by John Lane
“Does seem like a good hiding place for pirates,” Tommy’s retorted. He kept his goo gun unholstered and ready. Agnes was also armed with a particle cannon of her own design. Although untested, she swore that it was perfectly safe to use in space. Tommy had no doubt that she knew her engineering. But he had yet to see a particle anything that wouldn’t put a hole in the side of a ship and take a man out with it.
“The traffic is picking up,” Agnes said. “Look there. It’s a whole convoy of parts trucks. They must be coming from the printers and are being moved to an assembly site. I can’t quite make out what they are, but it looks big.”
“Need more info. Alfred.” Tommy’s tone was enough for Alfred to know that he should do some snooping around. So he sent one of his avatar gnats to hitch a ride.
“Those girders are very lightweight and structurally strong. They are made of a composite material. Although they are printed parts, they have been cured under high temperatures for a long time to get the tensile strength I’m reading.” Alfred continued, “As to the purpose of these constructs, I may have to hang on until their destination to determine their use. Something that takes that strength to weight ratio indicates a possible space craft.”
“Wait, look. Those trucks are carrying sealed containers,” Agnes commented as several more trucks sped by and then veered off into a darkened tunnel. “Wonder what was in those and what the hurry was?” Agnes mused.
“I got an x-ray of the contents,” Alfred offered. “Those containers were packed with small electronic parts and structures I’ve only seen once.”
After a pause Tommy prompted, “Well?”
“Sorry, I was just reviewing my scans to confirm.” Alfred continued, “Those are components identical to the caskets in which Agnes, Christine, and Dr. Annie Judson were ensconced.”
Silence followed Alfred’s pronouncement. Minutes later it was broken when Tommy asked, “If no one is home, why all of this?”
After another good minute of thought, Agnes answered honestly, “I got nothing.” Alfred and Dr. Ann agreed. So they silently rode the tram deeper into the underground complex.
As they descended, Dr. Ann described the layout she remembered from Annie’s memories. The first settlers dug into the planetoid and mined it for all the ore and minerals they could. Long before the wealth of the planet ran out, the settlement had grown into a community and a home. Several of the families branched out into other industries that could be supported by the mineral wealth and their location on the Frontier. It had been a prosperous and lively settlement. Annie’s family had started out as the local doctors but their need for medical supplies lead to them develop manufacturing, research and development in medical supplies and treatments.
About then, the tram broke out into a vast cavern. The track they were on hung from the ceiling and looked out over a small city. Lakes and rivers spread out below them on the cavern floor. Housing and industrial areas clung to the walls and ceiling while in other parts of the cavern floor fields of planted crops grew in large square patchwork. Robots or avatars tended all these. No sign of human life joined the activity of an otherwise busy settlement, just these servants of humanity that hadn’t been told there was no one home to serve.
After a few minutes, the tram pulled into an alcove along the wall of the cavern. “This is our stop,” Agnes stated the obvious, “but I don’t know which way from here.”
“Down,” offered Dr. Ann. “The Zephyrs lived in this building in the penthouse on the bottom floor of this inverted skyscraper.” And indeed, according the building directory by the lifts, most of the family had apartments in this structure.
“Is it still safe?” Tommy asked the question on all their minds.
Agnes expertly eyed the structure with its thirty floors of apartments, all of them looking as if the occupants were all home. “If it’s like the fields below, I think it’s been well kept up by the maintenance bots and some kind of Ai.”
“I wonder why the lower levels have been maintained and not the surface levels?” Tommy asked. No one had any speculation on that point.
They all hefted their gear and boarded the lift going down. It took only Agnes’ name to gain entry to the building and access to the penthouse. “Hello, Mistress Agnes. Welcome home.” The house Ai greeted them.
“Hello…” Agnes was lost for a moment when, “… Marcus. It’s been a long time.” She hid a spike of pain in her head from Tommy. It passed as quickly as it had come.
