The panel shut with a click, and I rechecked the readouts. All clear. I reached for the latch again, this feeling wriggling in the back of my brain, a small flash, an alert. No explanation for why. I just knew.
Even if computers couldn’t, it had somehow found a way to deceive me.
I tipped my chin to the sky. The sun had already dropped onto the horizon, quickly descending behind the volcano. Only a short amount of time remained before I had to be in quarters or face criminal charges. The curfew must never be broken if you didn’t have a permit to work at night. No exceptions, even for those who had the responsibility for bringing the life-saving technology back to functional.
I also didn’t want to risk being caught outside to learn firsthand what happened to those who didn’t follow the rules. I’d research more about the glitch, but not now, first thing in the morning when I had the luxury to spend the time digging.
Tomorrow, I had the freedom, given my contract closed at midnight, as the hives reported they were all systems go. It would give me time to look into the why, even if I wouldn’t be paid for it. Didn’t matter, I didn’t leave messes for others to clean up. I’d come back at dawn to dig deeper.
The crisis would be over soon. Things would go back to the way they were. But that wouldn’t calm the unease boiling over Sententia. If it happened once, what would stop it from happening again, and the same question reverberated through the population like a sickness.
As the energy storm settled down, the bees returned to normal. Well, mostly. But the crops would be weak this harvest rotation, and we could do nothing about it. Sententia would have a deficit in its food stores. With the bees back to work, our nation should be able to salvage some of the later fruiting crops to replace the ones stolen during the riots and hopefully get the colonies through the next rotation. It took time for seeds to produce food, and when not pollinated, the flowers dropped to the ground, failing to bear the life-saving fruit. We paid a price to cut ourselves off from the world, an existence which became more difficult as the years passed.
I glanced over at a soldier guarding a sector of the floating field now covering the area once called Pearl Harbor. The man-made island moved little when you walked on it, due to the anchors attaching it to the ocean floor every twenty feet, but it remained artificial, and, as almost everything on the islands, our lives depended on it. How ironic something so unnatural could seem so normal. It didn’t gather a second thought from most.
However, I wasn’t most.
I always thought the fields looked like giant jellyfish with their glossy domes and metal link tendrils below. As with a lot of our technology, the fields took their inspiration from nature. Like the bees or the hovering land/water train which moved like a centipede across, around, and between the islands, the fields were a marvel I could study for days, if allowed. Because when most saw an agricultural plot, I saw nuts and bolts, parts and pieces which didn’t have a soul but had been assigned one, molded like a square peg to fit into a round hole. How did the technology work? And more importantly, why, when the material used to build it conflicted with the natural world?
With a push of a button, the anchors would release the field and the weight of the heavy lines would act like a ballast to prevent it from tipping. The relocation of the agricultural mats protected the crops from those who would steal them as they began to set fruit. When the field required maintenance, it would be brought in close to shore and attached to the mainland, as they had with this plot. When in harvest, the crops were vulnerable and were moved out far enough from shore they couldn’t be raided. Soldiers guarded the fruiting fields; sometimes half a dozen were posted along the shore to protect the workers and crops while brought inland for harvest.
Speaking of which…I turned my head enough to look at the sole guardian of the barren field I worked on, doing my best not to appear as though I studied him.
The soldier nodded at me. With a shiver, I turned back to my work. It gave me little comfort knowing he patrolled this field. Many of the bee-keepers had been kidnapped lately. Others like me speculated the culprits hoped to get private hives up and running, but when body after body turned up, it became hard to believe they did it for that reason. If they wanted the hives to work, killing the people who worked on them conflicted with their goals.
I wondered if the soldier stood sentry over a fruitless field, because the real commodity in danger was the person programming the hives. This mat had nothing to offer anyone, yet he cast a shadow over me as I worked. Protection or not, the way he watched made me nervous. I scanned the field, looking for other soldiers posted as security, yet couldn’t spot another human close enough to call out to for help. No voices in the area, no movement near the other fields. I picked up the pace, not wanting to linger longer than necessary.
