by Kieran Shea
“Mmm. Seems to be sleeping now.”
“Should we wake him, Doctor?”
“Heavens, no. Let the man rest.”
Dr. Corella pulls the curtains around Flynn’s bed aside and the assistant moves away down the hall. When Dr. Corella crosses the hall to his office, he pulls up Flynn’s diagnostics on a projection screen and picks up a mug of cold, black coffee. Sitting down at his desk, he takes a sharp sip of the cooled bitter brew and studies Flynn’s charts.
As men of science, for five years he and Sébastien have been so careful with everything. Naturally there’s been bumps along the way, ebbs and flows and the like, but nothing so unexpected as a pair of strangers dropping in from the blind or a young girl right under their noses attempting to bring the project down.
Good lord… despite global malevolent tendencies for greed, these days getting any new drug to market took decades, and with TAM’s invasive nature had they proposed an extended trial from the outset they would’ve been hung out to dry by their respective thumbs. By utilizing the ruse of the Commonage and circumventing the usual jurisdictional foot-dragging, they now have the proof that TAM actually works—and in one fifth of the time it would have otherwise taken. True, the delivery system and quality controls need tweaking, but they now understand how TAM is absorbed and metabolized and what the safe dosage ranges are. With TAM’s shocking lack of long-range toxic effects, Sébastien and Dr. Corella are nearly ready to offer their discoveries to the highest bidder. What the highest bidder does after they acquire the research is not really their concern, but the program surely contains loaded promise to change the world.
Rid humankind of its congenital and biological paradoxes, all of the predictable societal ills.
Bring peace, equanimity, and most importantly, social engineering at a price.
Dr. Corella knows if they both can keep it together for just a little while longer, a few more months at the outside, he and Sébastien will both be wildly, impossibly rich.
Of course for his partner the massive windfall from TAM will be surfeit fortunes on top of previous excesses, but for Dr. Corella the impending payday would change everything.
TAM is his life’s work.
Agreeing to get Flynn started on the adaptive modifications verifies he and Sébastien at least are still on the same page. Point of fact, Dr. Corella actually finds it stunning that neither of them had ever considered TAM’s use for Depressus cases before. While there may be some averseness given the commercial ratings on live mass suicide feed broadcasts, people’s tastes in entertainment are hardly inexorable and, heavens, doesn’t everybody love a good comeback story? Who’s to say the Second Free Zone confederacies wouldn’t be interested in a policy about-face? One thing is for certain though. Patient advocates who backed the mass euthanizing events will undoubtedly have to change their tune.
Dr. Corella takes another sip of cold coffee and rises. After retrieving a large pressure syringe from a nearby cabinet, he unlocks a drawer and selects a local anesthetic and then a TAM cartridge.
It’s time to wake Flynn.
HAVE A FRUIT PLATE
After calling on Kumari’s parents, Sébastien returns to his quarters and examines the contents of Kumari’s needle drive. Quickly he ascertains that his previous hunch was correct. The archived contents confirm that she accessed and downloaded every last TAM file and sub-file on his systems and found out everything.
Minutes later, the dispatched second group returns from the wrecked sub. As they enter, they report that they checked the sub’s onboard systems and industriously removed what they could. After the group hands over all the recovered electronics and Koko and Flynn’s bug-out packs, Sébastien advises them to keep word of what they’ve found strictly to themselves. Effectively compliant and obedient with TAM, the group respectively bow their heads in unison and then depart.
After their exit, Sébastien inspects the electronics and proceeds to transfer the sub’s records into his systems for more penetrating analysis. When he examines Koko and Flynn’s backpacks and finds what’s inside he isn’t surprised at all.
Keep up the face?
Well, in any case he now knows something about the two alleged survivors.
