The Disk Mirror Solution (Galaxia Mortem Book 1)

by Danielle Ste. Just

  Is something wrong with the jack? My tie-in jack bill is current, right?

  Affirmative. I have already confirmed you have no outstanding balance on your tie-in jack. I have queried a service mecha about the viability of this jack, and will receive an answer in approximately two seconds.

  Two seconds passed.

  The service mecha has confirmed that your jack is performing optimally.

  Redcholate sat up, almost doffing her cranium on the closet shelf. Is there something wrong with my socket?

  You must visit a mecha-doctor or hook booth for an analysis.

  She slid off the bed, opened the door, and ran into the bedroom, calling Chinya’s name. But Chinya wasn’t there, so she ran to the bathroom, activated the full-body hologram mirror—always kinda creepto looking at a full-size replica of herself standing in the center of the bathroom, but also kinda koo—and checked behind her hologram’s left ear. Her tie-in socket didn’t look red or inflamed. She touched behind her own left ear with hesitant fingers as her hologram mimicked her movements. The flesh around her socket felt like normal. She sighed in relief. So at least she wasn’t about to mort from an infected socket. But if it wasn’t working, how was she going to find Sylvey? Or get the intel to Watson once she found him?

  At the thought of failing Watson, a deep shuddering nausea rushed up from her toes. She turned just in time to yack her lumen right into the toilet.

  “Bullseye,” she croaked, wiping her mouth, trying to laugh. The toilet’s cleaning mecha emerged from its niche. As she watched it zip around the bowl, another wave of nausea made her yack again, all over the cleaning mecha.

  I don’t feel so good, she said. Do I have a virus?

  Her OS said, I can detect a virus in neither your cranial embed, nor your thumbnail implant, nor your eyescreen.

  So she had to visit a mecha-doctor for her nausea and headaches, stop at a hook booth for her tie-in socket failure, and then drag Sylvey out of his ‘cave pod. She stumbled to the entryway, pulled shoes on, and opened the door. Running errands. Meatsack style.

  Two mecha-doctors and one hook booth agreed that nothing was wrong with either Redcholate’s body or her tie-in socket. But they couldn’t get her socket to work despite their claims.

  With her still nonfunctional tie-in socket riding around in her cranium, she went to the dremacave where she’d opened the account for Sylvey. Over four hours’d passed since she’d hired him. So he must’ve gotten some intel. A twinge in her tum and a slight worsening of the pain in her cranium reinforced that idea.

  “Pod?” the mecha asked.

  “No, I’m here to see Sylvey. Pod 4487. There’s an exception on his account for me to interrupt him.” That’d been one big benefit from her spending several hundred creds on an open-ended account for him to forge intel on the Butcher. She could pull him out of the Underworld whenever she wanted.

  “Scan,” said the mecha. She held out her thumbnail and authorized access her bifile. “Pinging client,” the mecha said, “requesting his presence in the overworld.”

  “I’ll wait for him outside,” said Redcholate, backing out the door. It was bad manners to witness someone’s groany, moany unjacking.

  Three minutes, thirty-two seconds later, Sylvey emerged, blinking.

  “Heyeoo,” said Redcholate softly.

  He gawk-a-blocked her braincase. “Your hair. It’s… they’re dancing.”

  Her standard response’d usually be a high-level discussion of the licks she’d used, but this was no time to indulge. “How’s the search?”

  “I been making real progress.”

  She sighed in relief. Her headache receded. “That’s daebak.”

  He grinned a wry, kinda excited, kinda wistful grin. “I been having… it’s been… I love having unlimited under time. Not that I’m… not that I’m stalling.”

  “Let’s go get you something to eat,” said Redcholate, feeling a little uncomfy with her new role as boss. “You can jabber all about it.”

  They went to the COM:SAN, and for old times’ sake brought their sandwiches out to the back alley to eat, accompanied by the crashes and clangs of the recycling center.

  “I been gathering intel on all his atrocities,” said Sylvey.

  Redcholate winced. She needed real intel. Not general intel she could’ve just ordered from Twiney’s Chostim Shop herself. She knew what her stupo cranium would think of Sylvey’s lack of progress, and braced herself for a redoubling of the pain. But when it came, it was way worse than double. It felt like her cranial embed was trying to wrench free of her braincase. She dropped her half-eaten sandwich and groaned, clutching her temples.

