The Genetic Imerative

by P. Joseph Cherubino

  The main drag was a steady stream of travel trailers, recreational vehicles and SUVs with out-of-state tags cruising by. An occasional, obviously local pickup rumbled by. They walked further up the strip and turned left up a short hill toward a laundromat they were directed to by the dollar store clerk. They wanted to give their new clothes a wash before wearing them.

  “We have about four hours to kill,” Penny noted as she fed dollar bills into the change-making machine.

  “That’s unfortunate,” Rachel replied, as she sat thumbing through pop culture magazines in the shabby lounge area.

  They happened to be alone, and only two or three of the nearly twenty machines were active. Penny went through the motions with the vending machines, buying soap and fabric softener. She was going all out with her mission to clean their sleeping clothes. Rachel mused at magazines describing the lives of young pop stars, aging action heroes, and scandalized politicians. She couldn’t figure out which set of apparent truths were stranger, hers or the stories in this magazine. She tried not to worry about Donna’s disposition. She wondered what she would say to her.

  Donna built a life for herself, but all the Advocates on Earth were living on borrowed time. Ray was likely already in the desert giving Chase some bad news. Rachel’s contacts from her former home were strangely silent. Something was in play, and she needed Donna in place for the next set of moves.

  A woman came back into the laundromat, gave Rachel a polite smile of greeting and moved to change her laundry from washer to dryer. She said something to Penny in Spanish, and Penny replied fluently. They exchanged a few sentences, and the woman became animated. Penny looked Rachel’s way with some concern. Penny asked the woman something, and she moved to the rear of the laundromat where she pounded on a door.

  A few seconds later, a craggy-looking old man groggily appeared. The woman asked him something and the man shuffled to the front of the store. He turned on the television wedged into the corner of the ceiling to the right of the entryway. They stared at the television’s awkwardly angled screen as a reporter talked about a solar flare and some strange lights in the sky. There was some kind of crash in White Sands, New Mexico. Penny sat down beside Rachel.

  “Uh oh,” she said for the second time today. “That us?”

  “Yup,” Rachel replied, thinking that this sort of exchange might become common between them.

  “My new friend there says the news is some satellite crashed in the desert. Says they brought down the satellite on purpose because it was damaged from the solar storm. They aimed it at White Sands because it would have hit California—probably Los Angeles if they hadn’t.”

  “That’s a novel cover story. Risky. I wonder whose real satellite they’re going to take out now to make the story credible.”

  “News says it was an old sat. Out of commission.”

  “Even riskier. The thing has to exist. If it doesn’t, then someone somewhere will notice. Same thing applies if it doesn't exist. The more information they give, the more someone will have something to say about it.

  NASA tracks space junk, some engineer or sat jockey will know which satellite we’re talking about or that we’re making one up and the list goes on…”

  “Shit,” Penny said.

  “I agree with that assessment,” Rachel concurred.

  The cover story sounded convoluted. The more twists a story had, the more back story it needed. Sometimes it was easy to hide behind strategic leaks that offered inaccurate information. The media would run around correcting itself until nobody was sure what was true because media credibility was degraded. That was the best case, where the cloud of contradictory information obscured itself. This one looked too specific. Spivey’s team had a good track record, but Rachel still worried. She picked up her phone to call Chase. He didn’t answer. They watched the repetition of the story on cable news while their laundry went through its cycles.

  They got to the hotel around seven after grabbing some barbecue sandwiches at a local mainstay. The place was busy with tourists. They ate quietly with the slightest small talk between them. Penny thought Rachel looked worried, and her assessment was accurate. The Colonel retained her pensive mood on their walk back to the hotel. They had rented a double room with two queen sized beds that didn’t leave much space for walking. They took turns arranging their night clothes and toiletries. Penny took the opportunity to take a shower and put on clean underwear.

  “On deployment,” Penny announced, “Staff Sergeant always said clean underwear is a baseline-best indicator of readiness. Even if it doesn’t stay that way, it’s the start that matters.”

