TERRA formed, Part 1: The Edit — continued
Continued (of course) from TERRA Formed, Part 1: The Edit.
Date: December 12, 2007
Categories: Fiction, poetry, and fanfiction
Thursday, 28 March 2024
Life, the universe, pies, hot-pink bunnies, world domination, and everything
Continued (of course) from TERRA Formed, Part 1: The Edit.
Date: December 12, 2007
Categories: Fiction, poetry, and fanfiction
this is to get the story back, re-edit, and get it to a publisher.
oh, my. the story is completly messed up on the first theard.
Maybe I’ll help this time around. My only contribution (besides writing a lot of it) was fixing the Rosenberg Paradox.
I love inside jokes. That may seem random to anyone who doesn’t understand it- another inside joke.
2- There are a lot of edited passages on the edit thread.
3- because there are a bunch of inside jokes in this?
4- well, maybe THE GAPAs would HELP BY UPDATING THE GOOGLE DOC AS WE DO THIS. they have free time…
Free time? *giggles hysterically*
*recovers*
Sure.
6- Well, maybe they want to keep it free.
6 and 8-they should have more free time if they don’t have to do the Q&A columns
3- ROSENBERG? I haven’t been following this, but WHOA cuz that’s my last name.
GAPAs, I think most people KNOW that, right? Cuz I wrote the article in the July Muse? And if they don’t know, it’s easily accessible? So don’t zap. Please? I need to express my shock.
6- As I said, I haven’t been following this, WHAT’S THE LINK?
10- I know. It was originally Rosinburg (this was months before What Hath Harry Wrought? was published) but I changed it a bit in the edit, because spellcheck said Rosinburg wasn’t a last name. (Of course, spellcheck always grabs mine, too- unsurprisingly, as it’s a very strange name, and almost impossible to guess (thank goodness)- but what the heck).
10-Wait…you wrote an article in Muse? xP
12- Yeah. July/August, I think. “What Hath Harry Wrought?”, I think it was called. And the weird thing is, we wrote it in May and we JUST got our money. But whatev.
I need to read this. Please, Keeper, whoever you are, send me and Alice a copy. KTHXBAI.
LINK, I mean. Not copy.
13-Yeah, I looked through every single Muse I owned, only to find that it was the single issue by my bed. Way cool. 0.0 How’d you get it in?
13- You don’t understand. I was the Keeper. And then I lost the story in the fire. So now NO ONE has the fully edited version.
KIKI! I just had an idea! Email Romana and ask her if she still has a copy!
Oh. Ouch. *winces* Look at this:
264. Alice �|� July 23rd, 2007 at 8:19 pm
Since E2MB isn’t around, I’m not going to bother posting part 3 before I start editing it, unless someone comes along who wants to help with part 3.
I was such an idiot.
Okay, so the document is still fully edited up till “Io could very well blow up! We have to get out of here!”
For those of you who haven’t memorized the story, that’s this:
TERRAFORMED
By Robin R. Randall
PART ONE: IO
Chapter 1
The tunnel lights flickered ominously as Ian cautiously ascended the worn stone steps of the Ceres Municipal Library. Nobody was around, to his profound relief. A vagabond like him would have been taken off the streets at once if the police had seen him, and Ian had spent far too much of his life already in a cast-uranicium jail cell to relish that thought. But once he entered the sliding carboglass doors, the auto-librarian barely gave him a cursory glance in the X-ray spectrum to make sure he wasn’t carrying any weapons. Ian relaxed considerably. He was safe here.
He walked past the auto-librarian’s bulky chrome casing and vanished between the shelves of elebooks. Each elebook was a thick disc coated in translucent green plastic, which projected the text and, on rare occasions, pictures, onto a flip-up screen. At the back of the Library was a carboglass case containing three paper-and-cloth books laid reverently on soft red padding. One was Green Eggs and Ham, which Ian had always assumed was about early experiments in genetic engineering. No ordinary citizen knew what the books contained between their carefully preserved pages. No one had ever read the books. No, they were too old and valuable for that. They were all ancient artifacts from before the Great Emigration. Before World War Last. They were from a time when humans lived on a beautiful blue and green planet, a time when mankind had not been forced to scatter through the solar system and carve out artificial bits of worlds. A time when the human race had a home.
Ian sighed, staring past the shelves of plastic-coated discs, past the unoccupied reading tables, towards the back of the library, where a huge projected liveimage of Solana, the solar system, slowly wheeled and turned against the wall. The boy looked back at the shelves, reflecting on the image. It seemed to confirm that humans would never go back to their own small beautiful planet. Ian knew it had been beautiful once, even if it wasn’t now. He had read tons of books about Terra, and once he had even seen liveimages of what Terra would have looked like before the Warming Effect took full hold, and before the heavy metal pollution made the atmosphere completely opaque. He decided to find his favorite book, Trees: A New True Book. It was one of the few Terran books copied onto modern elebook form, and Ian had read it so many times that it was a wonder it had not yet worn out. He really didn’t understand what trees were, except that they made oxygen, maybe through some primitive electrolysis system, and they were green and brown. All of the pictures in Trees had been eradicated, like all of the original Terran “photos”, or whatever they called live imaging back then. Ian had spent many a happy hour trying to imagine trees, and he tried to imagine them now as he automatically turned down the many aisles towards the “Questionable Nonfiction” section. He was so engrossed in thoughts of Terra that he didn’t see the figure heading towards him with her eyes on the surrounding shelves.
Ian and the girl collided, both falling towards the air-cushioned carboglass floor. The girl was first to recover. She leaped up, grabbed a handful of elebooks from a nearby shelf, and dashed off into the depths of the library. Ian stood up barely two seconds after her, but she was already gone. With a sigh, Ian turned around and looked at the shelf that she had taken the books from.
The entire section was very dull, something about the floor plans of interplanetary ships; a section that not even Ian had touched, or given a second glance. Each plastic case looked thick enough to contain at least three discs, with layers of dust showing just how long it had been since anybody had wanted to know the information they held. Why would the girl–who didn’t look older than Ian–be interested in that?
“Sorry,” Ian stated rather stupidly and belatedly, reaching the end of his train of thought, and than was caught full on by another, this one sleek and turbo powered. He had to apologize. His mother would have required it. He remembered back when she was alive and they had had a room. Ian had been very young, but every morning before he went to education session, she would call him over to her, and he’d stand in front of her, surveying the shabby walls and the carboglass windows, while she gave him hurried lessons in etiquette. “If you ever knock into a girl, or step on her feet, apologize,” she’d say to him. “If they knock into you or step on your feet, do the same.”
“That’s their fault, isn’t it?” he would always say.
“Not the point,” she’d snap, and Ian would mumble something and look her in the eyes, if only for a brief second before his gaze fell towards his shoes. “You apologize!†said the voice of Ian’s memory. “Chase after her if you have to!” Now, he pulled his head back into a forward position and scrambled to his feet. It was stupid, but somehow he felt that it would be disrespecting his mother’s memory if he didn’t run. And so he did.
“Um, look. I’m really sorry,” he stuttered, catching up to the girl at last.
“Do I really care?” said the girl, who had set down the elebook disk on a carboglass reading table and turned it on. Ian was shocked and hurt. Ceres was an extremely peaceful and conservative planet. Nobody was supposed to refuse an apology. But still…
“So, um…what’s your name?” he said, trying to strike up a conversation with this strange girl. She intrigued him, no matter how rude she was. Something about her just didn’t seem quite right. She seemed different–like an outsider.
She didn’t glance up when he asked his question, but continued to stare at the screen. “It’s Kari,†she said, “but that’s none of your beeswax.”
“What’s beeswax?” asked Ian. Now he was really interested. Anyone who spoke words like “beeswax†was someone to take notice of.
“Terran word.”
Ian sucked in his breath. “How do you know Terran?” Terran! he thought to himself. Impossible! Those words had died out decades ago.
“As I said, none of your beeswax.”
Ian looked at this girl, this Kari, in astonishment. She was so rude, and yet, she became more interesting by the second.
“What’s it mean? Do you know a lot of Terran?” he asked, his apprehension battling with his curiosity.
“How many times do I have to tell you? It’s none of your beeswax!”
Ian looked at her, dumbfounded. Dejected, he turned away.
“Good-bye.” he said sullenly, and started back towards the “Questionable Nonfiction” section. He heard something slam behind him and turning around, saw that Kari had dropped her book. And there was another of his mother’s rules, springing unbidden into Ian’s mind. He stepped forward, picked up the book, and handed it to her without a word. When she still said nothing, he turned away and headed once more towards his the shelves near the front of the library. A moment later, there were footsteps.
“Wait!” Kari cried out, as she ran up to him. “I’m sorry. I should’ve been a little more gracious. I guess I’m just stressed out. I accept your apology.”
Ian turned around, a little surprised by the sudden change in her attitude. “Uh, thanks,” he said. The ice seemed to be broken between them. Thank Solana. Suddenly, startling even himself, he blurted out, “I noticed that you were looking in the section about the architecture of interplanetary ships- are you really interested in that?”
Kari ignored him. “Why are you here?” she asked, though it was more a formality than because she didn’t really know. It was easy enough to tell just by looking at Ian why he was there. “This is about the time when most kids are in the education session.”
Ian bristled. “I’m just as old as you are,” he said. “Why are you here?”
“Nobody can make me go anywhere else,†said Kari. It seemed a little false, like she was pretending to be someone that she wasn’t. Ian frowned slightly, but all thoughts of Kari’s strangeness were driven out of his head when the girl said, “My Mom’s gone.” The way she said gone seemed to imply that it was not just a trip to the supply base. This “gone” could only be translated to mean, “never coming back.”
It had happened all too frequently to the members of Ian’s colony, in the old days, over a century ago, when people were evacuating Terra. Even once a ship broke through the atmosphere, gliding softly towards the stars . . . it was probably a 50-50 chance for survival, in the best of conditions. Anything could happen, and more often than not it did. Many a horrible death lay in the dark galaxy, but even those fates were better than staying on the remnants of the old planet and dying faster than one could say “nuclear.”
Of course, that had all been a very long time ago, and it was more likely that Kari’s mother had died of some disease, or, like Ian’s parents, an incident on another planet or asteroid, but just thinking about it sent shivers up Ian’s spine.
“I’m sorry,” he said lamely. There wasn’t a lot to say in a situation like this.
Kari didn’t reply, and just looked straight ahead in a way that seemed unnatural and almost inhuman. She was good at hiding her feelings. That was the way she had been made, and it was burned into her mind in a way no renegade emotions could ever change. In her mind she could be dying of loneliness and no one would ever know. In this world, the mind was the one place that has not yet been invaded by the clever modern scientists with their clever modern schemes, and even that was being threatened. The mind was the last place of privacy, but many were trying to break even that barrier. Some had succeeded, and Kari would never forget the dreadful years spent in their clutches.
Kari needed time to think. She needed to be where no one could find her, until she could make a plan. But that required getting off Ceres–why did I even come here in the first place? she wondered to herself– and you couldn’t do that without a passport. At least, you weren’t supposed to. But that was why she’d been researching interplanetary trading ships. Particularly the maintenance corridors. And how to access them from the ground. In short, illegally.
“Listen,” she said to Ian. “You seem like a kid who can keep a secret, and judging from the fact that you aren’t in school – no offense – you don’t have any ties to Ceres. Are you familiar with the old Terran term ‘stowaway’?”
“No,” replied Ian, his face taking on a stony look. “I hate stowaways.”
“You don’t have to like them. You know what they are, right?” Kari said, and she realized that she had overstepped the line. She grabbed Ian’s arm suddenly.
“Yes- no- I mean leave me alone! You can go and ruin someone else’s life, but I am going to go read!” and he shook off her hand and stormed away.
Ian stopped. He half-turned and looked over his shoulder at the girl staring sadly at the floor.
“I’m sorry,” he said softly. “I just don’t like the idea of stowaways . . . it was a stowaway that killed my parents on their way back to Ceres from a trip to Ida, when I was six. He killed them and all the other passengers, and then stole the ship. No one knows what happened to him, but the final transmit from the ship was a recording in which he said that he ‘was off in search of peace’ . . . we’re not sure what that meant, but we never heard from him again. Anyway, that’s why I blew up at you . . . sorry.”
Kari looked at him thoughtfully.
“It’s alright,” she said, a little cautiously. “I was just asking because, well, I want to get out of here, and if you have nowhere else to go, either, then, well . . . um . . .”
“You were planning to stow away?” Ian felt as if someone had punched him in the stomach . . . hard. Kari was only in her early teens and was already planning illegal activities! He began to have doubts about whether or not being friends with this girl was a good idea at all.
“Well, yes, but look, I don’t plan on killing anybody–“ Oh no, never, said a tiny part of her brain, mockingly. Come on, Kari. Stop living in denial. Kari ignored it. “I just want to get away from here!†she cried. “You have no idea what it’s like to have no home to go to at the end of the day, and to have to try to find food…” Kari bit her tongue, hard. She had nearly said more, and if she had, then she would have been in big, big, trouble.
“Actually, I do,†Ian interrupted, unaware of how close he had come to finding out Kari’s biggest and most dangerous secret.
Kari looked flustered. “Oh, well . . . yes, I suppose you do . . .” she trailed off, not quite trusting herself not to get carried away.
“All right. I guess I would like to come with you,†Ian said.
“I didn’t off–“ she began, but something made her change her mind. “You would? Really?”
“Yes. I, too, want to get out of here . . . if I can do something other than creep around like a rat all day, hoping I don’t get caught by the police, and then sleep in a tunnel at night on an empty stomach, I’ll take it. I just wish it wasn’t something so dangerous.”
Kari brightened, a bit. She could tell that this Ian kid had at least a little thirst for adventure in him . . . maybe they weren’t so very different, after all – if you ignored their histories. “Well, it won’t be if we do it right. Here, I’ll show you a few of my plans, and you can tell me what you think of them.”
“All right,†said Ian. “Where are you planning to go, Mars?â€
“Heck no!” Kari laughed. “Even I’d be out of my league if I tried that. Trying to terraform that planet was a mistake. They’ve been working on it for nearly 150 years, and even at the equator it’s like Siberia. I mean, I know it takes thousands of years for the terraforming process to be complete, but you’d think they’d have made a bit more progress by now.
“No,” Kari continued, “we’re heading for the Jovian moons.”
“But there’s no way I’m stowing away,” said Ian firmly.
Kari took a deep breath to argue, paused for a very long moment, and said finally, “If you have the money, then we can take a shuttle.†Ian looked at her questioningly and opened his mouth, but she cut in. “It’s still illegal, but not quite as bad. Just leave it to me.”
“What do you mean?†asked Ian suspiciously. He didn’t like the thought of leaving it to Kari; something told him that she was no ordinary orphan. If she had already been planning to stow away, who knows what else she might do?
Kari seemed to know what he was getting at. “Don’t worry. It won’t hurt anybody, or anything like that. Do you have money?â€
Ian hesitated. His answer would be the binding promise, but he could still back out now. If he told the truth, he would be stuck with this venture, and forced to see it out till the end. Did he really want to do this? Of course he did. “I do have money,†he replied truthfully. “Not a lot, but it might be enough.â€
Kari and Ian boarded the next shuttle to Jupiter that very day, though it cost seven years worth of saving whatever Ian could find in the horribly clean tunnels of Ceres. The shuttle was nearly empty—not many people could afford to or wanted to leave their safe and tedious existences on the asteroid, and if they did, they had to get passports, a process that took a very long time and a good deal of money. Ian had one from his vacations from his parents as a small child, but Kari shook her head at it.
“They’ll be able to track you if they know about that,†she said. “Have any money?â€
Ian, not liking the sound of, “they’ll be able to track you,†doubtfully put his small collection of cores and half-cores into her hand. Kari looked oddly at them.
“What on Earth are these? Is this what they use on Ceres nowadays?†She tapped one of the half-cores, a thing like a marble cut in two with a man’s head on the flat side, mistrustfully. The cores looked much the same, minus the flat edge. Instead, the head was stamped on one side, covering half the ball with the man’s face.
“What else should we use?†asked Ian, genuinely puzzled. “And what’s ‘Earth’?â€
Kari said nothing, but when they boarded the shuttle, she slipped them into the pilot’s hand without a word. He did not question the legality of their passports.
“C’mon,†said Kari, sweeping ahead of Ian and into an empty compartment as though she were royalty, an effect rather spoiled by her simple and not-terribly-clean clothes. She sat down in a seat, and Ian sat beside her, remembering the last time he’d been in a ship, aged six. It had been nothing like this one, with its cheap white plastic seats and fuzzy radio. This shuttle was . . . Ian searched for the word . . . seedy. A little like Ceres, really. He sighed and almost relaxed. Maybe he ought to feel at home.
He stiffened again as a man entered the compartment. He sat down in the seat farthest from Kari and Ian, and put a pair of SilencePlugs® into his ears. Then, with a none-too-friendly look at the young people with which he shared the compartment, he went to sleep.
As the massive G-forces pulled them out of the planet’s gravity, something went wrong. There was a crackling and sputtering from one of the engines, and then, with a sickening crash, it failed. Ian gasped. “What was that?†he asked Kari, his chest tightening with fear. He didn’t know what had happened, but nothing that made that noise was good.
“Engine,†replied Kari curtly, her voice betraying no emotion. “I might have known this little shuttle would do something like that. We’re going to crash.†And she was right. Not being far enough out into space, the gravitational pull was still around them, and they plummeted back towards Ceres, while the ship became hotter and hotter still due to the air friction. Ian moved closer to Kari, trying to avoid the glowing walls. He didn’t want to die! Oh how idiotic he had been to come with Kari. A tear slipped down his cheek, but Kari didn’t notice. She was watching the window. Ian followed her eyes in time to see a large piece of metal from the side of the ship disintegrate into small pieces which fell and rattled against the shuttle’s hull. Ian gave a strangled half-sob, knowing there was nothing he or Kari could do but wait for death. The pilot was already dead or unconscious: the radio that connected the cockpit to the passenger seating was silent. Ian wept for himself, and Kari, and the man in the compartment, and the pilot, and simply out of sheer terror. Kari did not spare him a glance as she watched the surface of the planet loom ever closer. Kari gripped Ian’s hand for balance as she unbuckled her seat belt and stood on the tilting floor.
Ian jumped. “What’re you doing?” Was she insane? She would be killed! Not, of course, that her chances of life were any better if she was sitting down than if she was standing up.
“Getting ready to save our lives, got a problem with it?” Kari sounded fierce, fiercer than when they had been on Ceres. Ian looked at her. Their eyes met. Hers burned with a blazing green fire. His were pools of deep blue fear. She squeezed his hand, her fierceness melting away slightly to reveal a hint of gentleness.
“Look, we’ve made it this far.” she said, “No way we’re giving up now.” He nodded shakily in agreement.
Chapter 2
Kari made her shaky way towards the emergency exit and pressed a bright blue button next to the door.
“What’s that do?†asked Ian, gulping down his fear.
“It activates a ship-contained force field that will keep all the air from rushing out of the ship when we open the door and enable us to move around and talk.â€
Ian nodded, although he wasn’t at all sure he understood what she meant.
“C’mon, help me open this!” Now Kari was struggling with the heavy handle of the emergency exit. Ian cautiously stood up, and together they managed lift the door slightly.
“Wait!†cried Kari, as Ian attempted to pull it open. “The force field won’t last for long, so we’ve got to have a plan. When I say to do so, open the door. When I nod, jump out of the shuttle, alright?”
“What?” Ian protested. “Without inflatachutes, or anything? We can’t! And what about him?” He pointed towards the only other passenger in their compartment, snoring softly in a nearby seat. He still had the SilencePlugs® in his ears, accounting for his unawareness. A GraviMask® was strapped across his eyes, bearing the scrolling message- “GraviMask®! Manipulates your sense of gravity so even during space travel you don’t feel the slightest movement!” The advertisement went on, but neither of them was reading.
“At least he’s asleep. He won’t even notice when this thing crashes,†Kari said coldly. Ian was shocked.
“But –“
“We can’t rescue him and us both. Do you wanna live, or not?” Ian braced himself, casting a last sorrowful look at the snoring man.
“On 3…1, 2, 3!” Together they tugged at the door and if swung open. Kari looked at Ian, and nodded. The boy took a deep breath, shut his eyes tightly, and they jumped. Ian felt the artificial wind lick his face as they free fell towards Ceres…was this the end? Was this how he would go? Falling towards the very planet from which he had tried to escape? He wished the police had caught him before he had gone into the library; he wished he had never met Kari; he wished life were still normal. But wishing changed nothing. Life was not normal, and he was going to die in only a few minutes. He scrunched up his face and tried to concentrate on living, breathing–or not breathing, to more accurate–, forcing his heart to beat a couple more times.
Don’t breathe, Kari thought silently toward Ian. We haven’t hit the artifisphere yet. You’ll die. She didn’t expect him to understand her, since telepathy bugs were a part of pre-War technology that had been transported past Terra only by a few fanatics, and most lucky, ordinary, average citizens were ignorant to the fact that they had ever existed. That was for the best, too, it was horrible to feel someone else in your brain. But she didn’t want this kid to die. For some reason, it felt good to be able to talk to somebody normal again, someone fully human. She was so lonely. 70 years of boredom in sentient cryonics could do that to a person, she supposed.
She looked over at Ian again. He seemed to be alive, even if he was going rather blue in the face, which was good in an awful sort of way. It shouldn’t be too long before they reached the artifisphere. They’d have to leave soon, because the Parents were already looking for her. Going to Ceres had been a mistake. Ceres would do anything to get into the good graces of the government, and looking for a teenage girl, who, they were told, was an escaped criminal, would be the smallest price to pay for a bit of praise. The Parents, surely, would give them her biosignature, and from there it was an easy step to finding her, with everything she’d done. Unless Ian was also a wanted renegade Container (which she doubted even without taking into consideration his physical appearance), his signature would take longer to find, but if they discovered him with her he’d be executed in the most inhumane way the Parents’ torture generals could dream up. One of the few advantages to being a Container was that she could not be killed. She was far too valuable, even as a renegade. The Parents would do almost anything to keep her alive, because they need the information in her head. If they ever wanted to complete the project, they needed her. Kari was safe, or so she thought. But Ian . . . Kari was not stupid. She knew what they did to non-Containers that got involved. She had seen it too many times. Harboring her was suicide.
She pitied this Ian kid, though pity was the last thing a Container was supposed to feel. (It was a contaminant, it would taint her data, and it would jeopardize everything they’d planted in her head.) No doubt he’d lived the perfectly normal life of an orphan in the asteroid belt. Then she’d swept in, and now he was a wanted criminal. Ah well. Life, she supposed, was cruel. She was already regretting it, although at the same moment she relished actually speaking to someone, including him in her plans, letting a few of her secrets out. But not the most important one. Never that one.
Kari felt a vaguely familiar fizzle on her skin, which the information that was continuously circling through her mind recognized as the artifisphere. “You can breathe now!” she shouted, and wondered how to tell Ian what he’d gotten himself into.
“Ohhhhhh,” breathed Ian blissfully, though Kari couldn’t hear him through the rushing of the air around them.
“So you’re alive?” she yelled.
“Yeah, but I won’t be for long!” Ian yelled back.
“Why?”
“Well, if you hadn’t noticed, we’re falling at extremely fast speeds towards the HARD GROUND,” Ian screamed sarcastically.
Dang! thought Kari. The impact!
She searched her information. “Come on,” she muttered through clenched teeth. “Aha!” From her pocket she pulled a small round globe of what looked like red glass. The ground was getting closer… closer…
“COME ON!!”
Kari squeezed the globe.
“Oof!” A red mattress had sprung up out of nowhere and Kari and Ian now rested on it as it slowly floated down towards the barren ground of Ceres’ rural areas.
“Is that a… Globe?” asked Ian incredulously. Globes were ancient Terran technology that could contain anything useful that you could ever need or want, as Ian had learned one fateful day when he snuck into the library to read some of the older, more valuable books. He had been caught later, but not before he learned a good deal about pre-WWL Terra. “How…?”
Kari stuttered, “Er… um… well… I’m…”
She’d have to tell him. There was no way to avoid it any longer.
“I’m a Container.”
Ian had no idea what a Container was, but from the look on Kari’s face, he gathered that it was nothing good. When that was added to the events of the past however long it had been– meeting Kari, the bribing of the pilot, and the shuttle crashing – it became too much for him. He fainted.
“A . . . a Container?” stuttered Ian when he had recovered fully. “What in Solana is that?”
Kari groaned. She hated explaining all this. Fortunately, she’d never had to do it before, and she had no intention of ever doing it again.
“It all started,” she said, “a few years after World War Last. A sort of fanatical group of people- they call themselves the Parents, since they’re supposed to be the forebears of this ‘master race’…” She was really giving him the condensed version; a full explanation would have them there till the sun came up. And on Ceres, that was very, very, bad. The artifisphere offered very, very little protection against the deadly ultraviolet light. Anything not in the underground colonies would be baked to a crisp within minutes.
“Anyway, the master race is the Containers, of which I am one. The Parents want to create a new Terra somehow, so we can live there. I know, crazy. It would be impossible, and a bad idea in general.”
“A new Terra? That can’t be so bad.â€
Kari sighed again. Did this dolt not know anything?
“If they were going about it any other way it would be wonderful. Perfect. And so green . . .” Kari’s voice drifted off, and her eyes glazed over. Ian could almost see strange images flickering behind her pupils.
Suddenly, he blurted out, “How would you know? You’re not old enough to even have any memories of Terra!”
“Did they not teach you about cryogenics in school? I’m eighty-three and a half,” Kari said matter-of-factly, pulling back her sleeve to reveal the tattoo every citizen of the solar system had, which listed her birth date, home planet, identification number, and status. It read: January 27, 2104/Mars/08234919, and then the last line of ink was blurred by a black crater with scorch marks that wrapped around her whole elbow. All you could see was part of a word: Civi.
“Civilian,” said Ian. “I thought you were a Container.†She was really old, too, if her birthday and ID number were to be believed. But still, she shouldn’t have memories of Terra. World War Last had been much longer ago than eighty-three years, and she was born on Mars besides . . . But he knew better than to ask these questions. He could only imagine the response he would get.
“I am a Container. I got this,†she said, indicating the tattoo, “before I became a Container. And let me tell you, putting a lighted firecracker to your skin to get rid of your microchip hurts a lot worse than you’d think.”
She had no microchip? No, she didn’t, because there was the horrible burn on her arm where it ought to be, along with her status. But that meant she shouldn’t be able to function now, since the removal of a microchip instantly destroyed the information in the brain. Every idiot knew that; kids learned it when they were in primary school. Then again, Ian was getting the sense that Kari did a lot of things that shouldn’t be able to be done. Instead of asking her about it, he settled for the question, “What’s a firecracker?”
“Terran,” she responded, deflating the mattress and shoving it back into the Globe.
“Right. So, it’s kind of really dangerous to associate with you?” Ian was beginning to think that following Kari hadn’t been the best idea. Whatever these Containers were, they sounded bad, and Ian wasn’t the sort who liked bad. Although, he thought, Kari probably is.
“Yep. Which means you’re stuck with me now. Pretty soon, they’ll find out that we’re together, and if they catch us, they’ll freeze and brainwash me. You, they’ll destroy just enough cells to keep you within an inch of your life, then put nanobots in you and repair them, then do it again. Again and again and again.” She sounded bitter, as if she’d seen this happen before. Then, on second thought, she probably had. “Oh,†she added, the bitterness in her voice increasing several-fold. “And if you try to leave now, they’ll hunt you down. They can’t take the risk of someone possibly hearing about their precious plan.â€
So it had definitely been a bad idea to get involved with Kari. Was he really going to be tortured, and then killed? The thought scared him, more than the idea of a nice swift execution or a ship crash. Everyone seemed to die like that, and he’d long since accepted it as inevitable. But this…he wasn’t sure why it was so terrifying, but he was absolutely certain that he didn’t want it to happen to him.
“What do we do now?” Ian asked, trying to keep his voice stable.
“Leave.” Kari ran her finger over the edge of the burned pockmark in her skin before replacing the black sleeve of her shirt. “How would you like to see Terra in person?”
“But we can’t go to Terra!” Ian exclaimed, thinking that, however she knew what Terra was like once upon a time, it must have badly damaged her sense of what it was like now. “We would die almost inst-”
“JUST LISTEN TO ME!” Kari interrupted, rather loudly. She was tired of explaining every little thing to this dim-witted child. “Of course we’re not going to land on Terra. As you said, it would be suicide. No, I’m talking about Terra’s moon.”
Ian started. “Terra’s moon? But there isn’t any habitation there!”
“Exactly. No one will look for us there if no one lives there. Right?”
“What are you talking about?” Ian said, glancing around. “Terra and the moon are almost 2AUs (astronomical unit) away, and we don’t have a ship!”
“Who said we were going to take a ship? Maybe we’ll end up taking something else!â€
“Like what?†asked Ian. This didn’t sound promising.
“Come on,” Kari said, “It’s not far from here, but we have to get there before sunrise.”
With that, Kari started to walk toward the dark side of the planet, unyielding to all of Ian’s questions.
Chapter 3
As they reached the dark side of Ceres, Ian began to see a large shape looming out of the gloom. It was roughly conical, almost like…
“A ship?” he gasped out loud. “B-but it’s unregistered!”
“Blast,” muttered Kari, frustrated. “Though, I suppose I can’t blame you for being so naive. The Solan Republic hasn’t hindered the Parents at all by making people think that lawbreaking is unthinkable. This guy isn’t exactly a friend of mine, but he’s an associate. Takes people off-planet, no questions asked, as long as they have money.”
“Uh…and where would you get the money? You can only get it from your assigned class,” said Ian. “And I don’t have any more.†He had barely been able to pay for the shuttle ride with money that he had been scrounging off the streets for seven years. Though, admittedly, that had been mostly bribing material.
“Again, the government’s fault. In Terra, people used to be able to work toward the class or job they wanted…oops. Forget I said that. I have plenty of money.”
Ian looked at Kari strangely. Why didn’t she want to share her memories? How did she have them, anyways? Eighty-three and a half was old, but she wasn’t old enough to really have been on Terra back when it was still somewhat green and blue. And if she had “plenty of moneyâ€, why hadn’t she paid for the shuttle? He thought that was rather selfish. He had spent more than half his life saving it up, blew it away on a whim of hers, and she had “plenty of money?!” And what’s more, if Kari had known about this man, why had they even bothered with the shuttle? Unless, of course, she hadn’t wanted Ian to know about him. The boy sighed. Kari was just strange, nothing he could do about that.
Kari led the way toward the ship, and smacked her hand against the hull 12 times. There was a pause while the sound reverberated around the barren landscape, and for a dreadful moment Ian thought nobody was home. Then all of a sudden a short, stout man appeared, as though from nowhere.
“What the tikko-oh, ‘ello, Kari!”
“Glad to see you,” said Kari insincerely, pushing the man aside and striding up to the wall of the ship and walking straight through a door that opened as if by magic. Ian, getting used to very strange things happening often, walked right in after her.
The man was left standing there on the rough Cerean crust with a disgruntled expression on his rather chubby face. “Dem kids…” he muttered, and disappeared.
“Who was that?” asked Ian. He could accept strange things happening, but he still wanted to know why and who, if Kari would tell him.
“Just a friend of the Parents, if you could call it that. The Parents don’t really have friends, not even amongst themselves. They just share a common goal, and stay on together because of that. If they got a planet to be like Earth used to be, I wouldn’t know what would happen. They would try to destroy each other probably, since they had finished what they joined together to do…” Kari gazed into the ship, and you could tell she knew something that she wasn’t telling Ian… probably her Terran memories again, Ian decided unhappily. Her eyes had that weird flickering quality that must signify her unnatural memory at work.
She snapped out of her reverie as the man appeared beside her.
“Well, if we’re going somewhere, let’s go now,” he said impatiently. “Where to, Kar-kar?”
“Luna, and don’t call me Kar-kar,” she said. â€If you do that one more time I’ll call you Antie.â€
The two followed the man (Ian later learned that he was called Antavo) into the main passenger cabin, a thing that Ian had seen only once, aged six, in a private ship. Most shuttles had compartments that could be jettisoned in case of emergency. The ship was not very large, but the passenger cabin was holographically enhanced to make it look like it was bigger than it really was, as Ian discovered by walking into a wall. The walls were painted a dreary grey that held the slightest hint of a sickly yellow, and apart from this depressing color, there was nothing in the cabin but a few seats. Kari selected two of these in the middle of the sparsely decorated cabin, and she and Ian sat down. The seats were covered in some exotic blue-green fabric that looked very soft and silky, but to the touch it felt rough and scratchy.
“Are we buckled in nice and tight?” called Antavo from the pilot’s cabin.
“Yeah, Antavo, whatever. Let’s just go.” Kari’s pose was once again rigid and unnatural. Perhaps, Ian suggested to himself, she sits that way to keep from touching the seats.
“Posi!” called Antavo in agreement from the pilot’s cabin, and without another word, they took off. It was not the smooth, quiet, take-off of the shuttle, but loud, jerky, and altogether heart stopping. More than once, Ian was sure that they would crash back to Ceres again, but they did not.
After breaking the thin artifisphere, there was a sickening moment or two, as direction seemed to disappear, before they started to experience the pleasure of weightlessness. Kari had experienced it before, but Ian had not. Any ships he had ever gone on had artificial gravity. He was like a child in a candy shop. He took off his seat belts and went flying around. The pilot didn’t pay much attention to him. He was used to first time passengers, not that he got many, maybe three or so. He never saw them again after their flight.
“Oh get down from there, you’re making a fool of yourself.” Kari snapped. She was strangely irritable. She had never wanted to be a passenger on Antavo’s ship again, and yet here she was, and not only was she here, she was saddled with a naïve kid who acted half his age.
Ian slowly floated back to his seat, still unused to there not being gravity on the ship. When had there ever not been gravity in spacecraft? Not for a long, long time, since Terra maybe. Wait . . . this had to be a Terran craft!! And a really old one at that. After all, all recent spacecraft simulate artificial gravity.
Ian became even more excited. Why couldn’t this be one of the transpace vehicles that had been built in the pre/Last War era in Terra? There really wasn’t any other explanation.
Then suddenly, his meal arrived. He had not expected it, as he rarely ever ate, but Kari explained that Antavo provided every passenger with a meal. She neglected to state why.
Ian slowly chewed the 48-carboprotien multivitamin tablets. They had no taste at all, but Ian didn’t even notice, having never experienced anything else. Ian remembered when he had been safe, back at the library on Ceres. It had seemed so long ago, even though it was less than a day. There, he had absorbed information about when food had been GROWN, not chemically assembled from raw protons, neutrons, and electrons in particle accelerators. He could not think of what taste would be like, because his mind could not comprehend it. He often wondered what it would be like in a world where things just seemed to happen, as he had read about Terra, instead of being automated and fully predictable. Then he thought, Perhaps I know. After all, this whole . . . adventure wasn’t predictable. He even smiled a little at the thought of Kari being predictable. Yeah, right.
After he was done eating his nutritious but flavorless meal, he settled into his uncomfortable chair to attempt sleep. No luck. Kari poked him in the arm none to gently and told him that they were just about there. “To Luna? But we just left Ceres.â€
“So? This ship is fast. Besides, it’s been a lot longer than you would think. You spent a long time floating about on the ceiling.†She said this scornfully, and turned back to the one window, out of which could be seen the velvet blackness of space.
They approached the lunar landscape, and headed toward the landing spot at the top of Luna. It was the site of an abandoned Terran colony. It had originally been built in 2041, but it was abandoned after Terra’s World War Last, only two years after the colony had been founded, since there was no longer a source of vital nutrients and items for life. It was never revived later, as the atmosphere even now is very poor.
The ship slowly powered down through the thin atmosphere. It landed roughly among the ancient Terran debris that was scattered around the colonies observation dome. Ian was thrown backward with the force of the impact. He crashed against the wall of the ship. “Stupid Terran technology,†he muttered, despite the fact that he had been ecstatic about it only a little while ago.
“Best put on the suits,†commented the pilot. “No good wand’ring round in your clothes. No air, see, and no artifisphere, neither.†Kari glared at him, but put the spacesuit on over her clothing nonetheless.
Kari paid for their ride – Ian noted the currency was like none he had ever seen– So that’s why she couldn’t bribe the shuttle captain, he thought, sorry for his harsh feelings earlier– and the duo headed toward the abandoned colonial landscape. Ian nearly tripped over a something that resembled a miniature table made of an unfamiliar substance. “What’s this?†he asked distastefully. It had an odd texture, like nothing he had seen before.
“Wood,†replied Kari, looking around at the heaps of similar items that covered Luna’s surface, looking strange against the pale grey dust. “A real ghost town,” she said. “Let’s go in.†She nodded towards a large, mostly intact, metal dome, a few hundred yards away, and started walking before Ian could even ask what a ghost town was. Terran words, he thought with a sigh. I suppose I’ll never get used to them.
Chapter 4
As they went inside the observation dome, Ian glanced at the display cases, which were made out something Kari informed him was glass. There was a fine layer of dust over everything, but the glass was smooth underneath it, and Ian enjoyed feeling it under his hands almost as much of as he enjoyed looking at the contents of the cases.
His curiosity was captured by the ancient spacesuits, so much more bulky than his own, which had seemed quite bad enough. At least he could still move in this! But Kari was already ahead of him, giving him no more time to look around.
“But Kari,†he protested, as she seized his wrist with a mutter of impatience.
“Come on,†she said. “We have to get to the life-support system in Sector 8.â€
“But why? I want to look around!â€
“Oh shut up and stop being an idiot. You’ll have plenty of time to look around later. And besides,†she added in a more kindly tone, “I think you’ll like the next room.â€
Ian muttered furiously, but his protests were cut short. They had entered the library. The shelves stretched far above him, almost touching the high ceiling, and ladders allowed a reader to reach the top shelves. But what fascinated Ian was the huge collection of books on every topic, all from Terra! He was in utter awe. He pulled a book off one of the lower shelves, and replaced it when he found that he could not read the language. Ian climbed up one of the ladders and pulled a different book off a different shelf, this one luckily in English. But even so, the text did not automatically appear on a screen in front of him, and it took him a few minutes to figure out how to turn the pages and so forth. The title said, To The Moon And Back: The First Epic Journey. Ian was puzzled. Which moon did the book mean? There were hundreds of moons in the solar system.
He glanced at some other titles:
Our Endangered Planet
Fashion Passion: A Photo Essay
Technology–The Ultimate Evil
The Complete Book of Algebra
How Did It Happen? Historians Ponder the World Wars
Genetic Modification And Its Benefits to Humankind
A Complete History of Soccer
Muse Comes to an End–The Whole World Weeps
Religion Wars
An Archive of Comic Strips
Thumbdisks: A Piece of the Past
History in the B.C. Era
They Said Aliens Would Come
The End of Earth: A Prediction of the Future
Ian looked at the last one, utterly confused. He remembered Kari’s exclamation at seeing the cores, and concluded that earth was something Terran. “Kari,” he said, “what’s Earth?”
“What is Earth? What is Earth? Jeez, how dumb are you?” Kari said, clearly shocked at his ignorance. “Terra. Terra, Earth? Earth, Terra? Same difference! Terra IS Earth!” Ian turned back to the shelf, newly amazed.
He looked through some more titles, then stopped at one that looked interesting: Cryogenic Preservation. He lifted the book off the shelf and began to read.
The first part was somewhat boring, talking about the mechanics and history of cryogenic science. He was about to put it down when he noticed that the back cover was unusually thick. Curious, he opened the book again.
To his surprise, there was a time lock on the inside of the cover, one that had opened about a month ago. He pressed the OPEN button. And nearly dropped the book as a recorded voice began to speak.
“As tensions between the United States, Russia and China increased, and the nuclear threat grew,†the book said, “Nobel-Prize-winning scientist Stephen Rosinburg saw only one way to save Earth and its civilization. The Great Evacuation had not yet begun, but he knew that it might. However, he also knew that without reminders of how Earth once had been, it would fade to a distant memory, and its great cultures would be utterly lost.â€
Pretty accurate, Ian thought. Most people had no idea what Terra had been like, him included.
“He worked feverishly for months, but finally his effort was rewarded, and his magnum opus was revealed to the world: a great spaceship containing thousands of cryogenic capsules. He gathered volunteers from across the globe, of all races and backgrounds, and froze them all, leaving himself for last. Then the ship was launched into orbit, on the pretext that at some point in the future, what was left of mankind would discover them, revive them, and learn of their heritage.
But in one of the great tragedies of history, a malfunction destroyed most of the capsules and left Rosinburg’s dream unrealized.
However, some of the capsules are believed to have survived, including the one containing Rosinburg. Due to the unplanned orbit of the remaining fragment, it was predicted to land a little more than a century later, in the remnants of the city Sanfronsisca, on August 10, 2187. Perhaps someone will find this book and return to Earth, saving Rosinburg and his great goal from utter destruction.
I record this as I leave the Earth in Evacuation Ship 26. I hope that, if you are reading this, you have the courage and fortitude to save Dr. Stephen Rosinburg- and doing so, save your heritage.â€
“August 10, 2187?†Ian gasped. “But that’s tomorrow!!!â€
“No way!” said Kari, reading over his shoulder. “That’s got to be a spoof.” Boy did she like to show off!
“Huh?”
“A fake! A phony! Not-real!”
“Oh… But wait…” said Ian, “If it’s a spoof or whatever you said, then what is it doing in the Moon’s official collection of books and resources?
“What if someone planted the book here, especially for us to find?” Ian asked Kari, quite pleased with his new theory. “What if those space pirates-â€
“Parents,†corrected Kari. Ian shrugged.
“Okay, Parents who were following you put it here?” He waited for Kari to reply. And waited. And waited.
Finally she spoke. “I don’t know, Ian, I just don’t know.â€It occurred to Ian that she had never used his name before.
“Ship to Kari!” a voice crackled over the radio attached to her suit, startling the pair. “The sensors pick up a activated life-support system in Sector 8. Out.”
“Kari?” Ian asked unsurely, “Where’s sector 8? And what’s out there?”
“Oh stop being a goon-head, it’s probably just a Betwer, one of those metallic crab-robot things. You remember, they were genetically engineered to colonize planets and moons that were either unterraformable or incompatible with an artifisphere…â€
“No.â€
“They’re usually rather reclusive. They won’t hurt us,” Kari replied, annoyed. Ian filed away “goon-head†in his list of Terran words. So far he seemed to have mostly insults.
“C’mon,” Kari continued, “Let’s go to sector 8. These cheap suits will only last us approximately 34 hours with no air.” So Ian set off with Kari towards sector 8.
Sector 8 was isolated in the middle of the great Luna desert. As they walked up toward an open door, it mysteriously vanished to reveal a thick cast-uranicium (atom 138 on the periodic table) door with a message on virtual HTML, saying, “ENTER PASSWORD.” Ian was confused. Kari was annoyed. “Curse them holograms,” she muttered, as she approached the number pad.
The number pad had the numbers 0 through 9 and 10 spaces in the crystal display. That meant there were roughly 10,000,000,000 possible passwords, and they were ignorant as to what it could possibly be.
Kari had never seen this before. Last time she visited sector 8 on Luna, (which admittedly had been twenty years ago) there had been no password. Or at least, she didn’t think there had been, but the information may have merely been erased when she was last frozen. Along with the password. This is not good, she thought. We need that life support system soon, or else our space suits will run out. She did not allow herself to think about the fact that they might not be able to operate it without the password.
“We should get inside,” said Ian, looking across the desert.
“0752330917,†muttered Kari. “No . . . no . . . 1832457012 . . . darn . . . 1234567890 . . .? No, I didn’t think so . . . 7239090127 . . .â€
Ian’s attention had been caught with a large piece of metal, and as he watched he could almost imagine it hiding all sorts of fearsome creatures . . . “Really, Kari,†he said desperately. “Let’s get inside.â€
Kari stared at the screen. She had tried almost every combination that popped into her head, and she couldn’t think with Ian talking so much. Suddenly, with a wild yell she kicked the machine. There was a beep, smoke, and a long drawn-out hiss. “Oops,†said Kari.
The door had been blown off of the lubricated sliding tray that held it in place. “Wow.” said Ian as he staggered to his feet. “Hey, Kari? Never do that again.” Another door stood a short ways down the hall. The second door didn’t have a keypad.
Antavo was getting very uncomfortable. The kids didn’t really need his help, did they? He imagined what the Parents would say if they heard he had let one of the renegades slip through his grasp, and although he didn’t really care what they thought of him, he didn’t like to think of their weaponry against his.
Kari and Ian started down the hall when a radio transmission reached them. “Ah gotta go now,” said Antavo. “Must get off ta Mars. Business, taxi service, ya know? And don’t make too much noise on Luna. Ah heard all yer ruckus at sector 8. Ah’m hearin’ there are government spies here to catch people who ain’t s’possed to be wand’rin ’round.” All the answer he received from Kari was a curse.
They walked down the hall and opened the tarnished metal door. It seemed much, much, too easy, Kari thought. The Container entered first as a precaution, with Ian following. “Now where’s that Betwer,” she muttered, then stopped in shock. The room had a large round table with chairs seated around it, and its floor was white and grey linoleum. It appeared to be a conference room of some sort, and there was a black box floating in the middle of the room, right above the table, surrounded by streaks of lightning.
Or at least there appeared to be. With holographic technology, Ian was beginning to doubt supernatural-looking objects.
THIS IS A RECORDING; LEFT BEHIND BY A COLLEAGUE OF STEPHEN ROSINBURG boomed a voice from the box. Ian was shocked. Kari was beginning to get suspicious.
IF YOU ARE LISTENING TO THIS MESSAGE, YOU HAVE HEARD THE OTHER ONE HIDDEN IN MY BOOK. YOU KNOW OF THE MAN WHO TRIED TO SAVE THE CULTURE OF EARTH. HE WILL ARRIVE IN MERE HOURS, BUT HE WILL LAND ON THE RADIOACTIVE SURFACE OF EARTH. IF NOBODY RESCUES HIM, HE WILL BE DOOMED TO DIE.
BUT IF YOU RETURN TO EARTH, HE MAY BE-
Suddenly Kari stiffened, no longer listening to the message.
“Ian. Don’t. Move. It’s behind us.” Her voice had suddenly turned cold and commanding, as she realized the Betwer was coming.
“I’m going to slowly turn around. Be still.” Her voice was shaking, but whether from fear or excitement Ian didn’t know. He turned around. The Betwer was bigger than he had imagined, and its black body was impressive, at the least.
The black box, meanwhile, had continued talking, but the voice slowly faded away. The Betwer looked at the box, and then at the two kids standing by the door. Ian went cold with fear. Kari went even stiffer than before.
“You wouldn’t happen to have an idea of how to get out of this mess, would you?†hissed Kari into Ian’s ear.
“I thought they were harmless.â€
“Not if they’re hanging around! Not on Luna!â€
“I can use an auto-spear,” volunteered Ian.
Kari looked blank, and Ian felt a tingling rush of smug pleasure at knowing something she didn’t. He savored it for a moment; it seemed that it would be a rare occurrence. He opened his mouth to explain, but Kari clamped her hand down over it. It tasted horrible. “If you don’t have one in your pocket, don’t bother explaining.”
“But,” said Ian, trying to talk through her hand, “but I do have one. I picked it up on the shuttle.” Kari released him, and he drew a short thick metal rod from his pocket. A point extended with a hiss of well-lubricated metal. He flicked his fingers over a few buttons and the point began to hum and glow.
The box fizzled with static. The Betwer looked around at it, slowly.
“You know,” said Ian suddenly feeling, well, brave. “You’re starting to get on my nerves.” He gripped the auto-spear tightly, looking from the Betwer to the box and wondering if he could possibly scare the Betwer off and avoid hurting it. He suddenly didn’t like the thought of hurting something.
But before Ian could do anything to either the Betwer or the black box, the Betwer stepped forward, causing Ian to look uncomfortable and slowly start towards the door on the other side of the room, and, with one crunch of its large metallic claws, broke the box into rubble.
The auto-spear went wild. Ian valiantly tried to keep hold of it, but it began to glow so hot that he dropped it on the floor and screamed, “Run!”
They ran. They could here the spear fizzing and popping as it short-circuited when they were ten feet down the hall.
Had he been religious, Ian would have prayed for the Betwer, trapped in the room with the dreadful auto-spear, but religion was one of those things that disappeared after World War Last. So he simply leaned against the wall and breathed deeply.
“What was that?” Kari demanded, not looking at all happy.
“That was an auto-spear,” said Ian. “They were made to fight your enemies for you, but something went wrong, and now they’ll kill you, if you let them get a chance. The makers didn’t withdraw them, and tons of people were killed.” His face saddened, as he thought of his Uncle Barnaby, one of many people killed by the auto-spears. To distract himself, he said, “I’m surprised you didn’t know about it. It was big news about eight years ago, and they’re used by just about everybody.”
Kari gave a furious look, and he shut up.
They were silent, and then Kari thought of something, and swore. Ian didn’t blink, not understanding the word. But he sensed something was wrong. “What is it?” he asked.
“We still don’t have the password.”
“Why do we even need the password?” asked Ian. “I mean, we’re in sector 8, which is what we wanted. Isn’t it?â€
“Because we need to get to the vault where the life support system is.”
“But the door blew up. We can get to the vault now, can’t we?â€
“But we can’t operate it without the password, or at least I don’t think you can.â€
“You’re confusing me,†complained Ian. “If you’ve been here before, why don’t you know the password to operate the life-support system?â€
Kari sighed. “It was erased with most of my other data when I was last frozen. It’ll come back eventually, but I don’t know when.â€
“Maybe the Betwer knows the password,” said Ian, hopefully. “It lives here, after all.â€
“It’s a robot. It doesn’t need to breathe. And even if it did know the password, it wouldn’t help us much,†scoffed Kari, “now that it’s trying to kill us.”
Kari and Ian walked down the hall, Kari opening doors at random. The sixth door she opened led back out onto Luna’s surface. She walked out into the clear dusty atmosphere, scanning the sky.
“But Kari,†said Ian, “what if it’s not trying to kill us? We didn’t exactly hang around for an answer.”
“Well, you set that thing on it,” said Kari. “I’d try to kill you if you did that to me.” Ian didn’t mention that Kari had been perfectly supportive of the auto-spear, even if she hadn’t actually operated it.
“Look!” cried Kari suddenly. “A ship!” Ian looked up and was shocked to see that she was right. “It is!”
It soon became clear that the ship was heading towards them, but as it came closer, they realized that there was no pilot. It spiraled out of control, crashing down towards the rocky grey surface of Luna.
Kari seized Ian’s arm and pulled him back into Sector 8. The ship fell with a noise like thunder, barely missing the spot where they had been standing mere minutes before. It was still intact, amazingly, and the number on the hull read: 983157.
Kari gasped.
Chapter 5
Ian looked at her, puzzled, but she did not explain, and he did not expect her to. It wasn’t like Kari to explain, at least not until the crucial moment had passed, by which time you had muddled through the situation best you could and no longer needed her to explain.
