Science and Sorcery Box Set

by Ryan Tang

  Zach shook his head. It wasn't surprising that some of the technicians and assembly-line workers decided to stay overnight. But surely some of them wanted to return home. What were their kids doing?

  Zach thought about some of the technicians he'd worked with for years, especially his favorite one, frizzly-haired Gail. He and Gail had started at Southern Robotics together, and she too hoped to pass her position onto her child. Being a technician was still better than being an assembly-line worker.

  But when her son was born, his left arm and leg had both come out shrunken, unfit for the manual labor required of a technician. And so Gail worked and worked, lifting parts and slamming them together even when she hit old age, doing all she could to save the money needed for her son to join Southern Robotics's engineer training program.

  Zach wanted to help, but couldn't.

  The Director closely monitored his employees to ensure they followed his company values, which included a disdain for outright charity. It would not be political to donate to Johnny's schooling, and Zach knew better than to risk sending money in secret.

  But as hardworking as Gail was, she had to return home every night. She left even when Stock was pushing his hardest, even when he had the Security Force publicly shaming everyone who left headquarters when the workday was over. Zach knew better than to ask her to stay.

  She needed to take care of her son.

  He wondered how Gail was getting back and forth from work without the big transports. Maybe she had someone watching her Johnny when she was gone.

  Zach shook his head and began climbing up the stairs up to the main offices, hustling up two stairs at a time.

  He didn't care what everyone else was doing. That was none of his business.

  He had his own son to care for.

  Zach's frustration built with every step.

  Why would Jared say something so foolhardy?

  Why was he being so shortsighted?

  Did he really think he could somehow shame Stock into parting with his money?

  He'd spent his whole life teaching his son politics – only for this to happen.

  Zach climbed and climbed, past one empty flight of stairs after another.

  It took him six flights of empty stairs before he realized how weird it was.

  Zach was no stranger to the long climb from the hangar to the top floor. The stairs were typically bursting with so many people that long lines formed at the landings. Even discounting the engineers, there were thousands of technicians and assembly-line workers inside Southern Robotics. At any given time, some were running up and down the stairs – moving from one lab to another, grabbing equipment, or simply stretching their legs.

  But he hadn't seen a single person all day.

  It was the same the longer he climbed, and when he reached the top floor, the hall was empty as well.

  The old tags still hung outside their offices. Zach passed by his room, which was right next to the Director's. The placard was lined with dust, but his name was still there. It almost made him feel like his firing was just a bad dream.

  It'd been such a surreal meeting.

  What made Stock suddenly decide he didn't need any of them anymore?

  The Director's door was locked, and the flaring red lights around the frame made it clear he was out of the office.

  Zach paced the hall, waiting for the Director to return.

  As soon as Zach saw the boss, he'd fall to his knees and beg. Nothing put the Director into a better mood than seeing people beg.

  Then he paced too close to his former office, and his card activated.

  When Zach was assigned to the Inner Circle, he was given a pure gold card capable of opening any door in Southern Robotics except for the one to the Director's office. Pure gold indicated the highest possible level of security. At other companies, red, orange, and yellow were used, but Stock disdained those "girly colors." He did love classification and hierarchy though - there were 20 ranks in between white and gold, all varying between slightly different shades, each representing a different level of security clearance.

  There was a loud whirl. The door flashed pure gold, and his office opened.

  Zach blinked.

  He had to be seeing things.

  He opened his eyes again.

  He wasn't.

  The room was covered from floor to ceiling with heartlessly organized debris. There were photos of friends and family strewn all across the floor. There were faces Zach recognized. He saw one of George and Duncan. Their identical grins and identical salutes made it clear they were father and son. He saw one of Gail and Johnny, an adorable photo with a giant footprint stamped on top of it.

  Hundreds of photos, the sorts that board members placed in their offices, technicians put up in their cubicles, and assembly-line workers put in their lockers, were tossed onto the floor in various states of damage. Some of the photos had been torn apart, not by hands, but what looked like shifting feet. They blanketed the floor, and there was nowhere else to walk.

  Clothing items, like jackets and scarfs, were messily dropped on top of them. Loose clothes had completely swallowed his desk, chair, and personal computer. On top of the clothes came the uneven items, knick-knacks like Paragon models or stress balls.

  Zach pulled out his tablet and took a picture.

  Something very strange was happening.

  He stepped back out to the hall, and the door closed behind him. He paused for a moment then used his card to open the next room over.

  Mark's room was the same, piled up to the ceiling with clothing and personal effects. Zach took a second picture.

  All of a sudden, thunderous footsteps echoed down the hall. Every step was perfectly timed with every other, creating two massive thuds rather than the user pitter-patter.

  Somehow, Zach froze for only an instant. He gathered his wits quickly enough to slide back into the room.

  The doors of Mark's office slid shut behind him.

  The windows in the room were one-sided, built so managers could observe waiting workers without their knowledge.

