He and Anton had worked together as geo-engineers. Anton was big and brash to Fan’s considered and cautious, but they got on well, at the time. It had been meeting Jun, and her dedication to human evolution, which had got him thinking. The Earth, they knew, was self-suffocating. They’d been so busy over the years, lurching from one disaster to another, trying to mitigate and work within their immediate resources – they had limited bandwidth and budget. But that had plateaued, and now they had the time and money to look for alternative, long-term solutions.
Besides their own efforts, Anton had known through an astrophysicist couple, good friends of his, that extensive research was being conducted on Mars. If terra-formed appropriately, it would be viable to live there long-term, in the future.
From Jun, Fan had been intrigued with the neurologists’ work in developing human potential. It was different from their tried and tested approaches to the physical and meteorological problems. No less valid, and could, in its own way, hold the key to the future. If her team were able to augment a brain to conceive a solution, the likes of which the most intelligent Ai-ssistants and brains hadn’t been able to crack, then bingo. But no one yet had figured out how to reverse a ravaging fire back to a sustainable glow without burn-out.
While the teenage United Adaptive was still developing its way of working, no one had galvanised all the scientific disciplines to tackle their shared goal. He and Anton saw an opportunity to bring them all together; share inspiring, life-changing work, and collaborate on a central purpose – to sustain and evolve humanity.
‘Anton’s starting point was different, but for me, your mother inspired it all.’
He and Anton conceived the Adaptive Strategies team and took it to the powers that be. As it gained pace and popularity, the Province Heads took over. It was with the view that, supposedly, they were best placed to connect everyone. But then it mushroomed and took new edges and curves. What had, in earnest, been devised to answer the world’s most challenging problem, turned seemingly into an Inter-Province competition – who would crack the code of life quickest, who would make it last forever?
He and Anton were always acknowledged with starting the AS, and supposedly were still ‘fundamental’ to its success. As a sign of ‘gratitude’, he received a bursary, meaning he could purchase their house and family home. Financially he was in a better position, secure for the future. But with increased responsibility, came split loyalties. He had birthed a beast that was getting bigger, but he couldn’t let it drop, he’d fathered it. Perhaps it was ego, but he wouldn’t walk away; he couldn’t.
He’d never really talked to Jun about the AS. Looking back at it now, it seemed ridiculous, he said. He’d thought he might have sounded conceited or saying it out loud confirmed the truth – he’d wedded himself to an organisation she didn’t have the heart for. He had made mention of a colleague and him working on a multi-disciplinary approach for long-term sustainability but hadn’t said much more about it. As it had grown and became something new altogether, he knew she would disapprove even more; Jun had already gradually been slipping away from him.
She was so headstrong; that was one of the things he loved about her, but it also infuriated him too. She wouldn’t listen. The anti-PSA group, which he once considered her foolish folly, was now bringing unwanted attention. At that point, no one from the UA had known they were together. They had wanted to be discreet. But when rumours began circulating at Province level about the group, and then those rumours cultivated reactionary measures, he had to come clean. The UA hadn’t been pleased. One of their brightest stars with the woman planning the demise of the ‘cornerstone of their connectivity and survival’, they didn’t see it as simpatico. He assured them she was smart, an asset to the UA, and that she had inspired the AS. Maybe if they explained the consequences of her being involved with the anti-PSA group, she would see sense, and back down? They disagreed. She had been unruly in a study of a promising subject, one who could intuit the future and proved that she couldn’t be trusted to fall in line when they needed her to.
They suggested Fan keep close to that very study. Monitor the developments and work on the potential exploitation for AS projects, and from a domestic point of view, covertly keep Jun and her unruliness ‘in line.’ For the most part, he tried to give her as much room as possible. He knew her intent was pure. But then Wei pushed it too far, trying to outdo the North Euro Province, and Zaye ended up dying. Jun was adamant that the UA’s story of suicide was false. They would have killed her if she’d kept probing, that much he knew. If they hadn’t wiped her memory, she would be dead. That had kept her safe, as well as his promise to the UA to keep her in line.