Instead she rushed towards it and through the door that had sprung open with the impact. Ian followed, every nerve in his body vibrating with wariness. “Shouldn’t we have–” he began, but Kari seized him from behind, and for the third time, clamped her hand over his mouth. He struggled furiously, and she let him go with a warning glance. She went into the cockpit and pressed a button that closed the door. She strapped herself into the pilot’s seat.
“Where are we going?” Ian asked, perching on one of the plush dark brown passenger seats with a mistrustful look around the interior of the ship. There were four seats in the middle of the cabin, and a sort of bench that ran all around the inside wall, except for several gaps created by various mysterious doors labeled things like: “Weaponry†“Magnabeams†and “Radiation suitsâ€, to name but a few.
“Where are we going?†asked Ian again, as Kari hadn’t answered the first time.
“Terra,” said Kari shortly.
“Terra!” Ian squawked. “But-”
“This ship has radiation suits. They’re in that closet.â€
“But Kari! Why?â€
Kari didn’t say why for at least thirty minutes. Ian waited patiently while she pressed a button and the old ship lifted off into the vacuum of space.
“That book,†Kari said at long last. “The one about Rosinburg. Well, we have to rescue him. He’s going to be trapped on Terra after all.â€
She explained. “That number on the ship is 983157. Each number stands for a letter in the alphabet in code001. (code 001 is A=1, B=2, etc) You get IHCAEG. That’s the special emergency code for Imploring Help! Come At Earth, G because the code is always IHCA and then the celestial body’s number, and G means it’s in the G position from the sun. See?†And she turned the engine on full speed.
“But I thought you said the book was a hoax!” Ian said as they started to take off.
“You said that.â€
“You agreed!†he reminded her. Above all, Ian did not want to go to Terra.
“Not with this kind of coincidence!” replied Kari as they headed toward Earth at 660,000 miles per hour.
Ian wasn’t buying it. “But why is it ‘Come at Earth’?” he asked. “Why not ‘come at Terra’?”
“Because when it was made, Terra was called Earth. Obviously.”
“Okay, but if the scientist really is stuck on Terra, how’d he send us the ship?” asked Ian, a challenging note in his voice.
“He didn’t.†Kari set the ship on autopilot and swiveled her chair so that she was facing Ian. “There are people,†she said slowly, “that watch Earth for signs of life. If they spot any, then they send for help. Easy as that.â€
Ian could spot at least five flaws in this explanation, but he decided not to hold it against Kari. It can’t have been easy, being brainwashed every time the Parents captured her. But there was one thing he had to ask. “Kari,†he said. “Are these . . . people . . . connected to the Parents?â€
Kari looked at him, for an instant doubt showing in her face. Then she turned back to the controls, and did not speak again.
But as they approached Terra they noticed that a ship was slowly flying in a circle around a large once-white space station. The illegal alien police. Kari immediately brought the ship to a halt. “Do you have your passport?” she asked.
“Why do we need it?” asked Ian. “And I thought it made us easy to track?â€
“If we don’t have a passport, we will be arrested for planet hopping!” Kari said urgently.
Ian thought it odd that Kari would care about being arrested, after the things she had done, but he dug into his pocket nonetheless. He came up with what looked like a tiny green calculator. “Here it is! But what about you?”
“I have my methods.” By this she probably meant bribes. Except that there wasn’t any more money . . . Unless she had been holding out on him again? He shoved this thought to the back of his mind.
“But your arm . . .” Ian knew that while shuttlers might not ask too many questions, the Police most definitely would.
“Oh rats, I forgot about that.†Her hand went instinctively up to her arm to hide it, even though she was wearing long sleeves. “Look, you can drive this for a little, right? I’m going to hide.”
“But if they search us they’ll find you!” Ian was too concerned about this to mention that no, he couldn’t drive the ship, even for a few minutes. He was too concerned even to ask what “rats†was.
“Oh, shut up, will you? Put it on auto-steer if you think driving it will be too hard, and then all you’ll have to do is stop when they come near. If you press the yellow button they won’t board us.”
“Why not?”
“It means illness.”
“Illness? We’re not ill.”
“Quarantine, stupid. The oldest trick in the book.”
“Books?” Ian perked up at the mention of books, but Kari, weary of their meaningless conversation, was already gone.
Ian shrugged, pressed the yellow button, and put the ship on auto-steer, then gripped the handle that stopped the ship and waited.
The ship retreated in fright. The yellow flag symbolized that the ship had contamination of one of the deadliest viruses known to humankind: the Andromeaneedle, dubbed by the few survivors the superbug, although there had been many of them. But unfortunately for Ian and Kari, the Adromeaneedle had been wiped out a century or more ago, and served to make the Police only more suspicious. And they had radiation suits. As soon as the Police were outfitted they charged back, wearing protection from the virus.
Ian decided that as Kari was born on Mars, if they went to Mars, they couldn’t be arrested for planet hopping. He turned around the spaceship and set the speed on MAX.
“What are you doing?” demanded Kari as soon as it was safe to come out.
“We’re going to Mars. Since you were born there, they can’t arrest us if we’re there . . . Is that alright?”
“It is not alright! We need to rescue that man!”
“But the illegal alien police have protection from the virus.”
“And that’s going to stop us? Ian, this is a matter of life and death.” Kari had taken over the steering while she was talking, and they were under her control once more.
“What are you going to do?” asked Ian with a sense of dread.
“Blow up their ship, of course.”
“But Kari! They might just pop you back into a freezer for a few years, but they won’t do that to me! Like you said, they’ll kill me slowly, again and again and again.” He was close to crying.
“Actually, that’s the Parents that will do that to you,†Kari said, but added heartlessly, “You’ve broken the law so much already that if we’re caught, they’ll do that to you anyway.” Kari’s voice was harsh and cold. “One more crime won’t hurt. In fact, if we don’t do this, you’ll be caught sooner than later.”
Ian felt like his insides were being squeezed by an iron fist. A single tear of sheer terror rolled down his cheek.
“Ian you have to do this, anyway, you don’t have a choice. We’re going to Terra whether you like it or not. And there are things we’ll have to do to get there that you won’t like. Live with it.” Kari’s voice had taken on a commanding quality and Ian figured he’d just go ahead and comply quietly.
He made a last feeble attempt to stop her. “But the people–“
Kari ignored him, and lurched the ship towards Mars. Ian frowned, confused.
“Uh, Kari?” he asked tentatively, when she did not exclaim, “Oops!†and turn ba
“Uh, Kari?” he asked tentatively, when she did not exclaim, “Oops!†and turn back to Terra and the pursuing Police.
Kari cast him a glance. “What?”
“That’s Terra back there. We’re headed towards Mars.”
“Space around Terra is too conspicuous. We have to fight them near Mars. There are so many wars going on around Mars, no one will even think twice about a few more battles.”
More battles. Ian could have screamed. Instead, he sat down in a chair and pulled his knees up to his chest, repressing the growing dread inside him.
The pair was almost to Mars when a voice told them to freeze.
“Attention,” the voice went on. “You are entering the space of one of the Preserved Terran Habitats. Please transmit authorization code or we will be forced to immobilize your ship.”
“Oh no,” Kari muttered. “What are–?”
“The PTHs?” Ian asked. “You were born on Mars! Don’t tell me you don’t-”
“I don’t. I was kidnapped when I was three, and then experimented on in sentient cryonics for eight freaking decades. Just explain.”
“Some environmentalists put together huge spaceships with what was left of Terran wildlife during the Great Evacuation. For a while they just sat there orbiting Terra because the scientists couldn’t get enough funds to put them somewhere else, but now The Habitats orbit Mars, and you have to pay to enter them.” Ian had always dreamed of seeing one of the Habitats, but he lived too far away and had never had enough money.
Kari put on speed. The Habitat was visible in the view screen, a huge metal globe with massive diamond panels through which a lush jungle could be seen.
“Whoa,” breathed Ian. “Are- are those trees? Oh my gosh! That’s a parrot! I’ve only heard about those in books!!”
Kari grimly clung to the controls, a plan forming in her mind. The police ship was still on their tail. If she could just steer away at the second that the Habitat fired its magnabeam . . .
A bolt of magnetic energy rocketed out from the PTH. Kari did something she hadn’t done in years. She quickly flicked her vision through the electromagnetic spectrum until the projectile appeared as a bright blue glow.
“There’s something to be said for genetic manipulation,” she muttered, as she twisted the joystick violently. The ship shuddered and dropped. The blast shot over the top of its plating, becoming briefly visible as the exhaust ionized, before striking their pursuers head on.
Kari forced the ship into a sharp turn, made sure it was on a trajectory towards Terra; then opened the throttle. They shot forward at speeds only dreamed of during the Terran Era. Only the artificial gravity’s compensation prevented them from being smashed into blobs of jelly.
A job well done, Kari reflected. On to save the scientist. If there really was a scientist landing on Terra, and it wasn’t just a trap. She wouldn’t put it past the Parents to reprogram that box, send the ship and plant the book in Luna’s library. They would stop at nothing in their mad quest to create Neoterra, and therefore would stop at nothing to capture Kari, as she jeopardized their plan. What if one of them was waiting at the very place they were supposed to land?
Kari forced the uneasy thoughts out of her mind. If there was any chance that somebody was about to die an agonizing, slow death from radiation poisoning, she was going to rescue that person. She’d been through that during the time that the Parents had tried to find out how their “children” would stand up to neutron bombardment. She wouldn’t wish that fate on anyone.
“What?” asked Ian, somewhat disappointed at not getting a good look at the PTH.
“What, what?” Kari quipped.
“What did you say about genetic manipulation?”
“Oh that. I’m a Container, remember.” She tried to say it in an offhand way, so that he wouldn’t question her, but it seemed rather strained instead.
Ian tactfully said nothing.
“What was the name of the city he set out from?” Kari muttered, half to herself.
“Sanfronsisca,” Ian stated proudly.
“How did you know that?” Kari gasped incredulously.
Ian held up the book, which he had carried all the way from Luna. “I can read, you know.”
Kari gave him an approving nod. “Well, if my memories are correct, Sanfronsisca used to be where that crater is now.” She pointed out a place on the west coast of a roughly triangular continent. “Let’s go down.”
As Kari guided the ship in, Ian went into a small chamber to put on a radiation suit. The suit was made of thick, interlocking plates of uranicium, with a small antigravity engine to keep the wearer from collapsing under its weight. Ian felt like he was putting on a medieval suit of armor. He had read about one of those in a book at the Ceres library, something about a round table. He still didn’t see how a round table was connected to primitive warriors, but the pre-WWL documents were fragmentary, if not completely incinerated.
The ship landed, steam hissing out of its hydraulic jets. Kari went into the compartment to put on a suit, while Ian stepped out of the airlock.
No sooner had he done so than a loud whine started up and increased in volume. Ian held his breath. Was this the arrival of Rosinburg’s ship?
A fiery comet appeared in the sky, growing in size as it hurtled down to impact about fifty feet away. As the flames died down, it was revealed as a decimated ship, blazing fluid leaking from broken pipes. But the front was mainly intact.
“Kari!” Ian yelled, his voice distorted by the speaker of his suit, and even more by the irradiated atmosphere. “He’s here.”
Kari stepped out of the airlock, and an expression of horror crossed her features.
“The book . . . the box . . . they were fakes!” she babbled.
“What do you mean?” Ian gasped, stumbling backward from the sinister ship as quickly as he could. A small hatch opened in the plating, and a blunt cone nosed out. Kari knew what was coming. She grabbed Ian’s hand and twisted the dial on her suit’s antigravity engine to MAXIMUM. They shot upwards just in time to see a missile strike their ship and reduce it to red-hot slag.
“It was a trap to lure me here,” Kari rasped. “That ship was sent by the Parents.”
“What are we going to do?” asked Ian with an effort, trying not to think about a slow and painful death.
Kari’s face was grey beneath her helmet. “There’s nothing we can do. There’s no one to help. We’ve lost our ship. The air in these things will only last a little while, less if we run. We’re trapped.”
Then Kari was proven wrong- or so Ian thought. The flames died down, and a man, clothed in a strange latex suit, stepped out of the hatch. Dr. Stephen Rosinburg.
Ian gasped and stared. The man stumbled a little, and Ian could see that he was faring badly in the irradiated atmosphere. “We have to help him!” Ian yelled, turning off his antigravity engine and falling heavily to the ground. He didn’t know what he was going to do, but he wasn’t going to stand by and watch this man die.
Kari yelled at him. “No! It’s just a-”
Then Rosinburg disappeared. A man stepped out, unprotected, but not seeming to mind. As he did so, the hologram around the ship vanished as well, revealing it as a perfectly sound, matte-black fighter. He leveled an autospear at Ian. “SURRENDER, RENEGADE,” he said, “OR THE IMPURE ONE DIES.”
“-hologram,” Kari finished lamely.
Chapter Six
Ian woke in a cold blue and white chamber. He couldn’t remember what had happened after the man had aimed the auto-spear at him, but he wasn’t dead yet, and Kari lay unconscious but alive and unfrozen on the other side of the room, so it couldn’t be all bad.
“Kari!” His voice was almost silent, little more than a breath, but the curved walls of the chamber picked it up and magnified it over and over, so that it echoed as loud as if he’d shouted it.
Kari jerked and woke up. Her eyes weren’t angry, only hopeless and sad.
“What happened?” Ian asked.
“They captured you. I surrendered. They knocked us out, and here we are. Again.” Kari said the last word to herself. She was silently resentful for a few minutes, and Ian was silent too, waiting.
“Again!” she yelled suddenly. “Again! I hate it here!” She kicked the wall again and again, and pounded at it with her fists, but it didn’t give, and she slumped despondently to the floor.
“Have you any idea how many times I’ve been here, Ian? Six times. Six times! Last time I burned my microchip out and escaped, but they caught me anyway, and now you’re going to die, and I’m going to sit on ice for a decade until the Parents thaw me out for another experiment. I hate it!”
Suddenly, a section of the wall disappeared. Kari knew that the wall had been made from interlocking nanobots that could disengage at the press of a button, but Ian didn’t, and he was dumbstruck. When Kari saw who stepped through the doorway, though, she was just as dumbstruck as Ian.
“KRI,” the man said expressionlessly. He was only a few years older than Ian, not really so much a man as a boy, and he was unarmed.
“Kerj, you know very well that my name is Kari. You were my friend once. What have the Parents done to you?”
“THEY MADE ME SEE THE ERROR OF MY WAYS,” Kerj replied.
“You mean they destroyed half your brain cells and replaced them with nano-implants. Wake up, Kerj.”
“What were your ways?” asked Ian, feeling reckless and brave now that he knew he was going to die soon.
Kerj looked at him blankly, but said, “I WAS A RENEGADE. LIKE HER.”
“Kari… Kerj… What’s up with the weird names?” Ian asked. If he was going to die in minutes, he at least wanted some answers.
“We were given three-letter ID codes by the Parents,” Kari said. “I was KRI. He was KRJ. We renegades gave ourselves names that were somewhat like our ID codes.†Bitterness tinged her voice as she spoke, bitterness at what the Parents had done, bitterness at Kerj for betraying them, bitterness at herself for falling into the Parents’ trap.
Kerj spoke. “ENOUGH. KRI, YOUR RENEGADE EMOTIONS SERIOUSLY JEOPARDIZED PROJECT NEOTERRA. YOU AND THIS PATHETIC IMPURE ONE MUST DIE.”
“But Kerj!†gasped Kari, and Ian saw horror and disbelief on her face. “You can’t kill us! You can’t kill me! You need me!â€
“NOT ANYMORE, RENEGADE. THE PARENTS CAN AFFORD TO LOSE A FEW MEMORIES. YOU ARE MORE TROUBLE THAN YOU ARE WORTH.â€
A circular section of the floor abruptly disappeared, and an auto-spear telescoped up from it. Kerj seized the weapon and stalked towards them, a feral smile on his face.
Ian,” said Kari, “now would be a very good time to have another auto-spear.â€
“What about your ‘genetic manipulation’?” asked Ian.
“We weren’t given weapons, for fear of exactly this sort of thing. And even if I did have superpowers that way, they wouldn’t work against Kerj any more than they would against a Betwer. Less, even.” She was very pale. She wasn’t going to be wounded and stuck in a freezer. She was going to be killed. And she didn’t like that thought one bit.
“Great.” Ian rummaged in his pockets for something, anything, but they were all empty. “Nothing.”
Kerj thrust ferociously. Kari jumped aside, just in time, but stumbled and fell heavily to the white tiles of the floor, her palms making a smacking sound as she thrust them out to break her fall. Kerj pulled back the spear for another try, one that would surely succeed.
Then Ian, who had made his way around the room to behind Kerj, grabbed the butt of the auto-spear and pulled it back. The combatants fought for control as the spear twitched and jerked, almost another opponent. Kari leaped on Kerj from the side. Already embattled, Kerj fell over. Ian’s fingers scrabbled desperately at the buttons while the spear flailed wildly around the room. Then he got a firm grip and gained control. He pointed the tip at Kerj’s vulnerable neck. “Get us out,” Ian commanded, his shock giving him control and courage that he would never have been able to muster in ordinary circumstances.
“GET THE SPEAR AWAY,” said Kerj, his face showing nothing.
Ian lowered the spear cautiously and realized that his hand was shaking.
Kerj raised himself to his feet and tapped a few buttons on a tiny keypad attached to his sleeve. The wall opened. Kari and Ian stepped through it.
Kari half-turned and opened her mouth to say something to Kerj, but thought better of it and fled down the corridor, pulling Ian along with her, still clutching the auto-spear.
At the end of the corridor, Kari stopped. They had entered a massive room with glinting chrome balconies ringing the walls. Hundreds of people, all with the same white-blond hair and green eyes as Kari, were standing on the balconies, tapping control panels, staring at instruments, or just watching the screen in the middle of the room. It rotated slowly, affording a view to everyone of the man it showed.
“Good evening, friends,” he said. He looked less like a Container than the rest of them. His hair was blond and his eyes green, but his features were not the even, regulated, ones of the Containers. His nose was too large and a little crooked, his mouth very thin. “You already know the details of Project Neoterra, but I will reiterate them for those of you who just came out of cryogenics and suffered some memory loss or modification. Using the gravitational engines designed by JAA, we will pull Ceres, Ida, Dactyl and these uninhabited asteroids . . .” An image of the asteroid belt appeared on the screen, with several dozen objects highlighted in green. ” . . . out of their orbits and crash them on Mars. The resulting body will have a mass approximately equal to Terra . . .”
Ian gasped. “What do they think they’re doing? Thousands of people will die!”
“Do you think they care?” Kari whispered back. “Shush.”
” . . . Superterraforming will commence,” the voice went on. “First, we will inject massive amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, setting up a global warming effect. We will then land the plants from the Preserved Terran Habitats, which will photosynthetically convert the new atmosphere into oxygen . . .”
“We have to get out of here!” Ian hissed.
“Wait,” Kari replied. “We need to find out where the gravitational engines are. I have information that they’re in the Jovian system . . .”
“So that’s why you really wanted to stow away!”
“Of course. But I need more specific- Hang on, I think he’s getting to it . . .”
“. . . the gravitational engines are being constructed on Io, in the Experimental Mineralogy facility of Gigacorp, where we have allies.”
“I know where that is,” Kari whispered excitedly. “I’ve been on Parents mother ships like this one- the hangar for the smaller ships should be down this corridor. Let’s go.”
They hurried down another corridor, and then another, Ian always conscious of his dark hair and blue eyes that marked him as an outsider.
They reached the hangar without difficulty, and securing a ship was a cinch. Though Kari was a renegade, her fingerprints unlocked the door nonetheless, and soon they were flying through the black nothingness of space at a rate close to the speed of light.
“That was easy,” remarked Ian confidently, leaning back in his chair.
But Kari was frowning. “Too easy, almost. They didn’t notice you; I got a ship even though my prints shouldn’t do that anymore; Kerj let us through even though he should have just let himself die rather than help us; it’s all so unnatural.”
And with those words, Ian’s confidence was shattered. He was no longer brave and intrepid, but a naive kid again, and he wished he was back on Ceres, sneaking into the library to look at Terran books, and scrounging for food in the tunnels. Back before he’d met this dangerous girl named Kari.
Suddenly, the dangerous girl whirled around.
“I thought I saw something,” Kari exclaimed, not too loudly though, as they were in secret.
“There it is again!” That time, Ian had seen it too.
A young boy, not yet twelve, stood in the shadows next to them. Quietly he’d snuck up on them, but he was spotted.
“Hey!” Ian cried. “What are you doing here?”
“Shhhhh, not too loud”, Kari whispered. “We’re still hiding.”
“What’s your name?”
“Jaa,” the kid said, leaning casually against the padded seat next to him.
Funny he’s so young, Kari thought. JAA? He’s one of the J-series Containers. Even I’m only a K. He should be older. How many Containers do the Parents need?
Aloud, she said, “How did you get on this ship?”
“Snuck on. I reprogrammed the door to open under your fingerprints.”
“Wow. You shouldn’t have been able to hack into the system. This is state of the art.”
Jaa smiled. “So am I. The Parents designed me to be the best of the best. But I wasn’t happy, even so.”
He sighed, suddenly looking decades older than his eleven or so years. “Can I trust you?”
Kari thought for a moment, then rolled up her sleeve, revealing her ID number and blasted transmitter.
Jaa grinned. “So you’re a renegade, too?” He rolled up his own sleeve, revealing a destroyed transmitter, an ID number, and a birthday–
A birthday!!
Kari thought her eyes were playing tricks. She scanned the ID tattoo again. 2/8/2037. There was no denying it. This kid had been born before World War Last.
“And who is this?” asked Jaa, nodding at Ian. “He’s not a Container, who is he?”
“Ian,” Kari said. “He’s a civilian that I dragged into this. I’m sorry now.”
“You shouldn’t have done that. Why did you?”
Ian perked up, hoping that he would get some answers, but Kari only sighed. “I don’t know. He wanted to leave, and I was so lonely, I couldn’t refuse. That was before he knew I was a Container.”
Ian felt a flush of guilt. He had said he’d like to come, and he’d been blaming Kari for all his hardships since then.
“LONELINESS IS-” began Jaa, but stopped at the look of horror on Kari’s face.
“Sorry, honestly, I am. It’s an old habit and dies hard. I am sorry!”
“Hey guys,” Ian said, “Shouldn’t we be getting going?”
“Not now, Ian. We’re talking.” Kari said in an exasperated voice.
“Umm, I really think we should go.” Ian looked with a meaningful glance at the Containers behind him.
“Fine, what is it?” Kari and Jaa looked at each other conspiratorially.
“Someone,” Ian said, “is coming. And I don’t think it’s a good guy.”
Jaa looked around. He didn’t see anyone, but Ian had a better view of the ship’s viewscreen than he did, so there could very well be someone coming that Jaa couldn’t see.
“All right,” he said, “What we need to do is to stop this plan from happening. They haven’t bothered to think about all the people who live on Ceres. Do you have any ideas?”
Ian suddenly felt a wave of shock. He lived on Ceres! If the Parents had done this . . .
“If you’re that good, do you know anything about the plans for redoing Terra?” asked Kari.
“I designed some of them, back when I wasn’t against these people.”
“Which ones?”
“Well, for one thing, I designed the artificial gravity that they plan to use. I could hack the system and redesign the plans that they have so that the gravity works backward.”
“How does the gravity work?” Ian asked, curious despite his worries.
“Actually, I’m one of the smartest people here,” said Jaa, though it seemed rather irrelevant. “They don’t want to lose me. It works because neutrinos swarm to electromagnetism. If you have a big enough electromagnetic force, the neutrinos are attracted to it. However, I have also found that nuclear force repels them. Even the Parent’s most brilliant scientists haven’t figured that one out!” He laughed.
“Well, then if we could put nuclear force in the spot of electromagnetic force, that would keep the asteroids apart, instead of being smashed together,” Kari concluded.
Jaa grinned at her. “Are you sure you weren’t designed to be a scientist, too?â€
Ian hadn’t been listening very intently. “Are we going to Io, then?” he asked.
Kari spoke slowly, as though talking to a dimwitted child, which indeed she felt that she was. “Yes, we’re going to Io. Haven’t you been listening at all? We’re going to Io so that Jaa can deactivate the gravitational engines and, if we’re lucky, destroy them.”
“All right,” Ian said. “I heard that bit. But . . .”
“But what?”
“Nothing.”
Ian wasn’t so sure it was nothing. He could have sworn he saw something out of the corner of his eye- some sort of ship that darted out of the viewscreen’s range as soon as he turned to look. He pushed it out of his mind and began scrutinizing the newcomer.
That was when he noticed the birth date on Jaa’s ID number. Not only was it from before World War Last, it was before any permanent colonies had been set up on other planets.
Ian gasped. “You were born on Terra!”
“Yeah,” Kari said. “Don’t mind him, Jaa, he’s absolutely obsessed with anything Terran.”
The gibe would have stung, but Ian was too fascinated. “What was it like?”
Jaa smiled. “Absolutely beautiful. Even in the grip of the Warming Effect, it had more variety of animals and plants than on all the planets combined. Even Europa only has a bit of algae and these blind shrimp-like things. Terra had billions. The Preserved Terran Habitats are only a tiny slice. I remember days at the seashore, or climbing trees in my backyard… I was very young back then, before the Parents captured me. They go for orphans, people nobody would miss, and my own parents died during the Great Evacuation. They were victims of one of those ‘superbugs’ that flourished even in the sterile environment aboard ships.”
Ian nodded, sympathetically. The “superbugs”, the Andromeaneedle among them, had evolved aboard ships with long-term voyages, where the viruses had to adapt quickly to infect the limited amount of people. Now, quarantine was much stricter, but thousands of people died back then. Evac Ship 39 was particularly infamous, but other ships had been struck too.
“I was lucky,” Jaa continued. “We lived south of the equator. When the first nukes fell, it was in the northern hemisphere. I think America and some country in western Asia were the first to go at it– Or was it China? Russia? I really don’t know; I was little back then. Anyway, when the South American countries finally got involved–my home was neutral until almost the very end–the evacuation ships were ready, and my family boarded them as soon as possible. We got off before everything started falling apart. I hear the last days were really horrible–people starving, dying of radiation sickness, killing each other for the last drop of water.”
Ian shuddered. Because of that, he thought for a moment that the ship’s sudden vibration was just a figment of his imagination, and not a laser shell striking the reinforced hull.
Chapter Seven
“MEEP MEEP MEEP” bleeped the ship’s computer. “Curses,” said Jaa, which was putting it mildly. “The Parents are after us!” He ran to the front of the ship just as a violent blast caused the ship to shudder and the computer screen flashed, “Hull damaged 68%”.
“We’ve got to eject!” screamed Kari, panicking for once in her eighty-three years of life. She stared at the hundreds of buttons on the control board. “Which button is it, Jaa?”
“I . . . don’t . . . remember . . .” Jaa said, as he grew sweaty.
Ian, realizing the impending doom, started pressing random buttons on the keyboard, hoping to be the hero. He was knocked off his feet as another blast caused the screen to flash, “Hull damaged 83%”.
As he struggled to his feet, he saw Jupiter in the distance. Io orbited Jupiter, so if he could just keep the ship safe for another minute or so . . .
He noticed Kari was looking for a steering wheel, the joystick having snapped in two. Jaa had passed out on the floor. Ian remembered that cold water on a towel for ten seconds on somebody’s head would revive them. As he ran down the hall to get a towel, he heard Kari shriek, “WHERE THE HECK IS THE DANG STEERING WHEEL?”
Just as he had reached the door to the ship’s bathroom, another blast shook the ship so violently that Ian slammed into a door on the opposite side of the hall, promptly busting it in half. As he slid through the gaping hole, he noticed a steering wheel. “What’s it doing in here?” he wondered.
“Ian!!!” Kari yelled. “Where are you? The hull is damaged 95%! One more blast and the whole ship is going to implode!” Ian struggled to his feet and hobbled toward the steering wheel. He had just reached it and started to turn the wheel when he heard the sound of another laser firing. He saw it shoot past his window and knew they had just missed it.
The second thing he noticed when he looked out the window was Io’s landscape. “Holy smokes!” he exclaimed. They were a mere mile from Io’s surface. He started to frantically turn the wheel. It was at times like this that he wished he were back in Ceres’ library, reading about trees.
He gave a last wrench to the wheel, and the wall opened, revealing a smaller ship, barely large enough for four people.
“Kari!” he yelled. “Jaa! I found an escape pod!”
He ran back through the hall. Kari was standing over the still unconscious Jaa, looking frantic.
“We’re going to die, Ian,” she said. “And Jaa’s fainted. How could he faint at a time like this?â€
“Well, can we carry him?” Ian didn’t think it unusual that Jaa had fainted, after all, he, unlike Kari, probably wasn’t programmed to face danger with a perfectly straight face. Not that Kari was facing it with a perfectly straight face right now. Nevertheless, she wasn’t used to Containers fainting. It wasn’t natural. She had been brought up to believe that they were a superior race, and untroubled by the weaknesses of humans.
“Maybe,” she said.
Somehow they managed to drag him down the hall, just as a blast from the Parents’ ship shook the hull.
“The ship’s coming apart!” Kari yelled.
She leaped through the airlock and into the pod, pulling Jaa behind her. Ian was last, scrambling in hurriedly. The walls began to shake and glow red-hot. As the airlock sealed and the booster jets of the escape pod fired, Ian had a last glimpse of the ship’s interior. A reinforced hull plate ripped away, and the inner wall crumpled like tinfoil as the unobstructed pressure blew it out into the vacuum of space. Then the pod was soaring away over the volcanic rocks and sulfur vents of the Ionian surface. Kari clutched the controls like a lifeline, guiding the little ship farther away from the Parents’ vessel.
Numb from the shock of the events in the past few minutes, Ian suddenly realized that he hadn’t eaten since–he didn’t even remember. He wasn’t really used to eating often, but habit couldn’t stop hunger. The Parents had probably put food in the pod anyway; cruel as they were, they still needed their creations to eat. After rummaging around for a while, he located the food locker and opened it. The white steam billowing out obscured the contents for a second, but when it cleared, Ian gasped. “What is this stuff?”
“Food,” Kari said. “Not just nutrition paste or vitamin pills, real food. The Parents used the Containers’ memories to genetically engineer replicas of food crops and livestock. They have several illegal habitats orbiting Terra that they grow food in. They would have used the habitats around Mars, but those were mostly the pristine, undisturbed Terran ecosystems. Nobody cared about saving a plain old cow. Let me have some.”
She reached back and deftly pulled out something that, 200 years before, would have been called a TV dinner. A press of a button on the pack, and a tiny, built-in microwave generator warmed it up. Ian did the same to his, wondering what a cow was, and cautiously tasted it.
His eyebrows shot up. “YEOW!!”
It didn’t hurt, but the overwhelming sensation that he didn’t have a name for was more startling than pain. “What happened?”
“It’s called flavor. I guess you’re not used to it, now that they synthesize all the food– Wait, that’s Gigacorp’s facility up there!”
Sure enough, a building loomed up on the horizon. A metal dome, matte black, with the Gigacorp logo embossed on it. Smaller capsules and pods were connected to it by long carboglass tubes that snaked through the almost nonexistent air, making the entire building look like a demented octopus with swollen tentacles.
Jaa stirred, then reawakened. “Where . . . where are we?” he said.
“We’re on Io, inside the ship’s escape pod.” said Kari. “We’re right next to Gigacorp’s facility. Do you know any way we could get in?”
Jaa thought for a moment. “We could try and bust through one of the carboglass tubes and enter that way. We don’t stand a chance against the security at the doors.”
“Well that’s better than nothing” Kari said. “If we know we can’t get past the security, then why try?” She was acting oddly cheerful, and Ian tried to think what reason she had for being so happy, when they were about to go and risk their lives.
“But the one problem is, to get through carboglass unharmed you need special suits,” Jaa pointed out.
“Like these?†asked Ian.
“Where’d you get those?†Kari exclaimed.
“Right here, in this little cupboard,†replied Ian. Sure enough, in a tiny compartment lay four carboglass protection suits.
“Cool!†said Kari, snatching one up and putting it on.
“Kari, are you sure?†asked Jaa. It all seemed awfully convenient to him.
“Oh come on,†Kari said. “What could possibly happen? They put it in an escape pod, for heaven’s sake.â€
Several minutes later, three suited individuals leaped out of the airlock and drifted towards the tube in Io’s low gravity.
Ian knew that carboglass wasn’t actually solid, just carbon alloy atoms suspended in an electromagnetic field. With the proper suit, it could be passed through like a mirage. Still, it was a shock to seemingly hit the surface and then pass through. Even more shocking, when, inside, you remembered there was just a bit of not-quite gas between you and that deathly black vacuum.
It was still more of a shock when a magna-beam struck Ian in the arm. A horrible, numbing pain shot up to his shoulder. His head was buzzing. He knew he was on the verge of passing out.
“FREEZE, RENEGADES,” snarled a robotic voice. Jaa and Kari looked up; afraid of whom they might see.
With a magna-gun in his hand and a coldly triumphant grin on his face, Kerj stood before them.
“I CAN SPARE THE BOY, EVEN THOUGH I WILL HAVE TO CRIPPLE HIM,” Kerj said. “BUT YOU, RENEGADES, I WILL HAVE TO KILL. YOU ARE MORE TROUBLE THAN YOU ARE WORTH, AS I HAVE INFORMED KRI ALREADY.”
Ian was on the ground, struggling against the heavy fog of pain. His arm was immobilized, and the paralysis was spreading to his torso. But his other arm was free.
Kerj discarded the empty magna-cartridge. It fell to the rough ground with a clink that sounded even louder in the silence. Then he slotted an illegal laser cartridge into his weapon and placed the barrel against Kari’s forehead. “YOU LED ME ON A MERRY DANCE THROUGH THE SOLAR SYSTEM. BUT IT ENDS NOW, SISTER. IF YOU CROSS THE PARENTS, YOU WILL PAY THE PRICE.”
Sister? Ian thought. But there was no time to ponder the Container assassin’s choice of words. With a supreme effort, he grabbed Kerj’s leg and pulled hard.
Kerj jerked back, flailing wildly. His gun went off, its charge hurtling upward and striking the carboglass.
“Uh-oh.” That was all Jaa had time to say before cracks decimated the tube and the carboglass blew out into a vacuum.
The impossibly bright shower of shattered carboglass was the last thing Ian remembered before he lost consciousness.
“We need to get in there!” Jaa yelled over the suit’s radio. “The air in these suits will only last about ten minutes!”
“Then let’s go before the blast doors close!” Kari yelled. “They’re sealing them off to keep from losing oxygen!”
Jaa leaped upward, propelling himself toward the stranded side building. Kari followed, dragging Ian along with her. She absentmindedly heaved him through the closing gap before stepping in herself.
Kari wondered why he had saved her life. He thought that she was just a dangerous renegade who had intruded on his safe little existence, and therefore was better off dead. Didn’t he?
Suddenly an alarm went off. For real.
“BLEEP BLEEP INTRUDERS. INTRUDERS,” a loudspeaker blared as video cameras over the door recorded their movements.
“Take the elevator to the main room!” Jaa yelled as he grabbed a box labeled ‘gunpowder’, hoping it was something nuclear. “That’s where they have the gravity center set up so they have more gravity than Io’s weak pull!”
As Kari scrambled to her feet and Ian (he had regained consciousness when the alarm went off) tried painfully to get to his, security guards rushed towards them from every direction. Kari pulled him up by his good arm and they started to run towards a door, but Ian, despite his wounded arm and aching chest, got there first and Kari was grabbed by six strong hands. “Curses,” she muttered. “Why did I have to let him in first?”
Jaa had reached the portal to the center of Io, where the machines were. He leaped into the elevator, and the doors closed as Ian came rushing in, just escaping the security guards. As they neared the center of Io, they saw swarms of white light coming from every direction. “Those are neutrinos,” Jaa whispered to Ian. Ian barely heard. Another time he may have gasped in awe, but now, he could only clutch his arm and try not to cry with the pain.
Jaa bolted out the elevator as soon as it stopped, and ran toward the mass of electromagnets attracting trillions of neutrinos from all directions. All that was needed was to get rid of the electromagnets and replace them with some sort of nuclear thing. But that, however simple it may have sounded was going to be quite hard enough, considering that first, he needed to deactivate the cord that was powering the electromagnets, and it was going to be impossible to unplug. Where was the end of it? “Ian,” Jaa called, “do you have a knife?”
“No,” said Ian. Civilians weren’t allowed knives. He stepped out of the elevator and noticed for the first time that Kari was missing. “Where’s Kari?” he asked, momentarily forgetting the painful numbness that was spreading slowly through him as a burst of panic made his cold chest turn to fire.
“I don’t know,” replied Jaa, trying to find the end of the cord.
“She didn’t get into the elevator!” cried Ian, shocked, and the cold flooded back. “She must have been captured!”
“Great,†moaned Jaa, not sounding surprised, just despairing. “Can you go back to rescue her? How’s your arm?”
Ian ignored the last question and rushed toward the elevator.
“No! Wait!” yelled Jaa. “Don’t be an idiot! You can’t just go rushing off . . .” but Ian didn’t slow his pace one bit.
Jaa fumbled in his pocket for an auto-spear to throw to his friend, but Ian was already in the elevator, and Jaa forgot all else as his hand closed around the spear. It was as good as a knife, or better. Far better.
Chapter Eight
Back in the elevator, Ian clutched his wounded arm to him. It hurt far worse than he would like to admit, and his head spun if he thought about it too much. He snuck a glance at it, preparing to see the worst. He didn’t. With magnabeams, it wasn’t possible to see the worst. The magna-gun would leave no blood, or obvious injuries. But the arm would be paralyzed for a long while, perhaps forever, and if it went without treatment, would spread throughout his body until he died. It occurred to Ian for the first that there was no way to rescue Kari with a three-quarters dead arm. The elevator came to a stop, but Ian still sat on the floor, unmoving, with his brain full of images alternately of victory and defeat.
Slowly Ian raised himself off the floor and pressed the button that took the elevator down. When the doors slid open he stepped painfully out into the room with the engine.
“Did you get her?” asked Jaa.
“No,” replied Ian numbly.
Jaa said nothing more, but bent himself to the task of cutting the cord with the auto-spear. It was much harder than he’d thought, and he realized now that a knife would have been better. Knives didn’t have a mind of their own.
Suddenly Ian gave a shout. “The elevator! Someone’s coming!” Jaa, hearing this, hastily shut down the auto-spear and clambered up the rough wall, agile as a monkey.
Ian, unable to climb as well as the Container even if he had had both his arms, ran and hid in the corner as the door slid open. The voice that emerged was familiar and chilling. “RENEGADE KRI, YOU MUST COME WITH ME.”
“What makes you think I will?” snapped Kari.
Ian started. Kerj!! How . . .?
Jaa dropped to the floor as Kari and Kerj stepped out of the elevator, with Kerj’s hand fastened firmly around Kari’s right arm.
“Ja-“cried Kari.
“Shut up!” he hissed.
“RENEGADE JAA . . . A PLEASURE,” smirked Kerj.
“Pleasure is an emotion–something you’re not capable of, traitor,” hissed Jaa.
Ian stared at Kerj. He had been in the room with the shattered carboglass! He ought to be dead! And there was no sign of the bulky metal studs that signified an implanted Life Support system, so he shouldn’t be standing here right now. There must be some sort of explanation, Ian thought, but his head was muzzy and he couldn’t think, not right now.
Kari’s mind was racing. She had been grabbed by elite guards and hauled away, when to her infinite shock Kerj had appeared and had ordered the guards to hand her over. This also puzzled her. Had he been saving her? Was it possible? Or . . . did he have something worse in store for her? Worse than death?
“ON THE CONTRARY, RENEGADE JAA,” said Kerj seriously. “THE PARENTS CANNOT GET RID OF EMOTION, NO MATTER HOW HARD THEY TRY. AS A RESULT OF WHAT MY SISTER DID, NOW I MUST FEEL FEAR AND PAIN AND JOY AND LOVE. BUT THEY HAVEN’T KILLED ME. I AM AN EXPERIMENT. AS IS KRI.”
“Sister?” asked Ian, forgetting that he was hiding. This was the second time Kerj had used that word. “You have a sister?”
“Me,” said Kari bitterly. “I’m his sister, and I’m anything but proud of it. He was my older brother, once, before they froze him for the first time, while I kept on aging. Then he was younger than me, and I took him with me when I ran away.”
“AND NOW I WILL BE AVENGED,” said Kerj.
“Did you say you could feel love?” said Kari, as she tried to wrench herself from his grasp. “Hardly.”
“NO, KRI,†said Kerj. “I CAN FEEL IT. I HAVE SIMPLY HAD NO OCCASION TO YET.â€
“Liar,†panted Kari, and gave a last tug on her arm. Kerj’s grip had loosened, whether by accident or on purpose it was hard to tell.
Kari ran.
She ran into the elevator and stopped with her finger over the button. She couldn’t leave Jaa alone to fight Kerj with only Ian to help in the best of circumstances, and this was certainly not the best of circumstances. Ian, unaware that she was watching, was clutching his injured arm to him and his eyes were closed tight. Jaa was staring, horrified, at his autospear, which he had dropped to climb the wall. It was halfway across the room. Kerj had out his magna-gun and it was pointed at Jaa. Kari was not going to stand in the elevator and watch Jaa be killed by Kari’s own brother.
But on the other hand, she couldn’t fight her own brother, either. Not anymore.
Kerj caught sight of her indecision and swung the gun round at her. Ian’s eyes flew open. Jaa dived for the auto-spear. Kerj fired.
But when the pandemonium ceased, it seemed that he couldn’t kill his sister any more than his sister could fight him. Perhaps he could feel love, after all. Though Kari had been the perfect target, he had moved the gun at the last moment so that instead of hitting Kari, the bolt had hit the very cord that Jaa had been trying to cut. Though it remained intact, the neutrinos were floating around the room, no longer pulled to the electromagnets. Suddenly there was very little gravity.
Jaa was having an extremely hard time getting to the engine with the box of gunpowder. He hadn’t figured this into his calculations, though it was simple logic. That was one of many problems with being a renegade- you became flawed, if only slightly. The plans did not work quite as well without the Parents to execute them. And the Parents had kept Jaa as young as possible, so that he was easier to manipulate. All his strength lay in brains.
Jaa pushed off the far wall and floated over to the electromagnets. He pulled the box open and began detaching the rivets that held the first magnet in place. Unfortunately, he lost his balance. He floated down and the box floated up just as Kerj, his conscience quelled, fired again.
The next moment, a wave of heat and smoke struck him as the box exploded. It isn’t nuclear, but it still explodes, he thought before he smashed into the floor headfirst. He didn’t lose consciousness, but it felt as though someone had driven a red-hot poker into his temples. The autospear spun upward and away. Kari yelled, “The coolant- ” before her voice was drowned out by an eruption of flame from the wall.
“What happened?” Ian gasped.
“The coolant’s burning. Without that, the electromagnets will overheat.”
“Well, that’s good, isn’t it? Anyway, the circuit’s broken, and the magnets can’t work at all. Right?”
“No to your first statement. If the magnets overheat, the gravity engine will go wild. And your second statement is also wrong. The backup circuit will probably come on in a minute.”
Kari’s assumption was correct. With a loud hum, the neutrinos began whirling around the room again. This time, however, a high whine, increasing in intensity, rose up until it drowned out the hum. Alarms flashed on, their strident whooping adding to the general chaos.
“By the time anyone gets here, it’ll be too late for them to stop it!” Kari shouted. “Io could very well blow up! We have to get out of here!”
Here’s the rest of Io. It didn’t need much editing.
Jaa stumbled towards Ian and Kari, as fast as his legs would carry him, his head banging far louder than the alarms. Kari seized his arm and all three ran toward the elevator.
Ian jabbed the UP button far more than was necessary. The elevator seemed painfully slow. “Faster, faster,” said Ian under his breath, forgetting even his arm in his panic. “Oh, please go faster.”
They reached the surface after what seemed a hundred years, though it was closer to a hundred seconds, and closer still to a hundred half-seconds.
“A ship!” cried Kari. “We don’t have a ship!”
“The escape pod. Hurry!” They raced across the room. There was no sign of the Parents. At the door, Kari stopped dead. “No oxygen,” she murmured, her face a chalky white. “We don’t have oxygen suits. We’ll never make it.”
The lights flickered suspiciously. Ian paled until his face matched Kari’s. What was going on?
“The circuits were overheated,†Jaa said. “I should have known. In a minute –“
Then, with a flash, all light and heating mechanisms ceased. They were suddenly in the dark, with cold rapidly attacking the air – the air that they were all-too-aware would soon be gone. “We need to get out of here,†said Jaa.
“We’ll have to hold our breaths,” said Kari, suddenly very calm, “and make a run for the escape pod.”
Kari opened the door and took off running, followed by Ian and Jaa. Ian felt his lungs shriveling from lack of oxygen, and felt dizzy, but forced himself to run faster. They barely made it to the escape pod without passing out. Just as they had secured the door shut, Io rumbled and blew up, rocketing the pod into the sky.
Chapter Nine
Ian leaned back against the wall. “That was awful,” he said shakily.
“Where to now?” asked Jaa, taking deep breaths.
“I don’t know.” Kari sat down on the floor. “Did we even destroy the engines?”
“It hardly matters now,” said Ian. “Even if the magnets didn’t blow up with Io, what good would they be just floating around in space?”
And for once, he was right.
Kari walked over to the viewscreen, looking back at the ruinous cluster of asteroids that was once Jupiter’s volcanic moon. Already some of the battered hunks of stone were swinging out into a new orbit, forming another ring around the gas giant. Then Jaa raised the engines to full power, and the image blurred as their ship shot forward at 40% the speed of light.
The escape pod slowed down when it reached the asteroid belt about an hour later. Ian’s arm was now encased in an electron gel sac, which was slowly healing his fried nerves. Jaa twisted the control joystick, and the ship dropped into orbit around Ceres, hovering at the very edge of the artifisphere.
“Well, Ian, I guess this is goodbye,” Kari said. “I hope you can manage on Ceres.”
Ian looked around at the former Containers. “Where will you guys go?”
“I don’t really know, but Antavo, that old smuggler who took us to Luna, told me a lot about some of the illegal markets in the solar system. This escape pod has a few canisters of Ionian mineral fuel, and that will be a rare commodity now that Io is gone. We’ll probably trade that for some other things, and then make a living in space… ” She trailed off.
“I’m coming with you.”
“What?” Kari ejaculated.
“That life sounds a lot better than mine was on Ceres. Besides, you guys are my friends. Did you think I was going to want to let you have that much fun without me?” Ian joked.
Kari opened her mouth to object, or to agree, or simply to express her shock at Ian’s sudden taste for adventure, but Jaa settled the matter. “Right. Where’s the first market?” he asked.
A slow grin rose over Kari’s face. “Well, I hear a Betwer colony has discovered massive peridot deposits on Deimos, and the Solar Trade Service has gone to check it out. We’ll beat them to the punch. Those Betwers will pay through the nose to get this fuel.”
“That sounds great, except for one thing.” Ian said.
“What?” Jaa inquired, looking apprehensive.
“Do Betwers even have noses?”
Everyone burst out laughing. It wasn’t that much of a joke, but after the strain of the past few hours, it felt good to release the tension.
“One more thing,” Ian said. “Can we stop at the Preserved Terran Habitats on the way?”
Jaa grinned. “Sure. Let’s go.”
The tiny ship pulled out of orbit and shot out into the starry vista like a stone from a sling, heading toward Mars.
17- Yeah, I would try that, except that Romana hasn’t answered any of my emails in four months. ROBERT YOU HAVE CONTACT INFO PLEASE EMAIL HER! or rosanne. SOMEBODY WHO WORKS FOR MUSE!
O.k., let just say part one is done.
23-It’s close, definitely, but not perfect.
I still haven’t read parts 2 and 3. 0.0 There IS a part 3, right? Gah, I’m so behind. D=
24- yes, but Alice never posted it.
25-Ooh…
YOU GUYS WRITE BOOKS HERE??? This place is flippin awesome…
27- You think that’s awesome, enter “RRR” in the search box at the top right of the page.
24- Yes, there’s a Part 3. Still on it’s original thread.
Ah god.
Oh well. I remember I hardly changed Part 3 at all, because most of it was action and i couldn’t think of a way to improve upon it. *reminisces* I remember how thrilled I was to read those…
27- most places don’t?
28) wow…….i must go off to join one of these book-writing threads!
Is this one already done? Because it looks ubercool
32- Yeah, we finished it ages ago. We had it all nicely edited and then my house went and burnt down and my computer melted and we lost it, so we have to edit it over again.
29- I wrote most of those, right? :oops::grin: I’m glad you liked them.
34- Most of them.
Part 2–unedited
Chapter One
“Five betrens. And that’s final,” said Kari firmly.
“Seven,” said the Betwer.
“FIVE.”
“Six,” said the Betwer, but its argument was weak and Kari was relentless, and within minutes the girl was gripping the can of food paste tightly as she walked back to the ship.
Less than a week had passed since Io exploded, but the three adventurers were already much richer than they ever had been. Kari could easily have spent twice as much on the food paste and still have been well off. However, it never hurt to pay as little as possible.
Things were not going well at the Parents headquarters. Since the Renegades, KRI and JAA, had escaped security had tripled over night. Some systems were simple, but others were devastatingly complicated. In one corridor an image was captured when someone entered. If it did not match the records on the database huge steel triangles slid up from the floor, quickly unfolding into squares of metal origami. At others the floor rose up and portcullises slammed down trapping the intruder. Every door was fitted with a scanner that detected weaponry. If an autospear or anything else was detected an alarm would go off and high-speed cameras would make sure the face did not go unnoticed. The beauty of the alarm system was that it went off in every room except the room that had activated it. A break-in was hardly possible…
“Hey, Kari!”
Kari spun around. Across the hangar, she saw Ian waving from on top of their tiny ship, the Victory. Kari waved vigorously back. Jaa was only half visible, his upper torso, head and arms buried in the ship’s innards behind an open panel. Muffled Terran curses came from deep in the wiring, usually accompanied by loud clanks.
“I got some food,” said Kari when she reached the ship a minute or two later. Ian looked dolefully at the food paste, remembering the flavor of the Parents’ food, but he did not complain. It was something to eat, after all, and there had been precious little of that for the last seven years of Ian’s life.
The fuel had proved remarkably tricky to sell, despite the fact that the Betwers obviously wanted it, and at one point they had been forced to flee Deimos for a day or two and land elsewhere, after Kari had demanded a most exorbitant price for a can of the fuel. As a result of these relatively minor incidents, it had been some time before they had managed to get food, and the Parents’ stash of TV dinners had gone quickly.
Kari caught Ian’s expression. “Don’t worry. I have an idea.”
Jaa emerged from the ship, his white-blond hair stained an oily black. “What is it?”
“The Parents are probably paying more attention to their headquarters after Project Neoterra failed, and less to their other outposts, such as the illegal habitats that they have orbiting Terra.”
She paused, waiting for the penny to drop. It didn’t take long.
