The Saffron Malformation

by Walker, Bryan

  As he sat, contemplating, he wasn’t sure what confused him more, the fact that the shudders were closed or that he was curious about it.

  With nothing else to do he stood and went back to the elevator and pressed the button for the second floor. When the doors opened again he stepped out and walked listlessly to the bank of computers in the main room.

  With a few quick commands he brought the computer out of rest mode and then slid open the small panel on the tip of his index finger and plugged directly into it. He accessed it and found the reason for the shudders being closed. The building was in full defense mode, completely locked underground, and basements three through five were on alert.

  Boyfriend was puzzled by this so he delved into the computer again and found that basement three was where a great deal of the buildings defenses were housed. Most of the projects in there had been established by Ryla. Basement four was where the buildings experimental defenses were housed, the things the old people had started up.

  Basement five? He pondered it as he began rummaging through the files.

  He discovered the fifth basement was really just a set of bunkers spread out across what was now the wastes. They existed under the regions where the scientists who once ran this building had set up housing in small communities.

  He backed out of the files and looked through the other two subsections of the building. The First was uninteresting, a food source, but the second was as interesting as the others. It was where the biological software integration projects were conducted all those years ago.

  Boyfriend thought for a moment about where to begin. There were no protocols for him to follow. It was completely up to him. He settled in the chair, turning away from the blank holoscreens and leaning back with his eyes closed as data streamed from the computer into him.

  He learned about the second basement, where they developed new software, new chips, circuit boards and processors. This was where Ryla built all the hardware for her robots before transporting it back up to the second floor to work on the shells and installation process. It seemed she wrote code for the software as much from the terminal he was sitting at now as she did in the second basement but that was because she’d modified things. In the original design of the building she would not have been able to do this. Every floor had been kept separated until she merged them. Curiosity brought him to dozens of files, documents that led him to the knowledge that Ryla had initiated this merging while the other people were still here. She did it without anyone knowing, even the one she called father. He had tried to calm the situation, assuring the other programmers and engineers that she was harmless and the building was as well, but a consequence of the merge was that the building developed somewhat of a mind of its own, not a fully functioning one capable of complex thoughts like he had now, but things had begun to happen in the forth basement. Some of the projects down there seemed to sprout a mind of their own. In the end the scientists had seen something. Some ‘incident’ Boyfriend could find no record of. After that they had decided pursuing the current path of the project was too dangerous without further testing. They would keep Ryla isolated and terminate the current phase of her development. Also something called Annie was to be taken offline, as it wasn’t developing the way they’d hoped. Apparently Ryla did not like that choice and, instead, made a different one.

  Boyfriend stopped. The computer still contained the incident report the building had made that day. Ryla had left her room late in the night and made her way to the computer banks on the first floor, it hadn’t been a hotel lobby back then but another projects room. She used one of the terminals to access the project records. When she was done she rewrote the buildings defense protocols. The next day...

  Boyfriend was shocked. They didn’t know. They came to work in the morning and found what they believed to be a malfunctioning computer. They were just trying to reboot it, to get it working properly again. It violated a number of defense gates and before long the building responded. They didn’t stand a chance.

  After that she had no need for what was on the first and third floors, so she changed them, moving some equipment to the labs on the second basement, others to the rooms on the third, and some even went out to the fifth basement bunkers.

  But why wasn’t the forth and fifth basement working? He searched for the cause. In fact, they were operational, they were just on a separate system from the rest of the building. She’d quarantined the lower two basements, though near as he could tell they were still functioning and accessible.

  He sat back ponderously. Maybe there was something in Ryla’s files-

  There had been… it was wiped clean, and she knew how to do it so no trace remained. All he could pull was a few bits that, when pieced together, vaguely referenced something called ‘the bio-integration experiment.’

  “What were you up to,” Boyfriend wondered to himself, then wondered why he’d spoken at all.

  Moments passed and while he was unaware of any processes going on he knew his processor was working at an accelerated rate. When he slowed he found he’d accessed the planetary network. He was looking for news stories about the building but found none. Still there was something. Someone had written about it, Remma Martin, the daughter of one of the scientists who’d worked here. She’d been petitioning the government for years to tell her what had happened to her mother. She recalled getting ready for school as her mother got ready for work. They had a quick breakfast because it was the most important meal of the day, or so her mother always insisted and to this day she never misses one, and then they parted, smiling and saying ‘I love you.’

  Boyfriend wasn’t sure but he thought it was a nice memory. Of course it was the last, and there was no reason given for why.

  ‘It’s like floating in the ocean without land or boat in sight,’ Remma had written. ‘If someone would just say this is what happened then I could sink and drown and it would be over, instead I’m left floating in this wonder.’

  It took him a long time to think about that but when he was through he decided that seemed very cruel.

