Though she was excited by every bug sting and muddy land mass they crossed, the team members born free from the Reps were not. It even appeared that the novelty of the situation had worn off for Edo and Pruda.
Because she had not been keeping up with her physical conditioning since the explosion and her escape, she was not able to move at the same pace as Edo and the rest of his team. As she began to fall behind, Edo slowed to keep pace with her. Noticeably, whenever Edo dropped back to walk with her, one of the other team members would also drop back. Roxal was not sure what they thought she would do, but she did not comment. Whatever they needed to do to feel comfortable with going on this mission was fine with her. She was just happy to be given the chance.
Finally, they came to a clearing. It was manmade, and in the middle of it was a building. Not nearly as large as the compound where she was now living, but large enough to hold several dozen people.
“What is this?” Roxal asked as they walked towards the building.
“This is your test,” Pruda answered.
Roxal decided to remain silent until they were inside. She did not want to do anything to get Edo’s team angry with her. She knew it was a big deal that they were even there. Their presence did not signal any trust in her loyalty to the Resistors or in her ability to link with Lauren while awake. Rather it was probably a testament to their bond with Edo.
They walked up to the building’s door, and instead of there being a biolock, there was a keypad. Nawad approached it and was about the press the first button in the code when Pruda spoke up.
“Is the access code not classified?”
Roxal looked at her, trying to figure out why she was asking this question, then she felt everyone’s eyes turn to her.
At that point it occurred to her. Pruda was pointing out that Roxal did not have clearance to watch what was happening. Pointing out, yet again, that she was not one of them. Roxal accepted the rebuffing as best she could. I can take this, for Edo’s sake, she thought.
Roxal saw Edo opening his mouth to say something, but she spoke up and cut him off. “You are correct, Pruda. Thank you for reminding us,” she said as she turned her back.
Edo came over and put his arm around her shoulders and squeezed. She reached over and touched his hand without saying anything. When she heard the sound of the door opening, she and Edo turned back around. Now, instead of thinking about Pruda, Roxal began focusing on the building they were about to enter.
As the door opened, dust appeared to float down and into the outside air, following the air currents. Everyone, including Edo, was on alert with weapons raised. This was the first time, since their old compound, Roxal had seen him in action. She stood behind everyone, allowing them to do what they did.
Looking into the door, it was pitch black. Civort walked through the door and into the darkness first while everyone covered him. Several moments after he entered the dark, the opening was flooded with light. Once he returned, Civort gave a signal Roxal figured meant everything was good because the rest of the team followed, but still with weapons raised. Edo touched her arm as he entered. He made the hand signal sign for silence and then followed the rest of the team. Weaponless, Roxal followed as instructed.
Walking through the small building Roxal noticed there was dust and dirt everywhere and that some of the lights flickered. It seemed as if this building had been empty for some time. Finally, they came to a door with another keypad. Roxal turned her back without being asked and waited until she heard the sound of the door opening before turning back around.
As they entered the room, she noticed pieces of computer equipment and chairs also covered in dust. Roxal assumed this was their destination because now Civort began giving orders. “Pruda, Nawad, Tano, you three sweep the building and make sure we are the only people in here. Gerig, you and I will stand watch at the door. Edo, Roxal, it is time.”
Pruda, Nawad, and Tano left as instructed. Gerig and Civort took position inside the room on either side of the open door. Instead of looking straight out, they each stood at an angle so that they would not be immediately seen if someone walked by. Their weapons were drawn and they were no longer focused on anything going on in the room. Edo brought Roxal over to the console.
“Cover your nose and mouth,” Edo said. Then he buried his nose and mouth in the crook of his left arm and began brushing the dust from the equipment.
The dust particles remained in the air after he had finished brushing them away. Both Roxal and Edo coughed a little as they sat. Edo tapped the upper left corner of a darkened display surface and the corner blinked to life. Shortly thereafter, the entire surface awakened. It was no longer dark but rather covered with buttons and other writing.
Edo pressed several buttons without any hesitation. “Roxal, it is time for you to connect with Lauren. Once you do, I will let you know what we need to do.”
“Okay,” Roxal replied and sat back in the chair. She laid her head against the headrest and closed her eyes.
She called upon the required emotions, and soon she was looking at Lauren, who was already in the dreamscape, which looked different this time. Instead of the black void that normally greeted Roxal when she linked with awake Lauren, this time it was in a pristine white room with floor to ceiling mirrors.
“Hello, Lauren,” Roxal greeted the woman who was sitting in her purple and green chair that seemed out of place in this immaculate room.
Lauren turned around in her chair and replied, “Hello, Roxal. I’m glad you made it.”
“What is this place?” Roxal asked, motioning to the room surrounding them.
“This is where I am right now. It’s a lab. I’m being watched during today’s test. And apparently it’s on my mine. Where are you? And what’ll we be doing today?”
