Remember

by Karthikeyan, Girish

  Sheep's Clothing

  Mon 8/21/17 1:38 p.m.

  …last week. The other one must be 2645. I met him in person before on less friendly terms. The threat and indecisiveness of it still lingers, burned into my head. Towering just as tall as I remember from the night he recruited me for the Division, 2645 in his mid-forties with a muscular build, not body-builder but distance runner. They come up to me.

  In a baritone voice, Agent 2645 says, “Hello, I’m Morris. You know Jenna, I take it?”

  “Yes, we met last week at a business meeting.” I shake his massive hand.

  Jenna nods. “I think I remember you.”

  “I have to get started on my workout. I’ll leave you two to talk.” Morris takes off at high speed.

  I didn’t expect it. It isn’t that we can’t keep up, we don’t want to. A fake convo about her office starts up. They swapped managerial hands for some new, detail oriented ex-military type. He insists on going over each piece of paper that passes through his office. If he finds even a small mistake, they get called in (anger implied) to fix it. I share factual info. I start a sim body study anytime now. Physical intelligence vs. other intelligence metrics. I search for Morris around the elliptical running circuit. He isn’t here anymore. I look back at Jenna, missing too.

  I keep going around the track, looking for clues, something I missed in my mental replay of events. Where are they? Some words overlay my vision. They guide me to a section of the wall where a small lighter circle appears. It grows into a doorway under words that say walk through. I do it reluctantly, walk right through, and descend a darkened hallway leading away from the gym. The sporadic lighting gives some areas plenty of light, while in between, the light fades to nothing. I move down the walkway, following directions that now tell me to wait at a doorway for the room. Jenna comes out, and I go in. A set of clothes suggest I change into them. The ribbed body suit fits me comfortably, just the right size. Must be an adventure go-seat suit — manually control a go-seat over natural terrain.

  I continue down the hall and enter a cavernous alcove off an underground tunnel. Something that looks like a sculpture of an inverted black metal flower, actually a go-seat with three seats and a cargo space seats the fellow agents. The central tire bar meets with the other sections at the apex. It is suitably big for the space. Morris waits patiently in the center seat and Jenna adjusts her seat. I sit in mine. It seems the right size. The suit attaches to the seat in three places. There is no way to fall out. We rise up 4 meters into the air as the four outer struts climb over the central tire bar.

  Morris uses hand gestures to drive us out of the alcove on the go-seat — a perfectly balanced stick leaning with purpose. We speed ahead through other alcoves every few secs. Other passageways join this one until we end up at an intersection. A branching tunnel leads away ahead, like what we just left. Straight tunnels branch off to the left and right. We turn left.

  The tunnel quickly ends at a set of doors open to a scrubland. The go-seat easily moves through the rough natural terrain. We reach the mountains in the background and climb through the rocky foothills. A wheeled vehicle can't move without conveying up each bump along the way. I look down at the forgone wheels for something else, four legs. The center stem dampens the turbid surface with shape changes. Our pace over the ground remains unaltered despite the wild turns of landscape below. The upcoming box canyon might impede progress until the go-seat produces two extra legs near the hilt. It climbs like a rock climber up to the set of boxes stacked directly in the middle of this plateau. The go-seat parks and sets us down.

  We load the boxes numbered one through five into the cargo area. A quick pat on the side covers the cargo box with a black liquid flow that becomes solid. We board the go-seat. I drive this time and get in trouble with the transitions. Before I know it we are back in the tunnel where I know the way back to the intersection. Jenna takes over from there. She navigates us to a different alcove, big enough for at least six go-seats and sloped gradually. It looks almost empty. We get off. On the way to the stairs leading up, we pass an unusual looking vehicle. A commercial go-seat. All the bars meet around the wheel. The center bar is just loaded with storage space. Having a majority of the weight in the center helps balance. For parking, the three bars attached to each seat spread out flat with a leg under each one. We go upstairs to the lobby. Jenna leads us to an office suite — Main Maintenance.

