Uroboros Saga Book 2

by Arthur Walker

  “They were commissioned by the CGG decades ago for hazardous work below ground when certain cities became too big for their own infrastructure. Because some of it was so old and buried so very deep, they allowed genetic experimentation to produce a race of workers to that end. At least that’s what the public knows about them,” Silverstein said, poking the fire.

  “Officer Eamon, Ezra is special,” Taylor said patting my head. “He’s Type One and a pygmy.”

  “Pygmy? Makes sense, I always thought Drones were the same size as humans, or a little smaller maybe. Oh, and just call me Eamon, we’re all friends here.”

  We all nodded, glad to dispense with the formality.

  “Never really thought about it until now. I’ve met Type Two, Three, Four, and Five Metasapients. They have a similar range of Drones?” Eamon asked.

  “No. There are only Type One, Three, Five and Six Drones. No Type Two or Fours,” I replied feebly.

  “Type Six?”

  “Psychics. I’ve met a couple of Type Six Drones from Ezra’s hive, commune, family, whatever,” Silverstein said as he got me a second helping of broth.

  “So, they live in collectives?” Eamon asked.

  “Yeah, they don’t wander about by themselves like you do. Ezra appears to be the exception,” Taylor said patting my head again.

  “Maybe he isn’t,” Eamon replied, looking over at me deeply concerned.

  Silverstein and Taylor looked at each other and shrugged, then looked to me.

  “I don’t know what he’s talking about,” I squeaked, still feeling impossibly weak and cold.

  “There are Chiroptera Metasapients in Mexico and South America. They were designed to act in groups and if any one of them get separated from the others for too long, they’ll get sick and eventually die, presumably from loneliness,” Eamon said sniffing me.

  “Chiroptera?” Taylor asked.

  “Bats,” Silverstein said, wiggling his fingers at Taylor like fleshy spider limbs.

  “You guys are totally making this up just to freak me out,” Taylor said folding her arms.

  “Wish I was. Hopefully we can find some Drones in Helsinki to commune with your friend, or at least give us some insight into what’s wrong with him,” Officer Eamon said putting his paw reassuringly on my chest.

  The next day was rough. It began to snow again and while I felt a little bit better I couldn’t help but wonder if Eamon was right. I felt this strange loneliness that seemed to pervade my entire being and my dreams were filled with anxious flashes of my home beneath Port Montaigne. I desperately wanted to know how the others were doing and was deathly afraid of forgetting their faces.

  We climbed, crested, and descended down the backside of forested hill after forested hill. I couldn’t figure out how the old bear knew where he was going. He never even stopped to ponder where he was or look at the sky. He just seemed to know where to go. Then as it was starting to get dark, Eamon hesitated just before cresting a hill, his large ears twitching slightly.

  He pulled his rifle from its place on his harness and rushed to the top of the hill. Silverstein, Taylor, and I trudged upward behind him and went over the top as quickly as we could. I could hear Eamon’s deafeningly loud voice over the wind and snowfall clearly as he drew the slide back on his rifle.

  “Stop! Armed Nordic Enforcement, cease and desist, you are under arrest!”

  I squinted through the snow at what looked like a Snowcat, painted bright orange, a trail left in its wake indicating that it probably came from wherever we were going. Arrayed around it were several men with guns who had pulled a couple of groups of people from the vehicle. There were men, women, and children kneeling in the snow. The armed men stopped in the middle of looting the vehicle to look up at us.

  One of them raised a sidearm but Eamon and I responded almost simultaneously, rounds from our rifles dropping the bandit before he could get off a shot. The others froze, one holding up his hands and stepping back behind what were now clearly hostages. He pulled aside scarf to reveal a heavily stubbled face and a slight smile.

  “Cops? There aren’t any cops left. I’m sure we can work something out here. These folks have plenty,” he shouted up the hill in our direction.

  Silverstein and Taylor slid down the hill coming to rest beside Eamon, holding up their hands.

