World breakers, p.25
World Breakers, page 25
I wasn’t there more than a minute when Paul and Mark pushed a stasis pod through the entry. Like a black hole, its matte black finish seemed to swallow the light. The boys parked the pod in the center of the room. Dampness around their necks made the grey of their T-shirts a bit darker. Paul always managed to keep his shirt tucked into his dark navy utility pants, while Mark never seemed to be able to, despite the addition of a belt.
“Those things are heavier than they look,” Paul said after he caught his breath. The oldest of us, he was taller than Mark who was catching up to him in both height and weight and they seemed to really enjoy making everything into a contest. Who could run the fastest, jump the highest, eat the most, piss the longest, fart the loudest.
“It’s not like we have equipment specifically for moving the pods just laying around,” I said as I rolled my eyes. “Oh wait. We do.”
Actually, I was surprised that they hadn’t commandeered another pod just so they could make a race of it.
“Yes, Sis,” Mark said, “but then we wouldn’t know who could push it the hardest.”
A mental image of them pushing the pod back and forth along the corridor, using the wall markers to measure distance, flashed by. The truth was probably stranger than anything I could conjure, like when they decided to re-enact a duel they’d seen on a vid, but with signal flares. I still don’t know how they got the fabricators to make them.
Despite being so alike, they looked completely different. Where Paul had dark hair, Mark’s was blond. Paul’s almond-shaped eyes were almost as black as his pupils. Mark’s were not just blue, but ice-blue. What they both were, was annoying; all the time, full-on annoying.
Nanny came in, wearing one of her bodies. I had never seen this body, a 60-something woman with ash-blond hair, in anything but her nurse’s uniform (something that Sanctuary pulled out of the history books, I was sure). The blue, knee-length dress was cotton with a white collar and cuffs. It was topped with a pink apron and a cricket pin.
When I was little, the cricket hadn’t been a pin at all, but a robot that rode on her shoulder and talked. It would hop down along her arm and she’d pass it on to my finger and he’d tell me stories like “Pinocchio,” “The Tortoise and the Hare,” “The Boy Who Cried Wolf,” “The Scorpion and the Frog,” and “The Little Red Hen.” As we got older, the cricket spoke to us less and less and one day it was just a pin. Nanny said that it was because we’d outgrown fairy tales and that it was time for us to grow up.
When the cricket stopped talking to us, two things changed. The holographic companions—children our own age that kept us company—appeared less and less, and then didn’t come back, no matter how much we asked for them. Nanny changed too.
I think it was around that time that we realized how different the ego we called Nanny really was. Oh, we knew she wasn’t flesh and bone like the rest of us or like the faceless. We knew that she really lived in one of the vaults we couldn’t get into and that she could “ride” any of the avatars—android and not—or wear a brain-dead body, but it took the loss of the cricket to make us understand she wasn’t a different type of human.
I don’t know if anyone will ever truly understand what it was like. Nanny raised us. She was mother. She was father. She was the source of all knowledge and love. A hologram can’t hold you and an android’s hugs lack even the human warmth of a brain-dead body being worn by an ego. At the time we didn’t know enough to ask the relevant questions like where her bodies came from and what happened to the Sanctuary’s crew.
Like the fish we tended in the micro-farm, we didn’t know we lived in water.
Now that Nanny was here, Paul and Mark went on their best behavior, standing quietly on each side of the pod. I moved to its foot and Nanny took up the spot at its head.
“Governor is present,” the body said. Her pink apron faded to white as the executive ego took over.
“Scalpel is present.” The surgical ego had a man’s deep voice. I always imagined him—he’d never manifested as an image of any kind—as one of the older doctors in the historical vids, with mahogany skin, a hawkish nose, and gray at his temples. He changed the accent lighting in the room, giving it a bluish cast.
