by Melissa Good
Bricker nodded. “When? The need is urgent, as I said. There is a risk.”
Doss was already running the calculations. If it didn’t work, he could always say he’d told them so. “Two weeks,” he said. “And I’ll need to know the exact requirement, including any imprinting.”
Bricker’s smile widened slightly. “That can be arranged.” He lifted his cup. “Got any more of this? We don’t get it much downside.”
Doss leaned toward his comm unit. “Gigi?”
“Sir.”
“First, please bring us some more tea, and then, go to the crèche master and tell him I need to see him. I don’t want to disturb him if he’s programming by calling.”
“Sir.”
“Tell him to come to my office when he’s available, and to bring the NM-Dev-1 unit with him.”
“Yes, sir.”
Doss sat back and took a sip of his own tea, swirling the delicate beverage in his mouth before he swallowed it. “The programming could be complex,” he said. “We’ll have to put a lot of resources into meeting your timeline.”
“We’ll make it worth your while.” Bricker smiled now, with feral completeness. “You can be sure of that, doctor. Cost isn’t a concern for us at this moment.”
Now Doss smiled, tapping the toes of his space boots together under the desk. “Given that, we’ll find the time and talent, director. You know that’s how that goes.” He lifted his tea cup and Bricker mimicked the motion, as the station rotation moved them into the light and the windows automatically filtered the glare.
“To success, doctor. For both of us.”
A SOFT KNOCK came on the top of her helmet. NM-Dev-1 put the program on hold and ducked out from under it, blinking a little to bring her eyes back into normal focus. “Hello, proctor,” she said, surprised to see him there.
“Hello, Dev.” The proctor sat down next to her. “How are you?”
Dev quickly arranged herself on the bench, sitting up straight and tucking her boots under her. “Doing well, proctor. I finished the first advanced program and I’m looking at the second one now.”
“Great.” The proctor shifted his body a little and looked at her. “Dev, I came to talk to you because the administrator has asked me to bring you to his office. He wants to speak with you.”
She watched his face, seeing the tension there. “Did I do something incorrect?”
“No,” he answered immediately. “You didn’t do anything wrong, Dev. It’s just that some people have come to us and asked us to do a special job for them and the administrator thinks maybe you can do that job.”
Dev was momentarily silent. “I’m getting assigned?” She asked, with a small intake of breath. “Really?” Her eyes brightened.
The proctor’s brow tensed. “Well.” He shifted again, clearly uncomfortable. “These people—they want us to give you some special programs. Then we’ll see if you can do what they want.”
“Oh,” Dev murmured. “Is it hard?”
“It might be. It’s not like anything you’ve done before. But we’ve tried to give you things that stretch your abilities and this will be something like that again.” He watched the young bio alt in front of him, seeing the thoughtful look on her face.
He had his doubts. NM-Dev-1, though an experimental prototype that the name indicated, was not a type he would have ever considered for something as radical as this. She was a little below medium height, and slender, with a pleasant, friendly face and sandy colored hair currently pulled back in a holder.
Though she’d had the usual physical training, she didn’t look anything like what he supposed an Interforce soldier should look like, and the idea of her in those stark, gray surroundings made him rather uncomfortable.
He liked Dev. As much as one could like a bio alt. She was good natured and relatively clever, able to hold a conversation and even come up with an idea or two of her own once in a while. She smiled a lot, and was always eager to learn new things.
“Will I go somewhere?” Dev asked, unexpectedly. “I mean, out of the crèche?”
“Yes. You’ll need to go downside,” the proctor said. “Are you ready to come talk to the administrator? He’ll tell you more about what you’re going to do.” He stood up. “When he’s done, I’ll take you to the programming center so they can start giving you the programs you’ll need.”
Dev felt a little apprehensive. “Will you tell me what the programs are?”
The proctor put a hand on her shoulder. “I think it’ll be better for you if you just take them, Dev. Not think about it too much before you go.” He released her. “Let’s go now. The administrator is waiting.”
Dev followed along as he turned and started toward the big central grav stack. At this time of the shift it was filling with techs and minders heading to quarters, and at the outside edges, bio alts assigned to the station making their way to the dorms.
Dev really didn’t know what was going to happen. The thought of being assigned made her happy, but the look on the proctor’s face, and the way he’d spoken made her think there was something wrong with this assignment, at least to him.
They left the tube and walked along the outside corridor of the station, the transparent walls giving a full view of the earth orbit they were in. Dev smiled a little at the stars, and let them distract her as she traced their patterns in their endlessly fascinating variations.
It almost made the walk too short. She followed the proctor, though, as he turned inside a doorway and put his palm to a lock, waiting for the door to slide open then gesturing her inside.
Restricted zone. Dev had never been inside it. At the very end was a taller more impressive door, and that’s where the proctor led her.
They stood inside the entrance. “Gigi, can you tell Doctor Doss we’re here?”
“Sir.” Gigi pressed a button, looking up and exchanging the briefest of nods with Dev.
Dev was familiar with Gigi from the crèche. They were both something of an experimental set, though Dev’s programming had started out from the beginning to be advanced while Gigi’s added skills had been a recent development.