  We find our clothes for the actual mission in a general meeting room surrounded by offices. All the numbered supplies (3 for me) split between us leads us into our offices to change. The standard for a glorified electrician. A padded suit keeps you at a good temperature, safe from job related injuries, and insulated from electrical discharge. The grey suit with black trim everywhere features a set of three metal rods on my belt. I feel something on the end of each bar that I can’t see. A force projection tool. It uses magnetic fields or something to turn screws from a distance. I leave my adventure go-seat suit there.

  Morris and Jenna slather a white paste over their faces, the physical id. I open a bottle for 3 and start putting on the paste, a thick layer and use all of it, don’t know about covering my eye lids, but Morris is just doing it. I give it a try, start seeing something on my eyelids, and it's the outside, finish putting it on.

  It wants me to choose a new face, so I give myself a bigger nose and brow, make my chin rounder and bigger, and finally change my eye color green. Now, the tech id last. Getting my node from the table, I put it on. The normal place on my shoulder works. The node connects my new face with the new id. Now officially undercover. Jenna grabs a supply trolley from a storage closet and we all go to the garage.

  Morris stays at the cover go-seat. I help Jenna load the cart some 50 feet away. The adventure go-seat gives up its cargo for loading. I have to ask about last week. The week of prep pushed everything else out. Here goes.

  After we loaded the cart, Jenna plays through the cover vids the cart can show for something appropriate. We stand nearby to block the cam picking up. I whisper for confidentiality. “Does last week at Zensation mean anything?”

  Jenna disregards the whisper consideration. “You are still thinking about that?”

  I try something simple. “No, I just want to clarify.”

  “I was nothing. You refused to eat anything. HQ didn’t see that coming. I just improvised a solution to deliver the mission brief.”

  Seriously? “What was the alternate protocol?”

  “We were supposed to get to the cover office. I give you an encrypted drive to upload. The security comprise was too much for me. I came up with a secure option.”

  “How did you do it?”

  “I had them put the tech programming in my food. I securely delivered the report to you. What would you have preferred?”

  What do you say to something like that?

  Jenna grabs the fully loaded cart and wheels it away slowly against the gradual incline.

  I go meet Morris at the cover go-seat. He sets up everything. I weasel my way to the center bar, press the switch, step back to give some space, and the seats swivel around to one side. The storage space turns into a work bench with room for three carts. The other two slots hold the projector and tools needed for the job, two sets of each. I get in my seat and register my id with the go-seat.

  I just relax waiting for Jenna. She latches the cart in place and gets into the last seat. Morris set the destination, so the go-seat reconfigures the cargo area to the middle, picks up the three seats supporting it and moves through the maze of tunnels with ease. I couldn't find my own way back. We stop at a dead end street with a row of go-seats on either side of a metal building. The Main Maintenance go-seat lowers the seats all the way to the ground. Everyone gets off, I unload the supplies, and we each grab one cart, going into the building.

  The large metal doors open below a sign saying, ‘Stephens Institute’, the target. We go through a small lobby with a desk to the elevators leading up.
<
br />   “Stop right there!”

  How was Your Day?

  Mon 8/21/17 3:08 p.m.

  Morris produces a pad from somewhere and gives it to the security person. It takes a while for him to say anything. I look around at the lobby — a small area of granite in the middle of a big greenhouse covering the floor. I follow the walls through the dense growth.

  “Everything looks good. You have access to the fourth floor, conference room 14,” the guard says. He gives Morris the pad.

  “Thanks,” Morris says. We go past the desk showing our ids and pictures authorized access. We cram ourselves into the small space of the elevator for a slow ride from B1 to four. Exit the elevator, immediately turn right into the first conference room, 14, and we are in.

  Morris and I unpack the cover supplies — the old-fashioned projector, room node, additional tech, and pad — onto the table. Jenna opened box number one with the V-tech and enters something into the included pad, so the container of V-tech allows enough out for a screen over the door. Said screen shows us working on pads, what anyone outside can see with the door open.

