STASIS: Part 3: Restart

by E. W. Osborne

  With a hand on her stomach, she fell asleep thinking through a conversation with her unborn child. I hope I made you proud tonight, little one.

  Bright morning light streamed in through the windows. The hum of traffic, pedestrian and vehicle, hummed out on the street below. Two pigeons postured and flapped out on the metal railing a few feet from her window. She slept through all of it, the sleep of true exhaustion. What finally woke her was Christopher’s booming voice.

  “What the hell have you done?”

  She shot up, bleary-eyed and scared. “What are you… Chris, what the shit?” Even though it wasn’t at the front of her mind, she apparently was more stressed about people coming in and taking her away than she cared to admit. Whatever had made him so angry wasn’t at all tempered by how much he’d scared her. If anything, it fueled his anger more.

  Christopher shut the door behind him, glancing up and down the hallway once before locking it tight. “Why? Why would you do this without telling me?”

  The previous night came back to her in a flash. She was slow to catch up, but when she did, her temper flared hot. She fired out of bed, wrapping a thin purple bathrobe around her body despite the heat, almost as if it were a protective armor.

  “Not this again,” she said with a shake of her head. She filled up the kettle to make tea, wishing instead for a black cup of coffee.

  “Kristine, I…”

  She wheeled on him. “No. Don’t. I have never and will never need your permission to do anything. You get me?”

  He opened his mouth and closed it. For the first time, she realized he wasn’t angry. The temper was shielding a greater concern. It was coming from a place of genuine fear, but of what? It wasn’t the first time she’d put her neck out.

  “You didn’t need my permission, but I wish you’d at least stopped to think.”

  She was far too angry to backpedal now. She slammed a fist onto her hip and pinned him to the spot with an unimpressed glare. “Think about what? Saving millions of people from a fate worse than death? Yeah, believe it or not, I did think about it.”

  His shoulders slumped as he sat heavily on the arm of the sofa. “But what about the people who might want you silenced?”

  She tried to sound brave and defiant, but felt woefully short. “What about them?”

  Chapter Five

  New York City, NY

  “I didn’t say my address or anything,” she defended meekly, knowing that was beside the point. If anyone wanted to find her, it’d be all too easy for them. He felt awful for scaring her, but what else could he do? How could he protect her if she constantly went behind his back?

  He took a few steps forward, cradling her face in his hands. Her bright blue eyes darted back and forth, searching his for meaning.

  “Your face is enough for them to find you.”

  “Them?”

  Christopher tensed and released his grip. “Them. The government. The company. Whoever. Jesus, you can’t just tell people to turn off their Seeds!”

  She bristled and turned her back to him. “I’m trying to make a difference in the world. I don’t know why you have such a problem with that. If you haven’t noticed, things are getting kinda fucked up out there.”

  He walked backward until his legs hit the mattress. With a thump and squeak, he landed hard on his ass. It was beginning to dawn on him that he might have actually lost her already. Like a bird he was trying to protect, he may have squeezed her so tightly she broke.

  But when she spun around to face him, her eyes full of renewed fire, he knew he continued to get it all wrong. She wasn’t a delicate bird. She was a force of nature. And if he wasn’t careful, she was going to sweep him to the side like unwanted debris.

  “I don’t have a problem with… honestly? You do what you want, but I have a family to think about now.”

  “And why do you think I did it?” she snapped. “How can I, in good conscience, bring a human into this world with the way it is? Don’t I owe it to our family to do something about it?”

  He looked up through his eyebrows, almost not wanting to make the point. “Aren’t I your family, too?”

  Her body language softened. It’s not that he wanted to emotionally manipulate her, but she wasn’t going to listen to logic. Like most times when he thought he was being clever, the tactic backfired on him.

  Kristine poured herself a cup of tea and made one for him, setting his on the corner of the coffee table. She sat on the sofa and pulled her knees up defensively, fingers delving deep into her thick hair.

  “Of course you’re my family,” she breathed. “Which is why I need you to disable your Seed.” Christopher opened his mouth to protest which she halted with a single arch of her eyebrow. “If you have a Seed, you might snap and hurt me or the baby. You might hurt yourself. I can’t take that chance.”

  “I would never, in a million years hurt you.”

  “I’m sure all those people thought the same thing,” she said, her reply already lined up.

  “I’m sorry, but I just don’t believe the Seed has anything to do with this. I think you’re grasping at straws.”

  She was utterly unmoved by his argument. “Whether I’m right or wrong shouldn’t make a bit of difference to you. If there’s the slightest chance you could hurt me or yourself, shouldn’t you do whatever it takes to stop that from happening?”

  He cleared his throat. “Kristine…”

  “Christopher. Seriously,” she replied, shifting on the sofa. “Say there was an accident at work. There was a chance you’d come into contact with a radioactive material.”

  “Which is incredibly likely while we’re fixing roads,” he laughed, trying to lift the mood.