The door in front of them opened and she followed the proctor in. The administrator’s office was very large, and it had pretty white and blue carpet and a lot of clear glass ornaments. Dev turned around and stared at it for a moment, amazed by the tall ceilings, and the sense of light and air.
“Well, hello there NM-Dev-1.”
Dev turned and looked at the administrator. “Hello, sir.” He still had his lab overlay on, and with his curly hair in constant disarray he never seemed that threatening.
Another man was there, a tall, gray man and he was watching her. She looked at him, and saw the crease in his face, and the uniform. He was looking very intently at her and she felt like moving away from him.
Dev felt a little fear. Was this who she was going to be assigned to?
“This is Commander Bricker, of Interforce,” Doctor Doss said. “Do you know what that is, Dev? Have you had that program?”
“Yes, sir, I do.”
“Good,” he said. “So you know how important Interforce is, right? They protect us from all the people who are trying to hurt us, don’t they.”
“Yes, sir,” Dev said. “They’re very brave.”
Bricker produced a faint smile.
“That’s right,” Doss said. “Well, Dev, we have a wonderful opportunity to help Commander Bricker and all those brave people. They have a job, a tech job, and they came to us to see if we could help them, if we had someone who could do that job.”
“To go there, sir? To Interforce?”
“Yes,” Doss said. “They need our help.”
“Sir.” Dev felt her breathing go a little faster. She was afraid, and she wasn’t. “I don’t know how to be brave.”
That got another brief smile from Bricker. “We can teach you that,” he said, his low, burring voice tickling her ears. “If you have the heart for it.”
; Dev looked at him and their eyes met. Again, she was afraid—and not—because she could see something real there, something interesting and complex that reminded her a little of some of her history lessons. Some of the people she’d seen there. “Sir.”
“We have some programs to give you, Dev, that will help you learn what to do, so you can help Commander Bricker,” he said. “I want you to go with the proctor and get started. We don’t have a lot of time. They need you very badly.”
“Sir,” Dev replied. “I’ll do the best I can.”
Doss smiled at her, a real smile. “I know you will.” He gave the proctor a nod. “Robin, you know what to do. Let’s get started.”
“Right away, sir.” The proctor touched Dev’s shoulder. “Let’s go, Dev. You’ve got lots to learn.” He guided her out of the office and the door slid shut behind them.
DEV SAT IN the programming room, her legs dangling over the side of the body shaped couch. The sensor grid was cocked and in place over the head of it, and across the room the tech was busy setting up the boards.
It was a quiet chamber. The walls were dimly lit and a soft green color, and the light in the room was a soothing light amber. She knew it was designed to make her relax, but even knowing that, she felt her stomach in knots and her mouth dry as a paper.
She’d been in here many times before, of course. Here, or in one of the many chambers like it on this level where she’d gotten her basic, and then advanced skill programming over the years. It was in this chamber, in fact, that she’d gotten her first tech programming skill, waking to a delight of knowledge she’d run right to the sim lab and explored.
This, though, was different.
“Lie down, please,” the tech instructed. “The programmer is coming in. “
Dev took a deep breath and swiveled her body, putting her feet up on the gentle slope and her head down under the sensor grid. She watched as it slowly descended, the nodes settling over her head in familiar spots.
She felt the faint twitch as they synced and she took a breath and released it, forcing her hands to relax on the soft surface as the tech came over and adjusted the couch a little.
He had a digital pad on his arm. “Biological Alternative, set 0202164812, instance NM-Dev-1?”
“Yes,” Dev said. “That’s me.”
The tech nodded. “Okay, just relax for me please. I’m going to test the grid. It might tickle.”
Dev closed her eyes and immediately felt the faint twitchy/tickling sensation as the grid came live, sending testing pulses through her head. A flare of colored light behind her eyes, the scent of fruit, the sound of a gong, all without anything audible or truly visible. “Blue, apple, bell,” She said, after they’d died down.
“Excellent.” The tech patted her arm. Then he wrapped a sensor around her wrist, and gently tapped the center of her forehead. “Go down for me please. Let the system take over. Let go.”
And having no choice, Dev did. She felt a weight lift off her chest and she focused on the soft echoes of the gong, still chiming in her mind, the chimes now coming in the pattern of her heartbeat.
Deeper. Slower.
She was down.
The tech consulted a reading, watching the face under the grid of sensors relax and go still, the slim and toned body easing into compliance, hands uncurling, fingers easing out.
He adjusted a few settings, half turning as the door opened behind him. “She’s down.”
The programmer settled behind the console. “Thanks,” he said with a sigh. “Damned last minute admin crap.” He settled his hands on the controls and reviewed the display, eyes flicking back and forth in absorption. “Wow,” he said, after a minute. “Didn’t expect to see this.”
The tech trotted around and looked over his shoulder. “That’s military,” he said, flatly. “I’ve seen stuff like that in the pilot set.”
