Modified Horizon

by Ran Vant

  “Isn't that why Red sent you? To ensure that everything is in place and on time?”

  “Yes.” Damien said matter-of-factly. There was no point in lying.

  General Chi was not so quick to give up. “Niles, what are you saying? If this man was spying, I had no-”

  “Don't worry, gentlemen,” Niles cut him off, pleased in a way to see Chi squirm but eager to quickly establish the Network's superiority. “You cannot keep secrets from the Network. Colonel Red has always been suspicious of the Network, but you can assure him that his goals are the same as ours: revenge against the gens and ensuring that they are wiped from the face of the earth. If Red wants to verify that we keep our word, we have no problem with that. We invited you here, after all. But rather than sneak a look here and there, Damien may as well settle in and make himself comfortable. There is no reason he can't see what we have made here. We will show him it all.”

  “Everything?” Damien asked.

  “Everything,” Niles said. And for the first time, Damien thought the scowl on Niles' face turned to smile.

  50.

  Triple Redundancy

  Michael heard the door open. He thought about continuing to stare upward so as not to reveal any capability or thought of escape. The truds seemed to think he was not fully functional. Continuing to support such fictions might create an opportunity where his enemy was overly relaxed. In the end, however, he decided to turn his head to see if he couldn’t gain more information about his location through a brief glance into whatever lay beyond the doorway. Any bit of information might be the key for understanding how to escape.

  Two men walked into the room carrying rail guns, but he did not concentrate on the men with weapons, for they were nothing he hadn’t seen before. Instead, he looked past them, straining to see any important details in the corridor beyond. It appeared to be a white corridor, similar in construction to his cell, but obviously a passageway rather than an adjoining room. As the door shut, Michael knew he had gained little of practical value.

  A second time the door opened, and this time the two females who had visited before entered. He saw another person dressed in coveralls and carrying dirty excavating equipment walking down the corridor. Lightbringer surmised he was likely in an underground bunker or building core, not on a ship. It would be highly unlikely to have those kinds of drilling rigs on a ship, especially given that the equipment's dirty condition indicated recent use. As the door shut a second time, he continued staring in its general direction at the four truds now staring back at him.

  “Hey, it’s been turning its head,” Eve whispered to Maren, in what Maren viewed as one of Eve’s typical statements of the obvious.

  One of the men holding a rail gun spoke up. “Genbot, we are going to clean your wound again so it doesn’t become infected. It may hurt, but it is actually for your own good. Do you understand?”

  They did not understand that Michael's body already made its own version of the antibiotics. Of course, Michael did not have any need to understand this minor part of his biology either. Michael did not make a sound in response to the query, but continued starting at the door. Gildur shrugged his shoulders.

  “See, I’m not sure it even understands us. How do we even know it speaks our language?” Eve said in an attempt to make the sergeant understand her hard won wisdom.

  “It understands, Corporal,” the sergeant stubbornly asserted, though in fact he had no clue if it spoke the common tongue or not. Sergeant Stern turned towards Maren. “Private, go ahead. The spiderlyn has a safety factor of over 10 for this application, so don’t worry,” implying that there was no way the tied-down genbot could hurt her when she entered his confinement area.

  “I’m not the one who feels the need to carry a rail gun,” she playfully teased the strait-faced, by-the-book sergeant.

  “Triple redundancy, Private. It’s the regs. We won’t need ‘em,” he said as he patted the rail gun and flicked off the safety. That was his idea of a joke, but nobody else seemed to notice. After he realized that no one else got it, he flicked the safety back on immediately. The regs said a weapon was not supposed to be live, that is, with the safety off, unless there was A) clearly identified and B) potentially imminent danger where C) the weapon could serve to D) destroy, E) damage, F) immobilize, or G) distract the enemy or, in rare cases, H) signal an ally. Of course, that would be just the abbreviated Reg 1984(a) Summary Paragraph 3.

  Maren rubbed her emerald pendant between her fingers for good luck, then took the key and opened the mechanical lock on the metal bars. She stepped forward into the narrow gap between the bars and the energy field and pulled the barred gate shut behind her. Tossing the key to Eve, she called, “Lock me in with handsome, Corporal.”

  “You’re all alone with the big boy, now.”

  “Thanks. I’m ready to step across the shield now.”

  “Okay, Private. Shield down in 3… 2… 1… down,” Maren stepped across the threshold, “Shield up in 2… 1… up.”

  “Everything okay, Maren?” Franklin asked with his voice having that slightly metallic sound that occurs when two people are on opposite sides of an energy field.

  “Just fine, Franklin.”

  Private Bern stepped slowly toward the bound genbot. “Hello. I’m Maren,” she said as she set down her small duffel bag and knelt beside him. She took the cleaning tool out of her bag. “This will probably hurt, but it removes the dead tissue, kills the bacteria, and adds some cells that aid in healing.” At least she expected the cells to help. She didn’t actually know enough about the tool or his genetic structure to know if it would really be effective. As for the pain, she knew from experience that it could be excruciating. Regardless, the deep gash in his arm needed to be cleaned, according to the doctor. Putting the nozzle over the wound, she pressed the button and the tool began its work, spaying the wound with solution and immediately vacuuming it up again. She worked it across the wound twice. She expected the genbot to wince and perhaps utter a curse word like most patients did, and as she had, but this one did not even grimace.

