Spinward Fringe Broadcast 10.5: Carnie's Tale

by Randolph Lalonde

  “Listen, I don’t know what you’ve seen, I know I’ve seen horrible…” I adjusted my language for Izzie, her little eyes were focused on me. “…stuff. I have a bot that doesn’t want to connect to any kind of network or install new programs, he doesn’t even have a wireless receiver.”

  Donna picked Izzie up, she looked so thin and weak that I expected her to topple over under the toddler’s weight. “No, I’m not going near a bot,” she said.

  “What choice do we have?” Harry pleaded. His stubble looked at least a week old. “Look at him,” he said, waving his hand at me. “Whatever he’s doing is working for him.”

  “Sure, but maybe he’s a bot, we’ve met talkers before who tricked people,” Gabe said.

  “That kind of paranoia is what paralyzed us, kept us here when everyone else moved on to find food,” Harry replied.

  “No, I’m not going with anyone who has…”

  Sherman tried to grab my Heavy Hitter, the gun loaded with explosive rounds. I hadn’t noticed how close he’d managed to get. I took a few steps to the side and drew my blade shooter, Needler, the Heavy Hitter was still in its holster. Sherman stared down the barrel of my handgun like he was still thinking about making a move. “I worked my ass of, walked more klicks than you could imagine getting this together,” I told them. “I’m willing to share it with you if you settle down. We’ll talk our problems out, my bot goes nowhere, and you’ll learn to love him, trust me.”

  Sherman took a half step forward and I let a burst of micro-blades fly from Needler. He lost an earlobe and a few dots of blood appeared on his shoulder. “Try it again!” I told him, regretting the threat the moment I heard Izzie start crying. The wounds were superficial. Aside from his earlobe, the wounds should heal up in a couple weeks since the blades went through nothing but the thinner, meaty part of his shoulder.

  They all started backing off. “There can’t be many people around like him, people who would help us even though we have nothing,” Pete said. His face was turning almost as red as his hair. “When is this chance gonna come around again?”

  “He shot me,” Sherman said, holding a hand with a superficial spatter of blood on it up.

  “You went for his weapon, it’s simple Darwinism,” Pete shot back. “Listen, man, just wait. Wait until all this calms down.”

  The scene didn’t match what Pete was saying. He wanted to give peace another chance, but Harry was picking up his metal bar again, Donna and Izzie were making themselves scarce and everyone else was following them. I didn’t have a good feeling about Pete either. My eyes and ears were telling me that I should let him in, take him along, but my gut didn’t agree. I had visions of him taking me out in my sleep and driving my truck back to this shipping container, playing the hero who beat the well supplied survivor to save his friends. “Sorry, man, the confection truck is closed,” I said, hopping into the back and slamming the doors behind me. “Theo, hover up twenty metres and hold.”

  The truck gained altitude, and when it stopped I popped one of the doors open. They already had a couple condenser bottles, leaving me with one, which was fine, but I didn’t want to leave them without food. I pulled a couple precious parts out of Theo’s bag and tossed all the food inside at the container dwellers, making sure I made eye contact with Harry before dropping a bottle of anti-toxin meds down on him. There was enough food there for about a week if they rationed it. They could make it to one of the smaller shopping centres in three or four days, so I knew I wasn’t leaving them completely helpless.

  I considered dropping Needler down to them so they’d have some kind of ranged defence, but slammed the back door closed instead. “Let’s get out of here,” I told Theo as I moved to a passenger seat.

  “They didn’t want to come with us?” he asked.

  I was pretty sure he was pretending that he didn’t hear every word, watch everything go down using the sensors in the truck and his own electronic ears. I played along. “They weren’t our kind of people, man. Maybe next time.”

  I laid back and ran my hands down my face. I hadn’t seen an aggressive bot in at least a couple weeks. The Order of Eden was transporting people by the shipping container load to the planet. These things had to be part of the same puzzle somehow.

