“That’s more reasonable.
“Manda, if it happens again, Real-Worlding during Nnectonian work hours, then I’ll report him to QC for some tweaking, or I will fire him to Orns.”
“Unless I am there, David?” Manda teased.
“Either way. I swear by my surrogate mother.” He looked at his digital pad to hide his embarrassment, heated red flakes rising to his cheeks.
“Sure you will.” She smiled like only a queen looking at her subject could.
“Even you won’t stop me if he does it again, Manda,” David said in an unconvincing voice.
“Who are you trying to convince? You’re nicer than you act. Not like Grandpa Greg.” With that, Manda and David moved on to view the reports. David looked at the expanding profile for each of his subjects.
Jim backed away, bowing his gratitude in her direction.
Manda glanced at Jim, whispering, “You owe me.”
The list of test subjects began. Subject Logan was a young boy, age twelve, with dark-brown freckles and white-blond hair with streaks of gray. He had a small nose and a round head that bobbed up and down obliviously whenever he was excited, like a duck floating in a pond just before the hunter startles it into the air for the kill. This young captive was fascinated with drawing, and it seemed that when the team gave him something to draw, the boy would calm down. He had moments of hysteria, but the team convinced him that his mother and father were on their way, saying it would take a couple of days until they came. The boy believed everything was normal, if somewhat strange. The boy insisted on being called Logan and would not respond to any other nicknames that the team tried to stick him with, such as Freckles; other names only confused him. The Threat of Torture and Ransom Scenarios had not been tried on him. Comforting him seemed the only way to get information out of him. The boy was very sensitive to threats and only calmed down when two of the actors pretended his parents were coming. Ignorant, foolish boy, David thought. They had learned that Logan’s father was a passionate missionary and his mother was an intelligent IT specialist at a projection consulting firm, whatever that meant; the boy couldn’t explain anything else about his parents’ jobs. It seemed he was stupid or did not know. It was a shame that adolescent human beings didn’t learn about their elders’ work. Such corporate illiteracy was shocking. Work should be adored. David’s team surmised that the father was an intelligence specialist with the missionary corps who was trying to open communications with Xchange. The boy believed in a God called the Cross God. He wasn’t the only one. The history of Lave Labs explained what Nnect knew of this Cross God that the missionaries and members of Tri-Coalition believed in. The boy believed that this being was looking out for him and seemed to calm down when he drew strange stick figures—something that looked like a lowercase t with a person on it. Odd indeed. It made David wonder. The boy himself liked playing sports and studying in school, but that was about all the information they could glean from him. David thought it was humorous that the obviously weak athlete would play sports for fun and not as a career move. Apparently, his family lived at the missionary station only during the summers but lived in the heart of the enemy territory in a city where the boy went to school the rest of the year.
Subject Brac was a fourteen-year-old girl with bright red hair and an equally fiery nature. She was skinny as a twig and rarely smiled during her days of confinement. David doubted she ever smiled back in her land. She had a gloomy vibe. The actors who tested her were not able to calm her down or convince her she was not in captivity. She was smarter than the Logan boy. Brac’s name was Carolina Brac. They were able to get zero useful information from her; all she did was cry. It was exasperating. She only calmed down when paired with David’s older slaves. The familiar presence of her own kind and the obvious support she gleaned from their mere presence was tangible, like the way a coastline defines boundaries for a rolling ocean. Subject Arc had the most noticeably calming effect on Subject Brac. David had asked Arc how they could appease or calm the girl. Arc had suggested that they give the crying girl books or some reading material. And so they’d done just that, but stories about the integration of Xchange youth into adulthood horrified the girl, and stories from the Tertain entertainment reading didn’t make any sense to her. She’d cried so loud that David had allowed Arc to see her. Interestingly enough, when given an hour with the youth, Arc told her stories. Oddly, the stories weren’t real. Growing up, David had heard stories of success, innovation, creativity, and perseverance. Human being stories were nothing like human-doing stories. These stories were childish, happy, and useless. He later came to find out that these stories were called fairy tales. They were about knights, damsels, heroes, monsters, heroines, lovers, princes, castles, mystery, and a whole bunch of other unrealistic and impractical myths. The stories were nothing like Storyworld. Storyworld was real people living, fighting, loving, and dying. It was real. Arc’s stories were parables about virtue, love, and happiness. They always ended happily. How unrealistic. It baffled David that the girl was calmed, excited, and strengthened by such tenuous depictions of reality. Her weak heart soaked up the lies like a dry sponge; she seemed to soar into clouds of fantasy and smile after hearing them. He didn’t know how these false tales calmed her fitful spirit.
