Beat

by Jared Garrett

  My heart pounding, I crept along the hallway. I wondered if the door would open, but before I could worry about that for any length of time, the pale white panel slid quietly into the wall. No surprise, really, considering. The Prime Administrator wouldn’t need to lock an internal door unless a prisoner was behind it.

  When I got to within a meter of the open door, I stopped. My skin flared with cold tingles. The Prime Administrator was still sitting at his desk. I stood completely still, wondering why he hadn’t turned when the door opened. Was he asleep? Was his concentration that good?

  I waited for what felt like half an hour, not daring to move, focusing on keeping as still and quiet as possible.

  No movement at all.

  He sat, slightly slumped in his chair, his hands resting on his desk. It seemed like he was just staring straight ahead.

  I hazarded a step forward. No reaction. Confusion replaced surprise and fear. I slipped through the doorway and crossed the room fast, the door sliding shut behind me. Still no reaction from the man. He didn’t move at all; his stillness was scarily unnatural. If I looked long enough, I could see him breathe, but that was it. No other movement, and his eyes were closed.

  It was like he was a-

  I looked closer. No way. That was impossible. The word wouldn’t leave my brain, no matter how hard I pushed.

  The Prime Administrator wasn’t human. He was a robot.

  CHAPTER 21

  He wasn’t a robot.

  His hand was warm, the skin I felt when I touched his wrist and his hair—they were all real. No robot had flesh and bone.

  I held my breath and pushed his hand. It slid across his desk, feeling completely limp. But he had no reaction. Nothing at all. Still breathing unnaturally slowly.

  I released my breath and scanned the office. It looked exactly like it had before. Three walls covered in now dark skreens, a couple of doors. Turning back to the Prime Administrator, or whatever it was, I investigated him—it—a bit more. Everything about it looked human. It had talked a little funny, now that I thought about the time I’d spent in this office earlier, but it walked normally and everything.

  It had to be sleeping, or something like that. But I needed to use its desk, so I carefully pushed its hands off the glass desktop and set them on his lap. It leaned forward somewhat; I figured the hands had been propping it up. I ran my hands over the desk, searching for a place to power it on.

  I thought back. The corner. The robot thing had brushed the corner of the desk. I put my hand there, fingers spread.

  A hiss, and I sensed some movement. Heart suddenly clawing out of my throat, I spun, bumping the sleeping thing. The door. Just the door closing.

  It didn’t matter. I had to move fast. Flickers appeared on the bank of skreens on the left wall. The flashing pixels resolved quickly into multiple images—images of life in New Frisko. I needed to go backward and find that clip that I’d seen of me and the other Pushers. I searched the desk with my hands. As I did so, multi-colored rectangles of light illuminated beneath my fingers. I leaned more over the desk, nudging the Prime Administrator again.

  He slumped more, then slid sideways, falling limply toward the floor. I grabbed at him, but he was a grown man, or robot man, or whatever. He was too heavy. I got ahold of his shirt, but he pulled me forward as he fell. With a thump, he hit the floor, still in pretty much the same position he’d been in when seated.

  His weight nearly pulled me off my feet, so I grabbed at his chair with my injured hand.

  An electric shock, stronger and longer lasting than a static shock, coursed up my arm. What the Bug?

  I jerked back, stepping away from the chair. The tingles in my arm faded, but my fingertips felt numb. The chair was electrified.

  I stretched and wiggled my fingers to get rid of the numbness. I peered closer at the chair. It looked like nothing more than a chair.

  The Prime Administrator, whatever it was, lay completely unmoving, in a semi-fetal position. Obviously the electrical current wasn’t some kind of defense mechanism on the chair; it had to have been going while the Prime Administrator was still sitting there.

  Of course. Whatever the thing was, the chair charged it. It had to be some kind of robot. That’s why it needed a charge.

  I pushed my confusion and curiosity away, which wasn’t easy. A human robot, and nobody in New Frisko knew about it. I didn’t even think we had this technology, and tek was my thing.