  I remembered something that made me wonder if all that wandering had made my brain soft. I had a communicator. I yanked it from the box of supplies we had stashed in the back and went to the front. “Time for answers, man,” I said. “If they’re letting people reach out, maybe we can get on the Stellarnet and see what’s really going on.”

  “Those people,” Theo started. He was driving the truck at a reasonable speed, keeping it in tunnels and under bridges most of the time. “They would have accepted you if I weren’t here.”

  I knew Theo really well at that point. Most of his finer social niceties were learned from me by then, for better or worse, because we spent so much time together. His business suit attire didn’t hide slumping shoulders from me. I’d never seen anything look so sad then, organic or mechanical. “Don’t worry about them, man,” I said, putting my hand on his shoulder. I could feel the mechanical joint moving a little under the suit’s shoulder pad as he adjusted the truck’s course. “I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you. When we found out that the bots didn’t respond to you like they did to humans, you scouted ahead. I worried every time, the urge to follow you into those apartment buildings, malls, stores, supply depots was crazy powerful. I didn’t want you to be alone in there in case things went bad, but you made sure you were the first to see every bot we came across so I could stay clear. Now the bots don’t seem to be around, but there are people landing all over. It’s my turn. Let me scout them out until we find some cool tribe out there that’ll accept us both.”

  “You have a nice way of talking to people,” Theo said.

  “No worries, man. You’re the best friend I’ve ever had.”

  “Thank you, Noah. You are my best friend too.”

  I turned the communicator on and snickered. “Not that you have a lot of choices,” I said.

  “Even if I had a galaxy to choose from, I’m certain you would be my favourite person,” Theo reassured in a rush.

  “I’m just kidding, man. I know we’re joined at the hip no matter what.”

  “Another human expression,” Theo said, shaking his head a little. “That must be one of the most gruesome ones I’ve heard.”

  I was surprised to connect to a communications node in orbit. The connection wasn’t that fast, but it was serviceable and there was an information network attached. My heart leapt when I realized I could start searching. The first thing I searched was; why did AI turn on us?

  I was stunned when the network provided a few thousand answers – recorded communications, videos and statements from across several sectors – but one stood out. It was a huge information package from a ship called the Order of Eden Crimes Against Sentient Life. I started downloading it, watching the introduction as it loaded onto my device.

  A hologram of a curly red-haired woman appeared. She looked at me with a dimpled smile and kind eyes. “My name is Ayan Anderson, and I’d like to say I’m a survivor who has experienced everything in this record, but I’m afraid I’m more of a descendant. As you’ll discover if you begin viewing this record in chronological order, I was created using a woman named Ayan Rice as a template, and I have all her memories. This is important to mention because not many people survived the journey I’m about to take you on. By viewing this record in chronological order, you will see an honest account of the history of the people who put it together but more importantly this record will serve its true purpose. It will prove that the Order of Eden is guilty of murdering over a trillion humans and millions of their allies. They did so with the support of several large corporations, but none has offered more credit or equipment than Regent Galactic. It can be said that, without Regent Galactic and a company they purchased, Vindyne, the disaster caused by the Holo
caust Virus may never have happened.”

  “She’s an example of a lovely human female?” Theo asked.

  “I’d say she’s a nine or ten, yeah. It’s not just in how she looks though. Maybe she’d be a seven if it were, but she’s got something…” he said, watching the download meter make it past seventy percent. “Grace,” he said, snapping his fingers. “She’s charming too. Not everyone can just talk into a holo recorder and make it feel like one half of a private conversation.”

  “Like poise,” Theo said. “I would like to communicate that well someday. It would be nice to be able to put people at ease. There isn’t enough serenity in the galaxy from what I’ve seen before. I would like to give that to people.”

