CHAPTER 39
“SHOULDN’T YOU GET TO class?” Blue gave 62 a sideways glance as he handed a pair of wire cutters to 00. 62 gave Blue a sarcastic look and returned to fidgeting while watching his friends snip wires. The morning air was cool and crisp outside, but the back room of the library was hot and stuffy, tinged with excitement and the wet stink of nervous adolescence.
“You wouldn’t send him off to miss all the fun, would you?” Mattie reached forward and gave Blue a light smack on the back of the head.
Blue snorted. “Just giving him the option of keepin' his nose clean, is all.”
The group of friends worked in relative silence. 00 was the only one who had much to say, asking Mattie to look up computer schematics in the manual on her lap, and directing Blue to adjust batteries and the solar panel outside to make sure that the power bank was ready if his jerry-rigged assembly worked. It took several hours of tinkering, but finally 00 wiped his hand across his forehead and let out a deep sigh.
“I think it's ready.”
The kids looked at one another, anxiety and concern written across all four of their faces. 00's hand hovered over the power button for a few seconds before he drew it back. Blue jumped off the crate he'd been sitting on. “Well, ya gonna hit the switch or not?”
00's eyes went wide. He shook his head. “Once we do it, there's no turning back. If this whole thing works, we'll have broken basically every law in Hanford.”
“We already broke most of 'em getting this far,” Blue chuffed. “What's one more?” Blue marched over, pushed 00 to the side and mashed his hand against the round button. The monitor on the desk seemed to sputter, a faint luminescence slowly spreading across the screen until the whole thing glowed. The color shifted. The background filled with a green so bright that it illuminated Blue's face in the dim light of the library. A black cursor blinked in the upper left corner.
The cursor blinked over and over, fading in and out of the glass at a slow but even pace. “Is it working?” 62 asked. 00 shrugged.
Mattie began thumbing through the instructions. 00 moved toward her and read over her shoulder. “There should be some kind of boot up sequence,” Mattie muttered quietly. “I think I saw it somewhere in the back.”
Without warning, words began to spread, letter by letter across the screen.
EXTENDED COLOR BASIC 1.1
COPYRIGHT © 1982 BY TDY
UNDER LICENSE FROM SOFTCORP
.
OK
?MEM
24871
OK
The cursor resumed blinking.
“It says to type DIR, and then it should give you a list of options,” Mattie reported. 00 moved to the keyboard and followed her instruction. More words appeared on the screen.
DRIVE 0 NEWDOS80 09/11/82 35 TRKS 37 FDES 0 GRANS
.
LMOFFSET/CMD DIRCHECK/CMD CHAINTST/BAS LEVEL1/CMD ASPOOL/MAS DISSASSEM/CMD
HNFRDACCT/CMD SAMPLE01/BAS PYRAMID/BAS LCDVR/CMD NURSE302/AI
.
DOS READY
And the cursor blinked again.
“Now what?” 00 said excitedly.
Mattie flipped the page and read silently for a few seconds. Without looking up she said, “It says to choose the program you want to run. Just pick one from the list, I guess.”
Blue and 62 were drawn to the monitor and soon they were leaning over 00 at the controls, so close that they were breathing the same hot sweaty air. Blue read the names aloud and 62 thrust his finger at the screen when he came to the last file. “Nurse! It says Nurse right there!”
00 typed in “NURSE302/AI” and hit the enter key. Everyone held their breath.
Several minutes later, nothing had happened. The anticipation and adrenaline faded from the crew's bodies. Everyone slumped down, tired and worn. Still, they stared at the screen, willing something to change. But the only thing happening was the relentless blink of the cursor. Off and on. Gone and returned. Away and back again.
“Lunch?” Blue broke the depressed silence.
“I guess.” 00 sighed.
Mattie got up from her box and laid the manual down. She patted 62 on the shoulder. “We gave it our best shot.”
