by Eyal Kless
Mannes breathed a sigh of relief. Daichi had bolted because someone in security forgot to renew his security clearance.
“Okay,” he said, “maybe it’s just a mistake. Remember Andriana last month? She forgot to—”
“Someone’s been to my house.”
There was a pause. Mannes forced himself to breathe deeply three times before saying, “Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure! They hacked into my personal files, too, but I don’t keep anything there. Look, you need to change plans, tell them you’re ill or something and let’s meet at—”
“I’m in space.”
“What? Where? How? Your diary didn’t mention . . . oh fuck.”
“Relax, Daichi. It’s some emergency at the moon hotel resort. I’m in the hub, waiting for my shuttle.”
“Oh my god, oh my god . . .”
“Daichi, calm down.” He actually said those words out loud, but when he looked around he saw they were lost in the racket the kids were producing.
“Oh god. He knows, it’s happening, don’t you see?”
“I see nothing. They assigned me to an emergency system failure because I was available, that’s all.”
“You’re not even in the same engineering department as the space fucking resort! He’s separating us and taking us out one by one. We need to launch Cain, right now!”
“Don’t be a fool. Cain is not ready, barely tested, and we were only going to use it if all of us agreed.”
“That’s another thing, I can’t reach any of the others.” From the sound of things, Mannes guessed Daichi was now running. “We’ve got to launch it now.”
The world swam in front of Mannes’s eyes. This was crazy. This was not happening. There must be a better explanation.
“Listen to me, Daichi. You will do no such thing. You of all people should know what an untested Sentient Program could do.”
“But Man—”
“Stop where you are.” He put all the cold firmness he could muster in the mental order. “Don’t do anything until I return. That is an order, do you understand?” It was stupid to pull rank on a coconspirator, but Mannes couldn’t think of anything else to say, and as it happened, Daichi was too hysterical to protest. “Even if what you’re saying is true, we cannot launch Cain so incomplete, and since I have a part of his code you can’t do it on your own. So, call in sick, tell them I’m authorizing it, find a place to lay low until I get back, most likely in five, six days, got it?”
For a while there was only more heavy breathing on the line, then Daichi said “Yes,” and hung up.
Fuck. Mannes leaned back and rubbed his eyes with both hands. Get it together, Mannes. Daichi is just being Daichi . . .
The announcing voice resonated in the hall and in Mannes’s ear in unison: “Dear passengers, you will shortly begin embarking on your journey . . .”
“Mommy, Mommy, we’re really going!”
He must be wrong. The dangerous part of the code insertion is over. We were so careful . . .
“If you have not already dressed for space, please begin donning your space suit now. Do not worry, the suit is for your safety. The atmosphere and pressure in the cabins are at normal levels and should stay so throughout the journey.”
“Dad, I want to sit next to the window.”
“I want to sit next to the pilot.”
“There’s no pilot, dumbass, it’s AIed.”
Then again, what if Daichi is right? Why am I being sent to fix something on the moon resort?
“Mom, he called me a dumbass.”
“That’s because you are.”
“Moooom . . .”
“If you require assistance, signal a bot and it will help you as required.”
He needed time.
Mannes shoved his hand into his case and ordered an internal cable, which attached itself to his engineer’s fingertip, the only part of his natural body, aside from his retina and brain amp, that had been replaced by Tarakan technology. He’d never liked it but it was too useful to reject, especially when working in tight spaces such as the shafts of the space hub. Now where was that port? The blueprints were in his brain amp, and Mannes accessed it after a brief hesitation. He knew this increased his chances of getting caught, but if this was just Daichi’s paranoia he could explain it somehow, maybe say he was testing their security protocols, he’d figure it out. If this was real . . . well . . . he needed time to find a way to get back to Earth.
The blueprint flashed before his eyes. The port was close enough, and an engineer always knows how to find the back door to anything he builds.
Mannes bent down and touched the side buttons of his boots, cancelling the magnetic field. He pushed himself and began floating towards the port. In his closed fist was the end of the cable attached to his engineer’s finger. To anyone looking, he was just another enthusiastic passenger taking his time to admire the view while in low G. The port was a tiny hole, but as soon as it was close the cable attached itself to it. Immediately Mannes released a dampening program, much like the mosquito when it lands on the skin to feed. Still, this gave him only a little time . . .
“If you haven’t dressed in your space travel suit, please do so now . . .”
Six shuttles. He couldn’t change his own destination; that was too deep an intrusion. Mannes fought rising panic. What a dumb move, what was the point if he couldn’t change where he was going?
“We will be commencing boarding in five minutes. As you proceed, please check that your gate was not changed by looking at the names and destination on the hatch.”
There was only one thing he could have done, so he did it, and immediately felt foolish for risking his career, freedom, and perhaps his life for doing it.
“Doctor Holtz.”
Mannes turned, palming the cable again.
“You are supposed to be dressed in your space suit already.” The bot’s voice was not without kindness but still admonishing.
“Yes, sorry. I was caught up in the view.”
“Let me help you get dressed.”