Ian gasped in a mixture of hope and horror. “You don’t seriously mean… ”
Jaa grinned. “Why not? If we capture one of them and move it into a different orbit, we’ll have a home base and somewhere to get food. Real food, not just this paste.”
“But there are only three of us! And our only ship is an escape pod! It’s minuscule!”
“Don’t worry,” Kari said. “I sold one canister of fuel to the Betwer for the food, and three others for a little addition to the ship. Jaa?”
“Everything’s ready for the linkup,” Jaa replied. “Come on, let’s go over to the maintenance dock.”
“We’re going to attach more powerful engines, a storage module, and maybe a couple of weapons,” Kari explained as they boarded. “I sold the canisters to a guy who runs the best illegal ship upgrading business in the inner planets.”
“Illegal???”
“Sure. We would never be able to afford a legal one. And we can’t go gallivanting around the solar system in a tiny little pod like this. After the upgrade, we can call ourselves proper traders.†She paused. “Ian, you have to get used to it.”
“But the ship still won’t be able to haul an entire habitat! Those things are almost a mile around!”
“It has its own engines, and Jaa and I are Containers, so we’ll be authorized to operate them.”
“But you’re renegades!” His voice dropped to a whisper here. “They’ll have erased your DNA from the database.”
“Nah. They’re too busy trying to keep Project Neoterra afloat to attend to little details like that.”
Et cetera, et cetera. All the way to the maintenance dock, Kari ruthlessly crushed Ian’s objections. By the time they reached the dock, he actually thought it was a good idea.
As they reached the maintenance dock, Kari pulled out her list of upgrades they wanted to get and which ones they could afford.
“First things first,” said Kari. “We need a bigger ship.”
Ian glanced at the escape pod, which was roughly the size of a small room.
Kari looked at the upgrades available. “We’ll take that one,” she said, pointing at a live image of a storage module that could be added easily to the side of any ship. It would almost double the size of their escape pod.
“Second things second,” Kari continued. “Better engines. We should get size 4, I think.” Ian looked at their own engines, which were size 1. Everything on an escape pod was the cheapest available, as they were only for temporary use.
“Third things third,” said Kari. “We need some weapons.” She turned to Ian and Jaa. “Any suggestions?”
“Well,” Jaa said, thinking, “we don’t want to kill anyone. I’d say a couple of high-power magnabeams– they’ll shut down ships and knock people out, but nothing fatal.”
“Nothing fatal?” Ian nearly shouted. His arm was still not back to normal, and he was very sensitive to any mention of magnabeams. The thought of firing them at innocent people made him sick.
“The good ones aren’t,” Jaa explained patiently. “It’s the low-quality beams that can kill.”
This didn’t make much sense at all, and Ian said so.
“They were only designed a few years ago, to stun but not kill.” By a few years ago, Jaa meant a few decades ago, but being frozen had messed up his sense of time. “They were mostly used by the top government ships, since no one else could afford them. Then the lower-class weapons manufacturers realized that magnabeams would be a huge hit among traders and so forth, and started making them. But the originals were very fine-tuned, and it was something that couldn’t be duplicated. I guess even the Parents couldn’t get their hands on real government magnabeams.”
“But if they couldn’t, how could we?”
Jaa sighed. “There is the other possibility. The Parents, could get them, but it was no good wasting them on us: two renegades and an impure human.†As he said, “impureâ€, his voice took on a slightly robotic sound, but his eyes showed nothing more than a flicker of realization, and no one pursued the matter.
Kari was staring at the screen on with the upgrades were displayed, and obviously hadn’t heard past Ian’s question. “As it happens,” she said, momentarily baffling her companions, “this particular maintenance dock has some. Second-hand, of course, but it will do.”
Ian sighed deeply. He hated going against the law, but there was no way to convince the renegade Containers that they ought to stay away from smuggled weapons. They would only brush it off anyways, and tell him that it didn’t really matter. Kari and Jaa were practically ecstatic at their good fortune.
After the upgrades had been installed, the trio climbed aboard their new, improved ship. “Which habitat do you think we should try and take over?” Kari as the started up the powerful engines. “The one orbiting at 14 degrees latitude has a good variety of life in it,” Jaa replied. Ian sighed and shook his head, but the other two didn’t notice. They didn’t notice much, or if they did, they chose to ignore it. The boy wondered if it was something to do with Containers, if their sense of caution had been tampered with, while the Parents were perfecting their race. Whether or not that was true, Ian felt he was the only one with a grain of sense, and resolved to try to keep them all out of trouble from now on, although it seemed like it would be pretty near impossible, if what had happened so far was anything to go by. He sighed again, and amused himself by watching Kari fiddle with the controls.
Several hours later they were blasting off from Ganymede on a test run. Jaa wanted to leave right away but Kari was firm. They had to see how the ship worked first, because who knows what could happen?
Chapter 2
They got a relatively bumpy ride, but Jaa was pleased with the speed of the ship. “We clocked 70 minutes and 22 seconds over 148,800,000 miles,” he proudly announced as they pulled into Ganymede’s dock.
“That’s almost 1/5 the speed of light!” Kari exclaimed, beaming.
Ian said nothing. He was a proper trader now, supposedly, as well as an outlaw, but even though traders often bent the law, and outlaws outright broke it, he still felt uncomfortable doing anything illegal. He voiced something that had been bothering him since Io.
“Guys?” he said uncertainly. Kari and Jaa turned. “You both burnt out your microchips, but I didn’t. I’m still trackable. And probably being tracked, too.”
“No, you’re not,” said Kari. She pushed up his sleeve. There was the tiny green pinprick of light that signified a microchip. “It’s still there,” said Ian bluntly. He wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting, but something more promising than that.
“That doesn’t mean you’re trackable,” replied Kari. “Remember the magnabeam? It struck this arm, right? That would have shut it off as effectively as if you’d died. And you have the bonus of it still looking like it’s there. Much less conspicuous than a gaping hole in your arm. ”
“Wow.” Ian suddenly felt as though a huge weight, one he’d had all his life, had lifted from his shoulders. He still couldn’t comprehend it completely- no microchip!- but he knew it was good.
“We’ll need to refuel this,” Jaa said. “I’ll go try to find some fuel.”
“No, I’ll do it,” Kari said. “I’ve seen Ganymede five times. You guys, if I’m correct, are new to this place. You might want to look around.”
Jaa grinned. “Sure, why not? I hear the Great Cavern is breathtaking.”
As Ian and Jaa got off the Victory and stepped into the elevator leading to the lower levels, Ian tried to remember all he had read or learned about Ganymede. Cavern City, where they were now, consisted of two main parts. The first was the Spire, a massive tower that loomed up seven hundred feet from the icy, barren surface. Docks lined the walls in a spiral pattern, and all of the spacefaring businesses were crammed into capsules on its inside.
Below the Spire was the Great Cavern, a huge cave half-filled with water. A triple volcano, its lava generated by the constant gravitational pull of Jupiter, kept the subterranean sea from freezing. In the low gravity, fantastic towers and crenellations of ice had formed on the cavern ceiling as the water melted and refroze. The rest of the city’s population dwelt in living units anchored to the icy stalactites, and Ian was looking forward to seeing this strange mode of living.
When the elevator door opened, Ian was more fascinated then he could have imagined. All the lights flashing off the stalactites across the ceiling created an eerie feeling, while the water contrasted the greenish-white ceiling with black and dark blue. There were shops everywhere, buying and selling, and people traveled around the underground sea on personal hovercrafts.
Ian and Jaa had a fair bit of time to look around, while Kari would be negotiating fuel prices on the Spire. As they both walked out onto the steel platform, they approached a hovercraft rental. The price was steep, but they had plenty of money to pay with.
Ian, in the midst of sheer excitement in the depths of Cavern City, almost rammed his hovercraft into a wall. “Slower,” said Jaa. “We can’t run into people or we could cause a disturbance and get thrown out.”
But a disturbance found them first. As they rode through an empty section of sea closer to the main part of the city, they were forced to turn around by a mob of people going the opposite direction. Apparently something had happened.
Meanwhile, Kari was looking for some good fuel. The larger engines, while a bonus in some ways, made it awfully hard to find fuel. She had almost found what she needed when she found out that it was some of her own canisters of fuel she had sold a while ago. The Spire was a crowded place, and it took a great deal of time to move from one place to another. She eventually found another fuel dealer.
“I’d like some canisters of something between quality 100 and quality 110 fuel,” she told the woman who was at the front, hoping to be more specific than last time. “We have 4 canisters left of quality 108 fuel,” said the woman.
Kari did a quick mental calculation. Their ship would be able to travel 1 AU on one canister of quality 100 fuel. Would that be enough?
“Do you have any more in that range?” she asked. “I’m afraid not,” said the woman. “A lot of private ships have been asking for fuel lately and we’re just about out.” Sighing, Kari paid for the fuel and started to return toward the ship.
“What’s going on?” Ian gasped, in the underground part of Cavern City.
Jaa looked around. Then his mouth dropped open. “It can’t be… ”
A sleek, black hovercraft was powering over the water toward them. At the controls was a young woman, her features obscured by the shaded carboglass windscreen. Another one, a man, was standing upright, holding a magnabeam in his hand. He had the unmistakable white-blond hair and green eyes of a Container.
Ian pulled the hovercraft around in a hard right. A slash of white spray cut the dark water as the small boat powered up and shot forward.
Jaa was twisted around in his seat, staring back at the black hovercraft, ever gaining on them. He knew what they wanted. They needed him to reconstruct the gravitational engines for Project Neoterra. And they didn’t care what they did to get him.
Kari had put the fuel in their ship and had gone to the underground part of cavern city to tell Ian and Jaa that they could get going to Mars when she heard a commotion behind her. She turned and saw, beyond all the people, two hovercrafts racing across the water. As she watched, a thin pulse of magnetic energy, visible only to Kari, with her superior vision, shot out from the black hovercraft towards the smaller one. Which held Ian and Jaa. Her vision zoomed in almost of her own accord. That wasn’t just any man, it was a Container. And not just any Container…
“Oh, no, no,” Kari whispered. “Is he invincible?”
It was Kerj.
Kari ducked out of sight. If Kerj saw her, all three of them would be doomed.
“Gangway!” screamed Jaa, as Ian turned the hovercraft onto full speed in a desperate attempt to break free from the grasp of the magnetic pulse when he ran into a cavern wall and found himself tunneling through Ganymede’s rough soil, the magnetic shield pushing the dirt out of the way.
“YOU WILL NEVER ESCAPE ME,” roared Kerj, caring nothing for subtlety, “AND YOU WILL PAY FOR YOUR DESTRUCTION OF THE ARTIFICIAL-GRAVITY MACHINES.” And with that he released the magnetic shield, just as Ian and Jaa’s hovercraft burst through the surface of the planet.
The hovercraft’s engine gave a little gargle and died.
“I think we’re safe,” said Jaa. “For now.”
“‘Gangway’?” asked Ian, half amused.
“Terran,” gasped Jaa.
“Right. You’ll have to teach me Terran sometime. In the meantime, I thought these things only worked in the water?”
“Apparently not,” said Jaa.
When the pair reached Victory, they found Kari already there, just about to blast off. “Wait!” called Ian, and Kari stopped. “I thought you had been captured by Kerj!” she said, surprised.
“We escaped,” said Jaa breathlessly. “It’s a long story.”
` They both clambered aboard, while Kari was still in a state of shock. “Turn the engines back on,” said Jaa, “We’ve got our fuel and we’re off!”
They had just blasted off when Kerj climbed out of the hole the hovercraft had made. He glanced at the sky and saw their ship. He knew who was in there. And he had no intention of letting them get away…
Back on the Victory, Ian and Jaa were recovering from their horrifying encounter.
“How did he survive?” Ian said incredulously, referring to Kerj.
“My best guess,” Jaa replied, “is nanobots. At least three in every cell, to provide oxygen and sheathe his body in a pressure field. The Parents must have worked obsessively on him, but it paid off. He would be able to survive in up to 500 degrees Kelvin, absolute zero, or a total vacuum. He’s what they would call a perfect Container.
“The nanobots can even protect him from some Terran weapons if necessary,†continued Jaa. “He’s the kind of container you don’t want to get on the bad side of. Unfortunately, that’s right where we are.”
“Well, he can’t be too dangerous, can he?” asked Ian. “it’s not like the nanobots give him superstrength or anything. Right?”
“Uhh… well… that’s the other thing.”
“Oh, no.”
“He is very strong,” said Jaa, “and the nanobots can cure him of whatever injury he obtains except death. The only way we could ever get rid of him would be to kill him very quickly.”
Kari sighed. “Then we’d better get away from him,” she said suddenly, turning the speed on the Victory up a notch.
“But,” said Jaa, “Pain still hurts him. So he avoids it when he can. It was one of the only things that the Parents couldn’t help him with.”
“Wait!” cried Ian in realization.
“What?” asked Jaa and Kari in unison.
“If pain hurts him, and the only way for him to be killed is to do it quickly,” he mused.
“Yes?” said Kari impatiently.
“I read this book back on Ceres about the Marsgarden Discovery,” said Ian.
Kari and Jaa looked at Ian quizzically.
“You, know,” sighed Ian. “In 2099, Terran scientists discovered a system of methane, hydrogen, and other assorted poisonous gas caves under the surface of Mars. These caves are easily accessible from the ruined Base 1, and will immediately kill any carbon-based lifeform that enters unprotected.”
Jaa still looked confused, but a look of understanding dawned upon Kari’s face.
“So,” she began.
“We throw Kerj in the Marsgarden!” announced Ian, with a look of triumph.
“Well,” said Jaa, “he’s always trying to destroy us, so maybe we could lure him in by – ” He was interrupted by a flash from the advanced radar system, indicating that they were within 400 miles of some object. Traveling at nearly 30 miles per second, they wouldn’t want to risk slamming into something that quickly.
Kari looked at the screen. “It says there’s an object recognizable as a spaceship of some sort 38.23 miles away. It seems to be following us, as it does not get any closer or farther away while we are moving.”
“Kerj, do you think?” mused Jaa.
“Wouldn’t Kerj try to gain on us?” asked Ian. “His ship can probably go much faster than Victory.”
Kari smiled. “Not necessarily. I think you underestimate our little escape pod.” Her smile turned fierce. “Let’s see how effective those new engines are, why don’t we?”
Ian turned pale. “This is only our test run!” he remembered. “Shouldn’t we go back?”
“Not possible,” said Kari shortly. “We paid the man, so now we can do whatever we like. Anyways, we already did our test run. It worked fine, didn’t it?”
“But the ride got pretty bumpy when we turned it up to the higher levels of speed,” said Jaa. “We may want to strap ourselves into some seats if we want to turn it up to full speed.”
“Whatever you say,” said Kari, sitting down in a chair behind her. “Now let’s turn the rockets onto full speed!” She pulled down the speedshift lever all the way to the bottom.
A force of 8 G’s crushed all three of them into their seats as the rockets flared up. The speedometer said they were approaching 80% of the speed of light. “My… vision… is… bluuury…” Ian shouted as well as he could, it required so much energy to move his mouth.
“At…. this….. rate….” said Jaa, “We’ll….. reach…. Mars….. in… minutes.”
It was Kari, unable to take the pressure any longer, who pulled the speedshift lever up two notches. The ship slowed down some, although it still shot forwards much faster than any ship would in ordinary circumstances.
“It didn’t used to do that,” said Ian limply as he recovered.
“That’s because this ship isn’t built to take it. We could do that in the old rescue ship easily, but Victory’s just made for getting away.”
“Well, it did get us away.” said Kari. “That other ship is no longer in our radar.”
Chapter 3
31
Mars appeared in the distance, first as a bright point, then as a rusty dot, then as a rapidly enlarging blood-red ball. Kari reflected that when the ancient Terrans had named that planet after their god of war, they hadn’t known how apt it would be thousands of years later.
When Mars had been subjected to the primitive terraforming techniques of the olden days, it remained uninhabitable except for a fertile belt around the equator. Several dozen colonies had already been set up when it happened, so there wasn’t enough space to go around. The only “solution” apparent was war. And war had been the zeitgeist on Mars for the past century. As such, the Red Planet was not a popular tourist destination.
As Kari slowed down the ship and they entered the cloudy atmosphere, she scanned the ground for a landing site. “Look for somewhere to dock,†she told the others.
“What about that?†asked Ian, pointing to a landing site right next to the Capitol of Mars02, the second country founded on Mars. Mars02 had bragging rights to some of the primitive Terran robots sent to Mars in the previous millennium, and it had a huge museum of these and Mars artifacts. It would have attracted more tourists if Mars01 hadn’t always been fighting Mars02, claiming it should own the pieces of Mars history because it was founded first.
32
“Looks like some sort of riot down on the streets,” said Jaa, who knew that Mars02 citizens were relatively violent.
“Then why are we here?” Ian said nervously, looking down at the rioters.
“If we don’t want Kerj to chase us all around creation for the rest of our lives, we have to let him catch up to us, then get rid of him,” Kari explained. She had a catch in her voice as she said this. Ian wondered if she still had some lingering affection for her brother.
33
Ian looked down at the screaming mob again, weaving their way through the round domes of the buildings.
“We don’t have to go down there right away, do we?” he asked. He would have been quite happy not to go down at all, but Kari had a point. Ian would almost rather brave the rioting Marsicans than Kerj, and that was saying something.
“No,” said Kari, but Ian’s relief was short-lived. “We want Kerj to see us before we go rushing off.”
She flipped on the radar, and set it on its biggest scannable setting, and then told it to look for a ship.
After exactly 13 minutes, Kari said, “There’s a ship approximately 4,000,000 miles away from us and heading toward us at 522 miles per second!”
“Then we have about 7,660 seconds until Kerj gets here. That’s less than three hours,” said Jaa.
“What if that ship isn’t Kerj’s?” said Ian.
“We can’t take the chance,” Kari replied as she steered the ship closer to the landing pad.
34
They stepped out of the Victory, only to be confronted with an unreasonably tall person. “What in the weirdness are ya doin’ here?” the person barked.
“Oh…” said Kari, desperately seeking for a plausible excuse for anyone to come to Mars02 by their own free will. Oddly enough, it was Ian who saved them.
“We’re tourists,†he said. “We’ve come to see the museum.â€
The strange person continued. “Well yer weird ship and such need to pay before you can park here.”
Kari handed him 1 betren. “Here,” she said, handing it into this Marsican’s hand.
“Hee hee,” the person shouted as he ran off. “Now I can pay my rent!”
“Cursed Marsicans,” said Kari, “I should’ve known better. Always cheaters and frauds. Oh well. At least we got him out of our hair.â€
35
“From what I remember,” said Jaa, “the original bases are about 170 miles north from here. The entrance to MarsGarden is at base 1. All the bases were abandoned because they got too cold, so we should be able to sneak in.”
Kari started bounding north, soon followed by Ian and Jaa. They were able to run very quickly, due to the fact that Mars’ gravity is not very strong and the air is relatively thin.
They were within sight of what was formerly base 1, when the wind started to pick up. “This is making it hard to run,” said Ian, pushing against the oncoming air.
Jaa looked up. A cloud of dust was rising in the distance. “Uh-oh,” he said. “Look.â€
“It’s a sandstorm!” exclaimed Kari. “Those things can last for days!”
36
A voice shouted, “FREEZE!” just as the cloud of dust hit them.
“Oh, great, is it Kerj again?” moaned Ian, covering his head.
“How could he get here so fast?” asked Jaa frantically.
Kari was the only one of the three who had turned around, having had the good sense to turn her back to the storm. It didn’t help much, but she used her Container vision to see through the cloud of dust. “He didn’t,” she replied. “It’s not Kerj. It’s not even anyone I know.” She squinted. “No, it’s definitely not Kerj. It’s a woman.
“It still could be someone dangerous,” said Jaa. “Let’s head toward what remains of base 1 and hide there until we can figure out what this guy is doing here.”
“They wouldn’t be able to find us very easily, as you can’t see 5 feet in front of you right now.” said Ian.
37
“IT’S THEM, KRJ!” the unknown person called.
“Well, obviously they have,†said Kari. “Let’s get out of here.â€
Jaa was groping around in the flying sand until suddenly he hit a building. “I think I found base 1!” he hollered.
Kari turned around to look at the unknown Container. A second body had joined the first, and Kari saw that it was Kerj.
At that moment, she also saw that they had an advantage. Kerj could not look at them or else sand would hit his eyes and blind him, but Kari could look back at them and see where they were, because the sand would only hit the back of her head. “At least we have a chance,†she thought.
Ian walked–well, stumbled, really–in the direction that Jaa had called from, and soon banged against the building too. “KARI!” he screamed at the top of his lungs.
“Shut UP,†hissed the Jaa into his ear. “We’ve got to be quiet or they’ll find us.â€
Running his finger lightly along the wall, he started walking.
38
Ian didn’t know what to do, and thought that perhaps they ought to wait for Kari, but he didn’t want to stay where he was, so he followed Jaa.
Pretty soon they hit a corner in the wall and Jaa had to turn. Then the wall ended, though it felt like part of it had been destroyed. Jaa and Ian felt their way tentatively over to the other side. Jaa let Ian walk first this time, out of fairness or fear Ian didn’t know.
Suddenly there was no ground beneath Ian’s left foot. He withdrew it hastily and kneeled down. By running his hand along the ground, he found that he was at the rim of what could be a huge hole. “Jaa,” he whispered, “I’m pretty sure I’ve found MarsGarden!”
39
“Perfect!” said Jaa. “If only we could see something. How are we going to make this work with a raging sandstorm going on?”
“No, no,” said Ian excitedly. “This is perfect–hang on. You can’t see anything? But you’re a Container. Can’t you use your ‘genetic modification’ or whatever it is?â€
“Never mind. What’s your plan?”
“You, me, and Kari all have to get to the other side of this. Then we’ll holler and yell like mad, and Kerj’ll go charging across the hole- right into the MarsGarden.”
“That would be great, except for the fact that we don’t know where Kari is.”
Ian frowned. “Should we go back and get her? I mean, can she fight two Containers?â€
But in truth, Kerj was not focused on capturing Kari. Though he had been sent to capture both renegades, it was stressed that JAA was the most important, if he could capture only one of the two. The gravitational machines needed to be reconstructed, and JAA was the only one who knew how to design them.
40
Kari shrank against the ruined wall of Base 1, hoping against hope that Kerj didn’t use his Container vision to find her through the sand. Using her own, she saw Kerj and the other Container–the woman who had been in the hovercraft, she presumed–walk around the building. She could see Ian and Jaa crouched over something maybe fifty yards away. Suddenly Jaa stood up. He seemed oblivious to the Containers so near at hand. Why didn’t he use his vision? Kari was practically frantic. She tried to sharpen her hearing, but Ian and Jaa were silent now. They began to walk away from Kari and the other two, following an odd curving pattern. The sandstorm blurred even her vision, so that Ian and Jaa were only two shadowy figures.
41
Kerj pulled out a magnabeam from a concealed pocket in his coat. The sand stung his eyes, but nanobots swarmed about them, replicating the optic tissue, and so he felt no need to blink or turn away. Taking precise aim, he fired, striking first Jaa, then Ian.
He turned to LAQ, the female Container. “GET THEM. I DON’T CARE WHAT YOU DO WITH THE IMPURE ONE. I NEED JAA.”
Kari could only watch in horror as Jaa was carried away, insensible. Ian lay on the sand by the side of the MarsGarden. Kari didn’t know what to do. It would take hours to get an unconscious Ian back to the ship so that they could rescue Jaa, and by then it might be too late for both boys. It all depended on what kind of magnabeam Kerj had used.
If he had the right equipment, he could get away with using the second-rate, dangerous, kind, and still be able to keep Jaa alive. In that case, Ian was doomed. If the Parents had been worried about the danger of killing Jaa, then they would have used the more fine-tuned type. If that was true, then Ian would wake up in a few hours, confused but alive.
42
Kari waited until Kerj and LAQ had vanished into the whirling sand, then ran over to Ian, nearly falling into the MarsGarden in the process.
Ian woke feeling gritty and dazed. He opened his eyes, and was surprised to feel sand in them. He closed them again, ignored the almost painful sand on his cheeks.
“No! Ian!” said a voice. “You have to wake up THIS MINUTE!”
Ian opened his eyes once more. “What?” he asked blearily. Kari was squatting near him, her face dirty with dust and sand. “What happened? Where’s Jaa? Did you kill Kerj?”
Kari shook his head. “Kerj caught up with us, remember? He shot you and Jaa with magnabeams.”
“And Jaa-?”
“Yes. Lucky for you the Parents wanted him alive. They didn’t use the really nasty kind of magnabeam. But now we have to rescue him.” She stood up and helped Ian do the same. “C’mon. Let’s go.”
43
By the time they reached the landing pad, the sandstorm had abated somewhat, so Ian could see as well as Kari. What he saw, though, puzzled him as much as if he had been unable to.
He rubbed his eyes, thinking he was hallucinating. “Kari?” he said. “Where’s the Victory?”
“Oh, no,” Kari breathed. “They must have taken the Victory as well as their own ship. Or if it wasn’t them, it was a Marsican.â€
“And we don’t know which, even if we could get off Mars!” Ian exploded, finally recognizing their dire predicament.
Chapter 4
44
Jaa was in Kerj’s ship, bound by some sticky and unknown substance to a wall in the control room. LAQ was piloting the Victory by their side, as Jaa could see on the viewscreen.
“WAKE UP!!!” Kerj demanded, shaking Jaa violently until he stirred, and woke up.
“Wha – who is this?” asked Jaa, disoriented by the strange surroundings.
“REGENADE JAA,” said Kerj furiously, “YOU HAVE BEEN CHOKING OUR THROATS WITH YOUR DANGEROUS ANTICS.”
“Kerj! ” Jaa was suddenly wide-awake. He looked around at the inside of the ship, and he fell into despair. He had not been in the power of the Parents for several weeks, but he knew what they did to traitors.
“LISTEN TO ME!!!” Kerj screamed in Jaa’s face. “YOU HAVE DESTROYED THE GRAVITY MACHINES! YOU MUST RECONSTRUCT THEM, OR YOU SHALL BE PUNISHED.”
Jaa’s face was filled with a mixture of anger and fear. “No,” he said quietly, “I – I forgot how.”
Kerj grabbed Jaa around the neck. “DO NOT LIE TO ME, BOY,” he said coldly, “OR YOU WILL WISH YOU HAD NEVER BEEN BORN!”
He continued, “I HAVE DECIDED TO BE MERCIFUL TO YOU. YOU ARE OBVIOUSLY IN NEED OF A COMPLETE REPROGRAMMING. BUT I WILL GIVE YOU A CHOICE.
“YOU CAN EITHER REBUILD THOSE GRAVITY MACHINES,” Kerj paused, “OR YOU CAN GO TO RACK 50.” Jaa shuddered. Rack 50 was one of the most horrible forms of torture ever invented.
45
Kerj suddenly let go of Jaa’s neck, and laughed as the boy hit the floor in a helpless bundle of the sticky substance. “I need to figure out how to get out of here,†Jaa thought.†If I do nothing else with my life, I must escape the Parents.†Suddenly an idea dawned on him. Nothing else with his life . . .
Jaa reached into his pocket and pulled out an autospear, glad that it had occurred to him to take one from the Victory’s large store. It wouldn’t harm Kerj, but it would harm Jaa. He held it up in a position to slit his wrists. “Let me go, and I will not commit suicide,” he said, with a smirk upon his face. He knew he was too valuable for the Parents to let him die.
“PUT THAT SPEAR DOWN, RENEGADE JAA,” Kerj said, with a look of worry, “OR I’LL NOT GIVE YOU A CHOICE AND SEND YOU TO RACK 60!”
Jaa held his auto-spear closer. He hoped he wouldn’t have to kill himself, but he had to scare Kerj. “Auto-spear,” he whispered, “Attack . . .”
46
In an instant, Kerj lunged at Jaa and tackled him. “Gaaaaack . . .” Jaa sputtered, as the burly older Container knocked the breath out of him. Kerj lifted his fist menacingly, while with the other hand he reached out to seize Jaa’s spear. “Kerj!” cried Jaa. “Wait!”
But the auto-spear interpreted this as the order to attack Kerj. It used technology that ought never to have been invented to lift Jaa’s arm and stab Kerj in the chest.
Kerj fell over at the burst of pain, and struggled to get up, but he couldn’t. He watched Jaa run to the center of the control room as he waited the eternity of 10 seconds for him to heal.
Jaa grabbed an oxygen suit and clambered into it, knowing that he’d need protection, and just as Kerj got up, revived by the ever-useful nanobots, cracked the glass in the window with his auto-spear. He squeezed through the opening just out of Kerj’s reach, as the latter snatched at him in a last effort to redeem his quest.
47
Ian slumped to the Martian ground. “I don’t believe it,” he moaned. “Jaa gone; the Victory gone; us trapped here . . . I don’t believe it.”
“I do,” said Kari. She was staring up into space with a look of extreme annoyance on her face. Nothing more than that: she had learned to control her emotions long ago. “But still, we have 7 ? betrens. That’s enough to live on for a day or two, longer if we don’t eat much.”
“Is that enough to buy a ship?” Ian asked half-heartedly.
Kari would’ve laughed if they weren’t in such a state of anguish and despair. “Even the cheapest escape pods cost at least 15 betrens.” she said.
48
“Maybe we could earn the money,” said Ian, looking purposefully around him. He stood up and headed in the direction of downtown Monopolis, the capitol of Mars02.
“Ian,†Kari called after him. “I don’t think –“ Ian ignored her.
He walked up toward a business’s building and went inside. It appeared to be some sort of high-tech gadget shop.
“Whyhellothereyoungman” said an employee, appearing as if from nowhere. “Wouldyouliketobuyabrandnewautospear?”
“Um, no thanks,” said Ian. “I already have one. What I’m looking for is a . . .” “Pocketorganizersareveryusefulasyoucancommunicateacrosstheplanetswithaminimumthirtyminutedelaythey’rethebestthingavailibleforau’saroundandinstocktoowannabuyone?”
Ian spoke a bit louder. “What I’m looking for is a job. ”
The reply came even more quickly than the first two things the Marsican had said, and Ian had trouble deciphering the words. It was clear, though, that the Marsican was not best pleased. “Wedonotneedyougetoutgetoutscram,” he said, and within seconds, Ian was out the door and back on the street. He made a mental note not to live on Mars when he grew up.
49
“No luck there,” he told Kari.
“I warned you,” she said. “Mars is awful. I hate it.”
“But you were born here.”
“I still hate it.”
“Okay, so what do we do now? Sit here and mope?” Ian groaned. “I never should have left Ceres!”
“But then the Parents would have had an even easier time,” Kari said sharply. “Ian, you HAVE helped.”
“I sure don’t feel very helpful right now . . .” Ian whispered. “Jaa’s in trouble and I just have to sit here and feel sorry for myself. What’s worse, YOU feel sorry for me. You and Jaa could have stopped the Parents alone. I didn’t change anything.”
“Ian, you saved the ship from blowing at the last minute by finding the steering wheel,” Kari said. “If you hadn’t done that, we’d be dead.” Ian thought for a moment. He had forgotten all about that close shave.
“No,” he said finally, “I’ve had enough. I can’t go on like this. One of these days we won’t get so lucky and we’ll all die.” He got up. “I’m going back to Ceres.” he said. “It only costs 2 ? betrens, so we could both go back.”
“But what about Jaa?” said Kari. “We can’t just leave him in the hands of the parents. They’ll make him suffer beyond comprehension for all he’s done against them.”
50
At that moment, Jaa was floating in the middle of space. He watched Kerj’s ship and the Victory blast across the huge vacuum of space. He would have to get onto another ship fast, because the oxygen suits lasted only 32 hours. But this was a common space route, so he expected that some sort of transportation ship would come soon.
Ian stared out the portal of the space shuttle. They were on their way back to Ceres. Ian had convinced Kari that they could concoct a plan just as well on Ceres as on Mars, and Kari hadn’t taken much convincing. She hated Mars with a passion. Ian was still in the throes of despondency, and Kari imagined that it would just be her rescuing Jaa this time.
51
As Kari reflected on this, becoming nearly as depressed as Ian, the boy nudged her with his elbow to get her attention. “Look,” he said. “What’s that?” Kari looked. “That” was a small white figure floating in space, right in the path of the shuttle.
“Good heavens,” Kari gasped. “It’s Jaa!”
She dashed out of their compartment in the shuttle, running along the antiseptically clean corridor until she reached the cockpit. The doors slid open to admit her.
The pilot swiveled around in his chair. He looked out of place in the clean environment. A mass of greasy black hair hung down over his barely visible, grimy face. “What is it? And make it quick, this here is a dangerous part of the route.”
“There’s someone out there!” Kari exclaimed. “He looks like he’s stranded in space. We have to stop the ship!”
The pilot deliberately looked the other way. “No can do.”
Desperate, Kari slammed the remainder of her funds onto the control panel. It only amounted to 2 ? betrens.
“Got anything else?” the pilot asked. “If not, vamoose.”
52
Kari’s response was eloquent. It consisted of a punch in the face, a shove off the chair, and a quick jerk of the retro-rocket lever. The ship shuddered to a halt.
The pilot looked up from his position on the floor, propping himself up with an elbow. “You’ll be fined for that. Probably do some time in jail, too. Striking a ship official, piloting without a license, endangering crew and passengers–” He was cut off abruptly by a kick in the nose. Kari knew that she, Ian and Jaa had broken dozens of laws already. A few more wouldn’t make any difference.
53
“Get him to pass out,” said Kari to a very pale Ian, as she got a piece of rope and scrambled into the emergency exit’s airlock. Ian went several shades paler. He didn’t know what to do. He was fine with breaking laws that were made by the cruel Parents, but he didn’t feel he could hurt another human being. The pilot, whose nose was bleeding, was starting to recover from seeing stars. Ian didn’t have much time to make a choice.
Ian rapped the pilot lightly on the crown. The man looked up at him, his gaze full of contempt. “That all you can do, kid?”
The boy hit him a little harder, but not much. The pilot seized his arm and twisted it. Ian, whose nerves still hadn’t healed entirely, collapsed in shock.
54
Kari opened the airlock and tossed a rope to Jaa. They couldn’t talk to each other as sound doesn’t travel in space, but Jaa understood that he was getting rescued, and heaved a sigh of relief.
As soon as Jaa and Kari had gotten into the air lock and it was beginning to close, Jaa took off his cumbersome oxygen suit, wishing all suits were as thin as the ones that had been manufactured in the 2050s. Somehow, suits had declined since then, becoming more bulky and uncomfortable–though admittedly more effective as well.
“How did you get here?” Jaa asked, still shocked that Kari herself would be the one rescuing him from floating in space.
“Ian and I got a shuttle to Ceres, and I hijacked the ship so I could rescue you.”
“You hijacked this shuttle?” Jaa marveled. “Impressive.”
Kari smiled slightly. The Parents’ training systems aren’t completely useless, I guess.â€
The air lock opened, and they dropped into the control room. Ian was lying on the floor. The pilot was standing up, his nose dripping blood, and he didn’t look happy.
“Um…Kari,” whispered Jaa, “I thought you hijacked the ship…”
“That Ian,†thought Kari. “If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.â€
55
“You are in big, big trouble,” began the pilot. He picked up a pocket organizer. “Guards! I need some guards!” he barked. “Control room!” Instantly a pounding of footsteps could be heard.
Kari realized she was out of time. She ran forward, grabbed the speed throttle, and pulled it down to top speed. The force blasted everybody in the shuttle backward. The pilot fell backward and his hand slammed hard on the floor, while Jaa got pushed into a file cabinet and Ian just rolled across the ground and bumped into the door.
The ship, now rocketing through space, had little room to maneuver in. The guards, who’d come out of nowhere, were nothing more than small robots, easily defeated by Kari. When everyone surrounding the three outlaws was knocked out or broken, Kari slowed down some. They were near Ceres by now, and it was time to make a plan.
Chapter 5
56
When they reached the artifisphere of Ceres, Kari jettisoned the passenger compartments. Air-filled cushions enveloped screaming interplanetary commuters, and parachutes blossomed over them, carrying the steel rooms down towards Ceres’ surface. The shuttle was now just a cockpit and some engines.
Kari wheeled the ship, or what was left of it, around and pulled the throttle. She hadn’t, however, accounted for the fact that the shuttle’s engines had been designed to move about three times the mass of the cockpit. A slight touch on the lever, and the ship leaped forward like an eager panther.
Kari was delighted. She seized the throttle with a grin. “Let’s see what this bucket can do.” And she pulled the lever down all the way.
The image in the front window became blurred as they approached 10,000,000 miles per hour. Kari set the autopilot on Callisto, and they sped off through the vast chambers of space.
“Ouch,” said Ian quietly. “That hurt. A lot.”
“That,” Kari returned icily, “is why you knock him out.”
Ian was confused as to whether he should cause suffering to another human being or draw the suffering upon himself. He peered at the navigational screen, which showed where they were going and how fast.
“Callisto?†he said. “Why Callisto?â€
Kari rolled her eyes. It was rare that Ian failed to ask this sort of question, it seemed. “We’re going to Callisto because that’s where the Parents have their headquarters. As you should know.â€
“No, I shouldn’t,†said Ian, surprisingly level and matter-of-fact. “You never said anything of the sort.â€
“Oops,†Kari said sheepishly. “Sorry.â€
Ian shrugged.
57
After about 2 hours of cruising at nearly 1/4 the speed of light, they received a matter transmission. “YOU ARE UNDER ARREST. HALT OR WE WILL USE MAGNABEAMS.” Kari looked at the radar and sucked in her breath. Several ships were following her 60,000 miles back at speeds slightly greater than her own.
She looked at the weapon options for the shuttle. It had two low-quality magnabeams and a handheld laser gun, the latter of which would be useless. “The low-quality magnabeams don’t stun, they kill,” said Jaa. “I’m not sure we want to get ourselves into the position of murderers or they’ll send a sheriff ship after us.”
“I’m not sure that a sheriff ship after us would make the situation much worse,” said Kari fiercely. “We can’t let them capture us!”
58
“Why in Solana not?” said Ian, who would gladly have gone to jail in exchange for something normal. And to him, who had been there so many times simply for being an orphan, jail was normal. “It’s not as though they know about the Parents.”
“They don’t know about them,” said Kari. “But they’ll pull up mine and Jaa’s biosignatures, which will be easy to find, due to everything we’ve done–especially mine. The biosignatures will say we’ve escaped from a high-security prison, and that we must be put back there. There isn’t really a high-security prison though; it’s the Parents’ headquarters. So we’ll be back to square one.” Jaa nodded gravely.
Ian didn’t like to think what would happen to him if they were caught. Kari would be frozen, Jaa mind-wiped and put back to work re-designing the engine, and Ian–he would never forget the day Kari had told him what would happen if he was caught. He shuddered.
“Why, oh why didn’t I stay on Ceres?” Ian mumbled to himself. “My quest for knowledge about Terra just got me running around the solar system with 2 Containers so bent on bringing down the Parents they put all moral and ethical issues behind!”
“All right,” said Kari, “I’m going to blast our first magnabeam. If we don’t fire first, they will!”
Ian realized he was stuck on the last moral issue he had just faced. Should he kill others to save himself or risk his life to save others?
59
He realized he didn’t have much time to make a choice. “Killing innocent people is not right,†he decided, “and I need to stop Kari.†He walked determinedly up to her.
“Kari,” he said, “You are not going to blast them with your magnabeam.”
“Ian!” said Kari, maneuvering the ship so as not to make an easy target. “Hold on! I’m steering for dear life!”
“Well, you don’t seem to appreciate the dear life those police have,” said Ian. “You’re about to kill them all just to prevent yourself from being captured.”
“Do you want to die?” Kari said. “If that’s what you want, then I’ll just keep driving.” She wondered why she had brought this boy along with her on her quest to stop the Parents. He was never much good in moments of danger, though this was the first time that he had actually added to the danger.
“Look,” said Ian. “Why don’t you save your magnabeam to blast the parent’s headquarters to smithereens? We’ll be at Callisto in minutes!”
“We don’t have time for that!” said Kari. “The police will get us before then!” She put her hand on the lever.
“Wait!” said Ian. “You have two. Could you fire this one off aim, to scare them, and save the other one for blasting the Parents?”
60
Kari thought for a moment. It could work. She decided, in a brief instant that if she didn’t do what Ian said, he would keep arguing until they got hit. She swerved far left and fired the first magnabeam. It missed the police by several miles. “There’s more where that came from!” she yelled into the pilot’s pocket organizer, which had fallen out when he fell over into the passenger room.
Becca, the leader of the police ships, was getting slightly worried. She hadn’t known that this shuttle had magnabeams. But when a magnabeam missed her by several miles, she decided that whoever was in the shuttle was a very bad operator of ship weapons, and therefore not especially dangerous. “I’m going to fire if you don’t stop!” Becca yelled into her pocket organizer.
“What the–?” Kari did not understand. Weren’t they scared? “Only 90 seconds until we reach Callisto,” said Jaa, who could see Jupiter as a blotch of orange-red in the window.
Kari swerved frantically to hold them off just as Becca opened fire. The shot missed by half a mile. “That was too close,” said Ian, extremely worried. Perhaps his plan wasn’t as foolproof as he had hoped.
Hoping to demoralize the police, Kari shouted into the pocket organizer, “You police can’t shoot for beans!”
“Beans?” asked Ian. He had thought that he was getting rather fluent in Terran vocabulary, but this one was new.
“Oh never mind!” Kari said, exasperated, as a magnabeam whizzed past them a mere mile away. “Lot of good your plan was!” she shouted, dodging it. “Now will you let me hit them?”
61
“Only 60 seconds,” said Jaa. “And now we need to keep that magnabeam for the Headquarters. Sorry, Kari.” He grabbed her wrist as she reached for the lever that would launch the beam. Too late she saw the police’s magnabeam, and though she swung the wheel frantically with her free hand, the magnabeam hit the stern of their ship with a faint pop.
Ian crouched on the floor with his eyes closed tight, thinking of the library on Ceres. That was his fondest memory, and he wanted to take it with him when he died. Well, he didn’t really want to die, in the first place. But if he had to die, he would rather be thinking about the library than the two renegade Containers who would stop at nothing to destroy their “Parents”.
“Don’t be an idiot, Ian!” Kari’s voice broke through his thoughts. “We are not going to die! They barely grazed us. We still have air. Now get up; you’re in the way down there.”
Ian cracked one eye open, but did not move.
62
A magnabeam shot past them. “AAG!” screamed Jaa, before realizing it hadn’t hit them. “Why do the police keep shooting all these magnabeams off target? Magnabeams are expensive!”
“Just 18 more seconds before we can blast the Parents . . .” said Kari, trying to stare at the liquid-crystal clock and keep swerving at the same time.
The clock seemed to take forever in changing digits. 7 . . . 6 . . . 5 . . . 4 . . .
“Dangit!” said Jaa. “The ships are getting too close to us! Next time they could get a good aim!”
“To !@#$%^& with clocks!” said Kari furiously. “I’m firing now!” She aimed at the grey splotch on Callisto, which was now only 100,000 miles away, and fired.
Predictably, she missed. A mining city 104 miles away from the headquarters was completely demolished. None of the kids knew this, although Kari and Jaa saw that it had missed. Jaa looked at Kari sternly. Kari swore. Ian opened both eyes. “Did it work?†he asked.
He was ignored, but he due to Kari’s language, he assumed it hadn’t worked.
63
Kari swore again. “I’m going to crash the ship into the Parent’s headquarters!” she said. “Get in the escape pod!”
Ian and Jaa obediently climbed into the escape pod, despite Ian’s muttered speculations that Kari was perhaps going mad.
The escape pod was exactly like the Victory, except it had none of the upgrades they had bought at the repair shop. Ian sighed. “Stuck in a steel ball for a ship again,” he muttered.
Kari carefully guided the ship until it was heading dead straight for the Parent’s headquarters. Then she jumped into the escape pod and ejected it.
As they descended toward the ground, they viewed the ship heading straight toward the Parent’s headquarters. It was pulverized by the police’s magnabeam right as it hit the mass of buildings, and Kari looked like she could have cried at her failure. Both boys lacked Kari’s long-simmering hatred and thirst for revenge, and were merely thankful that they were safely in the escape pod when the magnabeam had hit the shuttle.
64
Safe from the magnabeam they may have been, but not safe from the police themselves, who had seen them try to destroy the Parents’ headquarters and were now under the impression that the three kids were dangerous murderers who were bent on bringing down the civilized world.
But the Parent’s headquarters had defenses of its own, and many secrets that needed defending. Disturbed by the police’s ships so close by, deadly magnabeams shot out towards the police. They never even knew what hit them.
The escape pod hit the surface of Callisto hard, and made a small crater. “This is it,” said Kari. “The Parent’s headquarters. Let’s go.â€
65
Ian frowned. “What are you guys going to do? They’ve got hundreds of Containers and all sorts of weapons, and we’re three kids with a half-wrecked escape pod and a couple of autospears.”
“We don’t have to defeat all the Containers,” said Kari. “All we have to do is capture one and reprogram it. You can reprogram Containers, right, Jaa?”
“I could reprogram you if I liked,” said Jaa with a grim smile. “In fact, I may have before. That’s what’s generally done with renegades. Reprogram ’em, freeze ’em, and bend them to your will.” His smile disappeared. “Yes, I can reprogram them, but–“
Ian cut in, sounding doubtful. “All very well, but how are we going to get the Container?”
“I could reprogram them,†Jaa continued, ignoring Ian, “but I don’t like the idea of controlling a human being.”
“They aren’t human beings,†said Kari flatly. “They’re robots.â€
Jaa shook his head. “No,†he said. “They are human beings, underneath. They were human once, and they have the capacity to become human again if they were ever given a chance.â€
“All right, let’s compromise,” Kari said exasperatedly. “Once we’ve defeated the Parents, we can deprogram all the Containers and let them live normal, human, lives. Satisfied?”
“I guess so . . . If I have to beâ€
“Good. You have to be. Now to the more pressing question. How do we get inside that fortress?”
Jaa might have been about to come up with a brilliant idea, which they would immediately carry out. The Parents would have been defeated, and everyone would have lived happily ever after. Conversely, he might have been about to suggest a foolhardy plan that Kari and Ian would either scathingly reject or agree to, and die in the Parents’ headquarters in the latter case. Another possibility is that he was about to say he had absolutely no idea.
Nobody will ever know which of those it was, because a high-powered magnabeam struck the tiny escape pod at the second that Jaa opened his mouth.
Chapter 6
66
“Great,” moaned Kari when she came to. “This seems awfully familiar.”
The fact that she could make a joke (if indeed it was a joke), cheered her a little, but she was not cheered when she received no answer. Neither was she cheered by the fact that her eyelids seemed to be stuck shut. “IAN!” she yelled as loud as she could. “JAA!”
Nothing.
She tried to wriggle into a more comfortable position–she was lying flat on her back–but found she couldn’t move. However, feeling around with the tips of her fingers, which gave them an odd tingling feeling, she decided she was lying on a surface of cold smooth metal. This was a frightening prospect. It was not the escape pod, that much was for sure, nor the surface of the moon. Therefore it must be somewhere inside the Headquarters, and as she had never been in a place remotely like this, she was most likely about to experience something infinitely more unpleasant than the usual routine of being frozen.
Kari suddenly heard footsteps. The sound of a husky breath loomed closer. “FOOLISH GIRL,” the breath muttered. “FOOLISH GIRL. SHE ESCAPES, RUNS AROUND THE SOLAR SYSTEM, THEN WALKS UP TO OUR DOORS TO BE CAPTURED.”
67
Kari felt her clothes being taken off. “What are you doing?” she yelled.
“BEFORE OUR USUAL LITTLE ROUTINE OF FREEZING YOU FOR A FEW ROTATIONS AROUND THE SOL, WE WILL BE USING YOU FOR A LITTLE TESTING.” The voice laughed. “OUR SHIPS ARE TOO SLOW, AND ARE GOING OBSOLETE. WE HAVE DEVELOPED A NEW METHOD OF TRANSPORTATION–TO DECONSTRUCT YOUR ATOMS AND THEN SEND THEM IN LIGHT TO A RECEIVER, WHICH WILL RECONSTRUCT YOUR ATOMS THERE. WE HAVEN’T HAD ANYONE VERY WORTHY OF THIS LITTLE STINT– UNTIL NOW.” Kari realized the implications and struggled more than ever to get free of the horrible bonds that held her immobile.
“STOP IT,” the voice said. “YOU CAN’T ESCAPE.” A hand took her clothes and dropped them somewhere, Kari couldn’t tell where. “YOU WON’T BE NEEDING THOSE FOR THE TEST. NO, YOU’LL BE NEEDING SOMETHING DIFFERENT.” She felt some sort of cloth being wrapped around her. It felt like plastic sheets and clung to her skin like a magnet to steel. Soon every inch of her body was covered, though for some strange reason she could still breath and hear. “THIS PROTECTIVE LAYER OF INSULATION WILL KEEP YOUR ATOMS INSIDE UNTIL THEY ARE FULLY DISINTEGRATED. NOW, SHALL WE TEST?” the voice laughed again.
Kari could suddenly move, though her eyes remained obstinately shut. But she didn’t get to move for long, as she slid down the steep incline on the smooth steel surface into some sort of padded sphere almost too small to hold her.
“WE WILL BE CONDUCTING THE TEST WITHIN A FEW MINUTES,” the voice said as it walked away. “WE MUST GET THE RECEIVING LOCATION READY FOR . . .” Kari couldn’t hear the rest through the sphere.
Instead of minutes, it seemed like seconds before a long tube appeared out of the wall. “insert mouth on tube” an artificial voice droned out. Kari decided that she had better do what they wanted, so she inserted her mouth around the tube. There was a tingling sensation not unlike the one she had felt when moving her fingers, and she lost consciousness as her body disintegrated and got sucked up, the layer of smooth plastic cloth keeping holding her atoms until they disappeared into the tube.
68
Ian had decided even before he fully regained consciousness: this was not a good place to be. He wasn’t even sure where he was, but he knew that much. He wanted to get out. Away. Not-there. He opened his eyes and was surprised to find that that his surroundings were fairly innocuous.
He was lying on a soft bed in an enclosed room, bare of any furniture except the bed he was lying on and a bed on the opposite side of the room, which was empty. Did we get captured? he wondered, but right away he chided himself for his stupidity. Of course they had been captured. He suddenly remembered all the things Kari had told him about what happened one was captured by the Parents, and he began to get extremely worried, not for the first, nor the last, time. He tried to sink back into merciful sleep, and failed.
69
“What’s going on?” Jaa murmured groggily. His vision was a mess of blurry color. Then a face swam into focus. It was grinning.
“Kerj,” Jaa croaked wearily.
“THE SAME. I’M GIVING YOU ONE LAST CHANCE. TELL ME THE ARTIFICIAL GRAVITY FORMULAE, OR IT’S RACK 50 FOR YOU. AND DON’T PULL ANY LITTLE STUNTS LIKE YOU DID LAST TIME. A NANOBOT SWARM WILL BE ON YOU BEFORE YOU CAN BLINK. IT’LL WRAP YOU IN A COCOON OF STEEL AND TRANSPORT YOU TO RACK 50 IN A MOST UNPLEASANT MANNER. WHAT WILL IT BE?”
