by Carme Torras
The pavement, which is covered in bits of glass and scrap mental, perhaps left over from accidents, contrasts with the lustrous constructions that rise up on either side of it. The majority don’t have entrances at street level, and others, the most dilapidated ones, have bricked-up doors. For a moment, the suspicion that they may not be able to get into CraftER from the ground level worries her, but remembering the other day’s visit restores her confidence; she’s one hundred percent sure that the aero’car flew down to the ground and that Leo greeted them there, on the ground floor. It must be because the most powerful companies have made the street into their own private parking lot whereas the others have had to move theirs upstairs.
All of a sudden, an aero’car flying lower than normal makes her leap backward, letting go of Xis’ arm, who keeps walking unperturbed. The pilot slows down, perhaps due to Celia’s brusque movement or perhaps because it is simply intrigued to see two people in the road. Celia is convinced they’re observing them despite the fact that she can’t see inside the vehicle. She hurries over to her friend to tell her about it and is surprised to find she’s not aware of anything having happened.
“Which one? That one? It got close to us and you let go of me? Did you want me to get hurt or something?”
“Please, Xis, it was a reflex … of course I didn’t want you to get hurt.”
“But you saw it and you didn’t tell me. ROBix would have warned me … instead of abandoning me.” She starts whimpering.
“What are you talking about? Abandon you!” She doesn’t understand why Xis’ reaction is so over the top. “I let you go because it made me jump, that’s all.”
“That’s horrible: you see danger coming and you leave me on my own. Why did you want me to come? So you could use me as a shield? Let’s go back right now!” She’s getting all worked up.
“Please, Xis, calm down.” She tries to take her arm, but her friend pulls away. “If I hadn’t told you just now you wouldn’t have even known an aero’car got so close to us. I could get upset too and start shouting: It’s impossible for you not to have seen it, you’re lying!” This performance is actually pretty convincing. “But I accept that we’re different, that it makes me jump but you don’t even notice it. And who’s saying it was dangerous? It wasn’t dangerous at all. The best thing to have done was just ignore it and keep moving forward, like you did.” At least she’s managed to calm her down and make her listen.
“Now you’re trying to flatter my circuits so we can go to CraftER, right? You always have to get your own way.”
“Not at all. I really think that. Can’t you see that I was born a century ago and I’m not made for life in today’s world? It’s logical that you would act more appropriately.”
Convincing her was easier than she thought. Although Xis did spend the rest of the journey gripping her arm so hard it was almost numb.
Just as she imagined, the enormous parking lot is spread out like a rug before the endless facade, where, as they walk along, they find ever more openings on ground level. They’re all identical. She’ll have to give up on the idea of finding the one from the other day and risk trying her luck with a random one. They’ve already passed about a dozen when they decide to try one that’s in an open area with no aero’cars parked nearby. That way there’ll be less chance of being seen.
She takes advantage of explaining the strategy to Xis to liberate her captive arm and, a few minutes later, she’s putting her still sore hand into the cavity next to the door. Today the voice doesn’t take her by surprise: “Identified as Leo-1.” It works!
They stand side by side and try to go through together, but an invisible barrier stops them in their tracks. It’s not as firm as a wall, it’s more like a membrane that, when it touches them, saps their energy. The panic brought on by feeling trapped dissipates when they step backward and, what a relief, they don’t find anything stopping them. They try again in case their synchronization wasn’t good enough, but the same membrane spits them out again, and this time a voice booms “you must go through one by one.”
She tries to convince Xis that, to check if the code works, she’ll go through once on her own. She’ll just go in and come right back out again, she promises, Xis won’t even notice she’s gone. Celia’s afraid her friend will go off on her like before and refuse to split up but, luckily, she is so keen to enter that she accepts the promise with no argument.
It feels strange to go through the opening so easily, but the shock comes when she tries to go back. She can’t. The membrane from before has appeared behind her and is draining her energy. She tries to find a solution in what she can see around her, while at the same time avoiding looking at Xis, so as not to worry her. A corridor just like the one from the other day stretches out in front of her, and she can make out a series of openings on either side of it. She really is a fool. Of course each one must have a corresponding cavity inside the building and, yes, hers is right next to her. She puts her hand in and “Identified as Leo-1” rings out like a blessing before she heads back outside.
Encouraged by her success, she puts her hand back in and lets Xis through the opening. Both of them have a protected identity, the system should be incapable of telling their chips apart. And, precisely, it doesn’t distinguish one from the other and her friend smiles at her from the other side. She’s taken a risk: now she needs the system not to have saved any record of “her” just having come in and allow her to open the entrance again from outside. Just imagining her friend imprisoned and being unable to help her sends a shiver down her spine and makes her still numb hand smash into the side of the cavity. Now it does hurt, she’s bleeding and everything, but the only thing she’s worried about is whether the wound might distort the code. She dries it off the best she can to hide it and, hesitantly, puts her hand into the cavity. “Identified as Leo-1.” Celestial music, once again.
