Survivors, p.25
Survivors, page 25
Sam shifted uncomfortably on the bench seat. “Oh. I probably shouldn’t have asked. Sorry. I ask lots of questions.”
Rachel smiled. “That’s okay. I’ve got lots of questions, too. Like, what’s it like, living in the wilds?”
Sam scratched his neck. “Well, where to begin? I—”
Rachel leaned forward and put a hand on his. “And what’s it like to sleep on the ground, in the snow, all wrapped up in furs?”
Sam blushed.
EBO - Day 3 - PM
Dinner time was noisy. The five of them walked through the middle of the room, Sam leading the way. He’d been grinning since breakfast, but wouldn’t talk about it. The others had turned to Katriana, but she’d pursed her lips and shook her head. They’d let it drop, as they soon found that they were busier than the days before, with more doors opened to them. They were all very hungry now, and looking forward to dinner.
Katriana jumped when someone reached out and touched her hand as she walked by. She stopped, walked back to the table and leaned down beside a heavy-set white-haired man. She nodded, then caught up with the others.
“What was that about?” asked Miya as Katriana came up next to her in the serving line.
Katriana gave Miya a small smile. “That’s where you’re going to have dinner. You’ve been invited.”
“Okay…” Miya said slowly. “Whose table?”
Katriana’s smile grew. “The curmudgeon. Wilhelm Strohaff.”
“Well.” Miya’s eyebrows rose. “That’s nice. Maybe he’s not mad at me anymore.”
Katriana’s eyes twinkled. “Oh, he’s mad, alright. But he’s got over your rudeness. No, he’s mad about something else.”
Miya’s pulse quickened. “What is it?”
Katriana shook her head. “I won’t tell you.”
“Can’t?” Miya raised an eyebrow.
Katriana gave her a mischievous grin. “Won’t. Telling you would spoil the surprise. Don’t worry, he doesn’t bite. But … well, you’ll find out.”
Miya raised an eyebrow. “Are all of us invited? The tables aren’t that big, Kat.”
Katriana shook her head. “No, just you, me and Sam. He’s pissed at Sam too.”
Miya and Sam nervously followed Katriana over to Wilhelm’s table. Three seats sat empty, waiting for them. Wilhelm gestured with a beefy arm that ended in thick, sausage-like fingers. The rest of him was in proportion, and he had one whole side of the table to himself.
“Please, sit.”
The three put their trays down on the table and sat. At the end of the table opposite Katriana, a man of about thirty sat picking at his food, a glossy tablet beside him. Miya and Sam sat directly opposite the mountain of a man.
Wilhelm gestured to the young man on his left. “Patrick Dowsey, my assistant. He’ll be taking notes.”
Miya blinked. “Notes? We’re not eating dinner?”
Wilhelm popped a scoop of vegetable mush into his mouth and spoke as he chewed. Miya noticed that the serving size on his plate was about double theirs. “We’ll eat and talk, and Patrick will take notes. I assume Katriana told you why I invited you to dine with me?”
Miya shook her head slowly. “You’re mad at me and Sam for some reason. Whatever it is, I’m sorry. I was the rude one, not Sam.”
Wilhelm stared at Katriana and shook his head. “Partial message delivery, not good.”
Katriana smiled. “I do have some freedoms, you know.”
Wilhelm nodded, then turned back to face Miya and Sam. “Very well. I am, quite frankly, angry. No, that doesn’t even begin to express it properly. Do you know—” Wilhelm’s bushy eyebrows rose, his eyes wide, “—just how long it took us to establish a mated pair that far west? And now they’re gone.”
Miya touched her necklace of ears. “Do you mean the wolves I killed?”
“Pah!” Wilhelm placed a meaty hand on the table. “Fourth generation, at least. They were practically and properly wild, for all intents and purposes. Natural. No, I meant the other things you killed.”
“Cougar?” asked Sam.
“No.”
“Something we snared, maybe?” asked Miya.
“No.”
Miya shook her head. “Then I’m sorry. We don’t know. Wait—” Miya’s eyes went wide. “Ur-bears. You mean the Ur-bears.”