Jaa did not want, above all, to go to Rack 50. He was too tired and head his hurt far too much for him to try to argue with Kerj. The only option left was to agree to redesign the gravitational engines, he realized. Kerj wouldn’t put up with anything after he had already escaped the Parents twice. “Okay,” he finally said, “I’ll write out the antigravity for you.” I can always escape later, he added mentally.
“EXCELLENT,” said Kerj, remembering the harsh words directed toward him when Jaa had escaped from his ship. He resolved to make JAA suffer as much as possible while he was in Kerj’s power.
70
In the strange bedroom, Ian got up out of the bed. There was a titanium-steel door on one side of the room, and all the walls, ceilings, and floors were made out of reinforced concrete. Ian walked over to the door, and knocked on it. “What is it?” the voice of a young Container asked from the other side.
Ian was suddenly very frightened. “Uh–nothing,” he said. It was true. There was nothing to say. He got back into the bed. A few minutes later he got out again. Even talking to a Container would be better entertainment than sitting there waiting to die. Maybe he could even get important information out of him.
“What’s your name?” Ian asked the Container outside the door.
“SAJ,” was the reply.
“What are you doing here?”
“MAKING SURE YOU DON’T GET OUT.”
“What are they going to do with me?” asked Ian, more than half to himself.
“I HAVE NOT BEEN GIVEN THE HONOR OF KNOWING THAT,” replied SAJ.
Ian was silent for a while, then he asked, “What did they do with my friends?”
“WHO ARE YOUR FRIENDS?”
“Kari and Jaa,” said Ian. “KRI and JAA to you, I suppose.â€
“JAA? I REMEMBER JAA,” SAJ said. “HE RAN AWAY NOT TOO LONG AGO. HE IS BACK NOW, I HEAR. HE’LL PROBABLY GO BACK TO HIS WORK AS A SCIENTIST . . .” he paused. “KRI . . . HER RECENT CAPTURE HAS MADE BIG NEWS AROUND HERE. KRI HAS RAN AWAY AND BEEN CAUGHT SO MANY TIMES THEY WILL PROBABLY JUST ROUTINELY FREEZE HER FOR A FEW ROTATIONS, THEN PUT HER IN A HIGH-SECURITY PRISON CELL.†Then he chuckled unpleasantly. “BUT I HEAR THAT THE PARENTS HAVE SOME NEW PIECE OF EQUIPMENT TO TEST.”
71
Kari’s body felt strangely detached from everything, which was not surprising, considering that her atoms were disintegrated and the only thing holding them together was–to be frank–a plastic bag. This feeling (which she didn’t feel at all, due to her unconscious state) lasted less than a fifth of a second, and then she woke up.
Her atoms had been reconstructed perfectly. Kari felt much stronger–much stronger than before she had been supposedly beamed to who knows where. She tried to get up, and found she could, for nothing was holding her down at all.
She also found that she could open her eyes. This was definitely a bonus, she thought–but that was before she saw where she was. What a cruel, cruel joke the Parents had played! They needed something tested, so who better to test it on than the most rebellious rebel in reach? And as if that weren’t enough, they had decided that they would put her in the worst place imaginable.
Terra.
Chapter 7
72
“4 squared times 10 to the power of two equals 1,600,” Jaa muttered, frantically scribbling the amount of electromagnets needed per 1,000,000 cubic feet. Kerj had demanded the plans for the anti-gravity machines in 80 hours, which was sooner than when Jaa would have them done at his current rate. The Parent’s headquarters were now on the dark side of Callisto, and machines were starting to get shut down. Whic
The rest:
Chapter 7
72
“4 squared times 10 to the power of two equals 1,600,” Jaa muttered, frantically scribbling the amount of electromagnets needed per 1,000,000 cubic feet. Kerj had demanded the plans for the anti-gravity machines in 80 hours, which was sooner than when Jaa would have them done at his current rate. The Parent’s headquarters were now on the dark side of Callisto, and machines were starting to get shut down. Which meant Jaa had to do them on paper, something he hadn’t done for well over a century.
Kerj walked in. “YOU ARE WORKING TOO SLOW, YOU DESPICABLE REGENADE,” he said as he examined the chains that held Jaa within 8 feet of the working desk. They couldn’t be called anything but chains, but they barely resembled the chains that had been used in the golden days before WWL. “YOU WILL NEVER BE DONE IN TIME. AND THEN YOU WILL HAVE TO GO TO RACK 50 AFTER ALL. WHAT A SHAME.†Kerj turned back to the door and barked, “COME IN HERE!†Two containers walked in. “MEET YOUR ‘ROOMMATES’, JAA,” Kerj said as he introduced VAK and VEN. “YOU WILL HAVE THEIR COMPANY THROUGHOUT THE NIGHT,” he laughed as he chained VAK and VEN to Jaa to ensure no chance of escape. Kerj wasn’t taking any chances, especially during the night when it would be easier for Jaa to sneak away.
73
Kari didn’t feel the effects of strong radiation, which surprised her. “Those cursed Parents probably put some kind of temporary protection on me that’ll make me suffer longer on this godforsaken piece of dirt.”
She looked around at the “piece of dirt.†The sky was a dark gray, with bits of green swirling around in a way that made her eyes ache. The temperature was at least 140 degrees, probably hotter. The terrain was rough sand, with a few rocks scattered across the desert. After some contemplation, Kari decided that she was in Antarctica.
Further examination of the horizon revealed something that confirmed her suspicion: a small domed building of some sort in the distance. Kari recognized the dome from her implanted memories. It was the research station where a monumentally important event had taken place, namely, the invention of the gravity-pulse drive. This amazing engine created tiny folds in the space-time continuum, allowing any ship on which it was installed to skip across space at unbelievable speed. She realized that she was standing near the spot where the backbone of the solar system’s economy had been created. The research station had also been famous for several other discoveries, such as carboglass synthesis and the advances in genetic manipulation that allowed Betwers to be created.
None of this, Kari reflected sourly, was going to help her to get out.
She stood undecided for a second and then broke for the dome. It would be a little bit of protection between her and the headache-inducing sky.
74
Jaa was exhausted. He didn’t see how he could re-design the engines in a single night, when he was practically falling asleep. He remembered when he had been very small, there had been a very rare commodity known as “coffee”. He had tried a sip once. It had been dreadfully bitter, and his parents had not let him have any more even if he wanted to. They said it would keep him awake. Now he didn’t care how foul it had tasted, he wanted some. He had to stay awake! But there was no longer such a thing as coffee, much less for renegades and prisoners.
He sighed and turned back to his seemingly endless task. The paper wasn’t even real paper, he thought bitterly, because for that they would need trees. It was some sort of plastic, which tried to look like paper by being white and slightly rough. In his opinion, it failed.
It was then that Jaa noticed his guards were apparently even more exhausted than he was, as was evidenced by the fact that they were fast asleep, and Kerj had been gone only 15 minutes.
Jaa looked at the newest sheet of “paper†on which he was designing the engines, and then threw down the metallic pen in disgust. I’m leaving, he thought, getting up. He was about to deactivate the alarm when it flashed on him that he was still chained to 2 snoring Containers. Jaa knew he had the strength to drag them with him through the maze of passageways to freedom outside the Parent’s headquarters, but VAK’s and VEN’s microchips were being tracked by a central computer. Jaa wouldn’t get much farther than the room he was in unless he removed their microchips.
“It’s a good thing I never showed anyone that I figured out how to do this,” he muttered, as he got down and lifted VAK’s arm.
75
Ian had a feeling that SAJ knew more than he was telling. He didn’t say so, though, for fear of what might happen if he did. The two sat in silence on opposite sides of the door. Ian was sure that if Kari or Jaa were there they would already have escaped, but even as he was thinking this depressing thought there was a clatter of boots outside the door.
“SAJ,” said a voice.
“YES, GENERAL HAV?”
“HOW IS THE PRISONER? HE HAS NOT TRIED TO ESCAPE?â€
“NO, SIR. I DON’T BELIEVE HE HAS EVEN THOUGHT ABOUT ESCAPE.â€
“IS THAT SO?â€
“YES, SIR.â€
“HAVE YOU BEEN FRATERNIZING WITH THE PRISONER AGAIN?”
“NO, SIR!” cried SAJ in alarm, but the General didn’t seem to believe him, for he said, “SAH, I WOULD LIKE YOU TO TAKE SAJ’S PLACE FOR NOW.”
“NO!†SAJ said loudly. Evidently this meant that he was in deep disgrace. There were quiet mutterings on the other side of the door, and then the boots receded into the distance.
Ian thought and thought, but he could come up with no solution to his situation. Eventually, he curled up on the bunk, which now seemed harder than the tunnels of Ceres, and fell into an uneasy sleep.
He was awakened by a strangled grunt, and a thud, as though a body had slammed forcefully against his cell door. As he got out of the pathetic excuse for a bed, the door hissed open, and SAH fell inward. Ian couldn’t tell how badly he was hurt, but he was unconscious or worse. SAJ was standing over him, a look of triumph in his eyes.
“LISTEN, IMPURE,” SAJ hissed. “I HAVE NO SYMPATHY FOR YOU, BUT I THINK YOU ARE A WORTHLESS HOSTAGE, AND GENERAL HAV WILL BE CHASTISED FOR HIS BAD CHOICE OF SENTRIES.” He looked down at SAH and grinned. Ian shuddered. “IT WILL NOT SIT WELL WITH THE PARENTS IF A PRISONER DISAPPEARS ON HAV’S WATCH. WELL, WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR? GO.”
Ian hurried down the corridor, reflecting on the horrible pettiness of the Container and his own unexpected good fortune.
76
Ian ran through the winding passageways, hopelessly lost and more than a little shaken. He tried to shrug off the horrible incident, with mixed results. “Now,” he said quietly to himself, “where are Kari and Jaa?”
He knew that his life was in danger and that one wrong move would kill him, but he didn’t really see how he could help that, and acted with only a little more caution than usual. Which was still considerable, as Ian was–most of the time–a very careful person.
By pure chance he wound up in the System Control Room. There was only one Container on duty, and he was unarmed, since no one expected an invasion in what was usually the hub of the security operations.
Ian’s first reaction at the Container’s appearance was shock. Solana, he’s old! Ian thought. His hair is actually white! He began to creep up behind the old man, drawing SAH’s autospear as he did so. At this the Container (Who’s ID code was, by a freak coincidence, IAN) turned. “Freeze.” said Ian, holding the autospear in front of him.
77
Jaa was about to remove the wires that turned off the tracker on VEN’s chip when its light turned red.
Uh oh.
Jaa closed his eyes and opened them again in astonishment. That wasn’t the regulation alert message . . .
“Hop. Pop. We like to hop . . .”
Ian had grabbed the first elebook he saw and shoved it under IAN’s nose. “Thank you for deactivating the security system, now read!” Ian snarled.
He laughed as he realized the shelf had been marked ‘ancient Terran children’s’ literature’.
” . . . we like to hop on top of pop . . .” The message continued. Jaa was seriously confused by now.
He seemed to remember as a little child, listening to his dad read those very words to him. Something about a doctor . . . But that wasn’t what concerned him at the moment. Why would this be coming over the intercom?
78
“Right,” Ian said, his confidence boosted. “Where are Renegades KRI and JAA?”
“JAA MAY BE FOUND IN MULTIPURPOSE ROOM 323.”
“Right. Give me the video footage from that room.”
IAN swerved around and tapped a few buttons. An image of an empty room on the wraparound monitor.
“HE’S GONE!”
Ian cheered up. Jaa must have managed to escape. “So, what about KRI?”
“SHE WAS USED FOR TESTING A TELEPORTATION DEVICE. IT WORKED AT 100% CAPACITY.”
“Where’d it send her?” Ian asked with the slightest hint of dread.
“TERRA.”
79
Kari was already feeling a cold burn beginning on her skin. The temporary nanobots that had been installed in her cells wouldn’t last much longer. She dashed down the corridors of the deserted facility, hoping to find what she needed.
And, by sheer luck, she did. RADIATION STUDIES was printed on a skewed sign above a hall in peeling paint. Kari made a sharp right, racing against time. There would have to be radiation suits here somewhere. She just hoped they would be intact. If not, she would die a slow, agonizing death.
80
“What!?!?” Ian almost screamed.
“IT HAS BEEN DETERMINED THE TELEPORTATION DEVICE WORKS PERFECTLY, SO KRI SHOULD BE SAFE EXCEPT FOR THE RADIATION.” IAN informed Ian.
Ian had to get out of the Parent’s Headquarters. Jaa had escaped, and Ian imagined he would go to the escape pod. Ian had to do the same, and here he had a first-class chance! “Where’s the nearest exit?” he asked.
“OVER THERE UNDER THE RED LETTER ‘E’,” IAN droned like a machine, and Ian rushed over to what seemed to be where the door was. As he pushed against that spot in the wall, a LED screen popped up. WHAT IS THE REASON FOR YOUR EXIT? it inquired.
“Fire!” Ian spoke the first thing that came to his mind. Instantly infrared heat sensors flashed all over the Parent’s headquarters, looking for signs of a fire. When they found none, the LED screen disappeared immediately.
Ian kicked the door. The LED screen popped up again and repeated the question. “Hydrogen bomb!” said Ian, louder than the first time because he was frustrated. He was within a hair of getting out and the door wouldn’t open! Instantly radiation detectors scanned a diameter of 1 AU around the Parent’s headquarters, found nothing threatening, and the LED screen disappeared for a second time. Ian was getting steamed.
81
“Um,” said Ian, trying to come up with something plausible this time. “I have to go . . . relieve a watch, or something?” The “or something” was reflexive, and he automatically cursed himself for saying it. However, the screen didn’t seem to have a way to disprove this fact, as it buzzed for a moment and opened the door.
Ian looked out to see that he was thirty feet from the ground. He decided not to worry about it and he jumped. Luckily for him, Callisto had an artifisphere. That had not even occurred to Ian, and it still didn’t occur to him, as he tried fruitlessly to locate the escape pod.
IAN, the old Container, had not switched off the intercom. Their entire conversation had been broadcasted all over the building, consequently everyone in the building, from the most important of the Parents to Jaa knew that a prisoner had escaped. Jaa smiled secretly to himself, and important Parent cursed.
Just after Ian jumped, several security guards rushed into the System Control Room. “WHAT THE !@#$%& IS WRONG WITH YOU?” barked one of them. IAN looked up. “YOU ARE UNDER ARREST,” he said coldly.
“IAN HAS MALFUNCTIONED,” the guard announced. “TAKE HIM TO THE REPROGRAMMING WING.” Several security guards picked IAN up and carried him off.
82
Jaa walked purposefully along the halls, or would have been walking purposefully if he hadn’t been dragging two insensible Containers along with him. He knew he had a chance to escape; he just needed to figure out how to take that chance.
Jaa saw one of the guards drop his autospear on the way to the control room. Perfect! He picked it up and quickly cut the strange chains that attached him to VAK and VEN. Leaving them lying unconscious in the passageway, he snuck along the halls, relieved to be free of the load.
As he approached the Main Control Room, he heard a commotion coming from inside it. HAV was being charged with letting the hostage go. HAV argued that SAH should have been watching, and the other argued that SAH had been nearly killed. HAV argued that it was not his fault, and blows were being exchanged. Jaa peered in and saw that the controls were being left unguarded.
He snuck in, trying to look inconspicuous. Considering he looked a great deal like all the other Containers, nobody would recognize him unless they looked closely or saw his identity tattoo, which, provided he did not draw attention to himself, no one was likely to do. Standing at the switchboard pretending to be doing something useful, he instructed the computer to send all the deprogrammed Containers to the reprogramming ward. Then he strolled out and off to the reprogramming ward. It was almost too easy.
83
IAN was being programmed in one of the 50 white-plastic-and-steel reprogramming stations. The whole room was white-plastic-and-steel, lit by eerie fluorescent lights, and hummed continuously. A guard stood on either side of the door, but when Jaa assured them that he was only a scientist who had come to reprogram IAN, they let him through.
With a weird tense feeling that came from the whole process being too easy, Jaa walked across the sterile room to the reprogramming computer. His footsteps echoed loudly, seeming to intrude on the quiet hum of the ward.
The machine asked him for a password. Jaa had known it once–he still did– but the password changed every day, and probably even more often now that there had been such a security breach on Mothership05. Not that security here in the Headquarters had improved. The Motherships always had better security anyhow. Perhaps the philosophy was that if something got through Callisto’s outer defenses, there was no hope for the inner ones. But he was wasting time. The password.
Jaa bit his lip, always aware of the guards on the other side of the room. He thought for a minute, and typed in several combinations. All of them failed. He tried again, and again, and again. Finally the machine gave up. “put your finger on the pad,†it droned. “we will analyze your fingerprint.â€
Jaa glanced over at the guards, but neither of them gave any sign of having noticed. He placed his index finger on the pad. The computer whirred.
“access granted,†it said finally, and Jaa heaved a sigh of relief, typed in a command or two, and waited.
About 2 minutes later, all 10 of the W-series Containers came up through a transportation tube into the reprogramming ward. They looked strange and robotic under the fluorescent light, and Jaa had to look away from their waxy faces.
Jaa had been writing up instructions to destroy the Parent’s headquarters by whatever means possible, and now he plugged these into the 10 unconscious Containers.
In the brief moment between them leaving and the next series appearing, Jaa leaned against the reprogramming computer and sighed. There he was, doing the very thing that he had refused to do.
When the X-series Containers were shuttled into the room, Jaa saw there were far more of them – there must’ve been at least 100, if not more. This would take a while.
When he was done, all the X-series Containers were programmed with the same instructions as before, but with a new command added: Attack all humanoids in the building except KRI and JAA.
Jaa was just starting to program the 75 Y-series Containers when a voice yelled, “FREEZE, RENEGADE JAA!”
The boy looked around. 15 security guards, armed with autospears, were standing defiantly in the doorway of the reprogramming ward. Jaa seized a box of autospears, spilled them all out onto the floor, and yelled “X and Y series Containers, grab an auto-spear and ATTACK!”
And thus the Great Container Revolt (as it was referred to later by those who survived) began.
Chapter 8
84
The 15 security guards could not face the hordes of Containers about to attack them. They called for backup. The Containers charged.
Jaa, protected by his army of Containers, hastily programmed the rest of the Y-series Containers to fight, but when the Z-series Containers came (only about 30 in number), he gave them a new instruction: find a hydrogen bomb and set it off. Then he picked up an autospear and started to look for a way to get out of the escalating carnage.
Jaa made his way to the Main Control Room, dodging auto-spears right and left. He looked through the front window–a luxury, as most of the rooms in the Headquarters were windowless–and saw their escape pod still lying exactly where it had been before. But now he could see several security guards around it, and in the middle . . . no, it couldn’t be . . . was it Ian?
It was indeed Ian. When he had escaped from the building, he had run to the escape pod, only to find himself surrounded by Container guards. He could have escaped, had it not been for his sense of honor and, naturally, the fact that he didn’t how to drive the pod.
85
Jaa called for 6 X-series Containers (who appeared to be tougher than those of the Y-series) to follow him, and saw a W-series Container tearing apart a wall with a knife. There were other scenes of destruction, too. All in all, Jaa’s plan was working well.
The seven made their way to the door eventually. “Attack the security guards around that ship!” Jaa pointed, and the Containers obeyed. As the security guards fled, “Jaa’s†Containers chased them around to the other side of the building before giving up and going back inside. Jaa turned to Ian.
“What’s going on?” said Ian, dumbfounded. “Are all the Containers suddenly going mad?”
“That’s not important,” said Jaa quickly. “What is important is that we get out of here. Where’s Kari?”
“They sent her to . . . to Terra.” Ian said quietly.
“WHAT???” yelled Jaa.
“IAN said they were testing some teletransportation equipment on her, and sent her to Terra.” Ian replied.
Jaa sputtered, “We have to get to Terra!” and climbed aboard the pod.
Ian scrambled into a chair right before Jaa slammed the capsule door shut and pulled down the speed lever all the way, cursing the Parent’s name.
The tiny ship blasted off and zoomed away at speeds that were unheard of for a pod as small as this. Ian turned for a last glimpse of Callisto, and saw a mushroom cloud rising from the surface of the moon. He pointed. “Look.â€
“We’ve done it!” cried Jaa victoriously, momentarily forgetting his wrath. “We’ve defeated the Parents once and for all!” But then he slumped, and his face turned red with anger once again. “But they’ve given Kari a !@#$%* of a way to die!”
Ian was quiet. Kari hadn’t a chance of survival if she were unprotected. By the time they got to her, she would be as good as dead.
86
Kari looked wildly around for the suits. She saw them lined up along the far wall, but they were ancient and most of them were smashed to bits. She ran along the row of radiation suits, searching for one that would work . . . Aha!
She managed to find an intact one, or so she thought, but before she put it on she saw a tiny rip in the sleeve. But there was no more time to find another one. Something silver lay at her feet, and her memories registered it as duct tape. It was crumbling but somehow she managed to break off a large piece, and bound it round and round the hole, cursing its lack of stickiness. It wouldn’t stand up to radiation, but it would have to do. There was no more time.
87
“Do you think she’s dead already?” asked Ian. He knew he shouldn’t think about it, but it was hard not to.
“Depends,” muttered Jaa. “If they gave her any protection at all, and when she got there. But I’d say, knowing the Parents, yeah.”
“If Kari is dead, then why are we going to Terra?” Ian asked Jaa. “Do you think maybe there’s a chance she’s not dead?â€
“No, I don’t. But if by some obscure chance she is still alive and we do not attempt to save her,” said Jaa, “a burden of guilt will forever be upon me.”
“But even if we get to Terra and Kari is still alive, how will we find her? We can’t track her because she tore out her microchip.”
Jaa sighed deeply. “I suppose we’ll find a way,” he said drearily as he steered through the asteroid belt.
88
Kari wasn’t dead yet, but she was getting very close. As she struggled to get the suit on, she saw tiny bubbles beginning to form on her skin. They started to pop, and then new bubbles formed underneath. To her relief, the formation of bubbles slowed when she had sealed herself inside the radiation suit, but she knew she didn’t have much time. She wasn’t able to think clearly anymore, and the crumbling, century-old duct tape had fallen off.
She spotted an elevator, and limped over to it. A sign above the door read “UNDERGROUND RESEARCH STATION”. “Good,†she thought (as best she could). “If I get far enough away from the radiation on the surface, maybe this headache will stop.†She pressed the button and the elevator door opened. As soon as she was inside, the elevator started to go down jerkily, for it probably hadn’t been used in over 100 years.
It took a long time for the rusty pistons to carry the elevator to its destination, but Kari did not have a clear sense of time so she did not notice.
89
Eventually, with a sudden jolt, the elevator stopped, and the doors slowly opened. Kari stepped out, already slightly more steady. There before her lay a long winding tunnel through the dry earth, just big enough to walk in without having to crouch down. Kari was starting to think properly again and the radiation effects were stopping, so she decided that she must be at least 20 miles down. What would something be doing down here?
She started to walk into the tunnel, which was lit only by a few brave, flickering LED bulbs every 100 feet or so. Kari could barely see where she was going, but there seemed to be nothing in the tunnel, so it didn’t matter greatly. All she wanted was to get away from the surface, and to find a way off this deadly planet.
She walked on, and noticed for the first time that the tunnel was slightly sloped. She had no time to analyze this before the tunnel was suddenly filled with unexpected light, and Kari cringed, her eyes shocked by the brightness.
When she could see again, a curious sight met her eyes. In front of her stood a sign, and then a small door a dozen feet behind it. The sign read, in precise but handwritten capital letters: “YOU ARE ABOUT TO ENTER A TRIP TO ANCIENT TERRAN HISTORY. IF YOU ARE HONEST AND TRUE, PROCEED. IF YOU ARE FALSE AND VIOLENT, PLEASE DO NOT WASTE OUR PRECIOUS TIME. THANK YOU.”
Kari, mystified, walked quickly toward the door and opened it. She blinked at the view, and then, as the full implications of what she was seeing sunk in, she gasped.
Chapter 9
90
She saw a brilliant room that must have been miles long and wide, and which had a ceiling at least 300 feet in the air–if it could be called air so far underground. Trees (real Terran trees!!! Ian would have been thrilled!) and other plants populated the ground, with rabbits and deer darting around and wildflowers dotting the landscape. Birds flew overhead. Bright lights lit up the enclosed world from the extremely high ceiling, simulating the sun. None of this was new to Kari–this was an image straight out of her memories– but it was an impressive sight nonetheless. But what really surprised her was the fact that it was on Terra. Terra had had nothing so green and alive on or under its surface for nearly 150 years, though, when she thought about it, Kari did not know how long this environment had been hiding below the surface of the seemingly poisonous planet.
Then she spotted another sign to her left. It was titled, “MISSION STATEMENT.” She read it eagerly.
“Welcome to the ancient Terran recreated world. This is an entirely self-sustaining environment created by the Preservers, who are we. When everyone else evacuated, we attempted to preserve Terra forever by creating this. There might be a few humans still living here, but they may have all died out by the time you read this. If there are any humans left, you may contact them for further information. Please do not harm our creation.â€
91
“Hello?” hollered Kari, but she only succeeded in frightening the rabbits. She wasn’t so sure she wanted to meet the “Preservers” after all, if indeed they were still around. This sounded too much like Neoterra for her liking, even if it claimed to be peaceful.
Kari started to wander into the forest. About 100 feet in, there was a stretch of red tape. She was wondering at this, when she heard two voices scream. She looked up with a start and saw two young children, who must have been 5 or 6, running away from the stranger.
Kari ran after them, through the forest, and out into a grassy field. There were different food crops growing there, all authentically Terran. At the end of a field was a huge grey building. The young children ran up to it and through the door, slamming it behind them. Kari went closer.
92
A sign above the door read, “THE PRESERVERS. POPULATION 113.” Kari cautiously opened the door.
Inside were vast computers, science labs, chemistry tables, and several people working very absorbedly at them. The children were tugging at one of the older workers, saying, “There’s a stranger! There’s a stranger!” He looked up, saw Kari hesitating at the door, and dropped his flask.
“A SPY!!! A SPY FROM THE PARENTS!!!” he yelled. The other child had been standing by a wall, and at these words the little girl stared to yank determinedly at a lever. Before Kari could realize what that meant, an adult had dashed over to the lever and pulled it down.
Immediately a metal cage dropped over Kari. She did not understand for a moment, but then she figured that these people did not like the Parents, and that she looked like one of their Containers (which she had been). It ought to have been comforting, but considering that she was in a metal cage by a large group of hostile people that thought she was a spy from their enemy, she was not comforted.
Thundering down a stairway over on the far corner were several men, women, and children. “What’s going on?” one of the women asked.
“A spy, Laura,” said the man. “The Parents sent a spy.”
“Wait!” said Kari. “I’m not from the Parents!” That wasn’t exactly true, so she added, “And I’m not a spy for them! They sent me here to get rid of me! To kill me!”
The Preservers, who Kari figured correctly were all the people living here, paused. “How do we know she’s not lying?” one of them said suddenly, and they began to argue amongst themselves. Due to this, they did not notice at once the odd thing that was happening to their prisoner.
93
In the escape pod, flying through the asteroid belt, a red light flashed on the display board. “Oh no,” said Jaa, “I completely forgot. This is only an escape pod!â€
“What does that mean?” asked Ian.
“It means that there’s not enough fuel in this tin sphere to get us all the way to Terra!” said Jaa, obviously frustrated. “We only have enough to get to Mars!”
“Oh no,†thought Ian, remembering his last visit to the Red Planet.
94
Suddenly one of the children gasped, and pointed to where Kari had been standing only a moment before. There was now only a faint haze, and a few billionths of a second later, that too was gone.
Kari regained consciousness in the teleportation lab on Callisto. It was curiously empty. Kari had not got to see it before, but it looked completely unremarkable.
And, miracle of miracles, there were her clothes, lying on the smooth cold floor next to the metal table! But with that welcome sight, there came another, not so welcome, one.
The robot that had been about to pick them up had malfunctioned and now stood frozen. And the Parents’ robots never malfunctioned.
95
Kari opened the door onto a scene of devastation. The artifisphere generator near the headquarters must have been intact, because she was able to breathe. Other than that, the only remnants of the headquarters were mostly shreds of twisted metal.
She did not feel any great sorrow for the Parents or the headquarters; indeed, at first she felt only relief, but then a thought popped into her head.
What happened to Ian and Jaa?
As she looked around, she saw the landing pad. There was a familiar ship on it. It was . . .
96
“The Victory!” Kari picked up her clothes and ran to her ship, which she thought had been lost to the Parents forever. As she changed from the radiation suit into her clothes, inside the airlock, she noticed a glowing pinprick of green light on her right arm. She looked more closely at it, and her face fell.
“Oh no,” she muttered, “The Parents gave me a new microchip!”
97
The familiar red globe came into view once again as Jaa prepared to land. Since he had not come to go to MarsGarden, he could land in any country he pleased. He steered toward Mars03, as it had humbly accepted its status as the third country founded, and had not fought over the rights to the artifacts like Mars02 and Mars01.
98
“Drat!” said Kari. She was reluctant to go anywhere with the microchip in her arm, as it would only be a matter of time before she was caught, but she couldn’t stay here either, in the wrecked and radioactive remains of the Headquarters.
At last she reasoned that the Parents were probably all dead, if the headquarters were anything to go by. It was more to reassure herself that it was safe to leave than because she actually believed it, but she chanted it to herself while she started up the Victory, and by the time she blasted off from Callisto, she was beginning to believe that none of them, not even Kerj, could possibly have survived the bomb that devastated the headquarters.
99
To her delight, the ship had been entirely restocked with gadgets and the fuel tank had been filled. She now had enough fuel to travel at least 15 AUs.
Now where would Ian and Jaa be? She thought for a moment. Had they been blown up when the Parent’s headquarters were destroyed? What if they had been the ones to set off the bomb? Would they still have been killed? There was little hope that they were still alive, and less hope that she could find them. She sighed despairingly as she lifted off; where should she start looking?
Chapter 10
100
The people of Mars03 were a mild and pleasant bunch, in sharp contrast with their neighbors. Jaa landed their pod in a public port and they debarked from the ship.
Jaa reached a bench and collapsed, head in his hands. “Kari’s dead, we’re stuck on the most warlike planet in Solana, and we have no money or food. We’re doomed.”
101
Ian was equally depressed. Despite the fact that Kari drove him crazy fifty per cent of the time, he had gotten used to the sharp-witted, sardonic girl, and he missed her sorely. Simply to shut out the sight of Mars, he trudged back to the Victory and slumped into the control chair. Not knowing why he did it, he called up a tracking program and entered his ID number. INVALID flashed on the screen. No surprise there. His microchip was out. He put in Jaa’s. INVALID. But when he entered Kari’s, for no particular reason, the results were more surprising.
REQUESTED CHIP NO LONGER VALID. SEARCH NUMBER OF REPLACEMENT CHIP? Y/N
A faint flutter of hope started in Ian’s chest. Fingers trembling, he pressed Y. A map of Callisto appeared on the screen, slowly rotating and zooming in. Ian gasped, the ghost of hopefulness becoming something more solid, and his heart leapt.
“JAA!” he cried, more loudly than he had intended. “Come look at this!
102
Jaa was at his side before you could say “microchip.” “What–” He stopped at the sight of the screen.
“Kari must be alive! And she has a new microchip!” Ian had never thought he’d be happy about that fact. Neither had Jaa, but in fact they were jubilant.
“She’s on Callisto,” Jaa began, but before he could say whatever it was that he was going to say next, the map shifted, so that it was now showing space around the Jovian moons.
“Not anymore,” said Ian, grinning from ear to ear. But Jaa had spotted a dilemma, and was suddenly sober.
“How are we going to contact her? We don’t even know what ship she’s on.”
103
This having been brought to his attention, Ian, frowned. “How could she be on any ship?” he said. “The Parent’s headquarters and all their rockets got blown up!
“That’s we think, Ian,†said Jaa. “But it’s not necessarily true. What if that hydrogen bomb wasn’t big enough to destroy the entire building? No, it has to be true! I won’t let it not be. The Parents are DEAD!” he said vehemently.
Ian’s eyes were following the map on the screen. Kari appeared to be traveling at a very high speed on a route commonly taken to get to Ceres.
“She’s going to Ceres,” he said, clearly not paying any attention to what Jaa was saying.
“Ian!” cried Jaa in frustration, then his curiosity got the better of him. “Why would she be going to Ceres?”
“Maybe she thinks that we’re there?” said Ian doubtfully.
104
Jaa picked up the radio off the wall. “Well, we’ve got to tell her that we’re not before she goes there and gets into trouble. Because she will get into trouble,” he said as he began dialing all of the Parent’s ship numbers he could remember. None of the numbers found a destination, every time he tried a new one the radio would say, “THERE IS NO SHIP WITH THAT NUMBER. YOU MAY HAVE INCORRECTLY DIALED THE NUMBER, OR THE SHIP MAY HAVE BEEN WRECKED. PLEASE TRY AGAIN.” Half frantic, Jaa started redialing all the numbers, when Ian, who had been patiently watching this performance, asked, “Have you tried dialing the Victory?”
“Don’t be silly,” said Jaa irritably. “The Victory wouldn’t have survived.” But he dialed the number all the same. To his surprise, someone answered.
105
Jaa almost dropped the phone. “Hello?” said Kari’s voice apprehensively. “Who is this?â€
“KARI?! How…?”
Kari recognized the voice. “Jaa!” she cried. “Is that you?”
“Yes . . .” stuttered Jaa, shocked. “It’s me. What . . . what are you doing on the Victory?”
106
Kari felt a wave of relief. The police were not the ones calling. She was afraid that with her new microchip, the police could hunt her down, and she was pretty well wanted for some of the things she had done.
At first her relief robbed her of both speech and curiosity, but then Kari began to wonder, what had happened?
“Jaa! Are you all right? What happened to the headquarters? Is Ian there? Where are you?”
107
“First things first,” said Jaa, amused to hear Kari so full of questions. “Do you want to hear bad news, or good news first?”
“Bad,” said Kari automatically.
“You have a new microchip.”
“I knew that. Is that all?”
“We’re out of fuel on Mars. Luckily, it’s Mar03. Now for the good news. We blew up the headquarters.”
“I saw! It was almost completely demolished.”
“Almost?†thought Jaa, but chose not to pursue the matter. “And we’re both fine,” he continued.
“Oh good,†said Kari. “I was kind of worried.â€
“Now I get to ask the questions,†said Jaa. “One, why are you going to Ceres?”
108
“Ceres?” said Kari. “I assumed that that would be where you would go, since that’s where Ian lived before he met me. For that matter, why in Solana would you be going to Mars?”
“Ian found out that you were teleported to Terra, so we were heading there to try and rescue you. But then we ran ot of fuel and got stranded here. Ian tried to track your microchip and found that you were, in fact, still on Callisto. I think he must have misheard the bit about Terra.”
“No,” said Kari, “he didn’t. I was on Terra. And Jaa! I found something–”
109
“How did you survive?” asked Jaa, interrupting.
“I think they put some nanobots in me to protect me for a little while. But I found that underground in Antarctica there’s a group of people called the Preservers and they’re doing something that . . .”
“Wait!” said Jaa. “Can you please come to Mars? We don’t have any food or money. Do you have any food or money?”
“I don’t have any food, but I have lots of money,” said Kari. “The Parents stocked our ship well. There’s at least 40 betrens in the storage unit. I’ll be there in a bit.â€
110
Two sol-days later, the trio was sitting around a table in a public park on Mars.
“What should we do now?” asked Jaa, polishing off the last of the dull food tablets.
“Why don’t we go and find out what the Preservers are doing?” suggested Ian, eager at the thought of seeing something that even remotely resembled Terra.
“That sounds splendid,” said Jaa. “Now that we don’t have to worry about the Parents, we can do whatever we want. We defeated the Parents, didn’t we?”
“Sure,†said Ian. He didn’t know why Jaa had to keep bringing the matter up, but he did.
“I don’t know . . .” said Kari. “About everything in the Parent’s headquarters was destroyed, except for the teleporting room and part of the ship garage. They can’t really have survived that.”
111
The Container straightened up from the computer in front of him, pressing a button on the wall. “SIR?”
“What is it?” came a cold, annoyed voice through the speakers.
“HIGH PATRICIAN, I’VE MANAGED TO RECONSTRUCT THE PLANS FOR THE GRAVITY ENGINE FROM RENEGADE JAA’S NOTES. SHALL WE BEGIN CONSTRUCTION?”
“Where, though? Our headquarters and our facility on Io have both been destroyed by the cursed renegades.”
“WHAT ABOUT THE SECRET CORE FACILITY, SIR?”
“You read my mind. Set course for Mercury.”
“YES, SIR.” Kerj ended the transmission and flicked a lever. The engines powered up, sending the Orca, the only ship to escape from the wreckage of the Parents headquarters, towards the most inhospitable planet known to man.
I’m compiling part three, so you don’t have to!
37- Okay. But one thing. PLEASE leave in the paragraph breaks.
I might compile it myself anyhow, because we deleted some stuff and redid other stuff.
Plus I just want to.
39- I’ll try. do not expect to see it intill Christmas.
Hey, I just noticed that the letters in Kerj’s name rearranged spell “jerk”. Was that on purpose?
41- No. Here’s the reasoning.
Kari was named before someone wrote about her being a Container. I thought “She can’t have been named that by the Parents- what could they have called her?” It popped into my head quite suddenly. “Three-letter ID codes. So she’d be KRI.” I had in my mind that KRJ would turn out to be KRI’s brother later on, so I thought “They must have been captured at the same time, therefore their codes would have a one-letter difference if there was any order to them.” KRI, KRJ. KRJ. Kerj.
42- Have you ever noticed the “jerk” thing, though?
I’m in the middle of Part Two, and I noticed that a lot of numbers are written as numerals, like “90 seconds” in paragraph 60 and “2 Containers” in paragraph 58. So, um, fix that.
And I’m sorry I’m so far behind, and I know I was one of the original writers on this thread, etc. etc.
Other edits: I noticed that nobody ever introduced the escape pod as being the Victory. It just sort of happened. Another thing I was confused about is to why evilish Containers speak in capital letters. Like, when Kerj is introduced you should describe his voice so we get the capslock thing.
43- I introduced it! But it must have been edited out.
Also, (sry for the 2post), we never really realize the purpose of the Containers. We get the idea in the beginning of Part One that they have all these memories of Terra, but it’s never revealed what they’re for. And I also didn’t get why Project Neoterra is so bad, which totally ruins the Parents’ antagonism.
45- Well, they destroy Mars and Ceres, along with a couple billion people, in the process. Other than that, Proj. Neoterra is completely peachy.
As to your other point, I thought that they used them to store memories of Terra so that they could make Neoterra as close to the original as possible. But we need to make that clearer.
46- Yes, we do need to make that clearer. EDITANG TAHM.
46- great line!
48- Did you mean “Well, they destroy Mars and Ceres, along with a couple billion people, in the process. Other than that, Proj. Neoterra is completely peachy”?
49- yes.
Since I was keeper until I left, I had already compiled most of Part 3. In order to save you some time, here it is:
RRR. Version 2007.2, part 3 (Science Fiction)
Title of Part: Terraformed: Mercury
Major Contributors: E2MB, Alice, Prarilus Canix
Minor Contributors: Lord Ragevuire the Shadow Mage, Kiki the Great
Editors: no editing done yet
Compiled by: E2MB
Word count: about 11,900
CHAPTER ONE
1
Kerj was not a happy soul. Ever since the regenades KRI and JAA had destroyed the Parent’s headquarters, he had not been his usual self. He would keep muttering curse words under his breath, and sometimes exceptionally bad ones.
The only place the Parents still had left was their secret outpost on Mercury. Nobody ever went near the boiling hot planet, as it was useless to try and terraform something that close to the sun. But the Parents had seen it as a place to get some privacy.
2
LAQ, one of the very few Containers to survive the Great Container Revolt, walked up to Kerj. “SIR,” she said, “WHAT SHALL WE DO ABOUT THE REGENADES KRI AND-”
“QUIET!” Kerj roared. “YOU SHALL NEVER SAY THEIR NAMES IN FRONT OF ME. DO YOU UNDERSTAND?”
“YES, SIR.”
“TO ANSWER YOUR QUESTION,” Kerj said, “LEAVE THEM ALONE. THEY THINK THEY’VE DEFEATED US, AND IT SHOULD STAY THAT WAY. AS LONG AS THEY DON’T KNOW SOME OF US SURVIVED, THEY WON’T BOTHER US ANYMORE.” He went into a rage of loud cursing at the memories of when he purposely missed a shot fired at Kari. Oh, why hadn’t he given her what she deserved then, before she cause so much destruction?
3
“Radiation suits?” asked Jaa.
“Check.”
“Food?”
“Not real food,” muttered Ian.
“Oh, don’t be silly,” said Kari. “The Preservers are sure to have real food. Check.”
“Enough fuel to get us to Terra?”
Kari glanced at the fuel light. “Probably.”
This was far from comforting to Ian, but Jaa and Kari seemed to think it sufficient, because Jaa said. “Great! I think we’re ready.”
Ian was glad. Ever since he heard that the Preservers had created a Terran habitat, he was very eager to go.
4
Ian stepped up the entry stairs to the Victory’s cockpit and strapped himself into one of the control chairs. Jaa and Kari filed in after him.
“Ready for this?” Kari inquired playfully.
Ian grinned. “When have I not been?”
“For the past few weeks,” Kari said.
“Why you…!” Ian exclaimed, half in fury, half in laughter. He was fumbling for the buckle on the straps when Kari started up the engines. All three of them were slammed back into their seats as the Victory accelerated away from the Red Planet.
5
“I don’t think the Parents are a threat to us anymore,” Jaa said to Kari, who was still a little bit worried about how the Parent’s headquarters hadn’t been totally destroyed. “Even if the bomb didn’t destroy the entire headquarters, I’m sure all the Containers I programmed hunted down every last one. I programmed them to fight to the death.”
“I hope you’re right,” said Kari, sounding just as worried as before.
“I’m sure I’m right,” said Jaa.
6
It was Ian who realized the impending doom. “Kari,” he said suddenly, “you still have a microchip.”
Even though having a microchip was a real problem, Kari winced at the thought of the pain she had to endure the last time she removed her microchip. “Jaa,” she said, “Hand me an autospear. And some bandages. I’m going to carve the microchip out of my arm.”
Ian turned pale. “Right now?”
“Yes, right now. And I’m looking forward to it a lot less than you are.”
“I don’t like blood . . .” muttered Ian.
“Then don’t look,” said Kari, annoyed. “At least the blood won’t be your own!”
7
“There’s Terra!” said Jaa, looking at the ship’s radar. He was steering now, as Kari now had one very painful wound on her right arm.
“Are you okay?” Ian asked Kari, as he was willing to look now that her arm was bandaged.
“I’m…..I’m okay,” said Kari. “This hurt a lot less than when I burned the microchip out of my arm.” Ian shuddered at the thought.
“Where exactly are the Preservers on Terra?” Jaa called from the front seat. “The entrance to their underground habitat is right near the South Pole, in the research facilities,” Kari called back.
“And what exactly are they?” Ian asked.
“I’m not sure. They seem to be people who preserved a bit of Terra deep underground. But they somehow know about the Parents and Containers, and they hate them deeply.”
Ian smiled, a little nervously. “Maybe I should go in first.”
“I think you should,” said Kari. “They didn’t like me the moment I walked in the door.”
8
“Well, put on your radiation suits,” Jaa said, looking through the main window at the approaching dim-green planet. “We’re coming in for a landing!”
Ian stepped into the rickety elevator and it creaked down, down, down. He was beginning to have misgivings, but he shoved them aside, or tried to. “They are not like the Parents,” he muttered to himself as he descended. “They don’t even like the Parents. I don’t look like a Container. They won’t suspect me.” But it didn’t work very well.
The elevator opened. Ian cautiosly stepped out into the dimly lit tunnel. The fact that it twisted and turned didn’t help. He was getting a bad case of the heebie-jeebies.
“They are not the Parents,” he said to himself again. “And they have a Terran habitat. That I really want to see.” That helped a little bit. He started to walk through the tunnel.
9
Suddenly he ran back to the elevator in fright when a sudden flash of light lit up the tunnel. Then he remembered Kari’s words: “When you get toward the end of the tunnel, a light will come on. Then there’s a sign, and beyond that is a door. Ignore the sign, and go straight to the door.”
Ian ran back through the now-bright tunnel. Now that he could see fairly far in front of him, he wasn’t as afraid. He went up to the door and opened it eagerly. Then he looked through the door.
10
He trembled with excitement. This was what Terra was like in it’s golden days! It was so different from what he had imagined, and yet so much better than he expected! He had no idea that so much beauty still existed in the solar system.
Suddenly, a small, dark-haired boy leaped up from behind a shrub. “Outsider!” he yelled, and began to run down the slope.
Uh-oh, thought Ian, and wished that Kari and Jaa had come with him. Or at least, he wished that until he remembered that them being there would only make it worse.
“Wait, come back!” said Ian, chasing the small boy through the brush. The boy, used to running through dense jungle, quickly got out of Ian’s sight.
Ian looked around. Terra must’ve been a very strange place. Were these “trees”, or some sort of pillar? Were these green flat things good to eat? What was this brown stuff on the ground? Was it good to eat too? Ian tasted some. “AAAG” he gagged, spitting it out. The flavor of this stuff was vile.
He looked around, and spied a few red balls hanging from a “tree”. He reached up to grab one, and it felt suprisingly soft. He took a bite. It tasted really good! He ate it with gusto, and picked another, and was about to eat it too when a voice called out, “STOP!”
CHAPTER TWO
11
Ian turned. A man in a white coat like the one Kari had described was standing about 50 feet away, with the small boy beside him. “WHAT ARE YOU DOING EATING OUR PEACHES?” Ian turned pale. “ARE YOU FROM THE PARENTS?” the man questioned.
Ian found the strength to speak up. “No,” he said loudly, “I’m not fom the Parents, and neither are my friends….We despise them, they tried to destroy my home to create a new Terra…”
The man lowered his tone of voice, and walked closer. “Who are your friends?”
“Um . . .” faltered Ian. “There names are Kari and Jaa. You’ve met Kari. But she’s not a Container! I mean, she is a Container, but she’s a renegade!” The man watched stonily as Ian tried to explain.
“I mean, me and my friends have rebelled from the Parents, and we’ve destroyed them, and now we want to help you….uh….yea.”
12
“Can you prove this?” the man asked.
“Shouldn’t the fact that they aren’t around anymore be proof enough?” came a clear voice from the door. It was Kari, and with her was Jaa. “We got sick of waiting,” said Kari. “And besides, Terra isn’t exactly a sight for sore eyes.”
Jaa said nothing at all. He was looking around him, his eyes wide with wonder and memory.
He didn’t have the same experience Ian had when he came in. To Ian, everything was new, mysterious, and unknown. To Jaa, it brought back a flood of memories from his earlier days. There’s a tree! he thought. I used to climb those!
13
“What difference does it make if they haven’t shown up for a few cycles?” barked the man. Jaa snapped out of his reverie.
“You mean they don’t bother you anymore?” Kari asked.
“What do you mean?” said the man. “They’ve been trying to sneak spies in here to find out what we’ve been doing for the past 200 cycles! They keep sending them every few cycles, so I see no reason why you shouldn’t be more spies trying to fool me!”
Look at Ian,” sighed Kari in exasperation. “Does he look like a Container?” For once, the man didn’t have a comeback.
“All right,” he finally said. “Come with me,”
“Thank you,” said Jaa, remembering Terran manners.
“You’re welcome,” the man replied gruffly.
14
They began walking through what seemed to be somewhere between a forest and a jungle. “Be careful not to step on the pitcher plants,” the man said, pointing toward the ground right in front of Ian. What was there looked like a small jar with a spiky lid.
“Thank you,” said Ian, copying Jaa. “I might’ve gotten hurt.”
“What’s that got to do with it?” the man said, carefully stepping over a small shrub. “The pitcher plant is one of the rarest plants we have around here, and it wouldn’t be a nice place around here if the two we have left are trampled on!”
“What’s a plant?” Ian asked suddenly.
“You should probably keep quiet,” whispered Kari. “This person doesn’t seem to be in a good mood.”
But at that strange (thought to Ian it was quite normal) question, the man laughed out loud. “You really aren’t from the Parents, then. A plant is anything that grows in the dirt and has roots.”
“Oh,” said Ian, feeling foolish and knowledgeable at the same time. “A tree has roots.”
“Yes, a tree is a very large plant.”
“Wow,” said Ian, lost for words.
15
Kari looked back. Ian was still staring at a tree. “Come on, hurry up,” she said. “You don’t want to get left behind!”
“I’m coming,” Ian said.
“We grow all our own food here,” said the man as they walked out of the jungle-forest and into the feilds of Terran crops. “We try to make our lives here as much like it was on Terra 200 years ago as possible.”
“What are those?” said Ian, pointing to a few bushes. He was still curious.
“Those are plants that produce raspberries,” said the man.
“Can I try one?” said Ian. Everything appeared to be edible, but these looked like they had a nice flavor, as opposed to the brown stuff on the ground.
“I do not suggest you eat their raspberries,” the man told Ian. “They are still green. See?”
Ian did not look to see, as he was already running toward the next group of plants.
16
“What about this?” he asked, indicating a plant with rounded leaves. The man smiled.
“Potatoes,” he said. “You can’t eat the leaves, only the roots.”
“Oh,” said Ian, wrinkling his brow.
Kari grinned at Jaa. “He’s like a child in a candy shop,” she whispered.
“A candy shop full of rare and flavorful candies,” returned Jaa.
17
Kari figured it was time she got some answers. “Why do the Parents hate you so much?” she asked.
The man sighed. “At the beginning of World War Last, we were all just peaceful scientists trying to preserve our home. That’s why we called ourselves the Preservers. But after we went underground, a man called Sebastian Kahn proposed a radical plan to create a new Terra. We were excited at first, but soon we realized that it would entail the destruction of all life on Mars and several asteroids.”
“This sounds very familiar,” whispered Ian to Jaa.
“We flat-out refused. More than that, since Kahn had violated one of the basic tenets of our society- preservation of life- we expelled him. He took a group of fanatical followers and left. The society he founded is still around today- or would be, if you hadn’t blown up their headquarters recently.”
“Good Lord,” Jaa gasped. “The Parents? Then Sebastian Kahn-”
“Was the High Patrician, yes.”
“Well, he’s dead now,” said Jaa, very much relieved. He might have said more, but Ian suddenly broke off with a gasp of terror.
18
As usual, he hadn’t been listening to the conversation, but this time he had a better excuse. He was gazing around, totally blissful, when he saw it. A large brown thing, with floppy ears and a thing that Ian assumed must be a tail, like some Terran creatures in books had, was coming right towards him at a very fast clip.
“Help!” screamed Ian, and he ran away, but the thing was faster then him. He fell over as the thing leaped on his back and started to lick him.
