Terraform (an Ell Donsaii story #15)

by Laurence Dahners

  “I know you feel like the shots didn’t do anything, but I want you to consider the fact that you didn’t drink while you were on them. Then, the day they ran out you got blotto drunk.”

  “I got blotto drunk because some asshole gave my job to someone else.”

  “Yeah,” Carley said with a sigh. “It’s never your fault, is it?”

  “Just let me out here,” Eli said angrily. “I’ll walk the rest of the way.”

  “Sorry. I know, not getting the job must’ve been tough…” She paused, not sure what else to say, but letting the car continue on its way.

  Eli didn’t say anything either. Carley suspected he’d be happier if he was closer to the Chapel Hill shelter before he actually got out. After a while, he said, “Really. Those shots didn’t do anything. I couldn’t feel any difference. I think you’re wasting your time on… whatever the stuff is.”

  “It’s a protein,” Carley said, unable to keep herself from beginning to explain, though she did manage not to continue expounding on something he so obviously didn’t care about. “There’s no reason to expect the shot would make you feel any different. They’re only intended to diminish your desire to keep drinking. They’re not supposed to replace the euphoria of drinking with a different kind of high.”

  “So, I suppose you want me to keep injecting myself,” Eli said in a flat, bored manner.

  She nodded, “And I think you should keep applying for jobs too. Don’t go off the handle because you didn’t get the first one you applied for. With your history…” Carley trailed off before she said something that’d piss him off.

  Before she could think of something else to say in order to recover from the verbal path she’d been heading down, Eli said, “Yeah. With my history, I’m going to have to apply for a lot of shit jobs before I get one. Then, I’m going to have to do well there before I can get a better one. I’ve got to dig myself out of the hole I’ve thrown myself into… I’ve heard it all.” He held out his hand.

  Carley looked at his palm suspiciously, “I’ll buy you dinner, but I’m not giving you any money.”

  “Give me your damned medication. Protein. Whatever. I’ll shoot it up. I still don’t think it’s going to work, but I’ll do my part.”

  Elated that he was willing, but depressed about his attitude, Carley handed over a packet with two-weeks’ worth of loaded syringes.

  She bought him dinner before she dropped him off.

  Then she drove home, emotions sloshing, sometimes optimistic, more often cynical.

  ***

  Sunday night at 10 o’clock!

  In disgust, Stackhouse pulled onto the road and started his long drive back to the motel in Creedmoor. Four days! He’d waited from mid-afternoon until midnight Thursday and Friday, all day until midnight on Saturday and now all day until 10 PM on Sunday!

  Donsaii never freaking leaves her farm!

  She probably got her mail through a port at the post office. Lord knows what she ate. She didn’t go to the store and no one delivered.

  I’ll give it another week, he thought. But I’d better start thinking about other targets.

  ***

  Jillian sighed, despairing over how much of her job followed the dictum, “Hurry up and wait.” Currently, she was sitting in a courtroom, watching the attorneys’ backs as they whispered to the judge at her bench. Worse, a moment later, the judge called a recess. Everyone else got up and started shuffling out of the courtroom. Jillian wanted to leave too, but she couldn’t afford to lose the seat she’d come early to get. Reaching into her bag, she pulled out a granola bar. Taking a bite, she leaned back in her seat, looked up at her HUD and asked her AI to run a new search on Raquel Kinrais. The woman had a vanishingly small presence on the web, but Jillian’d decided she should look deeper into the low relevance search matches in hopes of finding something.

  However, when the SERP (Search Engine Results Page) opened, before Jillian had a chance to scroll down to the lower relevance results, her eye caught on the top link. She realized it had its high relevance listing because it’d only happened a day or so ago. Opening the link, she read that Kinrais had stopped a shooter at the local mall’s food court. Jillian’s surprise grew as she read about the incident. Kinrais had been seated just a few tables away from the shooter when he pulled out a couple of pistols and pointed them out into the crowded court. According to witness reports, Kinrais had thrown a Coke at him, then launched herself across the intervening distance, tackling the man so hard she’d flown over him. She’d managed to get the man’s guns away from him, though he’d gotten off one shot that went wildly up over the crowd.