More than Zaye had died that evening, and the consequences defined everything else. There was the woman he loved, the untameable tamed, and they were married. But he always suspected if that incident had never happened, he and Jun wouldn’t have married. They were on different tangents that converged at a specific time but naturally would have carried along their separate ways, though he hadn’t wanted them to.
And it wasn’t just their relationship that had taken an unexpected turn. The whole affair had damaged his reputation. His early passion for the AS diminished and waned as it changed into something else. All that he had now was fear. He was sucked so far into the vortex like a hyperloop propulsion; there was no deviating or going back. They wouldn’t let him.
Anton, who always had the propensity to be bullish, excelled in this new environment. Fan was content climbing the ladder at a steady pace, not obsessing over the next rungs, but not Anton. He always had the next stages in sight and didn’t care who he trod on to get to there.
Fan had juggled the UA’s incessant demands with their family life. Despite what everyone believed after Kodi’s breakout, he hadn’t courted the dark side of the UA. He’d isolated himself as much as he could from it – wilful ignorance wasn’t blameless – but he hadn’t physically killed people, he wasn’t ruthless. He’d made mistakes, errors of judgement; that had costs lives, and for that he was sorry. Ashamed. He’d tried to continue in the spirit that the AS was intended, keeping humanity alive. He’d done what he needed to in order to keep his head above water, but yes, his feet were tangled in murky weeds.
And then there was his son; he’d gone down his own path, with a natural aptitude for marrying order with the human condition – making the functional, social. His name had been mentioned around Project Epomenzoic and Fan had thought, hoped, that in keeping him in a migratory role, a role he loved, he wouldn’t find himself in a compromising situation. It was better to be in the UA, than out. If you were part of the society it propelled, it made sense to be a cog in the machine, than be controlled remotely. And with the plans around Mars, it was a life-changing, fantastic experience. He would become a part of history. When Anton had asked him about recruiting Kau, he had sanctioned the decision, yes. Though there wasn’t any other option, it was inevitable.
And then Kodi. He had known about Kodi from the AS meetings. It was all people had talked about. The wait was over. As he had been so involved with the Zaye project, Anton wanted him on this too, to help figure out how’d they’d exploit her gifts. A unique opportunity; it could help him erase his mistakes of the past, of course, he’d work on it. Anton was good enough to trust him with it. The only complication would be that his son would be ignorant of his own role in it all, but it had never got that far for him to find out.
They’d been courting Kodi’s family since the migration and had waited till she was of age before reaching out to her parents, with the support of Kau. The Chirchirs had always promised they would collaborate with the UA. As Kau himself knew, the Chirchirs said they understood and appreciated what Kodi could bring to humanity. But when the UA came to collect her, her parents had changed their mind and became ‘irrational’. The intention hadn’t been to kill them but kill them they did. Kodi had been hiding while it happened, but presumably through her capabilities, knew what hap
pened and ran.
Would Fan turning down the project bring her parents back? They had already been killed; the damage had been done. And if he said no, well, you never said no. He’d be frozen out. That was the first step. He’d seen it happen. People weren’t involved in meetings; they weren’t kept updated, and then privileges were taken away. The roof over their head, their Intuimoto, their life. Relationships – friends, wives, husbands, lovers – were cut. Life was made very difficult, until one way or another you broke. Suicides were more prevalent than anyone knew. It was the only way to free themselves from the system.
‘I’m being frozen out,’ Fan said. ‘My relationships cut, but for once not by UA design or pressure, but by my own family,’ he laughed. It was a bitter laugh, not of spite or disdain, but wretchedness.
‘My home will be taken next – life will be difficult. I’m not asking for your forgiveness or pity,’ he had said, and his eyes became glassy. ‘Just preparing you.’