She crosses without any difficulty and is met with Xis’ serene expression, unaware of the risk she’s just taken. She’s certainly not going to tell her about it. The corridor is as silent as ever, and they move along pressed up against the wall so they can take refuge in one of the openings if someone comes along. Celia wants to get to the ramps from the other day and go up to the eighth floor, Leo’s. It’s easy to convince Xis that, although she’s not entirely sure where her mother is, it will be easier to spot her from high up, and at the same time they will be less exposed.
They must have come at just the right time of day, because they don’t see anyone the whole way there. They’re up at the top and the view hasn’t changed much: on the side they’re on, there’s the same series of openings as ever, which, as they’ve discovered, open onto the platforms where the aero’cars are kept, like pine nuts inside the giant pinecone; and, on the other side of the central gallery, a line of doors. She’d give anything to know which one was Leo’s. They crouch down next to an opening, looking out for any kind of movement and, surprisingly, it seems like everyone’s been waiting for them to arrive in order to start the show: the door farthest from them opens up as if by magic without letting anyone through, while from the opposite side of the space a great clamor of voices and footsteps announces the arrival of a whole army of people. They both try to hide at exactly the same time, but they can’t find anywhere to go, and Celia has the brilliant idea of going through the opening and watching the show from a safe hiding place. She’s already had plenty of practice putting her hand in them as many times as necessary.
These portholes that allow you to spy on everything with a low risk of being discovered are fantastic. They remind her of her mother’s ring, and squeezing it in her pocket makes her feel safer. Behind her, one sole aero’car nestled into the platform has turned the space into a closed, almost welcoming, area. They’ve positioned themselves on either side of the aperture and stretch their necks out toward each other in order to see out of it. Just as they suspected, a whole load of people are filing past them, and, suddenly, Xis starts jiggling around
uncontrollably and softly squealing: “my mom,” “my mom.” Xis’ mother isn’t exactly how she’d imagined, but it isn’t much of a stretch to put her in those dark glasses from the other day. Although she’s smiling at her conversational partner, she still comes across to Celia as unfriendly, and gives her bad vibes. As usual, she’s getting in the way and distracting her from her search for Leo. She returns her gaze to the door they’re coming in through and is frozen in place by what she sees. Over there, it’s definitely him, he’s not talking to anyone and he’s looking down at the floor. She longs to go out there and make him look up, talk to him, ask him to show her where he works, but she can’t … She would like to at least be able to hold on to Xis, show him to her and tell her it’s him, but she can’t do that either. She feels like an idiot just standing here, useless, not daring to do one thing or the other.
She doesn’t have to feel like that for long because right away alarm bells start ringing inside her head: a man and woman are coming toward them. With some difficulty she manages to push Xis down on the ground and get them both to huddle up behind the aero’car, when the metallic voice starts booming and the two strangers cross the threshold. Without exchanging a word, the woman gets into the device and it starts up. The shock is tremendous. For no reason at all Celia had supposed the man would pilot the machine, but now she can see that’s not right, and she is hit by a worrying suspicion: maybe the pilot is a ROB and it’s been observing them the whole time. The man has gotten in too and she’s still wondering how she could possibly have neglected to think of this when a powerful shaking alerts her to their immediate danger. Frightened, she grabs Xis and drags her over to take shelter by the opening, just in time to see the huge machine fly away, and an enormous hole, which this time is not solid at all, opens up before their eyes.
The spectacle is so magnificent and unusual that the girls feel drawn to the edge of the platform in order to take it all in better. The lattice of tensors and moorings that had been holding the aero’car in place serves as a railing for this improvised balcony. They watch the ship get farther and farther away, majestic, until it is lost among all the others, swallowed up in that highly organized collective movement. When they look down it’s hard for their eyes to adjust to the brightness of the facade, but little by little the different levels of platforms, with or without vehicles, start to emerge in a kind of giant screen of light and shadow. Celia is entranced, but her friend’s cries bring her back in an instant:
“I’m going to fall, I’m going to fall!” Xis’ hands grip the pole that separates them from the abyss, turning her knuckles white.
“Calm down, Xis, don’t look.” She gently takes hold of her from behind and makes her turn around. “It’s not that different than what you see every day from the aero’bus that takes us to school.”
“But there’s no protection here! I can see there’s nothing, nothing”—she whimpers, terrified, stretching her arms out as if they too were part of the horror. “I want ROBix right now. I want to go back.”
“Okay, Okay.”
She pushes her friend toward the opening and, after checking there’s no one on the other side, Celia puts her hand in the cavity. She’s so anxious to hear that soothing voice that the machine’s silence feels even longer than usual. And longer still. Shaking now, she puts her hand back in. Nothing. The system has stopped working, it’s like it’s disconnected, dead. She moves over to touch the opening and, when she comes up against that transparent membrane, more solid than ever, a gnawing feeling starts in her stomach. Could it be possible that it can only be activated when there’s an aero’car parked here? She’s really messed up this time.