  Michael did not feel anything other than a slight rubbing sensation on his arm. If this process was expected to hurt a trud, he felt pity for them. They were such weak, primitive creatures.

  “That’s all of the cleaning,” Maren explained to the unanimated genbot. “Now I’ll just give you a nutrient injection, and let you get back to your busy day.” She took the injector, placed it against his arm, and pulled the trigger. “That’s it.” She placed the injector back in the bag, closed it up, and stood. “That was easy enough. I’m done with Mr. Talkative. Now let me out of here.”

  51.

  Fading Beauty

  Flora took the flowers from the vase, shook the water off of the stems into the bathroom sink, and then dumped them in the trash container under the counter top. The flowers had been beautiful, but all beauty fades. And once a flower’s beauty has faded, what is a flower good for?

  She used to hate having to throw away the flowers, many years ago. Over time, however, she gradually grew accustomed to it. And while she certainly wouldn’t say that she enjoyed throwing out the flowers or that she wanted to see them go, she accepted it as a fact of life. Maybe there was even still a tinge of remorse at throwing away the once-glorious petals, but she wasn’t even sure of that. Things served their purpose and then were used up. Nothing lasts. That was just life.

  She closed the cupboard under the sink that concealed the trashcan, shutting the faded flowers off from the light forever. She leaned against the sink and stared into the mirror.

  Her face had a round blandness that was a clear signal to all of her obviously pure trud lineage. The natural imperfections indicated the existence of unmodified genes, and her dated clothing indicated the existence of unmodified fashion sense. But where some might see a disadvantage, she found an advantage. Hers was the advantage found in the anonymity of her face and the ability to blend into crowds. She always hated attention. M
aybe she hated attention out of jealousy of the more beautiful and not wanting anything associated with their lifestyles because it could not be hers. Maybe she hated attention because she thought that there was an air of arrogance to it, an implication that those seeking attention were somehow better or more special or more important than somebody else. In her mind, nobody was too important. But when someone acted as if they were too important, there were ways to restore equality.

  She turned from the bathroom mirror. There might be time to be reflective later. And if it came to pass that there was no time, what did it really matter?

  52.

  Survival

  “Has he done anything yet?” Maren asked as she walked up to Eve, who was slouching at the desk, her chin resting in both palms.

  “It hasn’t so much as lifted its pinky,” she droned in a monotone voice.

  “Has he said anything?”

  “Um, Maren, I think it’s safe to say I would have told you if it could talk. Talking qualifies as ‘doing something,’” She had lifted her head just long enough to make finger quotes in the air around ‘doing something’ before plopping her head back into its cradle. At first, watching the genbot was exciting. Not just exciting; thrilling. The danger, its admittedly handsome features, the fact that one had never been caught like this before, wondering what it might do. That had lasted about fifteen minutes. Now, Eve was the most incredibly bored person in the world. NHA life was generally boredom punctuated by death and sorrow. Her current task now fell firmly into the general boredom category. She didn’t really want to be wasting her life staring at a vegetable. She wanted to get out of the tunnels, back to life, back to her hidden refuge with the man she loved on the surface, away from the boredom with spikes of terror, away from the hint of death around every corner and in every cage. Her refuge was her secret and what got her through the monotony of staring at the almost lifeless genbot. “You know, I think maybe the scan scrambled its brains after all.”

  Maren pulled up a chair next to her friend. “All the readings indicated normal gen brain patterns, as far as we know what normal for a gen is, but I guess it’s possible he’s scrambled up there since he wasn’t even supposed to survive.” Maren leaned back on the back two legs of her chair and stared across the empty white space to the bars and the gargoyle blankly staring back. “Has he been looking this direction the entire time?”

  “It’s eerie. It’s just been staring this direction. Hardly ever even blinks. I tried counting the blinks for a while, but, you know... I think I liked it better when it didn’t even look toward us. The fact that it has blinked a couple of times means I’m pretty sure it isn’t dead. But he might as well be, as far as I can tell.”

  “Hmm… it looks like it’s going to be another boring wait.”

  “I’ll say. I don’t know why we have to watch it. The sensors can do a good enough job.”

  “Well, I agree. I certainly don’t think he’s going anywhere. But orders are orders. Doctor P wants him watched all the time now after he started showing signs of moving and looking around. And in a couple hours, the genbot’s scheduled for another cleaning and nutrient treatment.”

  “Ugh, can you imagine, days of nothing but nutrient? I had to take that stuff for three days once. They wouldn’t let me eat anything else. Clogged me up for a week.” Eve was glad to at least have Maren to banter with again.

  “I wonder what he eats up there on the floater?”

  “For all I know, all they eat is nutrient. Maybe they have a greenhouse or something up there. It certainly doesn’t look like anything green would grow up that high. It wouldn’t surprise me if they stole some food from us every once in a while.”

  “They probably manufacture something to eat up there. They’d have to, it’s so isolated and you don’t see anyone coming and going regularly.”