As Kau had collected his mother’s things, his father had looked at him painfully, like he’d exhumed the dead. Kau had known something had broken in him but wasn’t sure if it could be fixed again. There was such injustice and unnecessariness to it all.
Celeste’s door wasn’t ajar this time; it was closed. He rubbed his shorn head as he might rub a talisman. He knocked and heard no reply, before trying the door, but it was locked. The dumbest thing he could do would be to charge in, rage and hate as he wanted to.
‘Celeste!’ He shouted. She had to be in there with Anton, he knew it. He had been too naïve to understand what was happening, what had been going on all the time. She was supposed to have gone to Mars but hadn’t; that was one lie. She had held out information from him, that was another. He was being frozen out; his relationships were being cut.
Celeste’s office was off the main corridor in the AS building, and a network for colleagues scurrying along in their rat race. But at the sight of him they had stopped, their faces wrinkled like twitching whiskers, watching what he would do next.
He banged again, his fist pummelled into the sleek orange door, leaving swirls of handprints. A few spectators hurried along – keen not to get involved in the drama. But a few began to gravitate toward him, either curious or concerned. The door still didn’t open, and Kau backed away. Wherever they were, behind there or not, word would get around about the spectacle he’d made of himself.
He stalked back to Anton’s office, and said to the PA, ‘Tell him, about the kid, it’s done”, and walked away to more open mouths and captivated faces. He needed to get out. Not just out of the office, or the building, but the Province. The world.
Outside Anton’s office, he remembered. Celeste classed the workshop as her office. If they were going to be anywhere, they’d be there.
The workshop was only a few minutes away from the main building, but it seemed to take forever to get there. If Anton was freezing him out, then why orchestrate this sideshow, making them all circus performers? Why give him this farce of a deadline? It was spiteful and vindictive, like being in a playground.
As Kau pounded to the first door and launched himself through the vestibule, he heard several voices talking. One belonged to Anton – and Celeste of course – but he couldn’t be so sure about the others.
He burst in through the second door, and immediately knew it had been the wrong thing to do. Celeste, Anton and two unknown faces, hard and aggressive, were gathered by the illum wall. There was a CAD of something on there, maybe a house from one of the developments. Kau’s eyes hovered there only for a second before shooting from Anton to Celeste and back again, pinging like marbles.
‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ Anton bellowed. ‘Get out!’
Kau found himself knocked back faster than Anton slugged his whisky.
‘S-sorry, Sir,’ Kau said but stayed where he was.
‘I’m sure you didn’t mean any harm, did you, Kau?’ Celeste said, and the illum wall flickered off behind them.
Anton started to march over to Kau, but Celeste tugged on his arm. He pulled it off her, incredulous, his face a warning beacon of red. ‘Since when do you defend him?’ he spat.
Anton blustered towards Kau, the two men scrutinising him in his wake. He put his palm on Kau’s chest like it could unleash unruly power and obliterate him.
‘You’re walking a very thin line. Focus on getting the kid back and finishing your report, not poking your nose into things that don’t concern you.’
He gave Kau a firm push, and he backed out through the door, stealing a look at Celeste before he left, but her eyes wouldn’t meet his.
Dread welled in the pit of his stomach, thicker than tar, but just as sticky. Whatever it was that Anton, Celeste and those men were looking at, they hadn’t wanted him to see.
If he needed any more confirmation that Anton was freezing him out, that was the final nail. His relationships were already fractured and scattered further than the four winds. He and Celeste were falling apart; there was no chance of helping his mother, and his father was a ghost of the man he used to be. And there were so many lies spinning in Kau’s head, that he didn’t know the truth anymore. He wouldn’t know it if it slapped him across the face. It seemed he was turning out like his father, just as Chandra had said. Their fates and destiny, on the same tangent.
Like father, like son, the UA might be freezing him out and imploding his life, but unlike his father, he wouldn’t just sit back and let them break him. Things were set to get very difficult, but no matter how futile it seemed, if anyone was going to end up broken, he was determined it was going to be them. The question was, what was he going to do about it?
