First Light: Book one of the Torus Saga

by Berg, Michael

  “Here we go. Two breakfast specials,” the single person working both the counter and the tables in the café, had brought them breakfast. The chef could be seen behind the counter, cleaning up after cooking their meal. They were alone on the café – their meal, his first cooking task for the day.

  “Pretty quiet in these parts,” Tim said.

  “Yeah. Business is slow, but we will stay open. There is no way the authorities will shutting this place down if we can help it.”

  “How long has it been here?”

  “About eighty years, I’m not sure, I’ll ask the owner,” he turned around called out to the chef. “Hey Shaun! How long has this place been open?”

  “Since two thousand and two.”

  “There you go. Eighty six years.”

  “Apparently back then, there was a scene around these old wharves,” Shaun had come closer, wiping his hand with a towel.

  “A scene?” Carmel asked.

  “Yeah. One of those warehouse party scenes and art groups type of thing. You know, with live music and lots of people just enjoying themselves.”

  “Sounds great. What happened to this ‘scene’?”

  “Shut down mostly. Like any place, some humans can get up to mischief, so they used that as the excuse to get rid of it…well most of it. There were some groups who adjusted.”

  “Are they still adjusting?”

  “Yeah. You can still find a few about these parts now and then. But with all this crackdown by the authorities, they are getting harder and harder to find.”

  “Do you know of any art groups or musicians? I love music.”

  “Not really. I have seen a few people who look like they might know, but they keep a low profile.”

  “Are they dangerous?”

  “No. That I can say. They are not interested in power or manipulation or worshipping demons or the like. Generally they are peaceful, if not a bit strange at times.”

  “Oh that’s good. Tell me, please, do you know of any?” Carmel was now speaking to the waiter who was still at their table.

  “It depends. I might, but I don’t want to tell anyone, and you can’t force it out of me either.”

  “Oh don’t be concerned. I am not some official trying to get information. I just want to meet some of these people. I like what they do. I’m interested.”

  “Yeah me too,” Tim added. “I was in a scene of sorts in Vancouver man.”

  He looked at them for a few seconds, and to Shaun who was just standing there watching. “I could tell you, but not directly. You will need to work on this contact.”

  “Um, OK,” Tim replied seeing there was an identity cover in play not unlike the way people had to contact The Fixture.

  “You have to meet at the update station on the corner of Townsend and Third Streets today at two. Now eat, I’ll go and set up a contact.” He left them to eat breakfast. When they left he just said, “Thanks. Two.” Shaun called out a goodbye from the kitchen behind.

  “Bye Shaun.” It was nine in the morning now, so they had five hours until the meeting.

  **********

  Waiting so long for a chance to escape had become very boring, but they did their best to stay alert. As time passed, they noticed less and less new arrivals at the Facility – it looked as if the crackdown on identification chips was working. John had studied the movement of officials about the building, as he continued to hack into their systems using the projector. Without hesitation, he told them when it would be time to go, as soon as he had calculated the risks, “We need to go at six in the evening today. There is a periodic shift change over with officers going on two days leave after a twelve-day stint. During the handover process is our best shot.”

  “Why, the systems are automatic…alarms,” Tobias said.

  “Yeah, but we have the codes. It is mostly up to them seeing us. Our Geiga wear is public issue and they have official issue – the differences are obvious.”

  “What about our appearance in general? The systems will identify us.”

  “Yes, another issue. We are going to have to be careful…mostly to keep our heads down.”

  “But the Geiga wear? We can hide our face, but not the suit.”

  “I think I have an answer. See this?” he held a small amount of dusty material in his hand. “I made this from the projector. It uses old silica based chip technology. I guess they figure if it still works…for prisoners, then it is more efficient not to update.”

  “So what is with it?” Asper asked – they were in a tight group talking in low tones.

  “Well, I can crush it with my boot into this dust so that part is easy. But, if I put the dust inside the projector and run a phased projection beam into it, then it picks up remnants of the phasing and holds onto them for about twenty minutes. We just need enough dust to rub on ourselves. This will, I hope, fool the system by masking the readout from visual suit identification. The cameras will effectively blind but only in registering data that is not sufficient to determine the suit types – ours or official.”

  “Well. Let’s get cracking, um crushing,’ Lorraine said.

  “We must be careful not to waste any,” John still looked serious. “The processors are small and we need a fair bit of dust. And do it…”

  “Discreetly,” the others interjected. It had become a familiar way during their imprisonment.

  When they had all of the crushed silica dispensed to each and held in the palm of one hand, the projector would no longer work. There was no turning back. If the authorities caught them and saw what they had done with the holographic technology, they would be cast even deeper within the Facility and would do whatever it took to extract information from John. He still fought the device, it was troubling at times, but he could handle it. He knew if they caught them, even though they were risking losing the information they needed - desperation would eventually lead the authorities to overlook his health.