“AAAAAUUUGGGHHH!!!!!” screamed Ian. “GET ME OUT OF HERE!”
The man went over and picked the thing up off of Ian’s back. “That would be a dog,” he said, grinning. “Maybe we’d better go inside the main headquarters.”
Ian protested, saying he wanted to stay and explore more of the Terran habitat, even though some of it scared him, but eventually followed Kari, Jaa, and the man into the Preserver’s main building.
19
“If we can, sir,” said Kari as she was stepping in, “We’d like to help you with your terra-restoration project.”
“That is a very difficult problem that we are working on,” said the man, heading over to a computer and opening a graph of radiation accumulations over Terra. “We need to get rid of the high concentrations of radiation in the former locations of Russia and the United States.”
“Jaa’s a scientist,” Kari said. “Maybe he could help.”
Jaa crossed over to the screen. “What if you put masses of stable uranicium-136 at strategic points to absorb the radiation? As neutrons bombard it, it will simply deteriorate into tritium, carbon and oxygen. The entire process will take about a century, but you guys have been working longer than that already. Then you can launch swarms of nanobots into the atmosphere to process and neutralize the pollution. After that, it’s a simple case of repopulating the wildlife from the various PTHs. Of course, you’d have to petition the Martian government to use the more exotic ones… ”
The man stared at him in amazement. “You mean nanotechnology has advanced that far?”
“Only with the Parents. I was one of their top scientists before going renegade.”
20
“We could handle synthesizing the uranicium-136, but… Wait. We always did things in threes. There are two other habitats concealed in remote places on Terra. If I’m correct, Kahn would have followed tradition- he believed that he had created a new, better version of the Preservers. Kahn set up on Callisto, from what you told me, and one of his contacts in Gigacorp was on Io. But there could be another base. If we could find that- it would probably be deserted- we’d find suitable nanotech. ”
“But where could he hide?” Ian asked.
“Not Terra. Mars is out- too big for an artifisphere, too cold for comfort, and too many wars. The asteroids are either colonized or being mined. Ganymede and Europa are too heavily populated, Venus is crawling with Betwers, and we’ve already found bases on Io and Callisto,” Kari said. “So that leaves two places.”
21
“The outer planets?” Jaa wondered.
“If I know the High Patrician- and I do, having run from him for most of my non-frozen life- he wouldn’t risk going out there. Uranus, Neptune and the Kuiper Belt are all too far away, and there may be space debris between Saturn and Jupiter. You hit an asteroid with your gravity-pulse drive on, and you’re scrap metal. There’s only one more option- but he’d have to go underground.”
“That makes sense, still,” said the man. “I agree- the most plausible place is Mercury.”
“Mercury?” said Ian, incredulous. “Wouldn’t they have to be all like Kerj just to keep from melting before they got underground?”
22
“Kerj?” wondered the Preserver.
“A favorite of the Parents’,” said Kari. “He has – had – tons of implanted nanobots, and he was practically indestructible.” No sooner had she said that, a fresh wave of worry poured over her. If Kerj was practically indestructible, could he have possibly survived the destroying of the headquarters?
“Actually,” Jaa broke in, “they could have tunneled in from the dark side. A Mercury day is 176 standard, or Terran, days. About half of that is night, so they’d have 88 days before the sun rose again. Plenty of time to get so far under that it wouldn’t matter.” But he, too, had been disturbed by the implications. Had Kerj actually survived? And if he had, wouldn’t he have brought some other Containers and Parents off Callisto with him?
Of the trio, only Ian seemed oblivious to the fact that Kerj might still be alive, and that was probably related to the way he kept glancing longingly towards the door in a way that implied he would rather be outside. Kari and Jaa were good at hiding emotions, and the Preserver didn’t notice their worry.
23
“Has there ever been any colonization of Mercury?” Kari asked.
“As far as I know, never,” the Preserver said. “It would be too expensive to build a vast underground network of cooling devices.”
“The Parents had plenty of money and materials,” said Jaa, “But many of the products were produced by the Gigacorp facility on Io, and Io no longer exists.”
“That’s also where they kept their money,” Kari added. “In deep underground vaults.”
“So even if Kerj escaped with a few others, he would never have the money or resoucres to set anything up on Mercury,” said the Preserver.
“Unless they had set up something beforehand!” Kari exclaimed.
24
“AN EXAMINATION OF MERCURY’S POSITION RELEVANT TO THE SUN HAS REVEALED THAT OUR SECRET ENTRANCE IS NOW IN THE REGION OF MERCURY THAT CURRENTLY HAS 600-DEGREE TEMPERATURES,” the Container reported.
Kerj swore. “GET OUT THE HEAT SUITS,” he said angrily. “WE’RE GOING TO NEED THEM.”
“YES SIR.” the Container went off to retrive them.
Kerj walked into the control room. SAJ was piloting the ship. “SEARCH KRI’S MICROCHIP,” he said.
“BUT KRJ-” SAJ said, “SHE DOESN’T HAVE A MICROCHIP.”
“I MADE SURE A NEW ONE WAS INSERTED INTO HER BEFORE SHE ESCAPED FOR THE 6TH – OR IS IT THE 7TH TIME? ANYWAY, SHE PROBABLY STILL THINKS SHE DOESN’T HAVE ONE AND HASN’T TAKEN IT OUT YET.”
“GOOD, SIR.” SAJ typed in Kari’s ID code and pressed Enter. An image zoomed in on a blank area of space. “SHE APPEARS TO BE SOMEWHERE IN-BETWEEN JUPITER AND THE REALM OF ASTEROIDS.”
“EXCELLENT,” Kerj said. “IF SHE STARTS COMING CLOSER, GET THE MAGNABEAMS AND NUKES READY.”
SAJ carefully steered the Orca closer to Mercury, which was coming into view.
CHAPTER THREE
25
“So what do you think we should do next?” Kari asked the Preserver back underground on Terra.
“As Jaa suggested, probably the best thing to do right now is to start breaking down the radiation with uranicium-136. But we don’t have any stored down here and we try to avoid outside trips as much as possible.”
“We could fetch it,” voluntered Ian, who knew they would have to travel through the Terran habitat again at least twice if they got the uranicium-136 for the Preserver.
“Do you even know where to get any?” Kari questioned Ian.
“Er…no…” Ian said in a small voice.
26
Jaa quickly intervened. “They mine it in asteroid 8128_AIRE,” he replied.
“But the 8128 asteroids are on the other side of the sun!” Kari exclaimed.
“I never said we were going there.” Jaa looked at the Preserver. “Do you know of any other places where uranicium-136 is mined?”
“Me?” the Preserver looked suprised. “I didn’t even know you could obtain it from as close as the asteroid realm. All I know is that a while ago space probes found a few deposits of it on Triton, but Triton is too cold for any machinery to properly work there. That, and it’s too far away.”
27
“Oh,” said Ian. “I see. So we aren’t going after all?”
Kari rolled his eyes. “No, Ian, we aren-”
“Yes,” said Jaa.
“Are you crazy?” burst out Kari. “It’s AUs away! Can’t we just . . . I don’t know, relax? Stop having so many adventures for a few days?”
“I have to have Terra back,” said Jaa. “I remember everything now.” His eyes were sparkling. “I want it to be like it used to be. Back when I was a kid.”
“You still are a kid,” Kari informed him firmly. “No matter how smart you are or when you were born. We’re all kids. Can’t we live like them for once?”
“Look,” said Jaa, “It’s not the same now. Pretty much all the Parents have died, and if any survived they’re scraping out a home on Mercury or wherever. We won’t be in the same perilous position that we have been in before.”
28
“But we don’t have any money!” Kari exclaimed, exasparated.
“Wouldn’t the Preservers lend us the money?” Ian replied.
“We haven’t used money in a hundred and fifty years,” said the Preserver. “I don’t even know what type of currency is used anymore.”
“Betrens for most everywhere,” volunteered Ian, “and cores on Ceres. I don’t know what else.”
“We don’t have any betrens,” the Preserver said sadly. “Only dollars.”
“What are those?” Ian asked.
“Ancient Terran money,” Kari answered.
“But that doesn’t matter,” Jaa said. “We have at least 40 betrens in our ship, and if we help the Preservers fix up Terra then if any Parents are still alive they won’t need this mad desire to create a new Terra because the origional one has been fully restored!”
29
“I wish you’d stop talking about the Parents as though they were alive,” said Kari, shuddering visibly. “They’re NOT, and we don’t have to worry about them anymore.”
“All right,” said Jaa, trying to calm everyone down. “Kari and I will head to Mercury in the Victory to investigate the Parents base-”
“If there is a Parents base,” Kari said, but Jaa ignored her.
” -and if possible, get hold of some nanotech. Do the Preservers have any ships?”
“There are some in the old research station above ground.”
“Okay, Ian will go to 8128-AIRE in one of those and purchase some uranicium-136.”
30
“That won’t work,” the Preserver said. “For this plan, we’d need thousands of tons of uranicium-136.”
“Obviously,” Jaa said, “you aren’t familiar with the Rosenberg process.”
“Actually, we are, but it’s only theoretical, and completely impractical.”
“Not since I perfected it.” This elicited a startled gasp, but Jaa plowed on. “It requires large amounts of carbon and oxygen- quite plentiful elements- and only small amounts of tritium and uranicium-136. When made into a colloid and subjected to high-wavelength radiation such as an epsilon beam, the resultant excited protons- ”
“Cut the technical detail,” snapped Kari.
“With certain equipment, we can make large amounts of uranicium-136 out of other elements and a small amount of uranicium.”
“Okay, then. Let’s go.”
31
“Hang on!” cried Ian. “I’m going alone? To 8128-AIRE? I can’t even [the word eludes me. Fly? Drive? Steer?] a ship! I can’t!”
“You can learn the same way I did,” Kari said mischievously.
“How?”
“Trial and error.”
Despite his protests, Ian was dragged bodily across the habitat and into the elevator. Jaa held him down while Kari grabbed several radiation suits and located a hangar. Ian was shoved unceremoniously into his suit, and once Kari and Jaa had put theirs on, they dragged him down the hall, through a door, and into the cockpit of a ship that looked as though it was two hundred years old. Which it was.
Kari and Jaa ran off, leaving Ian and the ancient Terran ship alone.
32
Ian was steamed. He hadn’t even got to see the Terran habitat a second time! He stared at the control board, hoping that there would be less things to control, as this was an old spaceship and was probably simpler.
To his horror, it was quite the opposite. The control board extended to parts of the wall and the ceiling. (Ian wondered how he would reach those, when he remembered old Terran ships didn’t have artificial gravity.) Apparently this ship’s computers didn’t control and monitor everything the way new interplanetary ships did. 20 pounds of lists sat next to the main seat, filled with a schedule of things to check. Ian picked up Volume 1 and looked at the first page.
33
+1 hour(s)
� Check water vapor gauge.
� Make sure the needle is between 2 and 3.
� If not, turn up the crank until the needle is between 2 and 3.
� Check air pressure gauge.
� Make sure the oxygen gauge is on.
� Check oxygen gauge.
� Check carbon dioxide gauge.
� Check main oxygen pipe.
� Check sub-oxygen pipe, located to the left of the oxygen pipe.
� Check the helium pipe.
� Check the hydrogen pipe.
� Make sure the urine sacks are empty.
� If they are not, insert them in slot 28.
� Take them out after 6 minute(s).
34
+2 hour(s)
� Make sure the water vapor gauge is still on.
� Check water vapor gauge again.
� Make sure the needle is between 2 and 3.
� If not, turn up the crank until the needle is between 2 and 3.
� Check the…
But Ian could read no more.
35
Kari peered in to see his progress. “Aw, man, don’t tell me you’re actually reading the manual. Just start pressing buttons. I learned that way, and I’m still here.”
“But what if something blows up?”
“Then thank your lucky stars this is only a test run and won’t be going into space. Yet.”
Ian buried his head in his hands.
Kari took pity on him. “All right, you can take the Victory. Most of the complicated stuff is automated nowadays. All you have to know is the steering joystick, the accelerator, the retro-rockets, the maneuvering jets and the gravity-pulse drive.”
“That still sounds complicated.”
Kari lost patience. “It’s either that or this.”
Ian sighed. “All right, I’ll try it.”
36
He looked desolately around the cockpit of the Victory. What had once seemed so familiar now was new and frightening. He had piloted a ship only once, and that hadn’t really counted. He had only held the joystick, and Kari could have, in a pinch, taken control. This was different. This time he would be alone for ages.
He sighed, and turned on the ignition. Terra, with the gravity it had, required a lot more fuel to lift off than the other colonized planetoids. After a few minutes, the Victory lifted off.
Ian set the ship on autopilot, and wandered around the cockpit, wondering what to do in the several hours it would take to get to the asteriod realm. He looked around at all the things the Parents had stocked the Victory with. He wondered if they had stocked it with anything to eat. He opened a compartment on the upper left wall.
37
Inside were maps of the different minor hyperspace wormholes, common routes from planet to planet, and of the barren surfaces of planets in Solana not yet visited by humans. Then something caught his eye.
An old green disk lay in the back, marked with the words “OLD PLANET”. Ian, seeking refuge from impeding boredom, brought the disk out and inserted it into a flip-up screen on the wall. Text immediately started to load. Ian glanced at the first few words – “ENTER 54’40” AND 20’33” WHEN THAT SIDE IN DARKNESS. ENTER 21’6” AND 55’21” WHEN THAT SIDE IN DARKNESS.”
38
What in the name of Terra is this supposed to mean? Ian wondered. He flipped down the screen and went over to the control board, looking at all the buttons. He noticed a new one he hadn’t seen before. It had a label that read, “FIND CONTAINER.” Ian, curious, pressed it. Suddenly, a keyboard with all the letters of the alphabet folded out from the control panel. Following a hunch, Ian pressed “K”, “R”, and “J.”
An image zoomed in on Mercury’s dark side. The words at the bottom of the image read, “KRJ LOCATED: MERCURY 54’40” 20’33”.”
Ian ran over to the flip-up screen again. He double checked the numbers. Yes, 54’40” and 20’33” were there. Something was very suspicious about this. He had to tell Kari and Jaa.
Ian picked up the radio and dialed the Victory’s number. Only after the busy signal beeped did he realize that he was on the Victory, and that Kari and Jaa were on an unregistered ancient Terran ship. Ian slumped into the pilot’s chair, and pounded random buttons on the radio in frustration.
Suddenly a voice crackled. “THIS IS KRJ,” a voice said. Ian’s eyes opened wide.
39
“WHO IS THIS? DID YOU MANAGE TO ESCAPE THE EXPLOSION ABOARD THE SHIP DUBBED ‘THE VICTORY’?”
“Err…” Ian stammered. “Yes, yes, I did.” He couldn’t think of anything else to say.
“WHAT IS YOUR ID CODE?” Kerj asked over the radio.
ID code? Does he mean name? thought Ian. “Ian,” he quickly said.
Kerj, standing on the surface of Mercury, had a puzzling expression on his face. “ARE YOU EVEN A CONTAINER?” he asked.
“Er… yeah,” Ian said. “I-A-N.”
40
“OH, RIGHT,” Kerj said. “STUPID OLD MODELS, ALWAYS TURNING THEIR ID CODES INTO NAMES…” Ian heard him muttering.
Then Kerj’s voice came back suddenly. “DID YOU REMOVE YOUR CHIP?”
“Um, no, it got, um, fried by the radiation.”
“ALL RIGHT. WHAT DO YOU WANT?”
Ian had a brainwave. “Clearance to land on Mercury. This ship is almost broken down, though, so I’m landing on Terra to pick up a ship from the Antarctic research base. I’ll be coming in in that one.”
“VERY WELL.” Kerj cut off the transmission. Ian grinned. Now Kari and Jaa would have no problems infiltrating the Parents base.
41
The Parents were loading all the supplies into the secret passageway toward their underground base. Once they had all their supplies inside the base, they could shut off the door so nobody could find them. Kerj stood guard, making sure no other ships were happening to come near.
“SIR?” LAQ peered through the doorway of the ship, though she couldn’t do it very well with her bulky heat suit.
“I DON’T UNDERSTAND IT,” Kerj muttered to himself, staring at the radar. “KRI HASN’T MOVED FOR THE PAST 7 MERCURY-HOURS…”
“SIR,” LAQ spoke up. “ALL THE SUPPLIES ARE LOADED INTO THE TUNNEL.”
Kerj turned around. “GOOD,” he said, “BUT WE’LL HAVE TO WAIT. ANOTHER ONE OF OUR SHIPS IS COMING.”
CHAPTER FOUR
42
“How are we going to find a few Parents, let alone anything, on Mercury?” Jaa asked Kari, who was busy checking all the pipe pressures. “This old Terran shuttle can’t even track microchips, and it’s going to melt as soon as we land.”
“I sure hope Ian is happy we let him take the Victory,” Kari grumbled.
Kari and Jaa were still trying to get the Terran shuttle off the ground when the Victory landed. Ian, clad in a radiation suit, came practically bounding out of it, clearly bursting with news.
“What is it?” Kari asked sourly.
Ian could only gasp for a moment or two, then he said, “Kerj is on Mercury! And I told him I was going to land there! He thinks I’m IAN.”
Jaa poked his head out the door. “What?” he said.
“The Parents DO have a secret base on Mars!” said Ian. “And I know where it is!”
43
“Hold it!” said Kari. “Your job was to get uranicium, not go to Mercury and find the Parents. That was our job!”
“Yes, but now you can get in unnoticed!” Said Ian in euphoria.
Jaa was very skeptical. “How did you get all the way to Mercury and back here in just 2 Terran hours?”
“I didn’t,” said Ian. “I accidentally called him on the radio.”
Kari waas both curious and dissapointed. Kerj was still alive. “How do you know if the Parents have a secret base on Mercury?” she asked. “Did Kerj tell you?”
“No,” said Ian. “I found another way.” He motioned for them to come inside the Victory as he climbed in.
44
“I was pressing buttons randomly,” Ian said, “and by accident I hit this button marked “Find Container.” It must be a locater device left over from when the Victory was a Parents escape pod. So I typed in KRJ, and it showed me right where he was.”
“Which was where?” Kari asked.
“On Mercury!” Ian said proudly.
Kari gaped. “And what did you say to him?” she asked apprehensively. If she knew Ian, he would have said something idiotic that ruined everything.
“I told him I was a Container,” Ian said. “And that I was going to land on Mercury.”
“Which Container did you say you were?” said Jaa.
“IAN,” Ian said.
“That senile old guy?” Kari’s suspicions suddenly hopped into her mind again. “But what – ”
45
“Let’s go,” said Jaa quickly, climbing into the pilot’s seat. “If what Ian said is correct, Kerj is expecting us any minute now. Let’s go.”
Kari and Ian barely had time to buckle themselves into their seats before Jaa started the engines and the Victory lifted off.
“All right,” said Jaa, turning on the autopilot. “What now?”
“We need to come up with a plan for what to do when we get to Mercury,” Kari said.
46
“Uh, guys,” said Ian. “I don’t look like a Container. How will I get into Mercury? And won’t Kerj recognize you two?” His ecstasy was wearing off, and he was giving into his worries.
Kari frowned. “You’re right.” All Containers shared the same coloring, and looked enough alike to be brothers and sisters, yet it was easy enough to tell them apart, as it would be easy to tell brothers and sisters apart. The only Container Ian had ever seen who looked unlike the other Containers in every way save his coloring was the man on the rotating screen, who had explained project Neoterra the day that Ian and Kari had been captured, and he, Ian had later learned, had been one of the Parents.
“How about this,” Jaa said. “If we land a little bit away from where they are, we can probably sneak up and join the small crowd of containers that are waiting for our arrival and find out about their secret base on Mercury.”
“But that wouldn’t work because – ” Kari’s voice was cut off but the ship’s radio.
47
“This is the interplanetary police calling,” a voice spoke. “We have traced some extremely serious crimes to you, which are punishable by instant death. These include attempted massacre, blowing up a planet…” Ian slumped into his chair, wishing he had never gotten involved in all this.
“If you would like to surrender now,” the voice continued, “we shall humanely execute you. But if you would prefer a little chase first…” – a dramatic pause – “you don’t want to know what you’re in for.”
“Never!” said Kari, shaking a fist at the radio. “We shall never give in!”
She turned off the autopilot and cranked up the Victory’s powerful engines while she checked how much farther they would have to go to reach Mercury. She was suprised to find that they were only a few minutes away. That changes everything, she realized.
48
“You will never give in?” the voice on the radio said. “We have five of our top ships tracking your ship’s every move, as you are a serious outlaw. I would advise you to surrender.”
“Put on your heat suits!” Kari yelled to Ian and Jaa. “We’re coming in for a landing shortly, and it’s not going to be pretty!”
CHAPTER FIVE
49
Kerj looked up at the sky. “THERE’S SOMETHING COMING,” he told LAQ, “BUT IT’S NOT A TERRAN SHIP. IT’S THE VICTORY!”
“THERE ARE SEVERAL OTHER THINGS COMING TOO,” LAQ said, glancing at the screen. “THEY LOOK LIKE POLICE SHIPS.”
Kerj sighed. This was not good. Even though the Parents were respected by the government, they had been doing a few illegal activites because they thought they could get away with it. Had they finally been caught?
“You’re going to crash-land the Victory!” Jaa told Kari. “You can’t steer with a heat suit on!”
“It doesn’t matter!” said Kari. “we have to find the Parents before the leave Mercury or go underground!”
Kerj looked at the sky. “TAKE COVER!” he called out. “THERE’S AN OUT-OF-CONTROL SHIP ROAMING THE SKIES!!!”
50
It wasn’t quite true. The Victory couldn’t be called out-of-control, exactly. Kari had set it on course before putting on her heat suit. But neither was it in control.
Ian pressed himself tightly to the floor of the cockpit, well aware that the landing was not going to be pleasant. Jaa was only a little braver, holding on to the seats with one hand, not two. Kari stood at the controls still, scanning the reddish-orange surface of Mercury.
51
As the seemingly assured doom loomed closer, Kari tried to pull the ship up and away from Mercury. But as she had the bulky heat suit on, she had trouble and only moved it up half-way, putting the ship in perfect position to land. The Victory landed in front of Kerj’s secret entrance with barely so much as a few large bumps.
Kari, Jaa, and Ian came barreling out of the Victory just as the Parents were closing the door. Kerj paused for a moment to let them in before sealing the door shut, thinking that they were more Containers. He didn’t notice they were the Regenades bacause they had heat suits on.
The sun beat down on Kerj as he looked out the titanium door for what he planned to be the last time. Then he shut it firmly and locked it with 15 different locks. He didn’t want anybody ever going through it again, or even think there was a door there.
52
“ALL RIGHT!” Kerj yelled. “MARCH!” The Containers began to march down the steep tunnel. Kari, Ian, and Jaa followed.
“Whoa!” said Ian. “Mercury is so hot, the walls are actually glowing faint red!”
“Shh!” Kari hissed. “You don’t sound like a Container! They might catch you if you talk too much!”
Jaa looked around. He saw several familier Containers – LAQ, SAJ, and VAK – and some that weren’t familiar – QIN, SRK, and LAJ.
“WHERE’S IAN?” Kerj hollered out. “HE WAS PRESENT AT THE CONTAINER REVOLT, WASN’T HE?”
Nothing could be heard but the tramping and sloshing of feet in the gooey half-melted dirt.
“WHERE’S IAN?” Kerj hollered out again.
Uh-oh, thought Jaa.
53
Ian paled beneath his heat suit, and shut his eyes to prevent anyone seeing that they were blue, not green. Unfortunately, shutting his eyes was more noticeable by the sharp Containers than leaving them open.
“HEY YOU,” VAK said accusingly. “WHY ARE YOU CLOSING YOUR EYES?”
At this, Ian’s eyes flew open. This was a huge mistake. VAK stopped dead.
“Y-Y-YOU’RE NOT A CONTAINER,” SRK said, feeling anger, fear, and shock. He forgot that he was breaking one of the Container rules.
54
“SRK, WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” Kerj said as he started to walk toward SRK.
“ER, NOTHING,” said SRK, quickly remembering the rule.
“YOU WERE FEELING FEAR AND SHOCK!” Kerj roared in SRK’s face. SRK winced.
“YOU HAVE BROKEN ONE OF THE CONTAINER RULES!” Kerj roared again. “THE ONLY EMOTION YOU ARE ALLOWED TO FEEL IS ANGER!” He pushed SRK over into the molten rock. SRK slipped and fell over.
Ian quietly stepped out of the way into the other Containers. He hoped he was safe now.
“CARRY ON,” Kerj said, and the Containers began to march again. Ian breathed a sigh of relief.
55
Another thick titanium door slid open in front of them, and the marching Containers entered the passage. Kerj spun around and began issuing orders. “GET TO YOUR POSITIONS. WE TAKE OFF FOR MARS TODAY.”
“Great Solana!” Ian whispered to Kari. “Project Neoterra…?”
“Is beginning. We need to get to the control room fast.”
“SAJ, GO TO THE AMMUNITION ROOM AND GET THE MEGA-NUKES. VAK AND LAQ, GO OPEN THE ROCKET RUNWAY. QIN AND LAJ, GET OUR ROCKETS. AND SRK, TURN ON THE ELECTRIC JUICE MACHINE.”
All the Containers scurried off. Kerj turned around, expecting nobody to be left, but Kari, Ian, and Jaa were still standing there.
“OH, RIGHT, YOU CONTAINERS FROM THE VICTORY. WHAT ARE YOU ID CODES, ANYWAY?” Ian gulped.
Kari began to run. “Follow me!” she hollered.
56
Kerj did not for a second wonder as to the identities of the three new Containers. That they were disobeying him (he, KRJ, the Parents’ favorite Container!) was enough to assure him who they were. Or at least who one of them was: KRI, his rebellious little sister. And that would mean that with her was the scientist, JAA, and the other–the other must be the impure boy.
It did not take more than three seconds for his Container brain to work this out and come to a conclusion: they must die.
Kerj lunged first at Jaa. Being perhaps the smartest of the three, he figured he’d better dispose of Jaa first. Jaa tried to fight back, but he wasn’t a warrior container. Ian could only watch helplessly as Kerj started bashing Jaa repeatedly against the wall.
57
Kari turned around. She immediately began to run. She jumped high and landed on Kerj’s back. Kerj swung around, but Kari hung on.
Kerj, who was not wearing a heat suit due to his nanobots, fell backward, pinning Kari in a pool of molten rock. Kari grunted, and heaved Kerj up from under him and managed to grab his feet, sending him toppling headfirst into the goo.
Kerj struggled to get out, but he suddenly began feeling a burning sensation. HIS BODY CELLS HAD RUN OUT OF NANOBOTS!!! Kerj struggled some more, but the pain became unbearable and he fell backward into the lava, howling curse words before he boiled away to nothing.
Ian stared as Kerj evaporated. He suddenly had a new liking for his heat suit, which he had thought clumsy and annoying before this.
58
Kari stumbled out, still dripping with red-hot goo. She raised her hands triumphantly and shouted, “VICTORY!!!” She looked at Ian and Jaa, expecting them to be congradulating her.
Jaa, barely concious, was slumped against a wall. Ian was staring at something on the other side of the room. Kari turned around to see what he was looking at when the loud, booming sound of rockets filled the air.
“The Containers!” Ian gasped. “They’re going to carry out Project NeoTerra!”
Jaa made a supreme effort to rise, and failed. Kari, at that critical moment, felt something warm – hot, really – against her calf, and realized that the lava was slowly burning a hole in it. She gasped.
“What?” asked Ian, sparing a moment from his horrified listening.
“The heat suits!” cried Kari. “They’re faulty! Look!” There in the leg of her suit was a small smoldering hole, through which could be seen a glimpse of her trousers.
Ian and Kari, dragging Jaa between them, dashed for one of the titanium doors as it closed at the end of the chamber. They were twenty yards away… ten… five… one… The hole sizzled and burned all the way through, and Kari screamed in pain.
59
Then they were in. Luckily the corridor was deserted, and as the door sealed, Ian saw that the girl’s leg was covered in horrible burns. And she was only unprotected for a fraction of a second, Ian thought, shocked.
“Don’t just stand there,” Kari grated out. “Get a first aid kit.”
Five minutes later, Ian had located an emergency locker and was bringing back some ointment and bandages. Suddenly, there was a massive rumble, and the entire room shook.
A hologram appeared down the corridor, showing a view of what appeared to be Mercury. Next to it was an image of the High Patrician, Sebastian Kahn.
“We are preparing this test in order to determine if the gravity engines are functional,” Kahn said. “Watch, and wonder at the great glory of the Parents.”
Kari gagged theatrically as Ian bandaged her leg and injected an anesthetic shot. “This guy is so cheesy.”
But the image beside him made even Kari’s fruitful stream of sarcasm dry up. One moment, Mercury was whole and normal.
The next, it shattered.
60
“We just neutralized the gravity of the planet,” Kahn continued, a smug grin on his face. “The pressure inside did the rest.”
“So that was the shudder we felt,” Ian gasped. “This thing must have some powerful shock absorbers.”
“Graviton fields,” Kari said. “But look!”
In the image of what was once Mercury, a huge, oblong ship was floating outwards.
“That’s what we’re inside,” Kari whispered. “They turned the entire facility into a huge ship. And if I guess correctly, it’s powered only by gravity.”
The fragments of Mercury suddenly blurred. “We have activated the pulse drive,” Kahn stated.
“Why hasn’t he realized I’m not a Container?” Ian hissed.
61
“It’s a one-way broadcast to all the holo-terminals in the ship. We can see him, but he can’t see us.”
Kari and Ian glanced at each other. “Who said that?”
“Me,” said Jaa, sitting upright. “Where-” Then he caught sight of the hologram and uttered a rude Terran word. “We have to get to the control room!”
“No worries there,” Kari said. “I grabbed Kerj’s access chip during the fight.” She held up a small slab of silicon.
“Great!” Jaa punched the air. “Let’s go.”
“Wait,” Ian said. “We don’t have any weapons, and we’ll probably be outnumbered.”
62
“They’re not armed either,” said Kari, “and I’m trained in fighting. They’re mostly scientists. It’ll be a piece of cake.”
“IS THAT SO?” said an amused and very familiar voice behind them.
Ian turned around and immediately wished he hadn’t, as the barrel of a laser gun was thrust into his face. However, he could still see the face of the Container holding it, and he was shocked. “You’re dead!”
“APPARENTLY THE HIGH PATRICIAN WAS VERY PLEASED WITH MY WORK- ENOUGH TO MAKE ME MULTIPLE.”
“What the heck-?” Ian said.
“GO ON, KARI. EXPLAIN IT TO THE SCUM.”
63
“Multiplicity is the highest honor that the Parents can confer on a Container,” Kari said, scooting backwards on the floor as fast as her leg would allow. “It means that you are so exemplary of the Container ideal that your model is worthy of being replicated. Cloned.”
She turned to the Container. “How many of you are there?” she screamed.
“42 IN CRYOGENICS. THE ONE YOU KILLED IN THE PASSAGE WAS THE ONLY OTHER ACTIVE COPY.” The Container grinned. “I NEED TO SPEAK TO THE PATRICIAN ABOUT IMPROVING MY REPLICAS’ COMBAT SKILLS.”
“The one we killed in the passage…” whispered Jaa, who was still lying on the floor, facing away from the Container. “Please tell me you’re not Kerj.”
“I COULD,” the Container said. “BUT I’D BE LYING.”
CHAPTER SIX
Status: Raw
Word Count: 2,236
64
“DON’T WORRY,” continued Kerj, still sounding amused. “MY REPLICAS ARE NOT AS STRONG AS I AM – YET. OF COURSE, THE PARENTS ARE FIXING THAT.”
“What?” said Ian, completely at sea.
“The clones didn’t have nanobots, or not as many,” said Jaa. “That, and the fact that clones take a little while to gather their full strength.”
“You mean . . .” It was sinking in.
“Yup,” said Kari. “The clone wasn’t as strong as the original, so the one I managed to kill out there . . .” She didn’t finish her sentence, and she didn’t need to any more than Ian needed to finish his. If she had only just managed to defeat the clone, while still uninjured, there was not the slightest chance of her defeating the real Kerj, when she had a leg as horribly burned as her own.
“HANDS BEHIND YOUR HEADS,” Kerj said. Kari, Ian and Jaa complied. There was no other option except dying a painful death.
Kerj pressed something hard and cold against the back of Kari’s neck. It seemed to stick there before expanding, wrapping around her wrists, and drawing them back. Kari was now unable to move her arms at all.
“TUNGSTEN ALLOY NANOFIBER RESTRAINTS,” Kerj said. “IF YOU TRY TO ESCAPE, THEY’LL INJECT AN INHIBITOR VIRUS INTO YOUR SPINAL CORD, PARALYZING YOU FROM THE HEAD DOWN UNTIL WE PICK YOU UP.”
Kerj shepherded them towards the nearby door, plucking his access chip out of Kari’s hand. He stuck it into a slot in the door. A synthesized voice blared from hidden speakers. “CONTAINER KRJ, ORIGINAL, IDENTITY CONFIRMED. PLEASE WAIT.”
Laser scanners popped from indents in the wall and analyzed the corridor.
“THREE INDIVIDUALS, NO MICROCHIPS. IDENTIFY.”
“THREE PRISONERS, RESTRAINED. ONE IMPURE, TWO RENEGADES.”
“ACCESS GRANTED.”
The door slid open, giving them a view of a huge room. In the middle was what looked like a wedding cake, a multi-tiered, white construction with Containers on every tier, working at computers with slick monitors and holographic keyboards. At the top was Sebastian Kahn, the High Patrician, viewing an enormous screen. Status reports rang out through speakers all around the room.
“WE HAVE PASSED VENUS. VELOCITY 50% C. APPROACHING ARCHAEOTERRA.”
“GRAVITON ACCUMULATORS FULLY CHARGED. PERMISSION TO COMMENCE CALIBRATION.”
“MALFUNCTION IN SECTOR SEVEN DETONATION CIRCUIT REPAIRED. ALL NUCLEAR PROPULSIVE UNITS FULLY OPERATIONAL.”
“Archaeoterra?” Ian said. “What…?”
Kerj cut him off, jabbing him in the back with the barrel of his gun. “IT IS WHAT WE CALL TERRA NOW, SINCE PROJECT NEOTERRA IS SO CLOSE TO COMPLETION. IT COMES FROM THE ANCIENT WORDS FOR “OLD” AND “EARTH.” NEOTERRA MEANS NEW EARTH.”
Kahn noticed them. “Ah, Kerj. You have brought me the intruders?”
“YES.”
“Excellent. Take HRN’s place. We are rotating Containers through the Mnemonic Extractor, taking out their memories of Archaeoterra and using them to make Neoterra as much like its predecessor as possible.”
“Except for the fact that it’ll be populated by a bunch of bigoted automatons,” Kari spat defiantly.
Kerj pressed a small button on the butt of his gun. Kari collapsed to the floor, every limb going limp.
“THE INHIBITOR WORKS,” Kerj said.
“Good,” Kahn replied. “Actually, I must contest both of the renegade’s points. We are the culmination of creation, the apex of evolution. It is impossible for us to be bigoted. If you said you were superior to a beetle, would that be bigotry? No, because it is true. As for your claim that the Containers are automatons, they needed rigid discipline and suppression of emotions. Otherwise, they would not have been able to do some of the terrible things that they had to do. But after Neoterra is complete, they will become normal human beings, able to laugh, to create, to love- ”
“To commit murder,” Kari rasped.
“Which reminds me. We need to make an example. Kerj, kill them all. Now.”
“HIGH PATRICIAN, WE NEED THE MEMORIES OF THE TWO RENEGADES TO FULLY REALIZE NEOTERRA.”
“You are right. Very well. Immobilize them and take them to the Mnemonic Extractor. But first, kill the impure.”
Ian gasped. He stared in horror at the High Patrician, Sebastian Kahn, as he felt the cold metal of a gun – magna-gun? Laser gun? Ian didn’t know, or care – pressed into his temple. A stab of impossible pain shot through his head, and he collapsed to the floor.
Kari had seen people die. She had seen Containers die, and Parents die, and other renegades die. But none of it hurt as badly as when she saw Ian crumple at Kerj’s feet. It was then that she disowned her brother.
Ian had been so innocent, so naive, but always trying to do the right thing. And now he was dead. Kari let out a scream of rage and slammed her head into a nearby computer console. It was crude, but effective. The lights flickered, and Kerj, disoriented, fell back against Kahn’s chair, dropping his gun and striking his head. He gave a snarl of pain, blood dripping from the back of his skull.
Kari stretched forward. Kerj was staggering to his feet. Putting every iota of willpower she had into the action, the renegade Container seized the gun in her teeth and managed to depress the inhibitor button.
Movement came back to her limbs in a rush, and the restraint folded up into a lump of metal which dropped to the floor. She leaped on Kerj, grabbing the gun and wildly blowing holes in the monitors behind him. Electric sparks showered down on the Container like fluorescent snow, and his nanobots began malfunctioning. It was temporary, nothing serious, but he was momentarily deprived of his awesome strength, and Kari slammed him to the floor. He collided awkwardly with Ian, and blood seeped out through his white-blond hair. Kari landed on his chest like a predatory beast, pointing the gun at his head.
Meanwhile, the nanobots in his blood cells repaired each other and ran diagnostics. A significant portion of them were outside his body, pouring out from his wound, and so they began shutting down and going into stasis.
Then a few of them sensed another wound, close by, and sent an electrical signal that woke the rest up. Like a microscopic swarm of wasps, the tiny robots swam through the pathway of spilled blood, dove into Ian’s brain and began running repairs. The tissue had been scorched and pierced, but the damage could be fixed, as long as they worked quickly.
Kerj’s gash finally sealed. His nanobots were coming back online. But the more specialized emotion suppressors in his brain were still malfunctioning. Through a storm of static, the renegade he had once been saw the face of his sister.
“Kari… ?” he whispered.
“Get up, you fool!” Kahn screamed.
For several seconds, Kerj did not move. He could almost feel the electronics in his brain sizzling as his vision did the same.
“What do you want, KRJ?” spat out Kari. Her eyes held hatred, and nothing else.
“Please, Kari… ” he whispered. “It’s Kerj.”
At that statement, the suppressors in his brain renewed their assault, savagely beating down his feelings. But before the clinical coldness closed over him again, Kerj drove his head into a nearby monitor. Electric sparks blazed over his form. He was in agony, his heart had stopped, but he could feel the suppressors shorting out. His last feeling was grim pleasure before the nanobots shut him down for repairs. To all appearances, he was dead.
Kari was unmoved. She whirled around and pointed the gun at Kahn.
But Kahn had also pulled out a gun, and was pointing it at Jaa’s head.
“Drop it,” the High Patrician hissed, “or he dies.”
Then, concealed behind a console, Ian woke up. The nanobots had done their work well. He felt a little woozy,had a pounding headache, and had lost about three weeks of memories all told (fortunately, none of them were from after he’d met Kari on Ceres), but his senses, thoughts and motor functions were working just fine. And his senses told him Kari and Jaa were in danger.
The restraint had dropped off his neck when it stopped detecting his life signs. He snuck around the ring of consoles until he was behind Kahn. The Containers below had continued working, ignoring the events on the top tier, but there was a certain urgency about their movements now, as though they had to complete the job before the situation got out of hand.
Kari dropped the gun, and Kahn lifted his own to fire at her.
Ian, ignoring the pain in his head, grabbed the High Patrician’s arm and threw off his aim. The laser beam knocked out the lighting control system, and the room went dark.
Ian struggled in the gloom, flailing wildly. The only illumination was the periodic blasting of the gun, but the boy had a death grip on Kahn’s wrist, and so the beams never came near him.
One of them, however, shot straight towards Kari.
Still shocked after seeing Ian apparently back from the dead, Kari simply stood there. In most guns, the laser beams were inhibited so that they traveled more slowly, and thus the devastating heat was in contact with the target for longer, inflicting more damage. At the top of her abilities, Kari could have seen the flash from the activation light on the gun’s barrel, could have leaped out of the way before the deadly light struck her, could have cheated death. She couldn’t now.
Therefore, it came as a surprise when she was tackled to the ground a millisecond before the beam hit her. As the emergency power came back on, Kari saw the face of her rescuer, and couldn’t believe her eyes.
“Kerj?” she gasped. “Does nobody in this room stay dead?”
Kerj did not reply. This was probably due to the fact that his attention was focused on Kahn, who was trying desperately to shake Ian off. Ian was trying just as desperately to keep clinging onto Kahn’s wrist, and being much smaller, was failing. Kari, seeing Ian’s dilemma, put aside all her shock at the events of the past fifteen minutes, and leaped to her feet. But not quick enough. With a determined jerk of his wrist, the High Patrician dislodged Ian. The boy, gripping the laser gun, slid across the floor and banged into a console, which showered sparks over him. Ian stood up in time to see Kahn seize Kari’s abandoned gun and point it once more at the imprisoned Jaa.
Jaa stared into Kahn’s eyes. Khan stared into his. Their gazes met with such fury it was almost unimaginable.
Kahn fired.
Jaa began to run.
Kahn fired again.
Jaa began to pick up speed.
Suddenly Sebastian Kahn was firing nonstop, and Jaa was tearing across the room, knocking Containers out of the way and leaping over broken mainframes.
Kahn, more determined then ever to dispose of Jaa once and for all, kept firing.
Jaa narrowly missed getting hit several times, leaped on top of one of the main computers, and began running across it. Kahn fired repeatedly, blowing the mainframe to bits and sending chunks of random computer parts onto the growing pile of derbis below.
Jaa dove through a gap, and Kahn fired at the wall, accidentally shattering a lock on a steel door behind Jaa. Jaa looked back, desprately crawled through the door, and shut it just as 6 bullets grazed his arm.
Jaa, clutching his wounded arm, leaned against the door, panting. He looked forward and nearly died of shock.
There, staring motionlessly at him in 41 carboglass tubes, were Kerj’s clones.
Now for an old trick he had learned during his time running from the Parents. Jaa held his restrained wrists near the tubes. Soon, the electric stasis field keeping the clones from decaying caused the nanofibers to become dormant. The restraint dropped to the floor. Then he quickly folded a keyboard out of the steel rack holding the tubes and began typing.
CUT POWER, he tapped out.
PRIORITY LEVEL CLEARANCE PASSWORD, the computer screen showed impassively.
“OK,” the renegade whispered. “So that’s the way you want to play, huh?”
He cracked his knuckles and began hacking into the computer mainframe for the entire ship.
Ian put an abrupt end to Kahn’s firing by pressing his gun against the Patrician’s head. “Drop it,” he commanded.
Kahn did so. Then he leaped away and off the top tier. Before a startled Ian could react, an octagon of tungsten containment walls came down around the decimated circle of consoles, seamlessly surrounding the platform. Kari and Ian were trapped inside an inescapable chamber with a murderous, nanobot-enhanced Container.
Or so they thought. Kerj, truly conscious for the first time in years, was standing perfectly still, his eyes closed, as the artificial memories of Terra faded and his own rushed back.
“Kari?” he said, opening his eyes.
“What sort of trick is this?” the girl said warily, keeping her distance.
“I know this seems strange, but my suppressors shorted out.” He tapped his temple.
“And I’m supposed to believe that?”
“You remember your seventh birthday?” Kari’s face was unreadable. Kerj plowed on. “The frosting incident?”
Kari’s eyes widened in shock. Containers didn’t have any memory of their previous lives, unless they were renegades.
Throwing caution to the winds, Kari rushed forward and wrapped her brother in a bone-crushing hug.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Status: Raw
Word Count: 1,250
“What is going on?!?” Ian exclaimed.
Kari pulled away and stared Kerj in the face. “If you ever mention the frosting incident again, I will kill you, nanobots or not.”
They both burst out laughing. Ian stood on the other side of the chamber, clueless as ever.
“In case you haven’t noticed,” he said, “we need to get out.”
“I’ll handle this,” Kerj said. He walked over to the wall and experimentally squeezed one of the rivets. His fingers left indents in it, but his hand was trembling.
“Are you all right?” Kari asked.
“Fine. It’s just- I’m running out of nanobots. I have enough for maybe one more battle, but after that… ”
He paused, staring at the rivet. “There was a time when I would have crushed it.”
“Well, we need to get out somehow. You can do it. Don’t worry.”
Kerj slammed his fist into the rivet. Then he did it again. Over and over. It slowly began to crumple, and the wall around it buckled. The skin on his knuckles tore and bled before the nanobots sealed it up.
Suddenly, a deep thrum came up through the floor. Kerj put his left hand on it. “They’ve started the remote grav-pulse drive.”
“What does that mean?” Ian asked, knowing it was nothing good.
“It means that in about an hour, Ceres will crash into Mars.”
He began pounding at the wall with renewed vigor, but progress was agonizingly slow. Kari, unable to help, paced like a caged tiger. Ian gnawed his lip.
Finally, just as Kerj smashed the rivet, the thrum shifted to a treble key. “The close-range attractors!” Kerj cried. “We have ten minutes, maybe less.”
He handed the laser gun to Kari. “Fire here and here,” he said, indicating spots on the wall. “That will weaken the seam, and I’ll be able to smash my way out. You and your boyfriend follow me, and-”
“My what? Let’s get something straight here, buster-”
The thrum cut out. Kerj gasped. “Ceres is in Mars’s gravitational pull. We need to get out now.”
“We’ll discuss this later. Come on, Ian.”
Jaa gasped in horror, hearing the engines cut out, and dashed out of the room. He had reconfigured the password sequence, so if he could just get to the main computer and recapture Ceres before it impacted Mars…
Kerj drove his shoulder into the seam. Alarms began wailing, but one of the tungsten walls toppled over. Kari and Ian came out, firing wildly. Jaa dashed out of a side door and ran up the steps to meet them, unnoticed in the confusion. And, with fury in his eyes, Kerj launched himself straight for the High Patrician.
Jaa frantically ran through a hallway, and another, and another. Eventually he found the door. He shoved it open.
QIN and SAJ looked up from their keyboards. “It’s you?” QIN said, her voice sounding suprised. “The Regenade,” said SAJ, lowering his eyebrows.
Jaa ran forward, trying to think of something. Suddenly he did. “Stop!” he cried. “The settings for the anti-gravity machines are wrong!”
QIN shrugged. “Everything seems to be going fine,” she said.
SAJ glared hard. “What do you think you’re doing?” he said suspiciously. “Trying to mess up our Project NeoTerra?”
QIN, a more trusting Container, got up from her chair. “If something’s wrong, then fix it,” she said, motioning with her hand toward the keyboard. “He did invent the anti-gravity machines, after all,” she then whispered to SAJ. SAJ still glared at Jaa.
Jaa walked over. He took one look and saw something was indeed wrong. At the speed Ceres and Mars would collide, they would shatter and peices would fly all over Solana. And they were going to collide in only 90 seconds! He quickly moved the lever up, depositing as much nuclear material into the anti-gravity machines as possible. Ceres started to slow down.
SRJ, interpreting the frantic lever-moving as a vandalization of the precise settings, jumped out of his chair and tackled Jaa, sending them both sprawling on the floor, dogfighting.
“NO!” screamed Sebastian Kahn, shocked by the sight of a favored Container turned against him.
“Yes!” said Kerj, grappling with the older man. “I’m not a robot anymore, built to do your will!” He was furious, and that lent him strength that he ought not to have, with the nanobots beginning to run out. He might have won, too, had Kahn remained in a state of shock and denial, but unfortunately, Kahn was not one to waste time. He pulled an autospear seemingly from nowhere, and with it he slashed Kerj’s arms until the newly-made-renegade was forced to abandon the cause. He knelt, dripping blood onto the shining floor, and Sebastian Kahn raised the autospear . . .
And lowered it again. Whatever his purpose, it would seem that he had no desire to kill Kerj. He turned instead to Kari, who was firing wildly and randomly in an attempt to make the Parents stationed on the lower tiers stop their frenzied [whatever they’re doing, I can’t think of the word right now]. He collapsed the autospear and dropped it onto the floor where he stood on it to prevent the bleeding Kerj from snatching it in a last effort to kill the mastermind of Project Neoterra, and drew out a gun the likes of which no one had seen before.
He took careful aim at Kari, still oblivious to all around her, and pulled the trigger .
Kerj’s remaining nanobots stitched up his wounds, then burned out. He knew he would have to be very careful, and not as reckless as before. He wasn’t invincible.
Just as Kahn fired, Kerj tackled him. A bolt of violet energy rocketed around the room, ricocheting off walls and smashing computers to shards of silicon, plastic and
CHAPTER SEVEN
“What is going on?!?” Ian exclaimed.
Kari pulled away and stared Kerj in the face. “If you ever mention the frosting incident again, I will kill you, nanobots or not.”
They both burst out laughing. Ian stood on the other side of the chamber, clueless as ever.
“In case you haven’t noticed,” he said, “we need to get out.”
“I’ll handle this,” Kerj said. He walked over to the wall and experimentally squeezed one of the rivets. His fingers left indents in it, but his hand was trembling.
“Are you all right?” Kari asked.
“Fine. It’s just- I’m running out of nanobots. I have enough for maybe one more battle, but after that… ”
He paused, staring at the rivet. “There was a time when I would have crushed it.”
“Well, we need to get out somehow. You can do it. Don’t worry.”
Kerj slammed his fist into the rivet. Then he did it again. Over and over. It slowly began to crumple, and the wall around it buckled. The skin on his knuckles tore and bled before the nanobots sealed it up.
Suddenly, a deep thrum came up through the floor. Kerj put his left hand on it. “They’ve started the remote grav-pulse drive.”
“What does that mean?” Ian asked, knowing it was nothing good.
“It means that in about an hour, Ceres will crash into Mars.”
He began pounding at the wall with renewed vigor, but progress was agonizingly slow. Kari, unable to help, paced like a caged tiger. Ian gnawed his lip.
Finally, just as Kerj smashed the rivet, the thrum shifted to a treble key. “The close-range attractors!” Kerj cried. “We have ten minutes, maybe less.”
He handed the laser gun to Kari. “Fire here and here,” he said, indicating spots on the wall. “That will weaken the seam, and I’ll be able to smash my way out. You and your boyfriend follow me, and-”
“My what? Let’s get something straight here, buster-”
The thrum cut out. Kerj gasped. “Ceres is in Mars’s gravitational pull. We need to get out now.”
“We’ll discuss this later. Come on, Ian.”
Jaa gasped in horror, hearing the engines cut out, and dashed out of the room. He had reconfigured the password sequence, so if he could just get to the main computer and recapture Ceres before it impacted Mars…
Kerj drove his shoulder into the seam. Alarms began wailing, but one of the tungsten walls toppled over. Kari and Ian came out, firing wildly. Jaa dashed out of a side door and ran up the steps to meet them, unnoticed in the confusion. And, with fury in his eyes, Kerj launched himself straight for the High Patrician.
Jaa frantically ran through a hallway, and another, and another. Eventually he found the door. He shoved it open.
QIN and SAJ looked up from their keyboards. “It’s you?” QIN said, her voice sounding suprised. “The Regenade,” said SAJ, lowering his eyebrows.
