Unstable Prototypes

by Lallo, Joseph

  "You can climb up, if you really want to," he said after a few seconds.

  "Processing... Thank you," she said, her freshly minted willpower proving woefully under-equipped to deal with her current form's whims.

  She carefully propelled herself up to his shoulders and draped herself across the back of his neck, her massively fluffy tail hanging down one side and her head perked up on the other. She secured herself there by slipping a paw under his shoulder strap and curling her tail around his neck.

  "This is enormously satisfying to me for reasons which I cannot fully define."

  "Now you know why I fly a ship every chance I get."

  "Your fondness for flight is the result of a moderately arbitrary, chemically regulated set of stimulus-response pairings within your brain? Is this the source of your fondness for Miss Modane as well?"

  "... Well it sounds a lot less romantic when you put it that way," he said, unwrapping the steamy Mexican snack and holding it up for her, "Just eat your burrito."

  #

  Light years away, in a large conference hall on a planet called Tessera, Michella was hurrying backstage, polite applause smattering from the audience of peers. A little over an hour ago she'd stepped off a ludicrously expensive transport, so priced because it managed to get her to Tessera in less than a day, rather than the more typical week long trip a more reasonably priced vessel would have provided. Even so, she'd only just arrived in time for the first of her obligations at that year's Net Press and Broadcasters Guild Convention. She'd been part of a panel entitled, 'The Importance of Corporate Transparency In A Post-Gemini Society.' It was as painfully dull as the name would suggest, and yet it still had run the full hour. This was partly because one of the other panelists, the elderly Dr. Kenneth Greystone, had seen fit to answer every question with a five minute long wandering anecdote that stopped being relevant to the matter at hand after approximately fifteen seconds. The rest was due to the cluster of somewhat rowdy college students who had attended specifically to get their pictures taken with Michella. Some of them had been young women who saw her as a role model. Most were young men who considered her to be a different type of model altogether. It had taken an awful lot of polite excusing to get away from them to the safety of the backstage area, where an extremely attentive young man dressed neatly in a sweater vest was waiting with a plastic cup of tea and her glasses.

  "How did it go?" asked the man.

  "About a half hour longer than it needed to, Jon," she said wearily, slipping on her glasses and taking a cautious sip of her tea.

  Jon Nichols was her personal assistant, a paid intern hired by her editors to keep her at least somewhat on schedule for her appearances and press deadlines. Tearing her away from her project of the moment long enough to submit a story or sit in on a broadcast was a full time job. As a result, Jon was with her practically every moment of every day. Initially, it had been the source of some friction between himself and Lex. That lasted until halfway through their first conversation when they met face to face, which was the point it became clear that Jon was more likely to be interested in Lex than Michella. His tastefully selected wardrobe and well kept dirty-blonde hair probably would have been a fairly strong clue, if not for the fact that men of all orientations tended to look like that in the infotainment world.

  "He didn't call yet, did he?" she asked, taking off her earrings.

  "Not yet."

  "And we're sure it wasn't my turn to call him?"

  "Positive."

  "Oh, did you get in touch with Lt. Davies? I wanted to talk to him about-"

  She was interrupted by an obnoxious snippet of pop music blaring from Jon's pocket.

  "There he is, right on time," he said, pulling Michella's slidepad out and handing it to her.

  "Hi, honey!" she chirped in a sing-song voice, a smile lighting up her face.

  "Hey, babe. Just making sure I didn't miss Mitch o'clock," Lex said across the connection, his face displayed as a tiny, slightly jittery video stream.

  "You know I don't like it when you call me that, Trev," she said flatly, before her face lit up again, "Oh, is that Squee around your neck? That is so adorable!"

  She tapped an icon on the screen, snapping an image of it.

  "Isn't she such a cutie?" she said, turning the phone to Jon.

  "Hi, Mr. Alexander. Nice scarf," the assistant said.

  "Hi Jon."

