The Tau Ceti Transmutation (Amazon)

by Alex P. Berg

  “The sock drawer is this way.” Valerie put a tender hand to my elbow and guided me to a dresser that had popped out from the wall.

  I hesitated before diving in. “Um…there’s just socks in here, right? I’d feel awkward if I had to sift through any of your, you know…unmentionables.”

  “Relax, Mr. Weed. This drawer only holds socks, but even if it didn’t, I’d be perfectly alright with you searching through it. You’re here in a purely professional capacity…aren’t you?”

  I tried to keep a straight face. “Me? Of course I am. But please, call me Rich.”

  “Only if you call me Valerie. Formality is a two-way street.”

  I nodded and pressed a finger to the corner of the dresser drawer, which slid out at my touch. Inside, a cornucopia of patterns and fabrics greeted me: fuzzy wool, hand-crafted cotton argyle, and nylon hosiery, of all different colors. Each pair was folded and tucked back in on itself, and the drawer as a whole was arranged by both color and style.

  I swallowed hard. If the sock drawer was so diverse, I shuddered at what it implied about Valerie’s shoe closet.

  It’s not that extravagant—certainly not for a woman, said Paige. You’re biased because your entire sock drawer is filled with bland white cotton. What is bizarre, however, is how tidy it is.

  I silently agreed with Paige before turning to Valerie. “This intruder really did a number on your socks—and that kitchen of yours looked pretty close to spotless, too. Maybe you should instruct your Brain to leave the door unlocked to see if the criminal comes back to sterilize the bathroom.”

  “You jest,” said Valerie, “but this is serious. I didn’t leave the socks like this. Someone’s been in my apartment! How would you feel knowing someone had access to your home and had rifled through your belongings?”

  I swallowed hard. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to make light of it. But it’s a rather odd situation, wouldn’t you agree?” I scratched the back of my neck. “Have you checked your cleaning bots’ logs? I’ve heard they can go haywire sometimes. People come home to find silverware polished down to nubs or entire wardrobes bleached. That sort of thing.”

  “My bots have never malfunctioned before,” said Valerie. “And they’re not even programmed to organize socks.”

  I grunted and turned back to the stockings. Wool and other animal blends were on the left, organics plant-based weaves in the middle, and synthetics on the right. Each section had been sorted from lightest to darkest, flowing in a serpentine pattern from top to bottom. One bundle in the bottom, right-hand corner caught my eye, however. Both light and dark toes peeked from its fold.

  “Well, whoever did this missed a couple,” I said, pointing to the pair in question. “I don’t think these two go together.”

  “Huh?” Valerie followed my finger. “Well, that’s odd. I didn’t notice that one before. And I certainly didn’t pair those two together when they left the wash. I wonder where their mates are?”

  She reached a hand into the drawer, grabbed the socks, and pulled them apart. As she did so, a flash of something shiny flew, spun, and clinked as it made contact with the floor.

  “What the—?” said Valerie.

  I was similarly curious. The object—a shiny metal disk—spun end over end on the floor, making a faint ringing sound. I leaned over, palmed it, and stood. It was roughly the same diameter as an eyeball and only a few millimeters thick. Its edges were crimped, and on its face shone an image of a free-standing cabinet or cupboard with laser beams shooting out of it.

  “It’s an…honestly I have no idea what this is,” I said.

  It’s a coin, said Paige. They’re archaic units of currency.

  I glanced at Valerie, her eyebrows furrowed in confusion. I assumed her Brain had informed her of the same thing mine had, but knowing what the metal disk was didn’t help explain what it was doing in one of Valerie’s socks.

  I flipped the coin over. On the backside, the words ‘Keelok’s Funporium’ had been stamped around the edges, and in the middle, an embossed bovine face, that of a Tak, smiled at me in unnerving fashion.

  Scratch that, said Paige. It would appear it’s a token, not a coin. Subtle difference. Tokens were never considered legal tender.

  I mentally stumbled over the last part.

  Legal tender, said Paige. It was a term used in the stone ages for anything that legally qualified as payment for a good or service. Before everything went digital, people exchanged these metal disks, or even slips of paper, for products.

