by Ran Vant
He knew what it was like to lose loved ones. He knew the pain. Once. “I'm so sorry.”
“I'm sorry. Sometimes it just hits me. I can't explain why. They died... it happened a while ago. A mission went horribly wrong.” Eve needed to talk about it now. She needed someone outside of the Natural Human Alliance to understand her. She needed to talk with someone who didn't view the death of friends as just a normal price to be paid in a seemingly never ending war. She needed a safe place of understanding and acceptance far away from all of the pain and fear and violence. She could only pretend for so long before she needed to retreat, to regroup for another round of the struggle. But she was beginning to wonder if the struggle was worth it. She was tired of it. She told herself she just needed a break. That's why she snuck out. That's why she found him. That's why she told him.
“I don't want to be part of the dying anymore. I don't want any more death. Promise me that you won't die. Promise me you'll never leave me.”
“No one else is going to die. I’m not going to die, Eve. I’ll never leave you. Don’t cry.”
65.
Learning
It was the third day since Michael first talked, and Maren was at it again. Eve got a scheduled break, but on Doctor Psycho’s orders, Maren was back at it. The pressure for results combined with incredible boredom of the actual experience was beginning to take its toll on her.
Make friends with him, the Doctor says. It’s like trying to make friends with a brick wall! What am I doing here? This has got to be one of the worst assignments.
Maren was frustrated at the lack of response from the genbot. She knew he could talk. And the Doctor had assured her that if she just keep on talking, honestly sharing whatever she could, that eventually she would find a trigger and he would talk again. She wasn’t convinced. As a matter of fact, she was beginning to get a bit angry. It was getting ridiculous, her talking to the vegetable all day, telling him everything, having everything recorded by the Doctor, and probably reviewable by Jack despite the Doctor’s assurances to the contrary, and still nothing to show for it. It felt as if she was half the experiment and she was getting tired of it. She was also getting tired of him, the genbot. The thought even entered her mind that he could use a good kick.
Instead, she took in a deep breath and prepared herself. Honest talk is what the Doctor told me to do, so here it goes, like it or not…
“At first it seemed like a huge opportunity, when we found out you’d lived through the procedure. I’d thought I’d learn all about you, about life up in the floater. Maybe even hear what an old gen fart is like, one of the guys who has been around since the start. They’ve got to have some good stories, having been alive for so long. It would be pretty cool to hear about them, about the olden days, about what they are like now.
“Instead, you just sit there. You talk to me once just to get us all excited, just once TO ME so that I get this lousy assignment, and now you sit there and clam up. And because you talk TO ME once, and not to the lieutenant when he shows up, everyone thinks you’ll talk with me again. Oh, this is pointless.” Maren stood up, and began pacing around. She tugged at her necklace with the green pendant. Great, brilliant plan. Tell him all about your boredom and impossible task and maybe he’ll talk. I’m not sure that’s what the Doctor had in mind when he wanted me to be honest to build rapport.
Maren remembered back to her talk with the good Doctor Psycho. She remember his calm, smooth, reassuring voice. “Just talking with it might stimulate a response,” the Doctor had said. “You should continue to talk out loud to it even if it does not appear to respond. The scanners seem to indicate recognition in the verbal center when someone in the vicinity of the genbot is talking, and they spike when you talk to it. All indications are that he is conscious and understanding everything. He is just choosing not to respond. Our work with captured Fanatics suggests that if you talk to them long enough, eventually they will talk back, the ones who have verbal language, anyway. And then you start to build a relationship, and from there, extract information. My guess is it should be the same with the genbot.”
Maren remembered her response to Doctor Psycho after he had gone on about the genbot’s capabilities, “If you know so much about it, why don’t you go live with him and do the talking?”
“Frankly, I’d relish the opportunity,” the Doctor had responded. “However, the fact that he talked with you once, and only you, suggests he may feel more comfortable talking with you. Regardless of whether I want to, and believe me, despite the connection you may have established, I want to give it a try… Regardless, the powers that be have said you’re the one who is going to do it.” He hadn’t mentioned that he was one of those powers.
The Doctor had concluded, “It may seem tedious, but you must try to continuously talk with him. The stimulation of the verbal center is vitally important. I need data for the mission.”
Talk to him. Tell him stories, the Doctor had said, Maren thought the words to herself. Easier said than done. You try talking out loud to nobody for a couple days. She took another deep breath and calmed down a bit. Think… “Well, what could I tell you about? Hmm. Are you curious about the R.T?” She’d been avoiding the topic, even though the Doctor had suggested it. But after a few days, she was running out of other things to say. Life in the R.T., the Refuge Territories, wasn’t her favorite thing to talk about, mainly because for some reason everyone was always questioning her about it and she rebelled at the inquisition. She didn’t like being singled out as different. But she felt she had definitely run out of anything else to talk about. And once she got going, she figured she could probably talk about the Refuge Territories forever. “Everybody else is curious about the R.T., so you might be, too. They’re always asking me about it. And I guess it’s something I know about.