  “Sometimes you blow me away, man,” I said. “I’ve never looked at it that way, but maybe I should have. I would have appreciated the work the carnival did more. Entertainment can make people forget all their problems for a minute. I guess that’s a kind of serenity.” I looked through the holographic directory as I paused Ayan’s introduction. “What do you think of the pitch?”

  “Pitch?”

  “What she says this video is,” I explained.

  “Oh, I’m very interested.”

  “Then we keep watching?”

  “Definitely.”

  I hit play on the introduction and watched. “I’m speaking to you from Haven Shore,” Ayan said. “It is on Tamber, a terraformed moon in the Rega Gain system, and we are working hard to protect this abandoned area of space.” The point of view pulled back to reveal that she was standing on a balcony near the top of a building that looked as much organic as it did man-made. It looked like a pile of opalescent ovals carefully stacked into a massive round building. “The Rega Gain system was an out of the way terraforming project during the end of the last age. The records we uncovered indicate that the terraforming on Kambis, one of the major worlds in the system, failed when the system was abandoned when the Omnivirus infected the majority of the population in the system. We’ve taken up residence and are fortifying, creating homes for people who have been forced to run from a galaxy that has turned against most of us. It’s not safe here, not yet, the Order could attack us any time, but we hope it will be someday. Right now democracy is returning, we have formed alliances with important forces for good in the galaxy, and our infrastructure is growing by the day, increasing the number of people we can support. Our current goal is to turn refugees into active citizens who are not only productive, but well settled and important to the evolution of our society. The development of our military is also important, we need protection and are participating in a war against the Order of Eden, but you will learn more about that later if you keep watching, or you could skip to it if you like in the menu.”

  The focus returned to a head-and-shoulders view of Ayan. “This isn’t some kind of sales pitch for our settlement, I only wanted you to see where I ended up, so the darker parts of this account don’t seem impossibly desperate. Every part of our story has an evidence and testimony section, so if you want more detail, it can be found there. Would you like to begin our story from the beginning?”

  “Yes,” Theo and I said at the same time.

  The image of a massive space station appeared. Rings within rings affixed to bigger rings that served as habitation, production, hangars and ports. The hull looked older than anywhere I’d been. I hadn’t seen anything like it. “The story begins on Freeground Station,” Ayan narrated.

  Theo and I spent the next week travelling, watching the history of the people I admire now. The crazy brave pilot; Minh-Chu Buu, beloved leader; Captain Valent, brilliant engineer and adventurer; Ayan, the artificial intelligence turned real girl; Alice, the champion of his circle of friends; Captain Terry Ozark ‘Oz’ McPatrick, and so many people they lost along the way. By the time I reached the story of the Order of Eden, we had to take a break. We were coming up on Remington Mall.

  Part Twenty-Eight

  To my dismay, there were at least a couple dozen cargo containers on top of and around the Remington Mall. There were people everywhere, and the truck’s scanners picked up three ships on their way. “Into that alley,” I told Theo, who drove us expertly into an alleyway, reducing our height.

  Once the pad guards under the truck touched the concrete I hit the blackout switch and the truck went dead. “Let’s see what’s going on,” I said, leaving the truck. I took both my guns, my main pack and the new weapon I’d taken from the robber weeks before with me. I called it Slagger. It was a high energy plasma pistol, I’d never seen anything so nasty, it’s wide barrel was intimidating, and with the heat dissipation fins down its length it looked even more threatening.

  I still couldn’t respect the weapon though. I’d been brought up believing that any weapon that could burn through a hull was too reckless to carry around. Besides, I liked stun settings, but guns with that kind of function didn’t really work after the pulse. To be honest, my favourite new toy, or weapon I guess, was a sling shot I’d made for the suppression balls Theo and I had. With that thing I could fling a ball a hundred metres and it would hit so hard that it went off on impact, filling a couple metres with gooey green web. The slingshot never left my thigh pocket, and there was room for about twenty rounds in there too.