  Paper? I thought. You’re telling me money literally grew on trees?

  Hard to believe, huh? she said.

  I pinged Carl to come over before facing Valerie, who had turned her furrowed brows from the coin onto me. Perhaps my discourse with Paige had run longer than I thought.

  “Have you ever been to this Keelok’s Funporium place?” I asked.

  Valerie shook her head. “I’ve never even heard of it.”

  It’s in the orbital portion of the spaceport, said Paige. Concourse epsilon, third level, A wing.

  “So I’m assuming you have no idea how this token got into your socks, then?” I asked.

  Valerie shook her head again. “Your guess is as good as mine.”

  Carl joined us from the kitchen. Paige had briefed him on the findings. “Mind if I see the token?”

  I handed it to my battery-powered friend. “You think there might be some hidden meaning behind this thing?”

  “Possibly,” he said. “But it might also contain a partial print. Did either of you touch the coin’s faces?”

  I shook my head. “Nope. I grabbed it by its edges so I could see what was printed on it. Speaking of which, did you find anything in the kitchen?”

  “Unfortunately, no,” said Carl. “The vast majority of the surfaces had been wiped down, and the few that hadn’t contained only portions of Miss Meeks’ prints.” He flipped the coin over. “And it would appear our luck hasn’t changed. Nothing of note on the coin, as far as I can tell.”

  I tapped my fingers on my chin. “This keeps getting weirder. Rather than trashing your place, whoever intruded into your apartment cleaned and organized it, and instead of stealing something, they brought a gift.”

  “Maybe the trespasser left the coin unintentionally,” offered Valerie.

  “Unlikely,” said Carl. “Given the attention to detail in organizing your drawer, I can’t imagine whoever did this missed that two of the socks were paired with their improper partners and that something was in the sock bundle.”

  “The question,” I said, “is why would an intruder intentionally leave something in your apartment with the hopes it would be found? And why this token?” I snagged the metal disk from Carl and held it up for emphasis.

  Valerie shrugged, her hair jiggling as she did so. “I’m not sure.”

  “It could be a message, or a warning of some sort,” said Carl. “Miss Meeks, are you sure you’ve never heard of this Funporium establishment? Maybe a friend or colleague mentioned it in passing?”

  “I don’t think so,” she said. “Look, I wish I knew what was going on, but I’m as confused as you are. Perhaps someone at this emporium could shed light on what it means?”

  “Funporium,” I corrected. “But yeah, I suppose we should head there next.”

  I paused as I glanced at Valerie, her clothes accentuating both her curves and her muscle tone in the best possible way. I thought I caught a faint hint of a smile creeping up the corner of her lips—not a malicious one, but a genuine, heartfelt, come-hither sort of smile. I was fairly sure her come-ons were a product of my imagination, but before I’d dug into her sock drawer, she’d paused to make sure I was acting in a purely professional capacity. I’d assumed she wanted me to, but what if she’d hoped for the exact opposite?

  I cleared my throat. “Um…care to join us? If this Funporium place lives up to the token’s billing, we might be in line for a rip-roaring good time.”

  “Maybe another time,�
�� said Valerie. “Honestly, I should get back to the bakery. This whole escapade has stolen enough of my time as it is.”

  “Fair enough,” I said, somewhat forlorn. Apparently my initial gauge of Miss Meeks had been correct. “So, what do you say, Carl? Up for a trip to the thermosphere?”

  “I tend to enjoy any activity that doesn’t involved sitting in your office,” said Carl. “And given that this token appears to be our only clue to the intruder’s identity, I don’t see how we can avoid the trip.”

  Sometimes I wished Carl was a little less formal. A simple sure would’ve sufficed.

  “Alright,” I said. “Thanks for letting us come over, Miss Mee…er, I mean, Valerie. We’ll be in touch if we discover anything interesting.”

  Valerie smiled, her eyes soft and deep and inviting. “Thanks. I appreciate your help, Rich.”

  My heart leapt into my throat. I nodded, turned, and fled before I could say anything stupid.

