Mindspace - Complete Series

by A. K. DuBoff

  Nia eyed her. “And if our investigation confirms everything we already suspect about them?”

  Kira’s hazel eyes took on a slight orange cast for a moment. “Then their last thoughts will be regrets for ever messing with my home.”

  CHAPTER 4

  With Kira busy in the Gaelon System for at least the next three days, Leon returned his attention to the tests looking for TRs in Guard personnel.

  He settled into his workstation in his lab with coffee in hand. What awesomeness awaits me today?

  Working with Doctor Elric, Leon and his team had developed an automated process to compare historical medical records with a new scan, but like any batch processing system, it was imperfect. The system kicked back the occasional inconclusive result, which required manual review.

  Though Leon’s graduate degree was in genetics—he’d made that very clear—the rest of the team had spun his credentials to insist that that also made him an expert in neuroscience, and therefore he was the best person to review each and every one of those inconclusive records. While he could easily have pushed back and assigned the project to Tess or Jack, he decided to give them a pass this time around and just do it himself. A happy team was a productive team, and he’d rather have a favor stashed in the bank.

  As he did his morning inventory of the test results on his dashboard, Leon was happy to see fewer files to review than he’d feared.

  “Hello!” Tess greeted as she entered the lab, pulling Leon’s attention from the screen.

  “Hey.”

  “Why the grumpy tone?” she asked while sitting down at her own station across the room. The workspace was affixed with an odd assortment of a dozen magnetic stickers, including a cat wearing a spacesuit and a taco with rocket engines that Leon hadn’t noticed before.

  How can she work like that? Leon shook his head. “The system is still kicking back these ‘inconclusive’ results,” he replied. “I’m getting sick of the manual review.”

  “Is there any common factor with those records?” Tess placed her hand on the desktop to log into the workstation. “Maybe we can tweak the analysis algorithm.”

  Leon took another sip of coffee. “I don’t think I’m awake enough for that yet.”

  “Get to it, boss! We have a lot to do today.” Tess grinned. She turned her attention to her screen and brought up her inbox.

  “Wow, do you always have this much energy first thing in the morning?” Leon asked.

  She glanced over her shoulder at him with a raised eyebrow. “It’s 10:00. I’ve already had two meetings today.”

  “Is it?” He checked the time on his dashboard. “Guess I got a late start.”

  “I’ll say.”

  Leon turned back to his work. At least my team is more responsible with time management than I am.

  Tess was silent for a moment, tapping her finger on the desk. “Wait, where’s Jack?”

  “Elric wanted him for something,” Leon responded without taking his eyes off his monitor. He took a deep breath. Is she ever going to break that habit of tapping while she thinks?

  Tess was silent for another thirty seconds as she continued tapping her finger. She stopped. “Oh, that explains it.”

  “Hmm?”

  “Why didn’t you tell me Kira got an AI?”

  Leon swiveled his stool to face her. “Why is that relevant?”

  Tess sighed and folded her hands in her lap. “Because Jack’s specialty is in bioelectronics integrations. We got thrown together on this team when you arrived, and we’ve been sort of fielding the random requests that have come in. But now that we don’t have an immediate crisis on our hands, this is an opportunity to take an approach that caters to our specialties.”

  “And that’s connected to Kira… how?”

  “Now that she has an AI, we can figure out what’s going on with her,” Tess stated.

  Leon crossed his arms. “She has an alien strain of nanites. I’ve run the genetic models. We already know what changes they’ve made to her.”

  Tess nodded. “On the physical level, yes. But now we have a chance to learn about how the tech thinks.”

  “I didn’t get the impression that the nanites are a sentient entity.”

  “No, not like that,” his assistant replied with a touch of annoyance in her tone. “I mean, like, how it operates based on the specific circumstances. We know what it does, but her transformations have been random. With the detailed data her AI will collect, we’ll be able to analyze the specific conditions at the moment she’s about to transform—the triggers and the variables that impact the speed and expression of her abilities.”

  All right, so she knows her stuff. Leon leaned against his stool’s backrest. “I hadn’t thought about that part.”

  Tess pursed her lips with a hint of smugness. “It’s easy to think of the AI as just being a regulator, but for it to do that job, it needs to perform that analysis. We can access that data and learn even more about the nanotech.”

  “What can we do with that information?” he prompted.

  “Well, if we understand the triggers, we might be able to glean some more insights into what the aliens were after when they designed the tech.”

  Leon perked up. “Stars! I didn’t think of that. The trigger points will indicate certain expectations for the physiological state the Robus would be in. How they’d be used.”

  “Precisely.” She held up her index finger victoriously.

  “Except, we already know the plan was to turn them into soldiers.”

  “Yes,” Tess acknowledged, “but if we know the chemical threshold to trigger a transformation, it’ll indicate how long one could stay in that state.”

  “Blitz fights or extended conflicts,” he said.

  “You’ve got it.”

  “Huh.” Leon nodded, impressed by her reasoning. “So, what might Jack be doing with Doctor Elric?”

  “Probably figuring out a way to port the medical monitoring into our models of the nanotech expression so we can get a holistic view.”