  At one minute to six, they left the cell. They ran quietly towards the first of a sequence of holographic security shields. John gave the code and they were through. At the next, Tobias gave the code and they continued on. Two more and both Lorraine and Asper gave the code – they had remembered one each, as the codes were ten-digit numbers. The silica was working as camera scanners followed them but failed to identify them, the phasing residue still holding. At one corner they accidentally turned the wrong way – John had mapped their route. Fortunately the group of officials was all filing into a room and so had their backs to them.

  At another corner, they encountered a robot of a type they had never seen before. They stopped concerned it would scan them and raise an alert. They waited, and the robot waited. Seconds went by before they just decided to run. Then the robot moved. It was a JanitorBot – designed to clean and to stop until humans had been able to move around it.

  The perimeter of the building was their biggest challenge, and then though not as difficult to get through, would come the perimeter fence. As they approached, the guard station was full of personnel. “I have a plan for this bit,” John said as they hid in a JanitorBot hall closet. “You can hear the alarms, so they know we are out of our cell – they just don’t know where. This is a classic case, I’ve seen it old movies. But I have an answer. We enter the codes from here and add this extra code, which contains an algorithm I made. It is a simple open door instruction. So the guards will see the doors open but nobody there. It’s going to be a risk, but we are going to have to take out as many as we can, using just our fists. Sounds a little pathetic hey. But…with some distracted, there will be others around not knowing what to do and so their reaction time may be affected. We need to charge them.”

  “But why?”

  “So we can steal one of those little sensors they wear on their tunic. It is an auto sensor for opening the staff only doors around this place.”

  “Gee, you could have told us that before John,” Tobias said thinking of what he would be about to do.

 
“Why? It is not like we could have made any other plan. But feel…you are pretty hyped up now with this escape – we all are. Use this and just go for it. It will give you an edge.” The two women looked at each other thinking ‘yeah’.

  “OK, let’s go. They burst out of the closet as two of the four guards were looking through the open doors, as John had described. They rushed headlong at the other two, punching and pushing them around until Tobias said he had a sensor. Immediately they broke off and followed him through the small staff door and onto stairs leading directly outside.

  They were part free in a sense, as there was still the perimeter fence. They ran. An apprehension robot appeared from off the wall and gave chase. It strode on metal legs, taking galloping leaps in pursuit. They were ten yards from the fence where guards without weapons drawn, were manning a gate ready to apprehend them if the robot failed.

  The robot was only two yards behind them as they reached the gate – it could extend its arms and seize them, but not all of them at once. Dazed by their actual arrival to the gate and not having been seized by the robots, the guards, fresh to their shift, were knocked to the ground as the group ran straight at them. This made for a confusing scene as the robot extended its arms, probing for the right person to seize. It was programmed to apprehend dissidents only and so had to avoid the guards. Tobias finally made it to the gate and placed the sensor up to the reader device and the gate opened. Asper and Lorraine were attacking one guard, and John was dodging another and the robot. John saw the open gate and maneuvered towards it.

  When he was close enough a few seconds later, he yelled, “Go!” and dashed through. The two women immediately let go of the guard and ran through the gate. But neither the guards nor the robot were ending it there. They immediately opened the gates, giving the robot a chance to make chase. It did, and so did the guards. Failure for them was not an option.

  It ran, pounding the soil beneath it as it took huge strides in pursuit of them. The guards soon fell behind but did not give up. John told them to turn to the left and keep running. They ran and ran and the robot closed in – now just thirty yards behind. The ground beneath them became unstable and began to sink, but their determination to escape was as strong as ever. They ran on, their chests heaving. Their boots suddenly splashed into water and this slowed them down. “Swim,” John yelled, so they did. The water was getting too deep, but it saved them.

  The robot stood at the water’s edge – it was not equipped to pursue dissidents in water. Then the guards appeared, but only the robot could see the fugitives out in the dark waters. The guards upon seeing they were helpless were beside themselves when they thought about reporting this to their superiors – as were the other guards the escapees has left in their wake just inside the building.

  The robot left the scene and proceeded back to the facility. When it arrived, personnel were already tracking the group based on the data the robot had sent to central systems. They had a sensor lock on their bodies as they swam across the marshy lake, and then again as they emerged out of the water on the other side. They dispatched teams to apprehend the escapees and soon they would be back into separate cells this time. A few officers attending the holographic readouts smiled a little as they watched the imminent capture. They looked at each other feeling smug nobody could beat their efficiencies, and then looked back in horror seeing the dissidents had disappeared. They frantically contacted those dispatched to get information. They entered holographic sequences to adjust scanners. There were no sightings. None, they were lost. Then the guards really began to worry.

  John, Tobia, Asper, and Lorraine had escaped and were exhausted as they huddled together under a central systems node. It was a box for major hardware connections and John knew these boxes emitted enough waveforms of various types to kill the signal they were being tracked with. “We need to stay here for as long as we feel it is OK. They can track us if they scan, so we need to go on.”

  “How far apart are these nodes,” Lorraine asked.

  “Every two miles around here,” John replied. “They link up to the transit tubes closer to the city.

