“Exactly. Most Autoclons tend to overestimate my age due to the advanced responsibilities I’ve earned at my young age.”
“I hope this former instructor of yours can help me find a good Restorer,” I added.
By now, we were just a couple of kilometers away from Boreal Junction and could see some details of the settlement. Boreal Junction was less than 500 meters in width from north to south. It had a brilliant, nearly perfectly white marble city wall. The protective wall, at over five meters tall, was taller than most of the structures inside the settlement itself. There was no opening in the wall from the west, so we made our way to the northern entrance of the settlement and joined up with the road coming in from the Hillside Titanium Mine.
It was nearly Lazuli-summit when we entered through the northern gateway of Boreal Junction. We approached the nearby Settlement Registry, where Surreptitious logged on, but instead of looking up the residents of Boreal Junction by name, Surreptitious pulled up a map of the settlement.
As with many of the other settlements spread across Zarikum, the layout of Boreal Junction was primarily defined by two principle roads, which intersected in the center of the community. The main road coming in from the north and continuing southward toward Resplendent Center bisected the settlement. The road coming in from the Taurus Marble Quarry to the east sliced through the heart of the settlement and terminated at the western edge of the circular wall. This further subdivided the eastern and western halves of Boreal Junction, forming four equal-sized quadrants of the settlement.
“Ah, yes, here is where we need to go,” Surreptitious announced after studying the map, motioning to a part of the map in the settlement’s southwest quadrant. It was tucked away in a little alleyway a few blocks from the main road.
“Surreptitious, how do you know Erudius is located here?” I asked. “I don’t see anything on the map or the Registry referring to Erudius at all.”
“That doesn’t surprise me. Erudius is... a private Autoclon. Erudius doesn’t like for just anyone to know where it lives. Fortunately for us, Erudius has informed me and others it can really trust about where we can find it.”
“Is Erudius hiding from someone?” Resolute asked, intrigued by the secrecy.
“No,” Surreptitious responded flatly. “At least, not to my knowledge.”
“That’s pretty impressive to just be able to look at a map like that and recall where your friend is located,” Loquacious added.
“Yes, well... I’ve been here a time or two to visit Erudius, so the settlement’s layout is somewhat familiar to me.”
Surreptitious led us south along the main road, down through the center of Boreal Junction. As we started making our way through Boreal Junction, I noticed a few things that piqued my interest.
First, I could easily see the affects that the depressed economy had on Boreal Junction. A majority of the structures within the settlement were in good shape, but I saw quite a few that had fallen into disrepair. Some buildings had large cracks in the walls, while others had more serious structural problems, such as caved-in roofs or collapsed walls. Assorted debris, like crumbling stone or various metal parts, could be found in most of the smaller side streets of Boreal Junction, although the community at least did a good job keeping the main road clean.
Second, the streets of Boreal Junction were nearly devoid of any kind of Autoclon activity. Considering it was the middle of the day, I would have expected a bit more hustle and bustle of Autoclons going to and from places of work or shops or residences, but there was hardly anyone around. Even some of the street vendors were closed, an unusual sight within a community around Lazuli-summit. Perhaps the economic downturn of the region played a part in this lack of activity as well.
Third, the few Autoclons that I did see showed signs of nervousness and anxiety. As the seven of us moved along the road, I would occasionally see an Autoclon along a side street. Once an Autoclon caught a glimpse of us, it would do something like turn away or hide in a doorway or duck into an alleyway to get out of our sight. I saw one Autoclon peak out of a doorway to get a glimpse of us, but as soon as I turned my chief sensory complex toward it, the Autoclon disappeared into the building and shut and locked the door behind it.
While the first and possibly second of my observations could be explained by the current economic state of Boreal Junction, I’m not sure what could explain the trepidation I could see in the behavior of the Autoclons here. I also wasn’t the only one in our group to make this observation.
“Wow, these Autoclons seem like they’re afraid of us,” Resolute commented to me in a hushed tone.
