|Sci-Fi|: Eras of Cain Ch 5 |Sci-IRL|: Experience a Rocket Launch

Fic: Eve illegally launches out of the universe and Cain learns she’s a clone. Science IRL: Video from astronauts’ perspectives from Shuttle to Dragon

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Previously…Cain killed a thug in an alley to protect her friend Trin and wonders if maybe her augs were controlled by a shadowy figure to kill the guy. Cain suspects her Mom set up this remote control feature and sent the shadowy figure—as some sort of twisted, emergency child-protection plan. A hoard of cop bots chased Trin and Cain onto a roof where they got an emergency airlift from Cain’s parents, but a cop bot came along for the ride. They’re all strapped into jumpseats for an emergency launch…

🎥 (📍Eve’s Worldship; 🗓️ June 10, 5271 🕒 9:08PM 

▶️(My entire meatbag body is being pancaked into the jumpseat by the force of launch. Next to me, Trin is silently screaming with his crushed windpipe, gripping his flight harness for dear life. Maybe he’s never done this before? On my other side, I see Dad’s cop bot wannabe-captor is collapsed against his chest like a weird robo baby, but it’s still straining its thin arms, trying to reach its cuff-shaped grippers around Dad’s wrists.

I’m bracing for the terrible impact of us causing the biggest air-traffic pileup there’s ever been, while trying to figure out what Mom was thinking launching from one of the lowest levels of the city. I don’t have to wonder long. My organic right eye is suddenly blinded by the wacko kaleidoscope of nonsense data caused by the pressure of jumping universes in this damned illegal ship. I realize Mom’s not piloting us up through the levels of the city, she’s launching us out of this universe altogether. No way we’d make it through 156 levels of air traffic without more casualties tonight.

She must be insane. The ship will be seen disappearing by pedestrians! Trin might even notice there’s something a tad off about this launch and then where will we be?

There’s something clattering toward us—metal on metal.

My right eye is still blinded by launch, but my trusty left bionic eye has no such normie complications. I’m funneling all my concentration into that one line of clear vision.

I’m thinking more cop bots got in and I imagine them descending on us in a metal tsunami until we can’t breathe, glued to our jumpseats like sitting ducks. Who knows what those bots are authorized to do to murderers?

I’m expecting more 3-foot-tall cop bots, but what appears scuttling upside down along the curved ceiling of the ship is a much larger, far more terrifying machine. Its many long legs curling and uncurling, more octopus-like than spider and it’s coming straight at us. Its torso is tall and thin, with a rotating head dotted with dozens of sensors that blink and strobe.

“Enemy sighted.” Its voice is a cold feminine razor blade.

I’m struggling against the many g-forces to move my hands to my buckle. “What are you doing!?” Dad’s sputtering.

The octo-spiderbot is reaching out two metal tendrils toward Dad.

I’m concentrating on moving my arms and my augs whir down my arms and around my wrists, spinning up the super-strength protocols. I’m the only one strong enough to protect us right now. Despite Dad’s obsession with weight lifting and his weird exercise routines, I’m still roughly 30 percent stronger than him because of my augs.

I finally manage to unbuckle and my harness is ripping away and pinned against the wall behind me. I’m shoving myself sideways trying to put myself between the bot and my father. It’s a short-lived motion. Cold sinuous octo-arms wrap around my torso, easily pressing me back into my jumpseat. Yet more arms rebuckle my harness seat.

“Rip its head off!” My mother’s voice echoes over the comms system.

Trin’s sputtering a curse, then vomiting next to me.

My mother has never called me ‘it’ before.

On our best days, she treated me with a sort of longsuffering indifference.

And now that I’ve killed a person…

Maybe she thinks I’m a machine beyond redemption?

I’m closing both eyes and turning away from my execution.

But death doesn’t come.

Only an odd pneumatic popping noise followed by, “You’re tampering with government pro…pert….y.”

Then there’s gentle pressure petting my hair.

“Cain, are you okay, love?”

I’m forcing my eyes open. The octo-spiderbot’s many eyes are trained on my face. Its eight arms are roving over my body gently as if checking for wounds.

Suddenly the force of launch disappears and weightlessness is ballooning my limbs like they’re on puppet strings

“You’re shaking, dearest, is everything alright?” the bot asks, suddenly in a much gentler female voice I’ve known since I can remember.

“Rosie?”

“But of course! To the rescue!” she’s waving the limp metal carcass of the decapitated cop bot.

I’m so relieved I might join Trin in vomiting.

“Threat neutralized?” Mom’s asking over comms.

“Neutralized,” Rosie sing-songs, shaking the carcass like a maraca.

“To the cockpit, all of you,” Mom commands.

The instant we’re through the slim square door to the cockpit, Mom and Dad are fighting. Per usual.

Trin’s tugging my sleeve, “We time jumped?”

My heart freezes. Worldship is an undocumented, universe-hopping, spacetime machine. Even my parents’ celebrity status wouldn’t save them if they were convicted of this crime. Only the government is permitted to control and facilitate travel between worlds.

“Don’t be daft,” I say, shrugging Trin off.

I know he’s too smart to question his own judgment. This is a problem I’ll have to address. I’m wishing my parents would stop fighting so I could ask how we should handle this disastrous security breech.