  We unpack boxes two and three of the mission supplies, while Jenna takes the room node and puts on the extra tech vials. This assembly goes somewhere on the wall. She starts doing the programming. I lay out the laden body suits that become the assault suits, and Morris looks through the weapons (NILT - a puck sized weapon deploying a knife and electrical payload and VANSP - projectile weapon delivering constant electrical voltage to paralyze), nexuses, and helmets from his box for functionality.

  I take out the nexuses just replaced by him. They look like black nodes and interface between tech instances. I put one in the sleeve pocket at the shoulder and seal it inside each suit.

  “JB, take this.” Morris throws a NLIT at me. I put the NLIT in a magnetic holster on the thigh of the suit.

  Fine rods extend down from the ceiling, attach to the projector, and pull it into the ceiling.

  I take off my uniform and put on the fabric assault suit with socks and gloves attached, zip up the midline seam, and the suit snugs tight. Start the interface of the suit and the specs appear on my tech. The suit grows thicker and protective, forming a hollow over my front and various indentations for other weapons we don't have. Super traction plant my feet on the ground. Take off the tech id node, the assault suit can take care of it. I have to figure out how to control the added strength the suit gives me. The training comes in handy. I find a happy medium of how much force to use. Everyone changed. Jenna has a cream velveteen suit with a dark blue shirt. She altered her physical id, also. Morris puts box number four on my back. I help him get the other box on the little ledge across his back, where little latches hold it in place. We put on our helmets, check and re-holster the NLIT’s.

  “JB, let me set up the V-tech on your back,” Jenna says.

  I sit on the table with my back facing her. She opens the box, presses some stuff on the pad inside, and closes it again. A wall of tech surrounds Morris and me with a shimmering view of the outside world. Jenna's new cover allows access to the Institute so she stays outside the tech bubble. We leave the room together, walking through a waterfall of tech. The screen falls away and produces tech formed figures, a perfect facsimile of the three of us all working to get the projector up and running. We aren’t going to be missed.

  We go into the elevator. Jenna stays close to the side so we can get in, moves in front of us, and pretends we aren’t there. The tech starts moving into any gaps in the elevator door. We pass through the tenth floor. The elevator starts turning clear as it moves into eleven. The eleventh floor resembles a nature preserve with apartments scattered about — completely natural scenery (no constructed paths for walking) — a mountain meadow and stream.

  The views of Kiros Stephens’ entry hall and heavily guarded office hallway greet us at twelve. We stop, and the tech rushes out the closed door. The tech shows me the progress of coating the walls. The elevator doors open to tech masking all the walls including this one. The tech door replica opens, and Jenna walks out. As guards turn their heads to follow her through the room, the tech surrounds each of them in a screen. Jenna gets to the tech wall at the end of the room, where the tech reacts as if unauthorized access (flashing door frame), and shows Jenna going back downstairs. Jenna actually waits for the program to end.

  Morris and I have to neutralize all the guards in the room. I take the left, and he takes the right. I grab the first guard’s head covering his mouth and move my other hand over the holster. The NLIT magnetically puts itself into my hand. The guard has been trying to get me off with his stun wand that now dropped to the ground. He elbows me in the suit. The NLIT is in place. I press in. The blade goes in and comes out. Holster NILT and gently lower him to the floor.

  Morris incapacitated half, so far. I go to the next one, turn my NLIT holster for better speed, grab him, and place the NLIT. He tries beating me with the stun wand, doesn’t work. He is down. Jenna kneels, putting a strip of something along the edges of the door. I move to the next one with the realization this isn’t hard. The last one steps out of the screen, looks around for a sec, and runs toward Jenna with his wand ready. In one motion, Jenna pulls out the VNSP, turns around by putting the other knee down, and shoots him. He falls on the ground with the dart in his leg. Morris is just standing by. I get to the last guard, cover his mouth, pull out the VNSP dart, and use the NLIT to knock him out. The erratic movements of his eyes freak me out, so I close them.

