The same world that fascinated him only moments ago now sickened him, and Arik began to worry about vomiting in his helmet. The nausea and disorientation convinced him that he needed to get back to the rover, but just as he started to turn, he found himself careening forward from a massive blow to the back of his helmet. His legs were unprepared for the sudden forward momentum, and after a few feeble steps, they fell behind and he went down into the sand and sludge in front of him. He scrambled backwards and turned himself over, instinctively raising the plug gun to defend himself, and the moment he felt pressure on the muzzle, he jerked the action bar back. His visor was almost entirely coated with a combination of grit and the thick black mire he had fallen into, but he could see far enough in front of him to witness the pneumatic chamber turn crimson, then yellowish as his attacker's intestines filled it and pressed against the plastic tubing. The shrill scream from above penetrated his helmet and pierced his eardrums. He reversed the action of the plug gun and the weight that was on top of him was gone.
Whatever knocked him down had not been wearing an environment suit.
He was trying wildly to get to his feet when he had his legs jerked violently out from under him, then felt himself being dragged by his boots away from where he had fallen. Just as he regained the presence of mind to try to kick and fight, he felt himself pinned to the ground at the arms and legs. A tremendous weight was applied to his chest, and a moment later, a green spark appeared through the grime on his helmet and gradually grew into a long blurry emerald flame. A heavy fleshy appendage landed on his visor and slowly and deliberately wiped aside enough of the film that he could see what was on top of him.
It was a human form, though grotesquely disfigured. It was completely exposed except for a primitive plastic respirator through which Arik could see a nose of only a few protruding shards of cartilage, and exposed gums and jaws in which were set short metallic teeth filed into points. It was bald, and its head and face were covered in wide black lesions. It's eyes were hard and dry and misaligned, and they looked at Arik more with curiosity than savagery. In its webbed stump-of-a-hand, it grasped a green laser cutter which it lowered slowly toward Arik's visor.
Then a hole appeared just below the creature's eye, directly through its sinus cavity, and for a moment, Arik could see deep into its head before it burst apart, coating his visor and turning his vision red. A fraction of a second later, he heard the shot.
The weights on his arms and legs were gone. There were two more shots in close succession, then a third, and then it was silent. Arik wondered if he'd been shot, but the HUD inside his helmet reported that his suit was intact. He tried to see what was around him, but his vision was almost completely obscured by the red and black fragments dripping from his visor.
He felt his heel being kicked, and a moment later, his helmet rocked back and forth as his visor was wiped down. There were two environment suits above him: one kneeling over his head, and the other standing at his feet. He could see mouths moving through the visors, but he wasn't receiving their audio.
They each grabbed one of Arik's arms and hoisted him up. Arik watched them talk to each other as they looked at his eyes and inspected his suit. Their environment suits were an entirely different design than Arik's — some sort of flexible metallic material — and their visors encompassed more of their helmets affording them greater peripheral vision. Both the faces inside were bearded, gaunt, and clearly exhausted.
They guided Arik gently, each holding an arm, moving at his pace. Arik looked up and saw that they were approaching a vehicle. He tried to find the rover, but couldn't see where he'd left it. Each of the men had long rifles on their shoulders with fat illuminated digital scopes, and the taller one was holding Arik's plug gun.
A pressure door emerged from the side of the truck, then divided into two. One of the men used a running board to step up into the opening, then turned and took Arik's hand. Arik stepped up, and was simultaneously pulled and pushed inside. He sat down on a bench and watched the doors close and seal them in.
It was dark inside the truck, but there were enough instruments with diodes and brightly lit screens that Arik was able to see. There were two more rifles mounted on the wall, four pistols with trigger guards wide enough to accommodate gloves, and what appeared to be machetes, but with handles designed to be gripped with both hands. A green diode above the door illuminated, and both the men removed their helmets. One of them picked up a small wireless device and sat in front of a wide monitor in the back of the vehicle. His long unkempt black hair was wet and flat with perspiration.