Their fight suddenly has all my attention.

“She’s NOT going back to school, do you want her dead?”

“No! I just don’t want her incarcerated before her 17th birthday!”

“Dead?” I’m interjecting, then regretting it. My mother’s turning to me and her full attention raises my heart rate. As if Rosie feels my anxiety spike, a robo arm winds around my shoulders.

If my father is a composed paragon of a tech CEO, my mother is a weapon begrudgingly sheathed for the comfort and safety of others.

I’m relieved to be free from her attention when she turns to the captain’s chair.

“Lucifer? Will you take Cain and her friend to get cleaned up? Maybe get them something to eat in the galley?”

My father is pressing his thumbs to his eyes. “Does he have to?”

My mother barely glances in my father’s direction.

The captain’s chair is rotating to face us and I suppress a childish desire to run into the arms of my favorite—well, my only—uncle. I don’t know if it’s my excitement or residual jump noise in my eye, but the air around him is shimmering like concrete on a hot day.

Original art by Ann Drew

“Ah! Cain! Great to see you.” Lucifer is leaping from the chair and smoothing his black silk shirt into the waistband of pinstriped slacks. A dimple shows as he smiles at Trin. “And Cain’s plus one? Trin, is it?”

“Nice to meet you…” Trin says,  clearly wondering how Lucifer has any idea who he is. But he’s too polite, reaching out a hand to shake

Lucifer takes it emphatically shaking his arm up and down like an old-timey water pump.

Lucifer tuns to me and double takes. “Well she barely even looks like you anymore, Eve! How’d you manage that? Love the hair, Cain. Could never convince Eve to do anything with hers.”

“Lucifer,” mother is saying—a warning, like he’s about to cut himself on something sharp. Her eyes pin him like daggers.

“What? She must have so many brilliant theories about how cloned genetics can possibly manifest like—”

“Lucifer!” My mother is grabbing Uncle Lucifer by the arm and dragging him out of the cockpit.

My father is slowly crumpling into the co-pilot’s seat, looking down at his knees.

“Cloned? What’s Uncle Luce talking about?”

Dad’s arranging his features like he does before a commercial. “Come on, Cain, you know your Uncle. He says the craziest—”

For the second time in 24 hours, my Dad is betraying me.

“You’re lying? You’re…lying! To me! Why are you lying?” I want him to take it back. I want to believe Uncle Lucifer is just a batty guy who runs his mouth sometimes.

But if it was nothing, Dad would have just laughed.

Rosie is gently pulling me toward the portal. “It’s okay, dear, let’s go get you cleaned up.” She is in full nursebot mode now, like when I was sick as a kid. Which is worse. It’s practically confirmation.

My legs are turning to jelly. I want to let her soothe the panic that’s climbing up my throat.

I want this day to end—the day my Dad lied to me. Twice. The day Trin learned a family secret so dangerous it could put my parents in jail for the rest of their lives.

The day I killed someone.

The day I learned my parents aren’t really my parents.

My Dad—Adam Planck—isn’t even trying to solve any of this, not with his head practically in his hands.

I’m letting Rosie pull me away. ⏸️)

So, that about catches you up. I dazed through the shower Rosie all but tossed me in. The only way she agreed to leave me alone here in my Worldship room after that was because I agreed to do this ‘dear therapist’ journal thing while she makes some dinner…breakfast? Whatever meal time it is.

I killed someone, Doc. I killed someone and I’m afraid of myself.

Or someone made me kill someone.

Would I even know if that someone were able to control my thoughts?

And that someone might be my Mom, who’s not actually my Mom?

I don’t know what should freak me out more, but learning that I’m a clone? It sounds so stupid!

...it sounds awful.

I don’t know why I’m crying. I’ll probably edit this part out, cuz I don’t want you to think I’m truly losing it here.

My Mom’s not my Mom. She’s just another version of me.

It should make me feel better—the whole thing where she doesn’t seem to really love me like a Mom should suddenly make sense. Of course she doesn’t. Would I love a younger, less experienced, less intensely competent version of myself?

And Dad. Who even is he to me? Some guy who seemed to care, enough at least to have dinner with me once a week, which is more than Mom—

—wait, did you hear that crash?

Over and out or whatever.

To be continued…

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|Sci-IRL|: Experience a Rocket Launch

To celebrate completing the first half of Eras of Cain Quartet 1 (we’re already 5 chapters in!?) we’re doing something different for Sci-IRL. This week’s post started off with our heroes strapping into jumpseats in preparation for rocket launch. Since ScifIRL is all about how tech changes your life, I wanted to share a video that puts you right in the action from an astronaut’s perspective. (Granted, this IRL video is merely jumping out of our lovely Earth’s atmosphere, whereas Eve’s Worldship used some classic Sci-fi, yet-to-be-revealed, deus ex machina to jump out of her universe…)

NASA Space Shuttle Launch

Most recent crew launch Axiom Commercial Crew 3 on SpaceX Dragon

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ScifIRL will be on pause for a few weeks for spring break!

Stay tuned—when we return, Eras of Cain will shift perspective to Trin. In a few more posts, I’ll be hosting other Science nerds from the Sci-fi Soothsayers for the Science IRL articles!

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