During Chase’s frequent trips to the diary room, this was the main thing he now talked about. Tonight was no exception, with Steve already in position to witness the next flash.
“We’re so close to the end,” Chase said, leaning back with his hands resting on the back of his neck and his eyes fixed on the camera. “We’ve done all the work you wanted us to do and the group has held up well. Our only problem is Steve’s obsession with that damn light, which wouldn’t be here if this was a real mission, so if there’s something else you think I should be doing to deal with this, I think you should be telling me. Okay, if we were really isolated there would be no communication. But there would also be no light turning one of my crew into… I dunno… a guy who doesn’t feel safe unless he sees a light flashing every six hours. I’m on top of this, but like I said: if there’s anything else you want me to do to deal with this artificial problem that your setup has created…” Chase trailed off and pointed up to a speaker on the ceiling which had never emitted so much as a whisper. “That’s all I’m saying.”
None of Chase’s words would be broadcast — the privacy room was a private space — and not even Monica Pierce and her Terradox Live production crew were privy to the room’s AV feed. This hadn’t always been the case, but the feed had been separated from the others ever since Monica flagrantly broke the cardinal rule to refrain from broadcasting anything from the privacy room six months earlier by airing some comments from Chase which explicitly confirmed that he had feelings for Nisha Kohli. Chase’s feelings came as news to no one and caused no real harm, but Holly had nevertheless been furious at Monica’s insolent rule-breaking and responded by revoking her production team’s access to the privacy room’s AV feed and issuing a formal warning against future misconduct.
After making his thoughts clear on the light situation, Chase waited in silence for a full two minutes.
He knew someone would be watching and listening, but he wasn’t holding out much hope for a response. Indeed, when none came, he took it as a sign that the observers must have thought he was handling Steve’s behaviour quite well.
Chase then made his way through the quiet Kompound until he reached the central corridor, on the way to his bedroom. As expected, Steve was still there. The clock reported that just two minutes remained until the light was due to flash again.
“Almost there,” Steve said. He sounded calm enough — chipper, even — and wore a relaxed expression.
“Exactly,” Chase replied without stopping. “You know it’s coming, so why do you need to see it?”
“No harm in making sure,” Steve said.
Chase wanted to say ‘and what would you do if it didn’t flash?’, but wisely thought better of it. Instead, he settled for encouraging Steve to get some sleep, then headed down the corridor.
As Chase arrived in his room, he glanced at the clock. Twenty-six seconds remained until the end of the current six-hour block, at which point a shift changeover in the Buffer’s observation room would see the staff press a button to let the test subjects know that all was well. This occurred whether anyone was near the light or not — it was a test of the observation team’s attentiveness and professionalism, in a secondary sense — and no one who happened to be passing the light near the changeover time had ever reported it flashing any more than a few seconds early or late.
Chase lay down on his bed. He tried to relax, but within a few seconds he sat bolt upright and navigated to his wristband’s location tracker. He selected Steve and held his wrist out in front of his face so he could look at it and the clock at the same time. He held his breath as the clock hit the hour mark.
Four seconds later, Steve was walking towards his own bedroom.
Chase exhaled in relief and lay back down. This time, he closed his eyes and settled for the night.
He had known the flash was coming, but there was no harm in making sure.
thirteen
An announcement greeted every colonist as they rose for the day, appearing as an alert on the viewing wall of each home and workplace until it was dismissed. The news that intra-zonal movement restrictions were finally now in place came as no surprise to anyone given that their introduction had been expected for a while, but this didn’t make it any easier for Viola Ospanov to accept.
She spoke little of it to Peter prior to his departure for work, seeing no sense in repeating points she had already made a dozen times and with which he openly empathised without fully agreeing.
When Viola arrived at the CDD for her own workday, Jillian Jackson was already there and keen to find out if Viola’s opposition to the changes had faded or grown. Unaware of Viola’s all-too-brief encounter with Holly outside Terradox Central Station the previous evening, Jillian quickly regretted asking any questions.
“I’m not angry,” Viola insisted after recounting Holly’s recommendation to direct her concerns to the colony’s suggestions inbox. “I’m just disappointed. But I’m still thinking about what you said about it being important for the people at the top to look united even when we’re not, so I’m willing to see where this goes. I’m just worried that it’s not going to lead to anything positive and I’m disappointed she wouldn’t even hear me out, that’s all. But don’t worry, it’s not like I’m planning a ‘ditch your wristbands’ protest or anything like that. The only people I’ve spoken to candidly about this are Bo, my dad, Peter, and you.”