  He chuckled. “You were doing just fine on your own before I came along, weren’t you?”

  She smiled. “We didn’t have the genetics angle before. It’s great to have you on the team now.”

  “Glad I’m not completely useless!”

  “No way.” Tess flipped her wrist. “Besides, it’s not just anyone who’d volunteer to go through all those records.”

  Leon laughed. “There’s grunt work with any job.”

  “You’re in charge, but you took that task on yourself. Don’t think we didn’t notice.”

  “I appreciate that.”

  She nodded. “Sure thing.”

  “Well, I should get back to this,” Leon said, glancing back at his screen.

  “Have fun.” Tess smirked.

  “Yeah, and you with your… whatever you’re doing.” Guess that’s not very good management if I have no idea what my team is working on, whoops. He made a mental note to get caught up on their side projects and specialties so he’d be able to delegate more effectively in the future.

  “I will,” Tess said, offering no further insight into what her current project may be. “Oh, but first, there is one more thing.”

  “Sure, what?”

  The young scientist shifted in her seat. “I know we have things under control here in the Guard, but what kind of testing is happening on Mysar?”

  Leon nodded. “I was thinking about that, too. Even though we gave them our algorithm and the procedures, we have no way of knowing if they’re following those protocols.”

  “Or who’s reviewing the inconclusive results,” Tess added.

  “There’s not a lot we can do about it.”

  “Isn’t it our responsibility to make sure this is done right?”

  Leon shrugged. “Not particularly. Mysar isn’t even an Empire world.”

  Tess tilted her head and raised an eyebrow. “Was that supposed to sound convincing?”

  He chu
ckled. “All right, I spent way too much time on Mysar to not care about what happens there.”

  “Not to mention, now that the government is in transition, it’s not unlikely that they’ll be joining the Empire soon.”

  “Yeah, it doesn’t make sense for Elusia to be in and not have Mysar and Valta in, as well,” Leon replied. Not too long ago, he would have thought unity among the three worlds was only an aspirational, distant future. To now have that reality so close at hand still caught him by surprise.

  “Right.” Tess nodded. “And given that eventuality, we need to make sure there aren’t any threats to the Taran Empire once we start mixing together.” She waggled her fingers, as though kneading dough.

  “I don’t have any suggestions for how to improve the oversight.”

  Tess smiled. “But I bet you do know who would.”

  — — —

  Compared to her last visit, Ellen’s nerves were considerably more settled as her shuttle came to rest on the landing pad outside one of Mysar’s many biodomes. At last, she was returning to the planet as her real self, not some fictionalized modern version of her twisted past.

  She gazed out the viewport at the nearest translucent dome glimmering under the early-afternoon sun. Interlocking triangular panels formed the enclosure for the three-kilometer-wide dome, which was one of five connected structures comprising the city. It was the metropolis closest to the Mysaran government building from which Chancellor Hale had governed, and the place where Ellen had spent much of her time when she had lived on the world in years past.

  That feels like a lifetime ago.

  Her motivations and her way of thinking had been drastically different back then. She’d thought that keeping the Elvar Trinary isolated was the best way forward. Now, she couldn’t wait to help bring Mysar and Valta into the Taran Empire and solidify their partnerships with Elusia.

  Ellen rose from the passenger seat on the shuttle and gathered her belongings from an overhead bin.

  “Business or pleasure?” a middle-aged man asked her while he got down his own bag across the aisle.

  “Business. I don’t think there’s a lot of tourism on Mysar,” Ellen replied.

  “Pleasure doesn’t have to be tourism. Lots of good bars here.”

  Ellen cracked a smile. “Fair point.”

  “Are you government or private sector?” he questioned.

  “Government,” she told him, hoping that would be the end of the inquiries. While it wasn’t a secret that she was on Mysar, it wasn’t common knowledge, either. Given the complication of Elusia being in the Empire and Mysar still being on the outside, it was better if her activities on the foreign world remained behind the scenes.

  “Ah.” He bobbed his head of shaggy, graying hair. “Politicians. Can’t live with them… and we’d probably do just fine without them.”

  “Fortunately for you, I’m not a politician.”

  “One of the poor cogs that keeps society rolling, then?”

  Ellen nodded. “Someone has to do it.”

  “There is that.” He extended the handle on his rolling bag. “Hope it’s a productive meeting.”

  “Thank you, I’m sure it will be.” She gave him a parting smile and they made their way off the shuttle with the other passengers.

  At the bottom of the ramp, Ellen peered around the port for her escort. She had been instructed that one of the government aides would meet her and take her to the government office in town. When no one was readily apparent, she headed for the main terminal, a one-story structure constructed of the dark stone common across the planet.

  She was sweating by the end of the short walk. The ambient temperature was well above comfortable levels, due to the planet’s proximity to the sun. While the open air was technically habitable, only life inside the biodomes felt civilized.

  Ellen was about to step inside the port terminal when a woman’s voice stopped her.

  “Ellen Calleti?”

  She turned around to identify the speaker, her gaze settling on an attractive, dark-haired woman close to her age. “Yes, hello.”

