“If they’re calling the Cloud participants…. Baby? Will you get the EVA video feeds from Arenas Two, Three, and Four? Quickly, please?”
Chloe smeared away the remnants of her tears and did as instructed.
Tablet screens one, two, and three briefly flickered, then began streaming live footage from within the EVA docks on the Arenas. All three cameras broadcasted a similar image: hundreds of clones dressing for deployment.
“Ha! I knew it! I knew it!” Armada declared, hopping and pointing at the wall of tablets. “Cain’s bringing ‘em down!”
He pounced on Chloe, held her face in his hands, and repeatedly kissed her.
“See? I told you! We needed a distraction to get Euclid back. Oh, man, this is good!”
“Baby?” she peeped, as he began typing a letter to his stranded brother. “I have the stats on PIN CUSHION.”
“Lay it on me!” he gleefully commanded.
“Okay, to begin with, this program was created about four months ago. Right around the time you and I escaped.”
“Okay.”
“Second, there’s exactly one thousand subfiles, and they each contain around the same amount of data.”
“All righty.”
“Third, the folder titles are alphanumerical and sequential.”
Armada stopped typing and focused on Chloe’s words.
“You wanna know what number four is?” she teased.
“Yes!”
“The folder titles are sequestered into two groupings. Nine hundred of them have titles that end with a capital A. The other hundred have alphanumerical titles that end with a capital I.”
Armada leapt from his seat, shouting and clapping.
“Yes! Yes! Chloe! Chloe, Chloe, Chloe, baby!”
He grabbed her by the wrists and pulled her out of the desk chair.
“What?” she giggled as they stepped up on the mattress.
“Don’t you get it?” he hollered, jumping back and forth between their beds.
“Get what?”
“Augh! Chloe! Think! A thousand folders, all the same size, sequential file numbers … ACTIVE and IN-active?”
“Eee!” she squealed, bouncing slightly. “Armada! We’ve located the Cloud missiles! We know where Cain hid the program!”
“Woo-hoo!” they bellowed in unison, and, “Thank you, wherever you are! Thank you! Thank you!”
Armada abruptly stopped jumping on the bed and his smile disappeared.
“What’s wrong, baby?” she happily asked, still bouncing.
“They’re gonna begin arriving in hours,” he factually stated, frowning. “They’ll be sent up here for holding ‘til time to board the Clouds. And as soon as Euclid steps foot on the Aerie, retinal scanners will single him out.”
Armada stepped off the mattress and slowly strode to the refrigerator.
“How can we bypass the cameras?” she asked, partially winded, before collapsing on the bed. “Can’t you simply delete his file?”
Her frustrated husband picked up the bottle of wine resting on top of the refrigerator.
“I can’t just up and delete his creation records. It’s not as simple as that,” he grumbled as he poured himself a glass. “Everyone who enters the SUBOS receives an assigned retinal scan identification number. If you’re not recognized, you get detained. Remember, Euclid should have died days ago. He’s not supposed to exist. Sooner or later his retinas and RFID chip will expose him, whether or not his file exists.”
Chloe sat on the bed and listened as Armada continued to point out the negatives.
“We need to get to the kitchen and stock up on our food supply. I’d imagine Wycz and White are about to flood this place. We’ve got to secure enough food and water to sustain us for several days.”
Chloe’s heart sank as she watched Armada gulp down the first goblet of wine, then pour himself another.
“We’ll have to isolate ourselves for at least twenty-four hours … maybe thirty-six, until there’s enough people to blend in with.”
She could feel her heart beating and the veins in her temples throbbing.
“How do we hide? What’s to keep the Engenechem staff out of our room?” she meekly asked.
Armada guzzled the second glass of wine and sauntered to the door. While scrutinizing the handle and card-reading mechanism, Chloe silently waddled across the room to join him.
“Well, since you’re the electronics expert, I’ll leave it up to you to devise a method of cutting the power to the lock, but in a manner where you and I can still go in and out. And ensure against Cain’s newcomers from gaining access.”
