H.A.L.F.: The Makers

by Natalie Wright

  “Thanks. That’s all I’m asking. See what you can do.” Since Sewell was amenable to his first request, Jack pushed for more. “And one more thing. Erika and Ian. Any chance you have a way I can communicate with them?”

  “It’s not like we have a cosmic telephone to ring up the greys whenever we feel like it.”

  Sewell made it sound ridiculous. But if the greys could fly a spaceship through interstellar space, it seemed likely to Jack that they had a way of receiving messages. Jack decided not to argue with Sewell. “I know it’s not like a telephone, but –”

  “I’d love to help you talk to your friends. But even the Makers have their limits. I’m sorry.”

  It was worth a try. Jack would have to find some other way to reach Erika.

  Soon they were away from the dusty air base and in the campus area of town. Sewell wove through the side streets and at last pulled up to a small well-kept mid-century bungalow-style home with a small covered porch.

  “Here we are,” Sewell announced.

  “Looks nice. For a student’s house, I mean.” For any house was what he really thought. It might have been small, but it was the most meticulously maintained, well-groomed house Jack had ever seen.

  “Anna is in graduate school. She’s attending the University of Arizona. Getting her master’s degree in biochemistry. And I forgot to mention. The Sturgises are quite wealthy. Not William Croft rich, but still. Money is not an issue for them.”

  “I see.” That began to explain how a student could afford such a nice place to live.

  Sewell got out of the car and motioned for Jack to come with him. Jack’s heart hammered away in his chest again. For some reason, he felt like he did on the first day in a new school. His hands were clammy and he was suddenly aware that he hadn’t shaved or changed his clothes in two weeks (though he had finally showered at Dr. Randall’s place). God, I look like a yeti. What is she going to think?

  Sewell was already on the porch and knocking on the door when Jack sauntered up behind him. The door opened after only a few seconds.

  “Mr. Sewell, how nice to see you again.” The voice was female but strong, fairly loud and in the mid-tones, not an overly high voice like some women have. Anna’s long blonde hair fell in a curtain on either side of her heart-shaped face as she reached out and hugged Sewell. “You look exactly the same as always. Exactly.”

  “Well, you know, nothing ever changes in our world. It’s all shuffling papers from pile to pile.”

  “Please, come in from the heat.”

  Jack followed behind Sewell, and within twenty paces they were in a small kitchen that opened to an eating area and a tiny living room with a beehive fireplace. The place looked like it was professionally decorated with expensive-looking Native American pots and artistic blown-glass art pieces placed neatly on the lighted shelves on either side of the fireplace. Everything had a place, and all of it looked like it was picked out at the same time and positioned with care. It wasn’t the hodgepodge of stuff gathered over many years and strewn about like most people’s houses.

  Anna blew a strand of soft, curling blonde hair out of her eyes. “I’m Anna.” She held out a thin, manicured hand to Jack.

  Anna’s eyes were the tranquil blue of a deep pool of water and set above cheekbones so high and chiseled they looked sculpted.

  Jack was struck speechless by Anna’s unexpected beauty. Her aunt Sturgis was so repugnant to Jack that he’d pictured her niece as a troll. And when Sewell had told Jack that Anna was getting an advanced degree in biochemistry, Jack envisioned a plain-looking thirty-something bookish woman. Anna couldn’t have been more than twenty-two, and she looked like she’d stepped off a magazine cover. Though she wore a simple T-shirt and cutoff blue jean shorts and flip-flops, somehow she exuded sophistication.

  Jack realized he was still holding her hand and had said nothing. “Oh, sorry, nice to meet you too. I’m Jack Wilson.” Crap, was I supposed to use that fake name?

  Anna softly laughed. “I know.” She took her hand from his. “I don’t know much about you, but at least I wanted to know the name of my new roommate.” She flashed Jack a smile that was symmetrical and filled with perfectly straight, perfectly white teeth.

  She either had some major cosmetic dentistry or she got very fortunate genes. Jack had suffered through two years of braces and his mouth never achieved half the flawlessness of Anna’s.