“Afraid of us?” I replied back in an equally quiet manner. That certainly fit the behavior I saw in the Autoclons. But why would they be afraid of us? “Hmm, maybe you’re right. That’s... strange.”
“Yeah, I know. It’s pretty weird.”
Winston, who was traveling right behind me, had apparently been listening into our conversation. “Some-thing is ver-y odd a-bout this sit-u-a-tion.”
“Do you sense there’s something wrong, Winston?” I asked.
“I am not sure. Just be care-ful, Fast-id-i-ous.”
“Well, let’s just meet this friend of Surreptitious, and then maybe we can get some answers.”
“Yeah, maybe you’re right. But then again, I still don’t trust Surreptitious,” Resolute added. “Isn’t it kind of odd that this ‘Erudius’ isn’t in the Settlement Registry?”
“Yes, it is. But when I was looking for Loquacious in Silicon Central, I couldn’t find any information about where Loquacious lived. In that case, Loquacious was out in an alleyway. Perhaps Erudius is in the same situation here. Like I said, we should get some answers pretty soon.”
“Yeah,” Resolute replied. “Anyway, I know I’m not usually the pessimist in the group, but still, I have a pretty bad feeling about this...”
∆∆∆
10.2 Betrayal
We reached the main intersection in the center of the settlement. Unlike the larger settlements with their Magistrates, there was no central government structure here. In fact, this settlement was quite the opposite with a rather large open area at the intersection, at least 15 meters square of bare ground.
The largest structure in Boreal Junction was located on the southeast corner of the intersection. Much like the walls of Boreal Junction, this building was constructed of white marble. The building had three main components: a square central structure around 15 meters on all sides and two wings, one to the east of the square structure and one to the south. The square structure had a flat metal roof that stood over seven meters from the ground, while the two wings were topped with a solid marble roof that stood a bit more than three meters from the ground.
“That’s the prison facility for the Northernlands,” Surreptitious commented.
“It looks quite impressive. I doubt anyone has ever escaped from there,” I replied.
“According to the information I’ve received, you are correct,” answered Surreptitious. “Hopefully, it stays that way.”
We traveled around 100 meters or so beyond the main intersection of Boreal Junction before Surreptitious turned off the main road to the right onto one of the side streets. “Let’s keep close together everyone. These streets are pretty winding, and we don’t want anyone to get lost.”
How would we get lost? It’s not like we could get lost in a crowd of Autoclons in these desolate streets.
Surreptitious led us onto a couple of winding streets before stopping in front of an alleyway. The streets here had narrowed quite a bit, and the alley we approached was no wider than two meters.
“Erudius’s place is right down this way. Loquacious, would you lead the way? I’ll stay in the back to make sure everyone makes it into the alley.”
“Shouldn’t you be in front, Surreptitious? After all, it’s your friend who lives here,” Resolute said.
“That’s OK, I’ll catch up once we’re all in the alley...”
We
all followed Loquacious into the alley. Loquacious went about 10 meters and then reached the far end. There was a nook to the left, but it didn’t lead anywhere. We didn’t see any doors at all along this alleyway. It appeared that we had reached a dead end.
“Are you sure we’re in the correct location, Surreptitious? I don’t see any doorways here,” I said.
“Yes, I’m POSITIVE you’re in the right place,” Surreptitious chuckled from outside the alleyway. “Alright, they’re all yours!”
We turned around to look in Surreptitious’s direction. Surreptitious disappeared back into the street and was replaced in the entrance of the alley by a dozen gigantic Peace-Keepers!
“Surreptitious, what’s going on here?” I yelled.
I could hear Surreptitious’s reply come in from outside the alley: “Your insurrection against the Ruling Party has come to an end, Fastidious! Now, you will answer for your crimes against Obstinous the Obtrusive!”
The Peace-Keepers entered the alleyway, and we were trapped. Each of the Peace-Keepers carried a standard-issue stun baton, a nearly half-meter long metal wand with some metal coils on the far end. A blow from the stun baton would render us unconscious, and now a dozen Peace-Keepers blocked our path out with that exact intention!
