Defiant: Quantic Dreams Book 2

by Elizabeth McLaughlin

  Every day more of the sick emerged from the shelter to join the colonists. I was pleased that people had adopted that word on their own. The sickness had driven them out of the shelter but establishing a settlement had motivated them to look outwards, toward the future. After the initial adjustment period had passed, people started to really enjoy the surface. More than once I caught Eliza sitting with her eyes shut, a gentle smile playing on her face as the wind whipped through her hair. Piece by piece things were coming together. Each tiny victory bolstered the confidence of the people. The day we got a reliable intranet connection running from the shelter to the surface brought such exuberance it was like Christmas morning. Very little work got done that day.

  Day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute, we crawled forward towards a new life. By and large enthusiasm for the settlement was widespread. A few of Gabriel’s former confidants lazed around and needed some extra encouragement to perform their duties but there weren’t many bumps in the road. I kept myself out of the limelight as much as possible but there remained a never-ending parade of people coming to consult me on every small issue. Now that the settlement possessed the necessary elements of survival it was time to delegate out governance. I prided myself in physicality and my intelligence, but I was getting seriously too old for this shit. Marcus was showing strong leadership qualities and seemed to be well liked. Nicole and Jason had also stepped up, always trying to take items off my to-do list before I even knew they were there.

  Killing Gabriel had a surprising unexpected disadvantage. The massive amount of information contained within the shelter’s databanks was still available to us, but most of the shelter—including myself—had grown up with the ability to ask the A.I. to conjure the information up for us. As it stood, we had two entire generations of people who had almost no experience using an operating system of any kind. What should have been a difficult task made simple was made all the much harder as people tried to get up to speed on working their tablets. The amount of information and routines they had to learn was staggering, and more than once I found tablets on the ground that had mysteriously cracked. As for our patience with each other, well, that vacillated too. No one disputed the fact that the settlement was a societal reset. There wasn’t a single person who was so ignorant as to think they were entitled to more than their neighbor. That truth may have been hard to swallow, but any disputes for food, property, or space where quickly worked out. If coming to an understanding meant that a couple of guys came to blows, we let them fight it out. Better they get the aggression out of their systems right away.

  The days were getting warmer. I couldn’t have told you what month it was—the shelters were put on their own times and calendars to ensure uniformity—but I believed that Gabriel had exiled me sometime in the late spring. With the appearance of higher temperatures came the introduction of more insects. These varied in size from the tipi of my thumb to the width of my hand. Like their earth-bound counterparts, each bug bore a resemblance to the insects illustrated in our encyclopedias and databases but was markedly different. The insects that I came to know as dragonflies traditionally had a gossamer set of four wings firmly attached to their bodies. Their modern cousins possessed a third pair of wings about a quarter the size of the forward pairs. Evolution that would typically require thousands of years to pass had been shaken up by extreme weather events and radiation. Perhaps these insects had evolved the third set of wings to help them stay aloft in strong winds, or maybe a radiation leak had caused a spontaneous mutation. Either way, it was seriously cool.

  The 3D printers were shifted over to producing the components for more permanent housing. There was a single ‘industrial grade’ printer that some lucky soul had found deep in storage. It took the input of five engineering enthusiasts to get the thing running again, but run it did. The machine could use a wide assortment of materials to extrude a concrete-like substance line by line. Sand, dirt, food scraps, even human waste could be substituted for printing ‘ink’. When programmed with a basic design, it was estimated that the printer could produce a family-sized dwelling about every two days. There was one problem. The printer was in the shelter. We would have to devise a way to bring it to the surface while still maintaining enough power to keep the thing going.

  I pulled in some of the older people and asked them to meet me that evening around the biggest fire pit in the settlement. If we were going to do this, we had to go all the way back to the earliest method of consensus. I’ll summarize it for you; everyone agreed that there had to be a transition of power, everyone agreed that it should happen sooner rather than later, and absolutely no one could agree on who it should be. Marcus had impressed a number of people with his leadership skills during the sickness, but others maintained that installing him as next leader of the shelter would raise concerns of nepotism. Phoebe Rickman’s name was mentioned as an option as well; her stepping into Sophia Caruso’s shoes and working tirelessly as a physician and authority figure had catapulted her from a veteran member of the medical team into the spotlight as a leadership figure. A small but vocal minority of people believed fervently that Alexander Fang was the man for the job. It was difficult for those people to completely understand the mechanism of how Gabriel uploaded himself into a human’d mind. They believed that his possession of George’s body was real, but there was a little piece of their minds that disapproved of killing another human being above all.

  The commonality among all of them was to request another election. I brooked no resistance to the idea. This time there wasn’t a contest for the survival of the species. I promised that I would consult the three front runners personally to gauge their interest in taking over for me. We would reconvene in a week’s time to work out the specifics.

