by H C Edwards
It made sense in a maddening way. With the Mountain and Akropolis working together, they couldn’t sabotage their only means for continued existence by using their own processors from their quantum computer. They would need the sanctuaries to operate on Earth as a failsafe, in case the ship’s mission was unsuccessful.
Had that been the plan all along? Is that why Charlottesville had reneged on the deal? After all, it was feasible that Akropolis and The Mountain could scrounge enough materials and tech from dismantling sections of their own city to complete the ship, but a quantum processor powerful enough to run the Cloud for what could be thousands of people? That would take many years to create and depend upon a number of resources that either sanctuary might not have anymore.
The more Griffin considered it, the more certain he was that he had struck upon the truth. And with it went the excitement he had felt for the ship itself. He could not be filled with wonder when he was filled with so much grief and regret, for though unbeknownst, he too had played a part in the Plan. There was nothing he could do about that, but he could and would help stop what was happening to his people here in this city.
He had already considered the possibility that shutting down the quantum computer would not reverse the genetic mutation or stop it. That outcome meant the eventual demise of their entire species. It was a condemnation of its own, and while Quentin, the Major, and the councilwoman might not have considered too closely this prospect, Griffin was under no illusions that this could very well happen.
They would be responsible for end of the first, and probably the last, intelligent species on the planet.
It was a sobering thought, but if they were to have any hope left on this earth, it was the only course of action left to them. At the rate of genetic unraveling that was projected on the model, their time was finite, certain. At least this way they had a chance.
Griffin squared his shoulders, pushing the doubt far down inside of him where it wouldn’t hinder what he had to do. It didn’t go without a struggle, fear being the motivator in the short tug of war, but his resolve was sound, and when the last of his doubts died with a soft sigh, he started to walk through the gardens.
Speediness was essential in their coordinated effort. Trey had calculated the time it would take to retrieve the explosives and for he and Misao to make it to the Pantheon. Once there, they would message Griffin to let him know when they reached the bowels of the underground, near the heart of the quantum computer.
Griffin planned to be waiting in his office, poised to hack and drop the firewall so that he could release the contained Sia program into the central mainframe. They would have a couple of minutes to plant the explosives and get out before the electromagnetic field went back up. If they tried to detonate with the field still up, the blast could intensify it, causing the field’s strength to expand exponentially. Being so close to the planet’s outer core, it could possibly cause the polarities to reverse in a matter of minutes. Something like that would be catastrophic, not just to Akropolis, but to the entire world.
Griffin had made it a point that under no circumstances were they allowed that to happen. He was pretty certain the shocked expressions that met this particular theory made his point clear, hence the coordinated timing, but they still had to move fast. Security would flag his intrusion into their system almost immediately.
This made him nervous, enough that his feet seemed to be flying across the pavement. He had to force his legs to slow down the pace. Hardly anyone ever ran in the Gardens. Already it was nearing shift change, and there was a slow trickle beginning to go in and out of the building. If they saw him in a hurry, someone might stop him to ask what the rush was, and he wasn’t certain he’d be very offhanded when replying to that question.
Having the lead on the others, Griffin stopped, turned, and admired a group of blooming azaleas for a moment before mounting one of the moving walkways and taking a seat. Though his heart was beating like he’d been jogging, he forced his body still and pretended to look around, enjoying the view. After all, it could very well be the last time he ever saw the Gardens.
When he neared the end of the walkway, he stood and stepped off, mounting the dozen steps to the entrance, turning slightly as a trio of techs walked out. He nodded the obligatory greeting and moved past them.
The foyer seemed to loom over him, as if in reminder of how small he really was in the great scheme of things. The feeling stayed with him as he passed the entrance desk without a glance at the guards, keeping his focus in front.
The lifts were thankfully empty, taking him up to the thirtieth floor where the offices for the head program directors resided. He wasn’t so lucky, however, when the doors opened.
Much to his surprise, and quite unexpectedly, he was confronted by Dr. Janet Wadzinski, the very same person that had revived Trey and mention Griffin by name. It was how the Major had known to look for him, and she was the last person that Griffin wanted to see at the moment.
Homecoming
They put her in a room with a single steel table and chair that matched the walls. The floor was so polished that looking down, she saw almost a perfect mirrored reflection. She looked terrible, dirty, disheveled, as if she had been through a warzone. In a way, she felt as if she had.
The bottoms of her feet were black and she was still wearing the oversized jumpsuit that she had acquired in the bowels of The Mountain. Her hair was matted and clumped together in near dreads, and she couldn’t help but wonder if it would ever be the same, or if the better outcome would be to chop it off and start over.
Her mother had always fawned over her hair, claiming it was like a river at night, deep and dark and flowing. At nights they had sat together while she brushed Claire’s hair, humming lullabies that the world had long forgot.
