agreement.

“Interesting words” the Senator thought, “if only the government still actually believed in such things, instead of becoming such a den of self-serving vipers that it has become.” They were, maybe even he was, the real threat to those very same values. There were good people in the government, very good, but the best either became so disillusioned they left, or quietly accepted their role destined never to make it to the top. Most were not mean enough, or tough enough to get any real power to do something. Including him.

“Now over here we can observe one promising young subject. A young woman…”

The group was directed into a control room, a sophisticated booth with vid screens scattered about to help monitor several “students.” The guide pointed to the one screen that was active as he continued about her skills that made most of their own scientists or even soldiers look little more than children by comparison.

The Senator was standing behind an assistant to their host, and overheard her whisper to one of the parliamentarians “She may look like a school-girl. But you would never want to meet her on a battlefield…”.

She was calmly writing something, letters perhaps, seemingly oblivious to her audience.

“Can she sense us right now?” Maggie, the Senator’s long-suffering own aid asked.

“We think so, yet she is about 50 meters away from here. That would be an extraordinary distance for a reader. It really depends how ‘loud’ our thoughts are, and how many others there might be in the area at one time. She told us that at times she can her a single voice singing out, and at others all of the voices at once sounding like the dull roar of a full stadium. She said it could almost drive her crazy at times.”

“Now if you come with me…”

The group left, while the Senator stood and watched the young woman. She was a mere teenager, a waif of a girl. And a lab rat. He noticed that she paused and sat up briefly at that last thought of his.

“What do you see little girl?”

She went back to writing. He thought again about Jimmy, Jim, JD… Jim D'arbanville. She paused again briefly then continued her correspondence.

The Senator never considered himself a brave man. He got where he was by choosing fashion over substance and expediency over wisdom. He would let others do “what’s right for doin.’” The government drained people like him of any passion they might have had when young, staring up at the stars on a balmy summer eve.

But he could do one thing. One thing that was good. He could never boast about it, troubadours would never sing his praises nor marching bands parade in front of him standing in some future review stand. No. Only two people would even know. No way to trace it. None at all. If it worked that is.

Now alone he stared again at the screen. Hard. He thought of Jimmy, Miranda, the Pax, The Carnival’s experiments gone wrong, the meddling of the government where they had no right to meddle and most importantly, these so-called “reaver” attacks that were getting increasingly out of control. He repeated the thoughts over and over, and found himself unconsciously furrowing his brow as if that might magically focus his thoughts more clearly to this vid screen. He grinned at the silliness of it all. It was probably all carnival hokum, scientific wishful thinking. What if she was 50 meters behind him. Would that matter? Did she have to be line-of-site, without the walls blocking the delicate thought waves? What if the tour group was in some other part of the lab closer to her. Would that mask his, “transmission?” She continued writing…

“Senator!” His aid broke his silence. “We were looking for you. Everything all right?”

“Oh, yes…just lost in my thoughts.”

The two left the booth and headed back out to join the others.

“Well” the Senator said to himself. “I planted the seed. I wonder if anything will grow.”

----- Other stories by this author:

Gnaw Return to Serenity