“Don’t you think you should notify Euclid about what’s going on before going to the kitchen? He needs to get suited up and prepared to move to the Halo. Right?”
***
“I’m on the Aerie, waiting for Halo One to complete its descent,” said Dr. White, speaking into the microphone embedded within his helmet. “It’s getting close; I think another fifteen minutes or so and we’ll begin our ascension.”
“Excellent,” Dr. Wyczthack stated loudly, listening on the phone’s speaker. “What about the Arenas and such? Have they been cleared yet?”
“Eden and the Arks will take longer than we originally anticipated, but I can assure you that they’ll be vacated by tomorrow evening. The second half from Arena Four is on CARBEL One. When it touches down, all Evan subjects will have been accounted for.”
“Good, good. What’s the deck looking like?”
“Well, Mr. Huddleston’s a man to be taken at his word. There’s nine quadracles blocking traffic down here, so when he said we’d have ourselves a bit of a logjam, he wasn’t kidding. Two are in the CARBEL right now, and all five SUBOS elevators are swapping rockets for personnel.”
“That’s what I want to hear! Clouds One through Seven will come out of orbit within six hours. Riggs and his teams will set the tether cables as soon as they arrive.”
As he listened to Dr. Wyczthack, Dr. White observed CARBEL One gently come to a rest on the Aerie with a dense thud. The vibrations resonated throughout the concrete and steel structure.
“All right, good to know. Cain, CARBEL One just touched down and they’re filing out already. I’ll just plan to see you on Nine in about an hour.”
“Fine. See you then.”
Dr. White disconnected the Aerie Communications Console comm-link from his suit, picked up his satchel and the case containing the hard drives, and walked into the path of the oncoming clones. As he passed through the disembarking brood, very few of his synthetic subjects looked him directly in the eye.
While approaching the CARBEL One platform, he noticed a red flashing light on the front panel of the deck-mounted POG. Standing next to the POG was the Aerie load master and one of the Arena Four clones. Dr. White stepped on the elevator, secured his tether strap to an eyelet in the deck, and connected a POG comm-link to the coupler in his suit. Within seconds, the transponder in his helmet registered with the POG and a tiny green LED bulb began blinking steadily.
“Good evening, sir. May I please see your CARBEL access authorization codes?” the load master politely requested.
“Here you go,” Dr. White replied, handing off his cards.
“What have we here?” he then inquired, pointing at the lone clone.
“Thank you, sir,” said the man after scanning Dr. White’s authorization cards. “Well, something just doesn’t add up with this one.”
The man motioned for the clone to join him and Dr. White.
“We loaded the second half of the remaining personnel from Arena Four, and after everybody secured their tether straps and comm-links, only his transponder and RFID chip failed to synchronize with the POG.”
The clone approached Dr. White and the man as he elaborated, “He’s receiving oxygen, but due to the identification snag, the POG won’t engage the communication aspect of his comm-link.”
Dr. White gave the clone a swift look over and focused on his
face.
“I think it’s showing signs of ‘end of cycle.’ Whenever we tried speaking to him he’d just stare at us and wouldn’t say a word.”
Dr. White inspected the coupler in the clone’s suit, as well as the connector to the POG comm-link. Both appeared to be functioning properly and the POG showed no signs of operations failure. He detached his line, reached over and disconnected the clone, then hooked himself to the same comm-link. In no time at all, the POG synchronized with Dr. White’s transponder and the green light started flickering.
“See?” the man announced. “Something’s wrong with this one.”
Just when Dr. White placed his fingers on his suit’s coupler, he suddenly noticed an irregularity of the clone’s EVA suit: there were no exterior nameplates.
Dr. White reconnected both his and the clone’s suit couplers to the POG comm-link and glared at the clone.
“Identity credentials and primary and secondary applications,” he loudly inquired, resting his hands on his hips.
“Sir, I don’t think he understands you,” the man commented.