As Roxal walked towards her, a console and a chair similar to the chair and console in the real world room she was currently in appeared near Lauren, and not the normal table and chair Roxal usually conjured. My nerves must be affecting my concentration also, Roxal thought as she walked over to take a seat. She sat with the console positioned between her and Lauren.
“We are in an abandoned facility of some kind. I am not sure what we will be doing exactly, but as I speak to you, Edo is activating a control console. I would assume we will be utilizing it to program something.”
“You are correct, Roxal,” Edo spoke in the real world. “This facility once belonged to the Reps, but annums ago, the Resistors captured it. The problem is before they left, the Reps locked the computer system such that it could not be used except by them. We are here to break into the system, eliminate their lock, and install our own.”
Roxal relayed Edo’s message to Lauren, who then repeated it to the people in her reality who were listening. There was a period of silence before Lauren spoke again.
“We’re more than willing to help, but Ray, our programmer, is concerned about what we’ll be able to do. I mean, none of us have any idea what your technology is like. How much help can we really be?”
Roxal answered this without relaying the message to Edo. “You can help, because most of the technological advancements on Earth are inspired by us. And it only stands to reason that we used our own technology as a basis for the creation of yours. Therefore any knowledge of Earth technology should give you at least a rudimentary understanding of Treborian technology.”
A breathy chuckle escaped Lauren, who shook her head from side to side slowly and then repeated the message for the people listening in her world.
“All right, Roxal, we’re as ready as we can be to try.”
Roxal told Edo everyone was ready. Then Edo asked the first question, “Ask the programmer what he needs to know from me?" The message was relayed from Edo to Roxal, from Roxal to Lauren, and from Lauren to whomever she was talking with. The response followed the same path, but in reverse. The programmer Lauren was speaking with told her something, which Lauren then told Roxal, which Roxal then told Edo.
“Here on Earth, to access the BIOS, you have to press a designated key just after POST but before the operating system starts to load. The key you have to press is usually either a function key or the ESC key. They’re always located across the top of the keyboard. Just reboot and start pressing keys one at a time,” Lauren instructed.
“We will let you know when we have accessed it. This may take some time,” Roxal replied after repeating the instructions from Lauren to Edo.
In her world, everything was still quiet as Edo worked. Lauren and Roxal sat in silence in the sterile white room of the dreamscape, waiting for the next messages. Soon the women fell into a rhythm where they easily communicated back and forth between the two universes.
“It appears he has done it. It was the third key across the top. Edo says he is on a screen that he has never seen before. The terminal is no longer locked, but now he is being asked for the master password. He has no idea what the master password is nor what it could be.”
“Ray said he thought this may be a possibility. Okay, you’ll have to power down the system and access the motherboard. We need to reset the dip switches. This will hopefully clear out the master password on the BIOS.”
“Edo is removing panels now looking for the motherboard. Hopefully it is in this room and not in another location,” Roxal commented as she listened to Edo moving around.
While Edo was working, she heard more voices speaking in the real world. Pruda, Nawad, and Tano must have returned. It did not sound as if anything urgent was going on, so she worked to block the voices out. However, in their dreamscape, there suddenly appeared Edo and the other members of the raid team. Lauren stared at the new arrivals.
“Who are all of these people?” she asked Roxal.
“You know Edo. This is his raid team. They are with us now, making sure we remain safe. I need to focus so I can block them out,” Roxal replied.
Within the dreamscape, Roxal closed her eyes and tried to ignore them. As she focused, she could still hear them speaking in the real world, though she could not understand what they were saying. Then Lauren spoke, “She says they are part of a raid team.”
Roxal assumed she was talking to the people in her real world. This did not help.
“Could everyone please be quiet? I need to concentrate.” Roxal spoke in a raised voice.
After a few gruff grunts, the raid party members were silent. Not long after, she heard Edo call out and then relayed, “He found it.”
Edo’s assignment with his Earth Connection had been different from hers, but he was somewhat familiar with computer components. As a result, he found the dipswitches with ease. He reset the appropriate ones and then reinserted the motherboard back into its proper location. Edo then powered the terminal back on and waited. He pressed the third key on the top row and entered the BIOS menu again. This time it did not ask him for a password.
“He is in,” Roxal informed Lauren.
“Great, now, this is the tricky part. In the BIOS, he can change the boot order so that the operating system loads from another device. Did you happen to bring another drive or data storage device?”
“No, we do not have another data storage device.”
“Well, the only other thing we can think to do is try to break the operating system password, but that will take a lot of time.”
Roxal passed on Lauren’s message to Edo. Before he could respond Roxal heard a rumble of some sort. Suddenly following the rumble, she heard gunshots. “Roxal, we have to go. That was one of our security decoys. We need to leave now.”
As she listened to Edo talk, her console and chair abruptly disappeared in the dreamscape, and she fell to the floor. Next, the pristine white lab disappeared and the dark shapeless void returned. Only this time, a fog or haze of some sort seemed to be present.
“What’s going on, Roxal?” Lauren asked, looking around, surprised by the sudden change.