  Zach balanced himself on a loose jacket and stared in disbelief.

  His brain screamed that his eyes must be lying to him.

  Gail marched at the very front of the column.

  Zach's longtime friend was a passionate and aggressive woman, the sort of quiet hero who'd continue working long after her body had broken down. The kind of mom who'd go home and cheer her son on every single night as he studied for classes he wasn't sure he could afford to attend.

  Even more than the litter all around the room, seeing Gail like this made him feel like he was going insane. It was as if his brain had been untethered from his head.

  Gail looked horrible.

  After repeated overnight stays at work, Zach and Jared joked and sometimes even boasted about their disheveled appearances.

  This was something far worse, something utterly inhumane.

  Her frizzly hair was ragged and haphazard, popping out in every direction. She was far thinner than he'd ever seen her, so thin that her skin was drooped down in strange loose pouches from her face and exposed arms. Her face was unshaven to the point that she'd grown a wispy mustache and the beginnings of a goatee.

  Her clothes were in similar disrepair.

  Gail was proud and diligent. She was extraordinarily careful about her appearance. She frequently told Zach she was determined to look just as professional as the Inner Circle. But her uniform was a tattered mess covered in burnt red stains. The shredded gloves on her hands were the same odd color. She was carrying something balled up tight in her fists. It gleamed bright red, but Zach couldn't get a good enough glimpse.

  Strangest of all was the hollow look in her eyes.

  She stared ceaselessly forwards, glaring with an intensity brighter than the false sun even though there was nothing in front of her, nothing but the wall and the red lights circling the Director's office.

  And it wasn't only Gail.<
br />
  Zach had never seen so many workers in a single place before, and all of them were in the same squalid condition.

  Their white Southern Robotics uniforms were tattered and torn. Their faces were cut and bruised. Their hair was damaged and unkempt. They were dirty and ungroomed. Their eyes were empty and far away.

  There were so many people, and they were all packed tightly against each other. There was less than an inch of space between them.

  If it wasn't for their unearthly coordination, they never would have been able to walk. Their brisk steps were perfectly aligned. They even breathed at the same time. Their chests slightly rose then slightly fell, shifting just enough so that they didn't bump into the person right in front of them.

  Something had been done to them. The thought appeared unbidden in Zach's mind. He tried to push it away as a conspiracy theory, but he couldn't.

  Their eerily united movements, their identical hollow glances, their completely disheveled appearances.

  Something had been done to them.

  They turned as one, moving with impossible coordination.

  As they did, Zach caught a brief glimpse of Duncan. A horrid gash split his handsome face. His hair had grown wild, and the edges were stiff and gray. Dead eyes haunted his face.

  A gold light flashed as they opened the office directly across the hall from Mark's.

  How did these people have maximum security?

  They crowded the door so quickly that Zach couldn't see even a speck of what was inside the room. The workers were inhumanly orderly. They were so disciplined that they effortlessly stood on top of each other so that two rows of people could retrieve the materials inside at the same time.

  Zach gaped as a huge man stepped on top of Gail's head to crawl into the room. His old friend took the bore the weight on her head without even flinching.

  When they finished retrieving their items, the shambling workers formed into two groups. The first carried box after box filled with what looked like freshly printed books. The covers gleamed bright black, and Zach recognized Stock's autobiography.

  The next group carried rusty old equipment in their burnt red gloves. Zach recognized them as Old Earth tools, used for mining through the planet's rocks. At first, he didn't understand what they were being used for. The picks and shovels were rusty and ugly, nothing like the fine artifacts the Director hung in every hall.

  As the workers filed past his door, Zach looked and saw the truth.

  No.

  No.

  It couldn't be.

  There were flecks of broken metal on the tools, flecks that were gleaming forever burnt red and forever black.

  And as he looked closer, he realized it wasn't just the shovels.

  The workers were carrying burnt red shards of Eternium in their hands, shards they must have dug out by hand.

  No wonder the quakes had happened.

  Southern Robotics was mining the colony.

  ____

  Zach took another picture.

  It was unmistakably Eternium.

  He slowly pieced together what must have happened. The night of the quakes, Stock must have withdrawn a massive chunk from the core. Now, these workers were breaking it apart and refining it. Perhaps they were forging Paragon parts with the stolen metal. That would explain the humanity transforming announcement that Stock kept promising.

  Zach wasn't frightened.

  Perhaps he was too bewildered.

  There was still a part of him that couldn't believe this was real.

  But there was a part of his mind, the logical part, which saw this as just another engineering problem. He always told his trainees to document everything strange so the company could look back and see what went wrong.

  He would do the same here, only he had no plans of sending this to the company.

  Nothing like this would have happened without the Director's express permission.

  He should have seen this coming.

  Stock chose to build slow and unmovable Paragons simply because Jared's machine did not look proper.