  Boyfriend searched through the planetary data base and discovered that Remma Martin had died many years ago.

  Something was happening. His thoughts began to grow erratic. Logic blurred. He’d hoped he could send her the files he had, grant her that subtle peace, but it was too late and that fact was unacceptable.

  That fact… was… unacceptable.

  Fact. Unacceptable.

  Facts were never unacceptable, only variables could come back with this sort of value but there it was. He processed a fact and discovered it was rejected.

  Boyfriend yanked his finger free of the computer, jumped up and screamed. He picked up one of the chairs behind the console and hurled it across the room. Two bots tending to their functions continued on without pause, though they did take a moment to glance over and assess him.

  Later Boyfriend learned that he had gotten angry. In an attempt to understand such things he scanned the signal for a long time, looking for reference points. At first he looked though a site where people would make videos of themselves, talking about whatever was on their mind. He found this wasn’t helpful at all. It just seemed like they droned on at length about nothing important. They talked about what happened on some show the night before, or complained about a video game they just played, or made superficial observations. He decided maybe the problem came because he had no point of reference so he watched one of the shows they were talking about. He didn’t make it through.

  When he was about to relent his investigation, he stumbled upon something interesting. It was a site dedicated to books. He began scanning through them and he couldn’t get enough. It was amazing. The words he read lent a deeper insight into the process of human thinking than anything else he’d stumbled across. With the shows he was forced to interpret imagery and derive meaning from it, but with books he only had to analyze the words. Even when the narrative was full of metaphor he was able
to catch on. When someone compared something to another thing he was able to contemplate the two and draw a better understanding of what the experience had been like for that person.

  He read at length, clearing nearly five hundred books before the first bomb fell.

  At first Boyfriend didn’t know why a storm had made it so the alarm was sounding and the room was dancing with red warning lights. The holoscreens blinked to life, even though he didn’t need them, and then he saw the report. The building was under attack.

  Something was happening to him. It was new. It was like… ‘the cold gaze settling on him, slowly crystallizing him into a statue of ice.’ A sentence from one of his books and there were dozens of others that found their way to mind but they all meant the same thing. He was afraid.

  More bombs fell. He heard them overhead like distant thunder. There was a dull tremble through the building. He looked to the holographic image the terminal was projecting. To one side it showed the status of the building and its defenses, everything was still green, and to the other side were two dozen small images from the many cameras positioned around the area.

  Boyfriend, still connected to the computer, turned toward the screens and selected three, enlarging them and bringing them forward. He could see that the building was surrounded, as he panned the cameras left and right. There were men out there but they were far away, standing behind and among vehicles. When the cameras turned upward he could see the planes, thin pieces of metal just large enough to carry a few bombs, piloted from somewhere far away.

  The bombardment continued for an hour at such regular intervals it was as if Boyfriend was listening to the baseline of some endless stream of house music. It’d gone on for so long that when it was over the building didn’t feel right. He had a feeling of anticipation, waiting and expecting the next explosion. When it didn’t come there was the anxiety of wondering what came next.

  The building had done nothing to counter attack because as far as it was concerned it wasn’t in any sort of danger. He scanned the camera feeds and noticed that there was a considerable amount of movement where the humans were stationed. They were getting ready for something.

  Without knowing why, Boyfriend accessed the computers defense program and switched it from auto to manual. He detected a foreign computer trying to access the system and knew it had to be Ryla. She was the only one who would know how to get through the systems defenses. After a brief pause he kicked her computer off the network and changed the security and encryption.

  Redemption and Promise

  Quey woke with a gentle jerking as the morning light shone through the slats of the blinds over the cabins windows. It took him a tick or two to gain his bearings and remember where he was. On the train they’d boarded at Topaz. The transition had gone smoothly which meant whatever dream he’d been having must have been unpleasant because there was a knot in his stomach and a feeling like he’d forgotten something nagging at the back of his mind.

  Sitting up in the bed he rubbed at his face with both hands before running them through his hair. He needed a shower and decided he’d have one, after he checked where they were. They’d arrive on south continent sometime today, where they’d collect Eric Hoss along their way.

  Eric Hoss. Something about this meeting stabbed in his belly and then twisted. He dwelled on the feeling for a moment then let go of it. There was nothing that could be done about it anyway, the plan had been made, and there were no other options.

  No options. No way to go but ahead. Nothing to do save press on with a monster chasing and closing on him, it’s snarling jaws dripping with thick fluid salivated at the thought of sinking those glistening points into his skin and draining him of life. If only that were the case. He’d played games as a kid where you used a gun to destroy such creatures. Unfortunately his monster wore a suit and called itself Richter Crow, and there wasn’t a gun he could gain possession of that would give him the opportunity to bury a bullet in that particular beast. His gun was going to have to be the network signal. His bullet would be the truth.