  The tech moves through the door and covers the walls in the next room. Jenna uses a tiny pad to interface with the door sensors through the strip.

  An intercom delivers the voice of Mr. Stephens. “Is everything alright, out here?”

  “Yes, sir. One of us just dropped a stun wand,” Morris says.

  “Good.”

  With everything ready for opening the door from my end, I give Jenna the okay sign. She does something on the pad, and the doors open to the tech doors just inside. I take off the package on my back, after lowering the edge onto the empty assistant’s desk. The package settles precariously near the edge of the desk. I shift it back, open it near the ribbon of tech sticking out, and hover over the activate button. Jenna kneels out of the perceived firing line at chest height, ready to fire into the room. Morris introduces Jenna to Mr. Stephens.

  “Meagan Farrington is here to see you,” Morris says into the air.

  “Yes, send her in. She is the 3 o’clock,” the assistant from inside the room says.

  I open the doors and activate the next stage of the program. The room starts flashing in a rainbow of colors, designed to temporarily blind anyone exposed. Jenna shoots Mr. Stephens and his executive assistant. Morris and I enter with the protection of the helmets. Two guards wave their arms around trying to fend off anyone they can’t see.

  I grab the guards left arm, pull it behind his back, force him into the wall, put my knee on his back holding him there, use my now free hand to till his head back, cover his mouth, pull him away from the wall, draw the NLIT and apply it, finally lie him down. Morris NLITs the assistant while removing the VNSP dart. Jenna opened Mr. Stephens’ sleeve exposing his shoulder. She puts a node there, takes out the small pad, and a metal band. The band is fitted over his head between his ears. It expands to cover his head down to his neck.

  “We are all set to start the excitement. This tech uses the autonomic nervous system to guide the subject into performing the required action. In this case, he will operate the computer systems of the Institute. We are going to move the elevator to the eleventh floor. Open the data line access panel. Allow access to the elevator shaft over there,” Jenna says all while entering feverishly into the small pad.

  I look at open elevator doors. Morris comes over to give Jenna something from his package. She takes out a metallic sphere with a lens on it. It connects by two tubes to the package. The sphere, put on the desk faces the angular windows at the back of the office. Morris and I go to
the open elevator shaft. He lowers me down from the edge of the landing. I drop more than a meter to the elevator roof. Morris backs away, tumbles over the threshold and lands with his arms holding the twelfth floor. He drops down.

  My helmet illuminates the near dark elevator shaft. In the corner, the open wall soffit exposes a vein of electric blue liquid moving up and down with darker and lighter bands. Vein is the best description, the liquid just slowly moves through. Morris stuck his pack on the wall somehow. He takes out a black disk about 5 centimeters wide, access port. I stick it on the 40 centimeters pipe. The edge turns red. He gives me a canister with a flange on one end. I put it on the port, seal the flange against it, turn the port until it is green, and look through the auger in the canister to see the pipe.

  Morris gives me a crank handle. I put it on the auger and start boring into the pipe. The canister fills up with the liquid. Keep drilling until no longer any resistance. I take off the crank and turn it around. Reconnect and use it to withdraw the auger into the canister. Turn the access port to blue. This allows just the liquid to go back in. I keep cranking. A screen moves all the liquid back inside. I take off the canister and crank, both returned to Morris.

  He gives me a 30 centimeter by 30 centimeter box with two handles and connected to the sphere in the office. I put it on the access port by pressing down the handles, turn the port to green, and a small hiss of air escaping as the liquid transfers up the tube. It takes some time, but the liquid returns from the office by the other tube. The data transfer has already started. It seems to take forever to complete.

  (—)

  The liquid finishes draining back into the pipe. The transfer is done. I turn the port until it shows white. This means the access port is sealing the pipe.