  “If there was the smallest possibility you could harm me or the baby, wouldn’t you do everything in your power to prevent that from happening?”

  He realized there was no argument or defense she hadn’t already thought of. Fighting her on this wasn’t going to work. It was a match of wits and Christopher felt seriously outclassed.

  The strangest part of the whole argument was that it didn’t matter to him either way. It’s not like he actually had a Seed he didn’t want to disable. But he was using the idea of it as a means to try and convince her to give up on the whole thing. She was a iron fortress. There was nothing that was going to break her down, except one. He had one more tactic, however tiny it was.

  “Honestly, sweetheart,” he started, hoping she didn’t take the nickname as condescending. “It’s my body and I’m not completely comfortable with the idea of…” She cut him off, matching his tone with a touch of mockery.

  “And that’s completely fine, but I’m gonna have to ask you to leave and not come back until you do get it disabled.”

  He laughed at the ultimatum until he realized she was serious. “You’re kicking me out.”

  Kristine licked her lips and set a firm expression. “If I have to, yes. But if you disable your Seed, then it won’t come to that.”

  Christopher tugged at his hair, amazed at how frustratingly stubborn she could be. “I could leave, say that I’d disabled it, and come back without you knowing.”

  “But you wouldn’t lie to me, would you?” The question was sweet, the curl to her lip making him more nervous than he liked. God, does she know more than she’s letting on?

  He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and pretended to take it all in. He knew there was no way out and no way to convince her to drop it.

  “Fine. I’ll do it. For you.”

  There was no squeal of happiness, no praise or even thanks. Kristine nodded as if she knew he was going to break, that it was just a matter of time. He tried not to let it get to him. She stood to retrieve her props.

  “It takes about a half an hour. You don’t have to do anything but sit there.” She also grabbed a dark towel from the bathroom and draped it over his head, handing him her phone. “Make it as dark as possible and press play.”

  He considered protes
ting out of sheer stubbornness, hating the way she knew he was going to cave. Instead, he gritted his teeth and followed her instructions, both the ones she gave in person and on screen in the recording.

  Kristine looked radiant and serious in the video. It was always a mind-trip to see their unit online, even after all this time. But for the first time, he found himself searching the background for any identifying clues. Jamie could find them quickly enough, but what if there were others?

  “What am I supposed to do exactly?”

  “Sit still and let the lights do their work. It won’t hurt.”

  “It took you five minutes to say that in this video?”

  She ignored his snarky comment, taking a noisy slurp of tea to show just how little she cared for his attitude.

  “Did you get the push notification on your phone?” she asked, a touch of smugness in her tone.

  Christopher didn’t even pause to think. “No. Jamie sent me a message. He got it first.” And he was pissed. Fuck, maybe I shouldn’t have admitted that.

  He was grateful for the towel over his head. It meant she couldn’t read his terrible poker face. He might’ve been a captive audience for half an hour, but without his expression to read, she wasn’t going to get the complete picture.

  “Your brother?”

  “You seem surprised,” he replied, wincing.

  “I wouldn’t expect him to send you something like that, that’s all.”

  Of course you wouldn’t, because up until now, I hadn’t actually talked about him. “We’ve been messaging a little here and there since we had dinner. When he saw you, he sent it over.” He shrugged beneath the towel, impressed at how casual and real that had sounded.

  “That’s good,” she breathed.

  In the long pause that followed, Christopher wondered if he’d be able to change the screen to something a little more… entertaining than the bright, flashing blue lights. He hovered over the screen, but in the end decided it wouldn’t be worth the fight when she caught him. Because, let’s face it, he was going to get caught.

  “What’s the deal with Jamie and your sister, anyway? I was going to ask, but after the dinner…” She trailed off, cup clinking on glass as she set it down on the table.

  “The deal?”

  “You know, why don’t they talk anymore? It sounded serious and you never told me anything about it.”

  As much as he loved her, Kristine’s voice was beginning to grate at his nerves.

  “This is starting to make me feel a bit funny,” he said, hoping to distract her.

  “Yeah, it might make you a little dizzy, but it’ll pass. So is she like, the black sheep of the family? ‘Cause you don’t talk to her either.”

  He squeezed his eyes shut but the light still managed to break through. “Are you sure this is safe? Wait!” He flung the towel off to look at her. “You didn’t do this, did you? With the baby and—”

  She gawked at him. “Towel! And no, of course not. It’s perfectly safe, but I still don’t know if it’s something in my Seed that saved her—“

  “Her?” he demanded, moving to pull the towel off again.

  “Him! It. Baby. Whatever,” she huffed. “Stop trying to change the subject.”

  “I don’t really know what you want me to say. My sister is… complicated.”

  “Complicated how?”

  Christopher was as trapped as if he had a chain and shackles around his neck. He desperately wanted to tell her the truth, to get it out in the open once and for all. He considered that it might be easier without having to look her in the eye. But now that she’d started to see his family’s company as some evil mega-corporation, he’d have little chance of getting through to her.