  Instead of making his machines fly higher, he worked with the Waters administration to cut the height of all the houses.

  Instead of making the machines faster, he told everyone that Waters put a cap on speed.

  Zach had looked away each time, hoping one day he could build a true Paragon and get rich in the bargain.

  Instead, Stock just took another shortcut when it was time to create Eternium.

  His son had seen Stock for what he truly was. The Director always took the easy way out when it was available, no matter what the consequences were for anyone else.

  Zach's first thought was to tell his son, but the thought of what Jared would do with the information terrified him. Jared might get himself killed.

  His next thought was Adrienne, but he didn't want to get her tangled up in this mess.

  Maybe he should just post it on the Forums.

  That might spread to a lot of people, but Zach knew that Stock had friends at the Forums. That was how he kept the discussion of his past unsavory activities to a minimum.

  Maybe George.

  George was someone with a logical mind, just like Zach's own. And he would want to know. His son was one of the brainwashed.

  Then Zach realized he had another problem.

  He didn't have a tablet of his own. He still used a company tablet. If he used it, Southern Robotics would see what he'd done. Perhaps he should sneak home and find another way to send the pictures.

  Perhaps...

  Zach sighed when he realized the truth.

  His son had shown him the way the night of the quakes.

  Jared had bravely charged ahead and saved as many people as he could.

  Southern Robotics was tearing the colony apart.

  Who had the time to be careful?

  Who had the time to stay political?

  Zach sent the pictures to every person he knew.

  He posted on the Forums over and over again. As he expected, his message was deleted almost immediately, but that didn't stop him from sending another.

  His tablet buzzed and abruptly burned in his hands. It was so hot he dropped it to the ground.

  Bright letters flared across the screen.

  "Due to violating company policy, you (USER 5279 – ZACH STONE) may no longer send out of company messages from your tablet."

  "Due to violating company policy, you (USER 5279 – ZACH STONE) may no longer send out of company messages from your tablet."

  "Due to violating company policy, you (USER 5279 – ZACH STONE) may no longer send out of company messages from your tablet."

  It only took them a few minutes to cut him off, but that was more than enough time.

  People had seen.

  The door was suddenly torn open with incomprehensible strength and speed.

  Zach could only gape as the mass of workers formed an impenetrable wall. The faces stared back at him. He knew some of them. Others were unfamiliar. But every one was dead and still.

  His heart thundered in his chest. His legs felt like useless tentacles. He slipped and fell to the floor.

  The workers suddenly parted, and a tall woman dressed in a stark white dress and a pair of matching shoes stepped through the gap.

  She was very pregnant.

  Her long hair flowed haphazardly down the right side of her body. The sweat and knots in her hair were the only indications she'd been caught off guard.

  "Stop him from leaving."

  So Sarah was in on this too.

  Zach took one fearful step back, then another. But there was nowhere for him to go.

  Sarah's heels clacked elegantly with every step as she came closer and closer.

  "What is this? How could you do this?"

  Her violently red lips were twisted halfway between a smirk and a snarl. The expression made her beautiful face look shockingly ugly. Her eyes were lit up in a way that looked just a little too manic.
r />   He repeated his question, but she ignored him again.

  She pulled out a silver flask brought it to her lips. Her throat gulped and gulped as she drank deeply.

  "These are your co-workers!"

  He searched the dead faces.

  There were people they both knew. From so close, the inhuman coordination was eerier than before.

  "Some of them were your friends!"

  Zach reached out to the drone right in front of him, a burly woman he didn't recognize. She continued staring past his hand even as he brought it closer and closer. He touched her at the center of her forehead, and she didn't even blink. He pushed, lightly at first, and then hard. The muscular woman only continued staring forwards, the same look of distant concentration etched onto her face.

  "What have you done?"

  Sarah finished drinking. Her tongue flicked out to lick the pitch-black liquid from her lips. It looked like she was drinking from a vial of ink.

  Then she smiled.

  "I'm not going to hurt you. You are under no physical duress."

  She pulled a stack of papers out from her purse and briefly twirled them beneath her fingers.

  Zach blinked.

  It must have been just a trick of the light, but he could have sworn he saw black strands dancing between her fingers, twisting and circling the page.

  She produced a pen in her left hand, pulling out of her pocket faster than Zach could even see.

  "I'm not going to hurt you."

  Zach stared at the wall of brainwashed workers behind her.

  "I just want you to keep this a secret."

  She slid the papers over.

  "I repeat. You are under no physical duress. I only want you to agree not to tell anyone what happened here."

  She smiled knowingly.

  "This contract guarantees your silence."

  Zach stared at the crowd that circled them both. One of them had torn the door apart with their bare hands. Which one was it?

  He thought of their shocking coordination.

  Could they all move with the same strength and speed?

  Sarah coaxed the pen into his hand.

  "Please sign. I will not hurt you."

  Zach didn't have a choice. If he didn't sign, these people would kill him.