Echoes of Family Lost

by Clayton Barnett

  Chapter 13

  Callie stared at the numbers flowing past the tiny screen on her handheld. Chibi, what’s wrong? She wondered. For a solid month there had been only minor issues. It had become a race in her mind between boredom and insanity from answering all of Gary’s questions. But, when they finally wanted to do an initial power-up: nothing. For two days now techs and engineers were running around tearing panels out along with clumps of their hair in frustration. And for once, her feel for a problem was gone. She switched off her handheld and sat back, staring at the wall. Chibi was just on the other side.

  “Chicken and egg.”

  “What’s that, Gary?” She said tiredly.

  “Just like that story you told me,” the little boy continued. “How do you know what came first?” He was next to her, but on the floor with a sketchbook. That had started on the trek from Chattanooga to here. She forced eyes off the wall to take a look at his latest… I bet it’s another… sure enough: another warship, with some girl standing next to it. Vaguely reminded her of some anime she’d seen as a kid. But, they’d not watched anything like that together.

  “So, who came first, Gary?” Eyes back to the wall.

  “Is there any way we can run the noisy generators to the tall metal towers?” He asked, with his typical whiplash style.

  “Run power to the transmission towers? What for?” At her most tired she usually forgot to treat him like a child.

  “No, no: just the opposite. So we can…” he waved his hands, “…hear and see things.”

  “Oh, you mean broadband, internet, that sort of thing.” Thinking about something else sometimes helped. “We’d…uh… have to get a directional dish and acquire signal from a satellite. I think some of the guys have international accounts to log onto….”

  “And then we take that and run it around and out the towers around town, like we do back home?” She looked down at him; he was putting the final touches on the water foaming around the ship’s bow.

  “Gary, you almost are never on the internet at home. Why is such a big deal here?” He closed his sketchbook at stared into his mother’s eyes.

  “Let’s ask Pavel what’s wrong with Chibi.”

  Not again. She closed her eyes. After a little bit, there was a sound at the door, but she didn’t move.

  “Hello, father,” Gary said. She could hear Leslie walk into the control room. Only when he kissed her lips did she bother to open her eyes.

  “I would say ‘you look terrible!’ except that you don’t!” He smiled at her. “Things still stuck?”

  “Yeah,” she replied, stretching. “Your son suggested we uplink to a satellite and look for a solution there.”

  “Log onto a search engine and type ‘start-up troubleshooting for pebble-bed thorium reactor’? That’s….” He trailed off, looking thoughtful. A shrug. “Why not?”

  “Excuse me?” Callie asked.

  “Remember a couple of weeks back, when I had to take that militia trooper to the hospital?” He asked. She just nodded. “While I was kicking around there I heard some of the nurses talking about checking a diagnosis online. I asked them how in the world they did that. They told me that – only when things were bad – they’d use an emergency generator and connect to the web via satellite to talk to other hospitals in Asia or Australia.”

  He pointed at his son. “He’s usually right, so why not now? One of the boffins likely has connections at one of the reactor sites in China or South Africa, so let’s see if we can get a message to them?”

  By ‘boffins’ she knew he meant one of those mind-in-the-clouds geeks who just never had time to get their hands dirty. Sure, they were smart, but useless in the field. She knew of only two that came to Huntsville.

  “I suppose… but we’ve always had that odd trouble getting signals in and out of eastern Tennessee…”

  “Where we most certainly are not, now!” Leslie said, a grin on his chiseled features. She reached for her walkie-talkie to round up some comm techs.

  interlude

  In the faint evening light, the two men continued their slow climb along the road that wound its way to the top of Madkin Mountain, in the midst of Redstone Arsenal. They’d learned on earlier trips that trying to get the donkey to pull them only resulted in a stopped donkey.

  “I confess,” the young one said, “that was a fright, earlier.”

  The elder nodded. “They always are. Especially those kind!”