  "Hey, are you in the SOB right now?" Michella asked, turning the slidepad back to her.

  "Yeah. I've got one of those charter jobs."

  "It isn't anything dangerous, is it?" she asked suspiciously.

  "Hey, babe, you know me. Would I do something dangerous and not tell you?"

  "Yes," she said flatly.

  "Don't worry. This is strictly run of the mill stuff," Lex lied, hopefully convincingly.

  "Well, be careful. And shame on you cooping up that cute little pup in a cramped little ship."

  "Oh, but it's fine if I'm all cooped up? I see how it is."

  "Oh please, Trev. You'd be doing that in your free time and you know it. Where is this charter trip heading to, anyway? Anywhere close? Maybe you can stop by here. I'm speaking at two more panels. The last one is a keynote."

  "Tempting, but it's only about halfway between here and there, a place called deGrasse."

  "I've never heard of it."

  "I'm not surprised. It isn't even a planet. It's a dwarf planet, out in the middle of a whole lot of nothing."

  Jon snapped his fingers, drawing Michella's attention. When she looked, he held up his own slidepad and silently mouthed the words 'Lieutenant Davies' while pointing vigorously to it.

  "Oh, uh, listen Trev, I need to go, there's-"

  "I know, I know. Duty calls. Go plumb the dark recesses of corruption and deceit," he said.

  "Thanks for understanding, you're the best."

  "Damn straight I am."

  "Love you, Trev."

  "Love you, babe."

  She tapped the connection closed and quickly had Jon transfer the call from Davies, switching it to voice only and putting the slidepad to her ear.

  "Davies? Yes. Thank you for getting back to me so quickly," she said quietly, cupping the phone and speaking quietly, "What did you find out? … Really? Not on any of the watch lists? … That's what I came up with, too. … I suppose. Well, thanks for your help. I'll let you know if I find anything."

  She closed the connection and crossed her arms, a look of irritation on her face.

  "Dead end?" Jon asked.

  "Not so much a dead end. More like a confusing one."

  "What's this about?"

  "Lou, the feature editor. You remember what he had me working on?"

  "Mmmhmm."

  When one is surrounded by scoop-hungry journalists, it doesn't pay to speak in specifics, lest your carefully cultivated lead end up as someone else's breakthrough. Thus, Michella made it a habit to speak in terms that would be clear to Jon, but more or less worthless to eavesdroppers. In this case, Lou had asked her to look into a particular theft at a military base.

  "Well, I'm starting to pick up the breadcrumbs, and I finally got a good nibble, but it doesn't make any sense. The name just keeps pointing back to a disgruntled textile worker from the eighteenth century. Honestly, if you're already agreeing to meet with an investigator, why get cute and cryptic with your information?"

  "Some people just like being difficult. Maybe it's a red herring. Sending you on a wild goose chase."

  "No... No, this guy had an agenda, I know it. I'll keep digging. I've got a feeling about this one. I think this one is going to be big..."

  Chapter 8

  "Wake up, Dee!" barked Purcell.

  Karter, sprawled on the floor of his cell, snorted awake.

  "Oh, hello there, boss lady," he said, groggily.

  Through a complicated and highly awkward sequence of motions, he managed to pull himself from the ground with his remaining arm and leg and propped h
imself up in the chair.

  "... We agree to pay your full fee," she said with a sneer.

  "The adjusted fee for reproduction rights and the design and construction of mass production facilities?"

  "Yes," she replied, the single word carrying an impressive payload of hatred.

  "Too bad."

  "What?!"

  "Not good enough. I'm a trifle peeved about the imprisonment and involuntary return to amputee status that I've been subjected to. Price went up."

  "How much?"

  "Out of the range of mere dollars and cents, I'm afraid."

  "We weren't intending to pay you with an antiquated paper currency."

  "What I mean is, money won't cut it anymore."

  Purcell glared at him, military discipline the only thing standing between Karter and a broken neck.

