Penance Chamber chapter 1

The Penance Chamber

Chapter 1

         The moment Silla got home from work she went straight to her room, dumped her bag on the floor and then rummaged around in her belongings for the device.  When she finally located it under a pile of dirty laundry, she pulled it out and looked at it with mixed feelings of awe and reverence.
         It was a handheld scanning device.  Silla’s brother had called it an Electromagnetic Waveform Astrophysical Receptor or EWAR.  He had built it himself.
         Silla dusted off the device, fondling all of its dials and buttons with deep respect and affection.  Then she pulled out the aerial and fanned out the receptor dish and switched the device on.
         Then she left her bedroom and made her way outside.  Surreptitiously she crept along the corridors and passageways of Terra2.Edenworld to her and her brother’s secret place; a small corridor just outside some cleaning closets and directly above the Growzone (where, coincidentally, Silla now worked during the day).  Her job as a grower now gave her a useful excuse for being here but back when they were little, Silla and her brother had no such excuse.
         It still felt exciting to her; forbidden to be standing here, looking out at the sleeping Growzone below and the starry sky through the glass roof above and holding out the EWAR device, scanning for signals from the stars.  The device made a soft bleeping noise as it twisted its antennae from right to left, examining the starry sky for signals in whatever wavelength of light they might come.
         Silla examined the read-outs patiently, with diligence and sharpness of mind.  She checked them against the data she had stored in her computerised wristwatch, ruling out pulsars and regular stars and galaxies.  She did this every night and every night she found the same thing: absolutely nothing.  There was nobody else out there.
         Hanging her head in sorrow and pain, she let out a long sigh.  “Well, Jeff,” she said, addressing her dead brother, “it looks like the Elders are right.  There’s no one else out there; it’s only us.  Just like they always tell us; there are no such things as intelligent species in space, and all the other humans perished for their folly.  It looks like you designed the EWAR for nothing.”
         She mentally kicked herself immediately after she had said it.  She knew exactly how her brother would have responded to a comment like that.  Of course she agreed with him totally.  Scientific discovery, even if it yields no results, is never for nothing!
         She was about to switch off the device and begin her slow, morose journey back home when suddenly she detected something new; a flashing pulse of energy.  The device only caught it for a second and when Silla, excited, moved the device back to the place where the pulse had been detected, to her great disappointment the signal had vanished again.
         She held the device and kept it pointing to that one location in the hope of catching the signal again.  It had been very strong, impossible to miss and certainly not any of the usual objects in the night sky.  And then it came again, moving rapidly from left to right across the scanner.  She tracked it as best she could and caught up with it again.  It was a massive beam of radiation, moving swiftly across the sky until it finally reached a specific point.  Then it seemed to stop and cover a large area, pulsing and radiating before finally stopping.  It was infra-red when moving but when it stopped and pulsed then it seemed to radiate in all frequencies at once, except for the visible light range.  Whatever it was it seemed to behave like it was very close to the station.
         “How very odd,” Silla said to herself.  When the pulse stopped and the signal vanished there also seemed to be subtle cracklings of energy all over the sky.  On their own, these would not be worth noting.  She would have dismissed such things as simple anomalies, perhaps to do with her equipment or the space station environment itself.  But given the timing of these minute cracklings, following the energy beam and the radiating pulse, the whole thing seemed rather suspicious.  “What’s going on?” she wondered aloud, in a nervous whisper.  She turned the device sharply round to the left, trying to detect where the beam had come from but all she got was immediate interference from the space station itself and couldn’t make out anything specific at all.
         She switched the EWAR off and then left that place but instead of walking morosely down the corridors, she was alert and on edge, searching furiously for some kind of computer maintenance hatch or a computer input booth.  Eventually she found a maintenance hatch.  She rummaged around in the pouch that she kept on her belt during her night-time activities.  Finally she found what she was looking for.
         She picked open the hatch (not hard) and then plugged another handheld device into the computer port that all maintenance hatches had.  This device was a kind of amalgamation of several different devices she had legitimately obtained and she had spliced them together to design a new device.  Not only did science continue to interest and excite her but she had also taken an interest in mechanics and engineering in her brother’s memory also.  Actually she had been a bit of a techno buff even before he died.  This kind of technological sabotage and infiltration was something of a hobby of hers.
         She tapped away on her little handheld computer device as she analysed the data systems of the whole of Terra2.Edenworld.  It was on none of the official maps but there was definitely a number of systems operating in a hidden part of the station.  It was probably mundane and harmless enough for the most part, automatic systems for keeping Terra2.Edenworld in orbit around the planet below; a dead world they called Sinai 7 (although what Sinai was or whatever happened to the other six of them, Silla couldn’t have told you).
         It was extremely difficult  and she had to sneak and trick her way past passwords and encryptions to find it, but eventually she got the merest ghost of an indication of where the beam might have originated.  As she suspected, or else she wouldn’t even be doing this, the signal originated from the space station itself.  The physical location checked out as a possible source of the beam she had detected and the computer systems indicated that its operation was indeed to detect and neutralise all and any signals originating from elsewhere.  It seemed to create a bubble around the station, an electromagnetic  interference that blotted out all other signals from space.  No wonder neither her brother nor herself had ever discovered any messages from the stars.  Terra2 had been secretly working to cancel them all out.  All those years of searching and only now had Silla worked out what dupes the station had made of them!