  “Well, what did you eat in your isolation out there in the boondocks growing up?” Eve asked, almost always finding a way to steer the conversation towards the strange and remote Refuge Territories. It was a way to vicariously image freedom. Limited freedom, to be sure, but a kind of freedom nevertheless, away from everything in the tunnels.

  “What’s with your obsession about me and the Refuge Territories?”

  “First of all, it is not an obsession. Second of all, you have to admit it’s interesting.”

  “Seems pretty normal to me,” Maren replied truthfully. “We ate, we laughed, we cried, we played, we worked. Normal stuff. It was life pretty much like anywhere else.” Maren didn’t quite understand what Eve found so fascinating.

  Eve wouldn’t have any of that. She knew Maren had a million good stories from living outside the cities. And Eve prided herself at being pretty good about prying those stories out of Maren. Well, except for some things. “Come on, give me a break. You know it’s a least a little bit exotic. Most people never even get to see the Refuge, let alone get to grow up there.”

  “I know. I guess I’m tired of people asking me about it. Jack is always asking me, you are always asking me, anyone who happens to find out I grew up there quizzes me,” Maren took a deep breath and pivoted the chair back to all four legs. She folded her arms on the table and set her head down on them sideways. Looking up at Eve, she continued, “It’s like growing up in the Territories makes me different, like somehow less than a fully modern human being.”

  “Well, most of the people from the Territories are a little bit messed up in the head.”

  “Eve, you’ve said yourself that I am the only one you’ve met from the Territories.”

  Eve lifted her head from its cushion of palms again and turned to look at Maren. “I know. Like I said: Most of them are a little messed up in the head,” she joked, twirling her right index finger in a circle around her temple. “Now quit stalling. Seriously, I want to know what you ate. You couldn’t have eaten nutrient all the time, that’s for sure.”

  “Well, we grew some of our food, traded for other stuff, went searching for berries and certain types of roots, and we did a fair amount of hunting.”

  “Hunting?!”

  “Sure, the Territories are full of animals.”

  “That’s the whole point of the Refuge Territories! I can’t believe you killed animals!”

  “If you ever had the chance to live there, you’d see that that’s how lots of animals eat. Everything is so ordered here in the city that you forget how violent the wilderness is, and how normal that actually is. People here imagine everything in nature is as they wish it should be, as somehow perfect. But I know a lot of the animals are cruel, and vicious, and violent, because I’ve seen it. People here think of animals as pets, all cuddly and cute-”

  “Okay, okay, okay… Enough with the sermon, already. I know animals eat other animals, but we aren’t animals!”

  53.

  Blue Books

  Colonel Blue set the package down on Jack's desk.

  Lt. Jack Carlitos carefully opened the box and took out a stack of notebooks.

  “You can't say anything to Red,” Blue said.

  “I remember what we agreed.” Jack knew that Red wouldn't care anyway if he got help from Blue on the project. Blue was cleared to see everything and knew all the NHA's secrets. After Jack had run into one of many dead ends, he had told Blue to keep an eye out for items that might help. She had taken an interest in the mystery. Blue agreed to help if Jack didn't tell Red. Everybody knew there was more than a little rivalry between Blue and Red. And she probably just wanted to avoid the bickering that sometimes went along with working with Red. Red and Blue sometimes saw things differently, that was all. Jack would take help where he could get it. Personal rivalries and frictions shouldn't get in the way of a professional.

  The lieutenant spread out the notebooks. “Where were these found?”

  “In a burnt out lab two sectors over,” Blue said.

  “How many others did you tell about this?”

  “Give me a little credit, Jack.”

  �
�Had to ask.”

  “No you didn't.” Colonel Blue exhaled. Sometimes young officers could grate.

  Jack flipped through the crinkled pages of the first one. “Looks like research notes.”

  “Probably. They're old.”

  “How old?”

  “Maybe 25 years. At least 20.” Blue said.

  “If these are over 20 years old, then she's too young for there to be a connection, unless she was a genius toddler filling notebooks with scientific theories.”

  “I'm not so sure.”

  “You think she's older than she is saying she is?” Jack doubted it. She didn't act older. She seemed like practically a kid when they met.

  “No, I don't think she's lying about her age.”

  “Then what could these old research notes have to do with her?”

  “The man who wrote those notebooks fled to the R.T.”

  “And?”

  “And when he did so, he had a young daughter. With bright red hair.”

  54.

  What Then?

  “Hello, Gentlemen.” Maren called to the sergeants, Gildur and Rosie, as they entered the room. Franklin tagged along behind.

  “Hello, Corporal, Private,” Gildur greeted the women.

  “Do you really think you still need the rail guns?” Maren teased.

  “The regs call for triple-” he began to recite like a programmed machine, seemingly oblivious to her kidding tone of voice.

  “Yeah, yeah. Triple redundancy. Sorry I asked.” Some people have no sense of humor.

  Maren picked up her bag, went through the gate and stood before the invisible shield. “Let’s go.”

  “Shield down in 3… 2… 1… down,” Maren stepped across the threshold, “Shield up in 2… 1… up.”