  While Commander Sturgis’ smile seemed as planned as a NASA mission, Anna’s smile came from her eyes. She may not be smiling long if she learns the truth about her aunt.

  “Well, Sewell was hush-hush about everything, of course. Top secret, blah, blah, blah.” Anna made a talking motion with her hand. “But I’ll worm the details out of you.”

  Sewell let out an uncomfortable chuckle coupled with a cough. “Now, Anna, don’t interrogate your houseguest.”

  Anna grabbed Sewell’s hand and planted a kiss on his cheek. Sewell’s face flushed as red as a fire truck. “Oh, don’t worry, Mr. Sewell. I was just kidding. Now why don’t you run along to do whatever it is you do all day. I’ve got to get my houseguest settled.” She dropped Sewell’s hand and looked Jack up and down. “And maybe do a little clothes shopping too.”

  Jack’s face and neck flushed.

  “Pushing me out the door. I see how it is.” Sewell smiled and gave Jack a nervous look as if to silently say, ‘Remember what I told you.’

  Anna walked Sewell to the door and shut it behind him. She padded softly back down the hall. By the time she reached the kitchen, her smile was gone. “Tell me everything. I’ve got to know what Croft is up to now.”

  10

  TEX

  Tex awoke with a blinding headache. He was glad that the lights were dim.

  He tried to rise and assumed that he was still restrained by telekinetic bindings. But the invisible ropes were gone. He easily sat up.

  The A.H.D.N.A. standard-issue drawstring pants and T-shirt were gone, replaced with a tunic and pants made of a fabric so light it was nearly nonexistent. The material was soft against his skin, and there was an almost imperceptible feeling of it moving.

  His head swam. I need to eat.

  Within seconds the door slid open and a row of lights along the perimeter of the ceiling flickered on. One of the Conexus beings glided in carrying a white plastic tray containing a cup and a brick of something.

  “Nourishment,” it thought to him.

  Tex grabbed the brick of food and greedily gulped it down. He swallowed the viscous liquid in the small plastic cup. The food was familiar to him, similar to the nourishment provided for him at A.H.D.N.A. But the Conexus food was more tasteless than he had thought possible.

  The creature had either mastered the art of closing its mind to him or its mind was completely silent. No thoughts were projected into his head. It watched him while he ate. This too did not bother Tex. His whole life he had been observed doing everything from rising in the morning to eating to relieving himself.

  The small brick of food did not satiate him. His stomach rumbled with hunger. “More,” he said out loud.

  The door opened again and the larger being that he had seen before he passed out strode toward him. She stood easily a foot taller than the rest of the Conexus.

  She moved around the table, examining him from every angle. “You will make the Conexus stronger,” she said.

  Tex had no intention of doing anything for the Conexus until he knew that Erika, Ian and Dr. Randall would be safe. He did not need to say this out loud. His thoughts were no longer private, his mind no longer his own.

  She moved gracefully and deliberately like a snake slithering across the sand in search of its prey. Her mouth was so close to his ear that her breath tickled his neck, causing it to prickle with goose bumps. “You will be one with the Conexus.”

  Heat wafted off her body, carrying her scent to Tex’s nostrils. It was a heady odor that smelled of peat and musk and a faint sweetness like an overripe piece o
f fruit. Her lips grazed his ear as she spoke, and his pulse quickened. A strange warmth spread through his loins. The hunger in his stomach was forgotten, replaced with another kind of longing.

  “You are part human, aren’t you? Capable of feeling in a way that the Conexus have been unable to experience since before the Age of Regina.”

  Her long, thin finger ran up his arm, sending a chill down his spine. She moved closer, her thighs now against his shins, her face inches from his.

  “I am the Regina,” she whispered in his ear. “And you shall soon know me as all Conexus know me. I am their leader.”

  Her scent was everywhere, her touch maddening.

  “I am their mother,” she said. Her lips hovered next to his ear.

  Tex wanted to enfold her in his arms.

  “Their god.”