  Kinrais had been incredibly humble afterward, saying she’d just happened to be in the right place at the right time. She claimed anyone else would’ve done the same thing in that situation. This, despite the fact that a lot of people who were seated even closer to the gunman hadn’t even realized what was happening until it was over. Kinrais and the reporter had both attributed her action to the type of superhuman feats mothers had been known to perform in the past—lifting cars off children and the like. The reporter even had a vid clip of Kinrais’ trembling hands—attributed to adrenalin. The news outlet had managed to purchase AV records from some of the bystanders, but said none of them had captured more than a fragment of what had happened.

  Jillian ran the single scrap of video they’d attached to the story. Holy shit! she thought. She watched the video over and over, slowing its speed to a veritable frame by frame before she thought she understood what she was seeing.

  At the beginning of the clip the gunman was at the edge of the video frame, his right arm actually off the edge. The visible left arm pulled a gun out of the bag, then raised it to point out into the food court.

  Suddenly the guy’s head tilted violently toward center-frame, an explosion of brown material bursting out around it—presumably the Coke Kinrais had supposedly thrown at him.

  Only a few frames later Kinrais herself hurtled over him—Jillian wouldn’t have characterized it as “tackling” since an upside-down Kinrais went completely over the man’s head, flipping end for end. She ripped the guns up out of the man’s hands as she went by.

  Kinrais landed perfectly, halted in a single step, placed the guns on the floor during the crouch of her landing, and started back the other way, casual as you might please.

  As if out for a stroll on the beach.

  At that point, the video jolted. This seemed to be because the guy whose AI made the recording had finally reacted to the gunshot. The weapon that fired the shot must have been the one off the edge of the frame because Jillian couldn’t see it fire. Jillian certainly didn’t see any kick or fire from the left gun she could see in-frame. Despite significant camera motion artifact as the guy making the video was ducking, Jillian thought she saw Kinrais catching a kid who barreled into her.

  Then all the video showed was the floor, as the man who’d provided it cowered under a table.

  Jillian leaned back in her seat digesting what she’d just seen. That was freaking amazing. I wouldn’t have thought anyone… anyone in the entire world could’ve disarmed a shooter like that. Jillian sat bolt upright, But, by God, Donsaii could have!

  But that was supposed to be Kinrais! Did Donsaii dress herself up like Kinrais to go to the mall incognito?

  Jillian went through the video frame by frame again, trying to get a clean look at the woman to see if she actually could be Donsaii dressed as Kinrais. The few frames not distorted by motion all came as the woman walked back to the shooter, but the angle was from the side and slightly behind, not a good facial image.

  As Jillian looked at those frames again, she realized the woman didn’t look at all shaken. She may be claiming adrenalin let her perform superhuman feats, but she looked calm! Calm as only Donsaii could be.

  Anyone else would’ve been freaked.

  I hope Simpkins can work some of his magic to clean up this video, Jillian thought. She started searching
for the reporter that’d done the story, hoping the woman had collected more video clips than she’d published. Ones that might be able to be assembled with this one to produce a more complete picture of what’d happened. Hopefully, the reporter at least had the names of other people who had clips.

  ***

  Ell was walking back to her office when Sheila appeared in the hallway. “Hey Bosslady, I’ve got some news.”

  Ell broke into an excited grin, “What is it?”

  Sheila drew back, “You seem to think it’s good news?”

  “Of course.”

  Sheila narrowed her eyes, “What makes you so certain?”

  “Because,” Ell laughed, “whenever you have bad news for me, you send one of your minions.”

  Sheila frowned and looked introspective, “Really?”

  “Every time.” Ell tilted her head, “Go ahead, try to tell me it’s actually bad news.”

  “It is,” Sheila said in a serious tone. “It’s about those polls you asked me to get done.”

  With a relieved sigh, Ell said, “People think we should terraform Mars?”