Arc also sang to Brac. One such song went like this: “I lost my heart to a Galway girl. When I woke up, I was all alone with a broken heart and a ticket home. And I ask you now, tell me what you would do.” Taking a deep breath, she’d continue, “I ain’t never seen nothing like a Galway girl.” On and on its foolishness had gone. After Arc had left, the scientists struggled to information out of Brac. She was a locked secret shrouded by tenuous emotion. Today his actors were going to try once more to get some information out of the fragile and angry teen.
David was particularly frustrated with the younger subjects. As much as he racked his brain, he couldn’t think of anything particularly useful to do with them. Their incomplete and poor excuse for an upbringing made them fragile. Utterly useless. Unless maybe they used them as leverage against Tri-Coalition cities? Yet there was no know means of communicating with Tri-Coalition without violating a hundred Xchange defense laws.
The three adults, about David’s age, were more fascinating. Subjects Mop, Gimp, and Arc, nicknamed by the Lave Labs scientists, had much knowledge of Tri-Coalition. It turned out, they’d been visiting family members out at the missionary establishment, and bad luck or fate had timed it perfectly so that they were captured. David spent much of his day observing these three.
Subject Mop went by Frank You. Frank was smart and stubborn. He’d declared in a confident, cocky voice, “You can call me Frank You, no more and no less. I will not respond to anything else.” And he didn’t. He was a twenty-two-year-old black male with wide athletic shoulders, a narrow face, and something called a “beer gut.” David had tasted beer for the first time at Irish Pub. This beer gut made the man look disproportionate and contradicted his muscular arms and strong shoulders. A unique feature, for sure, but completely unmarketable because it made the man look like a bowling pin that widened around the waist. This look was not an acceptable norm in Xchange; out-of-shape citizens were given bad management reviews. He also had a bush of frizzy hair. A “mop,” as the scientists began to refer to it. Mop was a jet engineer who’d been visiting his older brother, whom he called Preacher Bro. It seemed a preacher was something like a Mindmonk for the spirit and morals. Frank did not particularly believe in the Cross God, but he did believe in freedom and the ideals that allowed religion and government to operate hand in hand. He certainly didn’t believe in all the things his brother preached, but the team could sense that Frank had a tremendous amount of respect for Preacher Bro. Mop was all about asking sarcastic questions.
Subject Gimp’s name was Domin Hafert, and he was a teacher by trade. He was a white male, thin-haired ginger with a double chin, which had an oval-shaped brown birthmark on it. Domin was of average build and wore odd r
ound spectacles that dangled on his nose. Didn’t the Tri-Coalition doctors know how to fix simple eye issues? But his most singular distinguishing feature was his twisted left ankle, which made him limp as he moved. The team dubbed him Gimp. He was twenty-five. Domin had been on a school trip to help some of the missionary kids with their summer lessons; his younger sister had married a young man who, like a fool, had decided to spend one year of his life as a missionary. A gap year was what they called it, volunteering a year of one’s life in the service of humanity. Domin had promised his sister he’d try to help with the missionary group at least once that year, but his trip had taken a new path when the Nnect hover battlecraft ships had descended upon the missionary village. Domin was all about becoming a better person and asking big questions. David couldn’t help that Paddy would have liked him. He believed in balance between the physical, emotional, spiritual, and intellectual. The man would not shut up about his thoughts. He had strange habits, which included exercise, recitation, and dancing in his containment cell. The man didn’t despair in his containment and often said he’d take one day at a time. David thought the man’s true deformity was his blindness to his fated uselessness. A man with a bad leg would’ve been sent to Orns immediately. There was no place in a productive world for the poor and broken.
