Bubble

Max made his way across an open expanse. One of ARCHON’s many spaceship hangars. This one had been stripped of its original purpose and reborn as a proving ground for experimental technology. The cavernous space hummed with activity. Overhead gantries creaked softly, cables hung like veins, and the air smelled faintly of hot metal and engine oil.

Clusters of engineers moved with rehearsed urgency, some in lab coats already yellowing at the cuffs, others in blue overalls streaked with grease and graphite. No one lingered. Every face was fixed on a screen, a component, a problem that demanded immediate attention. Max drifted between them, careful to keep his pace unremarkable.

Near the centre of the hangar, a pack of dog-shaped robots were being put through a series of motor-skill tests. They trotted, stopped, turned, corrected themselves. One stumbled, recalibrated, and continued on as if nothing had happened. Observers murmured and scribbled notes while a technician barked commands into a headset. It looked eerily like a futuristic version of Crufts.

At the far end of the hangar, the noise thinned out. Max slipped into a narrow service corridor. Another ARCHON employee passed him going the other way. Max kept his head down. No eye contact. Posture obedient and forgettable. The man didn’t even slow. Nobody gave him a second glance. Everyone was too wrapped up in their own critical tasks to notice one man walking just a little too carefully.

It was the only reason this had worked.

He was almost where he needed to be, and it was a good thing too. The dizziness was getting worse. His pulse hammered behind his eyes hard enough to make his vision bounce. He wasn’t sure how much longer he could stay upright.

It made no sense. 

He had completed dozens of space missions over the years, but he had never felt like this. Maybe passing out earlier had done more damage than he wanted to admit. Maybe he really had pushed his heart into arrhythmia.

It didn’t matter. All that mattered right now was talking to Daphne.

Finally, he arrived. A steel door. A sign above it read the bubble. Max pressed his wedding ring to the card reader beside it.

Nothing.

It was expected. He hadn’t imagined that Dr Greene’s clearance would reach this level. Fortunately there was a workaround. After all, Max had designed most of the systems here, for the board, for ARCHON. And the most extravagant of all of them lived behind this door.

Above the frame, a camera watched the corridor.

Max checked that nobody was around, then raised a fist and knocked a short, simple percussion on the steel door. He looked up at the camera and waited.

 Not everything has to be hi-tech, he thought with a grin.

The camera sprang to life and lowered, focusing on him. Max returned its glare.

The red light on the reader flashed green. A latch released. The door opened.

Max stumbled inside.

He stepped into a vast spherical chamber. Curved walls and ceiling danced with shifting patterns of coloured light. A transparent Perspex floor allowed him to see the lower half of the sphere. The colours swirled and swam like some kind of three-dimensional screensaver, slowly moving with hypnotic patience.

In the centre of the sphere stood a single workstation, complete with an integrated chair, keyboard console and mic. The station could rotate if required.

Max hobbled the last few steps and collapsed into the seat. His legs shook. He wasn’t sure how much longer he could have stayed standing. He felt so light-headed he worried he would have collapsed in the corridor.

“Hermes, I don’t want any of this logged.”

Nothing.

Max sighed and fiddled with his wedding ring, spinning it back and forth like the dial of a safe. Then he pressed his fist against the mic. The ring pinged erratically.

The chamber flickered. The glowing lights vanished. Suddenly he was sitting in a black abyss, surrounded by stars in every direction. The console appeared to float through space itself.

“Sorry, Boss-man. Protocol. Had to be sure it was you and not some joker in a rubber mask who knows our club-house knock is the Red Dwarf theme tune,” Hermes chimed, bright and jolly as ever.

The bubble shimmered, syncing to Hermes’ signal. The AI wasn’t actually in the room; one fragment of him lived in a server stack in Max’s lab, the other was currently hitching a ride through space aboard the Argos Relay Station. The bubble simply pulled both halves together and projected whatever Hermes saw in real time.

The stars deepened around Max as the room shifted. A three-dimensional panorama wrapped itself around him, fed from the 360-degree camera attached to the Argos Relay Station. Max had built the system for ARCHON so technicians could “fly” through space without grinding through endless calculus at a console.

“Log’s frozen,” Hermes added. “And I’ve piped my video feed into the bubble so you can admire my heroic journey to B612. Try not to swoon. You’re already wobbly.”

“I want you to call Daphne.”

“I’m afraid that won’t be possible. Her phone appears to be switched off.”

Max exhaled slowly. “What about Magnus’s hospital record?”

“Relax, Boss-man. I nabbed a copy the moment the hospital uploaded it. Magnus is fine. High levels of diphenhydramine, yes, but he’s made a full recovery. System says accidental ingestion of sleep meds. Most important bit: the kid’s okay.”

Max let himself sink into the chair. It was over.

 No more worrying.

“Hermes, the GPS tracker. Daphne’s ring. Is she still at the hospital?”

“The GPS tracker we solemnly swore never to touch unless it was a genuine emergency? Such as the villainous ARCHON henchmen taking her hostage to extract top-secret information out of you . . . probably about me? That GPS tracker?”

“Just check the damn GPS. Magnus nearly died, and Daphne’s phone is off. We’re bending the rule, not smashing it.”

“She’s not at the hospital. From her direction and speed, she’s in a vehicle heading home. She’ll arrive within the hour. Max . . . there’s something else.”

Something in Hermes’ tone twisted in Max’s stomach.

“Hermes,” Max said quietly, “I can’t remember the last time you called me by my actual name. You finally got bored of Boss-man?”

“It didn’t feel appropriate,” Hermes said, voice stripped of its usual playfulness. “The hospital has just released an updated record. Max . . . I know you can force me to show you the file, but I would ask that you don’t. This is not the right place. And you shouldn’t be alone.”

“Show me,” Max snapped. “Show me now.”

Hermes hesitated — actually hesitated. It was absurd. He had never delayed a response before.

Then a section of the bubble wall illuminated.

Max stared.

Nothing happened for a long time.

Then a sound escaped him — something guttural that cracked into a wet croak, then into wheezing, then finally into sobs. His body folded into the console like a puppet with severed strings.

“I’m sorry, Max,” Hermes said softly. “I’ve located a poorly hidden evidence trail. ARCHON already had this information. They kept it from you so you’d be more compliant and less emotional during your debrief. Is there anything you want me to do?”

Max gripped the mic in a shaking fist. “I don’t care how you do it. I don’t care what you have to do. I don’t care what you have to break. Get me the fuck home. Now.”