  Now wasn’t the time. I needed to see that video. It would be my proof of what really happened that night. I checked my Papa. Bren had died almost exactly 24 hours ago. I felt like I had lived through a year since then.

  I found the controls for the videos and discovered I could manipulate the videos on each skreen. Scanning quickly, I set the player to feed all of the videos it had to those skreens. There was no sound, so it almost felt like I was watching a fantasy of some kind, but these were all scenes of real life in New Frisko.

  There. The camera that had taken this clip must have been on one of the lights in Hope Park. It had a wide vantage point, but you could only see the face of my Pusher friends and me if we turned just right. We moved around enough that I had no doubt that this was really me and my friends from the night before.

  I watched myself go to the cycles, put the glue under my Papa, and start riding. The clip was long enough that I was able to see the entire thing. Melisa and Bren checking my heart rate. Victory shining from my face. Everyone leaving except for me and Bren. When Bren started pedaling, I wanted to shout at him to stop, wished I could go back in time and tell him to quit it. That I had been wrong, even though I had also been right.

  The camera lost sight of Bren and me as we rode away. It stayed focused on the empty park for nearly a minute after, then the clip ended.

  This was proof. Proof that the Prime Administrator was lying and wanted me to lie. Proof that there was more to the Bug than everyone thought.

  And here I was, in the Prime Administrator’s office, at his computer desk. What kind of damage could I do here before they caught me? I scanned the room again and held really still. No sound. My Papa said it was 03:30.

  I wasn’t sure when things started waking up around here, but I decided I didn’t want to wait around to be caught. I’d dig around until 04:00 and then get out of here. Somehow.

  I bent over the translucent desk and fiddled around, brightly-colored rectangles flashing under my fingertips. After a few minutes, I hit the right space, a spot on the left corner on this side of the desk, and a skreen appeared in the dead center of the glass. A keyboard appeared under it, along with a few other lit spaces—commands of some kind. I’d figure those out if I needed to.

  The skreen populated with several icons. I clicked on one that said ‘Observation,’ taking a minute to realize it meant ‘Obzervashun.’ The new spelling made a lot more sense than the old way. The icon expanded into a secondary skreen down and to the left of the first skreen, listing a bunch of directories.

  Purple　Rez

  Green　Rez

  Oranje　Rez

  It was a list of all the residential quadrants in New Frisko. I clicked on Purple Rez. A huge list of numbers appeared under the Purple Rez heading, each with a thumbnail-sized image of what had to be the view from a camera. So ‘Observation’ was exactly that. That meant that if I went to the ‘Hope Park’ directory, I should be able to find the video file of what happened last night. And I could probably even find a clip of Bren’s death if I dug around in ‘Purple Rez’ long enough.

  I needed some way to carry those clips with me, or some way of getting them off the Prime Administrator’s computer into a place I could access them from outside. I didn’t have a z-stik. If I’d been going to class, I would have had one on me for sure.

  I felt like an idiot but patted my pockets anyway. Maybe one would just appear there.

  No such luck. Drek.

  I left the secondary skreen open and continued poking around the computer.
A small icon, a green X with red lines running down the middle of the legs of the letter, caught my eye.

  Vaccine

  I knew that word. We spelled it ‘Vakseen’ now. This had to have something to do with the Bug. I clicked on it and another secondary skreen opened, this time to the bottom right. I glanced at my Papa. 03:40. I needed to get out of here soon.

  A list of directories filled the new skreen with different icons. One was an image of a clock, with ‘Schedule’ next to it. This must be the schedule for the knockout. Why would it be called ‘Vaccine?’

  I opened ‘Schedule.’ I was right. Could I turn off the knockouts? Make everyone have to go to sleep on their own? People would all of a sudden be able to push their heart rates past 140. I had to try it.

