Terminal Uprising

by Jim C. Hines

  Frank L. James argued this makes it our duty to preserve the species, and produced a copy of his own genetic makeup, showing his fitness as a mate.

  Madelynn Angell moved to “shoot Frank in the dick” if he says one more word about breeding. Hrubetz seconded. Seven yeses, one no. Motion passed.

  Adjournment

  Frank L. James moved to adjourn the meeting.

  Ju Honisch suggested James “adjourn your stupid face.”

  Meeting adjourned at 4:19 PM.

  * * *

  MOPS HAD IMAGINED THE Library of Humanity would be a grander, more modern version of the one the Krakau had destroyed, with endless rows of bookshelves and computer terminals stretching in all directions, interspersed with transparent display cases to protect the most valuable books and artifacts.

  She hadn’t anticipated the giant penguin.

  The statue greeted them as they emerged through the stairwell door—almost two meters high, black and white with enormous blue eyes. The orange-and-black bill was curved into a giant grin.

  “There’s my nightmare fodder for the week,” muttered Wolf.

  “His name’s Emperor Waddle,” said Gleason, giving the statue a friendly pat on the shoulder. “He was the main LockLand mascot. We’ve got all six seasons of The Waddle Adventures saved in the archives, if you’re interested.”

  One arm—wing, rather—held a sign welcoming them to sublevel seven. The text was repeated in eleven languages, enough for Doc to translate. A map showed everything from restaurants to restrooms to rides color-coded for different age groups. According to the “You are here” arrow, this was Reception Area 4, surrounded by beautiful fountains, a food court, and an administration area. A dotted line showed where the parade would be passing through at 7 PM.

  Mops looked around. The fountains had been converted to algae tanks. From the drying trays spread along shelves on the left wall, Mops guessed the librarians were harvesting the algae for food. The administration booth was a two-meter-wide concrete pillar with a door in one side. Rusted bars covered the square window. On the other side sat a young girl with narrow eyes, dark skin, and a magnificent cloud of black hair.

  She leaned forward, studying the newcomers. “What’s going on, Mom?”

  “Alpha library is gone,” said Gleason. “Pass the word. Board meeting in one hour.”

  The girl’s eyes widened. She nodded and turned away. Seconds later, the square lights in the ceiling began to flicker.

  “Morse code,” Gleason explained. “We’ve never gotten the PA system to work reliably.”

  “She has your mannerisms,” said Rubin, looking from the girl to Gleason.

  “Junior’s my daughter. She hasn’t chosen a specialty yet, so she rotates job assignments each month.”

  Other humans emerged from nearby rooms and chambers. Two moved to assist Melvil with his feral. Most crowded around Gleason, speaking in Nishnaabemwin and gesturing toward the newcomers—particularly Cate.

  “Khatami, our guests could use food and rest.” Gleason spoke in Human, cutting through the noise as effectively as any drill sergeant. “Put them up in the Princess room.”

  Cate clicked his mandibles for attention. “Does this library contain documents or records about your planet’s military vulnerabilities? If so, I would like to borrow them.”

  Gleason didn’t bother turning around. “Do you have a library card?”

  “A . . . library card?” repeated Cate.

  “Sorry,” said Gleason. “No library card, no lending privileges.”

  Junior was back at the window, her face pressed to the bars. “Is that—?”

  “He’s a Prodryan, yes,” said Mops. “He’s been helping us. Sort of. You speak Human well.”

  “Thanks,” said Junior. “I heard Mom speaking it to you. Figured it was polite to follow suit. I also speak French, Nishnaabemwin, English, Mandarin, and a smattering of Latin.”

  Mops had no idea what those were, nor did she know what a “smattering” was supposed to be, but it was an impressive list nonetheless.

  “You’re EMC, aren’t you? Cured ferals?” Junior’s nose scrunched. “I see you’ve met Earth’s skunks.”