  I decided to work from the bottom up. Rather unfortunately this meant having an awkward conversation with the man who had effectively sentenced me to exile. Fang was an environmental scientist by trade. Since his takeover of direction the exodus from the shelter he had found his hands largely tied; I hoped to ply him with the scientific discovery of the century. Overseeing the settlement would give him the opportunity to pursue the discoveries he was interested in. I caught Alexander as he was about to disappear back into the shelter.

  “Hey, can I have a minute?”

  He paused, looking between me and the now brightly lit staircase as if judging whether or not he could escape before he was socially obligated to speak to me. I closed the distance between us and took the choice away from him.

  “Listen, I’ve been talking with some of the older folks here about a transition of power.” Alexander quirked an eyebrow at me. “I know, I know. I’m sure you expected me to, I don’t know, declare my evil regime or something the minute we were out of the shelter? I’m old, Alex. I want to be out of the limelight just as much as you want me out of it.”

  “And you’re coming to me because you want me to take your place?” The eyebrow went higher. I started to wonder if it might fly from his forehead.

  “I’m coming to you because in the discussion I had last night with some people who are far smarter than I am, your name was put forward. The general consensus at the moment seems to hold another election. This time without an insane robot trying to take over our lives. I’m here to ask if you’d be amenable to putting your name forward. You’ve certainly got the leadership experience.”

  He leaned against the metal frame of the shelter entrance. “I appreciate your coming to me, but I’d prefer not to get the job. I’ve got the scientific find of the century in front of me.”

  “-you could be in charge of it.”

  He held up a hand. “I’m quite aware. If its the duty required of me, you can certainly put my name in. But I won’t complain if you drop heavy hints to them. I don't know how you’ve kept up with this job, Jacob. I have dealt with more shit in the past month than I ever have before in my entire life. Whatever our disagreements, I can honestly say that I don’t want the job.”

/>   “I can understand. I will convey your deep regrets to the appropriate people. They will probably tell me where I can stuff it, but it would be my pleasure to spare you the world’s most annoying job.”

  Alexander smiled a thin smile and disappeared down the entranceway. I don’t think that we were going to become fast friends, but it was possible that I had gained some favor back with him.

  Next on the list was Phoebe Rickman. She had spent most of her time in the shelter’s infirmary, looking after the few remaining sick and patching up the various bumps and bruises sustained during the move to the surface. I sent her a message on the tablet’s intranet, asking her to join me. It was almost an hour before she was able to join me. At the very suggestion of putting her name forward in a vote she burst out laughing so hard that she doubled over, arms clutching her sides.

  “No. No, actually make that a very firm ‘fuck no’,” she gasped between laughs. “I’ve had more than enough of responsibility for one lifetime Jacob Alvaro. All I want to do now is sit back, relax, and I don’t know, find some animal to study or something. I’m sure that one of the geeks will have a job for me. You can count on me to keep making sure they don’t drop dead, but other than that you’ll find me doing a whole lot of studying.”

  “Right. Okay.” I tried in vain to keep myself from smiling. “To tell you the truth Phoebe, I don’t blame you, but I have to say that you’d do a thumping good job of it. You command respect and order wherever you go. I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone so formidable.”

  She hugged me tightly. “You did your best, you know that? I can’t think of a single thing I could have done differently. It has been my pleasure to work with you, and gods willing we will grow old never having to deal with that kind of crisis ever again.”

  “The elders won’t be happy with me, you understand. Alexander Fang has already all but refused to let me put his name forward for a vote. If I come back with two refusals they’re going to accuse me of sabotaging the whole thing. You mind backing me up when they ask?”

  “Not at all, my friend. Not at all.”

  Chapter Thirty

  I lay awake in my tent staring at the darkened fabric, praying to anyone who would listen for sleep. It was sometime well past midnight and I couldn’t get comfortable. In the past days I had plenty of visits from my family but their presence couldn’t mollify the niggling sensation that ate away at my mind each day. My deal with Alexander to not return to the shelter chafed; though enthusiastic and excited about this new world, there was a small but insistent fear about being out here that I couldn’t escape.

  I vacillated between embracing the changes going on around me and feeling depressed that I couldn’t go back. As much as I wanted to believe that as a surface born human the change should be a natural one, the shift was difficult to accept. In many ways I was going through through the same period of discovery as everyone else. Perhaps I was romanticizing shelter life out of a fear of the unknown. More likely I had spent too many hours in the sun and needed a drink of water. Speaking of hours in the sun, I needed to work on finding out who could synthesize us some sunblock. My skin fared just fine with the sunny weather but my more pale skinned peers were suffering bouts of sunburn that made me cringe. For the moment we stuck to working under fabric whenever possible and urging those working outside to wear as much clothing as they could stand.

  The shift in lifestyle wasn’t just affecting me, either. I could see confusion, intimidation, and even fear in the eyes of others. But there was always hope. After spending the later half of my life alone, I was surprised to lose my faith in people. Maybe it was an out of sight, out of mind thing. Whenever I questioned whether or not I had done the right thing. In many ways, I doubted that I was any better than Gabriel. Whereas he had taken over the lives of hundreds, I had done the same thing. Did I have the right to rip them out of the simulation, the lives that so many had spent decades building? People had married in that world. They had started careers, given birth to children, even said goodbye to their loved ones. Only to be ripped back to an existence so many of them had barely known.