The programmer nodded. “Yeah, this one’s being sent to Interforce.” He perked up. “Hey, maybe they’re finally figuring out just how useful these guys are to them. Could be a big new contract.”
“But on her model?” The tech pointed. “Gonna cute them to death?”
“Tech.” The programmer started to work, setting parameters. “All tech side. This is a lot though. Hope she can handle it.” He picked up a sensor helmet and put it on, adjusting the leads with expert hands. “Okay, stand by.”
The tech went to the monitoring station and settled in, adjusting the monitors to watch the steady biological readouts. “She’s good.”
Chapter Two
“ARE YOU OUT of your cotton picking mind?” Stephan Bock stared at Commander Bricker seated in the big chair at the head of the table. “John? Are you nuts?”
Bricker let his hands rest on the table, folded together. “You never really lost that archaic language, did you?” He said. “Nuts. Cotton.” He flexed his fingers. “I guess hydroponic pod and tartex don’t have the same ring.”
“John.”
Bricker leaned back and studied his old friend. “Stephan, the options here are very limited. We have a problem.”
“Yes, we have a problem, but solving a problem with pointless insanity’s never been your game play.” Bock said. “A bio alt? Why don’t you just suggest we put a lab rat in as a field partner. It’d be cuter, and probably have a better chance at making an independent decision.”
“You told me you have a trust problem,” Bricker said in a calm voice. “You told me you not only have an ops agent refusing to accept a new tech, you have an entire ops group having issues with emplacements since they don’t trust the people with them.”
“Yes, but—”
“Yes, but nothing.” Bricker stood up. “You know how it is with us, Stephan. How small the pool of ops agents is. What do we have, a thousand, tops? In the whole of Atlantia?”
“Nine hundred ninety seven,” Bock stated quietly. “That skill set doesn’t come up so much anymore.”
“Exactly. So—they need to be teamed with a tech skill set, and the only place that comes from is outside,” Bricker said. “We take what applicants we have, and we vet them hard.”
“Not hard enough.” Bock’s voice was bitter. “We got lucky nature slaughtered nurture that time.”
Bricker sighed. “My point is, we have to take what we can get. You can’t force someone into the corps. Much as everyone believes otherwise.”
Bock grunted. “Pool’s getting shallower,” he admitted. “Not enough diversity.”
“So, there it is.” Bricker stood up and paced. “We have a gene pool that’s pathetically restricted, and no resources to support unrestricted breeding. We might even be past the point of no return anyway. We agreed?”
Bock grunted again.
“So.” Bricker turned and leaned his knuckles on the table. “We can’t afford to lose the agents we do have, Stephan. They have to be able to trust the people at their back if we want to continue this long, painful fight of ours.”
“But bio alts?” Stephan said. “John, they’re just big collections of cell structures with basic instructions added. How can you seriously think one of them can even be able to do the most mundane tech tasks in the field?”
“The pilots fly.”
Bock waved that off with an impatient hand. “Sure,” he said. “They fly, they get from point A to point B, they can land and take care of their machines. But if they run into a drone high up in the gray, they freeze. You know it. We’ve lost a dozen.”
“Training’s too basic.”
“Their brains are plastic bags full of pixie dust.”
“Stephan.”
“John, they are. Just because I’m ops, doesn’t mean I haven’t done the research. I took the classes, remember? So I could direct them?” He stood up now and did his own pacing. “Look, I’m not saying bio alts aren’t useful. They are. I don’t know what we’d do without them, since they take care of pretty much everything in this place except for operational activities. But they just take instructions
and carry out the basics. They don’t think for themselves.”
Bricker sighed and sat down. “I want to try and see if we can make one think.”
“John.”
“Your ops agent, the one who won’t take a partner? What happens if she can’t be convinced?”
Bock dropped into his seat with a grunt.
“Worth a try?”
“Jess won’t agree to this,” Bock said. “She has no use for bio alts, John. She’s from Drakes Bay, remember?”
“We have no use for lone ops agents who refuse orders.”
Stephan frowned. “John, that’s harsh.”
“Life is harsh, in case you hadn’t noticed,” Bricker retorted, dryly. “We’re the fine, thin edge trying to prevent complete collapse of our remaining society and frankly, I don’t have time for rebels. So either your prima donna decides to help us with this project, or she can go and spend her days harvesting seaweed.”
“What if I don’t want to help you. You sending me to rake the beds too? What if I think trying to send a bio alt out with Jess is the same thing as putting her up in front of a lead cannon.”
Bricker studied him. “Put your jackassery away for a minute and think about one thing. What if it works?”
“It won’t.”
“What if it does?” Bricker said. “What if we prove we can have bio alts made that can fill those roles, Stephan? If we take them to another level? If we don’t have to rely on the recruiters? What if this crazy idea turns out to mean we survive?”
Bock was silent for a few minutes. “You’re serious.”
“I am,” Bricker said quietly. “Look, this first trial, I know it won’t probably work. We took an existing model and threw some heavy tech into it. But I want to see the potential, if we can have one made to order, to our spec, you understand?”
Bock grunted.
“If this one even gets a few baby steps, we can see what the long term could be for us.”