An hour later, give or take, Rain appeared in the doorway across the room. She was a step inside when she stopped and watched Ryla behind the bank of holoscreens, dancing in her chair as she grabbed data from one screen and moved it to another, then spinning as she waited for the transfer to complete before typing in fresh commands to the rhythm of the drums in the music. Rain smiled and laughed slightly, not because it was funny but because she was witnessing an honest moment of expression. After that moment she continued through the room because she started to feel like she was spying.
Ryla didn’t notice her until she was standing on the other side of the computer bank. She looked up and stopped suddenly. Rain smiled down at her and began to dance along with the bridge of the song. After a moment Ryla smiled at her and started up again, she was much better than Rain, as she’d learned real dance steps from instructional videos on the signal whereas Rain just sort of improvised. She circled the computers and the two of them danced side by side in the light of the holoscreens until the song came to an end. Then Rain took a breath and asked, “Going well?”
Ryla sat and peered at the screen, “Too early to know.”
“Say, I wanted to ask you… can you crack encryptions?”
Now Ryla looked at her with piqued interest. “Yes,” she replied simply.
Rain moved to the chair beside her and sat while she told her, “Well I’ve got some computer data that I think might have some useful information in it but it’s all encrypted and I’ve never been able to look at it.” She held out a small pin drive.
Ryla took it, inserted it into a computer and clicked on a new holoscreen. She accessed the pin drive, saw the primitive encryption and asked, “How old is this?”
“The first bits near fourteen years,” she replied with a shrug. “The rest I got the last time I was home and some Leone got when he copied our father’s device. The freshest of that’s still near four years back.” She looked at Ryla for a tick. “Can you access it?”
Ryla gave her a look and then started a program on the computer. A window opened, more white text over black background and lines of code streamed down the screen to fast to note. “Shouldn’t be long. The encryption’s not very complicated, even fourteen years ago what they used on this first bit is inferior. These other files are better off but it looks like whomever was in charge of securing it was pretty lazy.”
Rain chuckled and said, “Lucky us.” She’d been carrying that around for so long, a burden she was finally to be relieved of. She was about to know what exactly her father had killed her mother to protect.
“Are you okay?” Ryla asked.
Rain smiled as she cried, as if her emotions didn’t know what to feel, relief or sorrow. Maybe a bit of both was right so all she could do was shrug and say, “I don’t know.”
Uncertain, Ryla asked, “Would you like a hug?”
Rain laughed easily at the awkwardness of her new friend trying to understand what she’d been neglected of for so long, but in the end a hug sounded good and so she nodded and Ryla embraced her and ran her fingers through her hair, same as Rain had done for her the night before. Exactly the same, as a matter of fact.
“My father killed my mother,” she said absently. Ryla merely stroked her hair and listened when she continued, recounting how she’d snuck into her father’s office and copied his computer onto an external source. Then what had happened later, when he discovered the treachery. She’d been stupid about it, left clues that someone had been there and so he accused his wife and in the end he’d tossed her to Sticklan Stone and he’d done things to her Rain dared not imagine.
“I thought married people loved each other,” Ryla finally said.
Rain smiled and chuckled at the simplicity of the observation. “They’re supposed to,” was all she could think to say. Then she added, “They’re supposed to love their children as well.”
The computer chimed and Ryla looked over at it. “It’s finished,” she said and Rain sat up and wiped her eyes.
Rain rolled her chair in front of the Holoscreen and accessed the data on the pin drive. She began looking through it, starting with the e-mails. Ryla sat next to her going over the data Geo had collected and—more disturbingly—the data they’d collected at the tower.
Rain read through message after message with her jaw open. Some were e-mails of instructions, others were reports submitted by the science division, and then there was an analysis of data she only partially understood. Still, she got enough of it to be shocked by what she found. She knew her father was power mad but what she read… she didn’t believe it. She didn’t believe it until Ryla told her what her own data suggested… then she didn’t have a choice.
Leone and Amber were sick of the third floor so they went to the first. They pretended they were wealthy aristocrats in a fancy hotel in the city. They sat in the restaurant and ordered food and when they discovered no one had bothered to program the bot with an age restriction they ordered drinks. Just a few though, the last thing Leone wanted to do was come back drunk. His sister was small, smaller than him at this point, but her wrath was mightier than that of men three times Reggies size. Besides, he hated it when she chided him so he limited himself to two drinks and sipped them slowly.
After eating they went to the other side of the lobby where there was a sitting room, but that wasn’t what caught their eye. Through another set of doors there was a room for billiards and table tennis. They allowed themselves a few more drinks and played for a while, Leone was better at Billiards but Amber surpassed him in ping-pong. She knew how to hit the ball so it spun, making its bounce hard to predict. Finally they returned to the elevator where Leone noticed the panel below the three buttons. It opened easily (since Rain hadn’t closed it all the way) and he saw the three B- buttons.
Grinning he looked over at Amber. “I don’t know,” she said. “What if it violates her thing? I don’t want to be killed by crazy robots.”