A picture appeared on the screen, and Arik could see that it was coming from a camera mounted on the top of the vehicle. As it panned, he noticed crosshairs in the center of them image, and a muzzle protruding from either side.
The other man removed Arik's helmet and stowed it under the bench. He had thin blond hair, but a fierce and full red beard. His mustache grew down over his mouth like red stalactites, and he was chewing something vigorously.
"You're all right now, boy," the man said in a accent that Arik didn't recognize. And then to the other man: "Do a thermal scan before we go."
The screen went dark and began panning. It centered on a small pink mound on the ground with another slightly darker mound nearby.
"It looks like three down," the man controlling the camera said. "One thanks to this kid. Nothing moving now."
The man with the red beard pounded on the wall next to him and the vehicle started moving. In gained speed rapidly and they all bounced and swayed with the rough terrain. The men sitting on either side of Arik seemed more concerned with their equipment than with him.
"What's happening?" Arik finally asked. He wasn't sure what the right question was. "Who are you?"
The man with the black hair snapped his rifle into an empty rack on the wall. "Right now, we're your very best friends in the world. Do you have any idea what would have happened to you if we hadn't found you?" He picked up Arik's plug gun and inspected the stained muzzle. "This is an damned interesting contraption. It did a hell of a job on that poor bastard back there."
"Who were they?"
The man removed the cartridge from Arik's plug gun and casually stowed it in a cabinet with other cartridges of various sizes and shapes. "They're the homeless," he said.
"Here you go, boy." The other man was offering Arik a plastic bottle. "Drink this. Are you hurt?"
"I don't know. I don't think so. Where are we going?"
"We're taking you home."
Arik could feel that the vehicle was moving quickly. He knew he hadn't traveled more than two kilometers away from V1 which meant he didn't have much time to as questions.
"Where we are?"
The two men looked at each other. The man with the black beard put his head back and squeezed two clear drops into one eye.
"Should we tell him?"
"Fuck it. That fucking place is demented. He deserves to know."
"It may be demented, but it pays well. You sure you want to bite the hand that feeds us?" He passed the eye drops to the other man.
"I'm sure he's figured most of out by now, anyway. Haven't you, Arik? Where do you think we are?"
"I'll give you a hint," the man with black hair said. He blinked his watery eyes. "It ain't Ishtar Terra."
Arik looked at each of the men and wondered if it was a mistake to admit how much he had figured out. But he knew this could be his last opportunity to talk to anyone willing to give him the truth.
"Somewhere on the continent of Antarctica," Arik said. "Judging by the length of the day."
The man with the red hair smiled. "So it's true what they say about you! You are a fucking genius!"
"All the more brains for the homeless," the other man said flatly.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Decontamination
When the inner airlock doors opened, Arik found the dock aglow in red emergency lighting. Two men wearing full isolation suits an
d masks waited in the center of the room beside a large plastic bin. There was a female voice calmly reciting instructions, but they were too muffled by his helmet for him to understand. The scene brought a fresh wave of panic over Arik as he tried to draw a correlation between his actions and what appeared to be an actual level zero emergency. He shouldn't have left the doors in the wall unlocked. All of V1 had been vulnerable for well over an hour. He imagined what the man in the van had called "the homeless" cranking open the steel barriers, running in coordinated packs toward V1, using the airlock's emergency ingress lever to get inside. He envisioned the grotesquely deformed figures sweeping through the halls and pods of V1, closing their trap-like jaws around the flesh of the people he loved, tearing it off in red and black chunks. He saw fleshy appendages using laser cutters to dismember bodies and divide human remains, to open the tops of heads to get at the fatty proteins inside.
Something was very wrong.
