The Eden Project: Humanity's Last Chance by D. P. Fitzsimons Page A

with red. “And for what? Some unhealthy curiosity?”
    She had never seen him angry and she had never seen anyone this angry anywhere outside of dramatic scenes in legacy films. She searched for just the right way to handle his overflowing emotion, but she had no idea where to begin.
    “Okay, fine. I’m in. Let’s be curious.” Zeke did what Gen could not do. He redirected his anger. Before she knew what was happening he was working the screen and making it a split screen with two frequencies instead of one. “It might just be possible.”
    “What might be possible?” Gen said, confused and exhilarated by his fast-moving fingers.
    “To talk to him.” Zeke stopped suddenly. “The starving man.”
    The gravity of what he was about to attempt once again synced his heartbeat to hers. They locked eyes not to question one another but to silently acknowledge their doomed solidarity. They would do this thing and it was far beyond anything that had been done already. Even more, Gen thought, than anything Tuna ever mentioned in his diary.
    And so when she should have spoken up for the good of them all, she did nothing, said nothing.
    Zeke turned back to the second frequency. “He may be operating a sub frequency that allows him to simultaneously transmit and receive on two separate channels. I’ll set it up to try any and all sub frequencies in this range and we could get lucky.” After a flurry of keystrokes he hit the last button hard and then stepped back from the screen.
    Gen was overwhelmed by his exhilarated eyes. He motioned her with his hand. She tried not to jump to any obvious conclusion.
    “We’re live,” he whispered.
    She turned back and saw the second frequency number pulsing. It showed a range of numbers instead of a single number. She checked back to Zeke who nodded and waived his hand from his mouth outward enticing her to speak.
    She nodded, stepped to the screen and cleared her throat. “Hello, are you alone in the ballroom?”
    They waited, listening to the faint melody of peppy dance music. Zeke stepped forward to turn up the music. Nothing. No response. A glimmer of relief began to form on Gen’s face until the music stopped.
    The song had not finished. It stopped amid a bouncy series of beats. They listened to the static. It seemed to be listening back. Zeke scanned the room full of speakers, waiting.
    She could feel her heart beating in her throat. A warm waive of fear overtook her, burning up her skin. The starving man had heard her. He was there within the static inside the room surrounding her.
    “What phantom are you?” His voice had changed. He was more vulnerable, sadder, like a lost boy or a simpleton.
    Contact. They had made contact with the outside world. Zeke laughed silently through a nervous grin.
    “I am like you,” Gen began, uncertainly, “a traveler.”
    The static became the sound of his thinking. “But I have long ago gone to madness. You are not like me, but rather you are me, a voice, no doubt, echoing in my feeble mind.”
    “From your mind or from your speakers?” Gen replied. Zeke gave her thumbs up for her quick response.
    “Good point, phantom. I can see the line on the transceiver pulsing when you speak.” The DJ coughed and cleared his throat. “And none of the voices in my head are that of such a young girl.”
    “Are you on a ship? Are you alone?”
    “Oh yes. I call my ship Borrowed Time and I am never alone when I have my music with me.”
    “Have you no food to eat?”
    “Neither rat nor bean sprout remain on the SS Borrowed Time .” He answered in an odd, sing-song accent of his own invention. “Do pray tell that you sail on the SS Cornucopia and your ship’s hold is overfull of sugared hams and baked haddock with creamy crab sauce.”
    Zeke and Gen turned to each other hoping the other understood what he just said. Zeke lifted his hands to indicate he had no clue. “Yes. I am on a small boat,” Gen said, searching for words.
    “So it was