  “You all right? You gonna yack again?”

  “No,” she croaked. “But I need more intel than that.”

  “Course you do. I just gotta get the base, then I build layer by layer. Each layer makes the next one sturdier. That’s my style. A pyramid of intel.”

  She nodded. At this logical answer, her headache lessened. “But you have to hurry. The client’s desperate.”

  “I can’t go too fast. I gotta be slow and low.”

  At the words slow and low, Redcholate’s braincase throbbed again. She needed to get him to cogik her desperation.

  Or bribe him.

  “If you get me the intel in twenty-four hours,” she said, “I’ll set you up with an unlimited dremacave account for a year.” Year! she shouted at herself. I wanted to say month. If she paid for a year of ‘caving, it’d take all Watson’s 25,000, plus almost every cred Redcholate’d saved over the last three years. When she tried to correct herself, pain shot from the top of her cranium all the way down to her tailbone.

  Sylvey dropped his own sandwich. It tumbled onto the alleyway beside her own. “A… a year?”

  She tried to shake her head, but the pain increased exponentially. What was she doing, agreeing to give away all her creds? As the millis ticked by and she didn’t say anything, the pain lessened. Relief flooded her body. Suddenly, no amount of creds seemed worth suffering this much pain. She’d give everything she owned away. Anything to make the pain stop.

  “But twenty-four hours?” Sylvey said. “My pyramid won’t be very sturdy. It might fall over and crush me.”

  “It’s K,” she whispered, trying not to move her head. “It’ll be daebak. Please.”

  He jumped to his feet. “I’ll do it. For a year of free podding.”

  She gasped in relief as her headache entirely receded. Tears filled her eyecubes. “Thank you.”

  “I’ll get us new sandwiches.” He scooped up their dropped ones and hurried back to the COM:SAN.

  Redcholate cradled her braincase in her hands. She didn’t yen how she felt about bribing Sylvey. But all was fair in love and intel.

  Chapter 10

  Variegor

  Date: 2412

  Since it didn’t matter what she did, since bad things happened no matter how hard she tried, Armintor adopted a new fatalism. She didn’t seek out Dil or Josie, but she stopped avoiding them. If they attacked her again, she’d decided she’d fight to the death. She’d stab their eyes out with her fingernails. She’d kick the sides of their knees to shatter the joints. She didn’t become careless at her job, but she no longer agonized about becoming as efficient as possible. They’d never let her transfer to the university. That had been a foolish dream. If an Alpha came at her with an agony stick, she’d grab it and hit them back. Even if it cost her life.

  Dil and Josie seemed to sense something. Although they continued making malicious comments, they stopped meeting her gaze. They didn’t even retaliate for Armintor stepping on Dil’s hand in the dark.

  Armintor continued to visit the Beta library. It became her only solace. People couldn’t be trusted. But she could trust books. They could never betray her. She read everything. Computer Science. Science. Mathematics. Economics. Medical texts. If she couldn’t ever visit the university, she could at least pretend she was attending one.

 
One evening a few months later, Armintor was reading and nibbling on a cracker in her bunk. Her book—Terraforming Basics, a new acquisition by the Beta library—was only a hundred years out of date.

  A babble arose near the door. A strong, resonant voice said, “Don’t accompany me. I’ll walk through myself.”

  Dil and Josie scrambled from their bunks. An older Beta from the next stack over nudged Armintor in the ribs. “Stand up, sub-damaged. An Alpha’s coming.”

  As Armintor slid from her bunk, Josie snorted. “You’ve got cracker crumbs all over yourself.”

  Armintor took a swipe at her coveralls, but stumbled when Dil shoved her against the three-stack.

  Dil raised her arm to hit Armintor. “You’ll get us all in trouble.”

  Armintor forced herself not to shrink back. Bad things happened no matter what she did. Since it didn’t matter, she should fight back. She caught Dil’s arm mid-swing.

  At that moment the Alpha rounded the foot of their three-stack.

  Dil froze, palm halfway to Armintor’s cheek. Josie froze, a sneer still on her face. Armintor froze, gripping Dil’s arm.