Subject Arc was the most mesmerizing. Her name was Tara Joan. She was twenty-three and married to a missionary leader. She herself was a firm believer in the Cross God and in human respect, and she made a point to address the many human rights violations that were acted upon those unjustly captured. She had demanded to be treated as a person and not some object. Foolish. The woman was beautiful and intellectual. She had a devious habit of extracting as much information out of Xchange scientists as they were getting from her. In Tri-Coalition she was a member of the Department of Justice and advocated for political interconnection and peace. She’d been teaching a course about future integration between Xchange and Tri-Coalition cities in a university seminar in the missionary village during the capture. Her whole life seemed to be dedicated to uniting the world and providing justice for the oppressed. Foolish. She was a patriot and a believer. Ironically, she was now helping connect the worlds by serving Nnect. Her white hair glowed in the light at night, and several technicians thought it looked like a half moon or an arcing moon. So they nicknamed her Arc. Tara Joan was the envy of the females and the desire of the males on David’s team. David had to enforce a no-touch policy to keep Grandpa Greg away from her.
This was the group David had to work with. His team diligently went about testing the subjects. The future of Xchange could depend on the intelligence the labs gathered. It was a sacred calling David was about.
Chapter 25
Episode 10: The Silence of Revenge
The wood was still and silent. The occasional whispering of the wind was the only disturbance. It was too quiet near where Drane’s camp should be. Phel tied his stolen roan to a rotten stump half a mile from his friend’s reported camp location. “Tili, wait for me here.” Tili was a tired horse. It had been a bad choice stealing the messenger’s recently ridden mount. “Desperate times.”
The horse neighed hungrily. She seemed like a Tili. Tili could feel the eerie silence in the forest. The horse shuffled and snorted at being left alone among the outlandish trees.
Phel couldn’t have the horse giving his position away if the enemy was gathering to attack Drane’s camp. Checking his sword straps, he moved through the woods quickly and silently, ears attuned to the whispers of the forest. He hoped he was in time. The message he had intercepted had been written recently. The handwriting was eerily familiar, but he couldn’t recall why or whose it was. “Who could the spy in the castle be?” he asked himself again. It had taken him a day of hard riding to get here, and he figured he was ahead of any warning message that might betray his intentions.
His nose wrinkled. A strange smell reached him. “ Burning meat?” The odor increased in harshness. He stalked into a clearing, branches breaking underfoot as he hurried his step and saw a leg of some blackened meat, probably pork, turning into charcoal on an unattended fire. The fire ring was surrounded by death. Three men sprawled in baths of blood lay silent and forever still. Phel knew these men.
“Drane’s war band.” Seeing a large monolith of aged stone rising above a brook, he said to himself, “This is the place in the letter. Betrayed already?” Hopelessness filled his being. The bodies were beaten badly and broken like the twigs underfoot. He pulled out his sword in anticipation of danger and inspected the camp. Seeing no sign of the intruders, he walked to the burning meat and inspected the fire and the bodies; one body was missing a leg. “The Creator of Light take me—that’s Dudoon’s leg.” Phel vomited and kicked it off the fire and threw dirt onto the coals. His eyes began to tear uncontrollably as the human barbecue’s smoke filled his nostrils. Knowing that it wasn’t pork made it worse. Hurriedly, he left the bodies as they were and, seeing no sign of Drane, tracked the hoof marks to the outskirts of a small farming community.