Taking the backpacks, Sébastien leaves his quarters and treads downstairs to the commissary. Just off the rear of the central kitchen, and used for miscellaneous waste disposal, are a pair of thermite furnaces. As he’s unacquainted with firearms of any kind, it takes Sébastien a few minutes to break down Koko and Flynn’s weapons, and when he’s finished he uses a slot to feed the deadly hardware into the furnaces’ forging heat. Checking the first-aid kits, he decides it would be sensible to destroy the laser scalpels and he slips these into the furnaces as well.
Taking the backpacks into the kitchen, Sébastien finds a tray and collects some food: a small loaf of bread, a plastic carafe of water, a bowl of mixed fruit, and a couple of milky-white wedges of hard cheese. Then he heads off to the Commonage’s supply stores and gathers some clothes and toiletries. Minutes later he climbs the stairs in Lodge Delta and approaches Eirik, Bonn, and Gammy with calm reserve. He tells the twins to go, and they head for the stairwell.
Gammy, on the other hand, is delighted to see Sébastien. Setting down the tray of food, clothes, and toiletries he’s brought, he praises his synthetic and gives Gammy’s throat a good scratch.
“Good girl, good girl. Let’s see if our visitor is awake, shall we?”
Sébastien types in a code to erase the door lock, and then, leaving the backpacks outside, he picks up the items he brought and opens the door.
“Hello?”
Koko is slowly stirring and tonging open her eyes with her fingers, but when she sees Gammy and Sébastien entering the room she sits up like she’s on fire.
“I’ll just leave these here,” Sébastien says as he sets the tray and other items down on the desk. “Fresh clothes and some toiletries. I took a guess at your size and they’re nothing fancy, but you should find them suitable to our climate. The clothes and boots you arrived in are still being laundered, I believe.”
Koko glares at him. Briefly Sébastien wonders if she’ll make a mad dash for it, but she remains still.
“I think we’ve gotten off on the wrong foot,” Sébastien says. “I admit, that’s partly my fault, but Dr. Corella suggested it might be better to extend a greater hospitality to you. Obviously you can understand our earlier precautions. So, all that said, how’re you feeling?”
Koko eyeballs Gammy and responds churlishly, “Through the ringer, but just so you and your huge pooch are clear, I’m not exactly in a trusting mood right now.”
Sébastien picks up a yellow pear from the fruit bowl on the tray and tosses it to her. Koko bobs right, and the pear bounces and rolls off the bed. Gammy looks at the fruit with big, dark eyes.
“Please, there’s nothing spiked in that pear. Squandering food is discouraged here.” Selecting a green apple from the bowl, Sébastien takes a large bite to demonstrate that nothing on the tray is tainted.
“So, where are your enforcers?”
“Enforcers?”
“Thugs one and two.”
“I told Eirik and Bonn to leave. They’re hardly enforcers.” Sébastien takes a second bite of his apple and munches. Gammy watches their words, leaping from lips to lips. Koko rubs her temples.
“Damn, that quack of yours sure knows how to slip a girl a mickey. How long have I been out of it?”
“Only a few hours. Looks like you needed the rest.”
“The rest. Right, so now what?”
“What do you mean?”
“With us. Flynn and me. What now? Is this some kind of game or are we free to go?”
“If you want to, I suppose you could leave, but your friend Flynn is still recovering from his surgeries. Fantastic progress with Dr. Corella’s treatments no doubt, it’s more than likely he’s out of the IC tank already.”
“Is he conscious?”
“That I don’t know.”
Sébastien lobs a second pear from the bowl on the tray to Koko and she snatches it from the air. For someone just coming around from a sedative and muscle limiters, her speed is nothing short of amazing. With her eyes cemented on his, Koko smells the fruit and tears off a small, hesitant taste. She gobbles the rest of the pear in six quick bites and chucks the core into a corner.
“See? It’s good stuff. One hundred percent organic and grown right here. By the way, there’s a rubbish receptacle in the bathroom.”
Giving him and Gammy a short venomous look, Koko wraps the wool blanket and sheets around her waist and slowly gets off the bed. She shuffles to the window, unfastens a latch with one hand, and draws back the shutters. Slanted sunlight spills into the room.
“Where the hell are we?”