  “Wolf had a run-in yesterday, yes.” Mops studied the girl. The Krakau only cured adults. “If it’s not rude to ask, how old are you?”

  “Sixteen.” Junior cocked her head. “You look amused. You think a teenager can’t work the library?”

  “It’s not that.” Mops smiled. “I was cured a little over twelve years ago. Given the way we track our ages, that makes you older than me.”

  Junior flashed a broad white grin. “I’ll remember that, kid.”

  Khatami cleared his throat. “If you’re ready, Captain? I figured I’d show you and your people to the showers, first. They say tomatoes are good for skunk spray. I’ll send someone to search for a jar or two.”

  He paused at the admin booth to extend a fist toward Junior, who tapped her own on top of his in some kind of greeting.

  Gleason caught Mops’ arm. “You and I need to talk.”

  Monroe and Rubin both tensed at the sight of Gleason grabbing their commanding officer. Mops gave them a slight nod, and they relaxed. Hopefully, Gleason wouldn’t realize how close she’d just come to getting socked in the jaw. “Go with Khatami. I’ll catch up.” To Gleason, she said, “Lead the way.”

  * * *

  Mops was used to being gawked at. Throughout the galaxy, humans were a novelty: a species of savages brought back from extinction to fight the Prodryans. She’d learned to stare down curious Quetzalus or ignore the titillating whispers of gossiping Nusurans. She hardly noticed the oily fear-scent Glacidae emitted when she got too close to one.

  It was different when it was your own species staring. Mops might be as human as anyone here, but she felt like an alien. Her skin had a pallor theirs lacked. Few of these humans had the scars and injuries most EMC troops collected. Their body language was foreign as well. Many walked hand-in-hand or arm-in-arm. They stood closer together to speak, and broke eye contact too quickly. Their culture, their language, their upbringing and history, everything was different. Mops’ tension increased with each step.

  “Don’t you people have work to do?” Gleason snapped at one group who stared a little too long. They mumbled apologies and hurried away. “They don’t mean to be rude. It’s just that you’re the first strangers anyone here has ever met.”

  Mops thought back to how she and the rest of her crèche had gawked the first time they arrived on Stepping Stone. “It’s no problem. Just . . . strange. Being around all of you makes me want to apologize for not knowing how to be human.”

  “Captain, if you read enough history, you’ll realize we’ve been fighting over the right way to be human for as long as we’ve been around. You and your people go right on being yourselves.”

  “Thank you.” The strain in her muscles eased slightly. She pointed to one of the lights overhead. “Where does the power come from?”

  “This place was built to generate enough electricity for millions of people,” said Gleason. “With most of the place shut down and sealed off, we only need a fraction of LockLand’s original power requirements. The hydroelectric generator doesn’t work as well during the winter, but we’ve also got a few working solar windows up on the surface. There’s some geothermal as well, along with natural gas from sewage and recycling.”

  They continued down a broad road. Enormous concrete pillars were spread every ten meters, each one tagged with a letter and number. Many looked like they had once served as kiosks, providing snacks and toys and tickets to various attractions. Larger structures were constructed of some kind of primitive foamcrete, probably sprayed onto a metal framework. Most had been painted in bright primary colors, though the paint had cracked and flaked away over the years.r />
  “The pillars form a grid,” said Doc. “We came in at pillar D4. We’re at M6 now. Don’t worry, I’m building a map.”

  Most of the buildings were closed down, but they’d survived far better than anything on the surface. Mops spotted theaters, gaming rooms, gymnasiums, and something called a dog park.

  Gleason turned past another penguin statue, this one holding his wings out like he was desperate for a hug. Or wanted to wrap his wings around your neck and choke the life from you. “You said your people were janitors?”

  “Sanitation and Hygiene, that’s right.” Given everything she’d seen so far, Mops could guess where the question was leading. “I imagine a hundred and fifty years takes its toll on a place like this.”