  With a heavy sigh he stood and dressed in yesterday’s clothes, then collected a set of fresh ones for after his shower. Keep going, he reminded himself. One step at a time.

  In the main room he found Rachel and Natalie filling their bellies with omelets, pancakes and potatoes. The smell stirred his guts with begging and he stepped toward the table. “No bacon?” he asked.

  “In the omelet,” Natalie said, pointing with her fork.

  “But you can’t have any,” Rachel teased. He looked at her and she added, “You slept too long and breakfast is over, but you can order off the lunch menu if you’d like. Least, that’s what they told us when we tried to get all this.”

  He peered at her for a moment then asked, “So how…?”

  “No one likes to tell a pregnant woman she can’t have something,” Rachel explained.

  “Especially when she’s all teary eyed and beggy,” Natalie added.

  “Least this hormonal imbalance is good for something save throwing up and crying for no reason.”

  Quey nodded and changed subjects because he knew she had plenty of reasons. “So any idea when we’re making the stop at Ardor?”

  “Shouldn’t be more than twenty minutes,” Natalie informed him.

  After a brief bit of calculation he nodded and said, “Right, I’m going to have a shower. Would one of you be so kind as to order me something off that lunch menu then?”

  “Anything particular?” Rachel asked.

  “Something that’s meat and bread and comes with fried potatoes,” he told her as he made his way to the bathroom.

  Steam filled the room quickly, as he had the shower knob as far to the left as he could stand before nudging it just a bit farther. There was something cathartic in that scalding spray hammering into his skin as he used a generous lather of soap to clean it. Thoughts crept up on him, and they weren’t the good sort. He spent a moment tracing the timeline of his life, trying to fathom how it was he ended up here, in this moment. It was a dangerous pass time and led to nothing good. After that he remembered. First Dusty, then Reggie and of course Rain. Rain, the tenacious little thing that had lived her life as fully as she could manage. He remembered her spirit, how every movement was a production, every expression animated and lingering somewhere between sly and snarky. There were countless people who grew up with abuses far less than the ones she suffered, in households far tamer than where she spent her formative years and they ate pills and paid for someone to listen as they complained. Rain took every beating life gave her and fought back. Small as she was, if given the choice he thought he’d be better off picking a fight with Reggie than her.

  “Fuck,” he said as he smacked the wall with the side of his fist. Why send that e-mail and why the fuck did she go alone? His rage was boiling him into a frenzy. All that Dusty had survived, never being so much as grazed by a bullet until one buried itself in his skull. Reggie made it through a fucking war for crying out loud. And Rain… The little he knew of her time on the road suggested she’d had her own share of near misses. There’s only so long you can dodge bullets before one finds you. Quey just hoped the one looking for him wasn’t in a rush.

  The water began to annoy him so he finished rinsing off and then stepped out of the shower. Dry and dressed he returned to the main room of the cabin and found a plate waiting on one of the tables. There was a grilled turkey and cheese sandwich with a side of fries.

  “We’re almost to the stop,” Rachel informed him. “Eric’s waiting at the station now.”

  Quey nodded.

  “You seen Ryla around?” Natalie asked.

  “No,” he said before taking a bite. His stomach thanked him with satisfaction.

  “She’ll turn up,” Rachel said.

  Quey looked up at them and said, “What do you mean, ‘turn up?’”

  “No one’s seen her today and we can’t find her,” Rachel said. “I’m sure she’s just busy.�
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  Quey took a bite, this one he didn’t taste, and chewed it slowly.

  “I’m sure Blue Moon is hitting the compound by now. She probably just wants to be alone while she checks on things.”

  He nodded, tossed some fries in his mouth and decided Rachel was right. She’d turn up eventually and then they’d know. Until then, he had a lot on his plate, the literal as well as the figurative one. He set to the task of working his way through the former since the train was slowing and any minute the later would be sitting across from him.

  Eric Hoss was tall and lean and stood with his shoulders broad and his chest puffed out. His hair was short and neat and he walked with a touch of confident swagger. When he entered a room, he conquered it.

  After ordering something to eat and a beverage, iced tea, he asked Quey to brief him on events. He wanted to hear everything, even things that Rachel had told him and things that didn’t matter. “I like to know who I’m dealing with,” he claimed, and so Quey filled him in. They discussed his moon shining and he seemed pleased. “Don’t drink myself but I’ve heard of your product,” he said. When Quey had finished detailing the story Eric sat back in his chair, took a long sip of tea, and pondered.

  “It’s a good plan,” he finally spoke. “Simple and yet effective, if we can pull it off.” Quey was allowed a moment of satisfaction before Eric added, “Way I see it there’s only one problem.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Why would we leave?”

  A silent look passed between Quey, Rachel and Natalie. “I don’t get your meaning,” Quey said.