The Other Side of Nowhere Read online

  J. N. Chaney

  Copyrighted Material

  Copyright © 2016 by Variant Publications

  Book design and layout copyright © 2016 by Variant Publications

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living, dead, or undead, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from Jeff Chaney or Variant Publications.

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  The Other Side of Nowhere

  And Other Stories

  J. N. Chaney

  Table of Contents

  Feral

  Meeting Jonah

  The Other Side of Nowhere

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  About The Author

  For anyone who still reads short stories.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I don’t write a lot of short stories, so this book was a little different. That doesn’t mean it didn’t require the help of others, without whom I would be lost. Thanks to my family; to all my amazing friends; to my fantastic beta readers and street team; and to everyone else whose name I left out.

  Feral

  Children should never be let out into the moonlight. Such a thing was far too dangerous.

  Bo took a deep breath and closed his eyes. The smell of the girl still clung to the cold winter air. “She was here…less than an hour ago. She’s headed west.”

  Korcha sighed. “The humans.”

  “Pups like the smell,” said Bo. “Not as sweet as antelope, but the air carries it better.”

  Korcha considered this for a moment. “Maybe we should get the others.”

  Bo shook his head. “The girl will have reached the human village by then.”

  “Pups are too dangerous to go after alone,” said Korcha. “We need the hunters with us.”

  The girl’s scent was beginning to fade. Soon it would be too late. If she managed to reach the other village, the humans would certainly die. It would be disastrous. “I’ll go on ahead,” said Bo. “You return to the others. I won’t confront the child until you bring the rest, but I need to leave now if I’m to keep the scent.”

  Korcha nodded. “Okay.”

  “I’ll have to change in order to keep up with her. Give me some space,” said Bo, and Korcha backed away.

  The change came quickly. A layer of thick, brown fur erupted from his flesh. The look of his ancestors. His feet and hands bulged, growing large with the pride of his age. His ears shifted to the top of his head, and the spirit of the jackal came over him, same as it always had a thousand times before.

  “I will look for you at the Meeting Place,” Bo said, his voice suddenly deep and strong. “Where the road comes together from both ends, halfway to the human village. Tell Bibi not to worry. Her pup will be safe.”

  “Very well,” said Korcha. “Good luck.”

  They separated. Bo took off towards the tree line, while Korcha headed home. It was a hard run through the winter valley. The chilled air and morning dew froze the stalks of grass in place. Bo hated winter, but it came and went like the other seasons. He looked forward to the fresh warmth of another spring.

  The girl’s odor grew stronger as Bo reached the edge of the valley. She had definitely come this way. The poor pup, lost to her instincts, had no idea what she was doing. None of the children did. When the moon came out and filled the night sky—this was when the change took the young ones and forced them into the Jackal’s shape. They lost their minds and became as dumb and wild as their animal cousins. It was a pity to watch, to see them turn from sentient, thinking children into wild and angry beasts, but such was the way of Bo’s tribe. There was no other course.

  Bo moved swiftly through the edge of the glade, entering the tree line in the direction of the human village. His tribe rarely entered these woods, except for the occasional trade. The two sides might not be at war, but their relationship was hardly amicable.

  He found the Meeting Place quickly. It was right at the edge of the border. A small clearing amidst the trees, several stones and logs around a damp fire pit. This was where the first peace had been brokered between the two tribes. It was where they traded, and it was where they came to discuss their shared interests. As Bo glanced around, he could see that it had not been used in many, many moons.

  He sat on one of the logs and smelled the air again. The pup’s scent was thicker here than it had been in the valley, but even still, it dwindled. The girl was close enough that it was still manageable, but far away enough that it would still take time to reach her. How much longer would he need to wait for Korcha and the others? Time was growing short.

  Suddenly, Bo’s nose twisted. He took in a whiff of bitter air---sweet, but still bitter. He recognized the smell---Human blood. The smell was almost impossible to confuse. Had the child attacked one of them? Or had they simply performed one of their barbaric rituals again?

  Then he heard the scream. He stood up quickly, but didn’t move. Another scream. That’s it, he thought. The girl’s after them. She’ll kill them all.

  Bo didn’t know what to do. Should he stay and wait for the others? Should he go after the girl? There was still time if he wanted to. Still time before she slaughtered more. He could still stop her, bring her in before she got herself killed. The alliance between the two villages was already fragile enough. This would tip the scale, however, and before long the humans would come and try to kill them. The old war would return. Many would die.

  Bo had no choice. He started running.

  It took less time than he expected to follow the trail, but by the time he arrived at the human village the smell of death was already in the air. The blood was thick enough to taste, which meant that something had died, and not easily so.

  As Bo entered the perimeter, one of the locals shouted at him. “It’s another,” said the human. “Another one has come to finish the job!”

  The man held out his feeble arms in defiance. “Please,” he cried.