CHAPTER 32
Friday 19th May 2062
24 hours to hand over Kodi
Eli’s wagon pulled in right on schedule to twenty eager faces, welcoming his arrival at the Ghetto. Among them were Jun, Batz and Solo, last seen strapped to his wagon in the dummy run.
The ferociousness of the sun had dialled down from a 10 to a temperate five, as the early evening settled in. Jun had watched Eli’s lorry roll along the access road and hiccup down the bumpy dirt-track to the entrance of the Ghetto. Eli was greeted with cheers, whoops and claps worthy of a shén. His wagon was almost the size of two mob-home’s put together, but the ambitions for the package hidden inside it, were much bigger.
‘One thing ya-eow should knoewe,’ Eli said with his southern drawl, ‘the police were on mae like flies… checked my wagon – not well, mind – but scanned my chips and consignment notes…’
It was to be expected, but if they did carry on with their escape plan on Monday, it was another thing they had to be wary of. Mini-dust clouds tracked Eli’s footsteps to the rear of the wagon. His sinewy body threaded past pallets that matched the Home Comforts consignment notes, to where the virus-analyst items Jonquil had ordered, were hidden.
‘I can’t thank you enough, Eli,’ Jun said and threw her arms around him without thinking.
‘Now, now,’ he said patting her shoulder, ‘laet’s seue if that helps the little laydee.’ He gave a bashful smile.
Jun left Batz and Solo to talk with Eli about the status of the Monday journey, and hurried away with the blood analyser and morphological classifications; they were finally in her hands. She ran to the East Bunker and tunnels, where Chandra and Kodi were waiting. Lucas was busy in the West Bunker with Jun’s other priority assignment. Now was their moment of truth. The sensation reminded her of when new Subjects joined the lab – the drop in the pit of her stomach at the first introduction; guilt, and apprehension to whether they would live up to her expectations. But in place of a multi-tiered study, it was a blood analysis, and instead of untapped potential, the prize was survival. If they couldn’t diagnose a virus, Jun was running out of hands to play. Kau hadn’t managed to find out what the virus was, and now wishful thinking was all they had.
The next few minutes played out as they had planned. Chandra sent a comm to Jonquil to l
et her know the delivery had been received; he then sent a message to Aiesha from Nor-Am, ensuring her Mid-Am contact was on standby to advise on the best course of action, if they were able to diagnose the virus. He loaded the Mid-Am contact’s virus data to the analyser to cross-reference it. Well, that was the idea, but doubtful thoughts had kept Jun awake last night, and prompted her to think of a plan b.
‘You’ve used one of these before, right?’ Kodi said, perched on a stool eagerly like she was after licking the cake-mix spoon, instead of inspecting the tool that would decide her fate.
It had been a while since Jun had personally analysed blood. The tech Ai-ssistants had always completed those kinds of tasks. It was simple enough, but she felt overwhelmed. Like playing a symphony she’d mastered when she was younger but was rusty from the years in between, she hoped no one would see her unsteady hands and shortened breath. She sterilised the vacutainer to draw Kodi’s blood. ‘This will sting a little,’ she said, pinching Kodi’s skin and driving in the needle. As the vacutainer welled scarlet, Jun’s mind tripped back to yesterday, when Kodi had said that Kau was holding something back from her. Jun’s heart had sunk. She thought about Fan, his duplicitousness, and the example he’d set their son. But Kau was his own man, and he made his own decisions, so he had protested often enough. There had been a big part of her that didn’t want to believe Kodi, but if her P-EP had pulled it through, Jun knew that it was true.
After Kodi had told Jun of her reservations of Kau, she and Batz began preparing lunch, while the rest of them went to the East Bunker to talk. Solo gave the pretence that she wanted to discuss what Kodi had said as a group, but Jun knew they had already made up their minds.
‘I don’t doubt Kodi, but why would Kau go to the trouble of prepping with Larisa, why send us through information-’
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