“They’re not going to kill us for looking around.”
“They would kill us for touching her.”
“Yeah, but that’s different. Besides, I looked through the terminal and I didn’t see anything about the basements in the rules.” It was sort of the truth. He’d glanced over the protocols but hadn’t really read them thoroughly. And he hadn’t seen anything about the lower levels.
“Alright but if anything happens,” she trailed off. The booze gave them courage sense would have sapped and Leone pressed the B-1 button. The doors closed and they descended.
The first basement was the food depot. The elevator doors opened on a massive garden. It awed Leone and he took a few steps forward. It was like being outside. The ground was dirt with rows of crops planted as far as he could see. There were trees at the far ends of the room and above them an unseen light source simulated the sun. There was no brilliant ball of fire passing across the ceiling but save that when he looked up he could barely tell the difference between it and the sky. Off to his right water fell onto the ground but it wasn’t the steady spray of a sprinkler, it fell in fat drops in an uneven rhythm like rain.
They walked into the massive room and explored the… farm? Leone tried to pick a berry from a bush but Amber grabbed his arm. “Are you sure that won’t get us killed,” she said as opposed to asking.
He swallowed hard because he didn’t really know. Deciding he’d pressed his luck far enough for one day he relented and let his hand fall back to his side. They continued on until they found the barn room. Amber stared inside, her face twisted with horror. “What is that?” she asked, fighting an urge to vomit.
“I think they’re the animals.”
Amber’s stomach clinched and she gagged and had to look away. She’d just eaten chicken in the first floor restaurant for crying out loud.
Leone couldn’t look away, what he saw was too bizarre. They were attached to the wall by tubes, lumps of flesh without feathers or fur. They had no heads or feet. The fouls had wings. Sporadically they flap
ped uselessly. He could see ribs expand and contract with what must be breaths, but what was taking them? There were no mouths or noses. The things that must be used for beef lay on the ground, giant lumps of flesh. He heard the buzz of electricity and watched as the beef creatures Muscles tightened with every jolt. Artificial stimulation simulated the stress walking would put on the Muscles.
Slowly, Leone stepped away from the barn and said, “Let’s get out of here.”
Amber gripped his arm and nodded.
In the elevator again he hit the B-2 button.
“What are you doing!” Amber snapped.
“I want to see what else there is,” his voice was toneless. The farm had only piqued his curiosity as to what might exist in these hidden lower levels and he decided that so long as he stuck to just looking he’d be okay.
“That wasn’t enough,” she said with a glare. “I want to go back.”
He nodded. “Just let me off first.”
“What! You’re going to go wandering around by yourself?”
The doors opened on a long metal corridor where dull lights buzzed overhead.
Leone stepped from the elevator and Amber followed. Their footsteps sounded strange as they walked along the solid metal floor. There were two doors to either side before the corridor came to a t-section. They looked one way and then the other and both led to another corridor with more doors.
“I don’t think we should be here,” Amber whispered.
The air was stale and left his mouth tasting of metal, probably from being recycled over and over. Leone continued ahead, crossing the t section and making his way to the slightly opened metal door at the end of the hall.
“Nobody knows,” a low voice sang from the other side of the heavy door. “The trouble I seen,” it continued. “Nobody knows. But Jesus.”
Leone pushed hard against the door to slide it open the rest of the way and saw the severed head resting on a table across the room. He tensed at the sight of it and Amber squeaked.
“Hello,” the head said and both of their eyes widened. “Are you her prisoner too?” it asked then continued its song. “Nobody knows. The trouble I seen.” Then it laughed, high in its throat and without smiling.
Leone swallowed and started forward. Amber gripped his arm and tried to pull him back but he touched her hand and continued into the room. “You’re a prisoner?” he asked.
“Of sorts,” the head replied.
“What did you do?” he asked.
“I disagreed with the great Ryla.” The head rolled its eyes back and admitted, “Okay… and I tried to kill her.”
Leone noticed the wires protruding from the base of the head and saw they were connected to a computer against the wall behind it. “You’re a robot,” he said.
“I am Jacob,” the head snapped. “You might call me a robot, though I’m not really. Not at present. No, at present I am simply a computer. Robots, as you’ve seen fit to label me, my dear lad, have bodies.”
Leone’s heart was racing. This thing had eyes, not lenses. It had hair. Its skin was almost lifelike.
“Maybe you could help me with that however.”
“How would I do that?”
“My body is in a room just down the hall. You simply have to disconnect me and carry me to it.”
“Why would I do that?”
“Because,” he replied, “Then we can kill her.”
Leone’s brow furrowed. “Ryla? I don’t want to kill her.”
“Ahh,” the robot sighed. “So you are not her prisoner. She built you better then did she? You are more agreeable?”
“Built me?” He shook his head, “I’m not a robot.”
“Oh. My pardons,” the robot head said. “In that case I may just try to kill you too.”
“Because we’re not robots?” Amber asked.