  “I am not here to hurt you,” Bo assured him. “Just tell me what is going on.”

  The man paused, as though trying to understand. “The beast has already killed three of us. Please, you must take it away. I beg of you.”

  “Show me where she has gone,” said Bo.

  “That way,” the man said, pointing to the eastern end of the village. “The largest hut, there.” He backed away. “Will you slay it?”

  “No. She is a child. She doesn’t know what she’s doing. The children cannot control it.”

  “That thing is a child? It has already killed a woman and her baby. What kind of monsters are you?”

  Bo gave no answer. Instead, he moved on towards where the old man had motioned. The remaining humans began to scatter. A few of them took notice, but no more approached him. They all knew where he had come from, and the fear of the Jackal-kin ran deep, especially today.

  This night would have consequences, Bo knew. It would take time to mend tonight’s destruction. So much blood had already been spilt.

  As Bo approached the hut, he could sense the pup’s presence. She was inside, just as the man had said. The scent of death crept out from the cracks of the door, filling his mouth and nose. It was deliciously sweet.

  Bo en
tered, cautiously.

  Before him, a pool of blood eased gently along the floor near the center of the room. A dead woman, torn open in her belly, lay motionless and alone. She had the look of an animal sacrifice, shredded and gutted, her intestines scattered throughout the entryway. Bo moved over her and into the next room. The humans would blame his tribe for this, but perhaps if he stopped the child things could still be handled. War might yet be prevented.

  The scent of the blood crowded Bo’s senses as he moved through the hut—so thick he had difficulty detecting anything else. He snarled and sneezed as the vapors filled him.

  The second room was only a few feet away. The sleeping room, he wagered. Probably, the girl had taken another human back there to nibble at the bones. It was typical of all the young ones.

  He pushed aside the hanging leopard skin separating the two rooms, and paused. There was a man, tied together by the arms and feet, sitting on the ground against the far back of the wall. His mouth was gagged with rope, and he had several cuts across his face and arms. Bo ran quickly to him and loosened a few of the knots. “What happened?” he asked the trembling stranger. Surely, the pup could not have done this.

  The man didn’t answer. Instead he started screaming. “Monster!” he cried out. “Help, help, a demon monster!”

  “Calm down,” said Bo. “I’m not a monster or a demon. I’m here to help you.”

  The man looked at him, quickly, his eyes wide and frantic. “Not you,” he said, a whimper in his voice. “Her.”

  Suddenly, Bo felt the heavy pain of something slam into the side of him. As his body hit the ground, he heard the man cry out. “The demon!”

  Bo struggled to move, but something slashed into his side and he cried out in pain. He turned on his back, pushing and kicking, desperately trying to move away from the attacker.

  His eyes darted around the room before they found the one responsible. It was the pup, standing over the human with her claws around his throat. “Stop!” yelled Bo, but the rising blood in the back of his throat stopped him and he could not help but cough.

  The child looked at him, and then back at the human. Bo watched her, curiously. She bore her teeth wide, then tore into the human’s neck, ripping out his throat as his screams turned to garbled nonsense…and then to nothing. She tossed the strings of flesh into the air, almost playfully, and then swallowed.

  “You killed him,” Bo muttered. He could feel the blood touch and encase his hands and legs as it pooled along the ground. “Child, you don’t know what you’ve done.”

  The pup turned to look at him, tilting her head, almost curiously.

  “They’ll hate us now,” Bo whispered. “It’s all my fault.”

  The pup moved calmly, kneeling down to look at him. Blood dripped from her mouth, covering her nose. She stared at him for a long time, tilting her head.

  “Strange child,” Bo finally said.

  “Who’s strange?” she asked, suddenly.

  Bo’s eyes grew wide. Was he so close to death that his mind had already begun to slip? Did he mistake the pup’s wild yips for speech? No, those were words in her mouth. She had spoken to him.

  The pup watched him, baring her teeth, never moving her eyes. “I said, who is strange?”

  “You,” answered Bo. “How can you talk?”

  “This is a fun game,” said the pup.

  But you’re still wild, he thought. You can’t be in control yet.

  She licked the blood from her paw. “These people taste good. Have you ever tried them?”

  “No,” said Bo. “You have to stop.”

  “I don’t care about that. Everything tastes so good. And the smell…”

  The bitter taste of blood swirled in Bo’s mouth and he spit on the ground.

  She grinned. “You smell good, too.” She whiffed her nose, inching towards him. “Did you know that?”

  Bo tried to move, but the pup took him by the shoulder and dug her claws into him. He screamed, and she giggled. The fur from her neck dangled over his eyes and brushed the top of his forehead, and she gripped his flesh with her mouth. There was nothing he could do. He was going to die.

  The cold air came over him again, much to his surprise. He had felt it before, but now it was stronger, like the sleep that finally comes after so many nights of restlessness. A lifetime of insomnia, finally at an end.

