by Mark Wandrey
“Yeah, and my dad said we paid an arm and a leg for them. I’ve never seen one, but they’re supposed to be the best recon tool there is.”
“I wonder why so many of the Concordia bots are bugs?”
“Three out of five main designs,” Minu agreed. “Don’t know.” Then she smiled when she thought of the contents of her transport.
"What are we going to do with this thing, any way?" Cherise asked and gestured back at the cargo hold.
"I have no idea," she admitted, "but I'm sure something will come to mind."
The transport dropped into Serengeti's traffic pattern. Because they were now several tons heavier Minu willingly relinquished control to the traffic computer as they flew toward the Portal Spire. This time they weren't heading for a landing pad. They orbited the spire while Minu worked on the computer.
She entered their destination, priority, access code (supplied by the Tog, of course) and cargo. The bill of lading provided by Kl'kl'taan was electronic, and a complete fabrication. Minu transmitted it with the other data and crossed her fingers. If the Beezer decided to play a dirty trick she'd have a lot of explaining to do. The computer quickly displayed a reply from the Portal Spire control center.
"Please continue to orbit while you are cleared through customs."
"Is that good?" Cherise asked.
"I wish I knew. This is my first time smuggling, just like you."
They flew slowly around the tower and waited. Eventually they spied a tiny squadron of dragonfly robots swooping toward them. Flying in a careful formation the robots buzzed along the transports hull from rear to front. The display informed Minu that they were being scanned. Their job completed, the robots shot away to their next task and the computer came to life again.
"You are cleared through customs. Portal Number Three is your departure point, and you are eleventh in line. Please do not engage manual controls. Deviating from procedure will cause you to sacrifice your queue position, and may cause further customs delays. Thank you for visiting Serengeti."
"Excellent," Minu clapped. Who knew being a smuggler would be that easy? They orbited the tower twice until it was their turn. The computer informed them to prepare for portal travel and altered their course. Smooth and easy they glided down toward the shimmering portal and lined up with computer controlled precision. The transport was as large as possible leaving bare centimeters of space on each side. Minu couldn't imagine doing it by hand. As they approached both girls unconsciously tensed. It always felt like you were going to crash into the pearly portal.
The subdued afternoon lighting of Serengeti gave way to blazing whiteness. It was midday on Bellatrix as the transport slid through and came to light gently on the ground. The working buildings of Steven’s Pass surrounded the portal. This one was strictly controlled and without the proper code it was impossible to come through. The Chosen kept it for their exclusive use. The other two operational portals were at the industrial complex on the southern hemisphere, and of course back in Tranquility.
"Welcome back, Chosen," a gratefully human voice spoke over the radio.
"We need to unload our cargo," she told the controller, a civilian employee who was working on a handheld tablet. "Make sure it’s a lot of space, this is big."
"Yes, Chosen, I am opening Warehouse eleven. Please follow the marker lights." Strobes on poles began flashing to show them the route. Minu took manual control and glided the transport over the road. A few hundred meters away she flew through the cavernous doors of a mostly empty warehouse.
"Why did you say it was big?" Cherise asked and glanced over her shoulder into the cargo area. The crates were fairly large, though not nearly as much as the transport was capable of holding.
"I wanted him to send us out here, away from prying eyes. We need to figure out what to do with this thing."
"We're going to get in trouble," Cherise complained. As the transport landed and they got out, a trio of the commonly used crab shaped robots were standing on spindly legs awaiting orders. These were the big cargo handling robots and they nearly came up to the girls waists.
"Unload this transport," she ordered them, "place the crates together and in the back of the warehouse." She took out the computer chip with the Beezer bill of lading and held it out. One of the crabs took it and slid it into an interface slot on its side, then handed it back.
The machine blinked a soft light at hear and the two girls stood aside as the robots scuttled inside to get the first crate.
An hour later Minu and Cherise returned to their quarters in the central housing structure of Steven’s Pass. Minu tossed her duffel down and flopped onto the springy bunk with a sigh. After five days in the transport it was good to finally stretch out flat once more. Cherise and Minu shared a room with two other female Chosen, both older women with many years of service. Even after a month of living there they'd only seen their room mates a couple times. Minu was quickly realizing how much work there was for the few thousand Chosen currently serving. Now it made more sense why Jovich remained in service way past when many other Chosen retired.
Four bunks were spread along one wall of the roughly eight meter long room, taking up most of that wall. Two beds per bunk made room for eight Chosen, though four currently shared the compartment. That was all the female Chosen who lived at Steven’s Pass, so they got to spread out a little. Minu knew there were more Chosen women, twenty seven, but she didn't know where they were stationed. She was more concerned with doing her own job.
Minu looked around the room for a minute since they'd been gone for so long. It felt like living in an auditorium compared to the transport cockpit. There were eight slide out desks along another wall, some chairs and a tiny entertainment center, a door leading to a two-seater restroom they shared with the adjacent quarters (be sure to knock in the morning to avoid an embarrassing scene) and a window with a nice view of the mountains rounded out their space. She tried to imaging eight men crammed into the space and shuddered. Having visited Pip one morning in the Cell (the boy’s nickname for their quarters) he shared with Gregg, Aaron and five others, she didn't have to guess how rowdy it got. Even with Chosen coming and going 23/7, there always seemed to be too many people doing too many things in too small a space.
