Box

by Richard J Lowe

As requested, a scale was displayed on the left hand side of the map in kilometres.

  ‘How does this thing know what a kilometre is?’ asked Kevin.

  ‘It’s an alien mind reading machine, remember?’

  ‘Right. Magic,’ said Kevin. He looked at the map again. ‘It looks like it’s only a kilometre to the first structures. Look, there’s a road we can use.’

  ‘I’m not sure I’ll be able to walk that far in that gravity,’ said Simone.

  ‘You’re right.’ Kevin had an idea. ‘Box, fabricate two assist exoskeletons.’

  There was a hum, and the door of the creation compartment slid open. Kevin reached in and pulled out a flat-pack box. A label read ‘Rewalk Assist Exoskeleton’.

  ‘How come the damn things got a brand name?’ asked Kevin.

  ‘They’re the only ones I know of.’ Simone shrugged.

  Kevin ripped open the packaging to reveal a set of sleek black plastic shrouded assist servos, fitted with nylon straps. There was one for each limb and a larger set for the back and neck, all designed to aid atrophied muscles. ‘Nice. These look like top of the range models,’ said Kevin.

  ‘It’s a good job I was working in the hospital during the collapse of mine sector three,’ said Simone.

  ‘That’s right. Old Randall got fitted out with one of these.’ Kevin was trying to strap one of the servos onto his leg.

  ‘Wait. Let me.’ Simone took the servo from him and turned it the right way up.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Kevin.

  ‘They really should have put a “This Way Up” label on these,’ said Simone as she adjusted the straps to fit snugly.

  Kevin offered his other leg to Simone, and she strapped on the second leg servo.

  ‘Maybe we can get some spare parts for the dig-units,’ said Kevin.

  ‘Really? We’re here, on another world, and all you can think about is getting some spares?’

  Kevin raised his hands. ‘Alright, we can do the tourist bit as well. But we haven’t had any supplies from Earth for years. Let’s not ignore an opportunity.’

  Simone grabbed one of his raised hands and started to attach another black servo to his arm. ‘But it looks like we can make anything we need with the Box.’

  ‘For the whole colony? Are you sure about that?’ Kevin flexed his arm. There was a quiet whine as the servos assisted his movement.

  ‘I suppose,’ said Simone as she tightened the last strap on his other arm and started on the larger back and neck support.

  Kevin watched his sister shed her excitement and shift into what he thought of as her ‘full-on analytical science mode’.

  ‘The full fabrication capabilities of the Box are still an unknown,’ said Simone. ‘There may well be limitations on quantity.’

  ‘Yeah. That,’ said Kevin. He stood up, accompanied by the whir of servo assistance. ‘This feels really weird, you should try it.’

  ‘I will. If you’ll help me fit mine.’

  Kevin whirred his way to the creation unit and retrieved the second package. Simone deftly fitted the servos to her legs. The arm units took a little longer as she needed Kevin’s help and he was still getting used to the servo assist reducing the effort needed to move. By the time they had finished he had managed to get a modicum of control over his limbs.

  ‘Almost ready,’ said Simone. ‘Box, two hats please. Make them green.’

  ‘So, we’re going to get some stuff for the colony?’ asked Kevin.

  ‘Yes, you’re right. We should take the time to load up on supplies if we can. But first’ – Simone grinned at him and held out one of the newly fabricated green wide-brimmed hats – ‘we do some sightseeing.’

  ‘Agreed.’ Kevin took the proffered hat and put it on his head. ‘Now, can you get the Box to make me a t-shirt that says “I’m with stupid”?’

  CHAPTER 12

  Daniel was beginning to wonder if they’d forgotten about him when the pol-AI’s voice came from a speaker grille fitted above the door. ‘The prisoner will stand behind the yellow line.’

  So that’s what the yellow line was for. Daniel obstinately remained lying down on the bed.

  ‘The prisoner will stand behind the yellow line,’ repeated the AI.

  Daniel continued to ignore it. He wondered if it would give up?

  ‘If the prisoner does not stand behind the yellow line, pacification measures will be taken.’

