The Senthien (Descendants of Earth Book 1)

by Tara Jade Brown

  “Aye, but remember, this part of the planet was protected,” said Peter, nodding. “Like us, saved in the crèches, this was on the other side of the planet when the solar storm hit the surface.”

  Peter looked at me and said, “I think it might work.”

  “As soon as there’s some electricity available, I can get the doors to open,” I said, nodding at my E-band.

  “All right,” Patrick said and then looked up. “Let’s check the roof, shall we?”

  J leaned on the wall with one shoulder and laced the fingers from his hands into a small stepping platform, which Patrick used to climb onto the flat roof. We watched him as he scrutinized the area around him, trying to decipher on his face what it was that he was seeing. Then he walked to the center of the roof, and we lost sight of him.

  “Anything?” Peter called up to him.

  “It’s all green here, guys. I don’t… I don’t see anything that looks like solar panels.”

  J turned to me. “What do you think he should be seeing?”

  “They might not look as you expect them. There were large technological advances in design and functionality in the years before the Evacuation, so the new cells looked nothing like the large dark panels you would have known. But they probably won’t look like ours either, the small solar chambers engraved into leaflets. That wasn’t pre-Ev technology, so I wouldn’t expect to see it here.”

  “So what am I looking for?” said Patrick, standing at the edge of the roof, lifting his arms in a question.

  I turned my face up to look at him and said, “I think you are looking for something in between the two. Smaller surface area. Might not even cover the whole roof, only an area of it.”

  He scanned the roof surface again and then shook his head. “No… I just don’t see it.”

  “J, can you help me up?”

  As an answer, he leaned against the wall again and made a stepping platform with his hands.

  I took off my leather shoes and stepped onto his palms with my bare foot, holding onto his shoulders. He gently closed his hands around my foot. It felt warm and intimate, and it inevitably raised my heartbeat. We looked at each other for a long moment, oblivious to the others surrounding us.

  “Today still?” asked Peter behind me.

  “Sorry,” I said and lowered my gaze. Then I leaned on J’s shoulders and pushed myself up.

  Patrick reached out with his hand and helped me onto the roof. It was like stepping onto a soft green carpet. The roof was layered with moss.

  It was beautiful.

  I knelt down and brushed my palm slowly over the layer. The surface was soft and flat, except that there was a repetition of a small ridge every centimeter or so. I dug my fingers in and scraped off the moss.

  “Here!” I said, looking at Patrick and pointing to the thin lines that now became visible.

  Patrick raised his eyebrows. “This? Really? Even if I’d seen it, I wouldn’t have recognized it. It just looks like a roof design.” He bent down as well to clear other surfaces.

  “Anything?” we heard Peter shout from below.

  “Yup,” Patrick called back. “We have it.”

  Then he looked up at the cloudy sky and said in a low voice, “Though we might need to wait a bit to get any electricity with this kind of weather.”

  I automatically looked up as well, but then I shook my head. “No.”

  He looked at me. “No, what?”

  “The cloud cover does not influence cell’s ability to absorb radiation.”

  “Really? Don’t we need sun for sun cells to charge?”

  “As long as it’s not night, they will get charged.”

  He nodded. “Okay. How long, do you reckon?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “How long do you think it will take?”

  “The types we use on Senthia get charged within a few passes.”

  “Is our sun stronger than what you guys have?” Patrick asked.

  “Yes, much stronger,” I said. “In fact, it got so strong that people ran away.”

  “Ha…” he said, looking uncertain whether I’d actually attempted a joke. “That’s funny.”

  “All right, let’s assume these cells are a lot weaker and probably partially worn-out,” I said as I wiped the last bits of soil and moss from the solar cell lines. “I would… reckon… sixty passes.”

  Patrick nodded and then said louder to the group below, “We’ll probably need to wait an hour or so.”

  Then he turned to me. “Shall I help you get down? Here, take my hands and I’ll lower you.” I came close to the edge and held his hands. “Turn the other way, so you can hold onto the edge with your feet.” Then he shouted, “J? Ready to hold her?”

  “Ready as I’ll ever be,” said J.

  “Finally,” said Peter and everyone but me laughed.

  I did not know what that meant, but it seemed to me it was said in good spirit.

  Patrick lowered me down and J grabbed my waist, holding it tightly as he brought me down.

  He smiled at me and said, “Do you want me to show you around?”

  I smiled back and nodded.

  J and I walked farther up the hill until we reached the end of the once-inhabited area, the edge where the forest started again. He turned around to face the hill and sat down. I sat next to him.

  “The whole city is too big to walk through now, but I thought I’d pick a spot where I could show you a few places.”

  “Okay,” I said and looked around. He was right. From this spot, we could see a large part of the deserted city.

  “Here,” he said, pointing to a place halfway down to the rugby stadium. “That was the place where I worked.”

  I looked, then frowned. There was virtually nothing left on that spot. “I don’t see anything.”

  “I know,” he said. “There wouldn’t be any. The building was made out of wood. It was all very natural.”

  “What was it?”