As the two men approached, Arik recognized them as his father and Dr. Nguyen. Darien's gloved hands broke the seal of Arik's helmet, and began unthreading the collar. Dr. Nguyen stepped behind Arik, and Arik could feel him doing something to the back of the suit. As his helmet was removed, Arik listened to the eerily sedate voice emanating from the polymeth around them:
"—emergency level zero. This is a full oxygen lockdown. Report to your nearest oxygen station and await further instructions. Attention. We are currently at emergency level zero. This is a full oxygen lockdown—"
"What's going on?" Arik asked his father.
Darien leaned in close. "You are to say absolutely nothing until we are alone." Most of his face was covered by his mask, but all Arik needed to see were his eyes. "Do you understand?"
Arik nodded.
Darien dropped the helmet to the bottom of the plastic bin. This was not how Arik imagined his reentry into V1 — the beginnings of a new and entirely different life for himself and his generation — but the level zero emergency put him on the defensive. It forced him right back into the subservient and obsequious role he had sworn only minutes before to never recognize again. But even without the chaos, Arik was realizing that he would probably never be able to challenge his father, to demand anything from him, to address Darien as a true peer. The foundation of Arik's relationship with his father would always be deference, not equality.
"How does it look?" Darien said. He was working on the latch inside the suit's metal collar.
"It's reporting full integrity," Dr. Nguyen said from behind Arik, "but I want to do a field decontamination just to be sure."
The two men helped Arik out of his suit. Everything they removed went into the plastic bin: gloves, Arik's watch, cuff and sleeve straps, the sweat-soaked hachimaki, and finally the entire suit itself.
"Your clothes, too, Arik," Dr. Nguyen said. "Everything goes in the bin."
Arik hesitated, but he didn't protest. There was no one else in the dock, and from what he could see of the shop from where he was standing, the entire Wrench Pod was empty. By now, everyone in V1 would be sealed inside pressurized oxygen chambers or zipped into temporary tents. Arik peeled off his clothing and dropped it into the bin. His body was wet with perspiration and he stood shivering in the center of the dock, his bare feet pressing into the metal grate floor.
The two men stood back, and Dr. Nguyen opened a portable decontamination kit. He removed a small canister, shook it vigorously, and punched a hole in the top with a tool that was embedded in the cap. A fine vapor was ejected from the nozzle which Dr. Nguyen directed up and down Arik's body while circling him. The vapor was drawn to Arik's bare skin where it adhered and quickly dried into a fine white powder. Dr. Nguyen then removed a wand from the kit, twisted the handle, and began moving it slowly just above the surface of Arik's skin. It emitted a deep ultraviolet light which Arik could tell was interacting with the dried vapor, and he could also tell from the clicking sound it made that it was searching for dangerous levels of radiation. When Dr. Nguyen was satisfied, he tore the top off a foil bag and removed a light-blue robe and a pair of slippers.
"Put these on, please, Arik."
The material felt waxy and it clung to his skin, crinkling as he moved. The last item in the kit was a carton of powder with a small, stiff plastic brush fastened to the side. Dr. Nguyen removed his gown and gloves and dropped them into the bin.
"Darien, if you'll finish up here, I'll escort Arik to his room."
Darien nodded, then leveled a serious look at his son. "We'll talk soon."
Arik could tell they were on their way to the Doc pod. Aside from Dr. Nguyen giving Arik curt instructions along the way, the two did not speak, though the oxygen lockdown instructions effectively filled the silence. The maglev tubes glowed red like giant arteries.
When they got to the room, Dr. Nguyen directed Arik to the shower. He gave Arik a plastic hazardous waste bag which was for his robe, slippers, brush, and the empty detergent carton when he was finished. Arik was told to use the powder all over his body, but to avoid getting it into his mouth, eyes, and nostrils.
By the time Arik got out of the shower, the lighting had returned to normal and the recording had stopped. There was a set of new clothes on the bed, still wrapped in crisp cellophane, and a bottle of water on the bedside table. Arik's skin was irritated and swollen from the detergent and the stiff plastic bristles.
