Read Online The Omega Expedition by Brian Stableford - Free Book Online
Authors: Brian Stableford
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she said. “Our records are incomplete, but it seems that you were frozen down on the third of September twenty-two zero-two, presumably by order of a court.
“ Frozen down? ” I couldn’t help reacting to that as if it were true, but I collected myself quickly enough. It wasn’t entirely impossible that I had ended up in court, and if one added all my petty crimes together, it wasn’t implausible that I might have got a custodial sentence — but I couldn’t remember being arrested, let alone charged and convicted. In any case, even though the fashionable sentence of the day was indeterminate in length — on the grounds that many of those committed to Suspended Animation were “habitual delinquents” from which the public needed and deserved “due protection” — I knew that I couldn’t have been convicted of anything that would get me put away for longer than a couple of years. I was utterly convinced that I couldn’t have done anything that would have got me put away for more than a couple of years.
Or could I?
Surely I would have remembered carrying out a massacre or blowing up a building full of people.
Then again, I thought, what would anyone have to do to justify putting them away for more than a thousand years?
What the child was telling me was that I had been woken up a mere hundred days before my eleven hundredth birthday, having served a term of “imprisonment” of one thousand and sixty years, six months, and a couple of weeks. Even allowing for the fact that SusAn confinement provided no scope for remission on the grounds of good behavior, that seemed a trifle excessive.
I really did think that: “a trifle excessive.” Such was the balanced state of my mind, cushioned by the commanding suspicion that this was all a game, a VE drama.
“What else do you know about me?” I asked the child.
“Very little,” she replied. “Now that you know my name and the date and place of your awakening, you know as much about us as we know about you.” I didn’t believe her. I was sure that it had to be a game, a ploy, a tease — anything but the truth.
“You must know what I was frozen down for ,” I countered, warily.
“That datum appears to have been erased from the record,” she said. “Do you remember doing anything that might have given rise to a sentence of imprisonment?”
I thought she was mocking me. I remembered a considerable number of trivial offenses. It occurred to me that I might have been convicted of “treasonous sabotage” — which is to say, deleting and falsifying official data with malicious and fraudulent intent. It was a crime I had committed more than once, and for a variety of reasons. So far as I could remember, though, in the years immediately preceding the summer of 2202 I had only done such things while acting according to the requests and under the orders of the Secret Masters of the World — or, more prosaically, Damon Hart. It was not beyond the bounds of possibility that I had been ratted out to the UN Police by my own employers. My arrest and conviction might conceivably have been a sop in the convoluted diplomatic game the Secret Masters still felt obliged to play against the representatives of a World Democracy that had not yet been reduced to absolute impotence. But it didn’t seem likely.
Surely, if that had been the case, I’d have remembered it.
Anyway, no one in the world could have expected me to serve more than ten years in the freezer for treasonous sabotage. The only way I could have been removed from society for any longer than that — let alone a thousand years — was by falling victim to treasonous sabotage myself.
In other words, if what the strange child was telling me was true, then someone like me must have been hired by someone like Damon Hart — or Damon Hart’s new masters — to obliterate the record of my conviction and imprisonment.
It couldn’t be true. It had to be a joke.
It didn’t seem to me to be very funny,
“ Frozen down? ” I couldn’t help reacting to that as if it were true, but I collected myself quickly enough. It wasn’t entirely impossible that I had ended up in court, and if one added all my petty crimes together, it wasn’t implausible that I might have got a custodial sentence — but I couldn’t remember being arrested, let alone charged and convicted. In any case, even though the fashionable sentence of the day was indeterminate in length — on the grounds that many of those committed to Suspended Animation were “habitual delinquents” from which the public needed and deserved “due protection” — I knew that I couldn’t have been convicted of anything that would get me put away for longer than a couple of years. I was utterly convinced that I couldn’t have done anything that would have got me put away for more than a couple of years.
Or could I?
Surely I would have remembered carrying out a massacre or blowing up a building full of people.
Then again, I thought, what would anyone have to do to justify putting them away for more than a thousand years?
What the child was telling me was that I had been woken up a mere hundred days before my eleven hundredth birthday, having served a term of “imprisonment” of one thousand and sixty years, six months, and a couple of weeks. Even allowing for the fact that SusAn confinement provided no scope for remission on the grounds of good behavior, that seemed a trifle excessive.
I really did think that: “a trifle excessive.” Such was the balanced state of my mind, cushioned by the commanding suspicion that this was all a game, a VE drama.
“What else do you know about me?” I asked the child.
“Very little,” she replied. “Now that you know my name and the date and place of your awakening, you know as much about us as we know about you.” I didn’t believe her. I was sure that it had to be a game, a ploy, a tease — anything but the truth.
“You must know what I was frozen down for ,” I countered, warily.
“That datum appears to have been erased from the record,” she said. “Do you remember doing anything that might have given rise to a sentence of imprisonment?”
I thought she was mocking me. I remembered a considerable number of trivial offenses. It occurred to me that I might have been convicted of “treasonous sabotage” — which is to say, deleting and falsifying official data with malicious and fraudulent intent. It was a crime I had committed more than once, and for a variety of reasons. So far as I could remember, though, in the years immediately preceding the summer of 2202 I had only done such things while acting according to the requests and under the orders of the Secret Masters of the World — or, more prosaically, Damon Hart. It was not beyond the bounds of possibility that I had been ratted out to the UN Police by my own employers. My arrest and conviction might conceivably have been a sop in the convoluted diplomatic game the Secret Masters still felt obliged to play against the representatives of a World Democracy that had not yet been reduced to absolute impotence. But it didn’t seem likely.
Surely, if that had been the case, I’d have remembered it.
Anyway, no one in the world could have expected me to serve more than ten years in the freezer for treasonous sabotage. The only way I could have been removed from society for any longer than that — let alone a thousand years — was by falling victim to treasonous sabotage myself.
In other words, if what the strange child was telling me was true, then someone like me must have been hired by someone like Damon Hart — or Damon Hart’s new masters — to obliterate the record of my conviction and imprisonment.
It couldn’t be true. It had to be a joke.
It didn’t seem to me to be very funny,
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