“Yes, sixty-three years, five months, and fourteen days,” Marcus intoned. “But you haven’t aged a bit.” Agnes recognized a polite conversation subroutine when she heard it and new that was all it was. But it still sounded kind of creepy. “I have initiated environmental systems to accommodate you and your guest. You may remove your suits and hang them in the hall closet.”
“Thank you, Marcus. We’ll do that soon. I’ll call you when we need you. Please give us privacy mode for now,” Agnes requested.
“As you wish,” was the curt reply from Marcus as he shut off with an unnecessary audible click. Agnes and Tommy gave each other a ‘what the heck?’ look before they carefully evaluated their surroundings.
After inspecting the rooms and Alfred’s appraisal of the environmental systems, they took off their helmets. “Smells like..” Tommy started.
“Food,” Agnes finished. They ended up in the kitchen where a meal of vegetable soup and fresh bread was waiting them. There were fresh fruit preserves and glasses of juice to drink. “Nice…” Agnes noted as she took her seat. A spider avatar put a tentacle into the food and gave them the green light to dig in. “Why would anyone ever leave this?”
“Good question. All of the other apartments and buildings seem to be appointed just as luxuriously,” Tommy commented as he sampled the soup.
“If I can get access to the local network, I might find more answers. The evidence indicates that the settlement’s Ai closely controls all the wireless systems. Perhaps Marcus can get us access?” Alfred asked.
As they ate, Agnes glanced around nervously. The flavor of the food, the surroundings, and even the voice of Marcus all had a warm familiarity, but she had no memory of any of these things. That creeped her out. Worse than the feeling of being a ghost in her own home, her headache had returned.
After they ate, Tommy took time to explore more of the lower levels. Off the main entrance to the apartment were staircases going back up into several wings. There appeared to be a guest wing with accommodations. Up another stair were the family’s sleeping quarters. Another stair led to several workspaces, small labs and personal studies for family members. Tommy strolled back down to the main level where he discovered a door that led out to a contained balcony. It gave him a grand view of the entire settlement’s cavern and the valley floor. The balcony was enclosed lest, in the low gravity of the planetoid, someone should bounce away over the edge and fall.
He was returning to the main floor when he saw Agnes standing in front of a door in the family sleeping wing. As he approached her, she seemed in a trance. “Hey,” he said as he gently touched her shoulder. A wave of pain crossed her face when this broke her away from her trance, and she turned to Tommy. “Woe, are you okay?” he asked, taking a firmer hold of her arm to steady her.
“What? Oh, I’m alright,” she lied. “Just tired from our trek down here.” They sat down on a step.
“What were you doing, staring at that door?” Tommy asked.
“I don’t know. I just found myself standing there.” She paused in thought. “Marcus! Please interact.” She stated to the air with authority, like she had said this many times.
“Yes Mistress? How may I serve you?” was the response from the air about them.
“I’ve suffered an injury and need some help,” she explained. “Which room was mine?”
Lights flashed near the door where Agnes had been standing. “Thank you. Please open the door.” The door now slid open. “Thank you very much, Marcus.”<
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“You are very welcome, Mistress. If I can be of any service, you have only to ask,” Marcus’ disembodied voice intoned from near the open door.
“Shall we take a look at my childhood?” Agnes asked, as much to distract from her pain as to satisfy her own curiosity.
It was dark in the room. “Marcus. Lights please,” Agnes requested. It remained dark in the room. “Please report, Marcus.”
Marcus’ voice still came from outside the room in the hall. “Mistress, there appears to be a malfunction in the power to this wing. I am running diagnostics now.”
Tommy shone a light from his suit into the room. As he panned, the beam exposed a fairly typical teen’s bedroom. There were posters on the wall of various musicians and performers from Agnes’ era. A workstation and screen took up most of one wall. And there were stuffed animals lovingly put on display in a corner. A neatly made bed occupied the center of one wall. Tommy guessed that that was Marcus more than Agnes. Her quarters aboard the Swift were often a mess.