Primus and Secundus were the closest of our group to the Peace-Keepers. “What should we do?” they asked.
I had no idea. I quickly processed our possibilities: we could either fight or run. Normally, my inclination against a group of Peace-Keepers is to flee, but that brought up another problem. After a quick look around my surroundings, I determined we had but one exit, and we had a dozen Peace-Keepers occupying that space. The walls along the alleyway were too high for any of us to climb or jump over. Then, I recalled the weapon that Winston possessed that could shoot out bolts of electricity. Could that be our way out?
“Winston, what about that weapon of yours?”
“I could in-ca-pac-i-tate a few of them, but not all twelve,” Winston replied. “We can-not win this con-fron-ta-tion by force.”
That wasn’t what I wanted to hear. The Peace-Keepers pressed ahead toward our position in the alleyway, so we needed to act fast. It seemed like our only option was to escape out of the far end of the alleyway and go THROUGH the Peace-Keepers without getting stunned. I didn’t like our chances for success, but what else could we do?
“We’ve got to get out of this alley! Primus, Secundus, ram into them and see if we can push them back.” Primus and Secundus were the largest and strongest of our group, so they stood the best chance at completing this task. They moved at full speed directly into the central casings of the first two Peace-Keepers. They pushed them back a full meter, but it didn’t take long for the dazed Peace-Keepers to regain their balance and use their stun batons to knock out Primus and Secundus.
“NOW WHAT?!” yelled Resolute, who was now the closest to the oncoming Peace-Keepers.
At this point, I ran through our options, and I could only come up with one. “Winston, you’ve got to get out of here and contact Marcus. He’s our only hope now!” As Winston activated its rotor blades and flew out of the alleyway, I announced to the Peace-Keepers: “We surrender!”
“Hey, the little guy is flying away!” the nearest Peace-Keeper said to Surreptitious.
“WHAT? We have to stop it!” Surreptitious replied.
“You didn’t tell us it could fly.”
“I didn’t KNOW it could fly. No matter, stun them all!”
“Hey, we surrendered. There’s no need for stunning us,” Resolute replied.
“You’re right; there is no need to stun you. Stun them anyways!”
∆∆∆
10.3 Imprisoned
I awoke sometime later to a general feeling of disorientation. The stun baton had knocked all of my systems off-line, and once my main processor came back on-line, the rest of my sensory systems slowly started to respond. As they did, I became more aware of my surroundings.
From my internal chronometer, I determined that it was about 11:45, still on the 5th day of the First Tetrad, meaning I had been unconscious for over four hours. I was alone and in a small room, just two meters square and less than 1.5 meters tall. The room was lined with solid rock along three of the walls and both the floor and the ceiling. The fourth wall was made out of metal and contained a door. The top half of the door included an opening in the solid piece of metal with many vertical metal bars placed about 6 cm apart. The gaps in the metal bars allowed for me to see outside of my room. It also allowed light from outside to come into my unlit room.
By now, I had a pretty good idea where I was being held: in a cell inside the prison facility in the middle of Boreal Junction. I looked out through the metal bars and could see a pair of prison cells separated from mine by a hallway about two meters wide. Those two prison cells were also dark like mine, so I couldn’t tell if they were occupied.
I tried to move closer to the door to get a better look, but I found it much harder than expected to maneuver my way forward. I suspected that I was experiencing some stability issues as a result of being knocked out earlier in the day by the stun batons. It also didn’t help that I was still adjusting to my broken leg suffered the day before. Eventually, I made it to the door.
“Fastidious, is that you?” I heard from the cell directly across from me. The voice was quiet and a bit shaky, but it sounded like Resolute.
“Yes, it is,” I replied. I looked across the way, and then I saw Resolute’s sensory complex peeking through the other door, looking back at me. “I’m so glad to see you, Resolute. I tell you, that blow from the stun baton sure is throwing my systems for a loop.”