  Pacification measures? Daniel didn’t think they sounded like much fun. With a protesting click from his knees, he stood up and shuffled behind the yellow line. He glared at the speaker grille, daring it to say something. However, it seemed his compliance with the AI’s request was satisfactory and the door unlocked with a loud clunk and swung open to reveal a tall ColPol officer writing something on a clipboard.

  ‘Ah, Daniel Maddock. If you’ll come this way.’ The man stepped to one side and gestured for Daniel to leave the cell.

  Daniel did as he was told and was taken back through the station to the entry desk.

  ‘You’ll be glad to know, you are being released.’

  Daniel just nodded. He still wasn’t sure what was going on.

  ‘You will make sure you are wearing your cuff at all times. This is a condition of your release.’

  Daniel looked at his wrist. The cuff’s display had a small blue ColPol icon in the corner.

  ‘If the cuff goes off-net or has been removed for longer than thirty minutes a ColPol team will be despatched to arrest you.’

  They were treating him like a common criminal who was deemed safe to release but who they wanted to keep tabs on.

  The ColPol officer continued with his monologue. ‘Any attempt to enter a restricted area will result in a ColPol team being despatched to arrest you.’

  ‘Restricted area?’ asked Daniel.

  ‘Your cuff will alert you when you are near one.’ The officers tone was bored. Daniel supposed he’d gone over this many times before.

  ‘Oh, right.’ Daniel eyed his cuff suspiciously.

  ‘Now, if you’ll just give me your thumbprint here.’

  A small beige box with a thumb sized glass panel was presented to Daniel. He pressed his thumb on the glass until the box beeped. The officer took the box back and pushed a black plastic tray across the desk which contained his therms, tank-belt and mask. Daniel took the items from the tray.

  ‘And you’re free to go. The main airlock is just behind you.’

  Daniel was still in a daze when he left the ColPol building. He was standing outside gathering his thoughts when the airlock opened again and a man exited. Daniel recognised the worn therms with the green cloth patch of an agri-dome worker on one shoulder. Dimitri was swearing loudly and offering various opinions on the ancestry of the ColPol officers.

  ‘Hello, Dimitri,’ said Daniel.

  ‘Danny. So, they let you out too. Did they program your cuff with that tracker bullshit?’

  ‘Yes, I think so. They said something about restricted areas.’

  ‘Hah. They’ll know everywhere you go.’ Dimitri turned towards the grim concrete ColPol building and shouted, ‘Fascists!’ The shout came out loud but distorted from his mask’s speaker.

  Daniel saw a plume of dust on the road moving towards them, and it wasn’t long before he could hear the familiar whine of an approaching rover. It stopped nearby, throwing up a plume of dust and small stones as the driver braked hard, slewing the rover around so the door faced them. The door popped open.

  ‘Come. We’ll go drink and talk about it.’ Dimitri stomped over to the rover and climbed in.

  Daniel didn’t relish the long walk back to his hab, so he followed Dimitri into the rover.

  ‘They got you as well? What dumb scheme did my useless husband rope you into?’ asked the driver. Daniel realised the driver was Lula, Dimitri’s long suffering wife.

  ‘This time, my sweet, it was not me,’ said Dimitri.

  ‘There’s a first time for everything I suppose,’ said Lula. S
he turned the rover in the direction of the communal habs and gunned the electric motor, sending the rover on its way with a gratuitous wheel spin.

  Dimitri grabbed at a handrail as the rover bounced over an uneven bit of road. ‘So, Danny. What’s going on with Kev?’

  ‘Have you not seen the news feed?’ asked Daniel.

  ‘No. I came off shift and was picked up by ColPol,’ said Dimitri. ‘They were asking if Kevin had told me anything about his plans for the artefact and if I was in on the plan.’

  ‘They think Kevin and Simone stole it. What did you tell them?’ asked Daniel.

  ‘Everything I knew. Which is nothing.’

  ‘And they held you overnight?’ asked Lula. ‘What are you not telling me?’

  ‘I told them that if I did know the plan I wouldn’t tell that bunch of fascist pricks, so they put me in a cell for a few hours.’

  ‘Oh, Dimitri.’ Lula shook her head. ‘And you Daniel? Did you call them pricks?’

  ‘No. They just didn’t believe me.’

  ‘But they let you both go,’ said Lula.