Agnes had her light out as well. Even though she was in pain, she now had an immediate problem to solve. Without thinking, she moved quickly to the stuffed animals in the corner. Pulling them off the shelves, she exposed an access panel. With the tools she always carried in her suit pockets, she pried it open and examined the interior. “This all looks to be in good condition,” she announced. “There shouldn’t be any reason for the power to be out here.”
She leaned her head deeper into the access panel and dug around with her tools. From the access panel, Tommy heard her muffled voice as she talked herself through the procedure. “Just need to pull this lead and cross that wire. Now, I’ll reinitiate Marcus actuator in this junction. And, voila!” Pools of soft light warmed the room.
“Congratulations,” Tommy cheered from across the room. Not only had the lights come on, the workstation screen had activated.
“Just an old trick to bypass parental controls,” Agnes absently stated as she pulled her head out of the panel and looked around for the first time. “I used to do it all the time….” She trailed off as she realized that she really had no memory of ever doing that before. She sat down on her bed as a wave of dizziness took hold of her.
“Agnes?” Tommy knelt to her side to support her.
“It’s nothing. Just muscle memory I guess,” Agnes said, hoping she was covering her condition. As a distraction, she asked into the air, “Marcus, can we set up access to your systems for Thomas Judson?”
“Indeed. What level of access do you require?” said the voice now coming from the workstation screen.
“Full access, please.”
“I’m sorry, but you do not have clearance for full access and cannot initiate that for another,” Marcus announced with subtle authority.
“All right, how about the same access level I have?” she asked.
“Granted. Please follow the procedures on the screen to open your account, Thomas Judson.”
The screen filled with instructions written in block letters, and the picture of a Roman general had appeared standing on the side. Tommy examined that image of the man with his sword drawn. Marcus was not only butler but also protector of the family. “Pleased to meet you, Marcus.” He followed the instructions and set up his access.
During this, Agnes took a moment to lie back on the bed and close her eyes. She pondered their next move. When she opened her eyes she noticed a touch pad next to the bed on a stand. Touching the screen, she activated it. Again, the Roman general appeared with sword drawn, requesting she identify herself for access. Her name got her into a menu. From there, she explored past mail and community notices.
When she touched a work icon, she was challenged again with the image of Marcus. The text read creatively, None shall pass here without the song of childhood joy. Agnes’ headache was growing worse. Since she had reawakened on the Swift, she had solved every roadblock by humming, “Ta dum, ta dum, ta dum te dah tum.” And then it fit. She sang aloud, “Pop goes the weasel.” The screen promptly responded with Access Granted. She was in.
Agnes explored her own notes on many projects and the internal mail from her father’s company. She began to form a picture of her responsibilities. “Tommy. It looks like I did more than just research. I was running a whole branch of the company. And according to these financial records, it was the most profitable part of the company.”
Tommy had completed the system application and was now logged into Marcus’ systems. “Marcus, copy all files to this station, please.” Tommy reviewed memos and schematics in a haphazard manner. “There is too much here. We need to filter it. Do you even know what we’re looking for?”
“Right now I think we should focus on any information about the caskets and the media units,” Agnes replied. She tried to hide the throbbing pain building in her head. “This pad and that station aren’t going to be able to process what we need. We need an interface that Alfred can handle. Marcus, where is my father’s study?”
Immediately, a floor plan of the apartment displayed on the workstation screen with a blue line starting in Agnes’ bedroom and terminating in the largest room in the next wing of the penthouse. Agnes quickly led the way, so she had her back to Tommy and he couldn’t see the tears in her eyes as her pain rose. She wiped the tears away as she and Tommy entered the study. They found a comfortably furnished room with a reading nook in one corner and a large drafting and design area. Light streamed in through an exterior window where there was almost as good a view of the settlement cavern as from the balcony. In the center of the room was a large ornate desk equipped with multiple interface terminals. On the side of the desk was the carving of the same Roman general. “Marcus, I presume,” Agnes said, trying to lighten her mood. The desk must be the central processing unit for the house Ai Marcus.
