“But life was far from perfect before the war.”
“It was better than what we have now!”
They’d been so close to the rollout of ‘Be Happy’ across the New Cities. Scene generation had been automated with a generic template filled with personal details farmed from thought collection, voice snapshots, photographs and any other online source. It was much simpler when the individual had suffered a trauma in their life because the trauma could be re-used. The team had successfully learned to piggy-back positive emotions on top of negative ones. Since an individual was more likely to remember and dwell on the negative, those being more relevant to survival, they were also more likely to remember the positive emotion linked to it. By triggering negative emotions, the brain turned scenes into a convincing reality and turned the positive emotion into reality too.
Whether they liked it or not people were going to have their neurons configured to ‘Be Happy’. It was ready to go. If she’d just checked Cait’s changes to the code, it would’ve been okay.
He faced her. “You can’t blame yourself for starting the survey.”
“What about Jason? Can I blame myself for that?”
“Where has all this come from?”
“I saw Damian. He knows about Lana. He’s got a video of me and her on a demonstration. He wants me to go to security and tell them about her tomorrow morning.”
He bolted up. “I’ll kill him.”
“No, you won’t.” She grabbed his arm and pulled him back down. “I will deal with him. It’s not your problem, but first I have to warn Lana.”
Chapter Sixteen
The message Beth sent to Lana remained undelivered. She frantically searched for Callum’s ID in her phone’s contacts and called him.
While striding down the walkway to their lab he answered the call.
“Have you seen Lana?”
“Who’s this?” Callum asked.
Look at the caller ID, idiot. Out of breath, she panted, “It’s Beth. I’ve not heard from her for days. I get suspicious when friends disappear.”
“We had to go inside Zone 0. We…I came back without her.”
From his hesitation, Beth guessed he was hiding something. Lana might have finally told him.
The internal tannoy boomed inside the walkway: Please standby for an announcement.
“When was that?” Beth asked.
“Nine days ago. When I arrived back inside Zone 12, I’d been away five days.”
“The next time adjustment is tomorrow. If she’s not back in Zone 12 then, she won’t be back for another five days. I’m outside your lab now. Can you let me in?”
The tannoy sounded: Increase in external noise expected.
A minute later Callum opened the door, and Beth stepped inside the small waiting room.
“Can I have a look around?” she asked.
They moved from the waiting room into the airy red painted space.
Beth stared motionless, taking in the rows upon rows of pods. She edged towards one and peered inside.
“Pigs? It’s a bacon factory,” she said.
“Bacon on Monday, bacon on Tuesday, bacon on Wednesday—”
“Yes, I get it. I’m not sure I’ll ever look at bacon the same way. It makes me want to be a vegetarian or at least think about it.”
He headed towards a side door.
Beth walked towards him, glancing back at the red pig-room. “It’s incredible!”
“The human embryos are developing in here. All are at four-months gestation.”
He pushed the door open. She followed him inside and gasped, grabbing hold of a high chair at the long control panel as she did so.
Behind the viewing window, inside each one of the five pods, blood-red light cast a glow on a clear sac of fluid. And inside every sac a fully-formed human baby grew.
“What the hell!” Beth said.
“Listen to this. It’s slowed down because the babies are under time acceleration, but this is what they can hear.”
Callum pressed a button on the control panel, and the room resonated with echoey under-water sounds. There was a definite regular heartbeat and something else.
“Is that stomach gurgling?”
Callum nodded, smiling.
She strained to hear the makeup of the quiet background noise. “Was that a vacuum?” she asked.
Callum nodded. “Sounds from the home.”
“I can hear children laughing too. This is amazing. You’ve done it.”
A broad smile stretched on her face. She could have a pod-baby. Howard and she could have a child of their own.
“Well not quite, but we’ve shown the technique works up to four months gestation so far. Those babies are from GAV negative woman. If they make it to full term, we’ll start on embryos from GAV positive woman. That will be when the real challenge starts.”
“Howard and me, we have some embryos stored inside the Deceleration Zone. Can you try growing a baby for us?”
“Yes, probably. There are no rules in here anyway.”
“Can I look at the babies?”
“I really shouldn’t take you inside the growing room, but okay,” he said. “Just because it’s you. We both need to wear overalls.”
They changed into the overalls. Callum entered a code on the door, and they stepped inside the growing room.
Beth edged towards a pod. She splayed her palm on the transparent curved walls, and the foetus inside blurred.
“What happened?” she asked.
“Under time acceleration any movement the baby makes looks like a blur to us. Our eyes can’t resolve the movements because they happen too quickly.”
Beth remembered seeing the rapid growth of the arugula plants in the greenhouse.
“Time acceleration? Too posh to push just became too busy to wait,” she whispered. “An instant baby.”
Overwhelmed, she was suddenly aware that with this technology life might never go back to how it was before the discovery of the virus.
