Stepping Stones (Founding of the Federation Short Stories Book 1)

by Chris Hechtl

  There were two people, lab techs, working. But they weren't anyone he was familiar with. When one bent over and looked his way he felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise up. The look was brief, but it bothered him. So did the suspicious bulge under the man's white smock.

  He realized security was on to him. There was no other explanation; they were on to him and watching him. He remembered a guy, Dano who'd been in trouble two, no three years ago. They said he'd collapsed at work and just disappeared. A week later the news said he'd died from a mugging. No way was he going out that way. There was no telling what torture they'd put him through before they cleaned up his loose end.

  When he saw the Cosmos kid come in, he thought he had the niggling of an idea. If he set up another distraction, it would cover his tracks long enough for him to get out of the building. Once he was outside, he could … no, he'd have to leave his vehicle behind. He'd figure something out. Get into the crowds … a fire! Yes, if the fire department was called he'd get out. They'd do a mandatory evacuation and move everyone back from the building since it had hazardous materials inside.

  But the sprinklers? How should he deal with them? He frowned thoughtfully as he went through the motions of his usual routine.

  He skipped meeting Rory to go to the basement. Inside he found the water main and the valve to the sprinkler system. It was the twenty-second century, and they still used the things. Water was still the cheapest way to put out a fire. He shut the valve, then yanked the cords to the servo motor. The computer would notice the power was out to the servo but would call maintenance to look into it. Maintenance would have other things on its mind in a moment.

  He next went upstairs to the lab. The lab was filled with chemicals and machinery. It was a simple thing to rig an electrical line to generate a spark; he'd done it as a kid. He set it up near a beaker of alcohol in the blind spot in the room. The massive L-shaped computer server tower blocked that corner from the view of the other three cameras in the room.

  “You there, do hurry and finish up. We have a lot of work … Oh, you're not the computer repair man,”

  Doctor Catheter said, coming up behind him.

  “Um, no, just cleaning here, Doc,” Bob said, knocking the beaker over in his haste. The glass shattered on contact with the ground, spraying their shoes and the area with alcohol.

  “Clumsy oaf! Look what you've done!” Doctor Catheter thundered, waving to the mess and shattered glass. He reached for Bob so Bob put his hand up instinctively. Bob was holding the wires; when the doctor's hand touched the bare wires, he connected the circuit. The high voltage wiring had been set up to run power to the lab equipment that ran the gene processors. He jerked as the live wire sent 1,000 volts of electricity coursing through his body and into the alcohol at his feet. The current was enough to set the fumes of the alcohol ablaze instantly.

  Bob jerked back as he felt the tingle and then screamed in horror as flames licked up his own legs. Doctor Catheter fell dead at his feet, eyes bulging, heart stopped by the current.

  Bob had other things on his mind as he tried to bat the fire out. But he just made it worse. He threw a beaker of clear liquid on it, thinking it was water but it only made the fire burn brighter. In desperation he tried to pull his burning clothes off. He started to cough as the smoke filled the room.

  The computer sensed the fire, noted the hot spot and shut off the ventilation in the room to starve the room of oxygen. It turned the fans on to suck the smoke out to allow the people inside a chance to breath and escape. But due to the fire its thermal sensors couldn't see Bob so it followed protocol and locked the seemingly empty room. Bob got to the doors as they locked and pounded on them in vain.

  The sprinklers attempted to come on but failed. He looked up, then down. He tried to bat the fire out, but the pain and smoke became too much. He passed out as the fire roared around him, consuming him, Doctor Catheter's body, and millions of credits of lab equipment.

 

  “What the devil?” Bill asked as the fire alarm went off. The lighting changed and bright strobes started to go off with a piercing wail of a klaxon. “We've got to get out of here,” he said to Kate.

  “Probably another blasted drill,” Kate grumbled as she got off her stool. “Doctor Catheter's going to be livid at the interruption. I thought he got them to stop doing uninterrupted drills?” She asked.