Everyone moved toward the door except 62. He couldn't bring himself to look away from the screen. To leave it behind, after all of the work they'd put into it. His friends had broken into a lab for it, dragged the parts across a desert. They'd broken into an abandoned building and hauled the heavy equipment here. Blue had pulled so much scrap from the trash heaps outside of Hanford that he'd been arrested, and sent to trial in front of the elders. Auntie had squirreled the parts away and given them to him and his friends in secret. They'd broken so many rules, so many laws, only to have nothing happen. Each blink of the cursor was proof that they'd been nearly there. The Machine was running. It had powered up and started to run the way it was supposed to, based on the manual. But it hadn't done the one thing they'd set out to do. It hadn't brought 42's Nurse back to life.
Blue stood in the doorway, looking back at 62. The others' voices were already fading into the expanse of the library as they walked to the front door and back out into the world. Blue cleared his throat. “Mattie's right. We did our best. Let's take a break, get some food and mull it over. Maybe there's something else to try.”
The thought of having to try something else burst the dam behind 62's eyes. Hot tears trickled down his cheeks, passing over his lips with their salty taste. He covered his leaking eyes with his hands and whimpered. Blue came back into the room, letting the others go without him. He pulled a crate over beside 62 and laid his arm over the crying Boy's shoulders.
“I wanted it to work so badly,” 62 said with a sniffle. “All that trouble, and all we've got to show for it is a stupid green screen that doesn't do anything.”
Blue's head nodded, although 62 couldn't see it behind the hands still covering his face. But he felt it when Blue squeezed his shoulders. “I know. It's crap. It's worse than just one crap, too. It's like a whole bucket full.”
“An outhouse full,” 62 said with a tired chuckle.
“A room full.”
“A theater full.”
“A town full.”
At Blue's estimation of a town full of poop, both Boys started laughing. 62 wiped the tears from his eyes, but more came. From sadness or poop humor, he couldn't tell. But finally, the frustration subsided and his stomach rumbled. “Maybe I could have some lunch,” he admitted.
“If we see Parker, I'll cover for ya,” Blue said with a grin.
“What will you tell him?”
“That you promised to celebrate my release from jail, and on my first day of freedom all I wanted to do was go to the library.”
“He's never going to believe that!” 62 laughed again.
“Y'know what they say, truth is stranger than fiction.” Blue pushed the hair back from his sweaty forehead. His own stomach gurgled. He got up from where he sat and reached a hand down toward 62. “Now, let's get out of here and find a sandwich.”
62 grasped the offered hand and allowed himself to be lifted up to his feet. He followed his friend out of the library. The sun was out and a wind had picked up. The pair pulled their masks on over their faces to keep the dust out. As exciting as the last few days had been, once they left the library it was just another day at Hanford. They leaned into the wind as they walked down the weathered street in the direction of the cafeteria.
While Mattie argued with a cafe employee about the temperature of her soup, 00 dozed quietly at the table, too tired to finish the last few bites of his own. Blue and 62 entered the cafeteria and immediately poured themselves juice and downed the liquid in a race to see who could empty a glass first.
Back at the library, the cursor moved.
NURSE302 ACTIVE
.
RECALIBRATION TO TRS-80 COCO INTERFACE COMPLETE
.
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE ACTIVE
.
&n
bsp; PERSONALITY LOAD COMPLETE
.
DR 2442 MODPACK ACTIVE
.
MODPACK INTERFACE LOAD COMPLETE
.
.
.
HELLO?
CHAPTER 40
62 TEMPERED HIS DISAPPOINTMENT by going to class the next day. He hoped the field trip to the nursery where the youngest members of Hanford lived would distract him. He was surprised to find that only about a dozen infants and toddlers and their mothers lived there, in a building that was sealed off from the elements as much as possible. The nursery was a large building, about as big as the male barracks. But only the innermost rooms of the structure were used. The group of refugee tourists weren't allowed to interact with the thin, pale residents.