  4

  Carl and I caught a cab to the tube station and joined a small crowd at the queue area. Within a couple minutes, the electromagnets at the base of the tube hummed to life, and a moment later, a pill-like pod zipped in from one end of the station and slid to a halt soundlessly in front of us. A jet bridge extended from the interior edge of the tube and latched onto the side of the pill with a hiss. The doors slid open, passengers exited, and we hopped on. After another hiss from the jet bridge, the vacuum pumps and electromagnets whirred into action, and we shot off toward the downtown regions of Pylon Alpha.

  From our home in Cozy Harbor, one of Pylon’s many suburbs, the tube ride would only take about fifteen minutes. The pill wouldn’t even reach full speed before beginning its deceleration, but the tubes weren’t designed for occasional commuters like myself. The real beneficiaries of the tubes were those who lived at Cetie’s poles or halfway across the world in god-forsaken outposts. For them, the twelve hundred kilometer per hour speeds of the tube actually mattered.

  I turned the token over in my hand as our pod raced forward, pedestrians and trees and high-rises turning into a multicolored blur through the transparent skin of the tube. Soon our pod dipped underground, the LEDs that illuminated the tunnel appearing as bright white lines stretching into infinity.

  I tried to force my mind onto the case at hand, but lacking any more evidence than the coin I held between my fingers, I found my thoughts wandering more in the direction of my client than her mysterious intruder. Despite the more attention-grabbing aspects of her physique, it was the smile she’d flashed at me as we left that kept coming to the forefront of my mind. It had seemed genuine and full of warmth—a smile that indicated that, even if she hadn’t explicitly expressed any interest in me and my personal life, at least she possessed the capacity for compassion and empathy.

  That was a rare trait, these days. The rise of immersive virtual reality Brain games and experiences, combined with the government-issued standard living allowance, had conspired to create a generation of extreme introverts who spent nearly every waking hour locked in their homes, blasting virtual zombies or aliens in Brain-linked teams where the individuals never met face-to-face yet nonetheless knew the personality traits of the other members of the team like the backs of their own hands. Better, honestly. Most of them never bothered inspecting their physical bodies—and those were the tame one. Others passed the days in joy-induced stupors, having spent hours upon hours engaged in virtual sex with strangers, made possible by the Brain’s ability to stimulate pleasure centers on command.

  We called them intros. My mother had been one of them—the kind addicted to gaming, not virtual sex. She’d conceived me while in the throes of a mid-life crisis, but by the time my zygote had grown into a strapping, four kilogram neonate, my mother had no longer been interested in me. She even forgot to visit the lab to pick me up on time. With such a warm, caring welcome into the world, it’s a wonder I blossomed into as balanced an individual as I had, but little of that had been my mother’s doing. Carl basically raised me as his own.

  It was my mother’s and others of her generation’s blatant disregard for the most basic elements of human warmth and compassion that led many people my age to decry the intro lifestyle and instead spend all their energies interacting with real people in real situations. Of course, simply exchanging virtual worlds for real ones didn’t teach them the limits of excess. Many extros, as they are fittingly called, spend all their time chatting and mingling and partying, often under the influence of various synthetic drugs, and, in a not entirely unexpected twist, many of them repeat the faults of their parents, losing themselves in the physical pleasures of never-ending sex-orgies.

  Much more rare were the ambivalents, or ambs, like me, people who enjoyed the occasional game of Smashblocks on their Brain and wouldn’t say no to a feisty roll in the hay but at the same time understood the value of balance and the virtue of hard work. We were the scientists and the engineers and the visionaries—and the private investigators and bakers, as the evidence suggested. Thankfully, we had plenty of droids and aliens to fill the holes left in society by game- and sex-addicted humans.

  Our pod slid to a halt and spit us out into the bustling chaos of the downtown Pylon Alpha tube station. The spaceport was close enough to the station that a cab wasn’t necessary, but we still had to push our way through the crowds to get to a motorized walkway leading in the right direction. After that it was merely a matter of waiting and stepping on the right forks as they presented themselves.