“Yeah, I had similar issues when I woke up almost an hour ago. That went away after several minutes. Hopefully, you’ll recover just the same as me.”
“Do you know where everyone else is? Is the rest of our group in prison with us?”
“I’m not sure about Primus and Secundus, but I can tell you that Loquacious is in my cell. Loquacious hasn’t woken up yet, but I’ve looked it over, and Loquacious looks OK,” Resolute said. “By the way, how’s your power supply? Mine’s pretty low. Not quite at critical levels yet, but it is low.”
I checked my main power supply. The result: I was at 23% of capacity. My backup battery supply was still in good shape, so I could run off of that for a while. However, I knew that my travel-mates didn’t have that same luxury. “I’m pretty low, too, but my extra battery cells are doing well. I should be OK for the next couple of days.”
“Well, that’s good. Hopefully, they don’t forget to feed us some power crystals in the next half-day or so, or you’re going to start hearing a lot less out of me,” Resolute added. “Oh, and one more thing: it looks like they took my cart, so I guess we can’t use anything in that cart to help us escape.”
Within the next 10 minutes, Loquacious awoke. Shortly thereafter, we heard from Primus and Secundus. They were both in the cell right next to Resolute and Loquacious. All in all, we were all fully-functioning (well, except my broken rear-starboard leg).
“So, NOW what do we do?” Resolute asked.
“Fastidious, do you still have your Cobalt laser? Can you use it to cut through the door?” Loquacious asked. I had forgotten about my laser, and with good reason too, because it was no longer attached to my starboard arm.
“No, it looks like it was taken by the prison officials. I’m afraid there’s not much we can do now except wait. Maybe someone will visit us, and we can find out what’s going on.” Realistically, I felt our only hope was that Winston avoided capture and got a message through to Marcus. I’m not sure what Marcus or Winston could do to help us, but I had found that Winston was full of surprises, so maybe Winston could somehow arrange our escape. At least, that’s what I hoped.
Several minutes later, I sensed some activity out in the hallway. I moved closer to the door and peered out into the hallway to see what was going on. I saw four Autoclons coming into our wing
of the prison. The first Autoclon was a “walker”, and I surmised that it was a Facilitator, likely a Facilitator for this prison. The second Autoclon was Surreptitious. Behind Surreptitious were two large Peace-Keepers moving side-by-side, keeping very close to Surreptitious. One thing was clear with this four-some: Surreptitious was in charge.
“Wake up, everyone!” Surreptitious shouted, banging its starboard graspers onto one of the cell doors. “Ah, I see that you all have recovered from your unfortunate encounter with the Ruling Party’s latest stun baton model. Now, it’s time to talk.”
“Why are we in here?” Loquacious asked.
“Yes, why are we in prison?” I asked.
“That is simple. The five of you (plus Winston) have been charged with ‘planning and performing seditious acts against the Chief Ruler, Obstinous the Obtrusive, and the Ruling Party’. You are being held here at the Boreal Junction prison facility until we can transport you to District Prime. With any luck, you’ll be out of here within the next 14 hours.”
“‘Seditious acts’?”
“What does that mean?”
“Ha, I figured you two might not understand all of the trouble that you’ve gotten yourselves into. You arrived here later in the game than the others, so I’ll explain from the beginning,” Surreptitious said. “Fastidious’s attempts to infect fellow Autoclons with this viral code from ‘the Programmer’ have not gone unnoticed by the Ruling Party. Obstinous the Obtrusive has observed your actions from afar and has deemed you and your compatriots as a direct security threat to not only the Chief Ruler but to the entire governmental structure in place on Zarikum. Now that you’ve been captured and charged with these crimes, you’ll have to answer for your actions and accept the consequences as deemed by the Ruling Party and Obstinous the Obtrusive.”
“I always knew you were trouble, you two-faced, backstabbing coward!” yelled Resolute, boiling with rage.
“Whoa, whoa, let’s not get personal here. I was just doing my job,” Surreptitious replied coolly. “Actually, I should be thanking you, Fastidious.”
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