“It’s a Partners Desk,” Tommy observed. There were two sides, each with a chair and workstation. There were also, upon close examination, biometric sensors in place within the surface of each workstation. “Looks like it takes two to have full access to this station.” Tommy sat down at one station. The screen glowed with the Zephyr Company Logo. The username Agnes Zephyr waited in the same font for a password. “This must be your station,” Tommy said, standing and moving to the other side. There, he found the same logo, but this one said Caesar Zephyr MD. “This station is requiring your father’s access.”
Agnes signaled to Alfred and Dr. Ann. “Could you both join us? We need your help.” She logged into her single terminal. “I’ve only got as much access here as I did in my room.” She grimaced and couldn’t hide her pain from Tommy any longer. He gave her a stern questioning look to which she answered, “Just a headache. Probably dehydrated. I’ll get Dr. Ann to give me something for the pain. Let’s keep going.”
Tommy nodded at her, but now kept a closer eye on her as she turned pale. “Try to log in on that station, Tommy,” Agnes said. Here, like Agnes, Tommy could log in but had no further access than before. “This is a master station, we should have more access to Marcus’ systems.” Now she addressed Marcus directly, “Marcus, help menu, master system access set up.”
“Yes, mistress.” The help menu appeared on both screens with the image of Marcus always vigilantly guarding the system.
“I was afraid of this. The system setup shows that my father and I set this up for two biometric and audio interfaces for full access,” Agnes explained. “This is a great way to keep business secrets and data out of the hands of rival companies.” With that last sentence, Agnes passed out and began to fall to the floor. Tommy could not get across the desk fast enough to catch her. As her head bounced off the station screen, her body fell out of her chair. Alfred and Dr. Ann’s avatars had just entered the room when Dr. Ann’s avatar caught her and sat her gently on the floor.
Agnes moaned from the floor. Her eyes blinked open as Tommy knelt beside her. “There must be a way,” she whispered through her delirium. Then she rolled over and vomited on Tommy. “Oh
, sorry,” she sighed as her eyes rolled up in her head. Agnes’ body shook violently.
“She’s gone into a seizure,” Dr. Ann pronounced and Tommy felt totally helpless as Agnes collapsed into unconsciousness.
Chapter 13: Revelations
Most of the lights had blown out. Sparks from open circuits rained down on her as she ran. She shouldn’t look back but terror had taken over and she did. They still kept coming, not fast but relentlessly, they hunted her. She forced herself to move and find a hiding place. No, not to hide, she had to escape.
At the next intersection, she needed to go left. She went right. Left was her goal, her lab and maybe safety. Right was storage. One last look back, they were around the bend and could not see her. She went right. Into….
Agnes pouted. She had lots of practice over the years. As the baby, she manipulated her father easily. Mother was a different story. Agnes and her father had been solving a word puzzle together in his study. They often spent lazy afternoons with their heads bent over some puzzle or mind teaser together. It was something they had shared as long as she could remember. But now, Father sent her from his study as soon as Mother entered. They were talking about her. She knew it. So she did what any eight year old would. She doubled back before the door closed and hid behind the couch.
“Don’t give me that look, Virginia,” Caesar said. “You know she will be just fine here. She has more resources and opportunity to learn than most children in settlements on the Frontier.”
“Yes, Agnes is precocious enough to learn like any other child, but,” Virginia was interrupted by her husband throwing his hands in the air and retreating behind his desk. She followed with patient determination. “BUT,” She continued, “she is fantastically gifted and the Central Systems Institute can nurture that. She’ll be back home before we know it.”
Caesar couldn’t look at her, but he countered, “I’ll teach her myself. That’s how she has come this far.”