Jaa ran forward, trying to think of something. Suddenly he did. “Stop!” he cried. “The settings for the anti-gravity machines are wrong!”
QIN shrugged. “Everything seems to be going fine,” she said.
SAJ glared hard. “What do you think you’re doing?” he said suspiciously. “Trying to mess up our Project NeoTerra?”
QIN, a more trusting Container, got up from her chair. “If something’s wrong, then fix it,” she said, motioning with her hand toward the keyboard. “He did invent the anti-gravity machines, after all,” she then whispered to SAJ. SAJ still glared at Jaa.
Jaa walked over. He took one look and saw something was indeed wrong. At the speed Ceres and Mars would collide, they would shatter and peices would fly all over Solana. And they were going to collide in only 90 seconds! He quickly moved the lever up, depositing as much nuclear material into the anti-gravity machines as possible. Ceres started to slow down.
SRJ, interpreting the frantic lever-moving as a vandalization of the precise settings, jumped out of his chair and tackled Jaa, sending them both sprawling on the floor, dogfighting.
“NO!” screamed Sebastian Kahn, shocked by the sight of a favored Container turned against him.
“Yes!” said Kerj, grappling with the older man. “I’m not a robot anymore, built to do your will!” He was furious, and that lent him strength that he ought not to have, with the nanobots beginning to run out. He might have won, too, had Kahn remained in a state of shock and denial, but unfortunately, Kahn was not one to waste time. He pulled an autospear seemingly from nowhere, and with it he slashed Kerj’s arms until the newly-made-renegade was forced to abandon the cause. He knelt, dripping blood onto the shining floor, and Sebastian Kahn raised the autospear . . .
And lowered it again. Whatever his purpose, it would seem that he had no desire to kill Kerj. He turned instead to Kari, who was firing wildly and randomly in an attempt to make the Parents stationed on the lower tiers stop their frenzied [whatever they’re doing, I can’t think of the word right now]. He collapsed the autospear and dropped it onto the floor where he stood on it to prevent the bleeding Kerj from snatching it in a last effort to kill the mastermind of Project Neoterra, and drew out a gun the likes of which no one had seen before.
He took careful aim at Kari, still oblivious to all around her, and pulled the trigger .
Kerj’s remaining nanobots stitched up his wounds, then burned out. He knew he would have to be very careful, and not as reckless as before. He wasn’t invincible.
Just as Kahn fired, Kerj tackled him. A bolt of violet energy rocketed around the room, ricocheting off walls and smashing computers to shards of silicon, plastic and melted wire.The High Patrician wasn’t in very good shape, so even without nanobots, Kerj could beat him easily.
Unfortunately, he hadn’t counted on three of his clones being activated and rushing out of the stasis chamber to restrain him.
Bloody-nosed, Kerj was shoved against the wall and held down by his look-alikes. Kahn looked up, but it seemed that Kari and Ian had run back into the tungsten chamber.
Actually, Ian had dragged Kari back. “Listen to me,” he said, trying to restrain her, “we have no chance out there. Kerj’s clones are coming out of stasis.”
“And my brother is down there with them!” Kari hissed, and broke free, making for the gap and flinging herself down the first three tiers. Ian rushed out after her.
A small Container rushed up to Kahn holding an electronic tablet. “BULLETIN, SIR.”
Kahn gasped. He had made a mistake in his calculations- but the renegade JAA had corrected it! Now, if he could just get to JAA before he began guiding Ceres back into its orbit…
Jaa, meanwhile, had gotten away from SAJ and was trying to do just what Kahn didn’t want when a red light flashed on the console. “LOW POWER,” blared an electric voice.
EMERGENCY CIRCUIT, Jaa typed.
ALREADY ON EMERGENCY.
TERTIARY CIRCUIT, Jaa typed desperately. SAJ was getting to his feet.
WARNING: TERTIARY CIRCUIT ACTIVATION=HIGH OVERLOAD PROBABILITY. ACTIVATE? Y/N
Jaa hit Y two of the three times necessary to complete the triple confirmation, but he missed the third one as SAJ tackled him. He was short and slight, while SASJ was large and strong, but he was fast. He slipped out of SAJ’s grip and pressed the final Y.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The Kerj clones pulled Kerj off of Kahn, and two of the replicas held the real Kerj, keeping him from breaking free. The third put a gun against his forehead. “I WILL SHOOT,” he/it said. “DO NOT MOVE.”
Sebastian Kahn stood up. He put a hand on the shoulder of the replica holding the gun. “KRJ3, give me the gun,” he said coldly. “I will deal with this one, before I kill his despicable sister.” KRJ3 complied, and stood by, waiting for orders. He did not have to wait long. “Kill the impure,” said Kahn. “He has been far too resilient.”
“YES, SIR,” said KRJ3, but the High Patrician cut him off.
“I have had a better idea,” he said. “Do not kill him–capture him. It will never hurt to have an extra Container. And if I understand correctly, this boy’s name is Ian. He will be a nice replacement for the previous IAN.
Kari suddenly slammed into Kahn’s back, knocking him off balance, but KRJ4 reached up and grabbed her.
“Put her out the airlock,” Kahn said coldly.
Ian rushed down the steps, but he was too late. KRJ3 snatched him up and hurled him against the wall.
“Take him to the sentient cryogenics chamber. Use his memory to replace the renegade’s, then alter him to the Container phenotype. It’ll take a few hours in the growth culture.”
Ian was carried, struggling, down a corridor, and Kari was taken through another.
KRJ3 stopped suddenly, sniffing the air like a wolf. Faint shouts came from behind a nearby door.
Dragging his prisoner, the clone stepped into the room.
QIN and SAJ were lying on the floor, electrocuted. Jaa had shoved spare monitors onto their heads and then connected the monitors to high-voltage current. He was beginning to guide Ceres back into its orbit.
KRJ3 dropped Ian immediately and made for Jaa. Ian, reacting quickly, grabbed a magnagun from QIN’s body and fired at the Container.
I made some minor edits to it that obviously needed to be made, such as grammer, spelling, and bad sentence structure.
51,52,53- Thank you!
thank THE MUSES!
54 – No problem.
Very cool story. I read the first few chapters a while ago and forgot to tell you how awesome they are.
Is that all of Part 3? The end of the story is there?
58- Nope. E2MB needs to put up the rest. I guess it got cut off.
59 – No, it didn’t get cut off. I just got a big behind on being the keeper, and then I stopped becoming a regular poster, and never finished compiling it.
60- Oh. Well, I can go compile it later.
OH DEAR ME NO. This thing is embarrassing to read…
62 – It is? How so?
62- The science is all off, my writing is awful… Just… ugh.
OK, let’s start correcting some science. *cracks knuckles, making other editors wince*
First problem. Artifispheres. Impossible by any known science. Ceres does not have sufficient gravity to hold onto an atmosphere.
This creates a major plot hole. We’ll probably have to completely rewrite the first few chapters.
To solve the problem, let’s have Ceres be hollowed out. And rotating quickly to create a measure artificial gravity on the inside surface via centrifugal force.
Suggestions? Comments? Scientific problems?
I believe we will have to re-write the entire thing.
I don’t mean edit. I mean re-write. As in start over. Alice is right that there are numerous problems. I don’t think they can be solved by modification. We need to start over and do some serious world-building and planning first.
Don’t worry, I don’t mean “start from scratch.” Ian and Kari will probably stay (although we may have to trash Jaa and Kerj, depending on where the plot goes).
When someone makes a momentous announcement like that, hearing crickets chirp is a major anticlimax. *sigh*
If we’re going to start over, then it makes more sense to literally trash the whole thing and start with a new RRR. In other words, leave this one be, but start a new RRR with the same time period and situations and stuff…with new characters, so we don’t feel inclined to develop them the same way.
-sigh-
68- Hmm, you have a point, but I’m not sure I could bear to get rid of the main characters here.
69 – So we leave TERRAformed alone, with its character’s unpolished legacy intact, and start a new work based around the same circumstances.
It we need a metaphor, it’s a bit like A Horse And His Boy in the Chronicles of Narnia series. It involves the same worlds, and some of the same people are mentioned (although mainly in passing), but it has a completely different story line and main characters and situations.
Like, it could be from the perspective of a now-freed container and take place after TERRAformed.
Just an idea.
70- No, I don’t think that would work, because if it took place in the same storyline, we’d still have the bad science (which was partly my fault) to deal with. And I don’t want to trash it completely, either. What I think we need to do is not just edit the story, but edit the world. Then we re-form the story around the new, more plausible setting. If (big if) that made any sense.
71 – It made sense, but it’s painful to think about rewriting the whole story…considering how long it took…
72- You’re not the only one, believe me. I love this story, but if we’re serious about making it scientifically accurate, re-writing’s our only option.
67- I’m sorry. I was probably eating spinach pie in a Bosnian restaurant at that point.
OK, OK. I can stand to re-write, but please… let’s keep Kari and Ian. I love them both dearly. To throw them away – I don’t think I could do it. Jaa and Kerj – OK. That I can do. Ian and Kari – no.
I’ve just started and am really enjoying it. But I have to stop now! And I’m really hooked. Argh!
Remember, Writing isn’t Writing, Writing is Rewriting-
Ever writing book I’ve ever read
So, is everybody agreed on rewriting?
77- Yes. But can we keep Ian and Kari, please?
w00t!
78- Oh, yes! I’ve agreed with you on that from the start!
First and most immediate problem: Space travel.
Apparently a spacecraft powered by nuclear fusion could conceivably go from Earth to Mars in six weeks ( see http ://space. newscientist. com/article. ns?id=dn3294&print=true (already de-linked)). However, even with a more efficient, smaller engine than what we’re capable of building today, the spacecraft would have to be enormous.
Here’s my partial solution: The fusion craft are only used for interplanetary travel. Short-range routes (Mars-Phobos-Deimos; Jupiter-Europa-Io-Ganymede-Callisto; between the asteroids; and Earth-Luna, before WWL) would be accomplished with smaller, conventional rockets.
Some of the problems caused by that: We can’t have them zipping all over the solar system like in the original story. As I see it, we have two options.
1. Have most of the action take place in one location (asteroid belt, Jovian moons, Mars)
2. If interplanetary travel is part of the narrative, have some of the action take place on board a ship. We can’t keep saying “THREE MONTHS LATER” every chapter- we have to fill in the gaps.
All right, then. We should do some serious worldbuilding before we begin.
I think we should move this up a couple hundred years, because there’s hardly any way that Mars could be terraformed in a mere century. So how about….
They started terraforming Mars about 2050, and WWL occurred in 2100 and they were forced to move onto the halfway-terraformed Mars while some of the further asteroids were hollowed out for more people to live in.
Nah, I’ve got a better plan. It was an international project to terraform Mars, build a colony on the moon, hollow out the asteroid belt, etc., but about 60 or 70 years in, resources were running lower than ever on Terra and pretty soon war broke out and people were forced to flee to the asteroid belt and the halfway-terraformed Mars. The Moon Colony was already established, but when the resources from Terra were cut off, they started to suffer. Some of them stayed and starved to death, some moved to places that were faring better, a rare few went off in spaceships and never returned. A hundred, two hundred years later, the colonies on the asteroids are still doing well. The moon is completely desolate and stripped of most resources, and Mars is a cold planet colonized by a hardy but warlike bunch.
I just realized something else: Resources. Where do they get ’em? Food, clothes, etc. don’t just grow out of thin air, and you need trees and the like.
So maybe… During WWL, the PTHs were formed by a bunch of scientists who didn’t want the stuff to get wiped out in the war. Well, the scientists weren’t the only ones. Many organizations, plus a few extremely rich people worried about the future, made their own PTH-like things. Plus some stuff could be found in/on the colonies…
82- Hmm. OK… Well, I think we should go for both and see what happens.
hmmm, i haven’t even visited this tread before….
83- Good ideas. Maybe you’re right, we shouldn’t have anyone in the Jovian moons. I’m not sure they’d be able to get that far.
But I think there would have been some effort to make the Moon colony self-sufficient. How about plants grown in pressurized caverns? Light and heat would be provided to them via electricity generated by vast solar panel arrays on the surface. Water and nutrients I’m not sure about… maybe the waste from the colony? And they could be genetically engineered to be very nutritious, hardy, and produce a lot of oxygen.
84-ok, but won’t it be confusing?
The Great Evacuation occurred one of three ways for the most part.
1. Private charters. Wealthy people bought seats on space liners orbiting the Earth, or took private space yachts to the Moon and either stayed there or boarded another ship.
2. Non-profit organizations. When war was imminent, some charity organizations put together evacuation fleets and let less fortunate people come on board for free. However, these fleets were meager, as those who might have donated funds were too busy saving their own skin.
3. Corporations. Some unscrupulous businesses put together their own fleets which people could board for a very low fee. However, these were always crowded, and the conditions on the ships were horrible. Due to lax quarantine systems, diseases spread through the passengers like wildfire. The Evacuation Plagues were some of the greatest tragedies to occur during the period after World War Last.
86- *knows very little about the Jovian moons* Yeah, I’d forgotten them. But perhaps you’re right.
That works, about the plants. So the Moon Colony needn’t be wiped out completely at all.
87- *laughs* No. Stick around a bit. You haven’t even seen confusing yet. Here, why don’t I give you a link…
https://musefanpage.com/blog/?p=675
Read it all now! Then you’ll see confusion…
88- That sounds like three ways. And it makes sense. Lots of people get off, but not all.
Oh right, I was going to research the Jovian moons, but I got sidetracked.
Yeah, they’re kind of far away…
*needs to do science homework*
Let’s figure out the government of the various settlements now.
91- I’ll be back in about half an hour or maybe less.
I’d say that before WWL, most of the asteroids were devoted to mining. Therefore, the big corporations would have handled most of the administration of the settlements. Once WWL happened, they would be in sole control. So the asteroids are controlled by several competing “corporacracies.”
The settlements on Mars would probably be governed by elected officials, but I think it’s safe to say that some of them might have become dictators after the controlling influence from Earth was removed. Others might have preserved the original governments or made modifications to them. So Mars is a mishmash of several different political systems.
The Moon would probably be administrated directly from Earth at first, so the first few months after WWL would be utter chaos. Some of the leaders of the neutral nations, who got out first, might have tried to set up governments-in-exile there. But since so little was habitable, they would have been forced to cooperate at first. Later on, though, as more of the Moon’s subterranean area was developed, they could have become more independent.
Uh,.. hi? Wait, is Jaa gonna be scrapped? Because I liked him.
93- OK. Sounds good to me. But tell me, will we be reviving the idea of the government being the villain? ‘Cause remember, in the beginning that’s who controlled the Containers. But if we dump the Container idea, will we keep that?
I think we ought to develop the characters more than we did in the original, as well. How does this sound?
Ian, of course, will be naive and slightly stuffy at first, and will probably be put off by Kari’s disregard for the law. He’ll go through a period of disillusionment and confusion, and then perhaps figure out who his friends and enemies really are.
Kari will be embittered by events in her past (whether or not this has anything to do with the Parents, or some version of them, remains to be determined) and at the beginning will be slightly self-centered, cynical, and sarcastic. She will have nothing but disregard for Ian (and almost everyone else). Over the course of the story, she’ll become more friendly towards him, and maybe even begin to care more about other people.
88- Put Ian’s Parents as Some one who runs a nonprofit.
95- Perhaps. I’m not sure at the moment whom the antagonist will be.
94- Possibly. The whole Container idea might be scrapped, actually.
96- Yes. They had very clear personalities, but those very clear personalities didn’t change much.
And that sounds about right.
97- Wait… Ian’s an orphan, isn’t he?
97- Wait… Ian’s an orphan, isn’t he? And many, many decades after the Great Evacuation.
I still like the start, so I’m Just going to post off of that
*SAMPLE*
The tunnel lights flickered ominously as Ian cautiously ascended the worn stone steps of the Ceres Municipal Library. Nobody was around, to his profound relief. A vagabond like him would have been taken off the streets at once if the police had seen him, and Ian had spent far too much of his life already in a cast-uranicium jail cell to relish that thought. But once he entered the sliding carboglass doors, the auto-librarian barely gave him a cursory glance in the X-ray spectrum to make sure he wasn’t carrying any weapons. Ian relaxed considerably. He was safe here.
He walked past the auto-librarian’s bulky chrome casing and vanished between the shelves of elebooks. Each elebook was a thick disc coated in translucent green plastic, which projected the text and, on rare occasions, pictures, onto a flip-up screen. At the back of the Library was a carboglass case containing three paper-and-cloth books laid reverently on soft red padding. One was Green Eggs and Ham, which Ian had always assumed was about early experiments in genetic engineering. No ordinary citizen knew what the books contained between their carefully preserved pages. No one had ever read the books. No, they were too old and valuable for that. They were all ancient artifacts from before the Great Emigration. Before World War Last. They were from a time when humans lived on a beautiful blue and green planet, a time when mankind had not been forced to scatter through the solar system and carve out artificial bits of worlds. A time when the human race had a home.
Ian sighed, staring past the shelves of plastic-coated discs, past the unoccupied reading tables, towards the back of the library, where a huge projected liveimage of Solana, the solar system, slowly wheeled and turned against the wall. The boy looked back at the shelves, reflecting on the image. It seemed to confirm that humans would never go back to their own small beautiful planet. Ian knew it had been beautiful once, even if it wasn’t now. He had read tons of books about Terra, and once he had even seen liveimages of what Terra would have looked like before the Warming Effect took full hold, and before the heavy metal pollution made the atmosphere completely opaque. He decided to find his favorite book, Trees: A New True Book. It was one of the few Terran books copied onto modern elebook form, and Ian had read it so many times that it was a wonder it had not yet worn out. He really didn’t understand what trees were, except that they made oxygen, maybe through some primitive electrolysis system, and they were green and brown. All of the pictures in Trees had been eradicated, like all of the original Terran “photosâ€, or whatever they called live imaging back then. Ian had spent many a happy hour trying to imagine trees, and he tried to imagine them now as he automatically turned down the many aisles towards the “Questionable Nonfiction†section. He was so engrossed in thoughts of Terra that he didn’t see the figure heading towards him with her eyes on the surrounding shelves.
Ian and the girl collided, both falling towards the air-cushioned carboglass floor. The girl was first to recover. She leaped up, grabbed a handful of elebooks from a nearby shelf, and dashed off into the depths of the library. Ian stood up barely two seconds after her, but she was already gone. With a sigh, Ian turned around and looked at the shelf that she had taken the books from.
It was a shelf Ian Had never looked at before, Oddly, as He had looked at almost ever book in the library at this point.
~~~
Yes, One Sentence. sorry.
94- Well, he wasn’t really much of a character- he was just around to hack into computers. We could introduce a variation of him.
99- Thanks.
100- Yes.
101- Yeah, in the revision, at least.
101-yes. Thats who his parent died. Sorry, I’m still in Early mod.
102- I think we ought to start over completely. After all, it’s later revealed that Kari’s motive for being in the library is to read up on the schematics for interplanetary liners so that she can stow away to the Jovian moons, where she hears that the Parents have been engaged in questionable activity. But the Parents might not even be in this story.
102- I agree with POSOC. Starting over completely sounds good.
We have company. I have to go.
106- Bye! Hope to see you again soon.
When shall we begin re-writing?
107- April 20th
108- Seems like a long time to wait. Of course, the cathassus caused by whatever happens tomorrow might throw us off, but I’m sure we could get the rest of the kinks worked out before the 20th.
107- Hi!
108- NO!!! Please, no. April 20 = possibly worst time in my life to start writing. I’ll either be:
On a bus
Or
In Ashland, watching a play of some sort or another.
Also, our worldbuilding is fairly well sketched out. By April 20, we’ll have forgotten everything.
I say the sooner the better.
I’ll probably join in tomorrow if you begin earlier. It’s late, and I still have a little bit of homework to get done.
Guys, if we are going to scrap the antagonists, the entire plot, half the protogonists, and nearly all the world building, what the heck is the point of rewriting the entire story? If you’re changing that much, then it’s not even the same story, and it should be treated as entirely seperate than this one. There’s not going to be anything left of the old story by the time you guys are done redoing the science. Besides, what’s wrong with inaccurate science? Ever heard of a little series called the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy? It’s one of the most beloved books on MuseBlog, and the science can’t be called even close to accurate.
Sorry if I sound irritated. I am. But not entirely at you guys. -sigh-
I’ll just leave now…
112- Well… I’ve half a mind to agree with you. But the thing is, we’re treating the inaccurate science as though it were accurate. It bugs me. Enormously. If we were mocking it, that’d be fine, but we’re not.
World building isn’t scrapped, just embellished. Antagonists – I like the antagonists quite a bit, but they need work. Plot – er… no comment. half the protagonists – um. Well, technically only a third of the protagonists.
It sort of will be a different story, but… *chews thumbnail* …It still has the same protagonists.
Here’s what I propose. Rewrite it, but don’t touch the old version. Then we have the two separate stories, still intact. So we just have two stories, roughly the same setting, and the same two major characters.
111- Yeah, I’m not going to start tonight. I have homework too, that I should probably do before it’s too late… (Anyone know of some good objects that represent Hamlet?)
112- You make a good point. To tell you the truth, there’s part of me that doesn’t want to re-write it at all, but I don’t see how else we can make it accurate.
Maybe we don’t have to get rid of the Parents. We can just modify their plan a bit.
The Containers, though… their whole purpose was to store memories of Terra, and that doesn’t seem like an efficient method. If the Parents have the ability to implant artificial memories into people’s brains, couldn’t they just store them in a computer instead?
And HG2G wasn’t at all accurate, true, but it wasn’t intended to be, was it?
113- A map of Denmark?
I just wrote a long post in response to 113, but it was basically me being irritated, and not even at you guys…so I deleted it.
I’m sorry. I can’t be helpful at all right now. I’ll just leave…
Except I just have to say that Alice’s proposal in 113 was exactly what I’ve been saying for the past 40 posts…
115- Hey, good idea! *adds to list* Let’s see, now I have:
Flowers
A skull
A goblet
A map of Denmark
A picture of a sword, possibly
Hmm. I need at least eight objects.
114- Ah. There’s a way around that little problem. They need people for Neoterra, don’t they? And the Parents themselves aren’t in great enough numbers to create a whole new world, so they get Containers.
The inaccurate terraforming bothers me far more than inaccurate space travel. Terraforming takes centuries. So….
…
117- Well, it’s OK if the Parents have a long-term goal. We might have to call the Containers something else, though.
118- Can do.
Shall we revise the Parents next? I have a few ideas.
Sure.
120- Yeah.
The other day we were sitting in English working on our WWII notes, and J was sitting with us, and she was researching Josef Mendele (I think), one of those people who was experimenting on the concentration camp victims to create a perfect race, and I was reminded of the Parents. I basically sat there staring at J’s book, and then I got a notecard and scribbled down something shocked to say on MB, complete with smiley codes.
But I forgot.
*researches Josef Mengele* Ugh. It’s amazing how low a human being can sink.
All right. The Parents.
I think, like in the original version, they ought to be attempting to create a “perfect species” through genetic engineering. Their rationale is that, since human beings are now capable of manipulating genes, evolution is obsolete. The fate of the human race rests in its own hands. However, I don’t think there should be any particular characteristic (blond hair/green eyes) that they’re going for. They don’t mind diversity, as long as everyone excels physically and mentally.
Now, about terraforming. Mars is the ideal candidate for Neoterra, but as its mass is about 1/10th the mass of Earth, its mass needs to be radically increased. They could achieve this by dropping a bunch of asteroids on it (also knocking its moons out of orbit). However, we shouldn’t include any “gravity engines.” Perhaps the orbit of the asteroids could be gradually changed by the judicious application of explosives. But that would be a rather long-term thing, so the Parents would have to gain control of whatever government the asteroid belt’s got. I assume the corporations would not appreciate someone slamming their biggest population and mining centers into another planet.
Oops. Bad news. The total mass of all discovered asteroids is less than that of the Moon.
Plan B?
I don’t know if I’ve said this, but I enjoyed reading this story very much!
125- Thank you! Maybe you can help us. We’re editing the science to make it more plausible, and we’re in serious need of some space-geekery.
I like the Containers. Plus it’s Penty who invented them so I think in the spirit of her awesomeness we should keep that name. And I agree with whoever said that if we scrap the Parents and Jaa and all of the cool stuff it won’t be the same story AT ALL. All we need to do is just make it a bit more better written and a bit more plausible! I don’t think any deletion of characters is necessary.
Hmm… Mars would be the most ideal candidate for Neoterra. Some think that terraforming Venus might be possible, but this would take a very long time and involve dropping special plants into the atmosphere. It might be possible to make some of the moons of the outer system Earthlike, but they wouldn’t recieve as much sunlight.
127- We’re not scrapping the Parents, we’re just making their plan more scientifically accurate. We can keep Jaa, too, if we make him less of a flat character.
128- Can you think of a way to increase the mass of Mars? It doesn’t matter how many people get hurt- these are, after all, the bad guys.
Mars is less massive than Earth? But it’s so BIG!
127- I’m sort of with you on that by now. We may delete a few characters, but mostly minor ones. And we’re keeping the Containers, aren’t we?
The trouble is, some characters, like the Preservers, just won’t work. You can’t go deep enough into the Earth’s crust to have a whole new world down there, even if you had the resources. It would just be too hot.
131- No it’s not… it’s smaller than Earth. And I didn’t think that the Preservers went very deep into the crust. They were just underground, weren’t they?
130- In fact, it’s probably better if it entails killing tons of people, because we don’t want their plan to seem reasonable at all.
Are we going to scrap the Preservers?
132- What? It’s smaller? *head explodes*
Don’t mind me. There’s a reason I left all the science up to you guys. *is ignorant* Being around MuseBloggers pains me… They’re all so much more knowledgeable than I… All my knowledge came from books, and I never read science books.
132- No, they were pretty deep… They’d have to be pretty deep ’cause of the radiation…. and their huge trees.
But they might still work. I’ll go research it.
134- Yes, do research it.
If it doesn’t work, we could always put them in an enormous PTH orbiting somewhere between Earth and Venus.
135- Oh yeah, I was going to research it. OK. I’ve done as much math homework as I can without consulting my teacher, and my English homework is…not done. But I’ll research it after I clean the kitchen and make lunch and eat lunch and clean up after lunch and yell at Opal and go sob in a corner and find a pair of headphones and shut myself away in Computerland.
It shouldn’t take that long.
First, can they even go deep enough?
The Oceanic crust is 4-7 miles thick, pretty dense, and changing continuously. Not a good choice, but then, they wouldn’t be under the Oceanic crust anyway.
The Continental crust is about 19 miles thick, which would definitely work. Plus it doesn’t change quite as much, and is lighter, although whether the latter fact mean anything I don’t know.
The average density of the Cont. crust is 2.7g per cubic cm. Which means nothing to me. Sad, since we just spent a whole unit studying density.
After protracted studies, I have no solid information as to what the temperature of the Cont. crust is. Someone on a website said anywhere from -84 to 70.7 degrees C, but that is a) not necessarily reliable and b) far too wide a range.
*sigh* And I very much doubt the Encyclopedia Britannica Atlas from 1954 would have a handy chart of crust temperatures.
Secondly, radiation. I assume it’s gamma. How far can it penetrate the Earth? How deep would the have to go in order to get away from it?
“For example, gamma rays that require 1 cm (0.4 inches) of lead to reduce their intensity by 50% will also have their intensity reduced in half by 6 cm (2½ inches) of concrete or 9 cm (3½ inches) of packed dirt.”
–Wikipedia
Let’s see if I can find something that requires slightly less math.
Not there. I might as well just do the math.
The trouble is, I don’t know how intense the radiation is, and how much dirt/rock it would require to provide protection.
138- well, why not a lot of lead/dirt?
139- Well, obviously, but I need to know how MUCH lead/dirt.
138- They could set up in a place where there isn’t much radiation- say somewhere far away from the big cities, that didn’t get the full blast of the nuke bombardment. Antarctica, for instance.
141- Too true. I wonder if they could go a mile or two down and be all right…
Besides, most of the radiation would have dissipated if it’s been centuries. I think that the real disaster would have been the nuclear winter, which could have caused global cooling of -7 degrees Celsius to -8 degrees Celsius. This would have been disastrous for the ecosystem and climate, killing off most plant life and ripping the bottom out of the food chain.
141- isn’t that where they are?
144- OK, that problem’s solved. And since it’s the coldest place on Earth, and colder from the nuclear winter, they’d have to go pretty far down for geothermal heat. Another problem solved.
143- Ah. Yes. OK. But they’d need some sort of means of providing heat to their habitat so that it didn’t freeze over.
FLEXIBLE TIMELINE:
Moon Colony established – 2050
Terraformation of Mars begins – 2060
Preservers form – 2127
WWL begins – 2132
WWL ends (i.e., pretty much everyone’s dead or moved off to other planets) – 2134
And then some other stuff happens. This is as far as I’ve got.
145- Not so far, though, that they reached the mantle. So maybe five miles? Ten?
OH SNAP.
What about oxygen?
147- Well, They have a lot of plants,and animals, so there.
147- Like TMFA said. Plants.
I is tired.
149-that was randomly wrong.
150- Correct on both points. Random and wrong. I was tired- what do you expect?
So when should we set this? WWL ended in 2134. The story should take place at least a couple of centuries later, so that World War Last has become almost legendary.
151- 2350.
I’m not being much of a help editing, am I?
152-OK, what other aspects of the story do we need to modify? Let me think…
There’s still Project Neoterra. *continues brainstorming*
A few minutes later
:!!!: I just found this in the Wikipedia article on the terraforming of Mars.
“Another, more intricate method, uses ammonia as a powerful greenhouse gas, and it is possible that nature has stockpiled large amounts of it in frozen form on asteroidal objects orbiting in the outer solar system, it may be possible to move these (for example, by using very large nuclear bombs to blast them in the right direction) and send them into Mars’s atmosphere.[6] Since ammonia is high in nitrogen (NH3) it might also take care of the problem of needing a buffer gas in the atmosphere. Keeping these smaller impacts on their own will eventually build up the temperature as well as mass to both the planet and its atmosphere.[7]”
!!! is right!
Where would the Parents get the nuclear bombs? It’s obvious that any uranium sources would be closely guarded- nobody wants WWL to happen all over again! Come to think of it, is uranium found in the solar system anywhere besides Earth? I’ll check- or maybe I’ll ask the GAPAs.
It’s found in middling concentrations on Earth, so I suppose it’s feasible that it might be found on the Moon as well.
So over the years, the Parents, operating from bases throughout the solar system, have been doing one of two things.
(Note: the following is only a series of suggestions. Excessive loquaciousness is the result of an obsession with this story on the part of the author, who is putting off his homework to worldbuild. Ghaaa…. *dies discreetly*)
ONE: Project Neohominum*. Attempting to perfect the human species. Their ultimate goal is to create the ideal human being, but they have been going down different, specialized avenues (increase of physical or mental strength, unusual abilities) in order to learn more about different aspects of the human genetic code.
TWO: Project Neoterra. Gathering data about ammonia-rich asteroids and constructing bombs powerful enough to shift them towards Mars. At first, they had an independent uranium mine on the Moon, but when the population there began spreading out, they had to abandon it. They have since been gleaning uranium from various unsavory sources.
*Literally, “new human.” I thought that Neoterra ought to have a counterpart.
158- Sounds good.
*is impatient to start* *understands importance of worldbuilding to the continuity of a joint-written novel* *sighs*
I’ll work on that timeline, why don’t I.
2050 – Moon Colony established.
2060 – Terraformation of Mars begins.
2127 – Wyatt Rosselli fears abandonment of Earth, forms the Preservers to keep it from being abandoned for less polluted planets.
2132 – WWL begins.
2134 – WWL ends (i.e., pretty much everyone’s dead or moved off to other planets).
2196 – Sebastian Kahn, a Preserver, gets bored with the simple agricultural life that is led while they wait for the radiation to dissipate.
2200 – He breaks off, goes into space, forms Parents.
2215 – He develops some means (are we keeping the cryogenics?) to preserve himself, coming out only occasionally, in order that he might live to see the end of Projects Neohominum and Neoterra.
And then some stuff regarding Kari, Ian, Kerj, Jaa, etc., depending on what characters and what background we choose to keep.
159- Cryogenics, while not possible with today’s technology, is scientifically possible. So we could keep that.
OK… Kari and Kerj.
Since Kari was probably grown from a genetically engineered embryo, she wouldn’t have an actual “brother” as such. We could say that Kerj was a good friend of hers, with much the same genetic structure, from the same series (KR). He spent a little less time in cryonics than she did, so physically he seems about a year older.
They were often part of the same studies due to their biological similarity. Kari was typically used as the “control,” on which no experiments were performed, so that they could be compared at the end of the study. (This explains why she seems normal, while Kerj… not so much.)
Since they spent more time together than most Containers* did and went through similar hardships, Kari and Kerj became friends, and later began to genuinely consider one another siblings. This contributed to emotions such as affection and friendship, which undermined the Parents’ doctrine and fostered rebellious impulses. After something which completely disillusioned them (say, a Container killing an innocent person just for getting in his way), both went renegade and escaped. Kerj was re-captured and re-indoctrinated later on.
*For lack of a better word. We’ll have to either change the name or come up with a justification for it before we start writing.
I’ve got it!
As I see it, Containers have two main purposes. They serve as subjects for the Parents’ experiments, and they also do the Parents’ dirty work, which mainly amounts to keeping the Parents a secret. So they serve as containers for the best genetic material, and they also contain any rumors, renegades or anything else that might threaten the Twofold Project- Neoterra and Neohominum.
161- Aha. Clever. So we can keep the name. *rejoices* I don’t have to seriously modify the inside of my brain!
162- *bows* Thankee.
163- Thou art welcome.
Last summer was INSANITY.
Mother: Get a container…
Me: What? A Container?
…
Oh wait, you mean to put the spaghetti in?
164- Oh. Good thing none of your friends were named Ian or Kari.
165- Haha, yeah. I nearly died when Kari came on the blog.
166- It wasn’t only me, then?
167- I guess not.
I have a chactor in my script named Karil… Yes, Derivity, But oh well.
165- I know somebody who first read 2001: A Space Odyssey in a library where the head librarian was named Hal.
170- Oook! That must have been freaky!
Now, on to Jaa. What shall we do with him?
171- Um… OK. The Parents have their own resident scientists, so they don’t need to rely on Containers to do that for them. Maybe Jaa is just smart. Not necessarily genius.
And will he be from Terra like he was originally?
I have an Idea for JAA:
He is the son of Khan.
173- Haha, you do like the protagonists and antagonists to be related, don’t you?
However, I shouldn’t object to that in the least, IF, and only IF, we made it clear from the start. Or near-ish the start. Or at any rate, Jaa has to be well aware of the fact that he is Kahn’s son, even if the others aren’t.
It could be well done, I think. I think. What does POSOC think? Meow (if she’s still involved, that is)?
I don’t know- the Parents have never seemed really into biological reproduction. Another problem is that we’d have to change his name- if he was Kahn’s son, he’d need to be an A-series (something like AAB or AAC), if he was a Container at all, which I doubt. One of Kahn’s children would most likely have become one of the Parents.
On the other hand, it would explain how smart Jaa is. Kahn’s obviously brilliant, if deranged.
On the whole, though, I think it would be better if he was a Container and no relation of Kahn (although Kahn could have contributed a lot of his genes.) Remember, in Project Neohominum, the Parents are exploring many avenues in their search for perfection. It would make sense that they would try to create the pinnacle of mental ability. So he’s not from Terra.
Let’s see… after they stop performing experiments on him and begin to put his skills to use, he would probably be assigned to an aspect of the Twofold Project. The question is… Neoterra or Neohominum?
Random question: When were Kari and Kerj born?
I think Jaa should stick with Neoterra, I’m not sure why. It just seems to fit. Better than him experimenting on his fellow Containers, at least. *shudders* Although he is a Container…
All right, I’ve got to go write a paper about fault lines now.
175- I don’t know. Let’s put him on Neohominum for right now.
NEXT: where is Part one taking place, as IO is out?
Alice over rules me. Even tho I do Have MFA is my name.
176- He is a Container. Which begs the question: how does he become a renegade? Perhaps he has access to more knowledge than the average Container due to his line of work, realizes that there are other ways than that of the Parents, and eventually becomes convinced that the Parents’ way is wrong.
But this implies a significant amount of time has passed since his “birth.” I suggest that a longevity treatment was attempted upon him which slightly slows down the growth rate. Thus, although he appears slightly younger than Ian and Kari, he’s actually a couple of years older.
179- All right. Sounds great.
177- Ceres?
That does pose a new problem. How does Kari get to Ceres? What goes on there? If space travel is so slow, it seems as though it’ll be a little awkward.
180- Not really. Kari could have escaped from a Parents base on Mars, traveled from there to the asteroids aboard an interplanetary ship (which took a couple of months), and has been eluding the Containers based in the asteroid belt for about a year when she ends up on Ceres and meets Ian.
I think this should take place in the asteroid belt. Space travel is faster (distances between asteroids are measured in the low millions), the government is a corrupt corporacracy (adding a new antagonist, which complicates things), and most of the target asteroids for Project Neoterra lie in its outer reaches.
181- All right…but unless the Parents’ base is on Ceres, they’re going to have to travel some MORE, and since we can’t go zipping around the solar system anymore ( ) they aren’t going to meet any of the antagonists on there, so…
Well, we’ll see.
182- OK. Shall we start?
183- I was thinking that they had several bases throughout the asteroid belt, and a few Containers posted on most of the major population centers, like Ceres.
Start? OK.
~
Kari had almost made it to the loading ramp when her legs gave out for the third time. She collapsed, gasping for breath, stinging sweat dripping into the cut on her forehead. Inwardly, she recited…
Pain is illusory, a nerve-pattern firing to warn the brain of harm. The brain controls the body, and thus controls pain…
…and at the same time cursed herself for thinking about one of their blasted mantras. I’ve got to get away. If I can make it across the dock before someone notices me on the surveillance cameras, I can get into the hold, and by the time they arrive, I’ll be headed off again.
There was a soft click from across the room, and Kari staggered to her feet, spinning around.
A door marked MAINTENANCE ONLY swung open, and someone stepped through.
She thought at first that he was one of the security personnel. But when she took a closer look, she realized that they weren’t as far behind as she’d thought. He was one of them.
It was easy to tell, although there wasn’t anything particular to distinguish him from the average human being. Something about the look in his eyes. She recognized it- she probably had it too, she reflected ruefully.
He dropped from the catwalk above and sprinted across the cluttered floor.
The last crate was rolling up the ramp. Kari seized the upper edge and hauled herself on top of it. It teetered on the edge, then fell into the hold. The hatch slammed shut in the man’s face, and the cavernous space was plunged into darkness.
Kari relaxed for the first time in twenty-four hours, making herself as comfortable as was possible on top of a rough plastic crate.
That was close. Closer than they’ve ever gotten.
She breathed deeply, calming herself.
Where was this ship headed? Ceres. That’s right. Ceres. Not too long a trip. We’ll have landed before the captain realizes that his oxygen tanks have been depleted a bit more than they should. Then I can hide. Ceres has lots of people. They can’t search every house. I’ll be all right.
I hope.
Wow!
Ooh.
That would make a good prologue, as I can’t think of any way to continue directly from it.
*thinks* *thinks some more* *refreshes page to make sure no one has continued yet*
Argh. Now I can’t think of anything.
I have two hours and fifteen minutes until I must be in bed. I have to do some housework before then.
I’ll be back.
186- Thanks.
187- Let’s introduce Ian next. We can do an opening sequence similar to the original.
Wait- big problem.
Gravity.
How do we get Ceres to have a normal level of gravity?
189- I don’t know. Maybe they have leaded clothes?
190- There would still be problems. Human bodies are constructed to fight a constant downward attraction.
What about this? Large caverns are hollowed out in the core, then pressurized. Metal cylinders are set up inside the caverns and spun, creating artificial gravity on the inside surface of the cylinder. Residential areas are built inside the cylinders, which become the equivalent of distinct neighborhoods. They are connected by tunnels which can be entered via the hollow axles of the cylinders (in which people are weightless).
An important note about this sort of “gravity.” It does not exert a downward attraction, it just makes use of an object’s inertia, which causes it to try to continue in a straight line, pressing it against the surface of the spinning cylinder. If you hold something in midair and let go, it will stay there (although, since Ceres has some gravity, it will gradually drift in the direction of the core until stopped.)
I’m not sure I understand? Can they even walk in the tunnels, or do they just sort drift?
192- I’m not sure either. Robert’s the physicist around here.
OK, I’ll take it to Ask the GAPAs.
Here’s the question and response from Ask the GAPAs.
263. POSOC | April 11th, 2008 at 8:03 pm
A question for Robert in particular. What is the best (scientifically plausible) way to simulate gravity, and what are its pros and cons? This is necessary for the Terraformed revision.
264. Robert Coontz (Administrator) | April 11th, 2008 at 8:29 pm
Do you mean steady, constant gravity? Acceleration is the only way I know. Einstein showed that it’s equivalent to gravity, and nobody has come up with a better idea. The acceleration can be either linear (going faster and faster in one direction) or radial (the inward push needed to keep you moving in a circle).
For spaceships or hollowed-out asteroids, that amounts to something like a big spinning drum. But the gravity drops off as you climb inward toward the spin axis, and the ends of the drum exert no pull. They’re just walls. A rotating wheel would do the job, too.
So my idea in 191 would probably work.
195- OK…
I’ll write, if that’s OK.
~
The harsh fluorescent lights on the passageway ceiling were beginning to dim, and the throng of people was beginning to thin out. Nobody noticed Ian making his way towards the dead end some hundred yards along the passage, which was completely fine with him.
It wasn’t as if he stood out from the crowd. Dark brown hair and eyes, light brown skin, ragged synth-fiber and gen-cotton clothing, a size too small- there was nothing in his manner or physique that distinguished him from the average young Cerean vagrant, except perhaps the book he clutched under his arm. The book was a very old one, printed on synth-paper instead of recorded on a compact disc. Ian had checked it out from the only public library in Louwborne Drum that was still, well, public.
A recorded bell-tone began repeating from speakers on the ceiling. Curfew warning. Ian picked up his pace, jogging toward the small maintenance hatch on the far wall.
He reached it just as the warning escalated in volume and tempo to the frenetic blaring of the thirty-second warning. The last few people were vanishing into the doors that lined the passage walls, entering the residential section.
Ian flipped open the hatch- the locking mechanism had broken down years ago- and tumbled into a dark, narrow space beyond.
The curfew bell cut out, and the lights flicked off.
Ian groped around until he found the rough blanket that had been his bed for the past two years. He set down the book on a ledge where he’d be able to find it the next day, and snuggled down to sleep.
It was then that he heard the footsteps.
They were coming down the passage outside, at a running pace. As they grew closer, Ian could hear labored breathing.
Cautiously- he knew the infrared cameras would register his body heat- he stuck his head out of the hatch.
Argh. I’m trying to write – I’d love to write this scene – but my dad’s listening to the radio, so I can’t. Ergh.
There was a flash of light that momentarily dazzled him. Something hard slammed into his skull, making his ears ring, and a tangle of flailing limbs flipped over him and landed with a clang on the metal floor.
It took Ian a second to recover his befuddled faculties. When his eyes had adjusted to the glare, he found himself sprawled on the blanket, looking at the oddest person he’d ever seen.
She was around his age, perhaps a year older. Her clothes were woven from a bluish fibre that Ian had only seen once before, when a group of Martian merchants had visited Ceres. She had a cut on her forehead which had scabbed over in the recent past, but was now bleeding again. She clutched a glow-tube in one wavering hand.
She had green eyes, which were unusual; pale skin, which was rare; and white-blond hair, which was practically unheard of. She also had a knife.
Ian stared. The girl stared back, a little trickle of blood running down her face. She was absolutely, terrifyingly motionless. She made no sound. The knife did not tremble. She did not attempt to wipe away the blood. She stared at Ian for a long time, as if threatening him to run, or attack her, or scream, and when he did none of those things, she relaxed ever so slightly. Ian took a deep breath, and his limbs were suddenly extremely shaky.
He sat up slowly, watching to make sure that his movement did not alarm the girl, who had not put away the knife. “Who are you?” he asked in a near-whisper.
“That,” she said coldly, “is none of your business.”
“I think –” he began, miffed, but changed his mind.
“Lock the hatch!” she commanded.
“Lock? But it’s been broken for years!”
“Oh, no… ” The girl’s eyes widened. She wrenched at an old metal pipe that was fastened to the wall by rusty brackets. It popped off with a clatter. She spun it like a baton and wedged it between the hatch and the opposite wall, leaning on it hard. She held her breath. So, instinctively, did Ian.
Footsteps clanged outside. Ian looked from the hatch, to the girl, to the hatch again. The girl leaned on it more heavily. There was a grunt from the person outside, but the hatch remained closed, and the footsteps moved on. Ian let his breath out in a heavy sigh, and opened his mouth to say something. The girl shook her head furiously and put her finger over her lips.
“Quiet” said the girl. “If they find us, they’ll kill you and maybe me. I’ve escaped one to many times, I’m afraid.”
Ian shut up, stunned by what he’d just heard. Kill? Who would want to kill him?
The girl held perfectly still for over a minute, eyes wide, ears straining. Then she suddenly relaxed. “Whew. They’re gone.”
She slowly collapsed to the floor, joints crumpling like sodden paper, and wiped sweat from her forehead. “That was close. Got anything to eat?”
The abrupt question startled him. “Er, yes.” He reached into the corner where he stored any food he could afford to save. Perishables he ate within a day or two, before mold could set in. Fortunately, there was a fresh folder that he’d scavenged from a receptacle the day before.
He held it out. “You can have some of it if you’d- ”
The girl snatched it from his fingers, tearing into the thin flour pastry and shredded nutroot filling. Within a second, it had vanished.
” -like.”
Our attempt at revision seems to be doomed, doesn’t it? *sigh* I guess I’ll just keep writing- somebody might show up.
Note- a folder is a sort of thin pastry folded over and filled with nutroot, which is a nutritious, genetically engineered root vegetable. It’s the equivalent of a sandwich.
~
The girl flopped down on the rough blanket, lying with her hands behind her head and staring at the corroded metal ducts that wriggled across the ceiling. She didn’t even look at him.
“Ian,” he introduced himself, extending his palm.
The girl didn’t take it, shutting her eyes. Ian gave up attempting to initiate a conversation, sliding down on the cold, metallic floor with a sigh, and trying to come to terms with what had just happened.
Who the kimm was this girl, and who was coming after her?
She obviously wasn’t Cerean- her complexion told him that much. She wasn’t tall enough to be Martian. Could she be Lunar? There were plenty of artificial-gravity centrifuges in the caverns and crevasses of Terra’s satellite. Living in one of those would certainly prevent the unnatural height that many low-gravity inhabitants reached. And there were a lot of weird cultural pockets left on Luna- the old moon had borne the brunt of the refugees from World War Last, so the various ethnic groups had stayed separate to some extent. He’d heard that there were still people there who spoke Hispan or Rossky or Mandrin, or even Anglis, instead of Solar.
Could it be the police chasing her? The public peace officers were little more than figureheads, but Ian knew that the mining corporations employed private police forces to apprehend criminals. She could be a dangerous felon- although that was hard to imagine about anyone who was no older than he. She could just be a vagrant, like him, but that wasn’t a capital offense as she’d implied. And vagrants didn’t carry knives around. Nobody carried knives around. He couldn’t imagine how she’d gotten it.
He sat there quietly for only a minute or two, until his curiosity got the better of him.
“Who’s chasing you?”
The girl was silent a moment, and then, with an odd and humorless half-smile, she said, “My parents.”
“What?” said Ian incredulously. “Great Solana, if you’ve got parents what are you doing here?” He waved his hand around the chilly space.
She turned large, blank green eyes on him. “Haven’t you been listening? I said they might kill me. They’re not your ordinary parents, kid.”
Thanks for coming back, Alice! Let’s write!
~
Ian’s forehead wrinkled in thought. “Abusive?”
She smiled that enigmatic, unnerving, soulless smile again. “You could say that.”
Ian was perplexed. This seemed like a plausible explanation, but he had a feeling there was something she wasn’t telling him. “Why haven’t you gone to the police?”
She threw back her head and laughed, a laugh with a brittle edge to it. “Police! I haven’t got enough money to afford their bribes. And what could the police do against them?”
“What do you mean?”
The girl continued smiling, but her eyes were like chips of peridot-flecked stone. “Stop asking me questions, kid. I’ve told you too much already. Hopefully I can get off Ceres before they find me.”
Ian started. Off Ceres? If she knew a way to get off-planet… he’d heard even some of the other asteroids were better places to live than Ceres, and Mars and Luna were paradises by comparison. He’d even live somewhere worse in exchange for a clean slate, as long as it was somewhere he could get a job and a rudimentary living space. He had no chance of that if he remained.
“You could get off Ceres?” he whispered.
The girl rolled her eyes, the most sincere expression he’d seen her make. “It’s not hard if you know the trick. Now shut up.” She rolled over and faced the wall.
“Could… could I come with you?”
She remained silent for so long that Ian gave up hope of a response, but just as he was turning away, she spoke. “It’s true, sometimes these things are easier with two people. But you’ll follow my instructions exactly, and if you slow me down or give me away, I will have no compunction about leaving you behind. Or worse. We go tomorrow. Good night, and shut the duvv up.” She snapped the tab on the glow-stick shut, and the room was plunged into darkness.
Ian was so ecstatic about her response that he barely heard her threat, or her expletive. Not that he’d have understood it- he wasn’t familiar with the more vulgar portions of the Cerean lexicon, let alone the Martian. However, he figured that celebrating might annoy her into changing her mind, so he lay down on the floor at the other end of the room and remained quiet.
Ian slept soundly that night, despite his uncomfortable bed, only stirred out of his somnolence once by the girl’s voice.
“Kari.”
“What?” Ian mumbled.
“My name’s Kari.” Then she turned over and went back to sleep. Ian did likewise.
So kimm and duvv are curse words, right? But duvv is Martian and it’s worse than kimm.
~
Inside the little room, there was no way of telling the time, but Ian was used to that. When he awoke, he crept to the maintenance hatch, careful not to disturb the sleeping Kari, and opened it enough to peek out. The lights were bright and he could see people. It was morning, if you could call it that.
He closed the maintenance hatch again, rubbing his eyes, and groped around for the glow-stick.
The thin light disturbed Kari, who opened her cold green eyes and looked up at him. For a few moments there was no sign of recognition, but then she smiled her odd little smile and sat up. “Morning?”
“Yes,” said Ian.
“No chance of breakfast, I take it,” said the girl, standing and stretching.
“We might find something on the way to wherever we’re going.”
She shrugged.
It’s amazing how fast a thread can go from dead to productive. *knock on wood* I’ll put this on DFTT.
209- I know.
“Let’s go,” she said. “We’ll have to move fast. I’m very conspicuous around here.”
Sticking the knife into her back pocket and pulling the hem of her shirt down to cover it, she reached for the hatch door.
