The Unfortunate Expiration of Mr David S Sparks

by William F Aicher

  Calvin slammed his fist down on the plastic coffee table in front of them, cracking it. “Arrogance! That is their sin!”

  David slunk back from Calvin.

  “I'm sorry, David. I'm not easily frustrated, but when dealing with The Progressives I just can't handle their haughty attitude.” Calvin folded his hands in front of his mouth, closed his eyes and bowed. After a few deep breaths, he continued, “I'd like to give you a lesson in civil liberty, David.”

  David relaxed. “Okay,” he said.

  “The Cause ... it can be difficult to explain The Cause to one who doesn't know the background and history. I suppose I should start with The Class Wars.”

  “Actually, I know about The Class Wars—the gist of them at least. Someone in Bandleshore filled me in.”

  “Oh really?” Calvin's eyebrows scrunched up. “Who?”

  “Some guy named Conor.”

  “Ah yes, Conor. He's friendly, although a bit too open-mouthed at times,” Calvin said, dismissing the issue. “Well then, I can skip the history and go right to the meat, as it were. In the simplest of terms, The Cause is an attempt to overthrow the government and to realign society with the Earth.”

  “I thought you said you weren't an Organic.”

  “No, I'm not an Organic, but those of them who stray outside pure pacifism do tend to side with us. The leaders of modern society are the same ones who got us into this mess in the first place—not the same people, they're long dead of course, but the same type of people. As you've seen, Plasticity is one of the last bastions of human life. There are other cities like it, but their numbers remain few, and though scattered, they are aligned in policy as to how to take back the planet.

  “The Cause argues we should not take it back. Instead, we believe that we should become one with it. You've seen what's already happened out there. It's like a green desert. Alive, but lifeless. And the things you haven't seen—the death and the mutation and the sickness still plaguing the interior is horrifying. The Society still lives by the same moral standards as they did before: technology is their God, and through their worship, they abuse it.

  “Do you know what happens when you abuse your God? When you beat him and cheat him and take him for granted? He strikes back. That's what's happened here—it's what's happened to mankind—and my cause—The Cause—is an effort to stop it from happening all over again.”

  “Surely The Progressives have learned their lesson.”

  “Oh, I'm quite certain they've learned some lessons. But their greed remains. They are elite, in their own minds, and most of society agrees with that assumption. Technology got them into this mess, and they expect technology to save them. Out there,” Calvin pointed toward the shore, “they're experimenting with ways to rid the planet of the mess they made. But, in the case that isn’t possible, they're also working on ways we can live there again—primarily by manipulating humans themselves. That's part of what the Eyefields are for. Eyes are highly sensitive and easily absorb chemicals and air pollutants—it's why you'll find so many blind people wandering about the cities ... well, the ones who don't get eaten ...”

  Calvin's voice trailed off; he appeared deep in thought. David remained silent, waiting for him to continue. A clock on the bedside table ticked away the seconds.

  “The eyes are being continually engineered to be resistant to the poisons out there, and they're using the same technologies on individuals here—grafting, gene therapy, cloning. These biological aberrations, as well as integration with the new Singularity are their plan for bringing us back to land.”

  “So, what's your plan?”

  “I trust you David, but I don't trust you that much,” Calvin chuckled. “You're part of it though, if you want to be.”

  Exactly the opening David hoped for. Like the woman in the hospital predicted, Calvin would invite him back, even if only to further his own best interests.

  “I understand you feel violated by what The Society has done to you, David, but in an ironic way, that's what will bring them down. You said you had some work done on your brain. Do you know much more about it?”

  “I do remember them saying something about a FloatNet. They also mentioned something about having to kill me to do it?”

  “That's wonderful, David!” Calvin said. “You were treated under Federal Health, meaning you must follow Federal Health Guidelines, which also means you are required to go in for regular checkups. Part of those checkups will require connecting you to the diagnostic network—and that’s our way into the system. If we upload a Trojan into your head, we can insert it on the network and break into the FloatNet core. You in?”