  He moved his lips to find hers, but before he could kiss her, she pulled away from him, taking her warmth and heady aroma with her. Tex’s mind reeled as if waking from a trance.

  “Walk with me, 9. I will show you the world of the Conexus. I will show you my world.”

  Tex found himself on his feet and trailing behind her before he had formed the intention to do so. His legs were like noodles beneath him, unused to walking and made weak by the desire the Regina had created within him.

  The door slid open and Tex followed her into a dark hallway. The floor was lit on either side by a row of dim bluish-white lights.

  She walked so quickly that Tex had to nearly run to keep up. They moved down the corridor, turned left then right before the Regina opened a door with her mind. Tex had not noticed there was a door. It was dark and there was no handle or hinges.

  The door slid open and he followed her into another smaller and short hallway that opened to a large, cavernous room. Inside were row after row of planter boxes raised up from the floor on stone tables much like the one he had woken up on. Above each box was a bank of lights that hung from the ceiling, illuminating spindly dark green plants that looked like a cross between a tomato and a thistle. Also over each box was a metal ligature with multiple mechanical arms radiating from it. Some of the arms held thin, flexible hoses that sprayed the plants with a liquid while others picked off leaves or the purplish-red oblong fruits.

  There were dozens of Conexus milling about in the room the size of a football field. As the Regina passed through, she reached out her hands and the Conexus gently touched her fingertips as she walked by.

  As if there had been a dam around his mind that was now taken down, Conexus chatter filled his mind. It was a fluttering buzz like hearing thousands of people talking at once. But as the Regina glided about the food-production room, the chatter calmed itself to a pleasant group hum in perfect unison.

  The Regina did not speak to either Tex or the Conexus as she strode slowly around the room. She exited the way she had come in. The door slid closed behind them and they were once again in the dark corridor.

  Tex had so many questions that he wanted to ask. But when he tried to form an idea, it evaporated before he could create anything coherent.

  He followed behind her like an obedient dog. They turned to the right and she opened another door.

  This room was less cavernous though still quite large. The air was filled with the soft whirr of machines. There were large boxes formed of plastic with clear windows through which Tex could see a long, black plastic arm moving back and forth above a smooth metal plate. A thin filament of plastic shot out of the arm and onto the plate. He passed a box in which it appeared that a rounded, hollow structure the size of a small car was being created. In another smaller box, multiple arms worked away spinning out layer after layer to build up cups like the one that Tex had drunk from earlier that day.

  The entire room was filled with these 3D printing machines. He followed the Regina as she moved through the room, passing by box after box filled with machine-created objects. She moved silently through another doorway to the left and into a room which held a half dozen or so reclining chairs molded from a smooth almond-colored stone. A diminutive Conexus reclined in each chair, their eyes fixed forward as though entranced, staring into space.

  “What are they doing?” Tex asked.

  The Regina’s voice was soft and low. “Working.”

  Without warning, Tex’s mind was flooded with the busy chatter of the Conexus in the room. The sudden onslaught of activity in his brain made his stomach queasy.

  “Listen,” she thought to him. “Focus.”

  Tex tried to do as she said. It was difficult at first. Their thoughts were incoherent to him. Numbers and equations mixed with phrases or words. Directions given in number sequences. A pattern. Language.

  “They are speaking with the machines,” he said.

  The Regina had been several feet away from him, but in an instant she sidled up next to him, her lithe body next to his, her purple lips so near his ear. “More than speaking. Complete interface.” Even when speaking directly to his mind, her voice was a low, intoxicating hum. “You will achieve this, 9. You will know what it is like to be one with the machines. To know all that they know. Imagine it. All the knowledge of countless generations available to you instantaneously. You have only to ask a question and the answer will be known.”

  Tex had so many questions he wanted answers to. Where only minutes before his queries were like ethereal phantoms in his mind, they now flooded forth. “Where are we? How long have I been here? Why do –”

  “Come. I will show you more. All will be known. In time.”