  I clicked on the link that said ‘22:30.’ An orange alert box flashed

  Identification　Verification　Required

  A small black box opened inside the alert box. It was a fingerprint scanner. What would happen if I scanned my finger? Probably the thing would seize up, a cage would fall out of the ceiling, alarms would blare, and bright red lights would flash. At that point, robots would likely show up and blow me to bits.

  Better to not try it, I figured. But I had the Prime Administrator right here. I bent over the thing and grabbed his hand, stretching it toward the desk. No good. Maybe I could get him back into his chair. I leaned to hook my arms under his but immediately trashed that idea. The stupid cast on my right arm was really getting in the way.

  I guessed that if I had a knife, I could cut the thing’s finger off. If he was a robot or something, he wouldn’t feel it. I pushed the gruesome thought away, staring at the crumpled heap of semi-human. Something pale green was poking out of the man’s pants pocket. I stooped to get it. A small card, about the size of a couple of my fingers. I stuffed it into a pocket on my zip. Forget the fingerprint.

  I stopped and considered, looking back at the skreen and wondering what the knockout had to do with a vaccination against the Bug anyway. It was just supposed to calm your heart rate down really fast so that the Bug couldn’t get anywhere. It had taken researchers all over the world nearly a year back during the Infektion to figure out that the Bug needed a heart to be working pretty hard in order to be able to get in and do its nasty business. And since people couldn’t naturally slow down their hearts really fast, the knockout had been made. Because there was no vaccine for the Bug.

  Later, tests had shown that a person could carry the Bug for a week or two and not die or even get sick as long as the person’s heart rate didn’t go too high. In fact, it turned out the human body’s immune system could kill the Bug within two weeks—again, as long as the person’s heart rate didn’t go up too high.

  As I stood there remembering my old Virus classes, a thought tickled the back of my brain. It felt like a tiny speck of light, smaller even than the pinpoint of a star in the sky, had suddenly opened in my gray matter. I squeezed my eyes closed and tried to make the speck bigger. What did that mean? I knew I was missing something—knew that I almost had whatever it was . . .

  But it slipped away.

  I tried to catch it by whispering what I’d been thinking about. “Okay.” I stared at the skreen on the glass desk, but didn’t see it. “The Bug can be on . . . No. A person can carry the Bug for a while without dying.” I glanced at my Papa. 03:50. “But we can kill the Bug naturally if we don’t let it get us first, if we have time.” I waited for the speck of light to come back. Nothing. “And the knockout saves us from the Bug in the air by slowing our heart rate.” I waited, imagining I stood in my own brain and was tapping my foot impatiently. Nothing. “But the Bug can’t be in the air anymore. Because of the Wanderers. And me.”

  Still nothing.

  “But what about Bren?”

  The speck came back. Only it wasn’t a speck; it was a column of thundering light. I nearly sat on the Prime Administrator’s chair but caught myself just before shocking my backside. A Vaccine directory. The knockout. The immune system.

  “No bugging way.” Impossible. No way could that be true. I tossed a look toward the room’s doors. No sign of anybody. Or any robots.

  I had to find out if this was true. Glancing down at the crumpled Prime Administrator, I considered trying to wake him up and ask him. No, ‘it.’ But that was stupid. The human robot thing was still bigger and stronger than me and it was being controlled somehow. It wouldn’t answer me.

  My hands darted around the three skreens in front of me, frantically trying to find a directory or file or anything that could tell me I was wrong.

  I had just glanced at my Papa again, the time was 04:00, when I found a directory called Prime One. When I opened it, I saw there were schematics of the layout of the dome. I bent closer and scanned the thumbnails. What looked like offices filled the entirety of the sections of the dome that were above ground. The Prime Administrator’s office was on S1; I guessed the ‘S’ stood for subterranean. Or maybe stupid. Probably subterranean.

  Which meant that the room I’d been locked in was on S2. I opened the schematic for S2, curious. I hadn’t noticed when I was being led to that room, but it looked like there were nine additional rooms. They were called H1-10. I pondered that briefly. Happy-place 1?

  Not likely. It had to be for Holding.