  ‘Come to think of it, it does seem strange,’ said Daniel.

  ‘They expect us to be in contact with the daring thieves,’ said Dimitri.

  ‘I was there when it vanished,’ said Daniel. ‘It was after they zapped it with a ray gun.’

  ‘A ray gun? What is this, Flash Gordon?’ Dimitri laughed.

  ‘The scientist mentioned quantum. It was sort of like a laser,’ said Daniel, straining to remember what he had been told.

  ‘Does it matter?’ asked Lula.

  ‘No, I suppose it doesn’t,’ said Daniel.

  ‘I don’t know about you Danny, but I could use a drink,’ said Dimitri.

  ‘I guess so,’ said Daniel. He wouldn’t normally touch alcohol this early in the day but this was not a normal day.

  ‘Lula, my darling, take us to dome six.’

  Lula nodded and drove past the communal habs and on towards the gleaming glass of the agri-domes.

  Once they had arrived at agri-dome number six, Dimitri led them through a small maintenance airlock and into the bowels of the water storage area. The way was dimly lit, the flicker of a defective light giving the place a run down and neglected feel.

  ‘Goddamn lights. Maintenance apparently don’t have enough spares for places no-one visits,’ said Dimitri.

  It was the same all across the colony. It had been years since the last spacecraft had come from Earth, and the colony was starting to fall apart.

  After ten minutes of negotiating the cramped walkways, surrounded by pipes and tubes, they arrived at their destination. There, nestled amongst the legitimate piping and water tanks, was a still. It was cobbled together with vessels and pipes purloined from agri-dome supplies and was bubbling quietly to itself. Not far from the still was a large plastic vat, wedged into a gap in the pipes covering the wall. Daniel assumed that this was the source of the faint, yeasty, sweet smell that was in the air. A small foldable table and some chairs had been deployed within reach of the still; a battered deck of cards was spread out on the table in a half-finished game of solitaire. An old laboratory fridge next to the table hummed quietly to itself.

  ‘Welcome to the distillery. Sit.’ Dimitri gestured towards the table and chairs.

  Daniel sat down. Lula took the seat opposite him and swept the cards from the table and started to shuffle them. Dimitri placed three small measuring cylinders on the table and squirted a 50ml measure of clear liquid into each of them from a bottle misleadingly labelled ‘distilled water’.

  Daniel picked up a cylinder and sniffed it. He couldn’t smell much. Maybe the merest hint of apple.

  ‘Drink up, Danny.’ Dimitri tossed back his drink in one smooth motion.

  Daniel followed suit and exploded into a gasping cough as the drink burned its way down his oesophagus.

  Dimitri laughed and banged the table with the flat of his palm.

  ‘Macho bullshit.’ Lula pushed the measuring cylinder in front her towards her husband. ‘Put some juice in mine.’

  Dimitri, tears of laughter in his eyes, retrieved a white plastic carton from the fridge.

  ‘I’m sorry Danny, just my little joke.’ He poured a golden liquid from the carton into Lula’s cylinder. The smell of fresh apple juice floated across the table. He then fixed himself and Daniel another drink. This time with an apple juice mixer.

  ‘So, what do we think has happened to Kev?’ asked Dimitri.

  ‘And Simone,’ said Lula.

  Dimitri nodded. ‘Yes, and Simone.’

  ‘I don’t know. ColPol seem to think they had some big plan to steal the artefact. But I just don’t see it.’

  ‘You’re right. Your boy Kev does not have the balls for something as big as that.’ Dimitri poured himself another drink. ‘So, your boy is gone—’

  ‘And girl,’ Lula interjected.

  ‘Yes, yes. Boy and girl. Both gone. Question is Danny, what are we going to do about it?’

  ‘Do?’ Daniel was genuinely puzzled. ‘There’s nothing we can do, is there?’

  ‘I tell you’ – Dimitri leaned forward, his voice dropping to a low whisper – ‘what we do is go and see for ourselves what is going on at this “dig site”’.

  ‘I told you, I was there. I saw it disappear,’ said Daniel.

  ‘You saw what they wanted you to see,’ declared Dimitri. He leant back on his chair and drained his measuring cylinder before banging it down on the table. ‘We’ll go there and find out for ourselves.’