“As I said earlier, you’re at the Commonage.”
“No, pinhead,” Koko says. “I mean coordinates. Longitude and latitude. Prohibs and the coast, yeah, I know that, but how far are we from the northern borders?”
“Was that where you were heading?”
“That’s my business.”
“Well, in that case, let’s see. Give or take, the borders are close to nine hundred kilometers from here.”
“Terrific,” Koko declares bitterly. “What’re you dimwits doing out here in the middle of the prohibs?”
Sébastien thinks of his earlier discussion with Dr. Corella. “That may be a bit difficult to explain.”
“Try.”
“You could call it a personal investment. A social petri dish could be another way of putting it. Perhaps we should start with some basics. Tell me, do you have any idea who I am?”
Koko splutters, “How am I supposed to know who you are? Right now, you’re just some middle-aged a-hole holding me and Flynn captive almost a thousand kilometers from civilization.”
“No one is a captive here, Koko.”
“Says you.”
“And I’m making an effort to be gracious.” Sébastien looks behind him and gestures to the door. “See? The door is open, and the lock has been erased.”
Koko looks suspiciously at the open entry and sniffs.
“Look, man,” she says. “I’m not stupid. Us having a sub, I know how it all looks, but me and Flynn are survivors, nothing more. We just crashed here because of that huge fucking storm. I mean, who in their right mind would ever think about deliberately coming to a place like this?”
Sébastien takes a step, and Koko’s eyes switch to the food tray. While he has Gammy to protect him, Sébastien is suddenly thankful he made sure not to include anything that could be used as a possible weapon on the tray.
“Lots of people actually like it here you know,” he says.
“Oh, and are they hostages too?”
“Don’t be absurd. Saying you’re a hostage would mean we’re holding you for some kind of ransom.”
“But we’re unarmed for fuck’s sake.”
Sébastien smiles. “I’ll take that last opinion with a healthy grain of salt.”
“What?”
“You see, I had some of the people go out to your wrecked submarine a short time ago. They found your stash of weapons. They’ve been destroyed.”
Koko almost drops her blanket and sheets.
“Destroyed?”
A rocky growl slides up and down Gammy’s throat as the synthetic senses a significant tensional shift.
“Shhhh. Everything’s okay. Good girl.”
Gammy quiets.
“You had no goddamn right to do that!” Koko cries.
“Balanced against saving your lives their destruction seems trivial.”
Koko briefly looks at Gammy again. “So what about the credits in the backpacks, huh? The nuclear-biological-chemical suits? You went and destroyed them too?”
“Except for the scalpels in the first-aid kits, the credits and the rest of your things are in the backpacks outside the door.”
“They better be.”
“Hard currency means little to those within the Commonage. In any event, when the group found your supplies they also looked to see if there was a way to get your submarine back online. The hull was badly damaged and righting the vessel looked impossible. Some of the sub’s onboard systems, however, were still operational. A Trang Xi Class submersible—can you tell me why you disabled your GPS transponder?”
“Please tell me you didn’t re-engage it.”
“Briefly, but only to see if it was still functioning.”
“And?”
“It was.”
Koko hangs her head.
Sébastien tells Gammy to lie down on the floor, and after the animal gets into position, he leans down and scratches one of her blue-black ears.
“From your reaction I take it that was a bad move on our part. I’m ready to listen to your tale if it’s a colorful one.”
Koko lifts her head. “Are you out of your mind? What, just because you’re all friendly with me now and offering me food, you think for one second I’m going to just let down my guard? Hell, I can’t believe you destroyed my weapons. I need those. We need those. What gives you the right?”
“We mean you no harm, Koko. How about a little trust?”
“Trust? Trust can suck it.”
“Goodness, are you always this tetchy?”
“When people destroy my property, hell yes I’m tetchy.”
Sébastien sits down on the edge of the desk and sighs.