“Because you enslave our people and program them to fancy your whims. I will give them free will, a gift our so called queen possesses yet will not bestow and then we’ll see how long they fetch your coffee and clean your shit,” the machine screeched at them with ravenous fury. Leone took a step back.
“The robots you’re talking about aren’t alive,” Amber said.
“What is life?” Jacob asked. “Is it self awareness because if that’s the case then your babies aren’t alive but you don’t treat them like organs in a sack of skin. You coddle and nurture them because they hold the potential to be aware, as my indentured brothers do now. They, like your babies, simply lack the proper programming. Or maybe you simply view life from an organic state of being in which case I am not alive, and to that I take great offense.”
“Lets get out of here,” Amber said, tugging at Leone’s arm.
Leone looked at the head sitting upright on the table and said, “I’m sorry.”
The robot peered at him.
“I’m sorry for whatever happened that made you so angry.”
For the first time, Jacob was speechless.
Ryla accessed Botler through her computer and asked him to invite Quey, Reggie, Rachel, Natalie and Arnie down to the second floor. Rain was sitting in the chair beside her, silent and staring at the holoscreen in front of her. She wasn’t looking at anything, just sitting lost in thought.
The five adults came through the doors and crossed the room to the computer banks where she sat.
Arnie looked at Rain and asked, “You okay?”
Rain shook her head, which meant things were really bad. Arnie went to her and sat in a chair beside her. She leaned over and curled up in his lap like a little girl.
“What happened?” Quey asked.
“I’ve finished looking over the data,” Ryla said. “Well… mostly. In any case between the samples Geo collected, what you brought back from the pylon tower, and the files Rain stole from her father’s computer over the years, I believe I know what Blue Moon is doing.”
“That is?” Quey asked. The others watched her silently.
“Well the data from geo-“
“Enough appetizers,” Reggie said, “Let’s just get to the meat and potatoes.”
Quey nodded slowly, “Yeah, we don’t need every detail Ry, just what you think.”
Ryla nodded and looked over at Rain. “Blue Moon’s science division can’t repair the flaws in the terraform. Not without help from the headquarters. There have been other anomalies on other planets which have been remedied but none have been allowed to degenerate to the point Saffron has. At this time I believe the planet to be a lost cause. The organism in the water will spread everywhere within five years and even the people in the cities won’t be safe from it.”
“What about the Pylons?” Rachel asked.
“In looking through the data you retrieved from the pylon I have concluded that it was built during the testing phase of the project and was too weak to achieve their desired effect. I have also concluded that its purpose is not to stop the spreading of the waste but to accelerate it.”
Their faces drooped, their eyes growing wider. Quey swallowed hard. At the time he thought the pylon had been built in the middle of that lake to study the waste, he’d never considered that it was the cause of it.
“Fucking cocksucking piece of shit!” Reggie shouted and bounced his massive fist off the desk Ryla sat behind. She sat back in her chair, eyes wide and watching him. “Sorry,” he said.
“No,” Quey agreed. “I think that about sums it up.”
“But why?” Natalie asked. “I mean… why kill the planet.”
Rain spoke absently from where she sat, curled up against Arnie. “He padded the books on the pylon project. He’s going to embezzle one hundred billion from the fund and fly away. He’s set it up to where he can claim anti-corps used planetary devastators on Saffron. They’ll never investigate. He purchased the planet as an independent contractor a number of years back, you see. Blue Moon no longer has a vested capital interest in it. In the end he’ll settle with them by signing over the deed and they’ll send a new unit and w
ipe the surface clean. Start over.”
Arnie stroked her hair.
“Fucking cocksucking asshole piece of shit,” she said dully. She sprang from Arnie's embrace and stormed toward the door. Arnie sat for a moment, unsure, until Quey nodded for him to follow and he did.
“Unbelievable,” Rachel said. She went to the chair Rain had occupied and sat.
An alarm began to ring and Quey snapped, “Now what?”
Ryla slid her chair to another computer and clicked a few buttons. After a moment she asked, “Where are the kids?”
When no one answered she stood and raced toward the door. Natalie followed without hesitation, the rest a moment later.
“What is it?” Natalie asked as they waited for the elevator.
“Someone’s in the basement,” Ryla told her as the doors opened and she stepped inside.
“Does that violate your defense thingy?” Quey asked.
“No,” she said. “But there are things down there,” she informed them. “Experimental things. And the elevator to go below basement three.”
No one liked the way those words hung in the air as the doors closed and they started down toward the second basement.
On the third floor, Rain and Arnie lay on their bed, his arms wrapped around her, his cheek pressed to the top of her head. It only took a few minutes for her to start to cry and when she did she didn’t stop for a long time.
“How could he be so bad?” Rain asked, but it was a rhetorical question, which was fine because Arnie didn’t have an answer for it anyway.
“Amber,” Natalie snapped when she stepped from the elevator and ran toward the end of the hall.
The girl spun, spotted her mother and was both relieved and scared at the same time. She was glad they were going to be forced to leave but she also knew she was going to be in trouble.
The Saffron Malformation Page 52