  “We do the best we can with the tools and reference material we have, but there’s a never-ending list of problems. Leaking water lines, clogged pipes, blocked air vents . . .”

  “My team would be happy to take a look.” After a moment, she added, “Assuming the Alliance doesn’t come knocking.”

  Gleason sighed and turned left, cutting through an empty cafeteria. “LockLand was built to protect people from nuclear war, among other things. I’ve got people securing every emergency door that still works, from here to the surface. The Alliance will have a hell of a time cracking this nut. But you’re right. They know we’re down here. It’s a matter of when, not if.”

  “You said you had contingency plans.”

  “We’ve stored library backups in secure locations around the world,” said Gleason. “There’s an old data warehouse about a hundred kilometers from here we’ve been looking at as a secondary site. We couldn’t relocate with all this Krakau attention on us, though.”

  She passed into the food service area, heading for a large metal door at the back. She pulled an old key from her pocket and unlocked it. “And we’d have to abandon most of this.”

  The lights inside came up slowly, and Mops stopped breathing.

  Gleason watched Mops’ face and grinned. “I thought you might like it.”

  Mops stepped into what had once been a refrigerated warehouse for food storage, but now held endless rows of white metal shelves, filled with books, papers, and old electronic media of all kinds.

  “Don’t touch anything without asking,” said Gleason. “Some of this stuff’s brittle or sensitive to skin oils.”

  Mops approached the closest shelf, hardly daring to breathe. Like the books she’d seen in the now-destroyed library, many of these were centuries old. But these had been preserved and repaired and protected. Each book was enclosed in a stiff gray case, neatly numbered and labeled.

  “It’s easier to control the temperature and humidity in here.” Pride and satisfaction colored Gleason’s words. “Even if the rest of LockLand goes to hell, this room should last at least another hundred years. The books would eventually degrade, but there are electronic data storage devices that could theoretically survive into the next millennium, like this guy.”

  She carefully picked up a plastic green-and-white eagle with rainbow-shimmering eyes.

  “What am I looking at?” asked Mops.

  “This is Ugochukwu 3.1. He was designed in Nigeria as an educational tool back in the 2080s. Each Ugochukwu contains an entire educational curriculum covering birth to age sixteen. Much of his information is out of date, but he’s still a treasure trove of history and knowledge.”

  “He’s cute,” said Doc. “But can he simultaneously monitor fourteen maintenance subroutines on a cruiser-class ship?”

  “Does he still work?”

  Gleason shook her head and returned Ugochukwu to the shelf. “It’s hard to find working batteries, and I don’t want to risk hooking him up to a jury-rigged power supply. Theoretically, we could just open him up and extract the data drive. That’s all we need to preserve. But I can’t bring myself to do that to the poor guy.”

  Mops approved. As important as it was to save humanity’s knowledge, it was just as vital to preserve their creativity. Every sentient species developed ways of saving data. How many of those species would build data storage into a prism-eyed bird of prey?

  “The working computer equipment is down at the end.” Gleason beckoned Mops to follow. “We keep it turned off when not in use.”

  “Oh, wow.” Mops stared at the old wall unit, a square of clear nanocarbonate three meters to a side. Ports and adapters were clustered at the middle of the left edge.

  Gleason put a hand on the center of the screen.

  It flickered several times before bringing up a life-sized image of three brown-skinned children playing with an enormous hairy dog at a beach. Several centimeter-wide squares remained clear. Those sections were presumably too damaged to display anything.

  “Who are they?” asked Mops.

  “Probably the children of whoever owned this thing. We found it in one of the administrative offices on six.”

  Meaning these children, whoever they were, were long dead. Probably turned feral or killed during the initial outbreak of the Krakau plague.

  Gleason removed the memory drive from around her neck and slid it into a port.

  A cat strolled onto the screen from the left, crouched, and batted the dog on the nose with one paw. It paused briefly to lick the long, black fur of its shoulder, then looked out at Gleason. “Your drive is now synched and current, Eliza.”