“Mom, look. We’re at gate 4-D and not 3-D.”
“There’s no need. I can manage on my own.”
“Darling, did you check our gate? Did they change it?”
“This way is fastest, sir.”
“Don’t know, maybe they did, but our names are on 4-D now, see? Who wants to go to space?”
“We do!!”
“Nischa, get back here at once, we are boarding now.”
“Please proceed to the marked gate.”
“There you are, sir,” the bot announced as it sealed the suit.
Mannes did not bother to respond. He steadied himself as he fixed his gaze on hatch 3-D. His name was flashing yellow and red.
“Darling, I thought we’d get a bigger shuttle. I mean the guide said that we’d get the family—”
“Well, we’ll just have to squeeze together, love.” The rest of the conversation was blocked as the hatch sealed itself shut.
Mannes tasted bile in his mouth as he entered the chute and floated into the spacious family shuttle destined for the moon hotel.
Chapter 19
Peach
When Brak had mentioned that Trevil was not the talkative type, he wasn’t lying. Once we hit the open road Trevil simply withdrew. He seemed comfortable with long silences. The only sound was the engine’s loud hum. I was weary of conversations, anyway. Years of operations as an agent taught me the dangers of mindless chatter. You could easily slip and land in a pile of shit for it. Trevil was driving me to my destination, at great risk and personal cost. I was not going to jeopardize it by trying to be overfriendly. At any rate, there was plenty for me to think about as we drove.
The first thing that struck me during the “road trip” was how empty the land had become. When I was on my last assignment there were twenty-six billion people living on this planet, far beyond the planet’s sustenance capacity. The invention of the nourishment pill,
the devastation of the Plague, and the passing of the universal birth control act by the World Council kept things more or less in check. Still, people were everywhere. There was no place outside of a virtual reality space that you could stand and not see others around you, not even around the Poles. Now, we drove for days without seeing a single soul. It was uncanny, but after a while I got used to all the emptiness and watched how the land was recuperating from Armageddon. Luckily for the planet, humanity was not so quick to recover.
The second thing I noticed was the lack of hygiene. Even the young men and women we met were already missing teeth and smelled of hard living. They were dressed in self-made clothing, skins, or occasional furs, and they lacked almost everything but the bare essentials. The oldest person I met claimed to have lived forty-one years and looked double her age; the average person was half her age or less. As in the beginning of human society, in order to survive, people banded together to create small tribes, living off whatever they could gather, grow, hunt, or occasionally barter for. A farm could contain four or six families and a hamlet triple that number, and when you banded together, others became the competition or worse, a threat.
There was a delicate etiquette we carefully followed whenever we approached a settlement. Trevil would stop the truck at a distance and honk the horn in sequence, three short and one long blasts; apparently where he came from it was the universal sign for a peaceful approach. Problem was, the farther we drove the more people we met who didn’t recognise that universal honk. The residents would eventually send out someone to investigate, usually several armed men. This was the most precarious stage, where things could go seriously wrong. Having a middle aged, nonthreatening female for a vessel turned out to be a blessing, and I made sure that despite the cold I was first out of the truck to face the armed welcoming party. At times it helped, and people turned out to be warm and friendly. On occasion we were warned away and had to stay rough on the road. Winter was at its fullest, and the temperature inside the truck was often below freezing. The Healer’s coats turned out to be life savers. On days we didn’t meet anyone or were turned away we had to keep driving through the night so as not to freeze to death. When we managed to get ourselves invited, we would spend more than a day each time. Trevil would clear the truck’s fuel tank of the gunk it had accumulated, then we’d haggle for provisions and fuel. Not many accepted coins, nicknamed “towers” in these parts. We spent precious time bargaining over three eggs or a jar of frozen pickles, sometimes paying in kind, meaning labour, and that proved to be time-consuming as well. All the farms and hamlets I saw were built on the foundations of buildings that had somehow survived the war. The additions or repairs were of low quality, and there was always something that needed to be done to maintain or repair them, like using the truck to move a large boulder from a field, repairing a collapsed makeshift roof, or in one instance helping deliver a baby into this new, harsh world.
Information was a commodity as well, sometimes more precious than food. We learned that the winter dwindled attacks from raiders and there was a rumour that many of them left these lands and joined the “Oil Baron’s Army,” whatever that was. Nevertheless, some roads were more dangerous than others, and the local knowledge we gathered probably saved us from having to fight for our lives on more than one occasion. In return for information, we would carry salutations from one place to another, or even take a person with us for a day or two. In those instances, I got to learn more about them as we drove and realised how ignorant these people were. Many of them were illiterate, and even for those who read, knowledge was not abundant anymore. People relied on stories, gossip, and religion to explain the world around them. I heard six different versions of the Catastrophe, from an alien race that came from the skies, to hordes of Demons climbing up from the pits of hell. All the stories had one thing in common, though: We, the Tarkanians, were the bad guys. Human or not, Tarakan was evil incarnate in the eyes of everyone we met.