  “Trisha Mercer,” the woman introduced.

  “Thank you for coming to meet me.”

  “My pleasure. It was no trouble at all.”

  They walked away from the port to a transit station at the edge of the dome. A set of automatic doors parted and they stepped inside.

  Ellen breathed in the conditioned air.

  Trisha noticed her relief. “Acclimated to Elusia now?”

  “Didn’t think it would happen, but I have.” Ellen smiled.

  “It’s a wonder the worlds aren’t more different, given their placements,” the other woman commented. “I’d expect Elusia to be a solid ball of ice.”

  “A lot of it is. I sometimes wonder if some ancient race prepared this system for habitation.”

  “And had it perfectly suited for Tarans? Doubtful, but you never know.”

  Ellen shrugged. “It’s not so unreasonable. Our environmental tolerances mirror the state of liquid water, and that is the foundation for much of life as we know it.”

  “When you look at it that way, different species aren’t all that dissimilar.”

  “At least not when it comes to what we need to survive.”

  The two women arrived at the maglev train terminal inside the dome. Three distinct lines snaked through the five domes, and two other tracks routed through underground tunnels, which connected to other cities over two hundred kilometers away.

  Trisha directed Ellen to the main transit line. “You probably remember the government offices,” she commented.

  Ellen nodded. “I could never forget. Many formative years were spent hunched over a workstation there.”

  They boarded the train bound for the urban core at the center of the main dome. Sets of two seats facing each other in groupings of four were positioned along either side of a central aisle. Only half a dozen other people from the shuttle were boarding the train, so the two women were able to select seating with relative privacy.

  “It means a lot that you came to help,” Trisha said a low voice when they sat down in their own row. “We’ve been a little short-staffed since the… incident.”

  “I can only imagine.”

  Trisha sat in silence for several seconds, staring absently out the window. The train began gliding forward, and she came to attention. “A lot of people won’t talk about what happened.”

  Ellen glanced around to make sure no one was nearby. It looked private, but she knew sound could easily carry on the train. “We can talk openly once we’re at the office.”

  The other woman nodded and resumed staring out the window.

  Four-story residential buildings sped by while the train traversed the track. The domes, numerically designated Dome 1 through 5, were each arranged with residential sectors at the perimeter and a commercial district in the center. Dome 1, at the center of the five, was almost exclusively dedicated to commercial and business functions, and it also served as the unofficial seat of the Mysaran government.

  Real power had always been wielded from the official capitol building, outside the city, but few were willing to make the commute on a daily basis. Ellen now understood that had all been by design. So long as the government activities were handled in an out-of-the-way place, no one would pay much attention to the goings on. Hale, and her associates who’d been forced into servitude, had done the aliens’ bidding, while the more public-facing workers in the city carried out their delegations, blissfully unaware of what was happening behind the scenes.

  Ellen could only imagine what those workers were feeling now, knowing what they had been a part of. Well, she did know what that was like—she had been manipulated herself. And it made her feel like it would take a lifetime to make up for what’d she’d done.

  She could see the discomfort written on Trisha’s face. Ellen’s heart went out to her, understanding all too well how disorienting it could be to realize that so many a
ssumptions had been wrong.

  “You shouldn’t feel bad,” Ellen said to break the silence. “No one knew.”

  As Ellen suspected, even out of context, Trisha needed no explanation. An experience so profound was ever-present on the mind. “We should have.”

  “Worrying about what might have been won’t change anything.”

  Trisha took a slow breath. “I know. Like you said, we’ll talk once we’re at the office.”

  The train finished the route through the outer dome, stopping every half-kilometer, and then it passed through a translucent tunnel into the central enclosure. Buildings in the central dome were taller and more ornate, though Ellen had never understood why resources had been devoted to the enhanced aesthetics. The glass-clad structures were a waste, as far as she was concerned.

  She caught herself.

  Shite, I guess I should have been on the Finance Committee. It never occurred to me how much I cared. With a chuckle, she realized that her parting statement to Joris might not have been so facetious after all—her job was likely going to transition yet again.

  Trisha gave her a quizzical look.

  “Nothing,” Ellen said with a shake of her head. “Just had a revelation about myself.”

  “Sounds better than my recent realizations.”

  “That’s to be determined.”

  A minute later, the train glided to a smooth halt, and the two women exited.

  The business district was like Ellen remembered, with workers dressed in tailored clothes, a multitude of restaurants and shops at street level, and more pedestrian traffic than seemed possible for a city of that size. She took in the sights with a smile, remembering how it had felt to be among that activity as an energetic youth.

  Things could have gone so differently for me. I wonder where I would have ended up if I hadn’t fallen in with the Sovereign?

  She had no more time for reflection, as Trisha set out through the crowd toward one of the medium-height glass towers two blocks from the train stop.

  The government building was appropriately simplistic compared to the private sector structures, but it was still at aesthetic odds with the harsh Mysaran landscape outside the dome. Rising twelve stories, it was half the height of its MTech neighbor. Seeing the proximity of the two structures, Ellen now found it to be no wonder that the line between government and private industry had blurred over the years.