  “Thank you, Libris.” Gleason removed the drive.

  “Libris?”

  “She’s our operating system,” said Gleason. “The original Libris belonged to Zinta Aistars, one of the first librarians. She hunted vermin and helped with morale. Libris, I mean, not Zinta. When our programmers got this thing running, they decided to model the interface after the cat.”

  “I will rebuild your entire plumbing system from scratch if you let me trade our ship’s tutorial software for a copy of Libris,” said Mops.

  Gleason smiled and brushed her hand over the screen. Libris jumped up on her hind legs to rub her head against Gleason’s palm. A low purr rumbled from the speakers. “The books behind us are only a tiny fraction of the library. Is there anything in particular you’d like to see?”

  “Everything.”

  “Assuming average reading speed, that will take well over ten thousand years. I’m no expert on reborn humans, but I don’t believe you have quite that long.”

  “What about . . .” Mops swallowed. “Do you have any pictures or articles from before the plague, when the Krakau first came to Earth?”

  In the Krakau version of human history—the version Mops and other EMC recruits were taught—humanity had been responsible for its own downfall. The Krakau hadn’t arrived until long after the planet was overrun by ferals.

  Azure had offered a different version, one in which the Krakau and their cold-water kin, the Rokkau, brought the plague to Earth. The Krakau blamed the Rokkau for the tragedy. After a brutal civil war, the Rokkau were wiped off their home world, the survivors banished to a secret prison planet.

  Azure’s existence proved the Rokkau were real. The librarians’ references to the Krakau plague suggested the rest of Azure’s story was true as well, but Mops wanted evidence.

  Gleason scratched the cat’s ears and said, “Index search. Date: June through August 2104. Keywords: alien, Krakau. Filter: news, images. Display language: Human.”

  The children vanished from the screen. Libris dropped gracefully to the bottom edge. The blackness behind her filled with columns of text, each line the title of an article or video clip. Libris stretched and scratched her claws down the screen, tearing open a virtual hole that grew into a table of information—an index of some sort.

  Libris batted the index up to Gleason’s eye level. Gleason’s fingers raced over the text, refining the search.

  As the number of results shrank, photos began to appear with the headlines. Mop
s pointed to one.

  Gleason tapped the index again, and the screen changed to a life-sized image of men and women—mostly men—gathered in a large, circular room in front of a colorful array of flags. In the center stood four Krakau and what Mops now recognized as a Rokkau. Superimposed over the top of the image were the words “Our Neighbors From the Stars.”

  Mops put a hand on Gleason’s shoulder for support. She’d known the Krakau had lied to her, that everything she’d been taught was a fiction, but this was proof. Life-sized, unassailable proof. “Doc?”

  “No need to ask. I’m recording the hell out of this.”

  “I take it this isn’t part of the curriculum for newly-cured EMC recruits?” asked Gleason.

  “You could say that.” Mops withdrew her hand and wiped her eyes. “Could you do me a personal favor?”

  “I can try.”

  “We all choose names from human history. Vera Rubin, Marilyn Monroe, Wolfgang Mozart.”

  “We have a similar tradition, only with famous librarians.”

  “The Krakau taught us that Doctor Marion Adamopoulos was responsible for what happened to humanity. I took her name so I’d never forget how much we owed the Krakau for saving us. I’d like to know who she really was . . . if she even existed.”

  Gleason cleared the search results and spoke a new query.

  Mops braced herself. “Thank you.”

  “It’s my job.”

  New results soon filled the screen. Gleason skimmed the list and chose one, seemingly at random. “This is a video clip from 2105. The audio is in English. I’m setting subtitles to Human.”

  The clip began with a blue screen and a series of electronic beeps. A logo appeared: three stylized white letters. Below, white text scrolled across a red banner. A second layer of text—the subtitles—read:

  CDC Alert Level 4: Practice Extraordinary Precautions and Avoid All Nonessential Travel