As we approached the northwest side of the City of Towers the land changed. Roads merged with larger roads and travel became smoother, but the land was even more barren and damaged, and the ruins were abundant. We circumvented a destroyed city whose radiation level, even from afar, was registered by my vessel as life-threatening. We passed a broken Sky Bridge, and a field that still had remnants of a Sky Train’s tracks, half buried in the ground. We crossed under a Tarakan freeway, and as we did a SuperTruck zoomed past, driving at a speed that was almost ten times our own. It warmed my heart and gave me hope. Here we were, getting closer to the world I had left behind.
By the time I saw the silhouettes of the high towers it was beginning to get a little warmer. It was the most beautiful sight, and it made me whoop and cheer. Trevil looked at me as if he was seeing me for the first time, but it was obvious that he was also happy to finally see our destination.
For a moment, perhaps my first in this world, I was filled with hope that everything would turn out all right.
I was dead wrong.
Chapter 20
Mannes
All space shuttles were initially engineering crafts that were used to build the hub and were later modified to take passengers on leisure cruises. Most of the hardware and tools were stripped away and the inside was completely refurbished, of course, but it still felt familiar to Mannes. The pilot seats were sealed off by a wall and a hatch but they were still there, as opposed to the newest models, which forewent any human influence whatsoever.
There were plenty of seats available. Mannes chose the one facing the viewing window and made sure his belongings were stashed securely. “My name is Norma,” a voice came up on his open channel, “and I am your AI pilot today.” Norma began explaining security protocols and safety measures. Mannes had always thought that it was an idiotic notion. If something went wrong in space to the point you had to do something yourself and not rely on the shuttle’s artificial pilot, you were as good as dead, it was that simple. He hushed the annoying speech on his channel but it just switched to the shuttle’s speakers. Well . . . at least his mind was noise free.
Mannes kept himself busy complying with the various tests and actions needed to be done prior to the detachment from the hub, including attaching the bulky space helmet, which always made him feel claustrophobic, all the while trying to justify to himself his foolhardy actions in the waiting room.
Sure, there was a chance he would not be discovered. After all, he and that annoying family were heading to the same resort and they would arrive almost at the same gate. A small misunderstanding, a glitch in the system, no harm no foul . . . or there could be an investigation. Questions would be asked. He would be tested again, and his secret might be betrayed by his own microfacial gestures. That is if Daichi was not being hauled right now into the interrogation room . . .
Mannes shook his head inside his helmet. Five years. Five fucking years of trying to outmanoeuvre the most complex, intelligent, and sophisticated mind in the history of mankind. What would they do to him if they found out what he’d done? What would be the punishment for such an act of treason? Tarakan did not have the death penalty, of course, but the punishment would be severe and would affect not only himself . . .
If he got out of this mess and back to Earth, Mannes swore to himself that he was going to quit. He’d just tell Professor Vitor that he was out. He wouldn’t do this anymore. He would let the world run itself and concentrate on the important things, like Deborah, and maybe mending things with his wife.
“We are about to detach from the space hub, please do not be alarmed by the slight tremors.”
He wouldn’t have to betray his team. He wouldn’t have to rat. They were all brilliant and capable, but without his leadership the project would just fall apart. Let Vitor find another fool for his alarmist theories.
“We are now detaching from the space hub in three . . . two . . . one . . .”
The shuttle shuddered as the clasps holding it to the hub opened and it drifted away i
nto space while the hub continued its spin around the Earth. Soon after, the engines came online and the shuttle began aligning itself for the slingshot manoeuvre towards the moon, using Earth’s gravitational pull to gain momentum.
Earth came into view, closer than ever. He could see the cloud mass around the southern hemisphere. He could also see the countless satellites floating in space. Most of it was military-grade stuff, some openly displaying weapons, others with hidden capabilities that were no less lethal. He’d heard someone claim at one of those boring office parties that there were now more weapons in space than on the surface of the planet, but that felt like an exaggeration.
The shuttle course took him underneath most of the debris and close enough to the Emirates space hub for him to see it from one of the windows. Mannes knew the shuttles were scanned and that weapons were locked on them, ready to open fire at the slightest provocation.
Once past the Emirates space hub, the shuttle fired its second engine and gained speed. He had one last glimpse of the Tarakan space hub in the distance before the shuttle was flung out of orbit. A large screen showed a live feed of Earth receding behind them, together with various information regarding their destination, time of arrival, gates, and such. Three hundred eighty-four thousand kilometres. It would take a little more than two days to get there and a few more hours to slow down into the docking area.
Mannes unfastened the helmet and secured it on the wall. Then, for the first time since he entered the shuttle, he relaxed into his seat and retrieved his pad again. The problem he’d been called to fix on the moon resort was serious but not complex. Several hours of work, perhaps a day of cleaning up any collateral damage in billing or supply orders. The amount of hassle would depend on the team waiting for him. He spent longer than usual looking at their files, memorizing names and faces. They were all young, three men and two women. It was their first job in space, so they were all eager to please. They always are. Mannes guessed they were smart, but not too smart—the moon resort was not a job for a top of the class candidate.