  We locked the truck behind us and got up the ladder as quick as we could. By the time we reached the top and could see the Remington Mall, the ships were landing. From the rooftop we were on a few streets over, the mall looked like it went on forever. It was several blocks wide, with landing spots across the roof and a navnet tower reaching up from the middle. There were people everywhere, coming out to see the ships land with long shipping containers marked with a stylized grain symbol. “Is it feeding time? This is new.”

  “There are so many people,” Theo said. “Most of them are still wearing emergency vacuum suits.”

  I couldn’t see with the detail that Theo did, the human eye doesn’t come with a zoom function, but the colour of the crowds’ clothing was mostly white. Those flimsy vacuum suits weren’t made for long wear, it was like being dressed in cheap plastic bags. The sleek, green and white ships set down. They had pointed noses with cockpits that gave the small crew a good view of everything around. One on the roof, the other two at either of the main mall entrances on the ground. A moment later, they were ascending quickly, leaving their long cargo containers behind.

  I watched as the nearest one’s main and side access doors popped open and the crowd rushed the container. “Can you see what’s in there?”

  “Emergency rations,” Theo replied. “They are fighting for the food now, a few who are dressed in normal clothing are winning. They are taking control of the food already using bats and blades from the sporting store.”

  The three ships didn’t waste any time heading for orbit, and were gone before the commotion was over. “Looks like one group has taken control,” I said. “Maybe a couple groups. Either way, we’re not going to be able to loot this place again.”

  “That’s better,” Theo said. “They’re handing out one bar per person. Some of the food is being taken away by the box though.

  “By more guys in normal clothes?” I asked.

  “Yes. No one in their emergency vacuum suit is being allowed to take their own food from the container. I would assume you’re right. There is enough food there for everyone to have several days’ worth, but most are being given only one emergency bar.”

  “So, they’re dropping people off by the thousand and now they’re feeding them.” The next chapter in the recordings I had from Haven Shore was about the Holocaust Virus. I was hesitant to watch it. I was living it. I was in the aftermath, but I think I was afraid to find out that there was a logical reason behind it. Revisiting the horror of that first day wasn’t exactly choice entertainment for me either. Even so, I’d sat through the story of the First Light, learned about Vindyne and their ruthlessness, seen the betrayal of Jonas Valent, the birth of Alice Valent, and learned about
the search for Jonas and the Samson.

  The story blew my mind, I didn’t think it could be real at first, but there was evidence backing everything up. Records from Freeground Fleet, extra recordings of Jacob Valent bounty hunting, logs from the Samson, from the Clever Dream, and from many other ships that were directly or even barely involved. At one point, around where Jonas sacrificed himself, I just stopped questioning and believed the story this collection of info was telling me. “I think it’s time we finish watching that holo series,” I told Theo.

  “Anything other than going to this mall seems like a good choice,” he replied.

  “We’ll look for another mall, or an abandoned store. Maybe stay away from those ships. No need to push our luck,” I said, planning out loud.

  “That’s a good idea. I’ll drive while we continue watching the Haven Shore Record.”

  A few minutes later we were in the truck again, driving on with all the systems turned down low. I hadn’t seen any other hover vehicles working, so I didn’t want to draw attention so close to where I was sure a new gang was forming up. Any new organization would do anything to get the only working hover truck into their hands.

  When we were several kilometres away I started the chapter detailing the Holocaust Virus. Ayan Anderson walked us through it, putting the pieces together for us as images of different ships, people and locations related to the events were presented.

  The story, as she told it was that a virus was spread by the Order of Eden that used the emotion coding of all artificial intelligences to turn them against any human that wasn’t in their database. That connected to an alien race that was covered in a previous chapter: the Edxi. They were an insect family race that saw humans as nothing more than a kind of intelligent worm, but we’d insulted their honour. A group of scientists associated with Vindyne had captured eggs and hatchlings from a brood world. Not only that, but they conducted experiments on that world before leaving.