Started with Errors (Relative Industries Series Book 2)

by Joanna Beaumont

  Callum looked at Beth and Howard seriously, then leaned towards them. “If Alex taking the embryos off-planet gets into the public domain, they might take the few we have away from us. Then how will we prove the growing technique works?”

  “Who knows Alex took them?” Howard asked.

  “That’s not the problem—it’s who’ll blab he took them,” Beth said.

  They looked at Lana.

  “If they find out the suicide code came from here intentionally, they might shut RI down, and then I would have no visibility of who has access to the code and everyone at home has the fucking implant,” Beth said.

  Beth fumbled inside the bag strapped across her body. She removed the piece of yellow paper Callum had dropped earlier and handed it to him. “I picked it up.”

  Callum took the paper. “I didn’t want to explain it to anyone when we got caught so I dropped it.”

  “Give it to Lana. Prove your innocence,” Beth said. She handed him the paper.

  Callum unfolded it and read the parents’ names on the list. He looked at Lana as if he was considering what he should do with it. Lana gave him no sign of encouragement. Slowly, he tore it into pieces.

  Clayton was back behind the security desk, and Beth rose from her seat.

  Howard grabbed her arm. “Where are you going?”

  Beth sat back down. “Did it just get worse, Howard? Or did my code only kill thousands of people instead of millions?”

  “The risks are getting higher all the time, and for what? So people can save a few hours on a transatlantic flight inside a deceleration pod, so people don’t have to worry about forgetting their mobile phones?

  “Where does it end? You understand the scientific process; making mistakes is inevitable. There are an infinite number of wrong answers and one correct one. At least my mistakes were worthy of the risk. The children were sick with brain tumours. They would die! I was trying to save their lives.

  “But now healthy people could die because they want to save time or they’re worried about losing their mobile phones. More lives will be lost. Look at the robots in the New Cities! You’ve seen them being returned to RI. I’ve heard the rumours. They’re drifters, for God’s sake. RI could easily create an Artificial Intelligence that terraforms Earth and turns it into paperclips just because people can’t wait or can’t get off their backsides to make their own dinner.

  “This tech is not aligned with the human race’s best interests. We need to ask hard questions like, where are we going as a species? What do we want to become? Normal people are working on tech projects in RI to satisfy the whims of a billionaire psychopath. How can tech ever be aligned to the human race’s best interests? If there is any benefit to human-kind, it’s only ever a side effect. So yes, it could still get worse, and I don’t want to be here when it does.”

  Beth looked at him, open mouthed. She’d never seen him that passionate before. For moments all she could do was watch him.

  “You’re right. It could get worse, and I can’t be responsible for that. I won’t be long.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Beth rose and headed to the security desk.

  “Hi,” Beth said to Clayton. “Where’s Meda?”

  “She’s in the back inside a deceleration pod. I’m working out what the procedure is. First, I need to work out who the boss is around here. Alex has disappeared, and I’ve arrested Meda for illegal firearm use. It’s probably Oliver Mason Brown. For sure, he’ll bring in a new set of management to run this place.”

  A new set of management? Could they be worse than Alex and Meda?

  “Why are you here, Clayton—working at RI?”

  “Protecting US assets; most of our top minds have worked here.”

  “What ratio of men to women work at NASA? Or ESA? Or in science and technology or even in politics?” she asked.

  “Good question; I don’t know. But you’ve got to be at the table to get served.”

  He was right too. What input could she expect to have if she wasn’t inside RI?

  “Do you mind if I have a word with Meda?”

  He lifted a panel in his desk, and Beth followed him through a door into a short corridor with rooms branching off on both sides.

  “We have a few deceleration pods in here for security’s use.”

  On the left-hand side of the corridor Clayton pushed a door open.

  A table, two chairs and a deceleration pod were inside the room.

  Meda was inside the pod. Strands of her hair had suspended in all directions like a rush of static electricity had gone through her just before the time was taken out of her. Her eyes followed Beth around the room in a piercing glassy stare. Every vibrating molecule inside her had slowed. She was a pork-chop in a freezer ever so slowly spoiling.

  “Kinda spooky, isn’t it? It’s easier in a pod, don’t have to feed ‘em or listen to the yapping. What do you want with her?”

  “I need to clear a few things up. There might have been a misunderstanding.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “A gun is a pretty big misunderstanding.”

  Clayton pressed zero on the deceleration pod.

  Time was added, turning Meda back to toxic fluid. Apart from her stiff forehead, her face and body unfroze. He yanked open the door. Meda stepped out, shivering like a scared animal. Beth had to remind herself she’d just murdered over a hundred thousand people.

  “Can I have a word with her in private?” Beth asked.

  “You sure?”

  Beth nodded.

  “I’ll watch you from outside.”

  “Thanks, Clayton.”

  Meda sat in the chair facing the door. Beth watched Clayton close it before she pulled out a chair and sat opposite her.

  “Looks like you have a problem. The PM is blaming the Youth Party for the suicides,” Beth said.

  “There were some?”

  “Hundreds of thousands, maybe more!”

  Meda’s shoulders slumped. The bitch was disappointed.

