by Eliza Green
Stephen sat at the table and aligned his body to mirror one half of a Surface-Creature couple. He immersed himself into their timeline as they ate. Anton sat opposite him with the 3D image of the second person overlaid on his upper body and face. Sitting down was an unnatural position for Indigenes who preferred to stand. He gripped the steel edges of the chair and studied the recording, observing the way they used their hands to gesture. He concentrated on their conversation. When he watched the Surface Creatures in this way, he could be clinical in his observations; no hate, or panic or fear to upset his preparations. His lips moved in perfect synchronicity with theirs.
‘I remember this scene. I sat right over there.’ Anton pointed to a spot off camera. ‘I was lucky nobody bothered me.’
Stephen’s gaze settled on a lone male in his forties with dark brown hair sitting by the window.
‘He watched me for a while,’ said Anton. ‘But I’d hidden the camera well enough. Then he gave up and just went back to looking out the window.’
‘What would you have done if he’d approached you?’
Anton smiled. ‘I have no idea.’
The recording looped, and Stephen glanced around the restaurant he’d seen too many times now. A much older male sat to his right.
‘How long do you think they live for?’ asked Anton.
The oldest living Indigene on record was one hundred and ninety-eight. He knew the Surface Creatures’ bodies were the same—one heart, one liver, two kidneys and one brain—but fundamental differences still existed between the two species. The Indigenes’ bodies and minds didn’t suffer deterioration due to the regeneration of all cells. An injury that could take weeks to heal in a Surface Creature would only take minutes in an Indigene’s body. Having studied their physical composition from books, Stephen discovered that the cells in their brains and spinal column possessed no regenerative ability. The Surface Creatures relied on the production of synthetic cells to combat brain injuries, old age and paralysis. Disease was uncommon among the Indigenes, because an infected cell never had time to manipulate a healthy one when the body was already expelling it.
The lone male by the window with the salt and pepper hair drew his attention again. A sudden hate for him forced Stephen’s concentration back to Anton and the image of the companion superimposed over him.
Anton was mimicking the movement of his doppelganger’s hands. ‘See how they do that? It’s like he’s playing out a musical score.’
Anton continued to copy the movements while Stephen watched and learned.
The recording looped for the third time and, right on cue, a female came to the table and filled their glasses with water. He’d read somewhere that Surface Creatures’ bodies contained sixty per cent water, although they didn’t always drink it in its purest form. The same female handed a beer to the male by the window. While the Indigenes could drink water, it didn’t “quench” their thirst as it seemed to do for the Surface Creatures. Initially when the Surface Creatures first relocated to the barren planet, they had brought their own water with them. What little supply they did find on Exilon 5, however, they replicated using chemicals.
How had the Surface Creatures with their lesser intelligence come to destroy so many Indigenes? It was almost as if they knew of the Indigene’s existence.
He kept that thought from Anton who watched him carefully now.
I think you should take a break, Stephen.
I’m fine. I need to rehearse this.
I think you’ve got it.
Stephen ignored his friend and allowed the scene to loop for a fourth time. He rehearsed their movements and studied their familiar ease with one another, ignoring eerie similarities between their species. There were plenty of differences, too; like the speed at which both species moved. The Indigenes regularly conversed in thought alone; words weren’t always necessary to convey a message. Since Stephen rarely spoke out loud he would have to slow down his speech for this mission. He loosened up his stiff posture and turned off the recording.
‘I need a set of your lenses.’
Anton stood up and stretched out his back. ‘I really hate chairs. I’ll get a set for you now.’
The lenses would protect his retinas from the harmful daytime sun.
With Anton gone to get the lenses, Stephen cast his own chair to one side and pushed the table against one wall. In the box, he picked out a half-length mirror and propped it up against the wall. The silicone skin he’d tried on earlier still clung to his skin. He looked past his strange image and practised his eye movements, then his speech, and last his hand gestures. He kept rehearsing until the movements felt a little less obvious and more natural.
Anton stood at the door with a box in his hand. It’s just for an hour. No problem.
Just an hour. So why was Stephen nervous about the trip the next day? Was it because the Surface Creatures had killed his parents? Every fibre of his body screamed at him to stay.
But he had to go. Central Council needed answers.
The time for waiting, the time for hiding, was over.
5
Laura O’Halloran dashed across the road to the nearest food replication terminal for lunch, one of many located close to the Earth Security Centre, in Sydney. She stepped inside the entrance area, along with fifty others. The doors closed behind them and fans whirred overhead as the harmful Earth air was decontaminated. A second set of doors opened giving her access to the environmentally-controlled terminal.
She popped off her gel mask from her face and placed it in her pocket. Next, she tugged at the Velcro strips that covered the zipped part of her grey ESC uniform. Her fine blonde hair fused with the strip and she worked it loose. That tight feeling around her neck lessened the moment she released the top section.