Wilhelm stuffed a heaping fork of vegetable mush into his maw. “Yes, that’s right. Ur-bears. Urrrr-bears. They had another name, but that doesn’t matter now. That’s what you call them up there, so that’s the name we’ll use. Sam’s been sleeping on the female’s hide, and you, Miya, left the male to rot. A complete waste, from a survival perspective.”
“It talked. We thought it was a post-human, mutated. People.”
“No.” Wilhelm waved a hand. “They’ve got bits of human and bear DNA, a mix of other things. But yes, they can speak, to a degree. If everything we do here fails, the monsters might just inherit the Earth. Somebody or something should survive.”
“Oh,” said Miya.
Wilhelm nodded. “Well, now it will take months or years, even, to readjust the ecological balance in that zone. We designed them to be sturdy, Sam, but you were persistent. And Miya — shit-on-a-bloody stick. One bullet. One. Fuck!”
Sam stared at him, eyes wide. “Ur-bears.”
Miya gaped. “You. You designed the Ur-bears? The most scary-as-fuck-thing I’ve ever seen?”
“No.” Wilhelm took a slow, steady breath. “The scariest-as-fuck-thing that has ever walked this Earth is circling over our heads and trying to make things right down here. Two of the worst are staring at me across this table, because we nearly finished the job a thousand years ago. Humans, the worst apex predator of all time. But we can’t allow that from now on. There have to be checks and balances in our fragile system. And that includes some level of controls over us humans. To prevent too much population growth, too quickly.”
“Holy shit,” said Miya. “You’re designing monsters.”
“Yes.” Wilhelm stabbed down on his plate, cracking it. “We design monsters. And between the two of you, you killed a mated pair, for fuck sakes, and the female was three weeks away from giving birth, Sam. You’ll be touring my facility first thing in the morning. Population control. Fucking Ur-bears.” Then he burst into tears.
Miya and Sam sat awkwardly at the table, waiting for Wilhelm’s tears to subside. Their own plates remained untouched.
Vast, shaking sobs slowly settled in his large frame, until finally he took three deep breaths and put his hands flat on the table. He lifted his head, his face streaked with tears. He dabbed them away with a napkin, then gave them a small smile.
“It must be quite a sight.” Wilhelm blew his nose in a napkin and put it aside. “The monster-maker, shedding tears for his creations.”
“Actually,” said Sam, “I was thinking you’re pretty scary, yourself. Even with the crying.”
Wilhelm sighed. “My apologies, but I do get worked up. I care about my work. It’s important, even if it seems destructive, on the surface. But balance is important. We lost that, long ago, round about the time when our ancestors invented fire and learned how to make spears with bits of wood and sharpened stone. After that, the world has been out of balance. And we all know how that turned out.” He resumed eating his meal, working around the crack in the plate.
“Ummm…” said Miya.
Wilhelm gestured at their plates. “Please, eat. Or I’ll move on to your plates after I finish mine. Can’t help myself. I eat more when I’m upset.”
“Oh,” said Sam, then dug into his food. Katriana began to pick delicately at her meal.
Miya coughed, her plate untouched.
Wilhelm stared at Miya, his mouth full of food. “What?”
“Um — I was wondering. You mentioned fire, and balance. Katriana said that most of the design of this facility is symbolic, like the stairs, the walk of shame or celebration through the middle of the tables, and I’m sure there are a lot of other things, maybe subtler. But reminders, anyway.”
“Yes, that’s correct,” he said.
“Right.” Miya nodded. “Well, Sam mentioned that the survival kits included matches, but no instructions on how to use them or what they were for.”
“Ah.” Wilhelm smiled. “Now, that was a brilliant thing to do. Not my design. I wasn’t involved. But still, clever. If you can’t make fire, then your chances of survival in a place like up north go down, and you won’t last very long. So they supplied the matches, but people had no clue what they were for, or how to ignite them. They don’t use them on the Arks. But a basic kit is provided to get started, to make it through the first day, at least. We’re not that cruel. But that was probably a failure on its own. That meant that in order to survive, they had to think. And that’s a very dangerous activity.”