“It’s been more than a few years since I left. On the one hand, it seems like I was just there yesterday. On the other hand, it seems like that was another lifetime. My life was so different. I was so different.
“We went to the Territories when I was young, just a child, but I remember the day exactly. It’s not something you easily forget, when your whole life changes in what seems like an instant. I remember walking through the grasses for the first time that afternoon. It was incredible. I could just barely see the head and shoulders of my dad walking through the tall grass ahead of me. The stems came right up to the height of my eyes. In much of the Refuge Territories, the grasses are long and golden and sway in the wind. Here, in the city, when you can even find grass, it’s short and cut and green. Most of the time, they don’t even want you to walk on it. In the R.T., you can see to the horizon where the grass meets the sky. The nights are darker and the days are brighter. In the city, these deep canyons of metal and glass make it... it seems that someplace is always suffocating in a shadow here. And the lights always seem to me to be artificial. But it’s cleaner here too. You never see dirt in the city. It so spotless and clean in the city.”
Michael was pleased to hear the new information, though certainly not because he was learning about the great grassy plains, of which he had patrolled often. Instead, he valued her story because of the last part: He now knew with certainty that he was within the city, thanks to her comparison with the R.T. Magritte was probably no farther than a few miles away, maybe only a few thousand feet straight up. The more she talked, even about seemingly innocuous things, the more Michael was bound to learn, and the closer he was to the clues that would lead to his escape.
Maren continued, “It’s so spotless. Everything is polished, so much so that I don’t think people on the surface even know what rust is. I mean, in the R.T., half the stuff we’d make would rust out eventually. We didn’t have the capability of making the higher end rust-proof metals. That’s one thing about the city. Life is certainly easier here. It’s safer, too. No wild animals or wild people who have sworn off technology, no floods or fires on the plain. Doctors, nurses, knowledge, plentiful food. There’
s law and life is ordered. I try to keep a realistic perspective. Jack tells me I romanticize the R.T., and he’s probably right. Both places have their good sides and their bad sides. It’s just hard to adjust when you’ve known one way of life for so long. I guess I don’t need to tell you that. That’s probably why you are just sitting there. I know this place must be different for you.”
Maren stared at Michael, who stared blankly back. He was just lying down there, not even moving his arms after his restraints had been removed. She was trying to talk with him, she knew he could talk and that he understood her, he knew she knew he understood her, and still he played mute! She was angry again.
“Listen, you can just sit there forever and waste away. I certainly feel like I’m wasting away when you just sit there like a stone. So you can just sit there, or you can take advantage of the situation, talk with me, ask some questions, and actually learn something about us. I thought you were human-like, but maybe I was wrong. Maybe you are just a machine that kills and doesn’t know how to learn. Or maybe you just aren’t interested in learning more about the people that you and your gen overlords kill.”
“I already know much about those,” Michael responded in a calm, cool tone. “I kill those who would try to kill me and who seek to wipe the Ancients from the face of the earth.” He would lose his only source of intelligence if she stopped talking. He could help prevent that.
Maren was astonished. She stood there with her mouth agape. He was talking again! What could possibility have made him decide to respond to that? She struggled to find a response that wouldn’t shut him down again. Talking to herself for days was beginning to drive her crazy. So she didn’t want to antagonize him by responding that it was the so-called Ancients, the old gens, who had on several occasions nearly wiped out humanity while pursuing their goals of making themselves gods.
After a few moments of stunned silence, she responded, a bit haltingly and at the same time a bit rushed, trying not to let the momentum slip, “Is there anything you would like to know about us? What questions do you want to ask?”
“You say I may ask you questions?” Michael asked. Though it sounded like an honest question because of the calmness and lack of facial expression in the asking, Michael was slightly amused that a trud, a small one at that, was granting a Guardian permission to do anything. Yet he still asked the question. He found something compelling about the woman.
“I do.” She decided that if her superiors wanted him to talk, she might as well try to get him to talk about things he wanted to talk about. She would work in the intelligence questions later, if they even mattered. Doctor Psycho seemed more interested in having the genbot talk, no matter what the topic. She would get him to talk.
Realizing that she was completely serious, Michael played along. He might indeed learn something just as she suggested. “Where are we?”
Maren smiled at his obvious angle, or rather, his lack of any angle at all. There were obviously some things her superiors would not be pleased to learn she had divulged. “Well, you can ask me questions, but I‘m certainly not going to answer some of them. And where we are is definitely one of them. But, hey, we’ve started a conversation,” she tried to sound relaxed, though her heart felt like it was beating a bass drum in her chest. “Please, try again. Ask away.”
“What are you doing with me?”
Haven’t you asked that one before? she thought. She didn’t want to say that one was out of bounds, yet she couldn’t really answer it. She stammered out a response, trying to keep the conversation alive. “Well, I guess you could say we’re learning from you.”
“What are you learning?”
“How you talk… how you interact with us… other things. What it means to be you, I guess.”