The clone stood silently before them, shifting his focus between the two.
“Oh no, he understands me just fine,” Dr. White said grinning widely, extended his arm, and tapped his index finger at the location for the missing nameplate.
“Identity credentials and primary and secondary applications,” Dr. White repeated gruffly, but received no response.
“I agree with your statement that there’s a problem with this one, and it’s right here, look…,” he ordered, poking the clone aggressively in his chest, “directly below the location for the identification plate. The missing identification plate. That’s problem number one.”
The clone’s eyes widened as fear and panic set in.
“We have yet an additional problem,” Dr. White continued, “Because not only is there an absence of an identification plate, but this uniform should have an A4 on it, signifying that he was stationed on Arena Four. But seeing as how I can plainly make out an A1 … I have to wonder how that’s possible.”
Euclid was trapped.
The load master hesitated to speak for a moment, but finally said “Sir, if you like, I’m more than happy to personally escort this individual to the Nursery.”
“Oh, no. No, no, no,” Dr. White dramatically replied. “That won’t be necessary. This fine specimen … is coming with me to Cloud Nine.”
As he spoke, a devilish smile spread across his thin lips.
“And I’m sure Dr. Wyczthack will want to interview our walking anomaly, personally.”
“Yes, sir.”
Although unable to hear every word in the men’s conversation, Euclid felt his stomach tighten as beads of sweat began to appear on his forehead.
The man disconnected himself from the POG, walked a few paces to the edge of the platform, and dismounted. He immediately waved his hand in front of a scanner on the CARBEL One control panel and typed in his security credentials and authorization for the elevator to depart. Euclid watched the man as he communicated with the Aerie personnel. The red warning lights started flashing, and soon thereafter, the deck slowly ascended from its base.
Dr. White carefully scooted the faraday case with his foot to the side of the POG. He pushed it up against the frame of the oxygen generator and stuck his briefcase in between, unfastened his tether strap, and reconnected it to one of the eyelets in front of the POG.
Euclid monitored Dr. White from several feet away as he unfolded the generator’s keyboard. He then glanced at Euclid and the blinking red light at the port of his comm-link. After a few keystrokes, the LED bulb stopped flashing and switched to a steady green.
“Can you hear me now?” a voice resonated throughout Euclid’s helmet.
“Yes, sir,” he plainly answered.
“You and I have a lengthy journey ahead of us,” Dr. White casually stated, folding the keyboard back in place. “And Dr. Wyczthack is bound to have a plethora of questions he’ll need answers to, so … lets you and I first conduct our part of the conversation. Identification credentials and primary and secondary applications.”
Dr. White stepped toward his copassenger.
“Evan Euclid Four. Aeronautics and metallurgy.”
“A Euclid?” Dr. White amazedly repeated. “There are no more Euclid series specimens. You do know they’re all dead, don’t you?”
Euclid’s demeanor suddenly transitioned from one of fear and despair to stifled rage. He elected to stare at his captor rather than answer.
“So, you’ve been hiding on Arena One this entire time? Knowing you won’t….”
“You’re not going to get away with this!” Euclid forcefully interjected.
“Away with what?”
“You know. Don’t play your mind games with me. We know about the missiles.”
“Oh … that’s what you’re referring to. I can’t begin to explain to you the myriad of projects and plans we’ve laid out for the benefit of mankind and survival of our dying planet. And you couldn’t possibly imagine or understand the unfortunate necessity for….”
“Spare me your pathetic and perverted justifications,” Euclid again interrupted, and with both hands pushed Dr. White with considerable force.
The men began to experience a small degree of weightlessness and Dr. White was momentarily airborne. The tether strap kept him from falling completely backwards.
“Stay away from me!” Dr. White demanded as Euclid knelt down and unclipped his tether strap.
Even though he outweighed Euclid and stood nearly a foot taller, the aged doctor lacked the agility, overall body strength, and familiarity of functioning in zero gravity to entangle himself in a row with the clone.