Miya stared at him. “Thinking is a dangerous activity.”
“The worst.” Wilhelm nodded. “And self-awareness isn’t much better. Guilt and remorse are pretty useful, though. Limiting behaviours.”
“It sounds like you don’t like people very much,” said Sam.
Wilhelm nodded. “You’re partly right. Ones or twos, individuals, nice as pie, we get along. Larger groups become the problem. Balance gets out of whack quickly, then. So one of our theories is to try to keep the population bases small. Intermingling, of course, so not too far away from each other, we’ve got the underlying principle of genetic diversity and minimum viable population to consider. Ten thousand is a good population centre size. MVP, right on its own. But keeping it down to that will be the challenge. Monsters won’t be enough. We’ll need other tricks up our sleeves, to trip up our children and slow their growth, long after you and I are dead and dust. But MVP’s not an immediate concern. We get enough randomisation of DNA from the regular drops, for now.”
“Sam said most of them die,” said Miya.
“Sam is right. But nor for long, we’re nearing a tipping point where the numbers will begin to swell, balloon. We’ll need more and better monsters for a while. And then something else, like I said. I’m particularly fond of the plague idea, popping up every hundred years or so, pandemics. But that’s not my area of expertise or influence. They know my opinions, though. I’m loud enough, and a few of them listen.”
“Sam also said that some of them died, with their matches un-lit.”
Wilhelm nodded. “Well, that’s a small win for balance, but we’ll take it. We can’t go back to the stone age, we can only move forward, one blind step into the darkness at a time. Because none of us know if any of this is going to work. Are we making tough enough monsters? Too tough? Too many, or too few? How many species are needed for each niche, where there isn’t already a suitable predator in the DNA archives, to restore? What about placement, the impacts on other re-introduced species? It takes a lot of processing power to run the simulations, and we barely get our share. The models are hideously complex.”
Katriana coughed. “Um … I might be able to help with that, if you like. It turns out I have a little more time on my hands, processing-wise, than I’m used to. I’d be happy to run some calculations for you.”
Wilhelm regarded her with interest. “You’d do that, for me?”
Katriana nodded. “Just send me the request. I won’t guarantee the turnaround time. There’s a petaflop limit, and my internal storage is limited, which will slow things, too. And I’m working on a book, which will take a few cycles here and there.”
“A book?”
“Trying to write one. But I’ll have plenty of cycles to help you out.”
“A book. Well, good for you.” Wilhelm stuck out his hand to Katriana, and she gently shook it. “I appreciate your help. I do. Anything you can spare. We’ll need to look at toughening up the Ur-bear design. I mean, if a small thing like Miya can drop one with a single bullet, then we missed something in the design. Now Sam, my boy, you earned that kill, three shots, same hole, thick skull. That’s persistence.”
Sam swallowed. “Just survival.”
Wilhelm waved a meaty hand. “Anyway, we must have missed something. No drones on site until after. Couldn’t see how she did it, just heard snippets about a single-bullet kill in the highlights they gave us, but not how. Or maybe the loud noise did it, gave the poor thing a heart attack. That one shot in the shoulder shouldn’t have been enough.”
Miya coughed. “So they didn’t actually tell you?”
Wilhelm shook his head. “No.”
Miya took a breath. “Well, I killed it while it was busy breaking Sam’s ribs.”
“Interesting method for an Ur-bear attack.” Wilhelm rubbed his chin. “I’ll have to remember that. So how did you kill it, then?”
Miya picked up her fork and scooped up a heap of mashed vegetables onto it. “Pistol, four metre range, through a hind eye. I was up in a tree.”
“Fuck!” Wilhelm slammed his hands down on the table, making them jump. “Really? Well, I was thinking about having to reinforce some part of the body, bony plates, something. But they need their eyes. All six of them. We can’t get rid of those. And the optical nerve … no, we can’t do anything there. Patrick, are you taking notes?”
The young man nodded.
“So, how did you manage to do that? Shoot it in a hind eye?”
“Only the front two were open when it was preparing to kill Sam.”
“Ah.” Wilhelm leaned back, crossing his arms over his chest. “Now, that, we can fix. Thank you, Miya.”