         The next day Silla woke up early at 5am to go to work in the Growzone.  On her way to work she passed a convenience store.  She bought herself some breakfast, some headache tablets and some of the red hair dye that she liked to use.
         “Hi, Silla,” smiled the cheery shop assistant, “dying your hair again?”
         “Yeah, Babs,” Silla replied to her friend behind the till, “gotta keep up the image, haven’t I?  You know you should try some yourself.”
         “Nah,” said Barbara, looking away with a shy smile, “it wouldn’t suit my hair.  It’s not straight and thin like yours.  It’s too coarse and curly.”
         Silla looked at Babs.  She did have a dark complexion.  “You’re beautiful,” said Silla, “most sweets maybe toffee but that only makes the white chocolate and dark chocolate even more special and delicious.  Besides, I do think that a bit of colour would suit your hair.”
         Barbara sucked her teeth and twisted her full lips into a rhy smile.  “Yeah, maybe,” she said, “anyway, how are your, shall we say, extra-curricular activities going?”
         “Weird,” said Silla in an urgent whisper.  “Don’t tell anybody but it seems like this station is actually blocking out all other signals, preventing their detection.  All this time and I’ve been searching for nothing.”
         “Of course,” said Babs, “you may be searching for nothing anyway.  That’s what the Elders would have us believe.”
         “I’m not saying there are other species out there, Babs,” Silla said with so much conviction that she almost believed it herself, “but there could be other human survivors out there.  And however sinful they are, I still believe that we should help them if we can.  It’s what the Lord of Light would want, isn’t it; if he’s a god of compassion and forgiveness, that is?”
         Barbara shrugged her shoulders.  “This is a matter for Elders,” she said dismissively.  “In any case, I don’t really think it’s for womenfolk to raise such concerns.”  Silla quietly fumed at those words but because Barbara was a friend, she didn’t say anything.  “Anyway,” said Babs, “don’t be late for work.  Enjoy your breakfast and come again soon.”  The chiming voice and fake smile were something of a routine for shop assistants.
         “Bye, Babs,” said Silla and she went on her way.