“Okay, look. Maybe if you know a little bit more about this place you won’t feel so threatened. Just now I hardly had a chance to elaborate, but up until recently I was what you might call a man of very significant means.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yes. A few years ago I leveraged the last of my financial muscle to acquire a great swathe of this area and had the entire coastal parcel reclassified. You’re now, in effect, within a privately owned Special Economic Zone.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s a locale exempt from governmental, political, and multinational interference of any kind as outlined under the Baxter Worldwide Trade Treaty of 2476. Given the less than accurate ecocide assessments, nobody really cared to take the initiative here seriously, and since then we’ve been left alone to do as we see fit. Outwardly I know it may look peculiar, but our efforts here are ingeniously sound given the state of the world.” Sébastien takes another bite of his apple and cheeks the flesh. “You’re sure my face doesn’t ring a bell?”
“Nope.”
“How about PIWI? Pharma Impetus Worldwide Industries?”
Koko’s eyebrows arch. “You mean the drug syndicate out of—”
“Northern Europe? Yes.”
“Holy, hot buckets of snake whiz, that’s yours?”
“No such luck,” Sébastien replies. “I was merely one of PIWI’s lead chemists. I helped synthesize an alkaloid that enhanced the company’s consumer drug efforts. In on the fledgling ground-floor days as they say, back when PIWI was a start-up. The truth is, PIWI was insolvent and about to go under when I bumbled into my little breakthrough, and now the alkaloid is used globally in thousands of products. Domestic relaxers, anti-tumor agents, and the newer climate adaptive applications for deep space travel. Not to toot my own Mensa horn, but the Nobel committee was fairly impressed. True, Stockholm was never the same after the third wave of the Prion-22 virus, but pandemic contagions notwithstanding after securing the Nobel, PIWI paid me handsomely in market credit options before the alkaloid patent expired.”
Sébastien sets his apple down and selects a wedge of cheese from the tray. He breaks off a tiny piece between his fingers.
“I was even a minor celebrity for a spell. Celebrated as one of the scientific golden boys of the new age, you know? Of course, I was much younger then and grew full of myself.”
“You don’t say.”
A nibble of cheese. “Mmhm. The trappings of the credit-soaked playboy. I squandered great messy chunks of my f
ortune, but after a while one does tend to hit rock bottom with all that wealth without conscience hoopla. Thankfully when Dr. Corella and I met our combined ambitions were mutual.” Sébastien spreads an arm in a wide arc. “Hence, the Commonage.”
Koko shakes her head. “Man, what a waste. If I’d been rolling in that kind of bank I would’ve been smarter about keeping it. Built me a place near some action at least. Hell, maybe even invest in a sports franchise.”
“Life is a terminal arrangement, Koko. Our motivations here are more proactive.”
“Congratulations. You and Doctor Knockout operate a backwater fiefdom in the middle of fuck-knows-where.”
Sébastien raises a finger. “Not a fiefdom, a community. A plausible kinship of like-minded souls cooperating peacefully under a shared and common authority.”
“Being you and the good doctor, of course.”
“I said shared and common, not absolute. The people here, they consult us just as much as we consult them… within reason.”
“And they’re here voluntarily?” Koko asks.
“All here were recruited for reasons far too extraneous to go into, but yes. The common denominator with all of them is that each sensed some equivocal deficiency in their lives.”
“Welcome to the goddamn club,” Koko says. “So, is it fair to say your pal Dr. Corella is rolling in the big PIWI bucks too?”
“No, but his contributions are different. We do, however, see eye to eye.”
“Sounds romantic.”
“It’s not that type of partnership,” Sébastien says.
Koko drifts from the window and looks around with disgust.
“So, you wasted all your money and built a settlement out in the prohib boonies. Great. Just great. I’m going to assume you’ve got outside contact.”
“Oh, we do, but it’s limited.”
“Limited in what way?”
“Let’s leave that for later.”
Koko huffs. “So, if this Commonage joint is a settlement, where are your defenses? I may have been out of it before, Sébastien, but I’ve been vigilant. You’re in the prohibs. You’ve got to have something.”