She wants to hid it from Xis, make her believe that her mother will walk past again in a moment, that it’ll be nice to wait for her, but her friend has already discovered the way is barred and turns to her with fear written all over her face:
“Open it, open it! I want to get out.” She strikes the membrane with both hands, beside herself. “I want ROBix. It’ll know what to do. I need to talk to it …”
“Calm down. We’re not in any danger. We’ll just wait here quietly until another aero’car parks and we’ll get out. We could be out really soon.”
“We’ll never get out! You’re from another century, you have no idea how anything works.” She suddenly switches from rage to inconsolable sobbing. “How could I have let myself listen to you?”
Any desire to fight back disappears when she sees Xis curl up in a corner with her legs pulled up against her chest and her arms wrapped all the way around herself. So helpless that compassion more than anger is inspired in Celia.
“Stay calm,” she whispers, huddling up next to her. “Nothing bad is going to happen. We can have a good time telling each other stories while we wait. I’d rather get out without them seeing us”—the words “Identified as Leo-1” are still ringing inside her head and she wouldn’t want to cause the bioengineer any problems—“but if you don’t feel well …”
Her only reply is two unseeing eyes. Celia won’t get anything out of talking to her, and she feels too tired to make more of an effort than that. It’ll be better for both of them if she gets comfortable and tries to relax, as it could be a long wait.
23
The first person to notice the girls’ disappearance is Lu, because when she goes to pick Celia up from school the SEEKer can’t find her. Today, unusually, she’s decided to go there herself. ROBul said she should, since the girl got so angry that morning when she found out they wouldn’t be going to CraftER. As she’s turned up without telling anyone and she’s unaware of how the place normally is at this time, she’s not immediately worried, and trusts that Celia will appear within a few minutes to get on the school aero’bus, like she does every day. When the bus comes, however, and the teacher confirms that Xis is missing, too, she can find no comforting thoughts in which to take refuge. Her daughter, missing! And now what? Which procedures will she have to follow? What will she tell her friends … they’ll think it was her fault; thank goodness it hasn’t happened only to her and that famous doctor’s daughter has disappeared too.
Lu listens as the teacher relays the situation to Sus Cal’Vin, who can’t believe what the teacher is telling her. She stubbornly repeats that it’s impossible and they should conduct a proper search. They’ve caught her when she’s about to go into a meeting so she can’t deal with the situation right now, and it’s the school’s problem anyway, not hers. Of course, she demands to be kept up to date at all times, and if they need any information about her daughter they can ask her friend Fi. This is the last thing Lu needed, putting their shared friend in the middle.
For now, Lu and the teacher alert the POLis and follow the early developments from the school. In the initial phase, the missing girls’ images are disseminated to every optical sensor in a radius proportional to the time that’s passed, in concentric waves that get progressively farther out. When any sign of detection is produced, the images are shown to the complainants so their validity can be confirmed or denied. One, two, three images: Xis in the middle of the road, Celia next to a wall, both of them walking arm in arm along the pavement. Confirmed, it’s them. Together and alone. They left of their own volition then, so the school is not responsible.
The teacher washes his hands of the situation, and Lu continues to follow any leads from inside her aero’car, helped by ROBul and ROBbie, ready to go and pick the girls up from wherever is necessary. The epicenter of the search waves is now focused on their last known location, in the street near the school. Next image: Celia, scared, watching a ship come closer to them. What if they’ve been attacked and the next photo shows them on the ground, horribly injured, what will she do? ROBul, always attentive, calms her down: she won’t have to do anything, the POLis will take responsibility for calling an aero’ambulance. But that won’t be necessary, because just then they see them walking along arm in arm once again. They decide to follow their path step-by-step and, with each i
mage, they are getting closer and closer to CraftER.
Stationary before the luminous facade, they’re waiting for a new photo to show them where to go. In vain. The clues stop here, the POLis informs them, and when they ask for an explanation, they are told that it doesn’t have access to any images taken inside businesses; in order to see them, they will have to request the corresponding permits. They can’t believe they haven’t realized until now, the girls must have gone into CraftER. It’s totally logical, ROBul states as he initiates the authorization process: Celia woke up thinking she would go there, and she’s gone! But Lu makes him shut up: ROB logic, no daughter would think to disobey her mother; someone must have forced her. Maybe that Leo. Otherwise, how could they have gotten inside?
She can’t decide what the next step should be. She would prefer to see the recordings before intervening, but she doesn’t know how long it might take. The courageous solution, now that she thinks of it, would be to contact Leo directly, her friends will reproach her for it if she doesn’t; the problem is that she’s not sure if she should ask him for help or threaten him. Who knows, he might have kidnapped them to suck out their brains. She’ll really be putting her foot in it if she gets it wrong.
After all this she’ll end up bald before her time. She’s got to calm down, by any means necessary. Didn’t her beautician ban her from getting stressed? So someone else should manage this. Just as Dr. Cal’Vin delegated to Fi, she will pass the responsibility on, too … not to her friend, she doesn’t trust her, but to a professional. ROBul will find one. These CraftER people are really mean-spirited not letting it in. She’s sure it would sort this out.