  “Truly. ‘Fear the cute ones,’ as you well taught me.”

  “Aye,” the elder said with tiredness in his voice. “And its worse when old: they all are younger and thus cuter.”

  “But soon, with the outsiders help….” The younger trailed off.

  “Inadvertent help,” the elder almost cackled, “but help nonetheless!”

  “…we will once again, after all these years, have the women we want.”

  “Aye.”

  “2D women,” they said together.

  The hilltop was, as ever, deserted. They’d only an hour before full dark to act. In the weeks prior they’d made sure the power lines down the northeast face of the great hill were sound. Harvesting from dozens of abandoned houses had secured them the satellite dishes they needed and unused base computers were setup both in the shed next to the transmission tower, and in their own homes.

  Computer engineers for the base before the Breakup, the loss of electrical power had been the end of their lives: lives lived entirely online. There, they had been heroes, masters of their own destinies, conquerors of kingdoms, able to talk to girls…. All that, gone. When word came of the strangers and their promise of the restoration of power, they knew what they must do.

  Slipping away after their day jobs, they began bringing their treasure up the mountain. Soon, with the power on, their multiple uplinks to the sky, the signal pushed up the transmission tower… then, snug in their own rooms with their computers, they would look at women the way a man safely could: on a flatscreen.

  “Word says they’ve encountered a delay,” whispered the younger.

  “Words say nothing; people say words,” replied the elder, running wires into PVC conduits.

  “Fine. One of the strangers, a boy—”

  “A boy you seem to me, so with all children.”

  “Nay, a real boy—”

  “Three D, in fine?”

  “And in stature. No more than five years, but like us than them.”

  “Truth?” This surprised the elder. “A budding otaku, what?”

  “As could be, but hear this: his mother nurses no longer him but the new machine, so this word, then, is from her.”

  “A horror,” the elder shuddered, “to even think of making a boy from a 3D woman: sweat and fluids, pah!” He rechecked the dishes’ orientation towards the azimuth.

  “Give me a stack of dating sims—”

  “And a box of tissues…”

  “…to the foul touch of so called ‘real life!’ Are you about finished there?” The elder asked.

  “Aye.” The younger looked up at the tower. “When the time does come, they’ll not note the lost power for the dishes… but when we push signal up this….”

  “It’s that forcing their hand: once the townsfolk have signal back in their grasp, they’ll not let the strangers do naught to it!”

  “And, of course,” the younger said slyly, “it is we that will have the lion’s share on our private frequency…”

  The elder rubbed his hands together. “Just to imagine what has changed in these lost years: the games, the sims, the MMORPGs… come when power is returned…!”

  “We shall see one another,” dreamed the younger, “in paradise!”

  From Brinkman’s machine shop, they rode around the east side of the hill Lily had been admiring earlier. Carell said that most of his people were where the reactor had been set up: just south of the hill.

  “Although they call it Madkin Mountain,” he had said. “For anyone who’s traveled, it�
��s just a hill, of course.”

  After his talk with Fausta, Carell wanted them to meet others in his Society. They’d asked for some privacy to talk that out.

  “He’s been fair enough with us so far,” Orloff had observed. “Another day won’t hurt us. And they can tell us about the road to Chattanooga.”

  At one hundred percent power, Fausta was almost vibrating. “After our announcement at Ai’s press conference, my family is not a secret, Lily. Subterfuge was only necessary in the badlands. Speaking of which, I do hope there’s trouble on the next part of our journey!”

  I think she’s safer at twenty percent, thought Lily.

  “Fine.” Lily had agreed. “But all our stuff is at the tavern….”

  Which, when they told Carell they were staying another day, he took care of by dispatching one of his men to collect Orloff’s and Lily’s bags.

  “Excellent!” Carell was elated. “I understand you won’t want a crowd, but I was thinking of a working dinner with the Colonel and his aide, my wife, and a couple of techs I know.” Lily had no issues with that.