In an act of fear and haste, Dr. White unfastened his own tether strap and slowly backed away from Euclid.
“You ejected my brothers!” Euclid angrily shouted.
Dr. White took tiny baby steps and looked about the deck. Other than the POG, there was nothing and no one to aid the lone scientist.
“You must understand, Euclid, even I have my orders and instructions, and must be held accountable by those more powerful than me. They, they … he, I mean, him, Dr. Wyczthack … he ordered Riggs to….”
“Shut up, White!” Euclid growled and lunged with all his might, knocking him off his feet.
“Help! Help!” Dr. White screamed. “I’m being….”
Before he could finish his plea for assistance, Euclid disconnected the doctor’s comm-link at the base of the POG.
Euclid stood defiantly in front of Dr. White as he struggled to erect himself. Not knowing exactly what he should do with his flailing prisoner, Euclid cautiously approached Dr. White. Like a caged animal, the demented scientist backed away, all the while searching desperately for any means of escape. He peered off into the dark, cold vacuum of space and at the Earth’s surface more than twenty miles below.
When he neared the end of the POG, Euclid disconnected the comm-link from his own suit. Now both men had no means of communicating and would likely die from carbon dioxide poisoning before reaching the Halo and the safety of Cloud Nine.
Euclid turned his head down to the right and spied Dr. White’s faraday briefcase.
“Stay away from that!” Dr. White roared, vigorously pointing at Euclid. “Don’t touch it!”
Although his words were muffled and muted, Euclid knew that Dr. White didn’t want him inspecting the contents of the box.
The interior of Dr. White’s helmet was already showing signs of oxygen depletion. His rapid, shallow breathing caused ice crystals to begin forming on the outermost edges of his visor.
Euclid picked up the case and held it in his arms.
“I said leave that alone!” Dr. White shrieked and lurched toward Euclid.
Euclid easily out maneuvered his attacker by stepping to the side, and, by using the man’s inertia against himself, pushed Dr. White past him.
With the doctor sprawled
out several feet away, Euclid was safe and free to examine the faraday briefcase. He unclasped the three locks and lifted the lid.
Dr. White sat on the deck and watched Euclid as he removed one of the ten hard drives.
Euclid held the sandwich-sized drive up close to his visor to get a better look. Without a word, he twisted to face Dr. White and extended his arm. He suddenly coiled back and flung the hard drive over the side of the elevator deck.
“No!” Dr. White screamed. “Stop! You don’t know what you’re doing!”
Euclid removed a second hard drive from the case, showed it off to the deranged physician, and threw it, too, into the void.
Like a little girl having her favorite doll pulled apart, Dr. White helplessly squealed, “Stop it! Stop it!”
The maniacal scientist managed to regain his footing and slowly pursued Euclid as he removed the data cartridges, one by one, and hurled them from the deck.
“Augh!” Euclid faintly heard the man wheezily wail as he pitched the hard drives.
He could barely see through the thick layer of condensation on the interior of Dr. White’s visor, but heard him shouting, begging, coughing, and crying.
After throwing the tenth data cartridge overboard, Euclid showed the empty case to Dr. White before tossing it to him.
Delirious from overexertion, unbridled emotions, and lack of fresh oxygen, Dr. White strained to control his balance, maintain focus, and keep his eyes open. Euclid watched as the doctor’s torso heaved upwards in desperation for fresh, filtered air.
The two men shivered from having disconnected their suits from the POG. Not only were they losing precious oxygen and cut off from all communication, the POG was the sole power source for the EVA suit’s radiant heat.
Dr. White staggered to the oxygen generator’s frame, laid his hand against the side, and gazed down at the Earth. Euclid momentarily stared up at the Halo and the collection of orbital stations.
The isolated clone turned his attention to Dr. White and approached him stealthily from behind. He quickly and quietly wrapped his arms around the doctor’s waist, pulled him in close, and jumped out into the darkness.
CHAPTER 39
OBSTACLES
Xn Page 40