Pip turned out to be unsurprisingly fastidious and of course hated his living situation. To avoid it as much as possible he spent most of his free time in the research labs. Aaron and Gregg had each other to keep company so they had no real complaints.
Cherise was sitting at a computer when she spoke up. "We missed a lot of class work."
Minu groaned. "Ugh, can't we take a break?"
"What do you think?"
"Right," she said and climbed to her feet with much moaning and stretching.
Completion of basic training didn't mean the end of school work for a Chosen. The six months of classes mainly covered what it was to be Chosen. It covered your obligations and such as well as some physical and mental conditioning. By the end of that you were given a grueling battery of tests and then placed in one of the five Chosen branches of service. Scout, Science, Logistics, Training or Command. No one was surprised that Pip ended up in science, or that both Gregg and Aaron were tapped to be Scouts. Cherise was taken by Logistics, to her stunned amazement. "I guess I scored high in paper pushing," she'd said glumly at the results. And Minu was taken for Command along with only three others from their class. All previous Firsts Among the Chosen came from Command branch. The announcement sent a chill up her spine, especially since they took an extra couple days to make up their minds. That was the second time a decision on her fate seemed to take an inordinate amount of deliberation and Minu couldn't help wondering why. Was the legacy of her father having some unexpected effect on her career?
She could see from their course work that a seminar on portal operations was due in a couple days. She'd been looking forward to that one. Who wouldn't be excited having grown up on a world populated entirely by the descendants of t
hose rescued via the mysterious portals? Their first class contained little substance, but of course Pip had already filled in more details.
"No one really knows how they work," he told them one day over lunch. "The original Concordian invented them eons ago and closely guarded the secret. It was one of the ways, I think, that they kept power."
"Once you make a portal it lasts forever," Cherise pointed out over a mouthful of potatoes, "so how can you control people?"
"Ah, there are more than one type of portal! Permanent ones like we have here, in Tranquility and the industrial zone, and temporary portals. Using those you can open portals to a place anywhere in the galaxy and zoom!" He made a swooshing sound and flicked a green bean across the room. Naturally the bean hit an older Chosen and gotten them all in trouble.
So they spent their days studying and doing minor missions between lessons. Half of those lessons were taken together, the rest were specialized to their own area of service. Minu's leadership class was the smallest with only five other Chosen. Unfortunately Ivan was one of them. After giving her a surprised look in the first class he ignored her, which was fine by her.
"So what are you going to do with that thing?" Cherise asked again of the cargo they'd returned with.
"I'll think of something," Minu replied. Cherise grumbled without saying anything more. Minu pulled up their mission log and typed a quick note. "Beezer warehouse master informs that due to scheduling conflict cargo will be unavailable for at least ninety-days," she noted and sent it off. "There, that ought to take care of it for now."
"What then?"
"That's the Beezer's problem," Minu smirked.
"He'll rat you out!"
"Don't bet on it. You know that bill of lading and paperwork? He'll have to explain all of that, plus the whereabouts of the goodies we were there for!"
"You have a devious mind," Cherise told her.
"That's what the Chosen are recruited for, remember the Trials?"
"I've been trying to forget." Minu nodded and went back to her classes. She couldn't wait for another off world mission. Even a boring trip to Serengeti would be better than this.
Chapter 3
September 13th, 515 AE
Chosen Headquarters, Steven’s Pass
It turned out Minu's next chance to get off world was only a week away. All five friends were in a class on Concordia technology, part of the basics classes they were all required to sit at least once a month. Pip was in the back of the class pretending to pay attention while he molested his computer for more useful information. Minu and the others were in the front trying to absorb as much as they could. It wasn't easy because Concordia technology was so radically different from what humans used on Bellatrix. That was part of the reason change came slow to their world. You couldn't just plug in an Concordia designed light bulb, they didn't use light bulbs. And they didn't use electricity, at least not like human tech did. Anything with any real power requirements used plasma directly, and those that used converted electricity used outlandish voltages or bizarre cycle rates. Minu didn't know how Pip absorbed it all and she cast an occasional scornful look at where he sat, apparently playing computer games of all things!
"So," explained the teacher, an elderly Chosen at least as old as Jovich who loved to joke during his lessons, "when dealing with unknown technology and the need to utilize power from them, what is the first thing we do? Anyone?" A young Chosen from Minu's class raised his hand in the middle of the room. "Peter?"
"We use a gauss probe to ascertain if it is using plasma or electricity."
"Very good! If it says electricity is it safe to handle?" Peter looked stumped. "Come on, this isn't difficult. What can be so dangerous if it is just electricity? Okay, let’s see if Pip has been paying attention?"
"Sir?" Pip emerged from behind his computer.