Five minutes later, I dropped the tools back into my bag and wiped the grease on my palms down the front of my shorts. I took a moment to look over to my companion again. Tall and built like a gladiator, his face remained hidden behind a tactical shield built into his helmet. I could only guess what he looked like. Not that I cared. I didn’t like the soldiers, nor could I even claim to be at a place in my life I felt the urge to seek out a relationship, even if soldiers and hive-keepers were considered approved matches.
I shook off the strand of thought, not sure why my mind had wandered to potential mates and companionship, something I had no desire to explore now or in the future. I didn’t like being told who I could see or that I had to acquire a stamp of approval on my sex life.
I wrinkled my nose. The laser barcodes went on to every vegetable and piece of fruit, a certification they were safe. The government regulated every piece of produce carefully, measuring safety, taste, color, size and nutritional content. From there, they decided if it would be sold whole, processed, dried, or for the items deemed unfit, the compost plant.
We, the citizens of the islands, were treated no different than our meals. It bothered me more than I cared to admit. I would not bow down to the system, become another cog in the machine, so I’d chosen to remain alone.
I knew the rules and wouldn’t break them. If one valued their life, they didn’t even think about it. I guess in that manner, I’d stepped into line.
Relationships were sanctioned by the government, or prohibited. The islands issued licenses for everything, from getting married, to having a child. If you had flawed genetics, you were not allowed to procreate or pursue an unsterilized relationship. If you were fertile, sex was forbidden unless you had been approved for a pairing.
When it came to the innocent infants, our government had some heart. An unlicensed child would take one of its parent’s life registrations, therefore condemning its mother or father from the time the child took its first breath. Accidental pregnancies did not happen and were punishable by death of the least valuable parent. The more you contributed to society, the safer your life.
The courts determined which parent would face execution. Their decision weighed your skill and genetics. Those who hadn’t undergone permanent sterilization didn’t have casual sex and avoided it, for fear of the executioner. Through this system, our government controlled our population. Most islanders accepted these laws, understanding we would run out of resources otherwise.
It was why the soldier made my skin crawl. Nobody watched anyone of the opposite sex so intensely. I glanced his way again and had to fight the urge to run. Sliding my hand to my chest, I rested my palm over my heart, willing the beat to slow and the fear to ease back to where it had come from. The soldier had done nothing to make me think my body might be the next one found floating in the harbor, and yet the thought lingered. And why should it not? It wasn’t like any of us could forget we weren’t the ones in control.
The military hung over the food plots as a threat, armed and able to kill with the pull of a trigger. The nagging question of where those who had resisted had gone hung silently in the minds of the people of Sententia.
If the solar storm had continued much longer, the people would have starved, or worse. We weren’t violent by nature, if anything, a bit complacent, but we would’ve killed each other to prevent our families from suffering through a famine. We were scared and hungry—trapped with nowhere else to go. Flocks of fowl, ducks, chickens, turkeys, and herds of beef, goats and swine had been slaughtered in the riots, the meat stolen away, leaving little in our food stores to maintain our carefully controlled population and fewer breeding stock to repopulate the flocks and herds.
It would take years to recover our animal populations, so the scientist tested the ocean and found it safe to consume the wild food there. Still, many refused to eat the fish for fear of radiation poisoning. Defects, cancers, we’d all seen the results of the fallout one hundred and fifty years before, and continued to see it. The sickness, once witnessed, couldn’t be forgotten.
Some asked, why not expand our horizons? Well, the Mainland had been turned into a wasteland, and on the islands, we had conveniences it would take centuries to bring online elsewhere. The mainland wasn’t fit for man or beast, or so we’d been told.
This made what I did all the more in demand. I had a job, earned lots of credit, but all I’d worked for wouldn’t be worth a damn if I were dead. What I did long ago stopped being about the money and became about survival. The more viable the hives, the better chance Sententia stood. God help us if another storm flared up.
