Nineveh's Child

by Gerhard Gehrke

  The potential for Ruben increasing her work volume wasn’t lost on her. With her new adventure in network architecture, she could cube the potential workload of her nodes. She felt a thrill at her success and wanted to shout, to tell Rosalyn. Maybe Rosalyn could do the same, and they could decipher their purpose and that of the program they were part of. But she decided to keep it to herself for now.

  When the workday was done, she ate her gruel and stayed in her cell like a good girl.

  Within days, she had everything automated. She imagined her workspace had transformed into what she had seen in books of early industrial-age sewing machine sweatshops. All her switches fired off flawlessly without her needing to do anything but keep them going by sheer force of will. Her accomplishment reminded her of the time she had corralled all the goats when a thunderstorm had scattered them while they were at pasture. The notion that she was doing the job of a human calculator didn’t diminish her sense of victory.

  Now she was hands-free and able to explore.

  She had expanded the space below, carving out a neat hallway that went straight down. From there, she could move any direction with a bit of concentration. Once she had been someplace, the hallway followed, forming the structure of walls and floor. Darkness prevailed, but the silence and privacy felt wonderful. This was her space: quiet, cool, and with a tactile smoothness that was pleasing. How far the network went was still a mystery.

  After a few minutes, her sense of indulgence in being within a private sanctuary faded. Perhaps it was more of a personal dungeon, a hole within a hole where she could hide while her brain continued her brother’s assigned duties. She needed to understand the network’s purpose. Otherwise she was nothing more than one of the nodes, a fellow prisoner with trustee status.

  She had limited options. Since she knew where each of her nodes was, she avoided them. She also avoided probing in Rosalyn’s direction, as her stepsister would no doubt sense her doing so. Rosalyn would be no help in this new space. She was a prisoner, too, just not as smart. Rosalyn hadn’t built an automatic brain machine like Dinah had.

  Dinah had only one other direction to go: the source of the flow.

  The binary stream could have been misconstrued as a machine gun–like rat-a-tat-tat of ones and zeroes. When she was first introduced to her job, she’d had to abstract the streams to keep from being overwhelmed. But now that she was free from the need to even think about her task, she could discern the difference between a program sending numbers to be crunched, which was most of what came her way, and a user making direct input into the program.

  So how would her brother interact with the program? Input could be made with an assistant, to be sure, or vocally, or via keyboard. She doubted he would use the voice-activated systems for fear of eavesdroppers. And he didn’t trust anyone to work closely enough with him on his pet project. His input would be done manually, which meant slow, deliberate keystrokes and spaced-out commands…like the ones she detected upstream at that particular moment.

  He was logged in, and she was heading his way.

  She watched, but her spying had its limitations. She couldn’t see what he was seeing, whether it was graphics or a chart or a document. Understanding his commands proved another challenge. Since she didn’t know the computer language, all she was left with were entries like ntdensity, listbase, figure, listcount, basecount, and a command that read condoncount (mitochondria), sometimes with numbers and letters attached that must have figured into a gridded database with associated columns and lines.

  The command line condoncount (mitochondria) stuck with her. She couldn’t say what condon were or why they needed to be counted, but she recognized mitochondria that was part of a cell.

  What’s he working on that has to do with cells?

  The output from his terminal suddenly stopped. He must have just been reviewing something, or else he was done for the day. She waited and watched and felt around some more, but got no other clues as to what he was up to. But she’d be back the next day.

  ***

  She only pretended to eat the next day’s no-meat chili dinner. She took a few bites, since she was actually hungry, but the brownish-green color and the yeasty smell made it easy to go no further. Dr. M had provided them with a dummy tablet that wasn’t connected to the redoubt network, a reward for some benchmark achievement. Dinah had showed Rosalyn some of the basic games, and she was hooked. Dinah thought having her brain connected to a computer for nine hours a day would make Rosalyn less interested in computer games, but Rosalyn had never played with a tablet before. If her stepsister had really come from here, she had left at a young age. But Rosalyn would never talk about that. It was something she’d need to question Karl about.

  Soon enough, Rosalyn was beating level after level of a surround-type game where the player ran an ever-growing snake around a map, enveloping other snakes before it was cornered and either crashed into one of them or into its own trailing body. Even in her distracted state, every so often her eyes would flick up from the screen, observing Dinah and their makeshift dining room. Perhaps Dr. Mephisto had snuck up on her once before with a needle, and she was now forever on the watch for just such an assault. Her vigilance also meant she could see the door to her own cell and could see Dinah if she tried to sneak inside.

  Dinah paced about as Rosalyn played, the synthesized electronic game music scoring her every step. She picked up her bowl of leftover chili and dumped some of it behind a stack of collapsed tables.

  Rosalyn muttered curses at the tablet. “Stupid game’s broken.”

  “Then stop playing it and give me a turn.”

  Rosalyn ignored her and resumed tapping away at the screen. Her hunched posture over the device told Dinah her turn wouldn’t come soon. She feigned disappointment.