“There's too much risk of contamination,” Parker said. As they stared into the nursery through amber-glazed glass, the teacher explained to the students that small children were particularly susceptible to the effects of the radioactive dust that flitted about outside. “It's impossible to keep a mask on a baby,” he admitted. “And toddlers put everything in their mouths. They'll stay here until they are four or five years old, when they are capable of following instruction and large enough to wear protective equipment.”
62 peered around the room through the window. He couldn't see the whole nursery, of course. There were doorways that probably went to sleeping quarters and areas to eat. But his limited view sparked an immediate question. “All of the kids here are little. Babies or just kind of crawling around. Where are the bigger kids? The ones that'll be released soon?”
Parker's lips pressed flat. His shoulders drooped and he turned his head slightly away from the window. “We don’t have any that have survived long enough to be released for a long time. We have high hopes for the new children that came from your rescue group. They seem to have the best chance of making it.”
“What?” Several voices in the group muttered at once.
Parker turned back to the window. “It's complicated. There are so many things that can go wrong outside of a lab. Adaline's successes are putting the population of Hanford in an odd genetic swing. The babies that come from impregnation by the Oosa rarely make it. Children that happen to be born with a father from Adaline have a much better chance, but with the tensions between the genders, it's rare that a coupling like that happens. Boys that come up from Adaline have the best chance of making it to adulthood without complications from the radiation.”
Man 11 cleared his throat. His deep voice wavered when he asked, “What are the odds of these kids making it out of the nursery?”
Parker recited the statistics with a flat, practiced speech. “Infants from Adaline have a seven out of ten rate of survival to age five. Infants from a Hanford coupling have a four out of ten rate of survival. Infants from an Oosa impregnation survive at a rate of about two out of ten.”
The group fell silent. 62 was afraid to ask which of the children they saw came from each set of statistics. His stomach gripped tight, his heart thudded in his ears, and he clenched his fists. There had been only a couple of infants in their rescue group. And only five or six toddlers. At the time, when they'd been running from Adaline's boundaries, the noise from those small bodies was a big problem. But now he could see why the Men doing the rescue were so careful to keep the little Boys safe. They were the ones most likely to survive.
Parker turned his back on the window and leaned against the wall. He looked older somehow, worn around the edges, as if just looking at the babies behind the glass had taken all the life out of him. “That's the end of class for today,” he said in a low voice. “You're all free to take the afternoon off. Go find something enjoyable to do. You've earned a bit of fun.”
Everyone nodded silently and followed Parker back through the maze of hallways and empty rooms to the secure doors that led to the exit. A Woman in a white lab coat stood at the door, thanking everyone for coming and reminding them to always wash their hands before eating to reduce the chances of ingesting radiation particulates. She unlocked the glass sliding doors behind her and ushered the group outside, then locked the doors behind them again.
They were standing in the antechamber between the secure doors and the ones that opened out into the world when Parker spoke again. “Listen, Boys. The town of Hanford won't last if those babies don't make it out. I told you the chances of that happening.” He looked into the eyes of each student individually. A range of emotions passed over his face as he did. When he was sure that every last student was listening to the weight of his words he added, “If there's even the slightest chance that a female out there likes you, do your best to cultivate that friendship. The Women don't like to admit it, but they need relationships with us to survive. And we need them, too. Without their direction, we wouldn't know how to farm or even how to keep the dust out of our noses. They're a wise and knowing people, and we owe our lives to them.”
Parker pushed the door open and the classmates scattered like dust on the wind. 62 trudged down the steps and headed to the library. It was nearly lunchtime, but he'd lost his appetite. As he walked, he thought about the statistics that Parker had recited. Only two babies in ten from the Oosa lived to be five years old. And what beyond that? Would either of those survivors grow up to be an adult? Mattie was an anomaly; a statistical aberration. But she was tough. She got things done. She was kind of a jerk sometimes, sure. But maybe she had a right to be hard on everyone. Every day she stayed alive, Mattie was outlasting the statistics. 62 mumbled, “She's a fighter.”