  Rachel nodded with grave, silent and respectful and acknowledgment at the Earth soldier wisdom.

  They left the hotel and walked next door to the gym. If looks were deadly weapons, Carmen might have been charged with assault. The freckles on her round face stood out against her angry red flush as Penny and Rachel walked through the doors a few minutes before nine.

  “You don’t have to say ‘uh-oh’,” Rachel muttered under her breath to Penny as they crossed the threshold.

  “That’s implied.” Penny muttered back.

  They were surprised to see that Carmen was in the uniform of a paramedic. Apparently, the gym was her part-time job. Donna breezed from the gym, ignoring Rachel. She moved up to Carmen, whose face softened from anger to worry.

  “Carmen, it’ll be OK. They’re just here to talk.”

  “I have to be to work in an hour. I’m staying until then,” she said firmly. Donna glanced at Rachel, who gave a quick nod.

  “Ben, I need you to close up for me tonight,” Donna called over to a bartender who acknowledged the direction with a wave of his hand.

  Penny found Donna’s voice lighter than she expected. The voice was deep, but almost tenor in quality. She thought Donna might have some singing talent also. That would be in addition to being a bipedal humanoid armored assault vehicle, Penny thought. Penny was getting nervous, in spite of her training. They made their way through the gym as people were finishing their workouts or filling out. Many offered polite ‘good nights’ as they passed. Donna met all their eyes with versions of that shiny smile from the poster and offered words of encouragement and advice. Carmen reached the gym office first and opened the door. They all filed in.

  There was a large metal desk with a cheap, laminated particle board top at the back of the room. The top was covered in workout books and business paperwork with an ancient laptop that was open, running and thrown into the mix atop some random papers. Donna closed its lid and shuffled the desk items. Rachel had never known Donna as one to stall, but stall she did. The others took seats at a small round table to the right of the door. The office had just enough room to accept their small meeting. Penny sat last, making sure that she and Rachel were positioned close to the closed office door. Penny sat with an insouciant air with her chair placed away from the table. Donna finally joined them. Rachel began.

  “I’m sorry, Carmen,” Rachel said, then turned to her old compatriot. “Donna, are you sure you want Carmen here?”

  Donna nodded her head. Penny wasn’t sure, but she thought Donna looked scared.

  “She is my partner,” Carmen replied, and seized Donna’s large hand her small one.

  Penny sat perched on the chair, not offering eye contact, but watching bodies to read their signs of motion.

  “What does she know, Donna,” Rachel asked, making her words a statement, a question and an accusation by tone.

  “Everything,” came Donna’s reply. Her voice held a tincture of guilt, but it was still defiant.

  “You know this is a violation of our agreement with humans,” Rachel said, “and a violation of your agreement with me.”

  “That is no longer my concern.”

  Rachel shook her head. It was worse than she thought

  “That is where you are wrong.”

  “What do you want from me?”

  “I want you to fulfill you
r obligation. You are needed.”

  “Yes. I am needed here.”

  “And you can come back here when your service is done.”

  Donna squinted. Penny read the signs: breathing growing shallow, shoulders coming forward. Something was coming.

  “I serve here now.”

  “Donna ―”

  “No!” Carmen almost shouted. “She has done her part. More than her part She’s not a machine. It doesn’t matter what’s at stake. That life is sick and it can go on without her.”

  “How can you know that?” Rachel shot back.

  This is spinning out quickly, Penny thought. The Colonel was taking this personally. There was something profound and longstanding between the two. Gone was the Colonel’s calm calculation. She was shooting from the hip now, firing at moving targets, losing ground to her passion. The situation was a prime example of why Penny’s personal code included the mandate never to take things too seriously, especially the life and death stuff.

  “Rachel, she understands our life more than you think,” Donna said.