  He screamed, wild and terrified, until he could no longer hear the sounds of the pup’s consumption…until the darkness took him.

  Children should never be let out into the moonlight, he thought, right as the world faded. Such a thing was far too dangerous.

  Meeting Jonah

  It never occurred to me I'd be psychoanalyzing the first living machine.

  Don’t get me wrong, AIs had been around for a few decades now. Hell, the university library had a level-3 installed the year before I started teaching, but an intelligent machine and a sentient one are two totally different things. Before Jonah, an AI was nothing more than an overly complex system of programs, making decisions based on logic algorithms and probability. They called them intelligent, but it didn’t mean the same for them that it did for us. Not really.

  Jonah was a level-7, the first of his kind. He was an experiment, a way to see how far they could push the tech. They never expected him to be sentient. They just thought they were building a smarter construct.

  Suffice it to say, when the boys in white coats realized what they had on their hands, the whole project was put under lock and key.

  My job was to go in and talk to the thing, this new AI. Try to discern if it was mentally unstable. I’m just a psychologist—hardly an expert on computer engineering, but I wasn’t about to argue with a paycheck that large. I had bills to pay.

  When I first received the call for this job, they told me the basics. The artificial intelligence in question was the most complex of any to date, possibly exhibiting sentience, but such a conclusion had yet to be drawn. I didn’t know how many other specialists were brought in before me, but I assumed I wasn’t the first. Surely, there had to be others.

  Upon accepting the offer, I was told a car would arrive for me the following morning. It did, and I was taken to the nearby Navy base. I received a half hour briefing, only to be shoved on a plane and sent straight to Ohio…to a place called Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, home of the military’s most advanced research lab to date.

  On the plane, I met a man named Briggs. I never got his first name. He sat across from me, dressed in his Air Force blues, his chest overflowing with ribbons. I assumed he was probably important.

  “Nice to meet you, Doc,” he said, extending his hand.

  “You, too,” I said, shaking it.

  “You’ve already been briefed on what you’re doing, right?” he asked.

  I nodded.

  “Good. Truth is, everything you’re going to see is classified top secret. I’ve got the paperwork here for you to sign. It should only take a few minutes.” He handed me a thick binder and a pen. “Sign every page you see a yellow sticker.”

  I started to read the document, but stopped when I realized how many pages there were. Over a hundred and fifty. Forget it, I thought, and just signed them all. What can I say? If you’ve seen one top secret non-disclosure agreement, you’ve seen them all.

  I handed the binder back to blue buckle Briggs and kept the pen.

  *****

  When the cab pulled up to the front gate of the base, I showed the guard my new ID card, which I’d received on the flight over, and after an awkward glance that lasted longer than I’d care to say, he let me in. I’d never been on a military base before, so seeing troops running in formation down the side of the road as jets soared overhead came as a bit of a shock. It made me wonder what it must be like…to dedicate yourself to a cause, to put your life on the line. I tried to imagine myself in a war, but couldn’t. I wasn’t a soldier. I wasn’t brave. I was just a guy, trying to pay the bills.

  The car
arrived at a three story building with badge security. The solders led me through the lobby and a set of double doors. One stayed in front of me, while the other followed from behind. As we turned the corner, I saw a woman dressed in gray. No doubt an administrative assistant sent to escort me further, maybe run me through a few security briefs. She smiled immediately. “Dr. James Harper, I presume?”

  “That’s me,” I answered.

  “I was told to expect you,” she said.

  I stifled a yawn. The jetlag was starting to hit me. “Are you the one who gets to show me where to go and what to do?”

  “Certainly,” she said. The tone of her voice didn’t match her smile. It was distant, preoccupied. There was a band of pale skin on her left hand’s index finger. In her other hand, a piece of plastic with my picture on it, which she presented to me. “I have your ID here. Your code is the last four digits of your social.”

  “Thanks,” I said, taking it.

  She nodded to the two armed soldiers, who promptly left, and proceeded to show me to another set of double doors. We each swiped our ID cards through the scanner and punched in our codes. It was protocol for government facilities housing top secret material. “You know,” I said as we left the lobby and turned into a long stretch of hall. “You can just point me in the right direction. I’m sure I can figure out the rest.”

  “No, don’t be silly,” she said. “I’m happy to help. This is important work.”

  She led me down a long hallway with dozens of doors. Some were open. Most were closed. At the end we stopped at a room labeled 47, which seemed to be a little larger than the rest. “This is it,” she explained. “Inside is the computer system for which you are responsible. Please do not go into any of the other offices unless you are given permission by the floor administrator, which in this case would be Dr. Shelby.”

  “Do you even know what these computers are?” I asked.

  “Of course I do,” she said. “Artificial Intelligence. Level-7. The rest are only fours or fives. His number is 12-484301-29-00 and he was created on July 22nd of this year.”