  The Alpha looked them all up and down. “A thrilling tableau. But perhaps you should stand at attention.”

  More than a head shorter than Armintor, the Alpha wore her steel-grey hair cut close to her scalp. Her uniform was covered in shiny epaulettes, medals, stripes and embroidery. Her gait suggested the grace of a leopard or, conversely, a gazelle. She wore an agony stick at her waist.

  Armintor released Dil’s arm and straightened. She longed to brush away the rest of the crumbs, but didn’t dare move.

  After a long, tense moment, the woman turned to Dil and Josie. Armintor quickly swiped at the front of her coverall, then stood straight with her chin up. Something about the Alpha made her want to show her best side.

  The Alpha examined each of their bunks in turn. Josie’s top bunk was neatly made, its covers taut and wrinkle-free. The Alpha nodded once, presumably at the orderliness. The middle bunk, Armintor’s, was a wrinkled, cracker-strewn mess. Her book had landed cover-side down. The Alpha unholstered her agony stick. Armintor gasped and stumbled backward a few steps. But instead of shoving the agony stick into Armintor’s stomach, the Alpha used it to flip the book closed and then leaned close to read the title. Without comment she bent to inspect the bottom bunk. Though not quite as orderly as the top one, it was decorated with white plazstik wings surrounding the letter A that Dil had affixed to the foot of her bunk.

  The Alpha straightened. “Whose is this bunk?”

  Dil stepped forward, chest puffed. “Mine.”

  The Alpha lifted one brow. “What is the title of the book you’ve been reading?”

  Dil’s face fell into such despair that Armintor almost felt pity. “B-book? There’s no book in my bunk.”

  “Then clearly your bunk is not the one to which I’m referring.” The Alpha turned to face Armintor. “And as you are just as crumb-strewn as your bunk, I assume it is yours. Tell me why you are reading a book on terraforming. And such an outdated treatise as Terraforming Basics.”

  Again, she was being presented with a choice. She could just murmur something unintelligible. Or say she didn’t understand. But those tactics hadn’t saved her in the past. “I, ah…” She cleared her throat. “Well, it’s the most up to date book on the subject in the B-beta library.”

  The Alpha gave a crisp nod. “Logical answer. Tell me what you’ve gleaned. What are these basics the book posits?”

  Armintor’s breath felt short, as if the oxygen in the room were disappearing. “The f-first step is heating or cooling the planet.”

  “Go on.”

  “Um, then stabilizing the atmosphere, and reigniting the magnetosphere. But only,” she paused to gasp for breath, “if it’s missing. Then you have to introduce lifeforms.”

  “What lifeforms? Mitochondria?”

  Even as terrified as she was, Armintor almost laughed at the naïve question. “No. That word needs context, you couldn’t use it in this situation. Instead, use primary producers.”

  Silence fell, thick as a blanket. Dil and Josie stared at her with mouths agape. Their shock helped her realize what she’d done. She’d just said no to an Alpha. She’d just corrected an Alpha. And she was no Sikayla, able to brazen it out. She was still scared, uncertain Armintor. She stared at the agony stick in the Alpha’s hand, wondering if she’d only be tortured until she vomited, or if she’d be killed.

  “Interesting,” the Alpha said. She stared at Armintor with a wry expression. Caught by the woman’s piercing brown gaze, Armintor found she couldn’t look away.

  The Alpha stepped forward, nudged a crumb from Armintor’s shoulder with the agony stick. “Follow me.”

  Was she being culled right now? Armintor glanced around for help. Shock slackened Josie’s face, and an unrecognizable emotion distorted Dil’s. The other nearby Betas turned away.

  The Alpha prodded Armintor’s ribs. “Come.”

  She’d let her guard down. She’d been stupid enough to bring a library book to her bunk. She’d eaten forbidden food in bed. She’d been caught fighting. She’d dared to talk back to an Alpha. It had gotten her culled.

  They emerged from the barrack into warm night air. Since it didn’t matter what she did anymore, she asked a question. “Where are you taking me?”

  The Alpha halted, turned to her. She still held the agony stick, but at her side. “You’re an offworlder. A so-called plaguer.”

