by Mars Dorian
“I know, but come on, for real now. She’s calling the shots, isn’t she?”
Bloom’s puzzled face morphed into a smile, but it looked forced.
“If it’s really important to you, we can talk to her.”
“That would be incredible.”
“Let me drive you there.”
He stepped into the passenger’s seat of the porter.
“Do you know where she is now?”
“Of course.”
Of course, RX mumbled over his breath.
Bloom took him to the hexagon complex and entered the commons. Few people sat inside, fumbling with trays stuffed with sea creature food. All of them were overweight and looked unlike the rest of the colonists. Guess not everyone was fit under the Evergreen sun. Norma maneuvered around them and headed toward RX’s direction. She opened her mouth before he could get his in gear.
“How do you like our place so far?”
RX eyed her facial expressions. Was she testing him or was she seriously interested? The elderly female’s appearance carried the diversity of a frozen asteroid.
“It’s an interesting place, ma’am. Your world is unlike any I’ve ever been to."
He paused.
“The ruins look especially mesmerizing, I wonder how they came to be.”
Real smooth.
“Me too,” Norma said with the expression of a sleepwalker.
“You don’t know?”
“They existed before I was born. Just like the highways, the barricades and the ground plates.”
“So you built your colony on top of another?”
“I don’t know.”
RX bit his lips.
How could everyone be so clueless about their past? Not that RX knew everything about Stryker and the US Corps, but at least he remained curious.
And asked questions.
Unlike these Evergreens.
“Do you have any kind of communication device that can connect beyond the stratosphere?”
“No.”
“Do you have spacecrafts?”
“No.”
And that was enough Norma-versation for today. She left him with the food and joined her table neighbors on the other side. RX returned to Bloom.
“Why is she so frosty?”
“She’s always like that. You have to understand, she’s one of the oldest people in Evergreen. She’s seen a lot.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know.”
Nobody knew anything.
RX shook his head. He remembered why he disliked civilians. Clueless and feeble-minded with no sense of duty.
“Can I eat your piece?”
“What?”
Bloom pointed toward his slices of fish. RX shrugged.
“Take everything.”
She rammed the pieces into her mouth and swallowed them with endless joy in her eyes. When everything was munched and mumbled, they both walked outside.
The fresh air fostered his digestion.
“That was a fruitful evening,” Bloom said.
Not for me, RX thought.
He hugged her goodbye but halted.
“Did you find any contraceptives?”
“I told you we don’t use them.”
Bummer.
He watched her tiptoe away while humming an upbeat melody. RX strolled through Evergreen central and watched the citizens return to their structures.
“Aida, are you there?”
“Always.”
“Any news from Stryker, or the US Corps?”
“Unfortunately not.”
“Do you think they would have sent a search & rescue team by now?”
The AI hesitated.
“Based on your last ranking, that is unlikely. But who knows? Your APEX costs a fortune, and even though Stryker made a record profit, they don’t squander resources. So there is a slight chance.”
RX had to wait and recover. He walked by three houses and thought of Bloom. He began to like her. She carried a laissez-faire attitude reminiscent of an offpsring unit. She was interested about his history and seemed to find joy in the mundane. He wished he would have met a co-pilot like her during his active duty.
Maybe one day in the future.
Once he propelled away from 'paradise'.
RX observed the people walking outside. Most had returned to their houses and switched off the light. An adolescent stood next to an organic structure and looked at RX with eyes wide open. He smiled back.
“Hey buddy, what’s your name?”
The young unit smirked and ran back inside.
Guess he didn’t have one.
RX looked around and realized he was the only one outside now. Didn’t matter, apart from the sudden chill. The same he had experienced a few days ago before he went to sleep.
Aida appeared.
“What’s the matter?”
“I don’t know. Sometimes I get the feeling I’m being watched. There are no cams around, but still. It's strange."
“This place is still new. It’s normal for a humanoid to experience adjustment problems, especially when interacting in a territory that is so different from your previous one.”
“Maybe you’re right.”
He turned right, climbed over the massive barricades and entered a ruinous perimeter. The structure in the center must have been at least five stories high, but now only broken walls and the steel skeleton remained. RX approached and touched one pillar.
“What’s your story?”
He looked up the stars and recognized gray smoke spitting into the air, far away in the distance. A giant disruption shook the grounds. The vibration rocked his body. The sound of explosions ripped through the air.
What the—
The adrenaline injected into RX’s circular system. People escaped their houses and pointed at the smoke on the horizon. Some shouted, some panicked, especially the children.
Finally a normal reaction.
Except, nah.
The Evergreens stood still and then proceeded back inside as if nothing happened.
RX remained the last one standing outside.
What the hell just happened?