  11

  JACK

  Jack stood in the doorway to Anna’s kitchen. Sewell’s price for getting Jack back home was to help her. But Anna Sturgis didn’t look like the kind of woman that needed Jack’s help. She held herself with the same air of confidence and authority that her aunt Sturgis had.

  Jack hadn’t met many girls at school that projected so much confidence. Except Erika. And though they were nothing alike, Anna and Erika had swagger in common.

  But she was a Sturgis. No matter how alluring she was, Jack didn’t trust her. He wanted to help her out about as much as he wanted to fight a honey badger. She’d asked him to tell her what he knew, but he stayed silent.

  “You’re the quiet type? Or maybe you think you need to keep whatever secrets you think you have?” Anna said. “You can trust me.”

  “Trust a Sturgis? Not on your life.”

  “Good point.” Anna opened a cupboard. “Coffee?”

  Did he want coffee? Hell yes, he wanted it. And some real food. But he felt like a traitor sitting in Commander Sturgis’ niece’s house, sipping coffee and chitchatting while Erika and Ian were God knew where and possibly in danger.

  Anna poured water into the coffee pot. “You do drink coffee, don’t you?”

  He wanted to say something witty but couldn’t come up with anything, so he nodded.

  Anna poured coffee into a mug that said ‘I Heart NY’ on the side. She handed it to Jack and poured herself a cup. She reached into the overhead cupboard and her shirt snaked up, revealing several inches of very toned abs. Jack forced his eyes away from her flesh though he wanted to see more.

  It was hard not to feel comfortable in Anna’s house. The buttery yellow walls and orangey-red Saltillo tiles created a warm cottage feel. Fresh flowers in spring colors spilled from a crystal vase on the table. Anna’s house was exactly the opposite of how A.H.D.N.A. looked and felt.

  Anna slapped a package of Hit cookies on the counter, ripped it open and held it out to Jack. “Cookie?”

  The story of Hansel and Gretel came to mind. Here he was in a cute little bungalow house with a woman who appeared sweet and nice. But it could be a façade, like the witch fattening up the kids. His traitorous stomach rumbled loudly. He took a cookie and ate it in one bite.

  Anna smiled again and took a cookie for herself. “You have no reason to trust me. I get that. From what I could worm out of Sewell, it sounds like you saw the worst possible side of my aun
t Lilly.”

  “That’s an understatement,” Jack said. His mouth was full of cookie.

  Anna held out the package again. This time he took two.

  “Look, I’m not going to apologize for my aunt or try to convince you of anything. Maybe what she did is wrong.”

  “Maybe?”

  “Or maybe, in the grand scheme of things, it’s not as bad as it seems.”

  “Like a friend of mine is fond of saying, there’s never a good reason to kill someone.”

  Anna showed no surprise at Jack’s reference to killing. “Your friend sounds like he views the world overly simplistically.”

  “She,” Jack corrected. Heat rose to his face. Anna didn’t know that she was speaking badly about the woman Jack loved, and he wasn’t about to tell her. He wanted to keep that information safe from the Sturgis clan.

  “I can see that I offended you. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. Look, I feel like we’re getting off on the wrong foot here. I’m not your enemy, Jack. And if we’re going to work together, you have to trust me.”

  “Um – no, I don’t.”

  Anna let out a loud, exasperated breath and looked him square in the eyes. “Okay, you don’t trust me. Fine. I’ll earn your trust. But we need to move forward, so how about I’ll give you some information then you give me some. Deal?”

  Jack wasn’t sure anymore where being appropriately wary ended and being paranoid began. Erika would likely have told Anna to pound salt. But Erika wasn’t a ‘plays well with others’ type. And she’s not here.

  Jack tried for a cool, nonchalant tone. “Sure. Whatever.”

  “Okay. I’ll start. My father, Robert A. Sturgis, is Commander Sturgis’ brother.”

  “That doesn’t count. I already knew that.”

  “I’m not finished. The A stands for Auguste, which was my grandfather’s name.”

  Jack rolled his eyes. “I thought you wanted to share relevant information not a genealogy lesson. Great, your grandpa’s name was Auguste. Mine’s name was Richard. Whatever.”