  ‘Hang on. You said earlier that ColPol let us go in the hope Kevin and Simone would contact us.’

  ‘Yes. So?’

  Daniel was having trouble following the tortured logic of Dimitri’s thinking. ‘But why would they be doing that if what I saw happen didn’t actually happen?’

  ‘Those ColPol pricks don’t know what’s going on. This smells like a council cover up to me,’ said Dimitri firmly. His voice was filled with righteous conviction.

  ‘I don’t know. It seems like nobody knows what really happened.’

  ‘See? One big cover up. We will go and find out for ourselves what is going on.’

  Lula had a resigned smile on her face. ‘I find it easier just to let him do what he wants when he’s like this.’

  Dimitri pointed a finger at his wife. ‘You know I am right.’ He looked at his cuff. ‘First, we need to fix our cuffs.’

  ‘Right. The restricted area protocol,’ said Daniel. ‘How are you going to do that?’

  ‘Don’t worry about that Danny. I know a guy.’

  ‘Idiot,’ said Lula. ‘I can take care of that.’ She waggled her fingers.

  ‘How?’ asked Daniel.

  ‘Of course, my beloved husband wouldn’t bother to tell you what I do. I’m an AI engineer. I’ll just move my fingers across the keyboard and make it happen.’

  ‘Best in the business,’ said Dimitri proudly.

  ‘That may be a slight exaggeration, but working around the ColPol alerts will be no problem.’

  ‘And they won’t find out?’ asked Daniel. He didn’t want any more trouble than he was already in.

  ‘Nope. As soon as someone accesses that node, my code will self-delete.’

  Dimitri clapped Daniel on the back. ‘Then we are agreed, yes? First, Lula fixes our cuffs. Then we uncover the truth.’

  CHAPTER 13

  A rusted, weatherbeaten sign had announced the name of the settlement as ‘Akpoort’. By the side of the road, Kevin and Simone passed some long abandoned vehicles, vegetation sprouting from them like an avant garde garden decoration. The first building they came across was a church. The once white paint was peeling from the wooden walls and its large windows were all broken. Graves marked with crude crosses overran the surrounding graveyard boundary, radiating out from the church in a haphazard explosion of bereavement. Everything was still, the silence only broken by the faint whirring of their assist servos.

  Simone
suddenly stopped. ‘Oh, Kevin. Look!’ Simone was pointing at one of the nearby grave markers. A brown bird with a yellow backside, its talons clutching the top of the cross, was regarding them. Its head made short, sharp movements as it appraised them from different angles.

  Kevin watched the bird, fascinated. He had, of course, seen birds before on screen. But never in real life.

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ said Simone.

  He thought this was probably overstating it a little bit. This was, however, the first sign of life they had seen. ‘Sim.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Does this all seem a bit’ – he swept his arm around in a wide arc, taking in the bird the graves and the church – ‘post-apocalyptic to you?’

  ‘Maybe. A little. Let’s see what it’s like in town.’

  Within five minutes of reaching the town, Kevin had decided it also looked decidedly post-apocalyptic. Massive heaps of rubble lined the street, barely recognisable as the remains of buildings. The few buildings that remained intact stood a lonely vigil over their fallen comrades.The street itself was deserted, the only vehicles a few abandoned cars at the side of the road. They came across a truck in a ditch, its loading doors open and contents long gone. Kevin climbed into the cab to find it also empty, a pair of sad green dice hanging above the dashboard. They left the truck behind as they moved closer to the centre of town.

  ‘This is beginning to creep me out,’ said Kevin.

  ‘I know what you mean. Everything I’ve read or seen about Earth said how overcrowded it was.’

  ‘And there’s no bugger here,’ said Kevin.

  ‘There’s got to be someone. We just have to keep looking,’ said Simone.

  Kevin cupped his hands around his mouth, threw his head back and shouted, ‘Hello, is anybody there?’

  His voice echoed around the empty streets before fading into silence. They both stood still and listened. There was an explosion of wings as a dark, black shape took off from a nearby roof and scudded low across the road in front of them. Kevin jumped back, his servos whining in response to his rapid muscle contractions.

  ‘Another bird,’ said Simone.