Arik had figured out back in the dock that the level zero emergency was probably just a drill, but it wasn't until he was in the shower that he realized its purpose. With everyone in V1 sealed inside oxygen chambers and tents, there was nobody for Arik to come into contact with while being escorted to the Doc Pod. Other than Dr. Nguyen and Darien, the last time anyone saw Arik was when he was prepping for his EVA. With all of his equipment and clothing collected and presumably incinerated, there was no evidence that he had ever returned. As far as the rest of V1 was concerned, Arik was still outside.
Arik touched the fogged polymeth wall beside the door, and was not surprised when it didn't open.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Quarantine
When Arik woke up, the small hospital room was dim, and he couldn't tell whether it was late in the evening, or if he'd slept all night. He instinctively checked his wrist, but it was bare. He started to feel around in the bed for his watch when he recalled his father dropping it into the plastic bin along with the rest of his equipment and clothing. It all felt like a dream to him at first, but unlike dreams which tended to fade the more you went over them in your mind, everything was streaming back, filling in, pushing away the numbness of sleep and replacing it with the mounting dread of reality.
When Arik sat up, he realized that someone had been in the room. His workspace filled the wall with a video message cued up, the frozen first frame of his father's grim face casting a somber glow. There was a hard compact case on the chair in the corner, and a boxed meal had been placed on the table by the bed.
The sight of the food made Arik realize how hungry he was. He picked up the plastic box, broke the vacuum seal, then set it back down while he waited for the chemical reaction to heat the stemstock inside. Darien's huge blue eyes were looking just past Arik, seemingly transfixed by something on the other side of the room. Arik thought about how sensitive our perception of eye alignment was, how we can always tell when someone is looking directly into our eyes, and how obvious it is when eye contact is intentionally being avoided. He stood up in front of his workspace and activated the message.
Darien's face became animated. His eyes wandered around the room as he gathered his thoughts and tried to settle on where to start. Arik backed away and sat down on the edge of the bed. He could hear the hot gasses escaping from the boxed meal, and the smell of the stemstock filled the room.
His father took a deep breath and looked up.
"Arik, I can't imagine what you must be thinking right now. I'm sorry I couldn't be there in person when you woke up, but there's just too much going on. I brought you somethi
ng to eat, and there's a case with a few of your things on the chair. Dr. Nguyen recommended a short quarantine period, just to be certain everything is ok, so I'm afraid you won't be able to leave just yet. I'm sure he'll be in shortly to explain.
"I don't quite know where to start. I know you must have a lot of questions, and I'll answer them all as soon as I can, but there are a few things I want you to know right away.
"First of all, I need you to understand that V1 was the best life your mother and I could give you. It may not seem like it right now, but you have no idea how lucky we are to live here. We have air, food, water, shelter, protection. You've seen what it's like out there for people who don't have the things that we have, and believe me when I tell you that you haven't seen the worst of it.
"Arik, the human race has failed spectacularly. I don't know how else to say it. There are no governments left, no laws, no economies. There's so much waste and poison and destruction out there that it's easier to contain ourselves than to contain it. Humanity's greatest achievement has turned out to be finally overcoming the forces which, for hundreds of thousands of years, prevented us from destroying ourselves.
"I don't know that anyone fully understands how it happened — how mankind was intelligent enough to defeat the natural system of checks and balances, but somehow not intelligent enough ensure its own survival. The easy answer is that there were simply too many variables. While one part of the world was perfecting cost effective solar technology, another part of the world was pumping so many pollutants and particles into the air that sunlight couldn't penetrate the atmosphere anymore. Just when wind turbine technology reached its peak, weather patterns became too unpredictable to know where to build them. Nuclear technology was supposed to be the big savior, but it ended up being the most destructive form of energy in history since the proliferation of reactors also meant the proliferation of weapons-grade enriched uranium and plutonium. The equations were just too complex, and there were just too many competing and chaotic and neutralizing forces for anyone to fully comprehend.
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