  “The PM told the world there was a zero-day attack, and RI had downloaded a patch to fix it. How the fuck would he know?”

  “That was protocol. They can’t blame RI if something like this happens. No one will trust RI tech again, and the world is about to be flooded with it. How do you think they pay people to do nothing at home—give them a state guaranteed salary and free cannabis when ImReal rolls out? This is the way the economy works now.”

  Beth dropped her head into her hands. The government couldn’t get off the RI gravy train now even if they wanted.

  “If new management comes in and finds out the suicide code was anything to do with you, you won’t have a job here anymore. And the government still wants to go ahead with your shiny happy people idea to bring calm to the New Cities. So, someone else will continue with ImReal. Wouldn’t you rather it be you? It’s in your interest to make sure I stay here as CTO and you carry on with the ImReal project.”

  “But they don’t need ImReal. They can grow babies inside the pods. Things will calm down by themselves.”

  Meda laughed. “You think everyone can have a pod-baby?” Meda laughed again. That time louder. “An explosion of births inside the New Cities? Really? The population must be carefully controlled—space is limited, money is limited.”

  Beth felt her head on the verge of exploding. How could she be so stupid? This would never end. Alex had screwed everyone over.

  “Women will work it out when they think they can get pregnant but can’t,” Beth said.

  “Their doctor will tell them to keep trying. They’ll be put on the waiting list for a pod-baby. It will be like winning the lottery for them!”

  “But they will know something is wrong!”

  “And what will they do about it? Risk being thrown out of the New Cities?”

  Beth sat back in her chair and watched Meda. The bitch was right. No one would risk getting thrown out of the New Cities. They would go ahead with ImReal, and as long as people stay
ed inside the New Cities under armed guard, life for them would never change. Troublesome individuals could be picked off. The suicide code could be activated in them, and who would suspect or be brave enough to open their mouths about it? The coroner would conclude it was mental illness, a death of despair.

  She had to stay in RI. But she knew Howard would leave her if she did. He couldn’t stand the stress. He’d wanted to leave ever since she’d met him.

  But a new set of management? Beth was sure Meda was not a misogynist; she hated men and women equally. In fact, she might say Meda was an extreme planetist. And right now, Beth wondered if it was better to know the devil, and this devil knew a shed load more than she did.

  “Even if the government finds out Alex stole the embryos, they will never shut RI down. You knew that, so I can only conclude that you distributed the suicide code because you’re a fucking psycho,” Beth said.

  “I didn’t target everyone. I was simply reducing the demand on Earth’s resources. You understand supply and demand, Beth? I had no choice. It was the best way to reduce the population. The people I targeted don’t care about Earth.”

  Beth suspected those people would be less likely to pick up their dog’s shit too, but you couldn’t try to normalise a population and turn them into picker-uppers because where would it end. The range of acceptable would keep shrinking until we were all identical and that would be desperately boring and more importantly eugenics. Beth suddenly realised psychos like Meda and Alex would always exist in normal society too. Without them society wouldn’t be normal. Meda and Alex were at opposite positions on the same bell curve, but she’d provided the tools for them to do their worst. She was as guilty as they were.

  “But according to you they will scale the population, so you’ll get what you want,” Beth said.

  “Not fast enough. It will take Earth thousands of years to recover.”

  “What if Alex made the infertility crisis up? Did you ever consider what he’d do to get the embryos? He could have pretended women tested GAV positive then supplied a drug masquerading as an anti-viral which made sure no woman got pregnant. What came first the reports of an infertility crisis or the anti-viral?”

  “It’s possible. I wouldn’t put it past him. The national testing program only began after the statistics were released, and those statistics were produced by a subsidiary lab owned by RI. But it does sound like a conspiracy theory.”

  Close to losing her shit, Beth counted to five and stared at the table. “So, Alex takes millions of embryos off planet. You murder over a hundred thousand innocent people. And my theory sounds like conspiracy!”

  “I’m not saying it’s not true, but it doesn’t change the situation we’re in now.”

  “It could! If the infertility crisis was revealed as a hoax, people would care about Earth again.”

  Meda was considering the possibility. Her expression softened. Was there a human inside her trying to crack out? Beth thought she’d glimpsed it once before. She wasn’t sure if Meda felt sorry for what she’d done or sorry Alex might have made a fool of her. Whatever it was she’d take it.

  “Alex could have manipulated you into murdering innocent people. Don’t you want to find out?”

  Something was very wrong with that statement, but it triggered the reaction in Meda she’d hoped for. A flash of realisation appeared on Meda’s face, then disbelief. A single wrinkle appeared on her forehead.

  “Fucker!”

  “Obviously, it doesn’t change the fact you’ve murdered over a hundred thousand people.”

  “That fucker!”

  “Would you have done things differently?”

  “I don’t know; I haven’t a crystal ball. But it won’t make a difference to any new management.”

  New management. That was a different problem entirely. Would they care that the infertility might be fake? If they wanted to control the population, it wouldn’t be in their interests to reveal it was a hoax now. The New Cities wouldn’t be able to cope.

  “Does it make a difference to you?” Beth asked.

  Meda stared at the table. “Alex can’t get away with it.”