Thinking of her mother made her heart feel like it was being squeezed. That first year had been one long dark evening. If not for her father, she would have succumbed to melancholy on the border of hopelessness. Her mother had been her world, and when she finally accepted that she was not coming back, her father took that place on the podium.
Michael Simms, a common name he was want to say. He had an easy smile, and could make a person laugh within minutes of first meeting him. He wasn’t uncharacteristically handsome, and his frame was a little gangly, as if he was held together with sticks and straw, but he was a giant in her eyes.
After his accident, Claire was devastated. He did not have a revival order, just as her mother, though she had naively thought different. He had left her alone, and for that, she blamed him, resented him. Her anger was like an infection. Despite the counseling and the sessions, it grew and grew until it permeated every cell in her body. Her nights became tortuous, spent in restless slumber with long waking moments, envisioning scenarios in which she hammered him into submission with guilt until he was a puddle of remorse. And then, invariably, came the tears, the ache that threatened to swallow her entirely, a black hole at the center of her being that let in neither light nor hope. If not for her grandfather, she would have fallen apart, become a shade of herself, a wisp that floated between the lives of others rather than interacting with them.
Grandpa Talbot, she called him. She knew how old he was, ancient being a better descriptor, and her history of parental figures had her certain that each day would probably be the last day that he drew breath, and she would be truly alone. But her grandfather was more than resilient. It was as if death were afraid to come collect him.
The years passed and Claire grew less certain of his demise, and when she reached adulthood, she realized how grateful and relieved she was that he had not been taken from her. She grew to accept the fact that he would go the way of her parents, without a revival order, but adulthood had tempered her fear and given her acceptance. It might not have been so had he not been there during those hard years.
He was Grandpa Talbot. He was family. And now Claire sat in a cold steel chair in a cold windowless room and wait
ed to see the man who had helped murder tens of thousands of people.
It was an hour before the door opened again, and when it did, her grandfather was not standing there. Instead, there was another set of guards, stone-faced and carrying a bundle of clothes and towels.
They walked her out of the room and down the hallway of the security center, situated on the fifty-seventh floor, directly in the middle of the Pantheon. While the quantum computer was the heart of the building, the security floor was the pulse. It monitored every part of the city, not only for occurrences of crime, of which it relayed to the ASF headquarters, but also anything that might disrupt or threaten the livelihood of the sanctuary, such as glitches in the transit systems or making certain the ionizers in the filters outside of the Wall were not getting clogged.
The security floor had its own guards as well. They fell under the ASF but were integrated in name only, which meant that they were the only security force that operated on the floor and never shifted out. Because of this they had their own wing of living quarters on the floor, complete with a gym and recreational area, as well as showers.
Claire was walked to these by the guards accompanying her. They paused at the entrance of the locker room and nodded towards the curved hallway. She was at least grateful to see that they had taken her to the women’s area. It didn’t make her abduction or captivity any less bearable, but it meant that they weren’t completely thoughtless.
Though she knew about this wing, it was her first time here, and she spent the first five minutes in the locker room scrounging for some sort of escape route. There was nothing, of course. She didn’t really believe that there would be. After her escape from The Mountain, they would be extra careful not to provide her with any other opportunities.
Not knowing what was coming was maddening when she considered it, so she opted not to…at least, as much as she could. Instead, Claire took a hot shower. It didn’t last more than six minutes, water rationing being in place for over two hundred years, but it was like a small slice of heaven in the midst of hell. She used the bottle of aloe conditioner given to her and was able to brush out the matted tangles afterwards, losing only a small amount of hair in the process.
The clothes provided was the standard tech fair, white slacks with white top, a long-sleeved coat that she was grateful to have. It helped cover her emaciated limbs, something she actually had the chance to notice in the mirror for the first time in weeks. She hated that it made her self-conscious, hated the fear that lurked just below the surface of composure.
Claire left the showers to find the same guards waiting. One took the lead and the other dropped behind her. Together they walked to the cafeteria, the only time she had ever seen one completely empty.
There were two meal pack trays sitting at a table. The thought of food made her stomach clench, but the moment the first bite hit her mouth, she became ravenous, wolfing the contents down, barely tasting the flavors. It turned out to be a mistake, because almost immediately after she cleaned the first tray, she leaned over to the side and heaved up the entire meal onto the floor, splattering one of the guard’s boots, and causing him to curse as he lunged backwards.
Claire smirked at the man and slid herself away from the mess, taking her time with the second meal pack, chewing the food slowly and washing it down with water in between bites. When she was finished she stood up, swaying slightly, her head woozy and stuffed with cotton.
She had a moment when she thought that her food might have been drugged, and then she seemed to be sliding to the floor. A pair of hands grabbed her and hauled her none too gently to her feet. She flailed for a moment, but her limbs were like noodles, and it was all she could do to keep her feet under her.
They walked her like that to another door, her eyelids growing heavier with each step, drooping until they closed. When they opened again, she was in a room, a small cot in front of her.