  They started to walk down the designated evacuation route when the heat from the fire above weakened the supports holding the heavy equipment up. They finally bent and then failed. The ceiling caved in ahead of them, raining burning debris everywhere.

  “Holy crap, it really is a fire!” Kate said, wide eyed as Bill held onto Gizmo.

  “Come on then!” Bill said, pulling her along to safety. The power cut out after a moment and only the strobes kept going. Smoke filled the room as the HVAC stopped sucking air for a moment. They coughed, hands over their mouths as they mingled with other people to get out.

  Gizmo could see despite the blinding flashes of light. He tugged on Bill's shirt, trying to guide him. The crowd panicked at the doors, bottle-necking the security check point.

  “Uh, uh,” Gizmo said, pulling Bill.

  “What is it, Giz?” Bill asked, looking down and coughing. Gizmo pointed to the right. He turned and tried to see through the smoke. “Okay, follow me, Kate! Gizmo has an idea on how to get out,” he called. He reached out behind him and felt her hand grab onto his gratefully. He ran his thumb over her soft skin as he moved onward.

  They met Rory and Doctor Casper with a door open after two turns and a long stretch of hallway. “Here, people!” Bill called out, guiding others to the free exit. “Get them out,” he said to Kate, guiding her outside with the doctor.

  “I've got this, kid; you get outside,” Rory said as the fire sirens outside went off.

  “Oh hell,” Doctor Casper said, looking up to see fire and rescue aircraft enroute to the building.

 

  When they got out into the parking lot, they were guided by people to keep moving to clear the area for the rescue vehicles. Bill looked back to see aircraft spraying water into the windows while others rescued people off the roof. Why anyone would go up there … he shook his head.

  They got pushed to the outskirts of the group as it thinned out to make room for ground vehicles to arrive. Everyone wanted to watch the fire. Many people were using their cell phones to take pictures and video.

  A reporter showed up on the scene with a camera woman who started to snap photos. “Hey kid, you know what's happening?” he asked as the woman snapped a photo of Bill and Kate together. Bill was blinded; the strobe on the camera was worse than the ones in the building.

  The bright strobe in Gizmo's face was too much. He'd put up with enough strobes on the way out of the hated lab. “Bright light!” he complained, burrowing into Bill's shirt and shivering.

  “Wowa! What the hell is that?” the guy asked, eyes wide. “What is that thing?”

  “He's a Mogwi.”

  “And he can talk?” the guy asked incredulously. Bill saw his ID badge. It said Fudderman.

  “Yes. He's got human level intelligence. They all do,” Bill said.

  “You don't say,” Fudderman said, eyes wide. Another reporter team nearby overheard while doing a sound test and came over. “Kid, what's the story?”

  “We don't know. A fire obviously. I was in for another round of intelligence testing with Gizmo here,” Bill said. “Then the alarms went off. We were on our way out when the floor above collapsed in front of us cutting us off.”

  “Scary stuff, kid,” the reporter said.

  “Yeah,” Bill said as Kate anxiously looked around. She could see a sooty Marla looking befuddled.

  “So, then what?”

  “We got stuck behind a security bottleneck. Gizmo was half blinded like we were by the strobes, but he managed to guide us through the smoke to another exit. We called to others to follow before they were trapped.
”

  “Smart thinkin’, kid. How'd he guide you?”

  “He pointed. Or he'd tug left or right on my shirt,” Bill said.

  “Say, what happened to your arm and stuff?” Fudderman asked.

  “Oh this? Vehicle accident,” Bill replied as more reporters showed up.

  “Say, I know you, you're that Cosmos kid. Bill, right?” one of the celebrity reporters said coming on scene.

  “Yeah, that's me,” Bill admitted.

  “How come you're not wet, kid?” Fudderman asked.

  “The sprinklers didn't come on,” Bill replied just as Kate stepped on his good foot. “Um, that is, I don't know why,” he said weakly.