  With a stern look, Sheila said, “I said, it’s bad news.”

  Ell laughed again, “It is not. You’re just trying to sell your little lie. What’re the actual numbers?”

  Exasperatedly, Sheila said, “In the US, 83% in favor. Worldwide, it’s more like 91%. Despite what the protesters out at UC Berkeley think, most people really do want us to live on another planet.”

  “Wow!” Ell said thoughtfully. “That’s way better than I expected.” She looked back up at Sheila and grinned, “Thanks for the great news…” She wrinkled her nose and leaned a little closer. Speaking quietly, she said, “And if you really want to pull off your little charades,” she winked, “You’re going to need some acting classes.”

  Ell turned and headed on down the hall to her office with a bounce in her step—leaving Sheila with a frustrated look on her face.

  ***

  Jillian stepped into Simpkins dim little workspace. High-resolution screens were the main feature of the room and seemed to be everywhere. Handing the video guru one of the disgusting vanilla cappuccinos he liked, she said, “Tell me you were able to work a miracle with those clips.”

  He grunted, “If you want art, you gotta give me something more than mud and sticks to work with.” Nonetheless, he mumbled to his AI and a video started running on the biggest screen. The first clip was one that displayed Kinrais from a completely different angle than the original video Jillian had watched. This one showed her from a left-posterior angle, sitting at a table in the food court. There was a kid across the table from her who could be seen in a frontal view. Simpkins had stabilized the motion of the image well enough that Jillian recognized the Kinrais kid she’d met at Barnes’ lab. So, what’s that mean? Jillian wondered, feeling confused. If this’s Donsaii’s kid… what’s he doing with Raquel Kinrais, and, how did she… Well, but aren’t I thinking this’s Donsaii dressed up as Kinrais?

  Her train of thought stopped as Kinrais turned her head to the left and could be seen in profile.

  It wasn’t Donsaii’s profile.

  The nose wasn’t a slight ski-slope. It had a hump instead. Then Donsaii leaped to the left and vanished off the side of the screen. Jillian’s initial impulse was to pause the video and go back through it frame by frame, but she could do that after Simpkins gave her a copy.

  So she kept her eyes on the screen. Now the action was seen from another angle. This time, when Kinrais turned to her left she was facing toward the camera. Her cheeks were a little chipmunky. Her skin and hair were quite a bit darker; eye color was hard to tell on the video.

  But, she did not look like Donsaii. The dark hair and skin color could be faked, but the shape of the face definitely wasn’t right.