“Why?”
“Michael, there are some things that don’t have answers.” In her mind she was panicking. She needed to keep him talking, but he kept on asking rather direct questions that she didn’t know how to answer. She had to obey her orders to get him, and keep him, talking, but she also had to obey orders not to give the enemy intelligence.
It was obvious to Michael that the trud female either didn’t know anything or wouldn’t divulge it. As in warfare, when you can’t get a direct answer, try flanking. “I can see the horizon from Magritte.”
“What?” Once again Michael had caught Maren off guard. You’d think I’d learn, she thought to herself.
Michael continued. “On Magritte, I’ve also seen where the oceans of grass meet the sky.”
All right, this is progress. “What’s Magritte?”
“The Fortress, where I live.”
“Oh, the floater? I would guess you could see a long way from up there. You can see a long way from the tops of the city towers, if you’re important enough to be able to get up there. But I guess you could see quite a bit more from your castle in the sky.”
“Do you often go to the tops of the towers here?”
“No, mostly I stay down here. When I’m off, I…” Maren continued. Down here, the words repeated in Michael's mind. Down here... under the city. As she talked, Michael continued learning. And planning. Bit by bit, he was getting what he needed for escape.
66.
Intelligence
Blue shut the office door behind her. The room was cramped. Jack leaned back and crossed his arms, waiting for Blue to ask the question he knew she’d come to ask. “Did you learn anything from those files, the notebooks I delivered? Could you find anything that helps?” Blue inquired.
“Sure, I feel completely ready to start building nano components,” Jack said sarcastically.
“Very funny. My people already looked at the science. Not much new there. Does it help with the girl? I'm just curious.”
“Listen, I’m grateful you dug these up and offered to help. God knows, I need it. But the notebooks… It could be her father that wrote these. It's possible, not certain, but possible. The diary-like entries allude to a daughter of her age and her mother. But who really cares about a second-rate researcher in nano components, let alone his daughter? I mean, the guy was using paper and pens. What kind of researcher uses that old stuff?”
“Someone who wants to control the information, that's who. Maybe it's illegal, maybe the research is dangerous, maybe it's competition... but they don't want to risk it getting out,” Blue said.
“Hhm. If that's the situation, if the guy went through the trouble of writing everything down on perishable paper notebooks, using reams of them for research that could have been documented automatically, if he did it for secrecy, the guy was a paranoid nut. There wasn't anything in those notebooks worth stealing. No cutting edge science there that I could see, anyway. Seriously, it looked like stuff that all had been done before.”
“Maybe the notebooks we have don't tell the whole story. Maybe he had other information, other things of value. He fled to the R.T. for some reason.”
“You sure about that?”
“He disappears from the archives and any city database. Poof. All the old stuff is in there, but nothing new. The daughter is gone, too. We can't find any record of him or his daughter after the last notebook there.”
“Maybe he went Fanatic.”
“A scientist?”
“Not the first time. Won't be the last.”
“Well, are you going to keep working on it?”
“Of course. Red is protective of her for a reason,” Jack said. “He wants me to figure out what I can. It’s been a long-term project, and Red isn’t going to stop now. I’ve asked him several times what the point of it all was, and all he will say is to keep looking and tell him if I find anything at all that gives any clue about where she came from and who she was connected to. This is a bit thin here. The R.T. is full of runaways, pretty much by definition, and I am sure more than one of them had a daughter with red hair. I’ll keep working it, and if I can get anything that’s more than just a hunch, I’ll let him know.”
“Don't you
think it's strange that he protects her, but claims he doesn't know what's special about her? That he has you try to find out what you can, but doesn't give you any starting points or tell you why? That he doesn't tell anyone else, especially me, about it?” the Director of Intelligence asked.
“If you are implying that I should worry about Red, you're even crazier than the guy that wrote these notebooks. He has a track record of years. I trust Red with my life. But does he tell me everything? Of course not. I wouldn't trust him if he did, because that would mean he was stupid.”
“Red isn't stupid.”
“No, he definitely is not.”
67.
Reviewing Progress
Doctor Psycho smiled. “Good work. I knew you would have success, though I admit it took longer than I expected.”
Maren was rather satisfied herself.
The Doctor explained. “After reviewing the recordings and the brain patterns showing the genbot is indeed comfortable talking with you, we have decided that we will move the genbot to a facility where he might feel even more comfortable. There are hints in the data that this could make him talk more easily. Of course, you are expected to report anything of interest he says to me immediately. I can't afford to wait to review the recordings, and I don't have time to look at them all either.”
“Of course,” she said.
“The new facility does not have the banks of recording instruments,” he continued, purposefully not mentioning that there would still be recording devices, they would just be hidden. She had to assume it was all recorded, but he didn’t need to emphasize the point. Part of the goal was also to make Private Maren Bern more comfortable, to make her more likely to talk. Naturally, he left those parts out. “Others teams won't have as much access to him anymore. The security won't be as obvious.”