  “This Trojan.. Is it dangerous?”

  “Of course not! It's a simple procedure—you won't feel a thing. Just a small file upload. It’ll be like a twitch in your brain, then it’ll be over. As for when you're back in the Federal network, you'll be sleeping anyway. And if they catch you, we'll be sure to leave a few tracers on the Trojan to have the fingerprints point to some hacker kids.”

  David pondered this for a while, or at least pretended to. If he appeared too eager to join in, he'd blow his cover. Then again, he didn't want to come off as too sheepish and risk losing whatever little trust he had so far acquired.

  “So, like I asked, are you in?”

  David reached over and shook Calvin's hand.

  “Excellent. Let's go see Sage.”

  SEVENTEEN

  BOTTOM OF THE BOWL

  “Most day-to-day operations of the city are powered primarily by ocean waves,” Calvin explained as they took a glass freight elevator down from the surface through the multiple sublevels beneath the city.

  “What you see there is the main plant, set up here beneath the city, built to capture the power of the ocean's movement and convert motion to energy. The problem is for it to function, you need waves. This is all well and good during hurricane season, but at times when the ocean is at peace, like today, the wave generators are insufficient for the needs of a city the size of Plasticity—even with the battery reserves.

  “The citizens started complaining about the brownouts, and so city officials agreed the only solution was an additional power source. Those same officials also didn’t trust the track record of nuclear power, and with good reason—especially after what happened in San Diego. But even aside from the obvious dangers, they feared the risks of a buildup of nuclear waste in a city with nowhere to dispose of it. Simply dumping into the ocean wouldn’t do. The ocean, as tainted as it is, was now their last refuge. Dumping it on land had been an option, but rather than continue to spoil the land they’d already destroyed, not to mention the logistics of transporting so much waste, they opted for a cleaner, more renewable solution.”

  As the elevator slowed to a stop, David saw that, unlike the other sublevels, sublevel fourteen consisted of a singular wide-open space, free of partitions, rooms and corridors. A pool of water lay placid in the center, directly on the bottom sphere in which Plasticity itself was housed. Stretching several thousand yards across, the amount of space the pool occupied would have allowed for at least two or three additional sublevels to have been built below the fourteenth. But instead of using the space for people, machinery or housing, this bottom quarter of the globe housing Plasticity held nothing but a massive volume of water.

  The air stank of salt and seaweed, and the atmosphere hung low and heavy from the tremendous amount of moisture. Even though sunlight poured in through the mirrored windows surrounding the massive expanse, David couldn’t see out of them due to the accumulated condensation. A plastic grid of catwalk surrounded the perimeter, crisscrossing throughout to allow access to the tens of thousands of square feet of surface.

  David stepped forward to the edge of the catwalk, his toes peeking over the edge, and stared down into the water below.

  “Why is it so green?” he asked.

  “This is where the algae blooms. It's where Plasticity grows its energy. Sage can explain it better
than I can. Let's see if he's around.”

  The wide-open space of sublevel fourteen appeared empty, sans the catwalks and water below. Calvin walked forward, searching.

  “Keep your eyes open. If you see anyone, tell me.”

  The two walked about the space for several minutes, the sound of their footsteps ringing a wet echo against the pool’s surface and the glass walls. Water dripped steadily from the walkways and ran down the walls in long streaks. David nearly lost his footing once or twice but managed to catch himself before he could fall into the soupy, emerald pool below.

  “Is there anyone down here?” Calvin shouted. “Sage?”

  “Calvin, is that you?” a gravelly voice rang out, the ensuing echo masking its source.

  “Yes, it's me.” Calvin yelled back to the emptiness. “Where are you?”