“For what it’s worth, Christian isn’t overly keen on the whole idea of intra-zonal restrictions, either,” Jillian said, “and he doesn’t think Chase will like it one bit. Like father like son, I suppose. And while I have no great opposition to the changes, I can’t pretend I’m not slightly hesitant about how it’s all going to play out. That said, I’m very glad to hear that you’re willing to let it play out. I also know that Holly paid a visit to Bo last night and that she’s going to talk to Christian today. She doesn’t travel out to the Gardens very often, so it must be about something fairly important. Not the restrictions, of course, but something important enough to talk about on the busy morning when the restrictions are coming into effect. I don’t think he’ll mention his mild concerns again — he already sent a note to the suggestions inbox — but we’ll find out soon enough what the urgent topic is.”
Viola nodded, only mildly interested in what might be discussed in the Botanical Gardens and far more interested to learn why Holly had paid a late-night visit to Bo after telling Viola she was too busy to talk.
Too curious to let it pass and with fifteen spare minutes until any children were due to arrive for their day of learning and play, Viola called Bo and asked him up-front what Holly had been so keen to talk to him about.
“Just work stuff,” he said after an uncomfortable moment’s hesitation. “She didn’t come to talk about the restrictions, if that’s what you mean. She knows I don’t really care.”
“What kind of work stuff?” Viola prodded; an obvious follow-up question, if ever there was one.
“Long-term stuff about where romotech is going, mainly. But, look, V… is this going anywhere, or can it wait? I just got back in after a few hours of rest and I really need to get started again on these rover integrity tests.”
Viola turned to Jillian, who could hear everything coming through the speaker built into Viola’s wristband since it wasn’t set to ear-side privacy mode. Jillian shrugged.
“I need you to do me one small favour,” Viola said, addressing the comment to Bo. “I won’t lie: I want to find out why Holly didn’t have five minutes for me last night but had enough time to travel out to Little Venus and talk to you about non-urgent ‘work stuff’. Could you call her at some point and say you want to discuss some specific thing related to whatever long-term romotech plans you were talking about, then tell me when she’s going back out to see you? I’ll go, too. If I call her, she’ll say she’s busy. I can follow orders and I can handle my voice not being heard on every little thing, but I can’t handle being lied to about how bus
y she is and being pushed away like I’m nobody.”
Now, Jillian was quietly shaking her head to discourage Viola from this line of action.
“I’m not going to lie,” Bo said.
“You owe me,” Viola replied.
“For what?”
“For what? Really? How about missing our engagement party? How about missing—”
Bo sighed audibly. “I was working, okay? I wanted to be there, but the breakthrough I made that night was huge. Maybe I do owe you for that, but I’m not repaying you by tricking Holly. She’s got a lot going on right now and in a few days you’ll have forgotten all about this nonsense. Is that everything? Can I start my work now?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t want to keep you from your precious work,” Viola groaned, ending the call with a much firmer tap than normal on her wristband’s screen. She gazed at Jillian. “He’s obsessed with work, just like Holly is becoming obsessed with being in control of every little thing. You must see that, right? You’re the psychologist here.”
“You know I’m somewhere in the middle,” Jillian said, consistent if nothing else. “What I would say is that you have to be careful not to build this into something bigger than it is. Bo was right: Holly does have a lot on her plate. The last thing you should do is build this into some grand personal issue; at the end of the day, her mind has been made up for a while and she’s probably been stressed about today’s changes going without a hitch. In her shoes, with the decision already made, would you want to go over the same old arguments with people who disagree and aren’t going to change their minds? I’m not saying you didn’t have good points, but I am saying that I understand why she didn’t want to hear them last night.”
Stuck for a reply, Viola glanced at the time. She then stood up to walk the short distance to the CDD’s main gate to greet the children who would be arriving soon. Before leaving Jillian’s office, she swiped a replay of Holly’s restrictions announcement onto the room’s viewing wall.
It was a short message, and straight to the point. It began with an explanation of the basics and informed everyone how to access their personalised impact report which would cover in detail any potential restrictions they could conceivably encounter based on their previous movements. Holly then ensured the colonists that almost no one would ever encounter a restriction and that access to newly-secured areas they didn’t normally visit would be granted via a very simple request process, provided that the reason for their visit met one of several very broad justification categories.
At the end, however, Holly offered a fairly strongly-worded defence of the overall concept of restricting colonists’ movements via a system which could ultimately deliver a painful jolt to the wrist should a series of instructions and warnings be ignored on approach to a boundary.
“This is not a dictatorship,” Holly said, “but it’s not a democracy, either. Terradox is our home — your home and my home. I want it to be a happy home and a productive home, but first and foremost we have to remember that Terradox is a place of work. As I have always strived to make clear, these new security safeguards will have no negative effects on your day-to-day life. There may be some minor teething problems, particularly today while individual access entitlements are ironed out, but before too long we will look back on today as a defining moment in the young history of our colony: as the day when we safeguarded its future while ensuring our own continued safety and prosperity.”
Despite their disagreement on the merits and likely effects of the changes, every part of Viola wanted Holly to be right. Terradox was Viola’s home — a happy and productive one — and she wanted nothing more than for it to thrive long into the future.
