Terradox Quadrilogy

by Craig A. Falconer

  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 busy 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 th
e 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 leading 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.”

  “Only three of us,” Holly said. “Myself, Grav and Peter. I can override the system to amend anyone else’s access privileges at any time, and that ability would automatically pass to Grav if I was ever incapacitated.”

  “Cool. Well, um, if you’re looking for Christian now, he just left his office to head out to the tropical nursery. A word of caution: that place is hot.”

  Holly grinned. “I guess the clue’s in the name.” She then waved goodbye and left the lab to walk the short distance to the largest of the Gardens’ new microspheres. She soon saw Christian on his knees, poring over a new crop of seedlings. He was wearing a denim shirt with the sleeves rolled up and was chewing on a long paper straw, a habit he still hadn’t kicked a full three years after quitting smoking as a condition of his application for a place on the colony. It was an open secret that Christian enjoyed a nightly glass of wine from his vineyard, but no one seemed to mind; he was an excellent researcher who was as popular with his subordinates as he was with Holly and other senior figures, and no one could deny that his contributions far outweighed even the astronomical on-Earth value of the small amount of wine he consumed.

  “Anything exciting growing in there?” Holly called, taking him by surprise.

  He turned around and rose to his feet upon hearing her voice. “Careful,” he called. “The change can be unsettling.”

  Holly crossed the boundary before Christian completed this sentence, and she immediately knew both what he meant about the change being unsettling and why the young researcher had tried to stress how hot it was within the tropical nursery. She instinctively stepped back to the normality of the other side of the invisible line.

  It was one t
hing to know about microspheres, or indeed the primary zonal divisions which had been present on Terradox even before its public discovery, but it was something else entirely to experience the sensation of crossing an unmarked threshold between two highly distinct artificial atmospheres. Most impressive was the complete lack of a physical boundary; there wasn’t so much as a line, let alone a wall.

  Holly somewhat understood how this worked in a loose technical sense: the submicroscopic romobots which composed the boundary were arranged in a double-layered adaptive cloak, not unlike that which kept thousands of people alive by holding the entirety of Terradox’s artificial atmosphere in place. As she stepped forward across a threshold, one layer moved forward with her while the other parted and reformed behind her. The inner layer then followed suit, fully enveloping her within the zone. A dial in Christian’s control centre could change how ‘porous’ any given boundary was, with the tropical nursery’s set to allow humans to pass unperturbed but not to allow the entry of anything significantly smaller, such as the butterflies or other beneficial insects which roamed freely in other open areas of the Gardens.

  As Holly shied away from the tropical heat, Christian laughed heartily and walked towards her. “It’s pleasant once you get used to it,” he said. “Are you coming in, or do you want me to come out? Bo told me you were coming to pick my brain about these microspheres. If you’re looking for an endorsement, I’ve got two thumbs all the way up.”

  Very suddenly, a shrill alarm began to emanate from both Holly and Christian’s wristbands.