  The Kinrais kid looked more like Donsaii than Kinrais did…

  ~~~

  At home later, having watched the vid over and over, Jillian sat back and sighed.

  The kid who’d barreled into Kinrais after the shooter’d been disarmed proved to be the Kinrais boy.

  The gun that’d fired had indeed been the one in the shooter’s right hand.

  The only video showing Kinrais springing up from the table to take three bounding strides before she leaped over the guy was of terrible quality, but nonetheless, it showed Kinrais performing an amazing, Donsaii-like, physical feat.

  After the guy was disarmed, Kinrais didn’t look at all shaken up. You would’ve thought she carried out such astonishing physical exploits every day.

  Jillian just couldn’t put it all together. The incontrovertible facts were that the kid at the mall had been Zage Kinrais, boy genius, going to grad school at age 5, and, that the woman, Raquel Kinrais, moved like Jillian would’ve thought only Ell Donsaii could, but did not look like Ell.

  Well, her body was similar to Donsaii’s, but not her face.

  Jillian wondered if Kinrais could be some kind of relative of Donsaii’s, with the same phenomenal physical abilities, just without the notoriety.

  Or, could this really be Kinrais and her kid; but Kinrais had really had one of those phenomenal, adrenalin-fueled physical experiences that were supposed to happen to ordinary people on occasion? A stress reaction that let her be as good as Donsaii, but only for a moment?

  Or could Kinrais be Donsaii in an extensive disguise? Seems like it’d require a lot. A nasal prosthesis, cotton stuffed in her cheeks, a wig, dark skin makeup…

  Damn… That has to be it! That’s why no one ever sees her anywhere except at work!

  But, how do I prove it?

  ***

  In the morning, Jillian found herself going over the material she’d accumulated once again.

  She had a few public pictures of Zage Kinrais. There were a few she’d picked from the video of the incident at the mall. There was the published picture of him from the article about him attending Duke at such a young age. She’d recently found one of him with his father at the Nobel Prize ceremony.

  She didn’t want to use her own images from when she’d found the kid at the Duke laboratory. She had a feeling that people wouldn’t take kindly to a reporter who tracked down a child to get a story.

  Unfortunately, for the most part, the kid looked like his dad. Her own pictures taken at the lab were the ones where he looked the most like Donsaii but even then she didn’t think anyone would remark on it if they weren’t considering the possibility to begin with. And, even though those images might seem suggestive, they certainly weren’t proof he was Donsaii’s kid.

  The kid was undeniably a prodigy, but the fact that he was a prodigy didn’t prove he was Donsaii’s child. In fact, though she’d graduated high school several years early, Donsaii hadn’t started attending grad school after skipping elementary school, high school, and college like the boy had. So, actually, it seemed he was a lot more of a prodigy than she was. Besides, genius like Donsaii’s wasn’t usually inherited. The children of geniuses were usually smart, but they weren’t often off the charts like their parent.

  Jillian also had the video from the mall in which Raquel Kinrais physically performed in a fashion that Jillian thought only Ell Donsaii could. That didn’t prove that Kinrais was Donsaii though. It was true that their body morphologies were similar, but they walked differently. Their faces were so different that Jillian found herself having to propose that Donsaii applied the kind of Hollywood transformation that took hours in the makeup chair. The fact that she’d have to carry out such a transformation on a daily basis made it seem ridiculous.

  Nonetheless, Jillian was convinced Raquel Kinrais and Ell Donsaii were the same person. But I can’t prove it, she thought with immense frustration.

  After thinking about it for another hour, she decided to draft a story in which she outlined what she’d found and posed the question, “Is this Ell’s child?” She wouldn’t claim to have proved it. She’d just suggest the possibility. Maybe she could even couch it as
a story about Zage Kinrais, a child of undeniable genius whose mother had astonishing physical capabilities like Donsaii… “Or could she actually be Donsaii?”

  She started working on the story.

  ***

  Carter DeWitt settled into place on his waldo controller, then told his AI to connect him to the oversized construction waldo on Mars. A view of Mars snapped into place in front of his eyes. It’d been a few days since he’d been on site there, so the first thing he did was look around the flat and featureless plain.

  It was still flat and featureless. They were located on the opposite side of Mars from the Valles Marineris—where Ell’s friend Phil and the other Martian scientists were living. The Mars waldo team had set up another kilometer diameter graphene dome, this one unshielded, since only waldoes were expected to work in it. The graphene contributed to the featureless appearance by diffusing the light coming through the dome. Well, and the graphene also kind of hid the pebbles on the surface of Mars inside the dome.

  They’d poured a concrete ramp four-meters—thirteen-feet—wide in the middle of the dome.

  At present, a couple of construction waldoes were setting up one of the new five-meter inflatable ring-ports at the top end of the ramp. They were positioning it so, when the ring opened, the surface of the ramp on the side back on Earth would line up with this one.

  Carter walked his waldo over and looked things over. He took the time to measure the critical distance from the ramp down to the ring. Looking up at the other two waldoes, he said, “You guys ready?”

  They nodded.

  Carter stepped back and spoke briefly to his AI. A few seconds later, the port opened with an actinic flash. There was a puff of air suggesting they hadn’t managed to pump the Earthside chamber down far enough to completely match the pressure in the Mars dome.

  Cognizant of the fact that they were burning 100-megawatts, or $1,000 per hour, just to keep the port open, Carter felt some urgency. He reminded himself that a thousand dollars an hour really wasn’t much to spend on keeping a 16 ½ foot portal to Earth open, but wasting money had always grated on him.