“I am not sure. Edo just told me we have to go. Keep coming here at our scheduled meeting times, and I will connect when I can. Goodbye.”
Roxal stood and closed her eyes to begin the exit countdown. When her exit appeared, she hurriedly utilized it to transition back into her reality. She opened her eyes in her real world to find Edo staring into her face.
“Are you okay? Can you leave?”
“Yes, I am—” A loud explosion interrupted what she was about to say. The entire room shook and dust and other particles fell all around her.
“We need to move. Now!” Civort commanded.
Edo helped Roxal stand. He was about to put his arm around her waist to help her when she stopped him.
“Edo, I am fine. I can keep up.”
“Good,” he replied, and motioned for her to follow him as he ran to the door, where Civort and the other raid members were standing with their weapons drawn.
“Sounds like our security decoys are taking fire,” Civort explained when Roxal and Edo caught up to him. “It sounds like the second one was just blown up. Whatever is attacking could be on the way inside for us. We are going out in order. Gerig and Pruda, you two are on point. Nawad, you and Edo will escort Roxal. Tano and I will bring up the rear. We are leaving and going for rendezvous location alpha. Move out.”
Gerig and Pruda each took quick peeks into the hallway with their weapons positioned and ready for use. They shot nothing, and had no shots fired at them, so they turned and signaled what Roxal assumed meant all clear. As they moved out of the room, she started to follow. However, Edo grabbed her arm and shook his head from side to side adamantly. Then he let go of her arms and pointed at her, grasped his hands together, and then pointed at Nawad and himself. She understood. She was to stick with the two of them.
Some time after Gerig and Pruda had left, Edo shoved a sizable rectangular box into her arms, raised his weapon, and approached the door with Nawad. They repeated the same quick peek motion then repeated the sign she assumed meant all clear. Next Edo waved for her to follow and walked out of the door. She stayed close to Edo and focused on the path, moving forward, gripping the rectangular box to her chest. Nawad walked behind her, she assumed. Roxal did not look back, too afraid to take her eyes off of Edo.
Finally, they made it back to the door through which they had entered. It had been propped open, and Roxal could see outside through the clearing and further into the wooded area through which they had traveled. Edo paused before going out, however. He was staring intently in one direction. While he waited, Roxal felt someone come up behind her and touch her shoulder. She started silently and turned quickly to see Nawad was there, holding a finger to her mouth, signaling for Roxal to remain silent.
Roxal nodded. Then Nawad touched Edo, who did not appear to start as Roxal had. He made eye contact and then made a series of hand signals Roxal did not understand. But Nawad seemingly did because she nodded curtly in acknowledgment and then stood in silence, watching the hallway behind them.
Everything was silent. There were no signs of movement outside or inside, so Roxal was unsure as to why they were not moving. Just as she was working up the courage to break the silence to chance whispering her questions into Edo’s ear, Tano and Civort joined them at the door. Edo acknowledged them then went back to staring out the door. Nawad, meanwhile, was communicating with the two newcomers using hand signals that they also seemed to understand.
Civort tapped Edo on the shoulder. When Edo turned, he held up his hand and began a countdown from five. At three, Nawad worked her arm through Roxal’s and whispered into her ear, “Hold on to that thing and stay with me.
”
By the time she was finished speaking, Edo burst out of the door, shooting his weapon into the trees. From seemingly nowhere, Pruda and Gerig jumped out of the woods and began shooting into the same area as Edo. Nawad pulled on her arm to get her attention. “Run,” she shouted and gave Roxal a bit of a shove.
Fear like Roxal had not felt since she escaped the compound gripped her. Thankfully though, she did not freeze. Instead, she did as commanded and ran without knowing where. She stayed behind Edo as she flew through the clearing, pausing only briefly to glance at what he was firing at. In the sky, just above the tree line, was a medium-sized flying object. This thing, Roxal realized, was shooting at Edo, Pruda, and Gerig as they shot at it.
Roxal could not tell how long she had stood watching, but soon Nawad was shoving her again. She again began running and entered the woods. Once inside, she just kept running, the sounds of the weapons fire still booming behind her.
CHAPTER 36
Roxal’s legs began to ache and her lungs burned, but she forced herself to continue running. The fact that she did not know where to go did nothing to stop her. She just knew she needed to run. Then something she did not see caught her foot and sent her tumbling to the ground. There she lay, on her side in the copper grass and underbrush, slightly confused.
She wanted to get up, but the lack of oxygen in her lungs made it hard to do more than just continue to lie on the ground. Since she could not do much else, she listened to determine if she could still hear the weapons fire. In the distance, there seemed to still be sounds of fighting. Then she heard something closer, the sound of the brush stirring. Unfamiliar with being out in the woods, she had no frame of reference for what the sound could be. Again, she struggled to get up off the ground in hopes of being prepared for whatever was moving towards her.
She managed to get up onto her elbows in time to see Nawad exit the trees and walk over to her.
The Heaviness of Knowing Page 25