"Answer please?" Minu caught Cherise' eye and grinned evilly, hoping Pip was about to finally get his.
"Sure it's safe," he said. The teacher opened his mouth to speak but Pip cut him off. "Of course since the voltage could be as high as twenty thousand volts, you would want to use a grounding probe and probably test the current first."
The teacher looked bemused. "Right, of course. Pip, even though you've memorized every possible detail of the course load, do try to act like your present. Perhaps your overly swelled brain will spill over some useful knowledge to the rest of us mere mortals."
"Yes sir," Pip said, his cheeks flushing.
"Better than nothing," Minu mouthed to Cherise who laughed silently.
"So here we have to excellent examples of analogous equipment. One is a standard Concordia manufactured handheld computer, the other a human made laptop dating back to before the exodus." The instructor moved aside so they could all see better. The Concordia computer was identical to all their issued computers, nicknamed tablets. About a quarter of a meter square, maybe a centimeter thick, one side dominated by a flat nearly indestructible display, the other contained access for power, hardwire interface, and memory chips. The laptop was one of the ones they all studied in school, a legacy from the colonists.
"As you can see," the instructor continued, "this laptop is no longer functional. A group from the Chosen science section works to maintain as many of the old laptops as possible for historical purposes. The initial colonists brought just over two hundred, all filled with terabytes of valuable data that saved many lives in those early turbulent years. If not for much of that data, it is likely that when the Concordian returned they would have found a society much more closely resembling our cavemen ancestors, instead of an industrial one, albeit early industrial. True, a few of the tribes then were reduced to near subsistence level existences, most were not.
"Using that data we were able to recreate much of the underpinnings of civilization. The people who filled these computers were very diligent in what they saved. Almost a million pieces of literature from all over Earth, hundreds of thousands of scientific texts, digital images of artwork, schematics on how to build everything from a toaster to a space shuttle were stored inside. So now, five hundred years later, only thirty nine still function. An amazing statement of longevity considering this is not Concordia technology. It is a testament to how far we'd come at the time we were made stellar orphans.
He picked up the Concordia computer. "Consider now this computer, usually called a tablet. There are thousands of them on Bellatrix now. There are hundreds of models available on other worlds, but like many examples of their technology, we have chosen chiefly one to import. This is because of several factors. Durability, availability, cost, and of course, utility. These are extremely tough machines." He held out the machine at arms length and dropped it, on edge. The computer made a thunk as it hit and bounced across the floor to stop at the foot of a student. "Pick it up please. What condition is it in?"
The student touched the power switch and it sprung to life instantly. "It's fine, sir."
"Any visible signs of damage?" The student examined it closely, including the corner it landed on. He rubbed at a blemish that came off under his thumb.
"No sir, in fact it looks like it scrapped away some of the floor."
"The floor is made from ceramic concrete, are you sure?" The student examined his thumb and nodded his head. "Of course I already knew the answer. The cases on those computers are made from spun dualloy. The monitor cover is a transparent form of advanced molecularly aligned polymer reinforced with nearly invisible threads of dualloy which we call moliplas. I've seen one ran over by a five ton transport with almost no damage." He took the computer back from the student and asked him a question. "Can you tell me how old this computer is?"
"If I had to guess, I'd say it looked new."
"Over a thousand years old," he told the class. Pip actually lifted and eyebrow. "This model was designed and first sold twenty thousand years ago, while our ancestors were still trying to figure out how to say good morning without hand gestures and grunts." He got a couple ch
uckles from that line. He smiled obligingly and put the tablet back onto the desk next to the old venerable laptop. "So it is durable, we've established that, how about utility? Is it easy to use?" Many nodding heads around the room. "I agree, the input is fully configurable and woven into the display. The designers really had their act together. And finally there is availability. I doubt any of you would know, but these are available in lots of a hundred thousand. That's the minimum order. In order to foster consistency across the planet, the Chosen worked with the world government to purchase a half million of these. Net cost, about a hundred Concordia credits each. Not much, you would agree? Of course you have to consider they were scrap. Yep, these wonderful computers that now form almost the backbone of our industrial development were going to be melted down for scrap.
"It would seem our ancestors lap tops and these computers have something in common. They are both obsolete. So how come they are still useful to us? If this laptop was still functional, I could easily interface it with this Concordia computer and freely exchange data between them. Why is that? Limberge?"
"Sir, because to the Concordian, information is a universal language."
"Well said, well said. A long time ago, probably before we figured out cooked food has advantages, the Concordian realized that it was easier to develop a series of universal data conversion algorithms than to convince a thousand species to use the same encryption. It was a really good idea. Only a couple thousand humans survived from earth, and they couldn't even agree on what language to speak. Of course, our computer has no chance of understanding the Concordia computer, but that doesn't matter. As long as it is capable of communicating externally, the Concordia made machine can do the hard work. Uhm, yes?"
Pip raised his hand, according to Minu's memory this was the first time ever in a technology class. Everyone, not just the instructor, was looking in amazement. "Sir, do we yet know if this is a system wide phenomenon with Concordia technology?"