  Several hundred feet away, two walkways over, a body rose from the ground. The man had been lying prone on the catwalk’s slippery surface. In his hands, he held a test tube full of the green water. A pair of nerdy glasses perched on the tip of his nose, and he slid them up as he stood. Dressed in a white lab coat that was smeared with green stains, the man was the most normal-looking individual David had yet encountered while in the city.

  “Calvin, what are you doing down here? It's so unwise of you to be” he looked around, “in the open,” Sage spoke rapidly. “The sublevels are under security now—so much more security than ever before, what, with that unfortunate mess you made up top.”

  “What are you implying?” Calvin grinned as he spoke.

  “Now Calvin, you mustn't be so cavalier!” Sage scolded. “You're so very important. So very important. So very, very important ...” Sage's voice trailed off and he fell silent, staring into the pools of water below.

  “Sage!” Calvin shouted, and the man snapped back to attention.

  “Calvin! What are you doing down here? It's dangerous for you to be here. You mustn't be out in the open like this!”

  “Sage,” Calvin rested his hand on Sage's shoulder, much like he'd done earlier with David, although David detected a hint of sadness in Calvin's eyes as he did so. “This is David, Sage.”

  Sage twitched with a bit of shock when he noticed David and nearly hurtled himself into the water. Like a striking cobra, Calvin reached and caught his arm.

  “David has access, Sage. He can get in.”

  Sage sneered. “We don't need another hacker. You know they'll trace any hacks we try; their security bots are too damn reliable! Besides, if I can't get in, no one else will be able to either.”

  “Not a hacker, Sage. A patient.” Calvin lowered his voice to a whisper and Sage leaned in. “A patient. And a friend to The Cause. He's not going to hack in, they're going to plug him in to the network on their own. We just need you to help us in.”

  “Ah!” Sage pointed his finger into the air, dropping his test tube into the pea soup below, and marched off. “Come with me!” he shouted, as they scrambled to follow. “I have just the thing.”

  EIGHTEEN

  HAMMERING IN MY HEAD

  Sage dragged a banker’s box out from under his bed and plopped it on the mattress. David and Calvin stepped to the side, squeezing uncomfortably close in the cramped confines of Sage’s quarters on sublevel nine.

  “So…” David started, as Sage began to rifle through the box. “What's with all the water and the seaweed downstairs? Calvin said something about growing electricity.”

  “Yup,” Sage replied. He tossed aside the first box and reached back under the bed. “For the hydrogen plant on sublevel four.”

  “David's never been to Plasticity, Sage. He's not from around here.”

  Sage eyeballed David, his glasses again sliding down to the end of his nose. “Organic?” he asked.

  “Not quite sure, actually. I'm here to help though,” David replied.

  “So then, you don't know anything about our little city. No idea about how we continue to exist, even though we've been out here for decades now. The answer's in sustainable energy!”

  “I already filled him in about the waves, Sage. He wants to learn more about your little greenies.”

  “Ahhhh.” Sage smiled as he dropped another box onto the bed. “They're what keeps the city going. We figured out how to make them break water down into hydrogen and oxygen. That's what the fields are there for downstairs. With the ocean, we have a hugely abundant supply of water, and the algae separates the molecules into hydrogen and oxygen. We capture the two gases through reclamation units near the water's surface and use the hydrogen to power the electric plant on four, The O-two is used to keep the air here in Plasticity at healthy levels—and free of pollutants. Quick and dirty explanation, of course. It's obviously much more complicated.”

  Sage stood up, a small green pill pinched between his index finger and thumb. “A-ha! Here's what I was looking for.”

  David shook his head furiously. “I'm not taking any more drugs. I've had enough of them lately.”

  “This is no drug! It's an ingestible NanoSwarm. Just swallow this, and thousands of nanobots will enter your system, allowing me to insert a Trojan into your cerebral cortex without having to bypass the security of the I/O port they installed on the back of your noggin.”

  David studied Calvin. “You trust this guy?”

  Calvin nodded. “Absolutely.”