  “Huh. Fudderman eyed him for a long moment, then Kate. He saw Marla coming determinedly over to cut them off so he shook his head. “Nice talkin’ with ya, kid. Take care of yourself,” he said. “Your guy here is a stand-up character,” he said to Kate.

  “Yeah. That he is. Both of them,” Kate said softly.

 

  Bill, Gizmo, and Kate ended up back at his house just ahead of the feeding frenzy of reporters. The reporters weren't getting anything out of the director of the facility, so they had turned on the staff. The staff had been rounded up by a grim Mister Foster but somehow the trio had escaped his net.

  The interview with Bill went viral on the net and then hit the mainstream news. People were shocked by Biogen. Reporters descended on anyone they knew had one of the creatures, and more information came to light, including that they changed into green skinned monsters.

  Biogen's public relations tried to spin the story and refocus it onto the sabotage, but the more they tried the more the media dug into it thinking they had something to hide. Two days later a public inquiry was called for as the fire marshals picked through the wreckage of the building.

  Some people wanted the Mogwi and other animals to be put down. Some wanted Gizmo and his ilk to be integrated into a monkey tribe in a zoo preserve. Bill sided with the people who pointed out that it wouldn't help Gizmo or the other Mogwi. They were all domesticated; they didn't know how to live in the wild or with each other.

  Protestors broke into satellite offices of Biogen as well as one of their smaller labs just ahead of the authorities who showed up with search warrants. Other genetic companies were raided by the protestors.

  Computer records came to light as Biogen's stock took a nose dive. Richard Cosmos moaned but knew he was well past damage control; the best they could do was ride it out. Some of the other companies were descending like vultures. He tried to steer some of the sell-off to Lagroose industries genetics division. At least he knew there were some good people there.

  His son's actions put a positive light on the entire situation for the family. That was why he quietly told the Biogen board to get behind Bill's petition to get joint custody of Gizmo with Kate Beringer and have him as their ward.

  Kate seemed to be quite attached to Bill and vice versa, so at least one good thing came out of the entire debacle Richard thought. “Does this mean you're going to get back into the invention business, Dad?” Bill asked.

  “Perish the thought young man,” Richard said, shaking his head.

  “He'd better not,” Bill's mother said coming into the room. She kissed her husband on the cheek. “So, did you two kids set a date yet?”

  “Um,” Bill blushed.

  Kate smiled. “We're working on it. We already have the best man,” she said, stroking Gizmo's head. The Mogwi purred and trilled happily.

  The End

  Real Estate

  “Lagroose Industries wasn't above playing the long game, the deep investment. Take for instance Venus,” Professor Wilks said, eying the class. He enjoyed the varying subjects he taught, all introduction to history, but the twentieth century period leading up to the First A.I. War was his favorite, which was why he was allowed to concentrate there. Some of the other history professors were starting to consider his view of that time period skewed, but he ignored such mutterings from lesser beings. Or so they said.

  The truth was he had his nose too deep in the history of the time period to really care. His best grad student, Olivia, now Ensign Raynor and head of Antigua's G-3 schools for the navy, had handed him tons of files to go over. It was all fascinating reading. He was learning only one step ahead of his students from time to time.

  “We don't know a lot of what happened on Earth; that perspective is gone due to the events of the A.I. War, or at least, a clean copy,” the professor said, eying the class. “But we do know quite a bit from those people who moved off the planet during that time period and eventually emigrated to other star systems. And of course, the A.I. from that time period kept rather copious files and logs,” he said smiling to one of the A.I. auditing his class. She nodded once but didn't reply.

  “Ahem, as I was saying, Lagroose Industries committed to terraforming Venus some time prior to the unfortunate collapse of the project. They spent years in planning, and more years moving Aten and belt asteroids and comets onto collision courses with the planet. The first impacted in the year 2132. The intended purpose was not to induce a greenhouse gas climate shift as on Mars, but to move the planet.”

  “That was step one of their plan. By the time the tenth rock was enroute, other megacorporations, such as Little Green Men, Mars Tek, Mars University, and the Venus Coalition, became involved in various ways. LGM and Mars Tek came up with a nanotech method of shading the planet. That eliminated the need for giant planet-sized shades in the planet's Lagrangian point.”