  “Look, fellah, I can tell you with no doubt in my mind this police officer isn’t going to let you split the spoils and walk off. I’d put your weapons down and just walk away,” Silverstein pleaded.

  “No way am I letting these guys walk. They are criminals,” Eamon growled.

  “Wait, they might just be hungry and desperate people trying to survive,” Taylor said tugging on Eamon’s arm.

  One of the highwaymen reached down and grabbed up a young girl pressing a knife to her neck. He looked up at us menacingly, his blade drawing a small amount of blood.

  “No! Don’t do that!” Silverstein cried out, eyes wide.

  It was too late. Eamon roared so loud it shook the snow from the trees startling everyone on the scene. Letting his rifle drop on its strap, he charged down the hill on all fours toward the nearest highwayman. I snapped off a round at the guy with the knife, dropping him as I tried to get a bead on the others. Eamon was throwing up so much snow in his wake that I could barely see.

  Eamon charged into the first guy hitting him so hard he cleared the thirty foot tall tree line, coming to rest some distance away, probably not all in one piece. The second highwayman got off a shot as Silverstein pulled Taylor to the ground for cover. They were firing handguns high and wild trying to hit Eamon. One stepped out from the crowd trying to get distance. I put a bullet in his ear as he raised his weapon to fire.

  When the smoke cleared, Eamon was on the far side of the clearing having leapt over the hostages. He growled angrily, his breath escaping from between clenched teeth in long white plumes. A gigantic paw rested on the chest of the man that had been doing the talking before. He pressed in with his immense weight as the man struggled to breathe.

  “Eamon! Stop! Stop!” Silverstein cried out, running down into the clearing.

  Checking to make sure the hostages were okay, Taylor and I followed Silverstein over to where Eamon had the man pinned. Taylor put her hands on the huge Metasapient’s arm and pleaded with him to let the man live.

  “The girl’s okay. She’s just got a scratch. Please, you don’t have to do this.”

  “He would have killed these people, or left them to freeze, starve, or worse. He’s scum. Not worth protecting, and if it’s like you’ve told me... there is no jail to put him in anymore,” Eamon snarled, turning his broad head as to better meet Taylor’s gaze.

  “Should only the strong decide who lives and who dies? Is this how you want the world to be? What if everything is back to normal in a week?” Taylor said, hanging off Eamon’s arm with all her weight.

  Eamon’s huge face softened slightly. “No, you’re right. Unfortunately only the law can do that. I don’t care what’s happened to the rest of civilization, I’m still a cop. Always will be,” Eamon replied, somewhat calmer.

  For my own part, I was fine with Eamon ending the fool for what he’d done. That’s not how it played out though. He slowly backed his paw off allowing the man to breathe then rose pulling out a pair of restraints with one smooth and practiced motion as if he’d done it ten thousand times.

  “Maybe you didn’t hear me before. I said, Armed Nordic Enforcement, cease and desist, you are under arrest.”

  Chapter 3

  42 Miles North of Helsinki, Finland

  2:38 PM January 17th, 2200

  Ezra’s War Journal, Part 5

  Silverstein went around and freed the hostages. The highwaymen had employed zip ties and twine to bind their hands, which seemed to
indicate some premeditation in their actions. Eamon was off seeing if the one he’d batted out into the trees was still alive.

  “Thank you for your help,” the eldest of the men said with a thick Scandinavian accent, rubbing the circulation back into his wrists.

  “I hope Eamon didn’t frighten you too much,” Silverstein said. “From what he told us before, he’s got nothing but hatred for people who take and harm hostages.”

  “Metasapients are an unpredictable lot to be sure. My name is Rupert Harjanne, I’m a doctor from Helsinki. This is my sister Marja and her husband Ahti Polvinen. We fled the chaos in Helsinki to try and find an outlying area off grid,” the elderly man said, shaking Silverstein’s hand.

  “This your Snowcat?” Taylor asked, gazing covetously at the warm interior of the vehicle.

  “Yes, I bought it so I could reach patients that lived in outlying areas during the winter. Would you like to warm yourself inside?” Dr. Harjanne offered.