“Rygbee is present.” The monitor on the far wall came to life. The triage ego liked to manifest as a silhouette and his voice was the most mechanical of them all. I don’t think I’d ever seen him wear a body, or even manifest as a hologram. Once, when Mark broke his leg, Rygbee had riden one of the androids just long enough to pick up my brother and carry him to surgery.
“We have a medical quorum,” Nanny said. “Pod 12-008 with Citizen N.C. Kaneski, male, aged 42 at time of evacuation. Let the record show that pod integrity has not been compromised.”
“Scalpel concurs.”
“Rygbee concurs.”
A seam appeared down the long axis of the pod. The outer shell slid down over the right edge, revealing a man resting on a cushion of gel. Lines and tubes ran in and out of his naked body. For him, only 294 days had passed, so he hadn’t died of old age. Even I could tell. His cheeks weren’t hollowed out. They were slightly lined, but full, and covered with a reddish stubble that matched his hair. Only a few strands were gray.
I let out a little huff of surprise. “He looks like he just went to sleep.”
He really did. I had expected someone who’d been lying still for so long to look sickly and pale. He was a bit pale, but not the right kind. At least not to my untrained eye.
Paul had moved closer. So had Mark.
“He’s not emaciated either,” I said.
“No,” Scalpel said. “The feeding lines are intact.”
“So, what killed him?” Mark asked as he rested his palm lightly upon the pod.
“Diagnostics is offline,” Governor said.
“They don’t know,” Paul said, crossing his arms and looking at me sideways. “They just can’t admit it.”
“So,” Mark said, scratching his head, “What do we do now?”
Eighteen pushed the pod down the corridor leading from the morgue to the multivator, its eyes no longer glowing orange now that Ratchet, the maintenance ego, was no longer riding it. We trailed Eighteen, me with Mark’s arm affectionately draped across my shoulders, Paul huffing and puffing behind us.
“This is wrong,” Paul mumbled under his breath.
The click-click-click of the android’s heels striking the metal floor kept interrupting the thunk-thunk-thunk of the pod’s wheels.
“We know,” I said. “It just has to be done.”
The unspoken “it” being “processing” because it sounded better than recycling. That didn’t change what it was—turning the dead man into nutrients that would go into the feeding lines of the faceless. Stasis dramatically slowed metabolic processes, but didn’t stop them. Our micro-farm was big enough to feed us and the aging bodies used by the egos, but it could not feed the faceless. Maybe if we hadn’t been born . . .
A chill ran over me and I shrugged into the shelter of Mark’s body. The warmth of his torso leaked through the short-sleeved shirt. I wanted to wrap him around me like a warm blanket and hide.
I don’t remember when we learned—or rather, understood—that Sanctuary had been a combat support hospital. Or accepted that we were marooned on a world our parents had called home but was no longer safe.
Like the fish, the water we lived in simply was. Unlike the fish, we didn’t have the bliss of ignorance about where the things that made our lives possible came from. And also unlike them we had a concept of time, of aging, but I think that deep down we all had known—known with absolute certainty—that we would be rescued. All we had to do was wait. As long as Sanctuary had power, as long as its fabricators were running, we’d be fine. Nanny would protect us. It was her job. She’d done it all our lives.
But now, as we walked that corridor it struck me: much of Sanctuary was powered down and had been all our lives. We’d simply thought it was because all those spaces were not needed. It was just the three of us.
The multivator doors opened. How long had it been making that screeching sound? How long had the light in the back left corner been out? As Paul and Mark helped Eighteen maneuver the pod in, I noticed that some of the control buttons no longer glowed.
The doors closed with a hiss and the multivator moved downward. Wedged in like we were, Paul was up against the far wall with Eighteen at his side. Mark leaned against the opposite corner.
“Nanny,” I said, “is Sanctuary dying?”
Eighteen’s eyes turned pink. “Governor’s models estimate that Sanctuary has sufficient power for five hundred years at present consumption.”
“That’s not what we’re asking, Nanny.” Paul’s voice was hard. Gone was the annoying playfulness, the smirk he usually wore. Instead his tone was defiant, challenging. Nanny wouldn’t like it.