  Meda was entranced by the crazy in her head. Hypnotised by it. She wasn’t listening anymore.

  If she stayed here, she could work to realign RI’s research with the human race’s best interests and keep an eye on Meda for a start. What use would she be on the outside? If Howard stayed, he could try to solve the world’s hunger problems. She was sure he’d want to do that.

  She imagined explaining the suicide code to new management. Meda was probably right. Cait and she could be found guilty of negligence, of stupidity, for sure. Yes, she’d been naive for thinking she could make people ‘Be Happy’ but she never wanted to kill people. If she was found guilty of being a tool, she might get thrown out of the New Cities, her family could, Cait too, and Cait was pregnant. She had no choice but to stay. She hoped Howard would see it that way.

  “Make me the CTO. Alex has left. You can have his job, and I’ll have your job,” Beth said.

  Meda laughed. “What? The board takes that position seriously. They wouldn’t have someone like you doing it.”

  Beth leaned forward. “I’ll take my chances on whether they sack me or not. You can go back inside the deceleration pod. When you come out Earth might be abandoned and hot as hell. Or someone might accidentally on purpose turn your prison pod into a time acceleration pod. I’ve seen what happens to the body days after death, and it’s disgusting. I’m sure someone important like you could smooth it over.”

  Meda’s smug expression faded. She nodded. “Okay, I’ll sort it out. It won’t be a problem.”

  “Good. And no more manufactured suicides. Let’s sort out the cow farts before we kill people.”

  Meda nodded. A determined expression on her face. “And we go after Alex!”

  “That goes without saying.” Beth rose then knocked on the door.

  Clayton opened it.

  Outside the room, Beth spoke to him for some time before she headed to the bathroom.

  Hands resting on the sink, she gazed in the bathroom mirror at the stranger she’d become.

  She needed to get inside the mind of a psychopath, but when you didn’t think like one everything was a surprise. In a just world Meda should be in prison, guilty for crimes against humanity.

  Was she now merely satisfying the whims of a psycho? She was covering her own arse. What did that make her? But she had to stay inside RI and keep visibility of the code until its requirement went away if it ever did, and she had to believe life at home could change.

  Alex must pay for what he’d done to Amy, to her, to humanity. Her children would not grow up without her. She would hunt him down and find the stolen embryos. She would setup an intergalactic police force to find the humans taken from Earth and free them from any mistreatment. This was not over. And if the infertility crisis was invented by Alex, life at home could change. It had to. But she had to trust Meda, and that didn’t sit well. How could she control a rabid dog?

  She twisted the hot water on and forced her wrist to stay in the stream until her skin burnt with pain.

  A woman entered the bathroom and gave Beth a curious look. “Are you okay?”

  Beth removed her wrist from the flow and looked over her shoulder at her. “I’m checking to see if I can feel.”

  The woman gawked at her as though she thought Beth might be insane. Then she scarpered inside a cubicle and snapped the door shut. She did feel insane but strangely in control.

  Howard was sitting in the same seat when Beth returned.

  She glanced at Lana and Callum. A ten-seat-wide block of ice still separated them. Given the opportunity, she wasn’t confident they’d ever make up.

  She sat next to Howard.

  “Where’ve you been?”

  Beth sighed. “Making a deal with the devil.”

  She looked at her hands for a moment, preparing in her mind the words she would say to
persuade him to stay. “I know you want to leave RI, but they want to continue with ImReal. And I have to find our babies and string Alex up by his balls. I want you with me when I do it. If I leave, I have no power to control what goes on in here. Will you stay with me?”

  She took his hand. Howard looked at her but didn’t speak. He’d started simmering.

  “I’m going to be the CTO in here. I can decide the projects we do. You can help with the world’s food and water shortage problems if you want.”

  “You think that sadistic bitch would make you the CTO.”

  “She will.” Beth dropped his hand. “What do you want me to do? Walk away? If I don’t work on ImReal, someone else will. They could make the same mistakes I already made.”

  “Yes, walk away. It doesn’t have to be you. You should never have done it in the first place! You were reconfiguring people’s brains, for God’s sake.”

  “My code uses the same technology as the air-screen. If we went back home, we’d have to have the implant. Screens are being phased out in the New Cities. That’s how they pay for food, watch TV, receive calls, receive thought messages, order an AI. We’d have a bomb in our heads!” she whispered frantically.

  His face turned red. He slammed his fist on the chair arm. “I fucking hate it in here!”

  The silence dragged on. This could go either way. His expression took on a range of emotions. She wasn’t sure what was going through his mind.

  After a few minutes, he said flatly, “I love you, and I’ll be by your side when the terraforming starts.”

  They leaned towards each other and hugged.

  “Just try not to make things worse.” He put an emphasis on the word try.

  “Don’t worry. It will be okay.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  Minutes later, Clayton, flanked between two guards, approached them.

  “Lana Underwood,” Clayton said. “Come with me.”

  Howard shot Beth a look that yelled, What have you done? Beth looked away. Had she made it worse already? But she could only do what she thought she must. After Callum ripped the paper with the names and addresses on it, she knew he’d made his choice. And so had she.