  Armintor nodded. “How’d you know?”

  “If you’d grown up here, you’d know what just happened.” The Alpha began to turn away.

  Again, Armintor dared to speak up. “What did happen?”

  The woman turned back, one eyebrow raised. “Think, child. Use your brain for something besides a paperweight. You’ve been chosen.”

  Armintor staggered and pressed her palm against the cool plazstik exterior of the barrack. She’d been chosen by an Alpha. She’d go live with an Alpha. With this Alpha. She had no idea what that really meant. All she did know was that her life would never be the same.

  “If you’re quite ready, child, follow me.”

  She followed the Alpha through the city, her senses on high alert. The air smelled sweet and almost spicy. Humidity made her skin tingle. Insect-hunting night birds swooped overhead, singing complicated trills. Alphas sauntered through the streets, singly or in groups. They had nothing to fear. And in that instant, neither did Armintor. But only because she was under this Alpha’s protection. If this Alpha decided to abandon her here after curfew, Armintor could be killed for anything. Or nothing.

  After a walk of almost fifteen minutes, the Alpha turned toward an elegant apartment building. Twin red plazstik towers rose up into the sky, warm lights sparking several windows. They rode an elevator to the top floor of the east tower. Armintor followed the Alpha down a corridor, watched her place her hand against the security pad beside a door. The pad dinged. The door opened.

  The Alpha gestured to the pad. “Press your palm here.”

  Armintor obeyed. The pad dinged again.

  “Now you can open the door too.” The Alpha smiled for the first time. It was a strange smile, guarded, a little grim, and condescending. Yet it somehow made Armintor feel secure. No. She shouldn’t feel secure. Couldn’t. She could never trust anyone.

  The Alpha led her inside and gestured to a closed door. “There’s your room. Go sleep.”

  “But…”

  “Yes?”

  “What’s your name?”

  The Alpha put her head back and laughed almost noiselessly. “No one’s asked me that in decades. No one’s needed to. Everyone knows me. And yet, you do not. The question is good for my ego. My name, child, is Twomanrie Ohetto. You may address me as Twomanrie. Now, go to sleep. We’ll start in the morning.”

  Start what? But she couldn’t ask. She’d already dared too much. Twomanrie had laughed at her boldness once, but there was no tellin
g how she would react to boldness dared twice.

  Armintor scurried into the bedroom and shut the door softly. The room held a bed, an empty bookcase, and a long, wide window. She stepped to the window and looked out over Varie City. From here, she could almost believe there were no Alphas, no Betas. No misery.

  If she’d been born on Variegor, she’d already know what she’d be expected to do tomorrow. But that excuse wouldn’t work. It never worked with Alphas. If Twomanrie Ohetto wasn’t happy with her performance, she’d die.

  She pressed her forehead against the cool plazstik of the window. A visceral longing for the simple kindness of human touch made her keen softly. She hadn’t been hugged since her father died. She’d never hugged Sikayla. Now it was too late.

  A long time passed before she crawled under the covers of her new bed.

  Chapter 11

  Bituminous Tarsi

  Date: 2422

  Twenty-four hours passed, and Sylvey didn’t ping.

  Redcholate barely had the mojo to reprog her holobeads. This was the first day of Bird Week version 4.0, which usually’d thrill her but now felt ulto-unimportant. So she chose an easy one: the ladybirds of Timmon 5. Sky blue needle-thin plumage radiating out in a puff, each with a tiny pink micropuff at the tip.

  With her still nonfunctional tie-in socket riding around in her cranium, she went back to the dremacave where she’d opened the account for Sylvey.

  “Pod?” the mecha asked.

  “No, I’m here to see Sylvey. Pod 4487. There’s an exception on his account for me to interrupt him.”

  The mecha said, “There is no one with the name Sylvey in pod 4487.”

  An ominous new twinge developed behind her left eyecube. “What, did he change pods?”

  “There is no one with the name Sylvey in this facility.”

  Redcholate took a step back, and peered into the dim, cavernous room as if it could tell her all its secrets. “He left?”

  “I…” and in an utterly bizzo occurrence, the mecha paused. “I have no record of Sylvey departing this facility. I am checking my progging for errors.”