The investigator looked at me with a faint glimmer of intrigue, tapping her fingers on a sleek tablet. Today she was dressed in a shapeless, monochrome ensemble that, in its own strange way, seemed almost calculatedly severe. Her hair, usually flattened against her scalp, showed a modest attempt at a style.
"How did it even occur to you to become a space border guard?" she asked, barely glancing up from her tablet.
A small smile tugged at the corner of my mouth. It was almost amusing how little she knew—and yet, here we were, locked in this odd game of questions and answers, with me expected to play the part of the cooperative detainee.
I straightened in my chair, keeping my face neutral. "There isn't exactly a recruitment process," I replied. "The system identifies you if you meet certain criteria. A single desire isn't enough. The identification begins when a certain... condition is met."
She exhaled audibly, eyes narrowing. "And what condition might that be?" she pressed, clearly irritated by the vagueness of my answer.
"You have to hear the Call," I said, feeling the weight of that word echo through me as I spoke it.
She shot a quick glance at the ceiling, then back at me, visibly disbelieving. "A 'call'? As in… what, a calling?"
I tilted my head thoughtfully. "It's not a word that requires much interpretation. Think of it as a vocation. The same as a calling to the priesthood, for instance."
Her face twisted slightly in confusion. "A what?"
"A calling to the priesthood," I repeated. "Surely, you've heard of Catholic priests?"
She shifted, clearly uncomfortable, and asked with a frustrated edge, "Priests? What year do you think this is?"
My mind raced at her reaction, and I felt a sudden shift in the room. But before I could fully digest her question, she continued, her voice like a needle seeking weak spots. "Tell me about Veselka. Or do you not remember that project?"
The room transformed in an instant. We were now seated in what looked like a replica of my old living room - a strange, distorted copy of a space I once called home.
"Veselka?" I asked, measuring my words carefully. "Veselka means Rainbow in Ukrainian. Veselka was my project - specifically, Veselka-2. The first was… a failure."
She raised an eyebrow, pretending nonchalance. "A failure? Care to elaborate?"
"All of them died," I answered curtly, watching her reaction closely. Her face barely moved, though I caught a brief flicker of something that might have been fear.
"And why call it Veselka?" She asked, her tone suddenly softer, probing.
I glanced at her, a faint smile tugging at the corner of my mouth. "Rainbow. It's… symbolic. The first was named after Nikola Tesla. A visionary of the past."
She blinked, uncomprehending. "Tesla?"
I sighed, looking up at the faint outline of a greenhouse ceiling above us, where parrots squawked from unseen branches. We were no longer in my living room. "You're unfamiliar with Tesla's diaries, the Philadelphia Experiment, or his work on wireless energy?"
She looked at me as though I were speaking in riddles. "I've never heard of such a man," she replied, frowning.
I resisted the urge to shake my head, finding some grim amusement in her ignorance. "The man practically created the twentieth century," I said, incredulous.
Her eyes sparked. "The twentieth century? So… you're from the twentieth century?" she asked, her interest suddenly piqued.
"No," I said dryly. "The twenty-second. But my work -Tesla's ideas -transcend mere centuries." She stared at me, faintly annoyed, as if I were a cryptic puzzle she was losing patience with.
"Then tell me," she said, leaning forward, "what did you do there in your free time? Did you even have any?"
She had taken on a new guise - this time resembling a ballerina. We were now seated on a wide, empty theater stage with two chairs, alone under the spotlight. The entire theater hall stretched before us, dim and silent, yet filled with strange, silent silhouettes that watched from the shadows.
A slight flush appeared on her cheeks as she waited for my answer. "Free time?" I repeated, faintly amused. "When artificial intelligence takes over the work, you have more free time than you know what to do with. During our missions, my crew and I… we solved the problem of spatio-temporal singularities that inevitably arise in general relativity if the energy-momentum tensor corresponds to physically motivated positivity conditions.."
She looked momentarily baffled, her expression somewhere between anger and bafflement. "You mean to say… what?"
I shrugged, feigning indifference. "Nothing significant. Just the theoretical anomalies in spacetime - peculiarities that, if overlooked, lead to catastrophic failure. But you wouldn't understand."
A hush fell over the hall as she visibly struggled to absorb this information. She glanced to the side as though waiting for some unseen signal, then abruptly turned back to me, her face a carefully crafted mask.
"Would you like something to drink?" she asked, her voice deceptively pleasant.
Without waiting for a response, she darted offstage and returned with a phial of clear liquid. "This will help you, today," she murmured, almost as if reassuring herself. Her eyes shone with something unsettlingly close to sympathy.
I raised an eyebrow, meeting her gaze with calm defiance. "And you are?" I asked, letting a sliver of curiosity slip into my tone.
"Paradise," she answered in a whisper, thrusting the phial toward me. "Drink."
The roaring sound of the audience swelled around us like an oncoming storm. Without breaking eye contact, I drank, and the chaos in the hall faded into absolute silence. A lone silhouette slumped forward from the audience, collapsing.
"Much better," she said softly, the glint of triumph in her eyes. "Now, let's dispense with the games. Tell me what you know about Project Wave."
I stifled a shudder. So they knew about Wave.
Feigning innocence, I tilted my head. "Project Wave? Never heard of it," I replied.
"Remember," she insisted, her voice edging into threat. "Remember, or the consequences will be fatal."
"Fatal for whom?" I asked, smiling wryly.
"For you," she replied smoothly, her voice as steely as ever. "So let's not escalate things further."
I sighed, feigning acquiescence. "Fine. Project Wave was aimed at… acquisition. A skill acquisition program, if you will."
Her eyes narrowed with suspicion. "And?"
"Resonance," I answered calmly, "the ability to resonate with certain energy waves. We trained, moving in precise sequences, creating resonance between body and mind."
She blinked, trying to suppress her mounting frustration. "And?"
"Just a precondition," I added, glancing away. "Achieving wave resonance has… unique benefits."
Her face remained impassive, though I could sense her impatience.
With a soft chuckle, I shook my head. "The project created wave resonance within our bodies so that, in the end, we became like waves ourselves, able to shift between 'here' and 'there'- a sort of omnipresence."
Her confusion grew, and she turned again to glance offstage, as if waiting for something - anything - to save her from the disorientation I'd caused. I could feel my exit approaching.
"Don't worry," I said with a wink. "I'll see you… in Paradise."
With that, I became nothing but a wave, slipping seamlessly out of the theater and into the unknown, leaving her behind, baffled, in an echo of her own questions.