It was then that I first heard the rasp, that wet, liquid sputter that the aquarium filters sometimes made. At first I thought that I imagined it, that my brain was playing tricks on me, making me think I heard something indicating life because I didn’t want to keep listening to the silence of death.
There it was again, barely a gurgle against the sounds of the multivator’s electromagnets, the beating of my heart, the push and pull of the cycling air.
“Shit! He’s alive.”
I still don’t know if it was Paul or Mark who said it.
Eighteen’s eyes turned yellow as Rygbee took over and rode him, working his arms to pump the man’s chest.
We should have known what to do, but that moment of shock froze us until Rygbee shouted orders. He told Mark to pinch the man’s nose and breathe into his mouth. He yelled at Paul to grab the external defibrillator mounted on the wall.
They obeyed. Paddles were applied. A shock was delivered. Eighteen’s eyes turned briefly, first to Scalpel’s blue, then to Governor’s white.
“Procedure room. Now!” That last was delivered with a squeaky, distorted voice, and for a fraction of a second, I thought that Eighteen’s eyes turned a pale, grass green, but it was probably just the transition from Rygbee’s yellow to Scalpel’s blue.
I stabbed at the multivator controls, got knocked into the wall as it lurched to a stop and changed direction.
Doors opened. I ran the pod into the back of Paul’s legs, making him stumble, but we got to the treatment deck.
An hour later, the man was stretched out atop a table, his chest bruised from the paddles. Pale eyelids fluttered above muttering lips, but he was stable and breathing on his own.
“What just happened?” Paul asked as he slid into a chair and slumped over. Sweat soaked his collar and armpits. In the midst of the resuscitation, mid-compression actually, Eighteen had just stopped as if someone had thrown a switch. Paul had taken over.
“We brought someone back to life,” Mark said, a little breathless. He was studying his hands. They were still shaking, although not as bad as they had been at first.
“No,” I said, whisper quiet. “He was never dead. They were wrong.”
Mark’s eyes widened. Paul’s gaze slid to the table and the now-warm man. Tubes and wires connected the man to machines that pumped fluids into his veins. Warm blankets covered him like a cocoon.
None of the other avatars or bodies had come to help us. The egos didn’t need either a body or an avatar to be here but there no presence in the room.
“Nanny,” I said tentatively, tapping the comm-patch. Nothing. Just the stir of air from the ventilation port above.
“Rygbee,” Mark said, doing the same. “Scalpel?”
Still nothing.
“Warrior,” I ventured. Warrior never responded to us. We were too young to summon him but he was supposed to come online in an emergency. Why hadn’t he?
I cleared my throat. “Governor.”
Paul got up and walked back to the multivator. I stood at the treatment room’s threshold as he pressed the multivator’s control buttons to no avail. He tried the emergency doors. They wouldn’t budge, not for override codes, not even when he put his shoulder to them.
He returned, his shoulders bunching, his hands fisted, anger simmering in his eyes. “I think we have a problem.”
We were stuck on the treatment deck. None of Sanctuary’s egos were answering, none of the doors were opening, and we had decided to save the batteries for life-support instead of recharging Eighteen. Crumpled in the corner it looked like a broken doll. With its head tilted like that, if it had been human it would have been drooling.
“The food and water dispensers are still working so it’s not Nanny punishing us,” Mark said.
“She hasn’t done that in years,” Paul pointed out.
That we’d done anything wrong—much less anything worth a collective punishment—hadn’t crossed my mind either.
“What is going on?” I asked. Somebody had to.
“I think there’s something wrong with Sanctuary,” Paul said. “I think it’s been happening for a while now.”
“As in Sanctuary’s dying.” There was a bit of panic in my voice despite doing my best to sound calm. “And she doesn’t want us to know.”
Mark made a sour face. “Sanctuary can’t die. She’s not alive.”
“Fine,” I said, crossing my arms. “She’s losing power, running out of resources. Whatever it is, it’s like dying.”