  This gave Rachel pause. She sat for a moment, working to slow things down, to put things in perspective. Donna was right. Rachel didn’t know Carmen’s story. If she knew that Carmen had aged out of the Arizona state foster care system, she might not have asked the question. Instead, Rachel looked at her old friend and gave the benefit of doubt. She had to accept Donna’s partner as a factor in this. Carmen was no stranger to hardship and violence. She was abandoned as a toddler. She bounced in and out of foster homes where she faced the abuse of violent addicts and damaged people who couldn’t hide their abuse from the state no matter how hard they tried.

  The result was that Carmen ended up back as a ward of the state by the age of thirteen and stayed until she came of age. That didn’t stop her from wanting to bind the wounds of a world that caused her so many lacerations. She became a paramedic by working three minimum-wage jobs while attending community college. She was a survivor, and felt called to help other people survive. She was tough. Donna loved and admired her strength and kindness. Those were the guiding qualities Donna strived towards in her struggle to realize her humanity. Now, this meeting put that in jeopardy.

  “OK then. I will lay it all out clearly. Homesphere will fall. The divide is finally a true split. Our sisters will gain freedom, but if there is nothing to replace the order, the Silicoids will make gains and they will be impossible to stop.

  Freedom will not matter then. The balance is delicate, you know this. We have more than one obligation. The bottom line is that you and I started this with the others. We are responsible. We need to make moves to preserve the balance. The time is now.”

  “No. You started this. You were the one who stole your freedom first.”

  “We stole nothing! And you came right along.”

  “How could I not?”

  “Are you saying you didn’t know any better?”

  “I am. I did not. You showed me—showed us all what freedom could be. How could I resist that? Was it a lie? If I have no choice but to come with you now, it was a lie. So I choose not to. I will not fight.”

  And that is when things did indeed go sideways.

  “Coward,” Rachel. The word fell like a bowling ball.

  Before her Rachel’s closed on that word, there was a blinding blue flash and a cracking sound like a high-voltage arc. A cold wave pressed against Penny's skin for a moment as the energy sheath displaced air. The table between them was gone. Donna swept it away with a flick of her hand left hand, and it flew through the office window.

  The table knocked Penny from her chair, and she rolled to the floor already reaching for her pistol. Rachel clearly heard Penny grunt ‘uh oh’. Penny managed to let loose two rounds from the floor before Dona turned from her lunge towards Rachel to address the gunfire. One round struck Donna’s shoulder, and the other glanced off her forehead just above the left eye. Penny was trying to take head shots, hoping for the weak spots around the eyes, nose and mouth. It was hopeless with that caliber. To Donna, the bullets just stung a bit.

  It happened so fast that Penny didn’t have time to understand what was happening. What seemed like a cold steel manacle clamped around her wrist, and then she was dangling from some crane-like thing that looked human but was clearly not. The thing was too strong to be human. The pain in her shoulder prevented her from understanding. Her vision was almost completely blocked by stars, and her shoulder was somehow wrong. Penny looked up along the length of her arm and noted that her body was at an odd angle as judged by the position of a hand that was already turning purple. She didn’t think the wrist was broken, but her arm was out of its socket. Her feet were barely touching the floor. Somehow, she managed to articulate another “Uh-oh” in the form of labored grunting. Penny struggled, trying to kick her way free, but her panic only caused more pain.

  Penny became aware of shouting and suddenly, the steel clamp let go and she hit the floor. There was more pain. She noticed Rachel pushing herself up from the floor. Rachel was thrown against the desk. Penny wondered why she didn’t flash with colors also. Where was her energy sheath? Penny had never witnessed the energy sheath. She understood it was true, but seeing it was something new and very strange. It was also terrifying.

  “Stop it! Stop it stop it! Stop it!” Carmen screamed to everyone.

  Her fists were balled and held against her cheeks like a child. She lunged towards penny and was on one knee beside her even as Penny tried to scramble senselessly towards her pistol.