  "Open this door," she muttered to one of the guards on duty.

  "Commander?" asked the guard.

  "Open this door! That is an order, soldier!"

  "Ooh, what's this? Is the big scary boss lady going to rough up the cripple?" Karter jabbed as the soldier entered a key code into the panel beside the door.

  The commander stalked in, grabbing the front of Karter's jumpsuit and hoisting him off of the chair. She pulled the knife from its sheath and held it to the side of his face, close enough to brush against the scraggly hair of a two week old beard. Those strands that touched the edge fell away.

  "What are you going to do? Slice up the man with one arm? Is that going to get you your precious solar missile?"

  "No... I'm not going to slice up a one armed man... Because as far as I'm concerned, you aren't even a man anymore," she said.

  The knife moved a fraction of an inch closer. It touched his skin and, with a hum at the very edge of hearing, a long shallow paper-cut opened on his cheek. Karter jerked away.

  "If you can't be reasoned with, then what reason have I got to keep you alive?" she hissed.

  "I didn't say I couldn't be reasoned with," he said. For the first time there was the hint of nervousness in his voice. "Take that knife away from my face."

  "Are you going to give me what I want?" she growled.

  "Regardless of whether I will or I won't, if you get startled by a sudden noise while you've got that against my cheek, you'll cut my face off. That won't help anybody. And in a minute, there's likely to be a very sudden noise."

  "What is that supposed to mean?" Purcell fumed.

  "When was the last time you saw my other arm?" he asked.

  "... MacDonald!" she barked to one of the guards.

  "Yes, Commander?"

  "Go check on Dee's arm."

  "Yes, Commander!"

  He hurried down the hall a short distance, to a set of lockers. A few moments later, he answered.

  "It isn't here!" he called.

  "What do you mean it isn't there!?"

  "Funny thing about lockers," Dee said, "They only really lock from the outside. Safety regulations dictate that most lockers have to have a manual release on the inside."

  "You can control your arm remotely..." she surmised.

  "Oh yeah. It's got cameras, the works. Want to know another funny thing? You didn't lock any of the surrounding lockers. One of them has grenades in it. Correction, had grenades in it."

  "I will kill you if you try anything."

  "Ditto. For all you know I've got one of those grenades against the reactor right now, just itching to pull the pin. I could take out this whole space..." he threatened, but slowly his expression drooped, "Crap."

  "Found it, Commander. It was in the next locker... It has a grenade, and the pin's been pulled," MacDonald announced.

  "Okay, so I can't take out the whole space station. I can still take out a few of your guys. I gotta say, I like your style. Timed fuse style grenades with an old fashioned dead man switch safety lever. I let go of it and it goes boom. Hell, even if I don't, I'm pretty sure I've got enough juice in that hand to set off the grenade just by zapping it. And grenades are really effective in close quarters."

  "If you set that thing off, I'll slit your throat."

  "If you slit my throat, those fingers go slack, and that thing goes off... We seem to have reached an impasse. I'm willing to deal if you are."

  "... Okay. Here is what is going to happen. You are going to let my man take the grenade. When that happens, I'll take this knife away from your face and you and I will start over," Purcell offered.

  "That works for me."

  "MacDonald! Depress the safety lever."

  "Depressed!"

  "Release it, Dee."

  "Done," the inventor said.

  "I've got the grenade. Disarming now," MacDonald announced.

  Purcell stepped back.

  "Now," she said, "Judging from the fact you let us take the grenade before I removed the knife, I assume you have more tricks up your sleeve."

  "Always. And judging from the fact I've got blood running down my face, you're just stupid enough to kill us all rather than play this game much longer. Probably best if we reach an agreement then."

  "The previous offer stands. Your full fee."

  Karter brushed some blood from his cheek.

  "Throw in some information and I'll consider it."

  Purcell's eyes narrowed. "What information?"

  "How did you get me off my planet? Your ships wouldn't have been able to make it through my moat without coordinates from Ma, and she wouldn't have given them with me drugged."