Another boom echoed from afar. RX ran back to the main street and saw Norma and a bunch of her compeers traversing the street. They chitchatted and exchanged chuckles.
“Norma, did you hear that?”
“Hear what?”
“The explosions.”
“No, I was having a conversation.”
RX pointed toward the smoke trail in the distance.
“Don’t you see that? I think something blew up.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Everything is in balance.”
RX bit his tongue. Looked like the elderly female unit suffered from a severe case of reality denial. He waited a few seconds and felt another impact rumbling through the ground.
“See?”
Norma’s voice stayed frosty.
“Rex, you should rest now. Everything’s taken care of.”
And with that, she and her fellow citizens entered the houses and switched off the light sources. RX stood on the spot and wondered what was going on. He wanted to summon a porter but didn’t know how.
So he ran.
Faster than ever before.
Dashed like the blitz through the Evergreen sections. The few bystanders on the streets paid more attention to him than to the smoke trail that greyed the black night. RX wondered what was going on in their minds, but he was more curious about the explosions. He sped up as much as his legs allowed him to. As perversely as it sounded, he enjoyed preparing for the blasts.
Slacking off and eating all day was starting to bore him.
An explosion offered excitement.
A chance to deal with challenges.
A way to prove his military use.
He ran like the wind on steroids and laughed at the turbulences blowing his way.
Whatever happened, RX was ready.
32
RX fo
llowed the source of the smoke and boosted all the way to the highways. It took him forever, but the APEX wasn’t operational yet. Exhaustion soon crept into his body, but the curiosity helped RX ignore all the pain. He ran down the exit and found out where the smoke originated—the rim section with the artificial lake.
Fish on fire?
RX roared down the exit and almost stumbled. The refinery spat orange flames into the air. The walls crumbled as the floors collapsed into each other. Dozens of male Evergreens wearing heavy exosuits marched toward the burning facility like a ground-pounder squad. They carried heavy organic machinery, placed it between the burning structure and the lake, pumped water and used it to extinguish the flames. The refinery crumbled to the ground, but the fire died. The Evergreens pushed the rubble away and recycled most of it with some kind of converter devices. Transporters with more exosuits and material arrived. The second the last sparkle of the fire vaporized, the Evergreens started rebuilding the refinery from the ground up. RX stood still and watched the citizens working in perfect synchronicity. No one talked, no one stood idle. Everyone did what they had to do.
When a group of new exosuits appeared from nowhere, he asked the nearest worker.
“What happened?”
The Evergreen ignored him.
RX repeated his question but no one answered. The noise of the builder devices swallowed RX’s voice. So he stepped closer to the transporter with the bionic crane that looked like a mechanized arm.
“Hey guys, what happened here?”
Still no reply, so RX addressed a male exosuit unit and tapped him on the shoulder.
“Is there something I can help you with?”
The man ignored him. He yanked another building block from the landing space and joined his fellow constructors. RX circumvented the building site and recognized craters embedded into the ground plates. He knelt and inspected the damage closer. The shape of the crater as well as the depth of its center looked familiar.
Interesting.
“Rex.”
A feline voice brushed through the air.
RX swung his head around and saw Bloom running toward him.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m trying to find out what caused the explosions.”
“Why? Everything’s taken care of.”
“Don’t you want to know?”
She shrugged.
“No one got hurt, so what’s the deal?”
“Things don’t just blow up, Bloom. Especially not facilities like these, unless they refine explosive fish.”
Delivered like a joke, but Bloom didn’t bite.
RX pointed to the craters on the ground.
“Those are holes from kinetic impactors.”
“What?”
“Shells that were fired from long-ranged weapons, probably artillery.”
Bloom’s face had WTF written all over it.
“You’re kidding.”
RX looked her into the eyes and pulled his soldier face.
“Unfortunately, I’m not. Something or someone targeted the refinery and blew it up.”
He paused to allow the message to go easy on her.
“Bloom, I have a military background. I know what I’m talking about.”
She grabbed his hand and wanted to pull him away.
“Let’s go.”
“I want to find more evidence.”
“No need to, the community’s taking care of it.”
“Bloom, I don’t think you understand the gravity of the situation. This attack poses a threat to you all. We need to know what we are dealing with here.”
Bloom raised her voice for the first time since…ever. RX noticed a rare edge in her tone.
“Do you see any fire? Do you hear any explosions?”
“I did half an hour ago.”
“But now you don’t. We are repairing everything. The refinery will soon work again. There’s no need to spread false panic among the citizens. It was an accident.”
“Accident?”
Bloom marched on and waved him over.
“Let’s go, Rex.”
He followed her to the porter parked near the ‘beach’. Rotated around and glanced one last time at the workers and cranes raising the pillars and rebuilding the refinery from scratch. The blocks fused into each other, layer for layer. From afar, it looked as if they shaped a sand castle.