  “A recuperation center.”

  I looked at him. “And what was your role in society?”

  Something about my question made him smile. “Well, I don’t know what my role in society was, but I was a trained physiotherapist. First, I worked with stroke and paraplegic patients.”

  I shook my head slowly, not understanding. “What are those?”

  “Well, a brain stroke typically happens when a blood clot blocks the blood supply to a certain part of the brain by clogging the artery.”

  “There is no such thing in Uni.”

  “Really? How can that be? Strokes are the third leading cause of mortality in the first world.”

  “Were.”

  “Okay, yes, were. But how can you guys control that?”

  “I do not know the details, J. All the information about bio-medical enhancements is proprietary to the Anas and Booleans.”

  “And they are?”

  “They are a species of Descendants. Anas are focused on medical science, and Booleans perform molecular and genetic experiments.”

  “Do you guys have any diseases at all?”

  “No,” I said, and then I lowered my gaze. “Not unless we come to Earth.” My thoughts went to Stevanion. J didn’t say anything, but he must have been thinking the same thing and we shared a few moments of silence.

  “What was the other one?” I asked.

  He raised his head. “The other what?”

  “You said you worked with stroke patients and paraplegic patients. What are paraplegic patients?”

  “Paraplegic patients had a trauma—ah, injury—to their spinal cord that blocked the use of their legs, and sometimes, depending where the injury was, also the arms. But I mainly worked with those where the injury wasn’t as serious, and there was still some use of the lower extremities, as well as the arms. In both cases, the goal was to train the body to recover movement and coordination.”

  “But you said you worked with those patients in the beginning. What happened afterward?�
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  “Right. So the building was originally built for stroke patients, but it was repurposed as a facility for… hmm, Scrambles. It’s… not a nice word, but that’s what everyone called them.”

  “Who were Scrambles?”

  “Well… the people with scrambled brains.”

  I shook my head slowly. “I do not understand.”

  “No, I know. So here is the story. At some point—it must have been about five years after I finished my studies—a new drug appeared. It turned the world around. It activated all the brain centers. It hyped up the brain bigtime.”

  “Hyped up the brain?”

  “A normal person—in my time, at least—used ten, maybe fifteen percent of their brain at any given moment, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “This drug made it possible to use several times that capacity. You would not believe what people were able to do! Luckily, for some reason it remained extremely rare and not many could get hold of it.”

  “Why do you say luckily? Isn’t it a good thing to use the brain to such a capacity?”

  He shook his head hard. “No. In the very beginning, people thought there were no drawbacks, but after one or two months of use, they—broke. They could not talk anymore, they had no coordination of their body movements, even their vision centers failed, so they could not see anymore. They were… scrambled. Half of the patients died in the days after the scramble started, but some didn’t. And as you can imagine, they had all the symptoms of the people I’d worked with before, so I was transferred to work with them.”

  He looked to the front, his gaze far beyond the stadium. “I can’t escape the feeling that the thing had been manufactured.”

  “What had been manufactured?”

  “The drug.” He turned to me. “This wasn’t some natural plant that got dried, chopped, mixed with cement, or dipped into gasoline. This drug came out of nowhere, all of a sudden, and it was available on different continents at different locations at the same time. As if someone was trying it out on the people.”

  “Trying it out? You mean like an experiment?”

  “Yeah, exactly like that: finding out how it works on Humans.”

  I searched my nanoprobes, trying to gather more information on pre-Ev history.

  “I don’t understand.” I looked at him and said, “This historical fact is significant enough to be saved on the nanoprobes. I should have some information saved on this topic. But I don’t have anything.”

  I looked at him again.

  “Is that surprising? It might not be so important for the Descendants.”

  “Unless it was.”

  In that moment, the gray ruined city disappeared in front of my eyes to give way to a Vision.

  The brightly lit lab is crammed with people in white coats, bent over their lab benches, observing robotic manipulators, talking in groups of three or four. This is a lab I have seen already. This is the lab where Tania’s deceased husband worked.

  University of Neurotechnology and Innovation. UNI.

  The alarm sounds and everyone is still for a moment. And then they start rushing toward the exit.

  Even after all the people are out, the alarm still sounds and the lights still blink. Two new people appear, walking into the lab from the exit. They do not wear white coats but rather hazmat suits. They reach the large refrigerator next to the robotic system. They open it, and one of them takes a case of small sealed tubes. He puts them in the bag that the other person is holding. He takes nine more cases. They zip the bag and then leave.

  “Dora?” J was holding me, both of his hands on my shoulders. “Dora, are you all right?”

  I looked at him.

  “You were… you were zoned out. Did you hear me at all?”

  “No. I didn’t.”

  “Are you—”

  “I had a Vision. It’s somewhat similar to the deep sleep stage, so it is very difficult to wake me up.”

  “Ah,” J said in relief. “I was starting to get wor—”

  “If my interpretation of what I saw is right,” I interrupted, “then what you said before is true.”

  J shook his head, confused. “I don’t understand. What are you talking about?”