  Taylor bounded over to the Snowcat with Marja and the children, and waited patiently in line to enter. Ahti and Dr. Harjanne stood outside with Silverstein and me keeping watch over the highwayman that lay handcuffed in the snow at our feet. Ahti gazed at me for several moments before he finally spoke.

  “I had a rifle like that when I was in the military. Are you a soldier?” he asked, gesturing to my rifle.

  “For my tribe, yes,” I said looking up at him.

  “Ah! I thought you were a child at first,” Ahti said, blushing.

  “Ezra here is a pygmy Drone, his tribe is back in Port Montaigne in North America,” Silverstein explained.

  “You look very ill, Mr. Ezra,” Dr. Harjanne said placing his hand on my forehead.

  “Silverstein, I thought Drones just lived underground and turned wrenches and fixed leaks in the bigger cities. This one says he’s a fighter of some sort?” Ahti said, the tone of his voice a little harder than before.

  “Ezra is a Type One, a tailored life form designed for hazardous environment and EVA combat,” Silverstein replied.

  “You keep dangerous company with you, Mr. Silverstein,” Ahti said meeting Dr. Harjanne’s gaze.

  Silverstein looked puzzled for a moment then smiled broadly.

  “Don’t worry, we aren’t going to ask for a ride. If you follow the trail left behind by Eamon you’ll find the cabin we were staying in. It has some food and enough chopped wood to last for quite a while. We’re going toward the chaos you fled,” Silverstein remarked with a slight sneer.

  Ahti and Dr. Harjanne seemed relieved at the news.

  “Here,” I said as I handed Ahti my rifle.

  “Won’t you need this?” Ahti said, totally taken off guard by my gesture.

  “I’ve another in the sled we brought, and a good rifle in the hands of someone who knew how to use it might have helped prevent what happened here,” I said leaning heavily on Silverstein.

  “Ahti, fetch my bag,” Dr. Harjanne said kneeling down beside me.

  The doctor listened to my hearts, looked in my eyes, ears, and throat. He looked grave before rising to his feet. Silverstein looked up at Taylor who was gazing down at us, forlorn, from the Snowcat window, her breath intermittently fogging the glass.

  “I can’t see that there is anything wrong with him that would afflict a human in this way. All three of his hearts are working overtime to keep him alive. Ezra, you probably exerted yourself way too much in the exchange with these thugs,” Dr. Harjanne explained.

  “Have you ever seen anything like this?” Silverstein inquired.

  “Sort of. I’ve seen it in the elderly when they’ve been just deprived of a spouse they’d spent years with, before the sorrow killed him. Extremely rare that people form those sorts of attachments,” Dr. Harjanne replied thoughtfully.

  Feeling very tired, I sat down in the snow and looked over at the highwayman lying face down in the snow. He struggled to turn over and meet my gaze.

  “Sounds pretty grim, you pint-sized freak, but no less than you deserve for shooting my friends,” he rasped. He spat at me as far as he could.

  Silverstein came unhinged, a strange fury overcoming him. He kicked the thug over onto his back and got one or two good shots in on his face before Dr. Harjanne and Ahti were able to pull him off. It was rare to see Silverstein angry, which is why I mention this at all.

  Silverstein wiped his sleeve across his mouth and turned purposefully in my direction. He picked me up out of the snow and carried me back over to the Snowcat. Taylor made room for me on the bench seat beside her, and Silverstein set me down to head back out and talk to Eamon who had just returned.

  “Is your daddy angry?” one of the children asked me.

  “Yeah, Dad’s mad,” I replied, petting Taylor’s fuzzy-snuzzy coat.

  Taylor looked down at me and smiled.

  “Do I need to make you one of these? You do look kind of cold,” Taylor said, trying to hide her concern for me.

  “It’d be terrible camouflage in a tactical situation, and it would result in the needless destruction of even more stuffed animals. Yeah, I think I need one,” I replied, trying my best to take mind off my situation.