Claire didn’t care where she was at that moment or what came next. All that mattered was the cot, and as she fell forward, the blackness taking her, she could hear her mother’s soft voice singing her a lullaby.
He was waiting for her when she woke; sitting across from her bed in a plush chair that was obviously out of place in the claustrophobic and sterile room, meaning it had been brought while she slept.
Her throat felt swollen, her tongue like a piece of driftwood. At the head of the cot were a simple nightstand and a glass of water with a half-filled pitcher next to it. She took it with a slightly trembling hand. It was ice cold, but she drained it in a few seconds, noticing as she did so that her wrist was cuffed to the metal frame with only a foot of chain.
Claire sat up slowly and leaned back against the wall, fighting the nausea she felt creeping on her.
“You drugged the food,” she said to her grandfather.
He sat there, an ancient king on his throne, looking magnanimously at her, a bit poignant as well, as if he suffered the weight of the world. In a way, she guessed he did, or at least thought he did.
“You needed the sleep.”
She snorted.
“Drink some more water. It will help.”
Claire wanted to scream at him, but she didn’t have the energy. She also wanted to be rid of the lethargy in her limbs and the cotton that seemed stuffed between her ears. She reached over and took the pitcher, drinking the cold water in long gulps, and then saved the last bit to pour over her upturned face.
It drained down her chin and neck and across her chest, the cold chasing away the fogginess. She let the pitcher drop to the floor and wiped her face with the sleeve of the coat she was still wearing.
“Do you want some more food?” he asked.
She glared at him, very aware of the distance between them. He sat just to the left of the door, far enough away that she wouldn’t be able to reach him even if she stretched. Leaning over slightly she could see that the cot was bolted to the floor.
“Where am I?”
Talbot looked around the room as if just noticing it for the first time.
“Oh,” he said, as if it just occurred to him that they weren’t passing the time in the living room of her apartment. “This place is, well, it is a part of the psychiatric wing. It used to be for those who had…difficulties, adjusting to the revival process. Sometimes they would hurt others, or even themselves.”
“It’s a cell,” she spat the word out.
“We call it a low-stimulation room,” he said, frowning.
“You can call it whatever you want,” Claire replied. “Why am I here?”
“Claire-”
“WHY AM I HERE?!” she screamed at him, immediately regretful as a sharp pain lanced across her temples.
Her hands went to her head as her body curled into a tight ball. She almost whimpered with pain.
She heard but didn’t see the door open.
“I’m fine,” her grandfather said forcefully.
A second later she heard the click as the door closed. It was, however, almost a full minute before she was able to unclench her body, the pain reduced to a throbbing that felt like someone was punching her head through a thick pillow.
“I am sorry for this, Claire. This was never meant to happen. You were never meant to be here…like this.”
It hurt to open her eyes, but she had to see his face, that long and forlorn expression he wore like a shield.
“I don’t know what went wrong,” he continued. “You weren’t supposed to wake from the Cloud. The program should have kept you under until you were ready.”
Her voice, when she spoke, was soft and hesitant.
“Ready for what?”
“For the trip,” he said, as if it explained everything.
She winced as her face made a grimace, but the pain in her head was finally starting to fade. Her thoughts began to swim into focus.
“The ship,” Claire responded.
Talbot nodded, and for a moment she thought there was a light that sparked in his eyes, a zealou
s, almost feverish fire, but if it was there at all, it was gone the next second.
“Yes…the ship. We call her Genesis.”
There was something that seemed akin to pride in his voice. She recognized it, because she had heard it before when he first introduced her to the staff as the new director of the genome project. Only two years before, but it seemed a lifetime ago.
“It is the hope of mankind, and the beginning of a new era.”
“Is it worth it?” Claire asked.
“Worth it?”
She gritted her teeth, the words like poison in her mouth.
“What you are doing to all those people in The Mountain?”
He shook his head like a misunderstood martyr.
“You don’t understand. I know you don’t. Those people are not citizens of our sanctuary. They are from…a dead sanctuary. They shouldn’t even be alive, but since they are, it was useful to try the vaccine en masse to ascertain how well it would work away from Akropolis, from our quantum computer.”
The computer? She didn’t understand the reference, but she understood that he had justified the capture and experimentation of people as easily as one drew breath.
“ Akropolis,” he continued, gesturing around the room with one hand, “is dying. In less than a hundred years the human race will be no more. The genome defect is just the beginning. Given more time you would have figured it out as did your mother, but then you would have arrived at the same conclusion that the council and I did…that there is no saving our world.”
Claire blanched at the mention of her mother, but Talbot’s words also struck a nerve, rattling around inside of her head like brittle bones. And then it hit her, as if it had been known all along since that first day in the lab when she spied the missing markers in the sequences.
“The DNA,” she said through numb lips. “It isn’t missing…it’s unraveling.”