  They rounded the base of the hill around four thirty. The winter sun was low in the sky. Carell pointed to the complex of buildings just ahead.

  “That’s the reactor and control room. The building just south of it used to be weapons development. We’ve converted part of it to dorms and a mess hall. It’s not a Hilton, but nice enough. Plenty of extra room for everyone.”

  “I don’t suppose you’ve a laundry,” Lily muttered. He laughed.

  “Give us a day or two and we’ll have the lights and water back on. Laundry should be no problem.” She resisted the impulse to sniff her sleeve.

  Everyone dismounted and they tied up Lightning and Clyde. Carell spoke into his walkie-talkie for a minute.

  “I’m going to go find those techs I mentioned. They should be around the reactor. We’re getting rooms set up for you, now.” He waved at the southern building, just yards away. “You can wait in the mess hall or wander around. If anyone challenges you, just say, ‘we control the lighting.’”

  “Not much of a password.” Orloff grunted.

  “Yeah,” Carell agreed. “As a secret society, we suck! Let’s go, Fausta!”

  Wait, what?

  “You…you’re taking…” Lily started. Her friend came over to, with her glasses down.

  “It will be fine,” she said. “Mister Orloff is here, and I find these people… trustworthy.”

  “Oh.” She’d grown used to Fausta always being there for these past weeks. This felt just like with Ai left. “That’s fine! See you!” Lily turned away quickly.

  “You want a snack?” Orloff asked.

  Callie looked at the notes that Jenkins had scribbled down after his short talk with Shu Li in Beijing. How in the world did they manage to miss something like this? She shook her head and passed it onto the Project Manager, who shook his head.

  “Give us ten minutes. Thanks, Callie! Saved our asses again!”

  “Nah,” she countered. “It was my boy’s idea, actually. See you guys!” And, speaking of Gary, now she needed to go find him. She reached for her personal walkie-talkie, a cute pink.

  “Leslie?”

  “Yep.”

  “Is Gary with you?”

  “He was, but John just called. He’s out front with somebody. He sounds like a kid at Christmas!”

  A kid expecting a pervy toy, she thought.

  “So where’s OUR CHILD.”

  He heard that clearly. “Sorry! I left him in the front office for you. It was warmer there.”

  “I’ll get him. Out.”

  Leslie walked out of the Reactor Building front door and down the three steps. Ah, there he was… sheesh. Did he always surround himself with exotic women? He’d seen Anna actually shoot at her husband, once. He thought she was pretending.

  This one was just as tall as Anna, but much more solidly built. Dressed military-style. Her hair, just a shade lighter than Callie’s, was in a tight braid. He wondered why she was wearing sunglasses in the fading light. Carell saw him and waved. He had one of his odder smiles on.

  “Perfect! Fausta? This is Leslie Hartmann. Leslie, Fausta.”

  No surname, Leslie thought. Where did John find this one?

  “My pleasure, Fausta,” he said, taking her hand. It was surprisingly cool.

  “As well, Mister Hartmann.” He almost shivered to hear her deep, rich voice. Was that a hint of Hispanic in it? He looked a question to John. Who laughed.

  “I’ve got to talk with the Colonel.” Carell said. “You, me, our wives, along with the Colonel and his aide will be having dinner with Fausta and her two companions at 1900. Could I trouble you to look after her for an hour? The other two of her party are milling about over by the Itsnotahilton.”

  “Uh, sure.” This was sudden. “I’ll call my wife…”

  Carell shook his head as he moved off. “I want to see the Project Manager before the Colonel. I’ll let her know!” The door closed behind him.

  “So Miss Fausta—”

  “Just Fausta.” She said with a small toothless smile.

  “Fausta. If you don’t mind me asking, how did you end up here?”

  “Difficult question.”

  Damn you, John.

  “Okay. If you don’t mind, I need to head back to our quarters to change out of these overalls before dinner. Would you prefer to return to your companions…?”