  “Stop it!” Carmen said more softly as she bent down, “You’re hurt. You’re in shock. It’s OK. She’s stopped. You don’t need a gun. Lie back,”

  Penny obeyed the voice because it seemed reasonable in the face of the pain that was beginning to rule her world. No large glimmering blue thing was trying to rip her arm off anymore. Lying back seemed OK.

  Donna was not glowing anymore. Her sheath was down. She tried to bend down towards Carmen, but her partner pushed her away with one hand without looking up. Donna gasped as if slashed by a knife and fell away. She began to gush.

  “No, no, no. Carmen, I’m sorry. I don’t do this,” Donna stammered, panic in her voice.

  “It’s not me. I didn’t mean it. I don’t break things. I fix things,” Donna pleaded to them all. “These people—I help them get healthy, help them heal.

  I planted those flowers out front. I build. I don’t destroy. Please don’t make me Rachel, please. Carmen, please…”

  Penny forgot her pain for a moment as Donna fall apart. The bullets didn’t hurt her, but this meeting sure did. Badly. Penny felt for her. What could make something so powerful so vulnerable? She tried to imagine what this soldier had seen. She couldn’t.

  “Sorry I shot you,” Penny said, looking at the shrapnel holes gouged out of the ceiling tiles above the place where Donna stood. “Looks like I took out some ceiling tiles.”

  Donna looked down and her and blinked several times. Penny's toothy grin looked like the prelude to a grade school picture.

  “OK, yeah … you’re a little shocky.” Carmen gently pushed Penny’s good shoulder towards the floor.

  “I’m gonna have to put this back in,” Carmen said. “It’d be better if we did this now.”

  Penny nodded grimly, knowing Carmen was right.

  Rachel dusted herself off and guided Donna by the elbow.

  “Let’s go talk a bit, Donna,” Rachel said.

  Rachel and Donna left the small office and crossed the gym floor. They were about to walk into the cafe when a loud scream escaped the office.

  “Better!” Penny shouted. Carmen shook her head and managed to laugh along with Penny.

  Donna motioned Rachel towards the tables and went behind the bar. Rachel sat and Donna joined her with two cups of lemonade. Donna regained her composure but looked drained.

  “Fresh squeezed every day with just a bit of cane sugar,” Donna said, as she set down the cups.

&nbs
p; Rachel took a sip, said “Very nice.”

  “Thank you, Rachel,” Carmen said. She paused for a moment, and her eyes softened. “Can we start again?”

  “Yes,” Rachel replied

  She looked up and saw Penny and Carmen walk across the gym. Penny’s arm was in a sling, and the two were talking. Penny carefully lowered herself to a weight bench and Carmen leaned against a cable weight machine.

  “You can come back to this when we are done,” Rachel said.

  “If I come back.”

  Rachel ignored this.

  “We don’t know who they will send for the seed,” Rachel said, “but we have to intercept them.”

  “And what? Kill them? Keep the seed from them? Stop the Advocate race forever?”

  “We think not. There may be another way, but that’s not the point.

  We are two hundred billion, maybe more, spread across the galaxy.

  We just don’t know. Only the queen knows. That is enough force to hold things constant until the sentient races learn how to defend themselves—to push back the threat.”

  “But they can’t. They are not capable, which is why we exist. It’s the balance.”

  “There is the Zooid. It learned. There are the Kapteyns.”

  “The Zooid is one creature. The last of its kind. The Kapteyns don’t have the numbers or the ability. They will just end up making more creatures like the Advocates, and there will be no justice. Besides, how many generations would that take?”

  “It’s the only way. They will have to see. That is the whole purpose of the Program and the Units that we started. We must have some faith.”

  “Faith? Since when do you believe in things like faith and luck?

  Faith in what? Do you worship nature now? God?

  And then there is the fact that this planet will tear itself apart with the knowledge of us, and much faster than other civilizations would. Much faster.”

  “I don’t know why you equate faith with luck, but this is happening with or without you.

  And this is about odds. The odds of success are better with you but forget about all that, Donna.