  The directory indicated that there were two more floors below S2, and that S3 was mostly labs. I opened the schematic. The biggest lab had no name at all. It was just called ‘Lab.’

  Knowing I needed to hurry if I was going to find a way out of Prime One before anybody found me, I quickly opened S4. What I saw made me stand up straighter then bend closer. S4 had no real rooms or offices; it looked like it was access tunnels and pipes and stuff like that. And one of the tunnels . . . I pictured Prime One in relation to New Frisko. That long tunnel led toward the Dumps. It had to. I imagined the Dumps, the long conveyor tunnels leading from each Rez. Prime One had one too, which made sense.

  I shook my head, filing that info away. I would rather find my way back up to ground level and get out that way. It seemed more direct. But it never hurt to have a plan B.

  But the video clip. I needed it for proof that the story the Prime Administrator was trying to get me to tell wasn’t true. People needed to know that we were being lied to. The clip of the Pushers at Hope Park would do that. I had to get it out of the building somehow. And if I was right about the knockout . . .

  I chased my thoughts around my brain. Then it came to me; I could send the clip to my IM-box. Moving fast, I opened the network and suddenly found myself at the Prime Administrator’s interface. Even better! I tapped in my IM-box ID, attached the clip, and went to hit ‘send,’ but stopped as another thought occurred to me. “They’ve got to be monitoring my box,” I said to the room.

  If Bren were alive, I’d send it to him.

  One of the other Pushers. I wracked my brain, finally coming up with Melisa’s ID. I sent the message and headed for the door I had come in earlier in the day, not the one that led down to the holding rooms. It was time to get out. The door slid open with a swish and I glanced into the strange cylinder that I’d had to go through. It had to be a scanner of some kind. I took the spoke out of my pocket and poked a hole through my zip, sliding the spoke up next to the zipper again.

  I stepped out of the office, remembering how this had gone earlier. First the long hallway, then the reception room, or whatever it was, and then this strange cylinder hallway. Lights flashed again, colorful,bright, and accompanied by pops, then the voice came again, “Proceed.”

  I proceeded. Fast. I ran through the doorway to the reception room, cut quickly through there, and within seconds was jogging down the long hallway. Lights came on above me, obviously sensitive to motion.

  When I hit about five meters from the doorway that led to the platform that the Enforser ship had come down on, I stopped. The robots were going to be there. They didn’t have to sleep, but maybe they were powered down for the night
. No, that was wishful thinking; they were guard robots.

  This wasn’t going to work. I’d go through that door and be caught immediately.

  Maybe I’d get lucky. Maybe they’d be gone, or wouldn’t be on. Or maybe I could move fast enough that I could get away even if I was being chased. Those treads they moved on didn’t look fast.

  I stood for a moment, torn.

  The door slid open and a robot, glinting in the cold light above, whirred through.

  A gun of some kind unfolded from its arm and a metallic voice spoke.

  “Halt.”

  CHAPTER 22

  I didn’t halt. I spun and ran, making for the door I’d just come through. A quick, loud explosion behind me; I flinched and dodged. A rubber bullet slammed into my left shoulder, sending me stumbling almost to the ground with pain. I’d felt worse over the last day and kept going. Through the open door, the first room, and the flashing cylinder. The few seconds that the scanner took to clear me and let me through felt endless. When were they going to lock all the doors? It had to happen soon.

  I ran through the Prime Administrator’s office. Incredibly, the doors were still working, but they were sure to be locked soon. I’d be trapped the moment the guards or Admins locked them. I ran down the hallway, glancing behind me for other guards or robots.

  Positive there were more around, I had nowhere else to go but toward the elevator that had taken me down to my holding room. Which meant that if I tried to get in that elevator, that would be the end of it. The guard or monitor system or whatever they had in Prime One knew exactly where I was going, even if there weren’t any cameras. I had to change that.

  I closed on the elevator door quickly. As I stopped to catch my breath, despair clawed through me. It seemed like the only way the chasing was going to stop was if they just killed me.