“Nanny said she had enough power for five hundred years,” Mark said.
“She lied,” Paul said flatly.
“She can’t lie,” Mark insisted.
Disgust settled on Paul’s face in that way that said that they’d had this argument far too many times. Sometimes they didn’t tell me things because I was too young and not ready to hear them. I kept thinking that as we got older that would change. The three years between them and me might have mattered when we were toddlers, pre-teens even, but now—it shouldn’t have mattered. But I could see that it had. Saw it in the silence passing between them.
It was in that moment so full of rage, fear, and frustration, that I wanted to stomp my feet and yell “I’m not a baby” at them. And I might have, had the man not stirred to life just then.
He came to with a cough and sputter, eyes blinking into the harsh light above like he couldn’t see and then squinting against it like it hurt.
“Citizen Kaneski,” I said as I put myself between him and the light. “Can you hear me?”
He blinked again as if testing muscles that weren’t working quite right. His mouth worked behind the oxygen mask, like a fish gasping at air and a rush of panic welled up inside me.
He’s not a fish. He’s been in stasis, that’s all.
At the time I didn’t really understand all that that meant, but even back then I’d known that not using breathing muscles weakened them and he’d not used them for a long time.
Mark tugged the oxygen mask off Kaneski’s face and pressed a sliver of ice to his mouth. He sucked at it, weak at first, then stronger. His gaze darted from Mark, to me, to Paul.
Kaneski’s Adam’s apple bobbed up and down but I couldn’t make out any words.
We propped him up carefully, setting him up an angle so he could sip from a cup. He drifted in and out of consciousness for hours, but each time he was semi-awake longer. Each time he drank a bit more. Mark left to catch a nap in the next room and Paul had excused himself, probably to use the bathroom.
I hovered by the bed, keeping the cup filled, fussing with the warming blankets and keeping an eye on the monitors for all the good it would do. Mostly I did it because I needed something to do, because I didn’t want to think about what might be happening, not just to him, but to us, to our home, to the only world we’d ever known.
“Where am I?” he finally said, eyes still closed.
“You’re aboard UENS Sanctuary, Citizen Kaneski,” I said.
His eyelids fluttered open, the muscles around them squeezing to reveal fine lines in his skin. His pupils were large, black pools in brown eyes flecked with bits of green and yellow.
“Who’s Citizen Kaneski?” he rasped.
It was my turn to blink. “You are.”
“No. No I’m not.” He winced as he pushed himself up a bit. “Even with this fog in my head, I know my own name, little girl.”
I opened my mouth to object, then shut it. To someone as old as him, I must have looked like a child.
“So what is it? Your name that is.”
He winced against the light again even though his pupils were smaller now.
“Lieutenant Adalwulf Storer, and for obvious reasons, everyone calls me Wolf.”
I should’ve wondered why the name on the pod was wrong but instead I frowned. I knew what a wolf was. And he didn’t look like one.
“What obvious reasons?”
He looked at me like he was seeing me for the first time.
“Well—er, never mind.” Slowly, he lifted his hand to his head and rubbed at his right temple. “What’s your name, little girl?”
“Elena. And I’m not little. I’m fourteen.”
“Sure you are,” he said, dropping his hand back to his side.
At first I thought he was teasing me, but he was distracted. I glanced over my shoulder. Paul and Mark were back.
In our excitement we asked a dozen hurried questions, most of which he could not answer. He was a pilot. He remembered his aircraft getting hit and bailing out, but not much more. We knew better than to push questions at someone fresh out of stasis. Nanny had raised us to obey safety protocols without question.
As Wolf ate and drank he let us talk. We were more than willing to go on and on about our noble mission of keeping the faceless safe until we were rescued. We talked about how we kept ourselves fed as if it was a great accomplishment. Paul bragged about how we’d kept the fabricators running and how we were taking over more and more tasks as Sanctuary’s avatars wore out.