  “Mars University brought with it the host of data on the Mars terraforming impacts to use as a comparison model to help in shaping the movement of the planet. They also brought vast servers to the party in order to help simulate various processes, allowing the teams to find the best and most cost effective path.”

  “Other megacorporations played a lesser known role. Gia Synergy traded their data on weather modeling and climate shift with Mars U. Pavilion Industries and Radick Industries both flirted with the terraforming project, mostly from the genetic engineering aspect of the project. It is hotly debated by historians, given the references we found in the Encyclopedia Galactica, as to their intended purpose in the endeavor. To this day I do not know which side of the conversation is correct, that the companies wanted the publicity, access to their competition's genetic technology, or had other motives. I will allow you to be your own judge of that.”

  He paused to use a finger to move the scroll bar to view the next segment of his lecture, then nodded to himself before he looked up.

  “It should be noted, LGM and Mars Tek were cofounded by Luigi Irons who also had a hand in the founding of the Martian University and Lagroose Industries itself. Each of the companies got together and formed a collective to coordinate their efforts, with the payoff being that they would divide the spoils, in this case real estate on the planet, once it was habitable. But not everything goes according to plan. Here are a selection of bits we've been able to recover from the files on that time period. You can see my notes and the notes of others in the comment bookmarks attached to each segment. The first we're attributing to a segmented recording from 2143. Unfortunately, the speakers are unknown though we have some tentative clues that they might, and I must stress this a lot, might, be related to the Irons family,” the professor stated slyly. There was a soft chuckle from a few people in the audience as they made the connections he wanted.

  He wasn't certain about how to deal with the Irons connection. Obviously it was there, but how much of it was true? Much of it … but the family had done its best to put it behind them for some reason. He wasn't certain as to why.

  ~V~

  March 2143

  “And you want in on that when they hit Venus?”

  “No, that's not going to happen. The rocks are already in motion. The first hit a decade ago, remember? No, pass.” There were several hundred rocks of many sizes lined up to hit Venus over the next fifty years. Eac
h was on a course to hit the planet to help move it from its current orbit outward just as the ones that had hit Mars had been carefully plotted out to move the planet's orbit further inward, closer to the sun. There was quite the scandal from people on Earth who were terrified of a mistake that would put Venus and Earth on a collision course. Since Mars hadn't hit Earth, they didn't have much to worry about in Ellen's opinion.

  Mars was shaping up to be a nice place to live. Not quite Earth, at least not yet, but getting there. When it did get to the loose water stage, things would happen quickly. Another two decades and the terraforming board assured the public that it would happen. When it did their home world would turn into a gorgeous paradise.

  ~V~

  “We can only conclude from the musings attached to the file that someone had entered the conversation as some part of a journal or diary entry. It does fit with what information we have from other sources including the Encyclopedia Galactica,” Professor Wilks stated to the class, leaning forward over his podium.

  “We also have a video of sorts that is tied to the project. Apparently there was some sort of romance going on between one of Lagroose's junior engineers and the lead planetologist on the project, Doctor Chloe Schnader. Here is a clip from the movie. I do have to emphasize the nature of this program is suspect since it came from a fictional representation of real world events. How much of it is real is unknown.”

  ~V~

  Chloe did her best to keep her lunch of tuna flavored paste down while she exited the lock. She looked around, shouldering her carryon, the only thing she'd been allowed to bring with her. Her equipment was either packed away in shipping crates or still back on Earth.

  “Miss Schnader?” a voice asked from her left.

  She turned, startled then had to slow herself as her body started to spin. “Damn it.”

  “Easy there. First time in null G I take it?”

  “No, but it feels like it. Will I ever get the hang of it?” she demanded. She gulped, then did her best not to swallow her gum. The gum was keeping her juices flowing and her mind off the Dramamine and nausea coursing through her system. “And it's Doctor.”