  "A short range transporter."

  Karter's eyes opened wide, like a child meeting Santa Claus face to face.

  "You guys have a transporter..." he said, his mouth practically watering as he said it.

  "I think it is safe to say that we have the transporter."

  "You guys let me mess with that thing, and I'll build you whatever the hell you want," he stated, nothing but sincerity in his voice.

  The commander stared him in the eyes, her mind turning over the offer.

  "After you have built us the CME Activator. And after you've turned over the manufacturing apparatus. And after it has been tested and proven functional. You will be delivered to a remote facility, we will evacuate all personnel and equipment within its effective radius, and you will be allowed to experiment with the device for twenty-four hours."

  "Only if you let me look at some of the designs and schematics before then."

  "Incomplete schematics."

  "Deal," he said instantly, holding out his hand for a shake.

  She clamped it in her grip and began to shake.

  "How do I know I can trust you?" she asked, still shaking.

  "Same way I know I can trust you... we're gonna be keeping a close eye on each other, won't we."

  #

  Just under the three day mark, Lex's ship dropped down to conventional speeds in the vicinity of the 'planet' deGrasse. The speck of dirt had the unfortunate fate of having a mass and radius that put it right at the ever-shifting threshold of planet-hood. Thus, depending on who was in charge of the Astronomical Standards Committee, it could be anything from a planet to a dwarf planet to a planetoid, and any of a half dozen other terms that had fallen in and out of favor. The primary problems caused by its size were the virtually non-existent atmosphere and a gravitational intensity that barely made it to 10% of earth's. It would have been a terrible choice for settlement, except for a few very handy features. The first was the soil, which had nitrogen concentrations high enough to make fertilizer unnecessary. It had a peculiar, wobbling orbit that gave a region near the north pole near constant sunlight, and the dark portions had vast seas of ice. Low gravity, top notch soil, plenty of water, and constant sun meant that certain crops grew massively large, incredibly quick, so long as you managed to keep them in pressurized greenhouses. deGrasse tomatoes were the size of beach balls, and rumor had it that some of the more... recreational crops were extremely potent. This led to a thriving underworld population in certain regions of the pla
net, which in turn made it a decent "no questions asked" hideaway.

  "There, that's the place," Garotte said.

  From high orbit it looked like a tall, grubby barnacle surrounded by a glass snowflake on the sandy brown surface of the planet. The living area was completely covered in black solar blankets, flexible solar collectors that came in sheets and were supposed to be a cheap, temporary alternative to the more traditional solar panels. Like most temporary things, they had a tendency to become permanent once it became clear that upgrading was too expensive. A vast complex of transparent chambers connected to the dorms housed vast patches of green. Unlike the network of greenhouses, which were spread to cover as much surface as possible, the dorms themselves were almost precariously tall and skinny. Though this made excellent use of the structural leeway that low gravity planets with zero wind provided architects, it did raise the question of just how much good the solar sheeting was doing. Lex glanced at the planetary map.

  "Clearlow Agricultural Dormitory?" Lex said curiously, "You hide out on a farm?"

  "I keep a room on a farm. Considering the nature of their produce, they are disinclined to contact the authorities, so it works quite well when I'm likely to have been pursued."

  "What do they grow?"

  "On the books? Cannabis," Garotte replied as they drew closer.

  "That's not illegal to grow."

  "That's true. Isn't evolving legislation grand? What is illegal is the species of mushroom that they've got growing at the base of each plant. I forget the botanical name, but they use them to make Green Devil."

  "I don't know what that is."

  "Well, aren't we the veritable boyscout? Green Devil is a remarkably intense hallucinogen. Illegal... well, pretty much everywhere. I'm told the THC in the marijuana gives the mushrooms an extra kick."

  "Okay, so you're bunking with a drug cartel? Isn't that still a bad idea? I mean, they won't call the cops themselves, but people might call the cops on them."