Bottle Born Blues

by Conor H Carton

  I raised my hands in surrender and reached for my refilled glass before she might take it back.

  “Then the unexpected happened and she didn’t return. This is the worst possible result, an information vacuum filled with mutually contradictory stories playing to the hopes and expectations of various survivors. That’s where it stands today: same vacuum, same stories. There’s been no new information since the Sickle Quadrant play.”

  That surprised me. I thought there’d been a steady accumulation of information as archives had been released, looted, found, copied, translated, leaked, and in at least one case turned into DNA and replicated organically.

  Lincoln followed the line of thoughts crossing my face. “Nothing new,” she repeated. “An extraordinary multiplication of information, coloured and weighted with subtle differences, crossbred with academic opinions and directed research that reassembled parts into different pictures … which then become parts for next-generation pictures.”

  “That’s your biggest claim so far tonight.”

  “The WZPROS Group did a search-and-filter exercise for me and found that all routes returned to the same set of data points, all dating from the week of the Sickle Quadrant firefight. Everything after that descended from that information, which is in itself a pretty substantial piece of information. Someone managed the process very effectively.”

  “The WZPROS Group did work for you?” This was unexpected, Lincoln getting the attention of the largest research organization in the systems, an organization that routinely shrugged off requests from ruling elites and governments … to accept a proposal from an individual, and a proposal as insane as researching the validity of information about the Claphain Jewel Box.

  Lincoln offered a brisk wave. “It was a straight exchange. I had something they wanted, so we swopped.”

  I’d seen Lincoln wear an Empire skeleton key, so I found this easy to believe. “How did you sort through all the confusion?”

  “I didn’t and ignored it. I started with one indisputable fact: she didn’t return. That’s the real problem. Why? The simplest answer: she couldn’t. Something went wrong that prevented her return, something accidental or something deliberate. If it was accidental, then it was a random event that could never be traced. If it was deliberate, then there’d be traces, and if I found them, I’d I have a trail.”

  “I follow your logic, but—”

  “But I could hardly be the first to think this? If other searchers had found nothing, is it likely that I would have?”

  “Something like that” I murmured.

  “Which is what I thought, then you came along and it all changed.”

  “What do I have to do with anything?” Lanken’s Tears I would not cope another unforced error.

  “The farm we visited wasn’t built by the people who used it. It was Empire construction, in fact.”

  10

  “The farm technology is current, only developed the last 15 years,” I explained, watching Lincoln closely. “Everything in that farm was current to the timeline. A bit out of date now but nothing antique and absolutely nothing Empire.”

  Lincoln offered a got-you smile, arched an eyebrow, and leaned back in the chair. “Did you notice the floor as we navigated the predators?”

  I recalled a faint and unmistakable mark on the floor, the ladder and sun of the Empire, Empress Ingea’s personal stamp used to indicate that construction had been completed by Imperial commission. Those marks weren’t wildly uncommon and could be found in the layers beneath the city, but not in that particular quarter. Another recollection: during the Empire era, that location had been beneath the sea, so it must have been utterly secret.

  Lincoln did some mindreading again and picked up where my thoughts had left off. “Correct, an unknown reserve location waiting to be utilized, out of sight and mind. So what went wrong? I went back to survey the—hey! No need to look like I jammed a fork into your arse! I came at it from below and stayed away from the hot spot. Anyway, I found the command centre, which had been stripped and dusted.”

  “Looters?”

  “No, this was a deliberate, ordered shutdown … completed at the same time as the Great Destroyer’s vanishing. The base commander had orders to take everything back to fallback location if they were not contacted within a specific timeframe. Following the instructions the base commander left a plain text log identifying the actions taken so the trail could be followed in the event safe part arrived at the base. The key let me in, the base is rigged to melt if unauthourised access is detected. She complied with the orders in full.”

  I had to spring the trap that Lincoln had so carefully set. “What base did they fall back to?”

  She leaned forward and gazed intently. “The Red Halls.”

  I was horrified, but not surprised. This was what I’d been hoping Lincoln wouldn’t say. The Red Halls were Empress Ingea’s personal bottle farm, the place where lifeforms that haunt the Sickle Quadrant were first developed. They were planned, brewed, and removed to the Sickle Quadrant for further refinement, a safe distance from Mengchi. If any place could be considered the engine room of the Empire, it was the Red Halls. Naturally, this made it a prime target for incoming forces, not to destroy, but to absorb … to inhale the information, procedures and techniques that had been developed … and capture the living intelligence that labored there. Losing the Red Halls was the loss of the Empire.

  The bargain that had been struck to clear out knowledge and leave the infrastructure for the Standing Committed to develop as they wished, created a second history for the Red Halls, which obliterated the first. The Red Halls was the security fulcrum for the Standing Committee, easy to enter and impossible to leave without the Standing Committee’s stamp. Getting into the Red Halls wasn’t a problem. Thousands streamed in there every day, but getting in unobserved and, more critically, getting out unaltered, was a gigantically difficult problem that had never been accomplished.