Even if a woman’s body was able, it may never grow a baby again. Normal pregnancy could be declared primitive, undesirable even. A controlled environment would eradicate child development problems caused by maternal negligence. Wasn’t that a baby’s human right? A baby did have the right to the best start in life.
A pod baby had been unthinkable once, but so was a global infertility problem, and so was living inside the New Cities. And what had been unthinkable in the past, and even frowned upon, was common place today.
Things changed— this was progress. The right to have a baby was a human right. It was her human right.
“Can you play out voice for the babies?”
Callum grinned. “Yes.”
“Could you record mine and Howard’s and play it for our baby while it grows inside the pod?”
“Yes.”
She could record herself singing nursery rhymes, reading stories, reading poetry; not her dad’s poetry though.
At the next pod, she flattened her palm on the wall. The baby blurred again. “They’re responding to me.”
She allowed herself to indulge in thoughts she’d pushed to one side. A rush of warmth and love filled her at just the promise of her own child. How can they say you do not miss what you’ve never had?
“Where will the babies go when they’re born?”
“A team has been set up to look after them,” Callum said.
“I bet Lana is happy.”
He stiffened and wouldn’t meet her eyes. He stared out through the partition window back into the control room.
“Why did you leave her in Zone 0?”
The atmosphere turned tense. Callum shook his head at her like she was responsible for something.
“What did I do?”
“After you filled her head with nonsense about Alex, she had a crazy idea about him. She wanted to see proof we were working legally. She thinks Alex is planning to take the embryos in some kind of seed-ship to another planet. She’s ma
de herself guardian of the embryos and—”
“And what?”
He looked down at the floor, kicked it hard with the toe of his plastic covered shoe. “She told me something else.”
“Oh, about her being Lucy Green and not Lana Underwood?”
“Yes, how did you know?”
“We were at uni together. We started the online survey.”
“Fuck! I was the last to know, wasn’t I? Does Howard know?”
She put a finger to her lips. “Don’t swear near the babies. They might pick up on negative energy.”
Callum flung his hands up and mouthed a curse word.
“He is my husband,” Beth said. She knew Callum would be mad if he found out last. It sounded like telling him had not gone to plan.
“We shouldn’t be inside the growing room, anyway,” Callum said.
He pushed the exit button and flung the door open.
Beth followed him into the control room. “Goodbye, babies,” she said, taking one last look over her shoulder and smiling.
Back inside the control room, a stern woman with glasses and curly brown hair tapped her foot. Her lips were pressed together, sealing her mouth to prevent her exploding.
“No unauthorised staff allowed inside the growing room. I thought Lana was back but obviously not,” she said, looking Beth up and down.
Still dwelling on the promise of a pod-baby, Beth bit down on her lip to stop her smile and force a serious expression.
“I’m leaving,” Beth told her then turned to Callum. “Callum, come with me. I want to show you something.”
Under the woman’s enduring watch and with her tapping her foot, Beth and Callum removed their overalls. They passed her.
“Callum, where are you going? The embryos must be monitored.”
Callum entered data on the control panel then looked towards the embryo growing room. The red glowing numbers on each individual pod changed from ten to zero.
“I’m going out for a few minutes, if that’s any of your business, Rosie.”
Rosie stared at Beth, and Beth glanced away.
In the walkway, Beth slipped her phone from her back pocket. “She might tell on you,” she said sardonically.
He raised an eyebrow. “No might about it.”
Beth looked up a contact and hit the call button. “This guy is a physicist and, believe it or not, he told me something interesting.”
“Sean, it’s Beth. Yes, cattle-fart Beth.” Beth crossed her eyes and stuck her tongue out.
“Can you show me what you were talking about the other day? Can I come to your lab?”
“Okay, thanks.” She slid her phone back into her pocket.
“I haven’t seen it yet, but Sean told me something when I literally bumped into him pushing a huge funnel inside time adjustment. I wasn’t making up what I said to Lana. Alex’s plans have been a joke. Most people haven’t taken him seriously. But if Lana is right, and he is planning to steal the transferred embryos, it might be time to.”
“You’re as crazy as her.”
“Yeah, we made a good team once.”
“What? Did you two plot to blow up the Houses of Parliament?”
She shook her head. “Ha…Ha….”
He scratched his arm.
“Are you working legally?” she asked.
“Yes; maybe not ethically though.”
“How so?”
“We don’t have parental consent.”
Beth frowned. “But it is legal?”
Callum nodded. “Yes, I wouldn’t risk getting thrown out of RI or the New Cities.”
Beth wasn’t sure what she thought about that. Some parents might not appreciate their embryos grown inside a pod without their knowledge, but then again there was a global infertility crisis.
“Could the babies be adopted?”
“I don’t know. They’ll probably have to stay here on the island. They couldn’t be returned to their country of origin.”
They arrived at Sean’s labs, and he was outside waiting for them. Etched on the cloudy lab doors was Space Exploration.
“This is Callum,” Beth said.
Callum and Sean shook hands. Sean pushed the doors open, and they followed him inside.
“This is the engine manufacturing room,” Sean said.