Hummmm. One of the ento-robites buzzed around my head, the first I’d seen on this field in days. With the lack of blooms, I wasn’t surprised there weren’t more, but this one caught my attention for the very same reason. Curious. They usually didn’t approach anyone. I popped the panel back open and glanced down. Nothing looked off in the programming.
The drone landed on my shoulder. Heavier than it looked, it seemed more bird than bee perched there, watching me. Another odd action. They always avoided contact. I lifted my hand to brush it off. Zap. The jolt bit into my shoulder, leaving the painful sting of a burn behind. Startled, I backhanded it into a tree, where it sparked and popped, dropping to the ground. A little wisp of smoke floated up. The scent of burnt oil and fried circuits followed.
What? I grabbed a glove out of my bag and slipped it on, picking up the ento and stuffing it into my pack. Perhaps the bots had the defect and not the hives? I’d have to take a closer look at the ento later when I had time, if the bee’s internal workings hadn’t melted together into a big glob, which I suspected given the stench.
Whoooooooweeeewooo. The shrill wail of a warning alarm started, indicating I had one hour before curfew. I dropped my glove into my bag and wiped my forehead with the back of my hand. A glance at the sky told me I’d miscalculated the time I had left. Later than I’d thought. With fifty minutes between the field and my high-rise, I’d have to break a few traffic laws to get home before lockdown. Everyone waited until the last minute to head in, congesting the roads and playing chicken with the law. Not something I’d liked to do.
Unless you were authorized to be out at night, medical, emergency personnel, police or one of the handful of occupations which required night work, you’d better get your butt home before the final alarm sounded. The fines were huge. And then there were those who blatantly broke the regulation, who were never seen again after they were caught.
And that meant I needed to leave. Now.
I grabbed my gear bag, slid it over my arms and onto my back, and looked one last time at the guard before starting toward my glider. He lifted his hand to wave, but didn’t move to follow. It should have made me feel better, but it didn’t.
The sky had darkened, and a sense of foreboding sank onto the landscape. I shivered and rubbed my arms to chase away the phantom chill. It wasn’t the curfew prickling along my nerves, triggering the warnings flashing through my mind like a strobe. I’d long since acclimatized to the evening lockdown. Something else bothered me, something I couldn’t pin down. The sooner I got home, the better. Right now, everything looked and felt like a threat, as though eyes watched me from every angle.
I stepped onto a side runner on my glider, swinging my leg over the seat and pressing my palm onto the scanner. A soft, gel-like material scanned the chip in my hand and activated the vehicle’s processor. The engines started. Its soft whirring reminded me of a kitten purring—well, the digital ones a lot of people kept as pets. I’d yet to see a real cat. The only animals kept for reasons other than food on the islands were the dogs, and they served a purpose of searching for stolen contraband, illegal technologies, and lab created drugs banned from our country before the war. Definitely not pets.
A roll cage rose from the lower frame, encasing me. The glider lurched and lifted off the ground.
I slipped on my viz-gear. The clear half visor dropped over my eyes, and the holo visuals activated, offering me a multitude of navigational choices. Staring at the control indicator, I engaged the navigational systems. I gripped the handles, pressed my thumbs into the guidance controls on the ends. The thruster activated, and off we went. I eyed the main strip, and the glider turned into traffic, following the movement of my eyes. I popped my thumbs off, taking control again. Sometimes I enjoyed a mindless trip, sometimes I wanted to be in control.
“Music.”
“What would you like to listen to this afternoon?” the drone voice of my glider asked.
“Urban buzz.”
The nape of my neck twitched. I glanced back. Nothing appeared out of the usual. However, it seemed as though eyes were upon me, and I couldn’t shake the niggling in my mind. I usually chose silence to accompany me home, but today I yearned for a distraction, something to ease the tension winding up inside like a wire spring, tighter and tighter.