A breath of relief rushed out of her, but a new scent spoiled her joy. She spluttered as the smell of body odour and sickly sweet lavender hit her—the latter designed to mask the noxious smell. Sucking in a new breath, she joined the queue of people waiting to use one of the replication machines. A hunched-over woman in her nineties stood to the front of her; crooked postures were a common side effect from overuse of the genetic manipulation clinics. A large sweaty man pressed up against her back, causing her to squirm in the cramped space. But the more she moved, the more the air toxins clung to her pale and clammy skin. People eyed her suspiciously, as they often did when she displayed her ESC uniform.
The queue inside the confined corridor moved forward quickly. At least efficiency and speed rated high in a world with twenty billion people. The old woman selected a beef stew and a glass of water. Laura ordered a chicken sandwich and a Coke, a choice which caught the woman’s attention.
‘Don’t order that, dear. There’s something wrong with the chicken replica. Looks and tastes like solidified porridge. Quite disgusting.’ Her nose wrinkled.
‘What’s good?’ Laura asked to be polite. Truth was she was too hungry to care.
The woman leaned in. ‘Anything except the chicken. Larry, who runs this place, says they’re trying to get replacements for some of the particle cards but the companies won’t replace them. The graphic cards need fixing too, he says. They’re years old now and don’t work properly. Have you seen how unappetising some choices look? Should take those foods off the menu, if you ask me.’
‘Thanks.’ Laura changed her order to lamb slices with potato cakes and mint jelly. The woman smiled as Laura collected her food from the base of the machine.
The line progressed towards the pay station.
She had felt eyes on her the moment she walked into the replication terminal, but now one hot set burned a hole in the back of her skull. She turned around to see a man in his early forties, with slicked-back hair and a beanpole-shaped body, staring at her. His loose jeans were secured with an old belt. She’d seen many junkies like him before, but she didn’t know if he was a druggie or a tech over loader. Both types had one thing in common: wild eyes.
‘Can I
help you?’
The man said, ‘You lot over there think you’re so fucking great.’
She braced herself for another verbal attack, usually brought on by the uniform she wore. ‘Is there something you want?’
‘My mother is in debt because of you,’ the man almost hissed at her. ‘Owes your crowd a ton of money. Can’t sleep ‘cause she’s expecting your lot to break down her door and arrest her.’ He pointed at her. ‘What are you going to do about it?’
‘You need to take it up with the World Government. I work at the ESC.’
Laura worked on Level Four of the ESC, where she’d spent too many hours filing away boring information about tax matters. In other sections, workers checked, processed and filed traffic violations and countless transactions that the inhabitants of Earth had charged to their accounts. ESC had nothing to do with setting taxes or chasing down tax-evaders. That was the World Government’s job. But that detail didn’t matter to most people.
‘Same fucking thing if you ask me.’
The junkie left his place in the queue and got in her face. Laura shrank back from the smell of his putrid breath. She noticed the track marks on his right arm as he used it to block her path.
Jabbing a finger in her face he said, ‘You lot are all the same, sucking the goodness out of innocent people like me and my family. You make me sick.’
Hot spit landed on her face. She tried to wipe it away, but the junkie had pinned her against the counter.
The large man, who’d been queuing behind her, stepped forward suddenly and pulled the junkie back by his collar. ‘Looks like you’re queue-jumping and we don’t tolerate that in here. So either you go back in line or I throw you out the door. Your choice. If you’re lucky, I might not break all your bones when I slam you into the pavement.’
The junkie squirmed out of his restraint and rejoined the queue, his eyes seething with hatred.
Laura released a breath.
‘Thanks,’ she said. The man grunted and returned to his place in line.
At the pay station, she scanned her identity chip. Her legs shook as she entered the common eating room, still shocked by her confrontation.
The square room was standing room only. She found a not so quiet—but much coveted—spot by the window. There she nibbled at her tasteless lunch, hoping to avoid any more drama.
The large man entered the room and stood between her and the entrance to the corridor. When the junkie finally entered, his eyes searched the room, but he lost interest when he saw the hulking figure in his way. For once, Laura couldn’t be happier for the packed room conditions.
She picked the fat off her lamb slices and gazed out at the dark, smog-filled day. It had been ten years since she’d seen the sun, when she was twenty-six years old. Since then, the change in atmospheric conditions had led to a steady increase in cloud and drop in temperature. A constant chill now replaced the lack of sunlight. In the thirty years since Laura’s parents had emigrated from Dublin to Sydney, the temperatures barely surpassed ten degrees in high summer. Her golden hair no longer shone. Her previously sun-kissed complexion was now pale and pasty.
She tore off a piece of lamb and popped into her mouth, wondering if she would ever see or feel the sun again. Exilon 5 had sunlight in abundance and she dreamed of living there one day. But early selection for the World Government’s transfer programme was not a guarantee. It seemed the policy changed every six months, and working at the Earth Security Centre didn’t give her any special rights. What was once a volunteer arrangement had now changed to a lottery selection. But with only a small percentage of the population having transferred, she wasn’t sure how to play the numbers.