  “If I unwillingly grant you everything that you’ve said, there’s still the substantial problem that no military installation was discovered in the Red Halls. So when you say fall back from the secret location, why are you so sure that they fell back to the Red Halls?” Just because I was losing, didn’t mean I was giving up.

  Lincoln smirked. “They said so. When they left the command centre, they also left details of where they’d gone.”

  I snorted with disbelief; Lincoln was so deep in the mine, it’d be impossible to haul her out. She reached into a robe pocket and took out a small egg-white box, and slid open the top so I could peek inside.

  There was a tiny Empire military insignia, the ladder and sun motif of the Imperial Corps, except this time the sun had a teeny berry-red jewel in the centre. Only one group in the Corps had that; they guarded the Red Halls. It was obvious it was genuine from the power that lay within.

  Lincoln placed it on her palm and we both stared at it. “It was left on the commander’s chair for the next one in the chain to find.”

  It dawned on me that this was business for Lincoln; my problems were a fun wild ride, but this was serious and needed to be treated as such.

  Most likely, Lincoln had considered that there was a non-zero chance of succeeding, but it was the depth of the non-zero margin that was the point of concern. Lincoln changed all the calculations by stating, “BookWorms have free access. They come and go without restrictions.”

  “You want to recruit the BookWorms?” Astonishment had to be etched on my face.

  “No, I want to get information from them. Getting in isn’t a problem; it’s finding what we want in the time window and exiting. If we know exactly where to enter, we have more of a window for the exit. I know what I’m looking for, but don’t know where it is. The BookWorms would know, but would never tell me.”

  The odds had doubled in our favor, though doubling a really small number still left a really small number. Lincoln now had an info crystal on her palm; it looked multiple generations old �
� and was as secure as posting on the lines. Regardless, I put it in my pocket before draining my glass and standing. Lincoln settled back in the chair, obviously not going anywhere, and neither was the bottle. Clearly, there was more business to be done tonight. “There’s a return guide in the crystal. I’ll be in touch regarding the maker.”

  I strolled from the lounge with an increasingly “normal” feeling that I was pulling one foot from a tar-sucking pit and placing the other in a bucket of glue. I followed the guide to the Square of Arts and Knowledge, the location of the Mengchi Centre for the Promotion of Historical Knowledge among a cluster of institutes that actually did promote knowledge. They were housed on the same campus, a sightseer attraction in its own right. A dim line of light bisected the unadorned square. If you crossed the square from north to south, you’d see nothing, and if you crossed from east to west, you saw an extraordinary glass pane that ran the length of the square. Completely unsupported, it rose so high it vanished into the sky. The glass reflected activity from across the city, a great collage of Mengchi public life and movement.

  There were public benches from where you could watch the vivid city tapestry, which was never the same one second to the next. I sat on my favourite one and stared at the lives that might be robbed if I got it wrong.

  There was a doorway in the pane that never changed, the only entrance and exit for the campus within. Inside, you were in a beautifully landscaped business park with enticing walkways, unexpected vistas, and fascinating buildings. The Centre for the Promotion of Historical Knowledge was the closest to the entrance and drew the biggest crowds. The campus was a visible answer to the question of how a small sliver of ground like Thingler could contain a population of 200-million lifeforms and still not seem crowded. Location space warping was one of the most advanced aspects of energy-controlled engineering, creating living room out of the space between molecules. After sending a request to Akion regarding the location of an unknown military command centre in the Red Halls, I went home.

  The next day, I never actually reached my office. I was captured by an agitated mob as soon as I walked into the administration corridor. Fortunately, I’d stopped by the food space before this and had lunch and coffee with me. This was a regular event, which was why I had lunch and coffee ready. I sank into the day, as required. By the time I had more or less solved, or put off, the issues of the day, I was ready to leave. Back at my space, I slumped into my comfortable chair and stared into nothingness, devices switched off. Nothing would disturb me.

  When I did switch everything back on, I noticed a guide from Lincoln. It was stacked and torn, so it would only be readable a section at a time, and then only when I was actually in motion to the destination. I washed, put on a transparent Stop-All under my public clothes. I could see no point in making it too easy to stab, beat, or shoot me, given that I was going into what would likely be hostile territory.

  The guide started me off at a nearby transit point, not my usual one, and steadily brought me through a series of loops and returns that seemed to have been created solely for the pleasure of making me walk up and down a never-ending series of steps. I’d never realized how many sets of city steps connected walkways and pass-throughs.

  Eventually, I arrived at a doorway. Where it was, I couldn’t say. I touched it gingerly and it swung open, revealing a bright, clean hallway with beautifully laid natural work planks. I took the silent invite and stepped in, feeling prickles as the door vanished and the charm expired. A room at the end of the hallway contained a plush chair beside a small oval table with a translucent bottle and etched wineglass on it. Ruby-red liquid filled the bottle. The room was shadowy, except where soft light fell on the chair and the table.

  “Welcome Mr. Mansard. Please sit down and help yourself to wine. It’s not what you had the last time, but I do hope you’ll find it acceptable.”