  “This thing is pretty big, bet a dozen people could ride in it,” Taylor said turning to Marja.

  “My brother bought the largest one he could so it would serve as a mobile clinic. After he retired, he converted it to carry us all up into the hills during the tourist season. It’s at least thirty years old, which is why it still works,” Marja said, her voice trailing off.

  “Are there a great many other vehicles that don’t work?” Taylor asked.

  “Anything marketed in the last twenty-five years that used the global grid for navigation, payment arrangement tracking, and similar was defunded and placed in lock down for repossession,” Marja replied.

  “Wow, a lot of people got behind on their bills,” Taylor remarked.

  “If you were able to ask the CGG AI, no one has the money to do so. It shut everything down, even outside of protocol. It locked down every hospital and defunded commercial transports and airlines while they were still in the air,” Marja whispered, trying to avoid frightening the children further.

  “What happened to the people on the airlines?” Taylor asked.

  “They died,” I said as quietly as I could.

  Taylor looked deeply distressed. It was the first news she’d heard of the people she had been trying to save back at the server farm. When Silverstein and I pulled her from the terminal, saving her life, we knew there would be a terrible price that others would have to pay. Being a little jaded toward humans, I hadn’t considered my own burden, let alone what Taylor would feel in the aftermath.

  She wept bitterly. Marja tried to console her, and she couldn’t have known what she was saying with what she said next.

  “Please don’t cry, none of this is your fault,” Marja said putting a hand on Taylor’s shoulder.

  This only made her cry harder like I’d never seen. It was as if she could feel the weight of every death, her own highly advanced nature enabling her to literally calculate the likely number of maimed, wounded, and dead as a result of her being denied the opportunity to sacrifice herself for them. I felt awful for her, but if I had to do it over again, I’d rather have my friend than a few hundred million lousy humans, especially within the context of that moment.

  I closed my eyes and resumed stroking the soft exterior of Taylor’s multi-colored coat of fuzziness. Strange, in those near death circumstances the very small things we cling to for comfort. In that moment, I felt as apathetic as I did selfish. I wished it had occurred to me at the time how my own very jaded worldview had probably already changed the world.

  Silverstein opened the compartment after a few moments, his face drooping at the sight of Taylor being so
upset. He didn’t need to ask what was wrong. He could guess by the bewildered looks on everyone’s face but mine.

  “We need to get going if we’re going to find shelter before it gets dark,” Silverstein said, directing his words more to me than to Taylor.

  Taylor did her best to dry her eyes and helped me to my feet. We made our way off the Snowcat to where Eamon stood looming over the thug on the ground. Silverstein repacked the sled so I could sit in it while we traveled and made sure Taylor hadn’t left her scarf in the Snowcat.

  “It’s in my pocket,” she said, pulling it out and wrapping it about her neck.

  “I didn’t even know that thing had pockets,” Silverstein said, smiling weakly.

  “Of course it does,” Taylor said pulling her handmade garment tightly around herself.

  Taylor’s hair slowly turned the color of the snow, a stark white as her skin became very pale and her eyes even darker brown. Her unconscious control of the tiny machines that made up her body was always startling, but it rarely betrayed her thoughts or her mood. More often, it signaled a fundamental change that had taken place, either by the trauma of what she endured, or the happiness from the things she enjoyed.

  I was thankful that I was not so transparent.

  Eamon shoved his prisoner along every once in a while, taking the lead while Silverstein pulled the sled and walked beside Taylor. I spent the time before it got dark doing my best to make my second rifle serviceable and pondering my own mortality. I didn’t want to die, but if I did during the commission of what we’d done and seen, I was strangely at peace with the notion.

  I wouldn’t take my words and assume that all tailored life forms created to serve humans are as settled about death or the prospect thereof. We all have the same desire to live and survive. I think it was then I stopped to ponder all that had happened and the very real possibility that my own tribe, back beneath Port Montaigne, was in very real danger. I harbored that anxiety every day we spent traveling to Helsinki.