  “Well, it’s going to be a series of two mile dashes then isn’t it?”

  “I guess.”

  “Don’t guess John, you never really do that. We can do this run. I know they will spot us, but what other choices do we have. Think of the Geiga wear. It will maintain our body temperatures…”

  “Giving us more endurance,” Asper was keen to get going.

  “It is eight miles to the nearest transit – the one we came off when we were driven to the facility.”

  “They’ll have robots there,” Tobias added.

  “Then what else? Asper and I want to keep going,” Lorraine added.

  “There are service bots on the transit lines. They only travel once per night though, to clean the viewing section of the tube.”

  “What time?”

  “Past curfew…”

  “That doesn’t matter, what time?”

  “Normally around ten at night.”

  “Then we need to travel eight miles before ten. It’s six thirty now. That’s about three hours or so to get there. Let’s go!”

  They ran as fast as possible and the suits did help them run for longer. They were tracked along a meandering course following the node line. At each two-mile section they stopped to get their breath and prepare for the next run. Twenty minutes after nine, they were at the last section and could see the distant transit line, now quiet without traffic. They waited at the last node, and they knew the authorities were mapping their course – after two nodes, they had established a pattern.

  “They will think we will go for the off ramp over there in the distance,” John told them. The ramp could be seen as at first it branched off the main line, first as a tunnel, which then opened to a ramp to join to the surface road below. “But we have to wait.”

  “They’ll close in. We’ll be sitting ducks.”

  “Not wait here. We need to split up. That way it will provide them with multiple targets in the area. It will give them more to look at. Then we meet at the underside of the ramp just before ten. There are a series of nodes around the ramp – so use them.”

  They ran the last section together and then split at the node. It was working as the officials saw multiple targets appear and disappear as the fugitives ran about and under nodes. For a while they all ended back up at their split up point and talked for a minute before heading off again. It was exhausting.

  Ten minutes later, John paused at one of the nodes near the ramp. He could see a robot standing and blocking all access. It looked different from the one that had chased them out of the Facility. Then he realized it was weapons enabled with laser pulse weapons on each claw hand. There was also a central weapon between the two arms coming out of the mid section. ‘Probably a static field emitter to knock people over,’ he thought. Then he ran.

  When it was five minutes before ten, they were gathered under a node on the bottom of the ramp. “With flux mechanics, they would never have such a problem tracking us. Their scanners would not be affected by these nodes. But it is much more than that. I don’t want them to get hold of the technology – they could create artificial intentions for people using the faster than light capacity within the flux. That means algorithms for intentions before feelings and that gets too spooky for my liking.”

  “Well lucky you did not tell them John,” Lorraine said grabbing his hand.

  They had to climb aboard the maintenance robot and it would be difficult.

  “We will climb up the underside of the ramp. Then… we need to go around onto the tube. There is access of sorts, but more like a pipe than a ladder. This did not bother them, as it was still all or nothing.

  “Shuffle up the pipe and wait for the robot?” Lorraine asked.

  “That’s about it.”

  “But how fast do the cleaning units go?” Asper asked this time.

  “It will be stopped
at the time we get on. They operate in sections. Each robot goes along, and then back on its designated section. One way to clean and the other way to polish. The authorities do like to keep these things well maintained and show off their achievements.”

  “So it’s more of this section jumping?”

  “Um, yeah. But we will need to get off…obviously. Somewhere we cannot be detected.”

  “How fast do they go?” Asper was insistent.

  “About eighty miles per hour over a section of ten miles.”

  They had climbed the underside of the ramp and were just about to get onto the pipe, when the robot nearby shifted its position – until now it had been entirely stationary. This could only mean it had detected something to John, and he was right. They could see scanners emit as rays from what could be described as a head. It was just the upper section and at this height, it was the best place to install scanners. The rays swept the area, as the robot had not zeroed in on their precise location due to node interference between them. They kept climbing.

  Tobias reached the top first and gave a hand to Asper and Lorraine. John was following and made it a few seconds later. The robot was continuing the scan and at any moment would pinpoint them by filtering out the remnants of interference still coming from the node thirty meters below. As they waited for the maintenance robot, they were discovered. Immediately the robot on the ground automatically began firing stun laser pulses, until an officer stopped it before it could kill them by their unconscious bodies falling to the ground below. They still wanted the flux mechanics knowledge John held and so needed him alive for now. The officer then entered another sequence instructing the robot to retrieve them physically. It responded instantly by walking to the tube and climbing up. There was no delay in how it reached the base of the tube twenty meters off the ground, as it simply used Vandervals force to attach itself to the large struts supporting the structure.

  They four of them could see the maintenance robot appearing out of the gloomy light along the top of the tunnel moving quickly and deftly up the side of the tube. “This will be tricky,” John yelled above the sound of the climbing robot now beginning to scale the top half of the tube itself. “The maintenance unit only stops for five seconds, so we need to be fast. Grab anything you can and then climb on top. Nothing else. Here we go!”