Dum, dum, dum. The speakers in my headgear kicked on. I jerked. “Volume down.” The beat softened, throbbing through my body, striking my core, all but blocking out the horns and yelling of people who’d long since lost their patience. I pulled my thumbs off the guidance control and tightened my grip on the handles, not wanting to relinquish further control.
A police escort home and hefty fine sat in the future of all the gridlocked motorists, but not mine. As I drifted between them and around the knot in traffic, I couldn’t help but smile, not regretting the trade-in of my more expensive sport utility for the one person ride six months before when the government announced the curfew.
I owned the glider for one purpose: to navigate through traffic bound hovers and get inside my apartment before the city locked down. The demand for one had grown so much that few were able to acquire them now. I was a have, the people crammed into their full-sized hovers, have nots. I weaved in and out of traffic, ignoring the rude gestures some of the have nots displayed for my benefit, eyeing instead the shifting halo-boards covering the surfaces of skyscrapers in Tetran, Sententia’s capital city.
Models smiled at me from the changing ads with perfect, glowing white teeth, flawless skin, and glossy hair, as perfect as the cyber-cosmetics could make them. They peddled everything from the latest styles of clothing, to plastech surgery which could create shifting hues in the client’s eyes, or erase age like magic. The nano-cosmetics industry had boomed on the islands.
I’d heard throughout history the skirts got shorter in times of crisis as people craved distractions from hardship and turmoil. Perhaps the technology driven makeovers were how Sententian citizens responded to the chaos brought on by the storms.
In twenty minutes, those billboards would contain warnings about breaking curfew.
For now, they seemed normal, almost excessive for what people were going through, reminding me of what a self-centered society we’d become. Even I had bought into it, much to my shame. Everywhere, color vibrated in brilliant shades of pulsing blues, electric pinks and neon greens.
“Propaganda.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t understand your music selection. Did you request propaganda?”
“No.” I sighed. Even my vehicle seemed to eavesdrop
on my every thought. “Shut music down.” I didn’t like soldiers watching me in the field, the government in my home, and now my vehicle picking up on a mindless mumble. I’d never realized how monitored we really were. Did my vehicle pass on information to others, sharing bits of my private life I’d thought I’d kept to myself?
The beat ceased. Blessed silence followed. I exhaled. At last, alone. I settled into a mode, moving through the trip without calling the music up again, contemplating why the bee had stung me and how the hives managed to lie. I knew they were linked, but as I rolled what I knew around in my head, I ended up where I’d started—without answers.
Fifty minutes later, I looked to the left to turn the glider, pulling into a parking garage. I navigated into a space. “Disengage engine.” The glider sank onto the parking pad, and the motor died.
Swinging my leg over the seat, I dismounted and pulled my helmet off, shaking turquoise, butt-length hair loose before tossing the viz on my glider. I grabbed a strand and studied the silk like texture, letting it flip through my fingers. It actually looked toxic for once, and unlucky for me, nobody would see it. Figured.
“Lock down.” I stretched and twisted side to side. My shoulders ached from stooping over hives all day, and I only cared about going inside, changing into my comfy clothes, and throwing my feet up. At the moment, I couldn’t care less about the mystery of the malfunctioning hives, the rogue bee, or even where they’d send me next to work.
A solid dome extended over the vehicle, securing it for the night. I started for the lift which would take me to my apartment. I hummed the song I’d started to listen to on the ride home, while checking my wrist chronograph, knowing I’d made good time. Ten minutes to spare. I’d eat, toss on my pajamas, and maybe look into why the bee malfunctioned, or not. I should still have time to watch my favorite holo show before hitting my mattress.
And maybe a night’s sleep would be all I’d need to figure out the odd event I’d witnessed today. There had to be a simple answer for the bee’s behavior, even though my instincts screamed there had to be more to it than a programming glitch.
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