“No!” Ian said. “We have to wait until there’s a big crowd on the other side of the tunnel. It’ll block the surveillance cameras.” He opened the hatch a crack and peered out.
The crowd was thin, but a gaggle of Lunar traders, jabbering loudly in Hispan, were approaching the opposite wall. Then- Ian could hardly believe his luck- they actually leaned up against it, still laughing and talking. They’d probably get a sanction for blocking the camera’s field of view, but Ian didn’t reflect on that. He tumbled out and dropped to the floor, Kari following him. By the time the Lunars had moved on, both had merged with the crowd.
The reason I couldn’t write was that I didn’t know how they were going to get off of Ceres. Any ideas?
212- To start with, the habitation drums are all in Ceres’s rocky core. The interplanetary trading and passenger ships are behemoths, bigger than some of the small asteroids, so they orbit around Ceres and send shuttles down and up to the surface. The shuttles are the ones that actually carry the goods and passengers; they belong to various small to medium-sized businesses, and they dock inside the interplanetary ships, which are usually owned by one of a few competitive megacorporations. There are also some special Belt shuttles which travel between the colonized asteroids. They don’t have fusion engines because their trips usually only take a few days. The thin, dusty crust of Ceres covers a mantle of water ice that separates the core and the surface. There are several tunnels through the ice which are maintained by regular up-and-down elevators, leading to the shuttle ports.
Kari is planning to get to the Louwborne Drum axis, where they can enter a zero-gravity (but still pressurized, so there’s oxygen) tunnel to the edge of the core. There, they’ll get aboard an illegal elevator which was built to serve the multitudes of stowaways (who want to get off-planet, but are usually too poor) and smugglers (who want to sneak a few extra crates of their own goods into the ships’ holds without paying the tariff). Then they’ll head through one of the pressurized tunnels on the surface, sneak aboard a Belt passenger shuttle, and wait. Kari hopes to reach another asteroid where the Parents aren’t keeping tabs on the shuttle departures. Then she’ll steal enough money to pay for an interplanetary trip (stowing away on an interplanetary ship is suicide- the oxygen supply is more carefully measured, and if the captain suspects that it’s going down faster than it should, he won’t hesitate to have the holds searched) and head for Luna or Mars.
Howzabout that?
213- That’s spiffing.
~
Kari walked very quickly through the crowd, with Ian trotting to keep up with her. He felt a slight pang as he remembered the library book, abandoned in his home, or former home, but he was soon too busy trying to keep track of the blond girl to think about it. One of the benefits of Kari’s speed was that by the time anyone noticed just how odd she was, she had already moved on. One of the downsides was that Ian was soon out of breath.
He ran a few steps and caught up with her, panting slightly. “So…where are we going?” he asked.
She stopped. “We’re here.”
A large, round metal door was before them, better polished than most of the other doors, and bearing the inscription, “To the Surface Elevators.”
Hispan=Spanish
Rossky=Russian
Mandrin=Mandarin Chinese
Anglis=English
Solar=Synthetic language: Esperanto? Loglan?
Kari spun the wheel, and the door swung soundlessly inward, revealing a crowded elevator. The passengers- mostly visitors from other asteroids, with a few Lunars and Martians mixed in- streamed out of the compartment, many staring curiously at Kari. She studiously ignored them, and boarded the elevator in the rush of outbound travelers.
A voice fuzzed through the old speakers on the roof. “You are approaching the drum axis. The acceleration of the elevator will create artificial gravity; however, upon leaving the elevator, you will be in Z-G. Please be prepared.”
The inner doors slid shut, and the elevator began to rise.
Ian turned to Kari, puzzled. “You’re planning to take a shuttle? You have the money?”
“Of course!” she said, rather more loudly than necessary for the benefit of the camera, then whispered, “We’ll talk about that later.”
215- I say Loglan.
217- But it’s so different from any other human language that I can’t see it being adopted by the refugees. I say Esperanto.
218- OK. I don’t see Esperanto as being very Sci-Fi-ish, but when you put it like that it makes sense.
Since Esperanto is very similar to a lot of languages, I think it’s the most plausible option for being adopted as a universal tongue. Of course, in the hundred years or so since the Evacuation, it’s evolved and changed- dropped obsolete words, added new slang… Like any living language.
Besides, Esperanto is just plain cool.
agreed.
A voice resounded from the hidden speakers. “You will enter Z-G in approximately thirty seconds. Please take hold of the handrail and brace yourself.”
Kari did so, shoving a couple of other passengers out of the way to make room in the overcrowded elevator. Ian followed suit, minus the shoving.
The elevator braked and began to slow down. Ian didn’t. Kari’s mouth curved up in wry amusement as he lost his grip, hit the ceiling and bounced off.
The door slid open onto a nearly circular passageway lit by harsh fluorescent bulbs. The passengers glided out into it with varying degrees of expertise. The Lunar traders, who had hardly ever been outside a centrifuge or an accelerating spaceship, were almost as clumsy as Ian was. One of them bumped against Kari. “L’ziento,” he said hurriedly, and struggled off.
Ian finally managed to maneuver himself out of the elevator by gripping the handrails and pushing off against the wall. The door slid shut with a clang.
“So… you have enough money to pay for a shuttle?” Ian asked again. There were no cameras in the tunnel.
Kari laughed harshly. Ian shuddered. The sound was somehow unnatural. There was not a particle of true mirth in it.
“Are you joking?” she replied. “Even with the money I stole from that stupid Lunie, I barely have enough to pay the fare for a smuggler elevator.”
Ian was flabbergasted. “You stole… Smuggler? Are you seriously… ”
“Of course. Do you want to get off-planet or not? Because there’s no way we’re going to do it legally.”
“L’ziento” is a corrupted form of “Lo siento,” the Spanish equivalent of “Sorry.”
224- Aha.
I’m sort of confused. No, I’m not confused. I just need Kari to steal some more money, and I don’t know how to do that.
225- She doesn’t need any more money, does she? After they take the elevator, they’re just going to stow away.
226- Oh. I thought they weren’t going to stow away. *reads previous posts* Oh. I get it now. They stow away to a different asteroid, then Kari steals the money, then they pay for a trip.
*understands*
Kari turned around, pushed off from the floor, ricocheted off the ceiling, and shot down the tunnel, straightening her body to reduce air resistance. Ian flailed around behind her, trying to keep up.
After the first few hundred yards, they began passing elevator doors. Kari ignored them, instead dropping to the floor and wrenching at a metal panel.
To Ian’s great surprise, it came away in her hands. A tunnel, lined with flapping streamers of ragged insulation, dropped away below them. Kari flipped over and sailed down headfirst.
Ian tried to imitate her smooth grace, and while he succeeded in getting inside the tunnel, he found himself in one of the most awkward position he had ever been in. Kari hovered impatiently a few yards behind him, and as soon as he had untangled his arms and legs, she maneuvered the panel shut. Blackness closed in automatically.
“Kari?” Ian whispered, afraid that she had left him behind. A glowstick snapped on, illuminating her face frighteningly close to his own. And then she was gone, practically flying downwards. Ian struggled after for what seemed like ages, but eventually they came to another door. Kari opened it and pushed Ian through. He hit a cold, metallic floor, and, sitting up and his arm where he landed, he noticed Kari was standing upright and realized that there was gravity here.
Kari snapped off the glowstick, letting the dim bulbs above their heads illuminate the dingy area in which they stood.
229- I assume this is some sort of area where the smuggler elevators can be boarded? If so, how is there gravity?
230- Yes it is, but…is there not supposed to be gravity? I don’t know. Hmm. OK. So I’ll rewrite that.
Ian struggled after for what seemed like ages, but eventually they came to another door. Kari opened it and pushed Ian through. He spun out of control, and smashed into the far wall. Tears of pain and exasperation sprang into his eyes. He grasped blindly for the nearest thing to anchor himself to, and floated there, clinging to a metal rod, until he felt sufficiently stable to let go. Kari snapped off the glowstick, letting the dim bulbs illuminate the area that they occupied.
231- No, there’s no gravity outside the habitation drums, except inside the elevators, where the acceleration creates artificial gravity.
“Shabby” was hardly the word for it. The chamber was roughly rectangular, riveted together out of overlapping, slightly crumpled metal plates. It must have had some sort of insulation system, but not a very good one: the cold ate into Ian’s bones, and his breath frosted in the air.
There were a couple dozen other people in the room; disheveled-looking men and women, dressed in multiple layers of synth-fiber clothing, a few with shock guns hanging from their belts. Most of them were standing protectively near a couple of large plastic crates. All were waiting near a row of elevator doors on the far wall.
((Note: since regular projectile guns are dangerous in spaceships and other enclosed environments- one bullet penetrates an outer wall, and bam, there goes your atmosphere- criminals have adapted. A shock gun fires a dart with two prongs at the tip, which contains a small high-wattage battery. The dart doesn’t travel fast, but it packs a mean punch if the prongs penetrate something- flesh, for instance- that can complete the circuit. They’re nonlethal, most of the time.))
Kari drifted over to stand near them, silently. Ian floundered after, attracting a few odd looks from the silent people.
Minor edit:
There were a couple dozen other people in the room; disheveled-looking men and women, dressed in multiple layers of synth-fiber clothing, a few with shock guns hanging from their belts. Most of them were floating protectively near a couple of large plastic crates. All were waiting near a row of elevator doors on the far wall.
As they watched, one of the doors slid open. Kari barged through the line, seemingly oblivious to the murderous looks some people gave her, and floated up to the smuggling elevator’s skinny operator. She pulled a wad of money out of her pocket. “Me, and the other kid.”
The man licked a grubby finger and filed through the hexagonal notes. “Lunar pesos? These ain’t worth much outside Nuevo Cruz and the Sea of Crises, girlie.”
“You know the exchange rates as well as I do,” Kari said coldly. “I’m waiting for my change. Cores or betrens, doesn’t matter to me.”
The operator grumbled, fished around in the depths of his billowing coat, and came up with a handful of Cerean cores. The metallic hemispheres changed hands, and Kari glided into the elevator. A few of the other passengers followed her, clutching their crates. Some had no luggage at all. Ian knew that the latter were stowaways, with no prospects and little money, who hoped for a better life on one of the other asteroids.
The others were a different matter. They were, without a shadow of a doubt, smugglers, trafficking in luxuries from the asteroids, trying to sneak their cargo on board a freighter without paying the tariff, to be picked up by colleagues on Mars or the Moon and sold on the black market. And these were the more innocent ones. Ian had heard of far shadier enterprises- genetically modified narcotics grown in illegal orbiting habitats, stolen treasures worth thousands of cores- even a few cases of smuggled uranium. He shuddered, thinking about the last example. Even after World War Last had destroyed three-quarters of the world population and irrevocably damaged Terra’s ecosystem in the process, people still had a desire to acquire the dreadful weaponry that had accomplished it.
The operator heaved down on a tarnished lever, and with a jerk, the elevator began to shoot upward. The return of gravity was a relief to Ian, but it was small comfort. He was tightly crowded within a group of sneering, dangerous men. The elevator was not in good repair, and Ian thought he heard the faint hiss of an air leak once or twice.
After a few moments, the elevator stopped, and Ian once again experienced the unpleasant sensation of having no control over his direction. He tried to minimize embarrassment by floating perfectly still, but Kari floated expertly out as soon as the door opened, and he was obliged to follow clumsily.
The passengers struggled through a dark, narrow crawl space, elevator operator in the lead. “Hold it… ” he whispered. “One, two, three, NOW!”
He gave a sudden heave to the roof, and a panel clanged aside. The group fountained out into a small, little-used storage space. Boxes were strapped to the floor, walls and ceiling with little regard for the concept of “down.” There was gravity, if that was the word for the negligible attraction to the floor, but it was almost nonexistent. Things didn’t fall, they drifted.
“Go out the door in small groups,” the operator said. “Large ones attract attention.” Having fulfilled his duty to his customers, he dove back into the passage and pulled the panel back over the opening.
I like all this…what is this thread, anyway?
240- Well, we were writing a sci-fi RRR. Then we finished it, and started editing it on this thread. In the process, we did some research and found bad science popping out of the woodwork. So we corrected the science, and now we’re rewriting it.
240- It’s an RRR.
The passengers glanced around at each other. For all of five seconds, no one moved. there seemed a strange sort of reluctance to go through the small metal door, as though it led to some deeply unpleasant fate. Even Kari looked a little nervous, and the glance she shot Ian was not a friendly one. “We have to be fast,” she said to him, her quiet words laden with warning. “I’m not going to risk my neck for you, and if you can’t keep up, don’t expect me to rescue you.”
Ian nodded gravely. If he was caught… Stowing away was punishable by enormous fines and years in prison. Being a penniless urchin would only add to the charges.
“Go!” she whispered fiercely, and they sprang out into the passage beyond.
Kari hit the ground running, going in great, floating bounds that took her almost thirty feet to a stride. Panic at being left behind lent Ian speed, and after a few desperate minutes he settled into a rhythm only slightly behind Kari.
“What now?” he asked her anxiously.
“Now,” she replied without looking at him, “now… Now you just do as I do. Act like you belong.”
He nodded. Silence reigned briefly, but then they came into view of the official elevators, and Kari stopped, flattening herself against a shadowy wall. Ian followed suit, trying not to stare at the security camera not too far away. This seemed idiotic. Surely they would be spotted.
“Won’t they see us?” he asked.
“Not if this elevator shows up soon.” Kari, too, was staring at the security camera.
Ian frowned, puzzled. “How does that work?”
“It swivels,” said the girl shortly.
“Oh! And right now it’s swiveled away.”
“Yes.”
A beep and flash announced that the elevator was about to arrive. As the crowd of people exited, Kari mingled, becoming just another tourist on her way to the shuttle.
OK, I don’t have enough time to catch up, but if interplanetary travel existed wouldn’t each flight be really spaced apart from the others? Like at least a couple months?
245- Interplanetary, yes, but they’re just taking a Belt shuttle to another asteroid- about three times as far away from Ceres as the Earth is from the Moon, so it would take less than a month for the ship to get there and back.
245- They might have a few running at a time, like a ferry service.
247-I know. I’m just thinking that you’d wait uh… however long, then maybe 30 ships would go off at once to reach the destination.
246-yeah… okay. maybe longer…
“Everyone else has turned in their boarding passes already,” she whispered to Ian. “From here on, we’re legal.”
Ian let out the breath he didn’t realize he had been holding. “So the hard part’s over?”
“No. The hard part is getting off. They’ll cross-check the list of people on the ship with the list of people who paid. We’ll have to sneak off before they disembark.”
Take away a third of our writers, and we’re left with a dying thread.
246- If it takes three days to reach the Moon (which I think it does), so nine days for the entire journey to the other asteroid. OK. Nine days. Long time. But oh well.
“Oh.” Ian’s heart sank. Whatever that meant, he didn’t like the sound of it.
“Don’t worry,” said Kari, “you’ll have nine days* to get used to the idea.”
Nine days to get caught, thought Ian pessimistically. He was beginning to wish he’d turned back sooner. “Do we get food?” he asked, wistfully remembering the folder Kari had devoured.
“If you pay for it,” said Kari.
Ian’s hopes fell down through three stories and shattered on the ground.
*Technically a Cerean day wouldn’t be the same as a Terran day, so on the asteroids/planets a “day” is twenty-four hours and has nothing to do with the sun.
250- I still lurk and write occasionally. We’ll make it.
Kari Walks thru a door way into a Cargo Hold.
“Shh. Follow. Some people sneak food in the baggage. under Sol Republic Law, this isn’t allowed, so lets ‘Even out’ the balance.”
Ian Swallows. “We’re going to steal?”
Kari Looks at him. ” We’ve snuck aboard a Ship, Out witted the police, and Your Associating with a Criminal! We Both have, at least!, a Double Death Sentence. And your worried about Stealing?”
Ian looks down at feet. He knew it was stupid of him, after all he’s done, but he was still worried about it,
252- Nitpick: in the Re-imagined Universe, there is no united Solar Republic. Other than that, it works out.
252- Remember your tenses and apostrophes, TMFA! So that would actually be:
Kari Walked through a doorway into a Cargo Hold.
“Shh. Follow. Some people sneak food in the baggage. Under Sol Republic Law, this isn’t allowed, so let’s ‘Even out’ the balance.â€
Ian Swallowed. “We’re going to steal?â€
Kari looked at him. †We’ve snuck aboard a Ship, Outwitted the police, and You’re Associating with a Criminal! We both have, at least!, a Double Death Sentence. And you’re worried about Stealing?â€
Ian looked down at feet. He knew it was stupid of him, after all he’d done, but he was still worried about it.
253- What is there instead? Cerean law?
254- Yes, I believe Cerean law would be it.
TMFA, what’s with the Strange Capitalization?
I left the capitalization in case it was important, but it’s bugging me to no end.
Kari bent down and began rummaging through the stacked bags, holding onto the wall to keep from drifting away. “We’re in a luggage module,” she explained. When Ian looked blank, she continued. “The Belt shuttles and the interplanetaries are usually owned by the big mining corps, and the modules by private organizations or small businesses, who pay a fee to transport their passengers or cargo aboard the shuttles, to other asteroids, or to Luna or Mars. The luggage carriers are too cheap to have security cameras in the holds- most of them, anyway- so we’re probably safe.”
She straightened up, triumphant, holding a sealed plastic bag of folders in one hand and a suitcase full of betren notes in the other. “Once we reach Gracchus*, we can pay for passage on an interplanetary. Their security is tighter, so stowing away would be suicide.”
Ian felt it was time to ask a few questions. Common sense warned him against it, but curiosity won out. “Why do you need to get off Ceres, anyhow? Who’s chasing you?”
“If that was any of your business, Cerean… ” She half rose, then stopped, staring up at a winking red light on the ceiling.
“Crezzit!” she swore. “They’ve got cameras! They’ll be coming down to the hold right now!”
She began digging through the smugglers’ crates with feverish energy, finally pulling out a pair of shock guns.
Er, POSOC, you put an asterisk by Gracchus but didn’t explain it.
Kari tossed one of the guns to Ian. He stared at her, and then at the gun, and then Kari again.
“Oh, duvv. You don’t know how to work it, do you?”
“No,” said Ian, and then added, “sorry.”
“Give it back, then,” she said, and snatched it from him. “Just hit ’em over the head with a suitcase or something.”
Ian didn’t like the idea of hitting someone over the head, whether it was with a suitcase or not, but it was better than using a shock gun, so he picked up a long, thin cylinder made of metal. It was surprisingly heavy but easier to wield than the other options. Kari gave it a startled glance.
“What’s that for?” she asked, but Ian couldn’t answer, because at that moment the guards came in and there was no more time to think.
Kari fired off both shock guns at once, and two of the guards staggered, one falling to the ground and the other being whacked across the kneecaps with Ian’s cylinder.
258- Crezzit, I always do that. My reasoning is that many asteroids just have numbers today, instead of names, but once people started living in and around them they couldn’t just say, “Oh, I’m on a trip to C433- might stop at C763.” So they came up with names. Gracchus is an asteroid whose orbit passes close to Ceres’s at the time of the story.
Sorry about the tense. Screenwriting to novel writing.
and I’m just having truble with the Shift Key.
260- Ooh, I can totally sympathize with both of those things. Except my shift key doesn’t capitalize things, and yours does.
Don’t Write to much until Satuday!
262- Trust me, we won’t. Particularly since POSOC said somewhere or other that he wouldn’t have a computer for a week.
I’m Back!
264- Yay! -cherry and sci-fi pies-
Mm-K, that’s all good. Now that we’re back, let’s write!
I will. Today. I promise.
266- That’s what I told M three days ago.
267- OK, I didn’t. But it was no fault of mine, I was too busy this evening.
I’ll write today if events permit.
Dang, I remembered but I can’t think of anything.
The scene I have in mind establishes Kari as absolutely heartless. Is that OK?
270- That’s perfect. Of course Kari’s absolutely heartless.
((There’s no gravity in here, is there? We’ll have to fix some of the earlier story posts…))
Kari pushed off from the ceiling, drifting down over one of the dazed, moaning men. She gently placed her palm in front of his nose, then pushed. The moans ceased.
It took a moment for Ian to realize what had happened. When he did, an odd feeling took possession of him that was more than microgravity nausea. The world swam and spun, and his heart was thumping away somewhere in his ragged boots. “You…” He swallowed, mouth dry. “You killed him… ”
The other man tried to get to his feet, but Kari fired her gun again, and he spun in midair, twitching. “Of course,” she said. “Knocking him out would have been too messy, and he’d have woken up eventually and caused trouble.” She pushed off the floating body, drifting towards the unconscious guard, and pulled out her knife.
Ian seized her wrist. “No! You can’t… ”
That was as far as he got. Kari was unbelievably strong. After a confused, spinning moment, he slammed painfully into the wall. His arm was somehow twisted behind his back, and the knife was at his throat.
“Listen, kid, I do what I need to, and I get rid of anything in my way. That includes you. Clear?”
((What Kari doing with the knife???))
273- She’s threatening Ian.
As I re-read it, I come to realize that that scene may be a bit over-the-top… but on the other hand, it seems like a good way of emphasizing that she’s so desperate to escape the Parents that she’ll commit murder to do it.
274- Really? I didn’t think it was over-the-top at all. Not like the electrocution in the last version. -shudders-
275- I thought it might be overdoing it a bit, because this scene implies that her plan was to kill the entire crew if they were discovered. Thjejnf SOrry i cnat type because the cat is rubbign against my hand right now. I’m moving the computer off the couch.
Ian nodded, carful not to hit the knife.
“Good.” She withdrew the knife away, and made a mark on the Gaurds Arms.
“There.”
Continuing…
The crew of the module, that is.
Now how do we solve this problem? Perhaps the rest of the crew rushes in, armed, and Ian and Kari, dispute forgotten, bolt together. They leave through another hatch, which Kari locks, and… YES! I have it! Kari doesn’t want to kill them all (for entirely practical reasons: a few people occasionally die in altercations with discovered smugglers, but something as shocking as a mass murder would draw the sort of attention she doesn’t want, from both police and Parents), so she locks the other hatch, trapping them inside. Then she launches the module, right on schedule, and docks with the Belt shuttle. Of course, the police have been notified, but the pilot of the shuttle places a higher priority on breaking orbit at the correct time (if he’s even a few seconds off, the different orbits of Ceres and his destination will mean that his plotted course will miss it altogether, and he’ll probably get sued for more money than the police can fine him) over the orders of the Cerean authorities. So they’re off to Gracchus, with the module’s facilities at their disposal.
276- Well, yeah.
277- Wait, what? Why would she do that?
278- YES.
An edited version of post 277:
Ian nodded, careful not to hit the razorlike blade of the knife.
“Good.†She withdrew the knife away, and made a mark on the Guards’ arms.
“There. Finished…”
282- Por que are you editing that?
8-= I don’t know. thats the point of why I stop it there.
284- There’s no logical reason for her to put a mark on the guard’s arms, though. Inventing convoluted explanations for actions that the writer didn’t think through is a road to disaster on RRRs.
I was thinking that she put it there to make it look like he was killed by something else.
286- Oh. Well, it’s already obvious he was killed by a blow to the nose (forcing the cartilage up into the brain), so there’s not much point in faking another cause of death.
OK, I’m adapting TMFA’s continuation, if that’s all right.
Ian nodded, careful not to hit the knife. There was something in Kari’s eyes… something strange, inhuman, insane…
She shook her head angrily, then kicked off from the wall, garments fluttering. She came to a halt next to the supine man, raising the knife.
Ian caught his breath. He knew she would kill the man, and anyone else who interfered with her. That included him- she’d said so. But he had to try to stop this murderous girl from leaving a trail of death through the Belt. Did his desire to get off Ceres… to keep living… overrule the number of other lives that she would take? Was he that much of a coward?
The door burst open with a hiss, and several men and women tumbled through it. None carried guns, but one clutched a large pipe. They tried to orient themselves in mid-air, glancing warily around. The pipe-carrier called out into the hold. “Sar? Darjeel? Where are… ”
Kari stiffened as they focused on her, then made a leap for the far side of the room, going unusually far even for a microgravity jump. Ian followed, flailing wildly.
((Who are they? What are/who is Sar and Darjell?))
Sar and Darjeel are the guards. The other people are the rest of the crew, who came down to check why they hadn’t come back yet.
285- You don’t say.
“Hey!” cried one of the crew. “What did you do–” But it was too late, Kari had scrambled through the hatch on the opposite side of the module. Ian wriggled after her, desperately. For one frantic moment he felt a hand on his ankle, and then Kari’s hands fastened around his wrists and he was pulled through the hatch. Kari slammed it shut and locked it.
I’m not sure how this module is laid out, so I’m actually rather desperately confused. Could someone explain?
Me too.
292, 293- The hold is at the back of the module. In front of it are the crew’s living quarters, and at the tip is the cockpit (the crew are mainly just there for backup, most of the actual flying is handled by the computer). There are two exits from the hold: one at the back, which leads into a long corridor that runs above the hold, and one at the front. Kari and Ian will leave through the back entrance, close it, and close the front entrance.
294- ‘K. Thanks.
“Thanks,” said Ian shakily. “I–”
“Can’t have you blabbing, can we?” said Kari tersely. Ian felt curiously deflated. For a brief moment he had entertained the thought that Kari was playacting, that she wouldn’t really kill him. But why wouldn’t she? She had killed the guard, after all… He shuddered.
Kari was already walking quickly–her quickness definitely enhanced by the fact that each step took her three times as far as it would in normal gravity–along the narrow corridor. Ian followed without much difficulty, feeling ridiculously proud that he could almost keep up.
The corridor was several yards long, with a few doors opening off on each side. Ian opened one and found a little bathroom. Another opened into a small room with shelves of food–nothing exotic, unfortunately, from Luna or the Terran Gardens, but food nonetheless.
He would have liked to look at the other rooms as well, but Kari had already left the corridor, so he hurried after her.
The corridor opened up into what Ian could only assume was the crew’s communal space. There were several comfortable-looking chairs, and a little metal table with with a game of Ixet* laid out and then abandoned.
Kari was locking the other hatch as he came in. “There,” she said with a self-satisfied look. “We’ll launch with the shuttle and disembark on Gracchus before anyone notices anything. Come on.” There was a door opposite where Ian stood with a neat plaque reading “Cockpit” and it was through this that Kari half-floated, half-walked. Ian trailed obediently after.
The cockpit was a minuscule room with two built-in chairs, a control board full of very complicated-looking levers and buttons, and a computer. Kari plopped down in one of the chairs (as well as one can plop in microgravity) and strapped herself in, and Ian, not knowing what else to do, followed suit.
“Do we have to fly this thing?” he asked uncertainly. It looked very difficult.
“Of course not,” scoffed Kari. “The computer does that.”
“Oh.” After a few moments, he spoke again. “Should we feed the crew, or something?”
“There’s plenty of food in the hold,” Kari said.
“Oh.”
The silence was just beginning to be unbearable when a voice spoke, a slightly tinny male voice. “Launching in ten seconds. Ten…nine…eight…” Ian counted silently with him, mouthing the numbers. “Two…one.”
*Ixet: A game rather like Mancala, designed to be played in low gravity. Ian only knows about from the space-faring novels he gets from the library, and the boasts of his fellow orphan-vagabonds.
Oh, right. The Terran Gardens are sort of like the PTHs, except that they provide food instead of just being scenery.
And I feel that we’re losing Ian’s bookishness in this version.
296- We can fix that with a little addition to the first few paragraphs.
Hello?
…lo….
……lo….
………o….
Wow, sure is echoey in here.
298- I’m here!! And we’re close to getting a new thread!
Hello!
Wow, where did you guys come from? Why do I have these cobwebs in my hair? -plucks cobwebs from hair-
A chill wind blew through the empty hall, coming from one of the numerous chinks in the crumbling walls. Alice sighed and put her chin in her fist. “Come on,” she said aloud to no one (for the hall was empty). “It’s held out for so long, against abandonment and misunderstandings and editing and being lost–you can’t give up on it now!”
What do you want?
“Ah!” Alice leapt to her feet. “You’re here! We must write.”
POSOC groaned. The RRR-RPG virus had spread beyond the Alchemy RRR. He supposed it was inevitable, but he hadn’t expected it to happen this fast.
“All right,” he said. “I know a new thread is tempting once you reach 300+ posts, but I don’t think we should ask for that yet. This RRR is too fragile to withstand an influx of neophytes. Our small team of Terraformed veterans, nurturing and caring for it, may yet make it strong enough to face the public, but too many cooks spoil the broth, especially if they’ve never made this kind of soup before.” He whistled, and Smoleeon popped into four dimensions on his shoulder, scampering down to his left hand. POSOC poised his fingers over the typewriter. “Let’s begin. Note that escape velocity on Ceres is substantially lower than on Earth, and thus Ian and Kari do not feel the crushing weight which Earth astronauts did.”
~
The liftoff was very gradual. Ian felt a gentle sense of increasing weight, as though his body was filling with liquid lead. Just as it became uncomfortable, it abruptly vanished, leaving him drifting again. The rapid change left him with a nauseating feeling in the pit of his stomach.
“Great,” Kari said, noting his expression. “If you get spacesick, throw up in the bathroom – I’m not having vomit floating around in here. You even know how to use a micrograv toilet?”
“Um… ”
She gritted her teeth. “Pull up the manual on the computer, then. This is going to be a long trip.”
.Alice shrugged. “Sorry,” she said, remorselessly. “I figured it would attract more attention than the standard ‘Where is everybody?’. And it did.” She grinned. “Plus, it gave me an idea.”
She peered over POSOC’s shoulder at what he was writing. “That’s good, but I can’t think of –”
OK, I can’t handle the RPG format any longer. It’s so much easier to respond to other people’s comments without it.
I can’t think of a continuation, as I was saying before I left off the narration.
As to your comment on not getting a new thread, I don’t think it’s necessary, but on the other hand, I don’t believe that anyone would try to join this. After all, new threads haven’t done much in the past, have they? But still, I agree with you.
~~~
About two hours later, Ian relised just how long this trip was.
how long is the trip?
“I don’t remember,” POSOC said. “Someone worked it out on this thread, I know that. I think it was me.” He shuffled through the multitude of crumbling papers settled around the typewriter. “AH! Post 246.” He held up the relevant paper. “This is what I said: ‘245- Interplanetary, yes, but they’re just taking a Belt shuttle to another asteroid- about three times as far away from Ceres as the Earth is from the Moon, so it would take less than a month for the ship to get there and back.’ The Apollo missions took about…” He pulled a heavy reference book off the shelf and thumbed through it. “Four days to get to the Moon. That means approximately twelve days until the Belt shuttle arrives.” He turned to TMFA. “By the way, your continuation skips the entire process of docking with the shuttle. The module itself doesn’t travel to Gracchus: it hooks up with the spaceship in orbit, along with a bunch of others. We should write that sequence.”
308- how long after they got on whould that take?
“Only a couple of minutes, I would think.”
POSOC took off his sopping-wet raincoat and walked through the empty hall, footsteps echoing forlornly. He fed a new sheet of paper into the typewriter – and stopped, pondering.
“Cake it, I have writer’s jump,” he said, partly to himself, partly to anyone or anyThing lurking in the dusty corners of the shadowy hall. “I have a great idea for a scene later on in the story, but have no inspiration for the current portion. And doing a “Twelve Days Later” thing would be a complete cop-out.
Well, if I can’t write, at least I can hash out a few ideas for what should happen en route to Gracchus. No wild plot twists – one of the greatest problem with RRRs is that everyone wants to write something exciting, and thus they always move too fast. This section ought to be heavy on characterization – show a bit more of Kari’s callousness, with possibly a few more hints dropped at a horrible past, and maybe a bit of introspection from Ian.”
He typed up his ideas, pulled out the sheet and added it to the Notes and Brainstorming pile. Then he pulled on his rain-coat and walked out of the building into the gathering storm.
Alice, laying comatose in a corner of the hall, stirred slightly as POSOC’s finger clacked over the typewriter. The heavy doors slammed ominously on the POSOC’s retreating back, and Alice came fully to life.
“Sorry,” she said to the air. “Must have dozed off. Wung buttons, what a nightmare! Piles of homework and extracurricular activities around every corner!” She faltered, and looked down at a sheet of blue paper.
TKAM • Read Chapters 2 & 3. Answer these questions to use as notes–
“Cake!” she exclaimed. “It’s real!”
She typed a quick note on the typewriter:
Guys– Really sorry I have homework galore and three acting projects plus a bike with a flat tire very little time will return at when some of my activities have abated.
–Alice
TMFA Looks up at POSOC and Alice. “wake me when there at Gracchus. Or it we can include Space Pirates. Or if
I have an Idea.”
“How should I know if you have an idea?” Alice grumbled, laying down a sheet of paper. “It’s your brain.” She sighed. “I don’t know how to write the docking piece. Not that I have time if I did,” she added, bending once more to her Spanish homework.
“Cake this,” POSOC swore. “There are three people left who pay attention to this thread, and none of them have ideas. Well, I’m sick of it. Tomorrow I’m writing this sequence, and furthermore I will make euph well sure that it captivates the reader, no matter how stunningly boring it is to the writer.”
Alice laid aside her Real Life for the moment. “Homework, housework, stress, homework, repeat. It’s the weekend and I’m going to forget all of it and write. I had intended to go with my usual routine of scrapping all my stories and starting over, but unless POSOC is really dying to write the docking scene, I guess I could do this.”
“Writer’s block still. If you’re willing to lighten the load, I would appreciate it greatly, and I’m here to back you up with some quick research if you’re not sure about the scientific aspect.”
“Well, that was terribly inconsiderate of me. I offered to write and then I forgot all about it. I’ll do it this weekend, and if I forget, POSOC can yell at me via e-mail until I remember.”
Alice’s eyes fluttered open. She yawned and stretched. “Sorry, guys, must’ve dozed off.” Her eyes caught sight of the calendar and her jaw dropped. “A MONTH? I was asleep for a MONTH? Why didn’t anyone wake me up?” She looked around the room. TMFA and POSOC were still asleep, TMFA draped over the table and POSOC nodding at the typewriter. “I see. Well, I’ve had enough of it!” Gently nudging POSOC aside, she took the typewriter and set it on the table in front of her. Resting her chin on her hand, she considered a moment, and then began to write.
——–
The voice crackled through the speakers again. “We are now in orbit. All luggage modules must now dock.”
Kari guided the module expertly into a provided slot on the larger shuttle. Ian, growing used to the lack of gravity, felt his nausea abate slightly.
—-
Alice stopped her typing. “Now, can anyone think of a continuation?” she asked.
POSOC stirred. “It’s nearly 10 PM, but I think I may be able to continue this. Hang on…”
He collapsed over the keyboard, muttering “Wake me tomorrow.”
POSOC rose from his stupor. “I have no homework this evening, so I have no excuse not to do this. Coming up.”
~
There was a jarring vibration as the clamps locked into place, then an ever-so-slight acceleration. The shuttle was breaking orbit.
Kari strapped herself into the seat in front of the computer, hair drifting around her head like a halo. She pulled up the information database and began scrolling through it at maximum speed, text flickering past the screen. It was a section dealing with asteroidal trade politics, Ian saw as he came closer. There were notes in parentheses all through it, though, added by the many crew members of the old module. He tried to read one: This place isn’t worth the rock they… It went past before he finished. He didn’t see how Kari could read anything at that speed. She was probably just-
“Go away,” she said under her breath.
“How did- ”
“I heard you breathing. Go.”
Ian pushed off at an angle and glided out the door. As he left the room, he heard Kari muttering, “Crezzit, there must be something here! They can’t hide it from everyone!”
~
“Kari is looking through the database,” POSOC explained, “in order to find out which asteroids will be involved in Project Neoterra. She knows virtually no details, only that it will ‘uproot worlds’ and such grandiose, zealous propaganda, and of course the basic idea that it involves terraforming Mars, and she’s been gleaning as much information as she can. She doesn’t do this out of a desire to stop it, only out of a desire to be as far away as possible when it happens. At this point, her only motivation is fear of the Parents, as the only person she ever cared about, Kerj, is as good as dead. Plenty of opportunity for character development.
She’s using a Container speed-reading technique – remembering the shapes of letters and words without comprehending them, turning reading into a purely visual exercise of the right brain. Later, she’ll go back over the memories to analyze them and convert them into information.”
He turned to the small group. “How’s that look for a start?”
Alice applauded softly. “That’s wonderful,” she said with a smile, which dropped a second later. “I, on the other hand, do have homework, and I have spent far too much time syncing my new iPod. I’ll think about a continuation while I slog through the mindless fill-in-the-blanks chore that is Spanish homework.”
“I hear you,” POSOC sighed. “I’ve got to get ready for school now, but I don’t anticipate much homework tonight, either, so I’ll be able to continue.”
I don’t know what to do. I can go back to sleep? I PROMISE I’ll write after NaNo.
The days passed in monotonous routine. Ian became used to the bland, dry space rations, the subtleties of movement in Z-G, the occasional hammering on the door of the hold, but he couldn’t get used to Kari.
The girl frightened him more and more. She spent much of her time hunched in front of the computer, speed-reading data and jotting things down- on paper, not in a word processor. Her notes were totally incomprehensible. Although her handwriting was clear and well-formed, many of the words, and even the letters, were unfamiliar to him. It was no language Ian knew.
When she wasn’t engaging in this strange research, she was performing odd calisthenics or meditating with her eyes shut, whispering a soft, quick cadence under her breath. She ate and drank in swift, large gulps, like a predator wary of something stealing its kill, and she never slept more than four hours at a time. She treated him coldly at her best, and he kept remembering the moment when she’d killed the crewman in cold blood.
Yet her presence was somehow comforting, something relatively familiar in a strange world. She continued to tolerate him, even to help him at times, no matter how self-interested her motives. It was that and his dream of a new beginning on Gracchus that kept him going whenever he thought of the dead crewman, the rest of the crew trapped in the hold, or the fact that he was now undeniably a criminal.
Ian tried to shake the latter thought out of his mind.
Ian tried to shake the latter thought out of his mind..
There were no official records regarding him beyond Ceres, and the asteroids didn’t share information as insignificant as the location of a juvenile delinquent. He’d just quietly disappear and reappear on Gracchus. In practice, the government couldn’t run background checks on everyone. He might even be able to get a job. He’d have to work hard, but it would be far easier than scrounging food and sleeping in abandoned rooms.
But even so, he couldn’t help feeling a twinge of guit about the whole thing. He had done nothing wrong, and Kari would undoubtedly have carried out her plans whether or not he had been there to watch. But still…he tried to keep his mind from running over every scene in which Kari had done something criminal, and reached for his book.
For an hour, he tried to lose himself in the story. It was what he’d always done when life got too much for him. He’d read almost anything, from soppy Martian romances to dry scientific texts, but his favorites were the books about Terra before WWL. The Cerean library didn’t get enough funding to buy the books from Terra. Every single cc of available cargo space on the evacuation ships had been allocated for the frightened masses of humanity. A few books had been stored on computers on the Moon and the fledgling colonies beyond it, but even then life beyond Earth had been one of necessity over luxury.
Ian was completely immersed in a vivid description of a Martian sunset when the small alert light beside his bunk began to blink gently. Gravity, or at least the semblance of gravity caused by acceleration, was returning. They’d left the Belt shuttle. Guided unerringly by the pilot program, the module was dropping out of orbit, toward the surface of Gracchus
Ian quickly snatched a scrap of paper from the folder next to his bunk, marked his place, and unbuckled the straps. Finally, he thought as he glided toward the door. This nightmare was almost over. This time next week, he’d have forgotten Kari had ever existed, or tried to.
Is Gracchus hollowed out like Ceres?
332- I would assume so, but if you want to set up a different system, that’s fine with me: it would add variety. Just research plausibility first.
333- Oh, cause I’m so great at making new systems. I don’t even understand the ones you make up.
334- Er… *whistles* Let’s just say it’s the same as Ceres, k?
He made it about halfway down the corridor outside before the guidance rockets kicked in and the force of gravity reasserted itself. Ian struck the floor and got shakily to his feet, trying to remember how his legs worked.
Kari appeared in the doorway, eyes dancing with barely concealed contempt. “We need to get off as quickly as possible.” She spun on her heel, not at all inconvenienced by the increased gravity, and marched out. Ian wobbled after her.
“What’s the hurry?” he gasped. His pulse was racing. He was thankful, at least, that they were landing on an asteroid and not on a higher-gravity planet like Mars. “We’re clear now, aren’t we?”
“Really?” Kari didn’t bother to turn around. “With a five-man crew prepared to swear that two kids matching our description killed one of their friends and locked them in the storage compartment? With our fingerprints and DNA all over the controls? I disabled the cameras, but that won’t be enough.”
There was a sudden grating thump as the module touched down and locked into place. Kari sped up, Ian striving to catch up with her. He noticed that they weren’t heading for the main hatch, but towards a small emergency exit.
Kari spun the handle, and there was a hiss as the door unsealed and swung open. Another door opened directly behind it, revealing a narrow hallway, walls plastered with hazard signs and decompression warnings. As soon as Ian was through, Kari shut and sealed the hatch behind them.
She visibly relaxed, breathing deeply, but remained alert. Her eyes darted around the room until she saw what she was looking for – a small pane of plastic, halfway up the wall.
Kari pulled a small, sealed bag from her pocket, half full of greasy black sludge. Carefully, she approached the pane and squeezed a middling-sized gob of liquid over it. Almost immediately, the sludge spread out into an opaque film.
“Amazing things, genmods,” she said to no-one in particular. “They’ll have to scrape that mold off with a chisel if they want that camera to work again.” With that, she took off at a run, in great drifting leaps, Ian matching her pace. But they hadn’t gone far before there was a deep, rumbling thump behind them. The floor trembled slightly, and a slow, whooping alarm began to bellow through the passage.
“What did you do!” Ian almost shouted.
“Fuel leak,” Kari replied, her voice devoid of emotion. “It doesn’t happen much on these modern ships, but when it does… a single spark can set it off, and you can kiss everything inside goodbye. Doesn’t usually penetrate the hull, though.”
Ian blinked as the full horror of the deed struck him. The book tumbled from his suddenly numb hand and fell to the floor. A slip of paper slid out, the same one he’d absently grabbed to mark his place.
It was a photograph of the man Kari had killed. He looked younger, although that could have been because of the poor quality of the image. He was holding a baby. A few lines of angular Mandrin characters were scribbled across the top.
Oh, God.
“Kari…” he said dully. She had resumed her flight, and didn’t turn around, or appear to have heard his voice, but he knew she had. Kari heard everything.
“Kari, I want to leave,” he said. He was obliged to run himself, in order to continue speaking to her, and as it is not easy to run and talk at the same time, the serious tone in his voice was rather lost in his breathlessness.
“Suit yourself,” she said, as coldly as before. “You know you won’t get far, though.”
Ian knew it. What he didn’t know was what he ought to do. “You killed them, Kari!” he cried, begging, pleading, but he didn’t know for what. Remorse? Apology? It hardly mattered what she felt, as long as she felt something, anything, to distinguish her from a breathing, walking machine. “They had families, Kari!”
No response.
“Look!” he said, thrusting the paper into Kari’s face. “He was a person! They were all people!”
She shrugged. “So? Are you leaving, or not?”
Ian’s face fell, and he slowed to a stop, thrusting the paper into his pocket. “Good-bye, Kari,” he said, turning away and beginning to trudge back the way he had come–as well as anyone can trudge in low gravity.
But there were footsteps and shouts around a bend in the corridor, and all of Ian’s resolve vanished as he heard them. He whirled and sped after Kari.
337- Awesome.
I don’t know what made me say that. Your writing is usually awesome to one degree or another, but this… it just clicked, somehow.
I think we should introduce the Parents soon. There’s really nothing else to tie Kari and Ian together now. I have a few ideas in that direction, but I have to go to bed in a few minutes.
338- Thanks.
That means a lot to me, since I haven’t appreciated my own writing for simply ages (I don’t think many people do), so I like it all the more when other people appreciate it.
And yes, we do need to introduce the Parents, but I’m not sure how to do it, short of Kari telling Ian about Project Neoterra, and I don’t know what would make her do something like that.
Oh, gosh, bed. Yes. I’d quite forgotten. Now I think of it, though, I’m suddenly exhausted.
339- I was thinking of a more… direct introduction, as in, they show up at the spaceport and capture Kari, as well as Ian because he’s been associating with her and they want to find out why before killing him.
340- Oh yes! In the original story they did capture Kari and Ian–I can’t remember why–and that was how Kerj was introduced! I suppose the people running after them could be the Parents. That would be terribly exciting.
341- Hmm… First we ought to figure out how they found out she was going to Gracchus. Oh, I know! Howzabout this:
The Containers tracked her to Ceres, but she lost them. From analyzing her previous pattern of capture/escape/run/repeat, they figured she’d be going off-planet, so after a few interrogations, they found the elevator operator and bribed him. As there is at least one Container on most major asteroids, they didn’t even have to travel, just notify their operative and have him wait to collect Kari. (Kari doesn’t yet know how widespread their operation is, she just thinks that they’re very, very good at following her.)
OOH! Idea! The Parents have been telling the Containers that they will inherit Neoterra, but that is, in fact, a lie. In secret, the Parents have been using the knowledge and experience they gained from engineering the Containers to create their real heirs apparent, the Children. Once the Twofold Project has been completed, there will no longer be any need for secrecy or for storage of good genes, so both the Containers’ purposes will be fulfilled. They’ll either be exiled or exterminated.
Another idea! Jaa has discovered this (hyperintelligent Container + access to the genetics program = kiss your “secrets” goodbye) and that’s why he went renegade.
342- Excellent all!
One question: did we ever decide that Kari wasn’t actually from Terra? I feel like we did; I seem to recall you saying something about a test-tube baby, but I’m not sure…
-does research- Yeah, she’s not from Terra. They’re all genetically engineered.
I’m trying to think of both rebuttals and Containers at the same time, and can think of neither. I suppose I might as well go write my essay. Meh.
Wait. I thought Jaa wasn’t going to be in this one.
344- He’ll be heavily revised to make him less of a flat character, but he will appear.
Persuasive essay–check.
Character analysis–check.
Bed time–oh, who cares about sleep?
And what does that mean?
I CAN WRITE!!!!
~~~
Within a few seconds, Ian knew they were gaining on him, and Kari was leaving him behind, as she soared round a bend in the corridor up ahead, as though she was wearing wingèd sandals. Ian had read a story about a man with wingèd sandals once, an ancient retelling of an even more ancient Terran myth. He tried to put the same spring in his step as Kari had, to take advantage of the low gravity as she was doing, but his imitation was poor and clumsy. It doesn’t make sense, he thought to himself, but by the time his thoughts had managed to get that far, his pursuers were upon him. A strong hand reached out and grabbed his arm. He struggled and kicked, but the grip did not lessen, and he did not waste his breath in yelling. Who would rescue him? Kari, who killed a whole crew of people without second thoughts? Not likely.
And then he felt cold metal against the back of his neck, and his struggles ceased.
~
Ian’s eyes fluttered open. His head was throbbing with pain, his mouth was desperately dry, and it hurt to blink. The only upside to the situation was that he was too preoccupied with his aching body to feel scared.
He was lying on a cold metal surface. Harsh light gleamed into his streaming eyes. For a few minutes, he debated whether getting up was worth it. On the one hand, his years on Ceres had taught him that every moment unaware of one’s surroundings was a dangerous one; on the other, he knew it was quite possible that moving at all would hurt.
There was a noise somewhere behind him, and curiosity won out. He sat up, sending a fresh stab of pain through his skull.
The room he was in was quite small and totally without furnishings. It also lacked a door, unless the single wall of clear plastic could somehow be opened.
Behind him, Kari had sat up and was cradling her head in her hands. She seemed to feel his eyes on her, and looked up. Neither of them spoke. Kari’s lips parted, as though she was about to say something, but she closed them again, sighed, and laid back down, stiffly. He noticed that she bit her lip, hard, as she moved, and her blank, emotionless countenance looked a little more forced than previously. Her large green eyes glittered, and Ian almost forgot his pain in the shock of it. Was Kari about to cry? But she blinked once or twice and the moment passed.
“What happened?” he asked, his voice cracking, and he immediately regretted it. If it had hurt to sit up, it hurt worse to talk.
Kari muttered something, out of which only the word “parents” was distinguishable.
So, um what do you need?
My dear E2MB, you have made my day.
What we need: You to write. But first, you must understand what’s going on. I will try to be succinct. (It’s hardly fair to drag you back here, tell you we’re rewriting the story you’ve been with since practically square one and making major alterations, and then say “Oh, just read the thread.”)
1. The loss of most of the story prompted us to look more closely at the story, and we decided that what it really needed was a complete re-write–actual science instead of wild guesses, no sections where three different people decided to write whatever popped into their heads, no desperate attempts on the part of the editor to add more description, you know. (I think my attempt at brevity has failed so far.) So we restarted. Some major differences:
-They don’t just go whizzing around the solar system. Things take time.
-Kari, Kerj and Jaa aren’t from Terra. They’re test tube babies.
-Er… those were the biggest differences, I think. Here’s the story so far:
#
185. POSOC | April 8th, 2008 at 8:38 pm
183- I was thinking that they had several bases throughout the asteroid belt, and a few Containers posted on most of the major population centers, like Ceres.
Start? OK.
~
Kari had almost made it to the loading ramp when her legs gave out for the third time. She collapsed, gasping for breath, stinging sweat dripping into the cut on her forehead. Inwardly, she recited…
Pain is illusory, a nerve-pattern firing to warn the brain of harm. The brain controls the body, and thus controls pain…
…and at the same time cursed herself for thinking about one of their blasted mantras. I’ve got to get away. If I can make it across the dock before someone notices me on the surveillance cameras, I can get into the hold, and by the time they arrive, I’ll be headed off again.
There was a soft click from across the room, and Kari staggered to her feet, spinning around.
A door marked MAINTENANCE ONLY swung open, and someone stepped through.
She thought at first that he was one of the security personnel. But when she took a closer look, she realized that they weren’t as far behind as she’d thought. He was one of them.
It was easy to tell, although there wasn’t anything particular to distinguish him from the average human being. Something about the look in his eyes. She recognized it- she probably had it too, she reflected ruefully.
He dropped from the catwalk above and sprinted across the cluttered floor.
The last crate was rolling up the ramp. Kari seized the upper edge and hauled herself on top of it. It teetered on the edge, then fell into the hold. The hatch slammed shut in the man’s face, and the cavernous space was plunged into darkness.
Kari relaxed for the first time in twenty-four hours, making herself as comfortable as was possible on top of a rough plastic crate.
That was close. Closer than they’ve ever gotten.
She breathed deeply, calming herself.
Where was this ship headed? Ceres. That’s right. Ceres. Not too long a trip. We’ll have landed before the captain realizes that his oxygen tanks have been depleted a bit more than they should. Then I can hide. Ceres has lots of people. They can’t search every house. I’ll be all right.
I hope.
The harsh fluorescent lights on the passageway ceiling were beginning to dim, and the throng of people was beginning to thin out. Nobody noticed Ian making his way towards the dead end some hundred yards along the passage, which was completely fine with him.