A large funnel-shaped structure, six meters end-to-end, suspended from the ceiling at both the long and short sides dominated the huge open-plan space.
Along the back wall of the room, a series of 3D printers noisily built more funnels.
Sean tapped a button on a control panel directly under the funnel, and the huge structure began a reluctant revolve.
“Three funnels are layered inside one another. The outer funnel warps space-time in its vicinity so any space debris and radiation follow the modified contours of space-time, avoiding a collision with the craft.”
The funnel’s concentric layers turned into view.
“The middle funnel generates a local gravity which propels the craft forward,” Sean said.
“I saw these funnels when I was inside time adjustment. What’s the propellant?” Callum asked.
“There isn’t one. We create a local gravity. After the middle funnel is filled the inner funnel is in free-fall just like if I drop this pen onto the floor.”
Sean released the pen from his hand. It clanked on the floor, and they looked at it and laughed.
“Small things,” Beth said.
Sean pushed his slipped glasses further along his nose. “The inner funnel is a closed system just dropping through space. It pulls everything along with it.”
“At what acceleration?”
“Depends on the space-time gradient. These funnels are tuned to provide an acceleration equal to little g.”
Callum stroked the funnel like a beloved pet. “A relativistic rocket?”
“Yes,” Sean said.
Callum walked around the structure, still stroking it. “How do you stop the acceleration?”
“Once you get half way to where you want to be the funnel can rotate 180 degrees or others can be filled in-situ to apply an opposite force. My guess is they will fill them in-situ when they need to decelerate because rotating might create instability. We’re not privy to the spaceship blueprint. We only print out the pieces and move them into Zone 0.”
“So, you’re not generating infinite energy from the space vacuum?”
“We generate the energy to propel the spaceship by manipulating spacetime. The spacetime metric is different at the top of the middle funnel compared to the bottom of the middle funnel. So time runs differently at the top compared to the bottom. The inner funnel is held in that spacetime gradient and feels a gravitational pull from the faster-time-rate to the slower-time-rate. The inner funnel feels like it’s accelerating under a force, but in reality its gravity. The inner funnel pulls everything attached to it along with it. Space was never the final frontier, my friend—it was always gravity. Gravity makes space travel possible.”
Sean sounded like an Alex clone.
“How many have you made so far?” Beth asked.
“We took the last of the funnels across when I saw you four days ago. Over the last five years we’ve taken printed parts over every five days. We missed a few slots, but they have all the pieces now. We pass them over to the team waiting outside time adjustment.
“I’m not sure, but that background noise we can hear now could be something to do with it. They need to take the printed pieces into space for assembly. When this craft is assembled it will be massive. They’d never get it off the ground.”
“How will they land it?” Beth asked.
“They won’t land it on the planet. They’ve printed the parts for the re-entry crafts too.”
“How do you get these huge funnels into time adjustment?” Beth said.
“We manoeuvre them in on rollers, but you’re right; it has been difficult. Fortunately, most pieces are lightweight,” Sean said.
; “What about on-board power?” Callum asked.
“Spacetime batteries—they use the same principle as the funnels. They never run out or have to be charged.”
Beth remembered Sean talking about aliens and Dyson spheres once. “So aliens wouldn’t need to build a Dyson sphere?”
“Not if they could manipulate spacetime.”
“If they could manipulate spacetime, wouldn’t they be dark to the electromagnetic spectrum?” Beth asked.
“If they could bend light away from themselves and manipulate what we think are straight lines, then yes, they would be dark. Maybe that’s why they always look so scared next door,” Sean said.
Callum shook his head at them. They were going off on a tangent.
“I think I should find Lana,” Callum said.
“Thanks, Sean,” Beth said.
Bemused by their quick exit, Sean watched them leave.
“Bye, then!” Sean called after them.
Beth yanked the door open and stepped into the abandoned walkway. Mid-afternoon was the calm part of the day she normally didn’t see. They walked past the lab next door: Dark matter and gravitational lensing research.
“The next time adjustment is tomorrow. Where do they keep the transferred embryos?” Beth asked.
“The Deceleration Zone.”
The Deceleration Zone—her embryos were inside the Deceleration Zone.
She knew Alex wanted to leave Earth; everyone did. He would need human embryos to start a colony. Why had she never considered where he’d get them from? He’d better not take hers.
Chapter Seventeen
Inside their apartment, Beth removed a jug from the fridge and filled a glass with water.
Howard was sitting on the sofa with a screen on his lap.
Beth returned the jug and closed the fridge door. “Lana’s missing. Callum dumped her in Zone 0. Time adjustment is tomorrow. If she doesn’t come back inside Zone 12 then, I’m going in Zone 0 to look for her with him. She thinks Alex will take the transferred embryos on a seed ship, and I think she’s right. Apparently, the embryos are in the Deceleration Zone so we should start there. We can’t exactly ask Alex where she is.”
Started with Errors (Relative Industries Series Book 2) Page 12