  The voice was high-pitched with a whistling sound. It told me what I needed to know and I sat gratefully, poured a glass of wine, and sampled it. “Thank you for both. This wine deserves no apology and is very nice.” I took another appreciative sip. “Has our mutual acquaintance told you anything, or should I start from the beginning?”

  “Anyone who comes here wants only one thing, but I don’t know the specifics in your case, so if you don’t mind…”

  “I want a copy of the Shoshone Circlet that can pass a first-order inspection. I need it in five days.”

  There was a burst of whistling laughter. “And I’d like a clean liver.”

  “I can do that for you. Can you do what I want?”

  There was strained, heavy silence. Finally, a twisted branch of an arm that had a hand resembling a bloated red spider attached to it, slid out of the darkness. The spider picked up the health card I’d put on the table and the branch withdrew into the darkness. All that could be heard with whistling breath.

  I had an idea what was happening in the darkness and beyond. The card would have been passed to someone further back and they’d have gone to check if it was valid. Once established that it was, there’d be a search for a suitable match and when they were found, a rapid negotiation would have been conducted with a third party. Time would be the subject of the negotiation: how soon, how long, how fast, how lengthy. Everything rested on the quality of the match.

  Most charms were manufactured in highly automated factories assembled in the Cobhouse Quarter, an entirely artificial concept made to mimic an artisan workshop cluster that never existed outside of tourist propaganda. If you wanted something out of the ordinary, there were shops that could customize charms, and if you wanted something built from the ground up, you had to trade with an Avian.

  I had no idea why Avians possessed the talent for creating charms or copying any charm that they saw. This talent for forgery was perceived as promise by some and a threat by others. The Standing Committee responded to threats with speed and vigor, reducing the downside to keep the upside, their motto I was once told. All Avians had a twist in their genes, which gradually developed disabling disfigurements that could be read by security scanners. If an Avian tried to get close to a guarded item in order to copy it, security systems would capture them, no matter how heavily disguised they were. Their lumps illuminated scans, as they are intended to do.

  Avians had migrated to private work and had a natural dislike of displaying themselves in public. For my plan to start, the Avian had to look at the Shoshone Circlet, which the security in the Mengchi Centre for the Promotion of Historical Knowledge was actively set up to prevent. They’d look for lumpy Avians, but if they had no lumps, they’d not attract attention.

  The Standing Committee loved collective punishments; they were self-enforcing and very effective. Still, demand would eventually create supply. There were routes to acquiring a clean Avian—the key was a health card that could be used to create a chain of surgical and medical work, and headline patients that moved money and spread activity across many places, so that no single act proved significant. Matching a headline patient with a real one was where blade met flesh; it had to be exact.

  Ten minutes of silence passed as I relaxed and enjoyed the wine, and chose not to consider much more than the simplicity of the moment.

  “All seems to be in order. Where would you like the item delivered: domestic or employment?”

  This was a new voice, but it too held the faint trace of a whistle. “Domestic would be good, thank you.” I rose, bowed to the extraordinary talent that rested in the darkness, and left. The door reappeared as I approached and I exited onto the street where my space was located.

  All I needed now was to survive a break-in into the Red Halls, leave with a fabled treasure trove, and follow my threadbare plan to steal the most closely guarded artifact in the systems—and see it come to perfect fruition. Then, I’d be free to kill myself and secure the future of my family and the universe. It was good to have goals.

  When I arrived at the office the following morning, Akion was standing by m
y desk, which was unusual.

  “We’ve investigated your request. The location you seek in the Red Halls does exist. It is NoWhere.”

  “Fuck” flew out of my mouth before I could stop it. If you wanted to hide something, NoWhere was a really good way to do it. NoWhere was literally nowhere, a nonexistent location that could never be found, except under highly specific circumstances. If you stood in the correct spot, and had the correct key, then NoWhere could be uncovered. The key could be anything, the correct spot could be anywhere, and either or both could be, and frequently were, lost or forgotten.

  “The location has been found and the key has been identified,” Akion advised.

  “Oka-aaay.” I smiled fleetingly and wiggled my fingers in a give-me-more gesture.

  “The location is in the Records Section in the Red Halls, and the key is the Shoshone Circlet.”

  11

  Akion stood waiting while I thought through the situation. Finally, I asked the most important question. “Can you get us to the location?”

  “Yes.”

  Evidently, details were not required. I nodded and watched Akion leave.

  This was a severe complication to my plans. I had not intended to actually steal the Shoshone Circlet, just make an apparent attempt for cover and have a copy to give to Zusak Sedge. This would buy me enough time to finish the rest of my plan and finally secure a safe future for my family. Now to I was going to have to actually steal it. I had no idea how I was going to do that, I have planned to simply avoid it now I would have to solve it.

  I sat and doodled to encourage my mind. It did not help much. Lots of swirls and circles, all leading to the same conclusion, I was stuck. To distract myself I took my memory bracelet out of my pocket and fingered the crystals. All the carefully created fake memories of a life and family I never lived or had flowed into me. I admired the work in the same spirit that Jovial had admired his work, it was nicely done. Part of my camouflage, they were carefully created and curated to mislead and distract anyone who found them.