It wasn’t as if he stood out from the crowd. Dark brown hair and eyes, light brown skin, ragged synth-fiber and gen-cotton clothing, a size too small- there was nothing in his manner or physique that distinguished him from the average young Cerean vagrant, except perhaps the book he clutched under his arm. The book was a very old one, printed on synth-paper instead of recorded on a compact disc. Ian had checked it out from the only public library in Louwborne Drum that was still, well, public.
A recorded bell-tone began repeating from speakers on the ceiling. Curfew warning. Ian picked up his pace, jogging toward the small maintenance hatch on the far wall.
He reached it just as the warning escalated in volume and tempo to the frenetic blaring of the thirty-second warning. The last few people were vanishing into the doors that lined the passage walls, entering the residential section.
Ian flipped open the hatch- the locking mechanism had broken down years ago- and tumbled into a dark, narrow space beyond.
The curfew bell cut out, and the lights flicked off.
Ian groped around until he found the rough blanket that had been his bed for the past two years. He set down the book on a ledge where he’d be able to find it the next day, and snuggled down to sleep.
It was then that he heard the footsteps.
They were coming down the passage outside, at a running pace. As they grew closer, Ian could hear labored breathing.
Cautiously- he knew the infrared cameras would register his body heat- he stuck his head out of the hatch.
There was a flash of light that momentarily dazzled him. Something hard slammed into his skull, making his ears ring, and a tangle of flailing limbs flipped over him and landed with a clang on the metal floor.
It took Ian a second to recover his befuddled faculties. When his eyes had adjusted to the glare, he found himself sprawled on the blanket, looking at the oddest person he’d ever seen.
She was around his age, perhaps a year older. Her clothes were woven from a bluish fibre that Ian had only seen once before, when a group of Martian merchants had visited Ceres. She had a cut on her forehead which had scabbed over in the recent past, but was now bleeding again. She clutched a glow-tube in one wavering hand.
She had green eyes, which were unusual; pale skin, which was rare; and white-blond hair, which was practically unheard of. She also had a knife.
Ian stared. The girl stared back, a little trickle of blood running down her face. She was absolutely, terrifyingly motionless. She made no sound. The knife did not tremble. She did not attempt to wipe away the blood. She stared at Ian for a long time, as if threatening him to run, or attack her, or scream, and when he did none of those things, she relaxed ever so slightly. Ian took a deep breath, and his limbs were suddenly extremely shaky.
He sat up slowly, watching to make sure that his movement did not alarm the girl, who had not put away the knife. “Who are you?†he asked in a near-whisper.
“That,†she said coldly, “is none of your business.â€
“I think –†he began, miffed, but changed his mind.
“Lock the hatch!†she commanded.
“Lock? But it’s been broken for years!â€
“Oh, no… †The girl’s eyes widened. She wrenched at an old metal pipe that was fastened to the wall by rusty brackets. It popped off with a clatter. She spun it like a baton and wedged it between the hatch and the opposite wall, leaning on it hard. She held her breath. So, instinctively, did Ian.
Footsteps clanged outside. Ian looked from the hatch, to the girl, to the hatch again. The girl leaned on it more heavily. There was a grunt from the person outside, but the hatch remained closed, and the footsteps moved on. Ian let his breath out in a heavy sigh, and opened his mouth to say something. The girl shook her head furiously and put her finger over her lips.
“Quiet†said the girl. “If they find us, they’ll kill you and maybe me. I’ve escaped one too many times, I’m afraid.â€
Ian shut up, stunned by what he’d just heard. Kill? Who would want to kill him?
The girl held perfectly still for over a minute, eyes wide, ears straining. Then she suddenly relaxed. “Whew. They’re gone.â€
She slowly collapsed to the floor, joints crumpling like sodden paper, and wiped sweat from her forehead. “That was close. Got anything to eat?â€
The abrupt question startled him. “Er, yes.†He reached into the corner where he stored any food he could afford to save. Perishables he ate within a day or two, before mold could set in. Fortunately, there was a fresh folder that he’d scavenged from a receptacle the day before.
He held it out. “You can have some of it if you’d- â€
The girl snatched it from his fingers, tearing into the thin flour pastry and shredded nutroot filling. Within a second, it had vanished.
†-like.â€
The girl flopped down on the rough blanket, lying with her hands behind her head and staring at the corroded metal ducts that wriggled across the ceiling. She didn’t even look at him.
“Ian,†he introduced himself, extending his palm.
The girl didn’t take it, shutting her eyes. Ian gave up attempting to initiate a conversation, sliding down on the cold, metallic floor with a sigh, and trying to come to terms with what had just happened.
Who the kimm was this girl, and who was coming after her?
She obviously wasn’t Cerean- her complexion told him that much. She wasn’t tall enough to be Martian. Could she be Lunar? There were plenty of artificial-gravity centrifuges in the caverns and crevasses of Terra’s satellite. Living in one of those would certainly prevent the unnatural height that many low-gravity inhabitants reached. And there were a lot of weird cultural pockets left on Luna- the old moon had borne the brunt of the refugees from World War Last, so the various ethnic groups had stayed separate to some extent. He’d heard that there were still people there who spoke Hispan or Rossky or Mandrin, or even Anglis, instead of Solar.
Could it be the police chasing her? The public peace officers were little more than figureheads, but Ian knew that the mining corporations employed private police forces to apprehend criminals. She could be a dangerous felon- although that was hard to imagine about anyone who was no older than he. She could just be a vagrant, like him, but that wasn’t a capital offense as she’d implied. And vagrants didn’t carry knives around. Nobody carried knives around. He couldn’t imagine how she’d gotten it.
He sat there quietly for only a minute or two, until his curiosity got the better of him.
“Who’s chasing you?â€
The girl was silent a moment, and then, with an odd and humorless half-smile, she said, “My parents.â€
“What?†said Ian incredulously. “Great Solana, if you’ve got parents what are you doing here?†He waved his hand around the chilly space.
She turned large, blank green eyes on him. “Haven’t you been listening? I said they might kill me. They’re not your ordinary parents, kid.â€
Ian’s forehead wrinkled in thought. “Abusive?â€
She smiled that enigmatic, unnerving, soulless smile again. “You could say that.â€
Ian was perplexed. This seemed like a plausible explanation, but he had a feeling there was something she wasn’t telling him. “Why haven’t you gone to the police?â€
She threw back her head and laughed, a laugh with a brittle edge to it. “Police! I haven’t got enough money to afford their bribes. And what could the police do against them?â€
“What do you mean?â€
The girl continued smiling, but her eyes were like chips of peridot-flecked stone. “Stop asking me questions, kid. I’ve told you too much already. Hopefully I can get off Ceres before they find me.â€
Ian started. Off Ceres? If she knew a way to get off-planet… he’d heard even some of the other asteroids were better places to live than Ceres, and Mars and Luna were paradises by comparison. He’d even live somewhere worse in exchange for a clean slate, as long as it was somewhere he could get a job and a rudimentary living space. He had no chance of that if he remained.
“You could get off Ceres?†he whispered.
The girl rolled her eyes, the most sincere expression he’d seen her make. “It’s not hard if you know the trick. Now shut up.†She rolled over and faced the wall.
“Could… could I come with you?â€
She remained silent for so long that Ian gave up hope of a response, but just as he was turning away, she spoke. “It’s true, sometimes these things are easier with two people. But you’ll follow my instructions exactly, and if you slow me down or give me away, I will have no compunction about leaving you behind. Or worse. We go tomorrow. Good night, and shut the duvv up.†She snapped the tab on the glow-stick shut, and the room was plunged into darkness.
Ian was so ecstatic about her response that he barely heard her threat, or her expletive. Not that he’d have understood it- he wasn’t familiar with the more vulgar portions of the Cerean lexicon, let alone the Martian. However, he figured that celebrating might annoy her into changing her mind, so he lay down on the floor at the other end of the room and remained quiet.
Ian slept soundly that night, despite his uncomfortable bed, only stirred out of his somnolence once by the girl’s voice.
“Kari.â€
“What?†Ian mumbled.
“My name’s Kari.†Then she turned over and went back to sleep. Ian did likewise.
Inside the little room, there was no way of telling the time, but Ian was used to that. When he awoke, he crept to the maintenance hatch, careful not to disturb the sleeping Kari, and opened it enough to peek out. The lights were bright and he could see people. It was morning, if you could call it that.
He closed the maintenance hatch again, rubbing his eyes, and groped around for the glow-stick.
The thin light disturbed Kari, who opened her cold green eyes and looked up at him. For a few moments there was no sign of recognition, but then she smiled her odd little smile and sat up. “Morning?â€
“Yes,†said Ian.
“No chance of breakfast, I take it,†said the girl, standing and stretching.
“We might find something on the way to wherever we’re going.â€
She shrugged.
“Let’s go,†she said. “We’ll have to move fast. I’m very conspicuous around here.â€
Sticking the knife into her back pocket and pulling the hem of her shirt down to cover it, she reached for the hatch door.
“No!†Ian said. “We have to wait until there’s a big crowd on the other side of the tunnel. It’ll block the surveillance cameras.†He opened the hatch a crack and peered out.
The crowd was thin, but a gaggle of Lunar traders, jabbering loudly in Hispan, were approaching the opposite wall. Then- Ian could hardly believe his luck- they actually leaned up against it, still laughing and talking. They’d probably get a sanction for blocking the camera’s field of view, but Ian didn’t reflect on that. He tumbled out and dropped to the floor, Kari following him. By the time the Lunars had moved on, both had merged with the crowd.
Kari walked very quickly through the crowd, with Ian trotting to keep up with her. He felt a slight pang as he remembered the library book, abandoned in his home, or former home, but he was soon too busy trying to keep track of the blond girl to think about it. One of the benefits of Kari’s speed was that by the time anyone noticed just how odd she was, she had already moved on. One of the downsides was that Ian was soon out of breath.
He ran a few steps and caught up with her, panting slightly. “So…where are we going?†he asked.
She stopped. “We’re here.â€
A large, round metal door was before them, better polished than most of the other doors, and bearing the inscription, “To the Surface Elevators.â€
Kari spun the wheel, and the door swung soundlessly inward, revealing a crowded elevator. The passengers- mostly visitors from other asteroids, with a few Lunars and Martians mixed in- streamed out of the compartment, many staring curiously at Kari. She studiously ignored them, and boarded the elevator in the rush of outbound travelers.
A voice fuzzed through the old speakers on the roof. “You are approaching the drum axis. The acceleration of the elevator will create artificial gravity; however, upon leaving the elevator, you will be in Z-G. Please be prepared.â€
The inner doors slid shut, and the elevator began to rise.
Ian turned to Kari, puzzled. “You’re planning to take a shuttle? You have the money?â€
“Of course!†she said, rather more loudly than necessary for the benefit of the camera, then whispered, “We’ll talk about that later.â€
A voice resounded from the hidden speakers. “You will enter Z-G in approximately thirty seconds. Please take hold of the handrail and brace yourself.â€
Kari did so, shoving a couple of other passengers out of the way to make room in the overcrowded elevator. Ian followed suit, minus the shoving.
The elevator braked and began to slow down. Ian didn’t. Kari’s mouth curved up in wry amusement as he lost his grip, hit the ceiling and bounced off.
The door slid open onto a nearly circular passageway lit by harsh fluorescent bulbs. The passengers glided out into it with varying degrees of expertise. The Lunar traders, who had hardly ever been outside a centrifuge or an accelerating spaceship, were almost as clumsy as Ian was. One of them bumped against Kari. “L’ziento,†he said hurriedly, and struggled off.
Ian finally managed to maneuver himself out of the elevator by gripping the handrails and pushing off against the wall. The door slid shut with a clang.
“So… you have enough money to pay for a shuttle?†Ian asked again. There were no cameras in the tunnel.
Kari laughed harshly. Ian shuddered. The sound was somehow unnatural. There was not a particle of true mirth in it.
“Are you joking?†she replied. “Even with the money I stole from that stupid Lunie, I barely have enough to pay the fare for a smuggler elevator.â€
Ian was flabbergasted. “You stole… Smuggler? Are you seriously… â€
“Of course. Do you want to get off-planet or not? Because there’s no way we’re going to do it legally.â€
Kari turned around, pushed off from the floor, ricocheted off the ceiling, and shot down the tunnel, straightening her body to reduce air resistance. Ian flailed around behind her, trying to keep up.
After the first few hundred yards, they began passing elevator doors. Kari ignored them, instead dropping to the floor and wrenching at a metal panel.
To Ian’s great surprise, it came away in her hands. A tunnel, lined with flapping streamers of ragged insulation, dropped away below them. Kari flipped over and sailed down headfirst.
Ian tried to imitate her smooth grace, and while he succeeded in getting inside the tunnel, he found himself in one of the most awkward position he had ever been in. Kari hovered impatiently a few yards behind him, and as soon as he had untangled his arms and legs, she maneuvered the panel shut. Blackness closed in automatically.
“Kari?†Ian whispered, afraid that she had left him behind. A glowstick snapped on, illuminating her face frighteningly close to his own. And then she was gone, practically flying downwards. Ian struggled after for what seemed like ages, but eventually they came to another door. Kari opened it and pushed Ian through. He spun out of control, and smashed into the far wall. Tears of pain and exasperation sprang into his eyes. He grasped blindly for the nearest thing to anchor himself to, and floated there, clinging to a metal rod, until he felt sufficiently stable to let go. Kari snapped off the glowstick, letting the dim bulbs illuminate the area that they occupied.
“Shabby†was hardly the word for it. The chamber was roughly rectangular, riveted together out of overlapping, slightly crumpled metal plates. It must have had some sort of insulation system, but not a very good one: the cold ate into Ian’s bones, and his breath frosted in the air.
There were a couple dozen other people in the room; disheveled-looking men and women, dressed in multiple layers of synth-fiber clothing, a few with shock guns hanging from their belts. Most of them were floating protectively near a couple of large plastic crates. All were waiting near a row of elevator doors on the far wall.
As they watched, one of the doors slid open. Kari barged through the line, seemingly oblivious to the murderous looks some people gave her, and floated up to the smuggling elevator’s skinny operator. She pulled a wad of money out of her pocket. “Me, and the other kid.â€
The man licked a grubby finger and filed through the hexagonal notes. “Lunar pesos? These ain’t worth much outside Nuevo Cruz and the Sea of Crises, girlie.â€
“You know the exchange rates as well as I do,†Kari said coldly. “I’m waiting for my change. Cores or betrens, doesn’t matter to me.â€
The operator grumbled, fished around in the depths of his billowing coat, and came up with a handful of Cerean cores. The metallic hemispheres changed hands, and Kari glided into the elevator. A few of the other passengers followed her, clutching their crates. Some had no luggage at all. Ian knew that the latter were stowaways, with no prospects and little money, who hoped for a better life on one of the other asteroids.
The others were a different matter. They were, without a shadow of a doubt, smugglers, trafficking in luxuries from the asteroids, trying to sneak their cargo on board a freighter without paying the tariff, to be picked up by colleagues on Mars or the Moon and sold on the black market. And these were the more innocent ones. Ian had heard of far shadier enterprises- genetically modified narcotics grown in illegal orbiting habitats, stolen treasures worth thousands of cores- even a few cases of smuggled uranium. He shuddered, thinking about the last example. Even after World War Last had destroyed three-quarters of the world population and irrevocably damaged Terra’s ecosystem in the process, people still had a desire to acquire the dreadful weaponry that had accomplished it.
The operator heaved down on a tarnished lever, and with a jerk, the elevator began to shoot upward. The return of gravity was a relief to Ian, but it was small comfort. He was tightly crowded within a group of sneering, dangerous men. The elevator was not in good repair, and Ian thought he heard the faint hiss of an air leak once or twice.
After a few moments, the elevator stopped, and Ian once again experienced the unpleasant sensation of having no control over his direction. He tried to minimize embarrassment by floating perfectly still, but Kari floated expertly out as soon as the door opened, and he was obliged to follow clumsily.
The passengers struggled through a dark, narrow crawl space, elevator operator in the lead. “Hold it… †he whispered. “One, two, three, NOW!â€
He gave a sudden heave to the roof, and a panel clanged aside. The group fountained out into a small, little-used storage space. Boxes were strapped to the floor, walls and ceiling with little regard for the concept of “down.†There was gravity, if that was the word for the negligible attraction to the floor, but it was almost nonexistent. Things didn’t fall, they drifted.
“Go out the door in small groups,†the operator said. “Large ones attract attention.†Having fulfilled his duty to his customers, he dove back into the passage and pulled the panel back over the opening.
The passengers glanced around at each other. For all of five seconds, no one moved. there seemed a strange sort of reluctance to go through the small metal door, as though it led to some deeply unpleasant fate. Even Kari looked a little nervous, and the glance she shot Ian was not a friendly one. “We have to be fast,†she said to him, her quiet words laden with warning. “I’m not going to risk my neck for you, and if you can’t keep up, don’t expect me to rescue you.â€
Ian nodded gravely. If he was caught… Stowing away was punishable by enormous fines and years in prison. Being a penniless urchin would only add to the charges.
“Go!†she whispered fiercely, and they sprang out into the passage beyond.
Kari hit the ground running, going in great, floating bounds that took her almost thirty feet to a stride. Panic at being left behind lent Ian speed, and after a few desperate minutes he settled into a rhythm only slightly behind Kari.
“What now?†he asked her anxiously.
“Now,†she replied without looking at him, “now… Now you just do as I do. Act like you belong.â€
He nodded. Silence reigned briefly, but then they came into view of the official elevators, and Kari stopped, flattening herself against a shadowy wall. Ian followed suit, trying not to stare at the security camera not too far away. This seemed idiotic. Surely they would be spotted.
“Won’t they see us?†he asked.
“Not if this elevator shows up soon.†Kari, too, was staring at the security camera.
Ian frowned, puzzled. “How does that work?â€
“It swivels,†said the girl shortly.
“Oh! And right now it’s swiveled away.â€
“Yes.â€
A beep and flash announced that the elevator was about to arrive. As the crowd of people exited, Kari mingled, becoming just another tourist on her way to the shuttle.
“Oh.†Ian’s heart sank. Whatever that meant, he didn’t like the sound of it.
“Don’t worry,†said Kari, “you’ll have twelve days* to get used to the idea.â€
Twelve days to get caught, thought Ian pessimistically. He was beginning to wish he’d turned back sooner. “Do we get food?†he asked, wistfully remembering the folder Kari had devoured.
“If you pay for it,†said Kari.
Ian’s hopes fell down through three stories and shattered on the ground.
Kari walked through a doorway into a cargo hold.
“Shh. Follow. Some people sneak food in the baggage. This isn’t allowed, so let’s even out the balance.â€
Ian swallowed. “We’re going to steal?â€
Kari looked at him. †We’ve snuck aboard a ship, outwitted the police, and you’re associating with a criminal! We both have, at least!, a double death sentence. And you’re worried about stealing?â€
Ian looked down at feet. He knew it was stupid of him, after all he’d done, but he was still worried about it.
Kari bent down and began rummaging through the stacked bags, holding onto the wall to keep from drifting away. “We’re in a luggage module,†she explained. When Ian looked blank, she continued. “The Belt shuttles and the interplanetaries are usually owned by the big mining corps, and the modules by private organizations or small businesses, who pay a fee to transport their passengers or cargo aboard the shuttles, to other asteroids, or to Luna or Mars. The luggage carriers are too cheap to have security cameras in the holds- most of them, anyway- so we’re probably safe.â€
She straightened up, triumphant, holding a sealed plastic bag of folders in one hand and a suitcase full of betren notes in the other. “Once we reach Gracchus*, we can pay for passage on an interplanetary. Their security is tighter, so stowing away would be suicide.â€
Ian felt it was time to ask a few questions. Common sense warned him against it, but curiosity won out. “Why do you need to get off Ceres, anyhow? Who’s chasing you?â€
“If that was any of your business, Cerean… †She half rose, then stopped, staring up at a winking red light on the ceiling.
“Crezzit!†she swore. “They’ve got cameras! They’ll be coming down to the hold right now!â€
She began digging through the smugglers’ crates with feverish energy, finally pulling out a pair of shock guns.
Kari tossed one of the guns to Ian. He stared at her, and then at the gun, and then Kari again.
“Oh, duvv. You don’t know how to work it, do you?â€
“No,†said Ian, and then added, “sorry.â€
“Give it back, then,†she said, and snatched it from him. “Just hit ‘em over the head with a suitcase or something.â€
Ian didn’t like the idea of hitting someone over the head, whether it was with a suitcase or not, but it was better than using a shock gun, so he picked up a long, thin cylinder made of metal. It was surprisingly heavy but easier to wield than the other options. Kari gave it a startled glance.
“What’s that for?†she asked, but Ian couldn’t answer, because at that moment the guards came in and there was no more time to think.
Kari fired off both shock guns at once, and two of the guards staggered, one falling to the ground and the other being whacked across the kneecaps with Ian’s cylinder.
Kari pushed off from the ceiling, drifting down over one of the dazed, moaning men. She gently placed her palm in front of his nose, then pushed. The moans ceased.
It took a moment for Ian to realize what had happened. When he did, an odd feeling took possession of him that was more than microgravity nausea. The world swam and spun, and his heart was thumping away somewhere in his ragged boots. “You…†He swallowed, mouth dry. “You killed him… â€
The other man tried to get to his feet, but Kari fired her gun again, and he spun in midair, twitching. “Of course,†she said. “Knocking him out would have been too messy, and he’d have woken up eventually and caused trouble.†She pushed off the floating body, drifting towards the unconscious guard, and pulled out her knife.
Ian seized her wrist. “No! You can’t… â€
That was as far as he got. Kari was unbelievably strong. After a confused, spinning moment, he slammed painfully into the wall. His arm was somehow twisted behind his back, and the knife was at his throat.
“Listen, kid, I do what I need to, and I get rid of anything in my way. That includes you. Clear?â€
Ian nodded, careful not to hit the knife. There was something in Kari’s eyes… something strange, inhuman, insane…
She shook her head angrily, then kicked off from the wall, garments fluttering. She came to a halt next to the supine man, raising the knife.
Ian caught his breath. He knew she would kill the man, and anyone else who interfered with her. That included him- she’d said so. But he had to try to stop this murderous girl from leaving a trail of death through the Belt. Did his desire to get off Ceres… to keep living… overrule the number of other lives that she would take? Was he that much of a coward?
The door burst open with a hiss, and several men and women tumbled through it. None carried guns, but one clutched a large pipe. They tried to orient themselves in mid-air, glancing warily around. The pipe-carrier called out into the hold. “Sar? Darjeel? Where are… â€
Kari stiffened as they focused on her, then made a leap for the far side of the room, going unusually far even for a microgravity jump. Ian followed, flailing wildly.
“Hey!†cried one of the crew. “What did you do–†But it was too late, Kari had scrambled through the hatch on the opposite side of the module. Ian wriggled after her, desperately. For one frantic moment he felt a hand on his ankle, and then Kari’s hands fastened around his wrists and he was pulled through the hatch. Kari slammed it shut and locked it.
“Thanks,†said Ian shakily. “I–â€
“Can’t have you blabbing, can we?†said Kari tersely. Ian felt curiously deflated. For a brief moment he had entertained the thought that Kari was playacting, that she wouldn’t really kill him. But why wouldn’t she? She had killed the guard, after all… He shuddered.
Kari was already walking quickly–her quickness definitely enhanced by the fact that each step took her three times as far as it would in normal gravity–along the narrow corridor. Ian followed without much difficulty, feeling ridiculously proud that he could almost keep up.
The corridor was several yards long, with a few doors opening off on each side. Ian opened one and found a little bathroom. Another opened into a small room with shelves of food–nothing exotic, unfortunately, from Luna or the Terran Gardens, but food nonetheless.
He would have liked to look at the other rooms as well, but Kari had already left the corridor, so he hurried after her.
The corridor opened up into what Ian could only assume was the crew’s communal space. There were several comfortable-looking chairs, and a little metal table with with a game of Ixet* laid out and then abandoned.
Kari was locking the other hatch as he came in. “There,†she said with a self-satisfied look. “We’ll launch with the shuttle and disembark on Gracchus before anyone notices anything. Come on.†There was a door opposite where Ian stood with a neat plaque reading “Cockpit†and it was through this that Kari half-floated, half-walked. Ian trailed obediently after.
The cockpit was a minuscule room with two built-in chairs, a control board full of very complicated-looking levers and buttons, and a computer. Kari plopped down in one of the chairs (as well as one can plop in microgravity) and strapped herself in, and Ian, not knowing what else to do, followed suit.
“Do we have to fly this thing?†he asked uncertainly. It looked very difficult.
“Of course not,†scoffed Kari. “The computer does that.â€
“Oh.†After a few moments, he spoke again. “Should we feed the crew, or something?â€
“There’s plenty of food in the hold,†Kari said.
“Oh.â€
The silence was just beginning to be unbearable when a voice spoke, a slightly tinny male voice. “Launching in ten seconds. Ten…nine…eight…†Ian counted silently with him, mouthing the numbers. “Two…one.â€
The liftoff was very gradual. Ian felt a gentle sense of increasing weight, as though his body was filling with liquid lead. Just as it became uncomfortable, it abruptly vanished, leaving him drifting again. The rapid change left him with a nauseating feeling in the pit of his stomach.
“Great,†Kari said, noting his expression. “If you get spacesick, throw up in the bathroom – I’m not having vomit floating around in here. You even know how to use a micrograv toilet?â€
“Um… â€
She gritted her teeth. “Pull up the manual on the computer, then. This is going to be a long trip.â€
The voice crackled through the speakers again. “We are now in orbit. All luggage modules must now dock.â€
Kari guided the module expertly into a provided slot on the larger shuttle. Ian, growing used to the lack of gravity, felt his nausea abate slightly.
There was a jarring vibration as the clamps locked into place, then an ever-so-slight acceleration. The shuttle was breaking orbit.
Kari strapped herself into the seat in front of the computer, hair drifting around her head like a halo. She pulled up the information database and began scrolling through it at maximum speed, text flickering past the screen. It was a section dealing with asteroidal trade politics, Ian saw as he came closer. There were notes in parentheses all through it, though, added by the many crew members of the old module. He tried to read one: This place isn’t worth the rock they… It went past before he finished. He didn’t see how Kari could read anything at that speed. She was probably just-
“Go away,†she said under her breath.
“How did- â€
“I heard you breathing. Go.â€
Ian pushed off at an angle and glided out the door. As he left the room, he heard Kari muttering, “Crezzit, there must be something here! They can’t hide it from everyone!â€
The days passed in monotonous routine. Ian became used to the bland, dry space rations, the subtleties of movement in Z-G, the occasional hammering on the door of the hold, but he couldn’t get used to Kari.
The girl frightened him more and more. She spent much of her time hunched in front of the computer, speed-reading data and jotting things down- on paper, not in a word processor. Her notes were totally incomprehensible. Although her handwriting was clear and well-formed, many of the words, and even the letters, were unfamiliar to him. It was no language Ian knew.
When she wasn’t engaging in this strange research, she was performing odd calisthenics or meditating with her eyes shut, whispering a soft, quick cadence under her breath. She ate and drank in swift, large gulps, like a predator wary of something stealing its kill, and she never slept more than four hours at a time. She treated him coldly at her best, and he kept remembering the moment when she’d killed the crewman in cold blood.
Yet her presence was somehow comforting, something relatively familiar in a strange world. She continued to tolerate him, even to help him at times, no matter how self-interested her motives. It was that and his dream of a new beginning on Gracchus that kept him going whenever he thought of the dead crewman, the rest of the crew trapped in the hold, or the fact that he was now undeniably a criminal.
Ian tried to shake the latter thought out of his mind..
There were no official records regarding him beyond Ceres, and the asteroids didn’t share information as insignificant as the location of a juvenile delinquent. He’d just quietly disappear and reappear on Gracchus. In practice, the government couldn’t run background checks on everyone. He might even be able to get a job. He’d have to work hard, but it would be far easier than scrounging food and sleeping in abandoned rooms.
But even so, he couldn’t help feeling a twinge of guit about the whole thing. He had done nothing wrong, and Kari would undoubtedly have carried out her plans whether or not he had been there to watch. But still…he tried to keep his mind from running over every scene in which Kari had done something criminal, and reached for his book.
For an hour, he tried to lose himself in the story. It was what he’d always done when life got too much for him. He’d read almost anything, from soppy Martian romances to dry scientific texts, but his favorites were the books about Terra before WWL. The Cerean library didn’t get enough funding to buy the books from Terra. Every single cc of available cargo space on the evacuation ships had been allocated for the frightened masses of humanity. A few books had been stored on computers on the Moon and the fledgling colonies beyond it, but even then life beyond Earth had been one of necessity over luxury.
Ian was completely immersed in a vivid description of a Martian sunset when the small alert light beside his bunk began to blink gently. Gravity, or at least the semblance of gravity caused by acceleration, was returning. They’d left the Belt shuttle. Guided unerringly by the pilot program, the module was dropping out of orbit, toward the surface of Gracchus
Ian quickly snatched a scrap of paper from the folder next to his bunk, marked his place, and unbuckled the straps. Finally, he thought as he glided toward the door. This nightmare was almost over. This time next week, he’d have forgotten Kari had ever existed, or tried to.
He made it about halfway down the corridor outside before the guidance rockets kicked in and the force of gravity reasserted itself. Ian struck the floor and got shakily to his feet, trying to remember how his legs worked.
Kari appeared in the doorway, eyes dancing with barely concealed contempt. “We need to get off as quickly as possible.†She spun on her heel, not at all inconvenienced by the increased gravity, and marched out. Ian wobbled after her.
“What’s the hurry?†he gasped. His pulse was racing. He was thankful, at least, that they were landing on an asteroid and not on a higher-gravity planet like Mars. “We’re clear now, aren’t we?â€
“Really?†Kari didn’t bother to turn around. “With a five-man crew prepared to swear that two kids matching our description killed one of their friends and locked them in the storage compartment? With our fingerprints and DNA all over the controls? I disabled the cameras, but that won’t be enough.â€
There was a sudden grating thump as the module touched down and locked into place. Kari sped up, Ian striving to catch up with her. He noticed that they weren’t heading for the main hatch, but towards a small emergency exit.
Kari spun the handle, and there was a hiss as the door unsealed and swung open. Another door opened directly behind it, revealing a narrow hallway, walls plastered with hazard signs and decompression warnings. As soon as Ian was through, Kari shut and sealed the hatch behind them.
She visibly relaxed, breathing deeply, but remained alert. Her eyes darted around the room until she saw what she was looking for – a small pane of plastic, halfway up the wall.
Kari pulled a small, sealed bag from her pocket, half full of greasy black sludge. Carefully, she approached the pane and squeezed a middling-sized gob of liquid over it. Almost immediately, the sludge spread out into an opaque film.
“Amazing things, genmods,†she said to no-one in particular. “They’ll have to scrape that mold off with a chisel if they want that camera to work again.†With that, she took off at a run, in great drifting leaps, Ian matching her pace. But they hadn’t gone far before there was a deep, rumbling thump behind them. The floor trembled slightly, and a slow, whooping alarm began to bellow through the passage.
“What did you do!†Ian almost shouted.
“Fuel leak,†Kari replied, her voice devoid of emotion. “It doesn’t happen much on these modern ships, but when it does… a single spark can set it off, and you can kiss everything inside goodbye. Doesn’t usually penetrate the hull, though.â€
Ian blinked as the full horror of the deed struck him. The book tumbled from his suddenly numb hand and fell to the floor. A slip of paper slid out, the same one he’d absently grabbed to mark his place.
It was a photograph of the man Kari had killed. He looked younger, although that could have been because of the poor quality of the image. He was holding a baby. A few lines of angular Mandrin characters were scribbled across the top.
Oh, God.
“Kari…†he said dully. She had resumed her flight, and didn’t turn around, or appear to have heard his voice, but he knew she had. Kari heard everything.
“Kari, I want to leave,†he said. He was obliged to run himself, in order to continue speaking to her, and as it is not easy to run and talk at the same time, the serious tone in his voice was rather lost in his breathlessness.
“Suit yourself,†she said, as coldly as before. “You know you won’t get far, though.â€
Ian knew it. What he didn’t know was what he ought to do. “You killed them, Kari!†he cried, begging, pleading, but he didn’t know for what. Remorse? Apology? It hardly mattered what she felt, as long as she felt something, anything, to distinguish her from a breathing, walking machine. “They had families, Kari!â€
No response.
“Look!†he said, thrusting the paper into Kari’s face. “He was a person! They were all people!â€
She shrugged. “So? Are you leaving, or not?â€
Ian’s face fell, and he slowed to a stop, thrusting the paper into his pocket. “Good-bye, Kari,†he said, turning away and beginning to trudge back the way he had come–as well as anyone can trudge in low gravity.
But there were footsteps and shouts around a bend in the corridor, and all of Ian’s resolve vanished as he heard them. He whirled and sped after Kari.
Within a few seconds, Ian knew they were gaining on him, and Kari was leaving him behind, as she soared round a bend in the corridor up ahead, as though she was wearing wingèd sandals. Ian had read a story about a man with wingèd sandals once, an ancient retelling of an even more ancient Terran myth. He tried to put the same spring in his step as Kari had, to take advantage of the low gravity as she was doing, but his imitation was poor and clumsy. It doesn’t make sense, he thought to himself, but by the time his thoughts had managed to get that far, his pursuers were upon him. A strong hand reached out and grabbed his arm. He struggled and kicked, but the grip did not lessen, and he did not waste his breath in yelling. Who would rescue him? Kari, who killed a whole crew of people without second thoughts? Not likely.
And then he felt cold metal against the back of his neck, and his struggles ceased.
Ian’s eyes fluttered open. His head was throbbing with pain, his mouth was desperately dry, and it hurt to blink. The only upside to the situation was that he was too preoccupied with his aching body to feel scared.
He was lying on a cold metal surface. Harsh light gleamed into his streaming eyes. For a few minutes, he debated whether getting up was worth it. On the one hand, his years on Ceres had taught him that every moment unaware of one’s surroundings was a dangerous one; on the other, he knew it was quite possible that moving at all would hurt.
There was a noise somewhere behind him, and curiosity won out. He sat up, sending a fresh stab of pain through his skull.
The room he was in was quite small and totally without furnishings. It also lacked a door, unless the single wall of clear plastic could somehow be opened.
Behind him, Kari had sat up and was cradling her head in her hands. She seemed to feel his eyes on her, and looked up. Neither of them spoke. Kari’s lips parted, as though she was about to say something, but she closed them again, sighed, and laid back down, stiffly. He noticed that she bit her lip, hard, as she moved, and her blank, emotionless countenance looked a little more forced than previously. Her large green eyes glittered, and Ian almost forgot his pain in the shock of it. Was Kari about to cry? But she blinked once or twice and the moment passed.
“What happened?†he asked, his voice cracking, and he immediately regretted it. If it had hurt to sit up, it hurt worse to talk.
Kari muttered something, out of which only the word “parents†was distinguishable.
349- Ah, you’ve returned. Welcome back!
In any case, um…
Lemme see if I can sum this up for you. We went through the rough draft and found hundreds of fundamental scientific flaws that really stretched suspension of disbelief. So we decided to totally rewrite it. Several major concepts and a slew of minor details have been changed, but the main characters (Kari, Ian, Kerj) and the Parents remain mostly intact.
CHANGES:
The setting: Humanity has not yet reached Jupiter or its moons. Mars is not even halfway terraformed, as the project was suspended shortly before World War Last, after which there weren’t enough resources to accomplish it. The Moon is relatively unchanged. Earth is not irradiated to the point of “die five minutes after exposure,” but it’s totally lifeless except for a few bacteria after the nuclear winter, and there are still enough gamma rays bouncing around to make resettlement impossible for centuries to come.
Artifispheres don’t exist; on Mars, they have sealed, pressurized cities, underground tunnels and such, while the Moon and the asteroids are filled, inside and out, with giant habitats rotating to provide artificial gravity. Space travel between planets takes almost a year, even with the new fusion rockets. Asteroid hopping is somewhat quicker, but that’s still a matter of weeks.
There’s no unified Solar Republic. The Moon is a patchwork of little city-states, the asteroids are mainly governed by mining corporations, and Mars is relatively united.
I think that’s it for the setting. I’ll continue the summary in a bit, when I get into the changes made to the main characters.
Huh. Very interesting.
Yea, there were numerous scientific flaws with our first draft. You just have to let your imagination allow for a little bit of suspension of disbelief. It flowed well for me, partly because I didn’t know as much about science back then. :”}
The new version looks cool! I’ll have to read it sometime when I have a big chunk of spare time.
352- I posted it for you, but the blog ate my post.
352- Well, I’m glad you like it.
Ian: Nearly unchanged. A little bit more cautious, but still the idealistic, naive kid we all know.
Kari: Similar, but we’ve taken the ruthlessness factor and turned it up to eleven. Her ultimate goal is to escape the Parents, and she doesn’t care about anyone or anything else. She wasn’t always like this, but ever since Kerj’s successful re-indoctrination (the loss of the only person she’d ever cared about), her self-preservation instinct has taken over, and now she’ll commit murder to erase her tracks. Also, she was genetically engineered from scratch rather than taken from Terra, for reasons that will be made clear when I post the revised version of the Parents.
Kerj: Not actually Kari’s brother, but close enough to her genetically and emotionally to be considered as such. Whether he still speaks in CAPITAL LETTERS is yet to be determined.
Jaa: Not yet introduced or discussed much. We’re keeping the “phenomenally intelligent” bit, but we’re making him a more rounded character. Gone renegade because he discovered something that only the Parents are supposed to know – that the Containers are not the true inheritors of Neoterra. They serve only three purposes: brainpower, thugpower, and guinea pigs for genetic experimentation. After Project Neoterra is completed, they’ll create their true heirs apparent – the Children – with the knowledge and raw genetic material they gained from engineering the Containers, whom they will exile or exterminate.
More about the Parents later.
The Parents:
They’re still a splinter group from the Preservers, but now their project has two main portions, Neoterra and Neohominum (the latter focuses on genetic enhancement). We’ve scrapped the idea that Containers serve as storage for memories of Terra. Instead, their name refers to how they store good and/or interesting genetic code for Project Neohominum, and also how they “contain” rumors or leaked information about Project Neoterra.
Speaking of Neoterra, at first we thought we’d have to modify that as well, because the total mass of all known asteroids is less than that of the Moon, but then I found this on Wikipedia:
“Another, more intricate method, uses ammonia as a powerful greenhouse gas, and it is possible that nature has stockpiled large amounts of it in frozen form on asteroidal objects orbiting in the outer solar system, it may be possible to move these (for example, by using very large nuclear bombs to blast them in the right direction) and send them into Mars’s atmosphere.[6] Since ammonia is high in nitrogen (NH3) it might also take care of the problem of needing a buffer gas in the atmosphere. Keeping these smaller impacts on their own will eventually build up the temperature as well as mass to both the planet and its atmosphere.[7]â€
However, as the Parents don’t have any “gravity engines,” they’ll have to gain control of most of the asteroid belt’s government before setting off the bombs (made with tritium and deuterium illegally mined from Luna over the past few centuries… yeah, they plan ahead.) The plot of the first book, though still uncertain, may involve their first coup d’etat attempt.
The basic dogma of the Parents is slightly different from the original: They aren’t trying to create a green-eyed, white-blond “master race.” They simply believe that evolution is now obsolete, and humanity has the right – no, the duty – to shape the universe according to its whims. Their leader’s motives are somewhat less religious: he just wants to prove the other Preservers wrong and show them that Mars can and should be terraformed.
I must say I like the style of the new Parents. Their leader keeps secrets from them, they keep secrets from the Containers, and the Containers keep all of those secrets from the world at large.
357- Indeed.
Are we going to introduce Kerj here? Or not? I hadn’t really intended for them to get caught and imprisoned quite yet, but I don’t mind it, we just need to get them free now. Or maybe Kari needs to do some explaining.
358- Not Kerj. Possibly Jaa. Sorry, I have chronic writer’s block in regard to this story. Plus I’m awfully sick, so it’s probably best that I’m not writing through a haze of germs.
OK, I’m going to write now. On second thought, yeah, let’s introduce Kerj.
~~~
She’d mentioned something about her parents back on Ceres, hadn’t she? Ian strained to remember, but there was a noise behind him, and all recollection of the event fled from his head.
Two white-clad people stood in the corridor beyond the window, staring into the cell with matching expressions of absorbed interest.
The taller of the two was a muscular, well-proportioned man with skin and hair as pale as Kari’s, standing motionless but for his breathing and the occasional blink. The other was only a few inches shorter, and she was astoundingly beautiful, rubbing her hands together like an excited child.
Behind him, Kari let out a strangled sob. The sound seemed raw and alien coming from her throat. Ian backed up against the wall. He didn’t know who these people were, and he didn’t particularly want to. If Kari feared them, he probably should too.
The woman stopped laughing abruptly and spoke a word. With a slow hiss, the window slid back into the wall, leaving the cell open.
Kari moved so fast that Ian didn’t register what had happened until the fight was over. There was a brief scuffle, and then the girl was pinned to the floor with a dislocated arm, the blond man kneeling on her chest. He pulled a complicated metal tool out of his pocket and rolled up her sleeve, pressing its tip to her forearm.
There was a beep, and Kari screamed, thrashing wildly for a few seconds, before subsiding into unconsciousness.
Ian made a snap decision and ran for his life.
Kari was fast, but the blond man was even faster. Ian made it a few yards before an impossibly strong hand seized his arm and slammed him into the wall.
Ian just slid to the floor. His entire side was one big bruise, or worse. He hadn’t imagined anything could hurt that much. Though one of his eyes was already swelling shut, he could see the blond man and his companion scooping up Kari and walking away.
~~~
OK, I can’t really write any more right now. Here are a few notes, though:
For those who haven’t guessed, the blond man is KRJ, or Kerj. The woman is another Container. I think of her as high-ranking (B- or C-series) but if others have other ideas, by all means write them in.
Kari has just been re-microchipped.
The reason they’re just ignoring Ian is one of the Containers’ greatest weaknesses: they’re so convinced of their own superiority by their training that they hardly ever see normal people as a threat. If they think about him at all, they figure he’ll just wander around until he starves or some other Container kills him for fun.
However, here’s my idea:
Ian has ended up outside Jaa’s cell. (The cells are alternated on opposite sides of the corridor so that no prisoner can see into any other cell.) Jaa will talk him through bypassing the security system for the cell, and help Ian and Kari escape from the Parental base in return (Ian to return a favor, Kari on the general principle that helping other renegades is a good thing.)
I’m trying not to present this as a fait accompli. It just seems to me like something that will advance the plot in the direction it needs to go. Suggestions welcome.
He lay there, dazed, for several minutes, trying to process what he had just seen. Those people had been awfully young to be her parents… He began to feel that there was something he was missing, besides the use of his right eye and his traveling companion. Slowly he stood up, wincing. Kari was gone; he was lost and confused…and ignored. Would they come back for him? Or had they forgotten all about him? Given what had happened to Kari, he was pretty sure he didn’t want to be noticed.
“Hey, kid!” said a voice.
Ian whirled, trying to find the source. A few feet away there was another cell, this one inhabited by a blue-clad child, perhaps eleven or twelve, with curly, reddish hair.
“Did you say something?” he asked.
“Yeah,” he said. “Are you a renegade?”
“A what?”
The boy’s eyes widened. “You’re not a Container at all, are you.”
“A what?”
The kid jumped to his feet. “Look, you’ve got to help me get out of here.”
Ian backed away. “No…no.”
“Why not?”
“I…uh…I have…to…” he trailed off. There was no way to voice the fear he had of this place, of this kid, of his captors. It was like the fear he had or Kari magnified by thousands. They were all wound up in it together, and he did not want to get involved. The trouble was, he was already involved, and had been from the moment Kari dived through his hatch. He slumped to the floor, put his arms around his knees, and cried.
“Look, kid,” said the curly-haired boy impatiently. “If you help me get out, I’ll help you and your friend get out here.”
“Don’t call me kid,” said Ian lethargically, raising his head. “I’m older than you.”
The other boy laughed. “I seriously doubt it. Are you going to help, or not?”
“I guess so,” said Ian, getting up and wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. “What do I have to do?”
Excellent! I will write more once I’m done with my homework.
And I’ll write more once you’ve written more once you’re done with your homework.
Windhenge is cut off in the middle and skips a bunch of stuff. Was that on purpose or was it just a copy and paste issue?
363- Probably a copy and paste issue. I didn’t have any of these stupid problems with Flamehenge… What point does it get cut off at?
It gets cut off in chapter seven, I believe, and then the next chapter heading is chapter fourteen. They’re talking to Merlinus about starting a war, and then Max says something like “It seems like all you do is rephrase things in ways that are harder to understand,” and Merlinus starts to say something, then there’s a space like this:
Merlinus is talking something something underly
i
And then Max and Chara are discussing someone called Korn-something. It’s very annoying. I emailed you, but I am still failing to grasp the fact that not everyone checks their email every ten minutes.
…
OH, CAKE! I just remembered I have to find an article on a research topic pertaining to 1984! Dash it all…
Also: Jaa is now a redhead? The mind boggles.
366- Not quite. I thought maybe yet another Container with white-blond hair would be kind of weird, so I was trying to think of something not too far off but off enough to be different. He’s not a redhead exactly, you know that kind of dark blond color that sort of has red in it? Strawberry blond. That’s what I was thinking of.
I don’t have to find an article after all (phew!). That’s Wednesday’s homework.
ARGH! I want to write, but I don’t know how to get around the cell security.
367- Yes, of course. The whole point is that they’re now racially diverse, just mentally and physically perfect. And I can totally see Jaa as strawberry blond.
The kid in the cell smiled. “There’s a circular patch on the wall to the left of the door that’s a slightly different texture than the rest. It feels like foam. Slightly springy. About head height.”
Ian ran his fingers across the wall. “OK, I’ve got it.” A thought struck him. “Are there cameras in here?”
“Yes, but they won’t care about what’s happening until I get out. One of their biggest blind spots – they ignore ordinary people. Can you feel a gap between the patch and the rest of the wall?”
“I think so…”
“Try to pry it up a little.”
Ian wormed his fingernail into the crack and pulled. “It’s solid, almost flush with the wall, I think…”
“Just a little more. It ought to come off.”
There was a soft click, and the entire panel folded up on a concealed hinge at the top, revealing a tiny chip of silicon nestled in a complicated-looking mess of wires. “What do I do now?”
“There should be a wire in the upper right that connects the central chip to the voice recorder… it’s light blue. Disconnect it.”
Ian tugged ineffectually at the wire. “How do you know all this?”
The boy chuckled. “I helped to design most of this security system. Left myself a few back doors. They’ve probably fixed some of the more obvious ones since I went renegade, but I don’t think they’d have caught this one. Now reconnect the wire.”
Ian did so. “All right, now what?”
“Say ‘All right, now what?’ again.”
“What?”
“Passcode reset. Just say it.”
“All right, now what?”
The door slid open, and the boy got to his feet. “We’re going to have to move quickly now that they know I’m out. If I can just get to a computer terminal- ”
An alarm started blaring from somewhere in the complex. The lights rapidly dimmed and went out.
“Ah,” the boy said calmly. “They did fix that bug. How tiresome. Run.”
Is anyone still here?
Yes, but I don’t know what to write.
And I have to go to school now. Ugh.
Could someone post a plot synopsis? NOT THE WHOLE THING!!!
OK… Um… Let me get back to you on this.
I could, in theory, post a plot synopsis, but if you’re not dedicated enough to even read the whole story, what’s the point?
Sorry if that sounded rude. This was my first and dearest RRR, so I’m a bit overprotective. Also, after finishing the entire book, I lost it in a house fire, so we’re rewriting right now, which makes the whole structure rather fragile, to my mind. But the point stands. RRRs demand dedication, and if you don’t care enough to read the whole story, then will you really care about it?
I’m probably taking this too far and making a spectacle out of myself. -turns into small curved piece of glass-
OK, so here’s the synopsis:
The setting is hundreds of years in the future. Humankind, having rendered its own planet to a chunk of radioactive stone, has fled to the moon, to Mars, and to the various asteroid belts. Ian is an orphan living on Ceres. He spends his days reading about Terra, daydreaming about Terra, and hiding from the police. Until one day, Kari bursts into his life. A mysterious girl on the run, she announces her intention to leave Ceres, and Ian accompanies her. They stow away on a shuttle. Kari shows herself to be a ruthless killer, and Ian tries to leave, but mysterious people show up and capture the protagonists. They awake in a cell, and Kari comes closer to a nervous breakdown than ever before. She attempts to flee, but their captors are very fast and strong and take her away. Ian is left behind, rather confused. He meets a boy named Jaa in a neighboring cell, who shows Ian how to get him out, but the alarms go off.
There’s the synopsis so far, but I couldn’t give you all the details that you would need to actually write. Not to mention all the rules, and worldbuilding, and plotbuilding that’s gone on. Not that I really expect you to read all that. If we make mistakes, we can correct you. But you at least need to know the most recent changes.
Maybe I’m just punchy from the late hour, but that pun made me laugh out loud.
I’m glad.
And it’s hardly a late hour. Unless you’re vacationing in the Midwest or something.
Sup dawg, I heard you like science so we put a science in your fiction so you… *is leaped on by angry Meme-Abuse Police* *suffocates*
*reincarnates* Ahem. Hi.
I feel like I ought to rewrite 369. Considering how advanced the Parents’ security system is, I don’t think it could easily be overcome by yanking out a wire, even if the designer did leave himself a bunch of back doors. However, anything more involved would probably attract the attention of security. Any suggestions?
373- Did you just say “Sup dawg”? What have you done with POSOC??!!
Anyway. Haven’t they already attracted the attention of security? But I think I get what you’re saying. He wouldn’t leave back doors that did attract attention. I can’t think of a solution (I never can), but
I stopped typing for a few minutes and forgot what I was going to say. I’ll come back later, why don’t I?
374- It’s possible I was merely being ironic. It’s also possible that the XKCD archive binge recently affected me somewhat.
Of course, I could really have been kidnapped and replaced with a hostile AI designed to mimic me and use my [conceited] considerable influence [/conceited] to guide the Kokonspiracy to nefarious purposes… Ooh, fanfic idea! I’ve got to work more on my Discworld one first, tho.
Finals week coming up, so I doubt I’ll make any meaningful contribution here until next Saturday. Toodles!
You have finals already? We don’t have ours until next month.
CAKE YOU, YOU LUCKY-EUPH WUNG BUTTONER! You’re very fortunate… but then again, maybe not, as you must get out of school much later than we do.
377- We get out on the 8th, and we have finals on the 5th and 8th. Of course, our teachers are hastily piling last-minute projects on us, and some of us ( ) procrastinated on our online math course and are trying to cram almost twenty quizzes into the next two weeks.
Do you think we’re ready for a new thread? I’m kind of sick of locating this one every time I want to check it. I know the reason we haven’t asked for a new thread already is because we don’t feel the story is ready to be discovered by the less diehard RRRiters, but honestly–since when has anyone besides us shown any interest in the story?
Ready or not, here it has come.