  The way he saw it, he had two options. He needed to either prove or disprove that Steele Industries was responsible for what had been happening in the world. Only definitive evidence would get Kristine to back off. Until then, he had to curb her curiosity long enough to buy him time.

  He cleared his throat, hoping half-truths would do for now. “Penelope was always our father’s favorite. Even though Jamie was older and his first son, she was the one he pinned all his hopes and dreams on. She was the one who was meant to follow in his footsteps.”

  “What did he do again?”

  “He was a doctor.” It was the thinnest description of a man who’d changed the world.

  “And what path did she take?”

  “A few different ones before becoming a clinical psychologist. She lives in San Francisco now.”

  Kristine laughed. “Oh yeah. Apple really fell far from the tree there.”

  “She might as well have become a circus clown for all it mattered to him. It wasn’t what our father wanted. At first, she loved being his pet, but the constant criticism and attention wore her down, I think. Jamie was more than happy to step up when she was deemed too much of a disappointment. He always tried to pit us against each other, like we were some kind of in-house experiment he could tinker with.” Christopher was surprised by the emotion in his own voice. He reigned it back in, worrying if he got too carried away, he might spill an important detail. “I was young, so I didn’t get a lot of that.”

  “And your mother—”

  “Mom was great. She shielded us from a lot of it but when she died…”

  Kristine was at his side in an instant. She straddled his body from behind, threading her arms and legs around him, enveloping him in a comfort he didn’t realize he needed. She rested her head on his shoulder but didn’t prod any further.

  A moment later, when the tears had cleared from his eyes, he continued. “They were teenagers when Mom died. They were already at each other’s throats, but I think she was the only thing keeping them from truly hating each other. If anything, our father used it as a tool to push us, them mostly.”

  “And your other brother? The one in England.”

  Christopher took a deep breath in an attempt to calm down. “He knocked up some woman while on a business trip apparently. Kept it from everyone until after Mom died. Eventually, he decided he’d rather be with them than us, so he moved over there. A couple years later he died.”

  He froze, realizing how much of the details were public knowledge. It wouldn’t take a lot for Kristine to connect the stories to James Steele, founder of Steele Industries. His affair, the number of children, it’d all been splashed out in unauthorized biographies after his death. Luckily, she was too kind and loving to be combing over his details with her journalistic eye… yet.

  She gave him another squeeze. “But you only met him once?”

  “Yeah, Julian. He was only little then. Don’t really know much else about him.”

  The blinking light in his lap was little more than a minor annoyance now. When he’d rushed home to confront her, when he’d pulled the towel over his head, he hadn’t expected to have to deal with all these memories and emotions. They were buried, meant to be forgotten and ignored.

  “You know, you never told me how your mom died.”

  Christopher wiped the sweat and tears from his face with the towel. He sniffed once and shrugged. “She killed herself. My father found her. We buried her a week later. There’s not much else to say.”

  “That’s terrible! Babe, I had no idea. I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s just one of those things. No one’s fault.”

  Chapter Six

  Alfreton, UK

  July 9th

  Alex used to use his online life as an escape from his real one. Online, he could surround himself by people and ideas in tune with his world view. Online, he was smart, capable, powerful and he could keep it that way through a very careful cultivation.

  But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t stop reading the rantings of idiots who didn’t understand the scope of their situation.

  “There’s no way the Seed could’ve done this.”

  “I’m not giving up my rights just because some terrorist assholes decided to step up their game
.”

  “I hope someone releases my Dreamscapes. I’m a fucking badass. The world deserves to see it.”

  No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t ignore the oblivious.

  “How can some stupid lights disable something as sophisticated as the Seed? Wake up people! This is exactly how they get into your brain.”

  “Is it hacking if you willing let someone in?”

  What little joy he felt the first days after releasing the Seed deactivation video was long gone. He’d gotten himself all excited at the idea of saving the world. He’d bought into the idea, all but wrote out a name tag declaring himself savior. Kristine’s words went to his head and now it’d nearly blown up in their faces. He should’ve known better than to put his faith in people.

  He tried to tell himself that millions upon millions were now safer and more secure than before, all because of him. But it definitely didn’t feel that way when he ventured online or even outside for his daily walk to the store.

  Fed up and hungry, the house feeling more claustrophobic than normal, he decided it was time for dinner. Without bothering to turn off any of his monitors or SmartWall, he was eager to leave the house.

  Alex locked the door behind himself, testing the doorknob several times before walking down the short drive. Ever since the suicides started, he pushed himself to go out for a walk at least once a day. The motivation was a double-edged sword. On one side, he knew he had to lose weight and get fit enough to survive on the outside, both physically and mentally. On the other, he knew at the end of their street and to the left was the tastiest, greasiest fish and chip shop in the area. Reward.

  Anxiety tightened around his throat like a weak hand. Rather than mentally pushing the fears away, he allowed them to pass through, to acknowledge them and let them go. He was willing to try any bullshit technique he read online if it meant he could act a little more normal.