  Dr. M had been out in the hallway speaking with Dr. Hel, and now he stepped back in. This caught Rosalyn’s attention for a moment, but he wasn’t carrying a needle or anything else, so she ignored him.

  Dinah tugged on his coat sleeve and whispered, “Rosalyn got sick. She doesn’t want you to know.”

  She pointed to the corner behind the stacked tables. Dr. M checked and soon enough he was escorting a grumbling Rosalyn to the clinic for a checkup.

  “Take the tablet,” Dinah said. “Maybe it will help you feel better.”

  But the tablet remained on the table, the in-progress game rapidly devolving into a horrific loss for Rosalyn’s unmanaged snake. Their footsteps faded down the hallway.

  Dinah went straight for Rosalyn’s cell. Much like Dinah’s, the room didn’t have much more than a cot, a stool, a sink, a toilet, and a small collapsible table. She checked the pillow and under the mattress. Rosalyn had actually made her bed. Putting it perfectly back together so she wouldn’t notice wasn’t easy. They both had made beds under Uma’s critical eye, but Dinah could never get the sheets so crisply folded.

  Next she checked the sink and the toilet tank, and even prodded about for loose tiles on the floor. She ran her hand along the top of the small mirror above the sink, and there she discovered Rosalyn’s lockpicks. She snatched them up and went to her room. She placed them above the door’s frame. If the door didn’t get slammed, the picks would stay.

  Rosalyn was returned a few minutes later. Dinah busied herself on the tablet, playing a game she had no interest in. She offered token resistance when Rosalyn took the computer away. Soon enough, it was time to go to bed. Dr. Hel came around to lock their cell doors. Dinah gave a one hundred count after she heard her leave, and then it was time to practice lock picking.

  She wasn’t prepared for success so soon. She had reasoned the task would probably take a week. She also expected to hear Rosalyn raging at her from her cell upon discovering her theft, but she wasn’t making a sound. When she used both picks inside the keyhole at the same time, just like she had observed Rosalyn do, the deadbolt clicked open. The door to the hallway wasn’t locked. She could now attempt to get into any room tha
t didn’t need a key card.

  She moved carefully into the hallway. No one was around. She tried the handles of several doors near the White Room that needed key cards. All those doors were closed and locked. One lab room she had never been in had light coming from it. This could mean something important, or it could just be a well-lit storage room for more soiled sheets. She put an ear to the door. Nothing. The room had a standard lock.

  In the map in her mind, this room shared a wall with the room with green lights and was close to the White Room. No label gave a clue as to what was beyond the door. A moment of indecision followed as she tried to decide whether to attempt the door or move on.

  “Focus.”

  Each scratch of the picks inside the lock made her cringe. At any second, someone would emerge from one of a dozen doors and see her. But much like her cell’s deadbolt, the door’s lock clicked open.

  Ruben sat inside a large office, slumped in his wheelchair, his back to her. He was facing three screens filled with grids of numbers. Dinah’s numbers. The figures floating in front of him were as much part of her now as they were bits of magnetic data on the network’s hard drive. But she couldn’t afford to get caught yet. Her brother hadn’t heard the door open.

  She watched him for a moment. He was breathing deeply, his head so far forward that his chin must have been on his chest. He’s asleep. She stepped inside before realizing that he must have an attendant. She looked around the room. No one else was there. He no doubt had a summons button for a nurse.

  She got closer. She spotted a trickle of drool on the lower side of his mouth that trailed down to his chin and had the urge to wipe his face. She realized how fragile he looked. Around her she saw several spare computer terminals all powered down, a long metal shelf that had been removed from the wall and now leaned against a cluttered counter, cables, and several scattered tools. She had four ways of killing him besides her hands. He smelled like he needed a bath.

  Then she looked at the screen and couldn’t stop reading. She found herself moving the numbers she saw around so they made sense. His row count was down into the 15,000 range. The file name read Sequence Subject C-2.

  His second screen had a desktop open with icons she didn’t recognize.

  The third screen had a file open like the first that was titled Sequence Subject A-1.

  Ruben wheezed, his mouth opened and shut like a fish, and then he settled in again. His eyes remained closed.

  “Stupid,” she mouthed, meaning herself.

  She reached for the mouse. She moved the cells on the third screen down and across to match up with the cells on the first screen. The numbers matched. If this was about genes, the numbers would match with most anyone, from what little she had learned on the subject. What made everyone and everything different was very small. This could be the sequence to a dog, a horse, or a tomato plant.

  She would have to return when he wasn’t there. But he wouldn’t leave the computer unlocked, and he would have a password that she couldn’t easily crack and that wouldn’t be written down in a book.

  His clammy hand grabbed hers.

  This wasn’t the iron grip from when they had first met outside, the boy-man with steel skin and mechanical bones, but instead the weak, sick hand of a convalescent who might choke to death if he rolled over on the wrong side and had a pillow too close to his windpipe.

  “My, how we’ve grown,” he said in a croaking voice.

  She pulled her hand from his and took a step back.

  “Now you think I’m contagious.”