Rex admired their ability to construct that fast, but he also realized: accident up his ass, something was askew in paradise.
33
The next day couldn’t arrive fast enough. The second the sun light graced RX’s face, he blasted from his bed and hit the street dashing. The usual suspects wandered around—adult Evergreens in their tech tunics and lots of offspring units. He approached some folks.
“Excuse me, did you guys hear the explosions last night?”
“Explosions?” the guy said and conjured an expression reminiscent of a puke face. RX helped the guy’s memory.
“They shook up the ground while a trail of smoke polluted the air.”
The folks shook their heads in unison.
“Really? You didn’t hear or see anything?”
“Maybe you had a bad dream?” one of them said.
RX watched their serene faces.
“Maybe.”
He passed them by and approached the next citizens. Found a female snacking on a sea meat piece, surrounded by offspring.
“No, I didn’t hear anything.”
RX sprinted from spot to spot and ‘interviewed’ every citizen he met. But no one knew anything. He finally found a familiar face—the guy who tried to take his APEX apart. What was his name again? Ah, yes, Toyler.
“Excuse me.”
Toyler turned around.
“Hey.”
“Did you hear that loud bang last night?”
“Can’t say I have.”
“And the smoke in the air?”
“I went to bed early. I’m not much of a stargazer.”
RX nodded and looked down at the little girl grinning. She ate sea meat on a stick and giggled behind Toyler’s broad legs.
“Are these your kids?”
“Some of them.”
“How many do you have?”
“Dunno. Fifty or a hundred?”
“Are you serious?”
“Are you?”
So much for the conversation.
“Well, I was just curious. Thanks for your time. BTW—I’m sorry about the tool incident.”
“Which tool incident?”
RX rubbed his chin. Did he mistake the guy? No, the longish hair and the goatee gave him away. And that broad build—as if someone pressed a two meter man into midget shape.
“You know, a week or so ago. You were working on my spacecraft with your welding tools. I wanted to make you stop so I melted your appliances with my beam. Like I said, I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
He turned around and chatted with his offspring.
The guy really didn’t remember.
A damn thing.
But what really rubbed RX off was the collective amnesia. He asked over thirty folks and everyone claimed they didn’t hear or see a thing.
This wasn’t possible—a deaf citizen with burned eyes would have felt the impact of the explosion. Either everyone lied to him or they were really clueless. The only thing RX could do was to investigate the matter himself. He looked for Bloom and found her strolling around the main sector of the colony. She led a line of offspring units and talked to them.
“Bloom.”
“Rex.”
“Can you tell me how to use these porters?”
"Sure. What do you want to know?"
“How do I make them come to me?”
“You just call them.”
“By their name?”
It was intended as a nifty one-liner, but Bloom didn’t get the memo.
“I don’t know…wh
enever I need them, I just think of the porters and they appear.”
"Sounds like hokey-pokey."
"Who's that?" Bloom said.
"Nevermind."
“Try it.”
Rex closed his eyes and thought of a porter. Five seconds later one curved around the corner and halted in front of him with its doors slid sideways. RX’s mouth fell open.
“How in the world…what kind of tech is that? Can it read my thoughts?”
Bloom shrugged. The ten kids behind her blanked out and remained silent.
Bloom stepped up.
“Do you want to visit the southern reach later on? It’s such a nice day.”
RX looked up into the baby blue vastness above him. Not a single cloud smeared the sky.
“Maybe. I have to check something out first.”
“What?”
Time for a little gray lie.
“The truth is, I need some time for myself, Bloom. I’m somewhat of a loner. All these people around freak me out.”
She watched him with curious eyes.
“Do I freak you out?”
“Not yet.”
He sent her a smile.
“Let’s keep it that way.”
RX stepped into the porter and assumed control.
Very intuitive.
Reminded him of armored tire-based vehicles from the early Stryker days. It took him ten minutes to understand the basics. Add another ten, and he was blasting through the colony like a natural born racer.
Vrooom.
When RX arrived at the beach with the artificial lake, the craters were gone. He checked the perimeter where the artillery shells impacted and couldn’t find one piece of evidence. He approached the refinery and looked for clues. The workers had already built a third of the structure. More material arrived and was embedded into the organic fabric. The drone ships were leaving and entering the bay at a lower frequency, but at least they worked.
Unbelievable.
The refinery had recovered at an incredible speed. RX watched the process unfolding before his eyes.
“Aida, tell me I’m crazy.”
“What do you mean?”
“The explosions yesterday. The damage done to the refinery. It happened, right?”
“Yes. I have the recording for your viewing pleasure.”
She played the footage on the top right corner of his vision. The smoke, the craters and the workers extinguishing the fire. Exactly as he remembered it.
“What the hex is going on here?”