  When the sickness had burned through the shelter, I was responsible for yet another power grab; the decisions I made as leader of the shelter had killed people. However well-intentioned, I was responsible for those deaths. I was responsible, not only for the loss of their lives, but also for robbing hundreds of others of theirs. My decisions had robbed them of their freedoms and their agency. My belief that humanity was meant to live on the surface again had forced them to give up their way of living without so much of even a thought to whether or not they should.

  Alexander’s suspicion of my motivations now was perfectly and absolutely reasonable. If I had been looking at this situation from the outside I would be the first person to warn everyone not to trust me. The best balm to heal that wound was going to be time. I would continue to play my cards right and forsake any semblance of privacy until the community felt like I was another of their own.

  Fiona’s plan to fabricate farming equipment by hand was coming along nicely. Together we had dug out two symmetrical molds from the dirt—one for each half of the plow. The information we pulled up on our tablets showed images of the simple machines being mounted on wheels, but that was a little too complicated for the manufacturing process we had at hand. We settled on a rudimentary hand plow. Two handles would jut from a single wedged blade, ready for a strong-armed volunteer to pull the tool through the dirt. Because we were living on a plain, the earth and grass was tightly packed. Without a razor sharp way to cut furrows, the person pulling the plow was in for some aching arms.

  Residents were all too eager to surrender any scraps of metal they had lying around. Fiona also asked each person returning into the shelter for a non-critical task to bring at least one large piece of metal scrap with them on their return. As for a crucible to melt the metal in, we had a couple of ideas. In order to withstand the extreme heat of melting metal the container had to be tightly packed with thick walls. Use a material that was too porous or one that trapped air and the precious metal within would be spilled to the ground and made almost irretrievable. Too thick or heavy and it would make casting the plow difficult at best. If the human lifting the crucible couldn’t control the flow of metal properly they ran the risk of severe burns.

  Fiona settled on using the clay mud from the stream. Along with a few other people she went to retrieve as much of it as possible without collapsing the bank. While they were away, Eliza and Marcus helped to dig four ring-shaped holes in the ground much like the crab traps we had set. The clay was deposited atop a tarp secured in the ground and construction began. Each potter worked on a different design idea, varying the thickness from about an inch to almost four inches thick. I hung back and watched as they pushed the clay into shape. It was impressive. Balancing using enough force to shape the vessel without collapsing the earthen structure inside was challenging. The remainder of the clay was formed into a large block for future use.

  The crucibles finished, we then set out to design a way to pick them up and pour. Assuming that they could stand the heat, there was no way a human could. Heat and fire resistant gloves might offer minimal protection from burns but the heat of the mixture was going to be intense. Holding it at arms length wasn’t going to be an option. We were going to have to fabricate tongs. Somehow I doubted that suggesting using any of the 3D printers’ essential time was going to go over well, so we would smith them. Fiona asked for a couple of chairs to be ripped out of the mess hall and brought to her. Oscar and I proceeded to disassemble the chairs into their base components, leaving us with two wide, flat pieces to work with as anvils and small columns that could be fashioned into strips. I rounded up some of the stronger folks in camp to help with the effort, my own upper body strength long since sapped. They helped to set the metal stool tops into sturdy mounts of grass and dirt that wouldn’t budge when hammered upon. Inbetween the ‘anvils’ there was a large fire built,
aided largely by the appearance of a few handheld blow torches.

  Along with the scavenged chairs, hammers were brought up to us as well. They were a far cry from the traditional blacksmithing tools that we really needed, but they were a start. The hollow legs of the stools were hammered out into flat pieces with minimal heating. At the end of each strip of metal the smiths crafted a curved piece by bracing one foot on the opposite side of the ‘anvil” and hammering the heated strip around the curve of the stool itself. When all was said and done, we were left with a functional, if simple, pair of tongs. We didn’t have time to design a hinge so in its place I wrapped a coil of copper wiring between the two halves. It provided a little flex and it would keep the tongs bound together long enough to cast the metal. Long enough was all we needed.

  I did a little more research and found that we were missing a crucial piece of equipment. A bellows. The more complicated we made this however, the more time it was going to take to get plants up to the surface. A team was sent to retrieve every scrap of wood and burnable material they could find. That night we were going to have a bonfire.

  While we waited for the wood to be gathered, we tested the crucibles in a regular campfire. The flames wouldn’t be hot enough to melt a significant quantity of metal but we could at least figure out if the clay vessels were going to crack at the slightest lick of heat. Just our luck, crucibles one and two did exactly that. The first crucible racked almost as soon as we had placed it in the middle of the fire and the second lasted long enough for the piece of metal we placed it to start melting.