“You’re welcome.” Miya popped the veggies into her mouth and chewed.
“Eyes open, closed? Such an obvious defect. We should have seen that coming. From now on, no more eyelids on the monsters. Simple nicitating membranes, or eyes like fish, but suited to the dry. Always open, day or night. Yes. We’ll get started on that tomorrow.”
Sam stared. “Eyes open all the time? All around its head? Now, that is the most scary-as-fuck thing I could imagine. Shit.”
“Excellent.” Wilhelm smiled. “That’s what we’re going for, Sam. They don’t actually kill many people, you know. Some, yes. More soon, but not until our numbers increase.”
“Okay,” Sam said, looking queasy. “But—”
Wilhelm scooped up some more fish onto his fork and stared at Sam. “What?”
Sam flushed. “Um … before I killed the Ur-bear while it was trying to eat me, rifle inside its mouth, well …”
Wilhelm popped the fork into his mouth, a hint of a smile on his lips. “Go on, young man. Say it.”
Sam flushed deeper. “Um … I shit my pants, and it left me alone.”
“Yes.” Wilhelm swallowed and nodded. “Yes, that’s right. Even monsters need to show mercy sometimes, Sam. But playing dead was too well-known, too old-hat. Worked with the original bears, but that was too easy. There had to be a twist. A kind of self-sacrifice. And they have a very sensitive olfactory system. Fresh shit in your pants, but we never thought anyone would actually find that little Easter egg so soon.”
“W…w…well.” Sam stammered. “I told lots of people about that when I gave the Ur-bears their name. They make this soft noise in their throats when they’re deciding where to bite you, sniffing up close. Now people remember the sound, and when to shit their pants to live. Urrrrr.”
Wilhelm sighed. “Patrick, make a note. We’ve got to change that now, too. Still a mercy trigger, but shit’s off the table in the next generation. Something else. Crying while playing dead, maybe.”
“That could work.” Sam nodded.
Wilhelm pointed his fork at Sam. “But if you tell a living soul outside of this table and my lab, I will kill you. No spoilers, no leaks, or it will be death by monster, no mercy. You understand?”
Sam paled. “Yes, sir.”
“Good.” Wilhelm nodded. “We need our monsters.”
Sam turned his attention back to his plate.
Wilhelm nodded. “A different mercy trigger, yes. And changing the eyes. I like that design improvement very much. And Miya, Sam?”
Sam swallowed, his eyes fearful.
Miya licked her lips. “Yes?”
“If either of you get assigned to my department, your first three or four years will be spent navigating the new batches to where they’re needed. Only the first generation has the navigational gear embedded. After that, they’re on their own. You and Sam killed a second generation, the beginning of the natural spread of that model. But now there’s a gap we urgently need to fill.”
“Okay.” Miya swallowed. “I guess that sounds fair.”
“Yes.” Wilhelm nodded. “You’ve earned your dinner and your tour in the morning. I’m pleased that you and your friends have decided to start mingling. I was waiting for it, closed door until then. Now, if you don’t mind finishing your meal, I’d like to take you somewhere, right after.”
Miya nodded. “Where?”
“The shooting range, down in the basement.”
“Um … why?” asked Sam, his face pale.
“Yes, why? You’re making Sam nervous,” said Miya.
Wilhelm smiled. “I’d like to see an example of your marksmanship, young lady. I still find it hard to believe that you pulled that off.”
“She did,” Sam said slowly, his colour slowly returning to his face. “It fell on me after. They had to drag me out from under.”
“That may be.” Wilhelm’s eyes twinkled. “But I’d still like to see her skills in action. And yours, too, Sam. After all, you taught her. I’m mad about the loss of those two Ur-bears, but I’m also as impressed as hell.”
Sam and Miya walked back to their rooms after they’d finished up in the shooting range, sometime around midnight.
Miya let go of his hand and leaned against her door frame. She smiled. “Did you want to come in?”
Sam blinked. “Are you sure?”
“I’m sure it will be fine.” Miya smiled and swiped her wrist across the sensor. She was met with an angry buzzing sound and a flashing red light.