         Margaret and Thomas met Silla as she arrived for work and immediately got her started, mucking out the cow stalls and feeding the chickens.  A strange feeling of peace came over Silla as she got to work.  She liked being around animals and enjoyed talking to the cows and the chickens as she tended to them.  She caught herself wondering as she worked about how different or similar the cows and chickens were from their ancestors on Earth.  How had the transference of their genes and lineages to the stars affected their DNA?  That went for all the plant-stuffs that humans brought with them also.
         Yet the corn still made bread, the cows still made milk and the chickens still laid eggs.  Not only that but apples still tasted fresh and the meat of animals was still delicious to the tongue so nothing of any great importance could have changed all that much really.  Silla even wondered whether the tastes had improved over the centuries of conscious genetic engineering.  But then why improve the taste without also changing the design?  Eventually Silla shrugged her shoulders and concluded that the New Dualism in any case preferred to try and return to the ways of the Pre-Space Age Earth as much as possible.  No easy feat when forced to live in an artificial environment such as Terra2.Edenworld.
         “Good work, Silla,” said Margaret with a warm smile spread from rosy cheek to rosy cheek.  “Tom’s still out tending to the crops but we’ll  see you tomorrow.”
         It was about three in the afternoon but Silla’s work was finished for the day.  She then went home to her mother.  They sat and talked over tea.
         “Got any plans for tonight?” her mother asked her.  Silla nodded sheepishly without saying a word.  “I wish I knew what you did at night.  You were always off doing something when your brother was alive.  The pair of you…”  She broke off, remembering.  She looked frail these days.  She was a big woman but looked more saggy than plump these days.  And her eyes always looked watery and weak.  “Why can’t you stay and sit with your mother, eh?  You’re all I have left, Silla.”
         “It’s science I do, mother,” said Silla, “just like Jeff did.  It’s important.  It’s all I have left of him too.”
         “It got him into trouble,” said Mum, “it’ll get you into trouble too, if you aren’t careful.”  She coughed suddenly and then continued.  “Women shouldn’t meddle in science, Silla.  It’s men’s work.”
         “Well, in case you haven’t noticed, Mum,” said Silla, unable to repress the fire that rose up inside her, “there aren’t any men in this family anymore and in the absence of men then it falls to women to do what must be done.”
         Her mother started to weep then.  “I’m sorry, Silla,” she said, “but I couldn’t remarry after they took your father, I just couldn’t!  It would have defiled my memory of him.”
         Silla was shocked by her Mum’s sudden tears and immediately responded with sympathy and concern.  “I’d never suggest you should remarry, mum, never!”  Silla said to make her point clear.  “Not after all the pressure they put you through.  I think it was abhorrent and wrong for them to do that to you.  First they take Dad, and then they’re pressuring you to remarry.  I am glad that you did what was right, mum!  In fact I wonder why you continue to pay lipservice to their beliefs at all.  ‘Women’s work’, ‘men’s work’, what a load of old rubbish!  A woman can excel at science and engineering just as much as a man can, so why shouldn’t she also be allowed to practise it?  It’s sheer bigotry, that’s all it is.”
         “Oh, my hot headed young girl,” said Mum, closing her tearful eyes in grief, “hasn’t enough trouble befallen our family already?”
         “What happened to Dad?”  asked Silla.  “I know they took Jeff and executed him. I remember him being taken.  I remember the talk of the Penance Chamber and we all know what that means.  They said he had challenged the core beliefs of the New Dualism, that he ‘flaunted the folly of the Tyrant in the face of the Lord of Light’.  I understand what happened there but what about Dad?  What did he do that angered the Elders?  I don’t remember anything about that at all.  He just sort of… disappeared.”
         “They took him too,” said Silla’s mother, opening her eyes to reveal a look of profound sadness, “to the ‘Penance Chamber’ as they call it.  No one ever comes back from there, and the Elders say that the Lord of Light has passed judgement on them and that they are no more…”  New tears came and Silla’s mother mopped them up with her handkerchief.  “…Dead!” she said.
         “But what did Father do?” asked Silla.
         “He thought too much, he did,” said Mum.  “He was always thinking, always contemplating and eventually it got him into too much trouble.  He was a deeply spiritual man, your father, he really was.  It wasn’t right for them to call him a heretic.  Now your brother was a different matter.  He was a hot headed fool, in love with science, angrily calling the very existence of the Lord and the Tyrant into doubt.  They rightfully call such unbelief heresy or apostacy.  I pray that you don’t fall into such similar folly.  Such is the danger of a love for science and technology, for these are the lies of the Tyrant of Darkness, with which he betrayed mankind for millennia.  But your father was a deeply spiritual man who loved the Lord of Light with all his heart.”
         “So what happened?” asked Silla.  Mother let out a long sigh.
         “Your father fell in love with the philosophers of Earth,” she explained.  “He studied the historical data banks and learned of Plato and Aristotle, of Descartes and Kant, Hegel and Heidegger, Sartre and Wittgenstein.  And he applied the rigours of philosophical enquiry to the matter of faith and religion.  And what he concluded in the end was that God and the Universe are one.  He concluded that our individual consciousness is in fact an illusion and that we are all part of One Mind, whose body is the Universe.  The Lord of Light, he concluded, is all there is and we are all part of Him.”
         “That’s beautiful!” declared Silla, honestly touched by the vision.
         “It is,” agreed Silla’s mother,” and your father was a deeply spiritual man.  But his belief called into question the very existence of a Tyrant of Darkness.  It was Monism, not Dualism, and as such the Elders called it a heresy.  He already has some followers, so they made an example of him.  They took him away for ‘correctioning’, a kind of therapy designed to change his mind to true belief, or so they claimed.  But eventually they admitted what we had all begun to suspect.  They had taken your father to the Chamber of Penance, as they do with all heretics and dissidents.  The Lord of Light had passed judgement and your father was no more…” she began to weep again, “…dead!”

         Silla went up to her room and pulled out the EWAR and her pouch of tools again.  She looked at them for a while and then put them away in a drawer again.  Not tonight, she thought.  She could always investigate further tomorrow.  But tonight was a night for sad memories about her father and her brother.  Perhaps tonight, she would keep her mother company after all.