  “If you're serious about kicking the Soldiers of the Reconstruction right where it hurts, we're going to need to know more about them. Take the pill and I'll reprogram you—it won't take more than a few minutes.”

  “Soldiers of the—?”

  “The official name of The Progressives,” Calvin answered. “They claim they're not interested in a war, yet they subtly threaten to start one even in the names they choose. They know this is a war, whether they publicly admit it or not, and they're positioning themselves as the heroes.”

  “Oh, okay,” David didn’t like the sound of this. “What happens to the nanobots after you're done? Won't they be detected somehow?”

  “Oh, don't worry about them. You'll just poop ‘em out!” Sage nudged David’s shoulder. “Make sure you eat plenty of fiber before you go in for your next checkup,” he whispered.

  David swallowed the pill and waited.

  “That swarm was programmed to respond only to reprogramming from my own personal wavelength—a security measure I added. I already have the code figured out in my head, so for this particular virus, I'll just need to send the instructions over into the swarm mentally. It will, of course, take some time for them to build the program.”

  “Will it hurt?”

  “Oh, God yes!” Sage replied, his face filled with gleeful enthusiasm.

  A flood of anxious energy coursed through David's body. He considered spitting up the pill, but from the warm sensation spreading in his gut, he knew the Nanos were already starting to disperse.

  “Isn't there something you can give me?”

  “You said no drugs,” Sage replied, matter-of-factly.

  The swarm rushed up through his neck, into his head and the base of his skull screamed with a searing pain.

  “I changed my mind!”

  “Well, I’m quite certain I don’t have any painkillers here,” Sage replied, digging back into his box. “I suppose I could go up to the surface and procure some morphine.”

  Tears began to pour down David's cheeks, the pain stabbing like hot knives through his head. He frantically searched the room for anything to rid him of the agony. Seeing nothing, he leapt from the bed, leaned back, and slammed his forehead against the wall. His skull made a bang like the crack of a bat and, with green memories of sublevel fourteen, one thought entered his mind before he went unconscious: Fenway.

  NINETEEN

  SOMEWHERE BETWEEN WAKING AND DREAMING

  David lingered at Aiden’s door and stared at the dark space below his bed. Watching for movement, he scanned for anything peculiar: a moving shadow, a glint of eyes reflecting the hall light. Froz
en in place, he stood terrified at the prospect of investigating what could lie beneath, but there was no way he could expose this fear to his son.

  “Please Dad, please just look under the bed. I swear I heard something.”

  “Aiden, you’re six years old and we’ve done this every night since you were two. Don’t you think we would have found something by now?”

  Aiden and he had been through this countless times before, and usually it was a quick look, a confirmation that nothing was there, and lights out. But tonight? Tonight felt different.

  David, you’re a grown-up. Just look under the bed and everything will be fine.

  He repeated this mantra three times, then slowly dropped to his knees. He imagined reaching into the abyss, only to feel the cold, leathery claws of some kind of gremlin latching on, tearing into his skin, scraping its nails across his bone. Still several feet away from the bed, he couldn’t really see anything without moving closer. He tilted his head and leaned forward, looking sideways at the dark expanse. To his right, the night light cast a faded glow, brightening the room much more than when he first entered, now that his eyes had since adjusted to the light.

  He turned his gaze to the side of the bed, the shadowy area falling into his peripheral vision.

  Then he saw it.

  A flash of light, like cat’s eyes, in the blackness beneath Aiden’s bed. He blinked and took a double-take, only to realize it was just one of Aiden’s toy robots. A little pair of cameras on a set of wheels. Probably something he got from Grandma and Grandpa, he thought.

  ----

  “I said, do you want any cereal?”

  David’s eyes scanned the kitchen. Missy and Aiden sat at the table with him, Missy munched on a bowl of blueberries while Aiden prodded at a mountain of scrambled eggs with his fork.

  “David? Are you alright?” Alice slowed her speech, pronouncing each word deliberately. “Can ... you ... hear ... me?” she asked.