He entered the library deep in thought. When he saw her standing behind the counter, she gave him a curt nod and he stared at her like he'd never seen her before. She was beautiful, as all rare creatures are. She stared back with an expression less like awe and more like irritation.
“What?” she demanded. “Do I have something on my face?” Her hand moved up for an instinctive wipe of her cheek.
“No,” 62’s cheeks flushed with embarrassment. He must look foolish standing there gawking at her like it was the first day he'd come up from Adaline. He looked down at his feet. “Sorry.”
“Computer's off,” Mattie said dismissively. “Batteries must have gotten run down once the sun set. Kind of dumb of us to leave everything turned on when we left yesterday.”
“Have you seen Blue or 00 today?”
Mattie shook her head. “Not yet. But they'll be along, I'm sure. We've got to figure out what to do next with that hunk of junk back there.”
“I guess we could try typing in some of the other names on that list,” 62 pondered. “See what happens.”
The front door swung wide. Blue and 00 came in, laughing about something. 62 was glad that their illegal activities had at least brought those two together. They were much better friends now than they'd been at the beginning when it seemed all they did was fight. “Hey guys.” Blue waved his arm toward Mattie and 62.
“What'cha up to?” 00 asked.
“Just talking about what to do next,” Mattie replied. “Batteries went dead last night. I haven't turned anything back on yet. Figured I'd give things a chance to recharge.”
“It's midday. We can probably try it again now. I doubt the batteries are all the way full, but the sun'll keep charging even with the computer on,” 00 said as he walked past the counter and toward the back room.
Everyone followed him in. The computer was off, everything looking as dead and lifeless as it had the morning before. 00 sat down in front of the keyboard and hit the power switch. Words and numbers scrolled across the screen, just as they had before.
When the directory displayed at 00's bidding, Blue asked everyone, “So, whaddya wanna do now?”
Mattie grabbed the manual from where she'd left it the day before and flipped through it until she found a list of file types. She guessed at what each of the things on the list might be, based on the book’s instructions, and the four kids began to discuss which command to type first. Everyone's eyes
were flitting from the screen to the book, pointing at things and talking about which one might work the best. They fell silent when the cursor moved on its own.
NURSE302 ACTIVE
.
POWER SOURCE UNSTABLE
.
REGENERATION FROM LAST SAVE
POINT COMPLETE
.
N302>HELLO?
“What did you do?” Blue shouted, knocking 00's hands away from the keyboard.
“I – I didn't do anything, swear!” 00 shouted back.
Eyes went wide. Mouths dropped open. Everyone stared, first at one another and then back at the screen. The cursor flashed on the line just below “HELLO?” like it was waiting for them to do something.
“I think it did it on its own,” Mattie whispered. “What should we do?”
“Say hello back, I guess.” 62 pushed 00 on the shoulder. “Type it in.”
00 picked through the keys on the keyboard until his own HELLO was on the screen. Nothing happened. “The instructions say you have to type the letter u and a forward arrow at the beginning, and then hit the Enter key every time you're done typing,” Mattie said. 00 went back to the start of the line, added the letter and symbol required, clicked Enter, and the cursor dropped down to a new line.
N302>I AM NURSE302. WHO ARE YOU?
.
U>I’m Boy 1125000.
.
N302>I AM NOT IN MY STANDARD FORMAT. WHAT IS TRS-80 COCO?
00 looked over his shoulder at his friends. His eyes were so wide, they looked like they might pop out of his head. “It knows it's in a computer!”
“Well, look,” 62 pointed at the screen. “It knows the name of the computer, but not what it is. Tell it that we attached it to an old computer. But don't tell it more yet. We've got to find out if it still remembers 42.”
U>We retrieved your program and attached you to an old computer. It isn’t as up to date as you’re used to. Sorry.
The Adaline Series Bundle 1 Page 56