The city still carried evidence of the catalyst that had changed Earth’s atmospheric conditions. Their generation blamed the habits of older generations, but little had been done to stem the changes. Tattered posters on walls announcing the Go Green revolution served as a daily reminder of their failure to stop the problem. Go Green: the World Government’s answer to counteracting global change. But as industries became self-sustainable, green energy had not become the cash cow they had hoped for.
It was at the turn of the twenty-second century when space exploration really took off. How to fund that exploration? Tax the Go Green initiative, of course. Any businesses and industries that survived were subsumed by World Government to become their new subsidiaries.
Laura picked at her lamb. Her appetite waned further when she caught the junkie staring at her. If only people could see the good work the ESC was doing. Headed up by Daphne Gilchrist, the woman not only protected the Earth from unknown dangers but from people themselves.
Laura’s only chance to move to Exilon 5 would happen through promotion; she’d heard that the higher levels had a better chance of catching Gilchrist’s attention for the transfer programme. The purple-uniformed workers from Level Five commanded instant respect. That’s what she wanted.
Respect. From Gilchrist.
Tired of the hostile attention because of her uniform, she dropped her leftovers into one of the waste incinerators and headed for the exit.
Laura affixed her gel mask to her face. The frigid air hit her like she’d plunged into icy water. She wrapped her coat around her tighter and crossed the street, remembering when trees and plants used to grow in the city. But nothing grew in an atmosphere with high levels of CO2 and nitrogen. She’d almost forgotten what flowers looked like. Wild animals had been the next to go, although the city had preserved some domesticated creatures. Humans were the only species adaptable enough to live in the toxic air.
She approached the ESC building, surrounded by an invisible medium-level force field that her security chip allowed her to access. The public area to the front—the newest and brightest section of the Centre—was the only part without an active force field. She bounded up the crescent-shaped steps and into the private entrance through the former Anzac War Memorial building. Recognisable by its pink granite exterior, it had remained largely unchanged since it was designed by C. Bruce Dellit and completed in 1934. The World Government had added the public section to the memorial building about fifty years ago, as part of its attempts to regenerate a declining city.
Inside, white granite covered the floor and part of the walls. Various sculptures and figure reliefs hugged the upper part, protected by a symphony of stars across the dome-shaped ceiling. The gold stars, one hundred and twenty, reminded the city of the many wars of the past, and the volunteers who’d fought during a more primitive time. A Rayner Hoff sculpture named “Sacrifice” had once stood in the centre of the room. The sculpture, with its golden sun and fiery outstretched arms, had been relocated to the public foyer of the Security Centre. In its place was the turbo lift, linking to the nine underground levels.
Laura pressed her right thumb on the flat plate beside the turbo lift doors. The system read her security chip that gave her access to the first four levels below ground. She entered the lift and within seconds the doors opened on Level Four.
A bright foyer with a glass ceiling and floor beckoned. Above her workers walked, but below, to Level Five, she saw nothing through the opaque floor.
Officially known as High Level Data Storage Facility, Five was where the World Government sent its high-security documents. Five had been christened The Abyss because of the joke that sensitive information was often lost, never to be seen again.
Her lunchtime experience wasn’t anything new. Laura had been losing something she valued for a while now. As she walked across Level Four’s foyer, she wondered if she’d ever see her bravery again.
6
Daphne Gilchrist pored over that week’s data sent from the ESC overseers for levels one to six. She sat back with a sigh. Facts and figures bored her. She’d rather be commanding her troops into action than checking how many people failed to pay their taxes last month.
When had the Earth Security Centre changed from the front-line organisation protecting Earth from attack to a
compiler of information on tax evaders? Okay, Charles Deighton had assigned the responsibility of the ITF to the ESC. But the business of investigations and policing was being handled by ITF overseers in each city. What did that leave?
Twenty years as CEO of the ESC had to count for something. She’d even tried to pass this task off to others, but her bio signature was the only one Deighton wanted to see at the end of the report. Daphne pictured a different working role for herself, one that steered the course of humanity.
Exilon 5 mattered. Making sure the Indigenes weren’t a threat was paramount. But the direction things were heading under Deighton’s command unsettled her. The World Government board members had allowed him to run with plans to make Exilon 5 safe. In turn, Deighton had assigned Daphne to oversee Bill Taggart and his team.
Yet, here she was checking numbers, while Deighton was about to interfere in an operation he had told her to manage. Deighton told her he would follow up with Bill even after Daphne had assured him she could handle the investigator’s difficult manners. Her strict family upbringing in Osaka, Japan, meant she understood men. She valued the Japanese no-nonsense approach to work and traditional views of home life, even if she hadn’t gained the respect of being a woman in power there.
Deighton was becoming a problem. His interest in Taggart and his investigation was bordering on obsessive. Why couldn’t he trust her to handle things?