  “The Scramble drug. It was made. It was made at the University of Neurotechnology and Innovation. And the field trial was planned. They wanted to test it.”

  J looked at the ground. “At the University of Neurotechnology and Innovation? Didn’t you say that was the place where the first prototype of the Mind was made?”

  “Yes. And Tania’s husband—”

  “Deceased husband.”

  “Yes—deceased husband—worked on neural biochips there.”

  J looked at me.

  “It’s all connected, I am sure of it,” I said, looking at J’s eyes and hoping, somehow, it would suddenly become obvious to me.

  It didn’t.

  I exhaled and lowered my gaze.

  Two beeps sounded on my E-band.

  I looked at my forearm and nodded. “The solar cells are sufficiently charged. It will just take a moment for my E-band to siphon the energy. It won’t be fully charged yet, but it should be enough to open the door.”

  Chapter 22

  The heavy-looking doors moved sideways, peeling away the moss where they slid into the wall, as a gust of air escaped from the building.

  “Hermetically sealed,” said Patrick. “That’s a good sign.”

  J entered first, I walked behind him, and the rest followed. We climbed down three metal stairs and found ourselves in a dark hallway, the only light coming from the entrance as well as from weak purple auxiliary lights on the ceiling. The hallway was shaped like a tube, and the floor was a metal grid running along the base. Our leathery shoes made no sound.

  “It’s a new building,” said Patrick in a quiet voice. “I don’t really know where to look first.”

  “You think you’re gonna wake up the ghosts?” said Frank loudly.

  His voice echoed in the hallways and came back to us metallic and distorted. No one said anything for a few moments.

  “Let’s not worry about ghosts,” said Peter. “Let’s find a computer that works.” His last words were so quiet it was as if he’d said them only to himself.

  “Ghosts?” I asked J quietly.

  “Some people believe that after the death, the spirit lives on and becomes a ghost.”

  “Why would the ghosts be here and not outside of these premises?”

  “Good point, because officially, ghosts can cross through walls. But much of this is linked to stories of haunted dungeons and castles.”

  “Haunted dungeons and castles?”

  “Old stuff, wouldn’t even be in your memory data. It’s an—”

  “Stop that.” Peter turned to us. “Bust the ghosts stories and follow me. We need to get this working.”

  J whispered in my ear, “You know, I don’t really believe in ghosts.”

  I smiled. “That’s sort of the impression I got.”

  He winked at me and we continued walking.

  When we came to the first door on our left, Peter and Rick walked in first and the rest of us followed. As the last person entered the room, the entry gate behind us slid closed, leaving us in the dim light of the purple light tubes on the ceiling.

  “Does anybody see a control for the main light?” I asked and looked at the others.

  “You mean like a light swi—who-hoa!” Peter jumped back.

  The others looked at me as well and stepped backward too.

  “Freaking hell! What is that?” Frank shouted out.

  The only person who actually took a step toward me was J.

  “Now, that is something else!” he said.

  “What is something?” I was getting annoyed.

  J raised his head to look at the purple-colored tubes. “UV,” he said, pointing with a finger to the ceiling.

  “Oh.” I looked up and understood: the auxiliary lights were in fact the UV
lights and they made my eyes fluorescent green.

  J came to me, his face a few inches away from mine. He bent down and kissed me, his eyes open to look at mine.

  “Very cool,” he whispered and smiled.

  “All right, the show is over! Let’s find the light switch, shall we?” said Peter and went to the right edge of the wall, placing his hands on the surface and feeling around for the way to activate the lights.

  The next moment, bright lights flickered on, and we all shielded our eyes.

  “Anything else I can do here?” Rick said proudly, dusting off his hands as if they were sandy.

  “Well done, boy!” Peter clapped Rick on the shoulder, causing him to almost fall forward.

  With all the room lit, I could now take in my surroundings.

  Three gray concrete walls. Covering all three were large transparent screens—OLEDs—dimly reflecting our silhouettes. In the middle of the room there was a desk made out of a smooth material. I stepped closer.

  A Proto system?

  “Wow,” I whispered as the realization hit me.

  “Wow, what?”

  “That’s… that’s ancient.”

  “Ah, thanks!” said Peter, rolling his eyes. “I almost feel for the dinosaurs.”

  I turned to them, realizing how it must have sounded.

  “No, no, I’m sorry. It’s not that you are ancient,” I said and turned back to point to the console. “It’s just that we do not use anything like this at Uni anymore—but this here is the same kind of computer system that was used during the voyage.” I turned again to face them. “This is the mainframe used on the early Seedships.”

  “Do you know how to start it?” asked Patrick.

  “No, I don’t,” I said and heard an intake of breath in the room. “But I have a manual,” I said, smiling, and lifted up my E-band.

  I checked my E-band to see if by now it had connected to the local computer system and I quickly zapped through several information displays until I found what I was looking for. I tilted my head to the side.

  Interesting.

  I looked up from the small screen, lowered both of my hands, and then quickly raised my arms upward, palms up.

  “SYSTEM START. INITIALIZATION,” a metallic female voice announced.