  “No more jokes. Tell me what’s going on. Tell me why you have to have me here. Is it all for this? Some genetic coding project?”

  He appeared to be nodding ever so slightly, but it was just the loll of his head. Then he pushed his chair back away from the computer and wheeled through another door.

  She followed.

  Lights came on. They were in another lab she had never seen, filled with charts, instruments, and microscopes. From here she was certain they could walk into the room with the caged Wally. Ruben stopped at a wall keypad by a security door. He leaned forward and slowly punched in numbers. He didn’t seem to care that she was watching.

  “This is the room you should never have been able to enter. Unfortunately, the redoubt has more doors than technicians that can fit them with proper locks.”

  “You’ve got your pet monster in there.”

  “Indeed. Time you met her again.”

  The door hissed open. He rolled through. The lights in the room were flickering as they had been last time.

  “Coming?”

  She paused at the doorway. The thing in the cage was at the bars and rattling the door. It uttered a low growl. All its attention was on Ruben, but her brother ignored it. He rolled up to a terminal mounted on a rolling cart that hadn’t been in there before and switched it on.

  Dinah tried not to be startled by the thing, but its every jerk and twitch made her want to jump. It wasn’t about to break free. The cage was solid. Yet she felt as frightened as a rabbit.

  She did a quick count and calmed herself. Her brother was busy and oblivious to both the Wally and her. Whatever he wanted to show her was taking some time. She stepped into the room. The door slid shut.

  There was a small flush metal panel inside next to the security door. While her borrowed lockpick wouldn’t open the door, she guessed it would open the panel. She unlocked it, the lockpick scratching against the metal.

  “What are you doing?”

  He began to turn in his chair, but by that time she had the panel off.

  There were wires tucked inside. A few times in her childhood she had seen Nineveh techs working on similar doors. She had an idea of what to do with what she saw. She pulled on a red plastic connector cap, exposing twisted copper wires. She separated these wires, careful not to touch the copper. Her brother rolled toward her. “Put those back!”

  “Door won’t open for you now, will it?”

  “Dinah, I’m serious.”

  “Look at you, sounding like a normal grown-up. I’m glad you’re serious. I am too. I got serious after leaving this place. I had a serious life with people I loved, but you destroyed that. You’ve set your game in motion, killed people, ruined lives. Time for you to take this seriously too.”

  She stepped around him. The Wally didn’t seem to like her getting closer to it, as it lunged against the cage with all its weight and began to howl. She flinched with each collision, but she put a hand to the cage’s door just the same. The door had an external spring handle that would open it. A carabiner was placed through the latch. She removed the carabiner and dropped it.

  “Dinah…”

  She took the handle. The Wally seemed to sense what might happen next. It got down low to the cage floor and tensed up.

  “It will kill both of us.”

  “I know.”

  Her brother laughed. It evolved into a wheezing cough. It took him a moment to compose himself.

  “Bravo. So this is the part where I give in to your demands. Set you and your friends free and admit to the error of my ways. Because I’d never call your bluff, would I? Kind of silly, really. You could have murdered me many times over with a few ounces of pressure in the right place. You also could have brought a friend with you who has fewer reservations. Even if you got squeamish, Rosalyn wouldn’t hesitate. I do adore her.”

  “Just shut up. Tell me what this thing is doing here, and what it’s got to do with me.”

  “This is just proof that great minds think alike. I was about to show you before your theatrics.”

  He inched forward in his chair. Her grip on the door handle tightened.

  “Dinah, my dear sister, I’d like you to meet our mother.”

  It was her turn to laugh. When she saw his odd leer, she realized he was taking pleasure in her temporary madness. She pulled up the gate lever.

  “No!” he screamed.

  If the Wally had been a fraction of
a second faster, it would have slammed the gate open. But Dinah dropped the lever back in place. The thing renewed throwing itself against the metal sides, causing the entire cage to shift. It wailed.

  She locked eyes with her brother. “Enough lies.”

  He looked angry. He had lost his composure. His hands gripped his armrests and he looked as if he were trying to get up. His mouth moved, and she saw he was wearing a com. If he had called someone, they would be here soon. The noise from the agitated Wally would make double sure of that.

  “Whatever brace or exoskeleton you use can’t be that comfortable, can it?” she said. “You take it off once you get home, don’t you? Maybe you have no sense of smell anymore because you still live down in this pit, but I can smell your bedsores from you wearing it too long.”

  “Don’t…be like this.”

  She pushed him and his chair backward out of the way and went to the terminal. The open program had a graphic interface with a score of icons almost the same as the ones on the computer in his office.

  “What were you were going to show me?”

  That was when Gregory called though the door: “The door’s locked. What’s going on?”

  She swirled the mouse cursor about, trying to decide which program to open. Ruben rolled toward the keyboard. He had blood on his lips from biting them.

  “How about you just tell me,” she said.

  He spoke softly. With the Wally making its racket, it was difficult to make out his words. “If you were anyone else, I couldn’t. I’ll let the numbers speak. This is the chromosome comparison between you, me, and the subject in the cage.”