Phel hiked around the village to observe it from all sides and gain his bearings. A stone chapel tower stood out from the landscape. “The town of Mastan.” He recognized the church. It was the Alexorian village of Mastan, still unconquered by the Moonz. He’d been so caught up in his mad hunt that he’d forgotten Mastan was so close. Two summers earlier, he’d trained at this very village as a young knight apprentice. He had been stationed here to learn about the municipal village responsibilities of Sonz warriors. Glancing over the green and yellow crop fields, there were about fifteen or so thatch-roofed houses, the stone-towered church, a small, decrepit inn, and a newly built large mill. He remembered them all very well. The simple village life had been a change from the hectic life of poverty in the busy capital city. Sharing a floor, in the humble carpenter’s home, with many siblings had been a stark contrast to the openness of Mastan.
As he observed the village, he noticed that his tracking had led him to the correct place. A band of Sonz knights’ horses were tethered outside the inn’s barn. Sir Drane and another Moonz warrior, Mark, were on display in the village yard outside of the inn, the Draping Wheat, with its barley, barrels, and wheat logo painted onto a crooked wooden post. The captives’ heads were locked into wooden blocks. Shame rose to Phel’s cheeks as he recalled his days spent in the stockades. His neck and wrists helplessly clamped so that the monster in a pink bonnet, Clouwna, could hold his nose and mouth until he struggled to breath. Shame. Phel cringed for his friend Drane. Villagers passing the captive pair spat and beat them as they went about their day. “I am coming, Drane. I know the stocks are horrid.” Rescuing him was the least Phel could do to remit his sin of sleeping with Jillian and thank Drane for building Phel back into a warrior. Muddling with the snake Lord Meldz’s plans was also top on his list.
The full-bellied and jolly, peach-cheeked Bedly, the miller, walked out of the Draping Wheat. Phel imagined that the swinging doors of the inn still groaned the way they had two summers ago. Bedly walked over to Drane and fed the prisoner out of a bowl. He wiped Drane’s drooling face and then fed Mark. He walked away, whistling as he went.
The sight of Bedly caused memories of the town of Mastan to fill Phel’s mind’s eye. He was torn about betraying the simple townsfolk who had been good to him as he planned an attack to free the Dristoners. Could he infiltrate without the townsfolk suffering repercussions? He didn’t know. Phel remembered training as a young man in this village for a winter. He knew a lot of the farmers and their families by name; he recognized many other faces from his vantage point in the woods. He had fond memories of living here. The stone well made him think of times spent with Micho, the hunter’s son, drinking and lustily singing to the stars. The Creator and the neighbors had complained about their midnight pranks and off-tune signing. He looked at the third house, the only one with a red clay roof, and blushed as he remembered how he had fallen in love with one of the villagers’ daughters, Daniell
e. That’d ended when he had been called back to Castle Bend for his final years of training. He had all but forgotten her—his infatuation with Princess Trawland had been very time consuming. The red-roofed house made him smile sadly.
“Time to act, Phel. No one will get hurt.” He hoped so.
Rocks crunched under his boots as he prepared. He stashed his telltale Moonz leather armor in the woods and wrapped a thick green cloak around himself, pulling the hood low so that the villagers wouldn’t recognize him. He walked boldly down the single main street potted with wagon tracks, acting as if no one had any business to stop him. He dared not glance at the red-roofed cottage, knowing if he saw Danielle his memories might overwhelm his intent. The door was just as old as he remembered.
It worked, and he quickly reached the Draping Wheat. The creaking door swung reluctantly open. The stench of peasant ale, the delectable aroma of fresh bread, and the odor of sweaty farmers assaulted the senses.
He swaggered like a lonely forest ranger up to the beaten-timber bar. “Two ales, innkeep.”
“Two, sir?” Roland the innkeeper asked, confused, seeing no companion. Roland was a twig with large ears, an unsightly nose, and a smile that filled the room. The white of his teeth shone in the candlelit space.
“One for my horse and one for me,” Phel demanded in a voice he imagined sounded like a thirsty ranger. Rangers who hunted the forest tracks for wild beast and outlaws were a secretive crowd.
Roland shrugged, the lines of his bones showing through his stained shirt. He poured the brown ale into large pewter mugs and passed them to the stranger. “Coin, sir.”
A Tale Of Doings Page 32