  I tilted my head back and filled my lungs with air as the walkway rolled us into the palatial, glass-ceilinged atrium of the planetary half of the spaceport. The room, a solid two hundred meters in diameter, was capped with a stunning hemispherical dome held together by a nearly transparent truss, but it was the view the clear dome afforded that drew my vision upward.

  Past the dome’s clear polymer loomed three enormous cables, each roughly ten meters in diameter and rooted well over a kilometer into the earth. They stretched into the sky, far past the point where the eye could distinguish them, their far ends tethered to a captured asteroid which circled Cetie tens of thousands of kilometers away. Luckily, the orbital spaceport was located only a fraction of that distance along the cables.

  As I gazed at the thick carbon-polymer composite cords that shimmered in Tau Ceti’s light, I noticed something. The tapered end of one seemed to be thickening. It wasn’t, of course. It was simply an optical illusion—one caused by the shadow of one of the climbers on the cable, one that happened to be descending rapidly.

  “Paige,” I said. “Can you get us tickets on that climber?”

  Already on it, she said. Luckily for you two, there were still seats available.

  No kidding. Each one-way spaceport trip took a little over an hour. Even with three space elevators working at regular intervals, if we didn’t catch a ride on the incoming one we’d be forced to sit and twiddle our thumbs for well over forty-five minutes. Not that I didn’t enjoy the people and alien watching that always accompanied a trip to the spaceport—just not three-quarters of an hour’s worth.

  “Is that the A climber?” I asked Paige.

  Nope. That’s the C.

  “Dang it.” The climber had already grown to a recognizable disk in the sky. “We’re going to have to burn some shoe polymer if we’re going to make it on time. Let’s go, Carl.”

  I grabbed my droid by the arm and took off at a run down the walkway, stumbling as the motorized portion spit us onto solid ground. That’s when the fun began. People of all shapes and sizes, from short, squat Cetieans to slim Gaians to labored-looking Martians, milled about the wide expanse of the spaceport floor, bumping and jostling into aliens, from six-legged, bovine Taks to glossy, insectoid Diraxi.

  Into the fray I dove, weaving through foot and hoof traffic as fast as my muscular legs would carry me. Holograms cycled in the air above me, displaying directions to accompany the steady auditory stream of information that pumped into the dome. Af
ter nearly trampling a respirator-clad Meertor, I raced out of the dome and into a connector terminal, Carl hot on my heels.

  “How are we doing, Paige?” I asked.

  The climber just docked, she said. Better hurry.

  I kicked it into high gear—metaphorically, of course, though I’m sure Carl had to increase the current to a few of his actuators to keep up. After a few more close calls with luggage-laden travelers and one run-in with a mobile beverage bot, I arrived at the gates to the C climber. My heart raced, blood pumping through my veins to supply the needed oxygen to my extremities. A counter above the door had ticked below a minute, but the lights were still green.

  I surged forward, and the doors flicked open upon receiving the ticket confirmation ping from Paige. With only seconds to spare, Carl and I found our spots up against the outer wall of the climber. I’d barely strapped myself in before the rush of acceleration pushed me into the warm, padded cushions.

  I turned my eyes to the climber’s windows and suffered a brief flash of acrophobia as I watched the sprawling metropolis below me shrink and condense. It’s not that I had any particular fear of heights. Rather I suffered from the very natural fear of falling to my death. Paige’s assurances that the climber had a spotless track record did little to assuage my worries, but the fluffy cloud we entered that obscured my vision to a half-meter did the trick.

  I turned to Carl, who sat unfazed in the seat beside me. “Must be nice not suffering from irrational fears.”

  “Advantages exist for both organic and synthetic life,” he said. “There are things I envy of you, too, you know.”

  “Like being able to mash your squishy bits into someone else’s?” I asked.

  Carl smirked. “Not quite. I was referring to your capacity for free will.”

  I snorted. “What are you talking about? You have free will.”

  “To a degree,” said Carl. “But not like you. I have free will to the extent I believe I’m in control of my own actions, but my knowledge of basic programming practices tells me I’m predisposed toward certain decisions. Even though I choose to act in the way I do, I can never be sure my choices are the product of my own experiences and not due to the residual influence of my fabricators.”