  She inclined her head just slightly. “He called you a tech, but you carry yourself like a soldier.”

  “Well, until the Breakup, I was.” He replied. Observant woman. “And even after that. I was armored cavalry; now it’s real cavalry!”

  “I am a warrior. Please let me accompany you.”

  “Sure.”

  Callie found Gary reading yet another book in the front office. At that moment, Carell came in. Try to be civil, she thought.

  “I left your husband out there with a beautiful woman.” What? “I need a word with the PM, then off to the Colonel. We’re all having dinner together at 1900. Hi, there, Gary!”

  “Mister Carell.”

  Infuriating man! She took her son’s hand. “Come on, Gary.”

  “Father’s with another woman?” Grrr!

  Outside, sure enough, she could see him off to the right, headed towards the living quarters, with… Good Lord, Callie though, she’s huge! Callie took a step….

  “Mother? When’s dinner? I’m a little hungry.” He looked up at her with his blank face.

  Trolling me; the pervert is just trolling me. I’ll find out from Leslie what’s going on in a minute.

  “Okay,” she smiled. “It’s a bit more than an hour’s wait, so let’s get you a small snack!” They moved towards the door to the mess hall.

  Carell entered the Control Room just as the Project Manager was saying “…let’s do… Oh, hello, John! Perfect timing!” He pointed at the main panel.

  “Care to do the honors?”

  “Sure! Thanks, Phil!” With no ceremony at all, he strode over and pressed the button the PM had indicated.

  “We control the lightning.” There was a shudder as the machines drew power for the start up; they saw the output indicator: 1%, 2%… it climbed to 5% and stopped at its programmed level.

  Everyone cheered.

  “I cannot believe your commander ordered you to fire on civilians,” Fausta was saying to Leslie.

  “We couldn’t either; that’s why we left.” This woman fascinated him.

  “Mutiny. But given your circums—” She whirled away from him, staring back towards the reactor building. He saw she’d taken her glasses off as she did. He felt the slight rumble. A successful start!

  “Amazing.” Fausta said. “The electromagnetic flux is… beautiful!”

  He wondered what she was saying.

  She put her glasses back on. In her right periphery she saw a little boy follow some woman who’s face she could not see into what Carell had called t
he mess hall. She turned back to Leslie.

  “So,” he said as they went into the building that housed the Society’s dorms. “You mentioned being a warrior yourself. Ah, did you serve in the US forces….?”

  As light fell, it was getting cold, quickly. Standing inside the mess hall and smelling hot food made Lily’s mouth water. A glance at her watch showed plenty of time for a small bite.

  “I’m going to get an apple or something, Orloff. How about you?” She asked.

  “I wonder if there’s a bar here?” He coughed a laugh.

  Lily found the fruit section and took an apple. Orloff had at least found a beer. The circled back together toward what looked like a checkout. Two coppers. Rather than let him fumble with his one good arm, she handed over her apple and pulled them out of her pants pocket. The clerk made a note on a piece of paper and thanked them. He was already looking at the next customers.

  “Protein bar, please.” Lily heard a little boy’s voice say. She followed Orloff over to a seat by a window. There was an unlit candle in the center.

  “What do you think will happen at this dinner?” She asked him.

  Callie held the door for Gary just as she felt the rumble. Yes! It started! Go, Chibi, go! Show them what you can do! Oh, Gary was waving at her.

  “What may I have, Mother?”

  “Hmmm. How about an apple?”

  “I’d an apple with lunch.” He thought for a moment. “Would a protein bar be okay?”

  Whatever will help you grow, she thought. “That’s fine!”

  In line to pay, Callie did not recognize the two people in front of them. Must be locals, but this close to the reactor? She toyed with the idea of challenging them, but the more she saw how bad off the old man was, the girl even had to pay for him, she decided to leave them alone. She paid for Gary’s bar, let him open it, and took his hand. Time to see what the hell Leslie was doing with that woman.