But while Holly was correct that this new day would indeed go down as a defining one in Terradox’s history, neither she nor Viola could have known that it would live long in the memory for all the wrong reasons…
fourteen
Of all the research zones on Terradox, the one filled by Christian Jackson’s Botanical Gardens was unquestionably Holly’s favourite. Christian, the colony’s Head of Botany, worked tirelessly alongside a team which included everything from conventional gardeners to genetic engineers.
And despite being the subject of less general interest than other zones like Little Venus and the Primosphere, more tangible breakthroughs had come from research within these Gardens than anywhere else. Moreover, it was also the site of the most advanced novel romotech applications which had been authorised to date.
The vast majority of the Gardens’ land was filled by outdoor plants. A small vineyard lay near the zonal boundary in the direction of Holly’s approach from her home at the edge of Sunshine Springs, with the low morning sun casting long shadows. The wine produced by these grapes commanded truly eye-watering prices from rich collectors on Earth, partly because of the novelty factor of where it had been produced but also because the growing conditions were absolutely perfect and thus conducive to producing the best wine anyone had ever tasted. None of it was consumed on Terradox, per a strict directive from Ekaterina Rusev, and there was a hard limit on the amount of space which could be used for commercial cultivation of any kind. Naturally, however, the resultantly low volume of wine only served to drive up the per-bottle price and led to fierce competition every time a batch was shipped to Earth.
Other outdoor areas were devoted to the study of Terradox’s ‘native’ plant species, which had been present upon Holly’s group’s discovery of the romosphere having been engineered by Roger Morrison’s own botanists as part of the initial and secretive Terradox project.
The thorned plant which once surrounded the original security bunker and caused a violent reaction on Bo Harrington’s young foot was not among the species cultivated, but earlier study had revealed that the dangerous compound it contained was in fact a cocktail of organic irritants extracted from Earthly plants and mixed with genetically modified scorpion venom. Before the last of these plants were destroyed following the completion of their genetic mapping, Christian presented Bo with a fully sterilised thorn which Bo had since taken to wearing as a pendant.
The four edges of the Gardens were marked by a landscaped moat rather than a high wall. Holly crossed the footbridge at the main entrance after disembarking from her transport capsule. She then headed straight for the cylindrical laboratory tower, where Christian Jackson spent most of his time overseeing his team’s research and monitoring conditions within the invisible microspheres which had recently been introduced in accordance with blueprints drawn up by Bo Harrington and with the assistance of his father Robert’s team in Habitat Management.
The Gardens now held the honour of being the only single zone on Terradox within which conditions varied tremendously from place to place, and this development had already considerably sped up Christian’s research in several areas. Bo had likened the microspheres to bubbles when he first pitched the idea, explaining that a romobot cloak would essentially turn each microsphere into its own small-scale artificial environment.
Most excitingly for Christian and his colleagues, the flexibility of the technology had since allowed the introduction of microspheres which were almost as small as he could imagine, with some being no more than ten metres wide. This enabled him to optimise growing conditions for all manner of plants by isolating individual variables, using one field to grow the same crop under dozens of slight atmospheric variations and then analysing the results to see which variables had the greatest positive and negative effects.
Because these recent developments occurred within the Gardens, perhaps the least intrinsically exciting research zone in the eyes of the average colonist and indeed the average person on Earth or the Venus station, few appreciated just how significant a breakthrough the safe introduction of working microspheres really was.
The greatest research development so far came from Christian’s ability to shorten the day-night cycle within individual microspheres, simultaneously shortening the life cycles of certain plants and lea
ding to increased rates of minor evolutionary mutation. He spoke with great confidence in telling Holly that the field of regenerative medicine would never be the same once these new mutation-inducing techniques were fully utilised on as-yet unmodified plants which already provided compounds capable of partially but imperfectly curing serious ailments. Holly’s reporting of this breakthrough during her quarterly Rusentra board meeting had since been the catalyst for Monica Pierce’s disruptive behaviour, after a loose-lipped TV executive from Earth broke a confidentiality agreement and blabbed about the report to Monica so she could attempt to corner Christian about it for an exclusive feature on Terradox Live.
Christian was so far none the wiser that the Monica-related drama had in fact had anything to do with him, since Holly and Peter had opted to disclose as few details as possible in an effort to avoid prolonging anyone’s interest in an issue which had been sufficiently dealt with.
“Morning, Holly,” a young botanist smiled as she entered the multi-storey laboratory at ground level.
“Morning,” she replied. “Has everything been running smoothly since the access changes were introduced this morning?”
The researcher nodded with a slightly upturned lip, as though surprised to hear that Holly had been in any doubt. “There aren’t many restricted areas in here, anyway. Just the control centre, really. Only Christian can go in there because that’s where all the dials and controls are. You know, for changing conditions inside the microspheres. Well, I guess you already know all of that.” A smile crossed the young woman’s face. “And I guess you can get in, too, right? I guess you guys have to be able to access everywhere.”
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