Broken Pixels (The Chronicles of Mara Lantern, Book 4) (27 page)

Sam gave her a tired look. “Whatever. Let’s just not get all touchy-feely with the equipment. That irradiated-hand thing did look creepy.”

“We might be able to learn more once we access the manual terminal on the third floor,” Cam said. “It’s probably best if we head that way.”

As they walked across the room, Mara noticed that Sam walked with a slight limp. “Did you hurt your leg when you ran into that cop?”

“No. Why?”

“You’re limping. What’s wrong with your leg?”

He stopped walking and stuck his foot out in the air in front of them and wiggled it. “It feels kinda like it fell asleep,” he said. He put it back on the ground, but when he shifted his weight onto it, his knee gave out, and he fell into a kneeling position, barely keeping his balance by waving his arms out to his side.

Mara stepped in front of him and put her hand on his forehead. She gasped and said, “You’re burning up! You’re getting sick, aren’t you?”

He swatted away her hand. “I am not burning up, Mother Hen. I feel fine.”

“Ping lost his balance before he went deaf, and now you’re stumbling around. Are you having trouble with your hearing?”

“I hear perfectly,” he said, standing up and dusting off his knee. “I told you. My foot fell asleep standing around, waiting for you to finish feeling up the cube.”

In the distance, beyond the column that housed the stairwell, a burst of clapping and cheering erupted.

“See? I heard that just fine,” Sam said.

Mara glanced at Cam with a questioning look.

“It’s coming from the atrium. Remember? I told you the second and third floors run along the periphery of the atrium and are open to it, like balconies above the ground floor,” he said.

Mara turned and looked toward the noise. “Maybe we should have a look at what’s going on down there. What do you think?”

“I think it might be a better idea to do that from the third floor. We’ll be farther away, and there will be a little less risk of us being seen or recognized,” Cam said.

Mara nodded. “You’re right. Let’s go.”

The third floor of the transceiver building was a mash-up of the first and second floors. Rooms and offices were walled off with drab-looking dry wall along the periphery of the building, while the open center area overlooking the atrium glowed with the light of the plasma that flowed through the cubes. Hanging above the atrium, suspended from the apex of the dome, was a house-size sphere filled with spinning bands of golden energy. It reminded Mara of Jupiter without the red spot. Columns constructed of the same translucent material as the cubes on the second floor ran along the three corners of the atrium and converged in the dome above the sphere. Pipes of plasma could be seen inside them, funneling power and signals to the radiant globe to be sent out into the city.

Walking toward the railing that marked the edge of the atrium, Mara marveled at the ingenuity it took to create something so complex and powerful. “The sheer technical know-how of this place is almost unfathomable. You guys are generations ahead of us in what you can do. It must have seemed like living in the Dark Ages when you were stuck in our realm,” she said.

“Not really,” Cam said. “It is true that necessity is the mother of invention. We built what we needed to survive. So did the people in your realm. If you think about it, we all pretty much have the same capabilities and quality of life. We just went about it in different ways because of our circumstances.”

“Still, it is amazing,” she said staring up at the sphere, awestruck.

Cam tugged at her arm and directed them toward the column at the closest corner of the atrium. “If we stay near the pillar here, we should have a good view of the first floor without being seen.”

Mara nodded and followed him. After a few steps, she noticed Sam wasn’t keeping up with them and turned around. Her brother stood in the middle of the floor, halfway between the door to the stairs and the railing at the edge of the atrium, staring up at the sphere. His shoulder was slumped under the strap of the book bag. He looked tired.

“You want me to take the bag?” Mara said.

He hefted it higher onto his shoulder and shook his head. “You don’t have to be so …” It took him a moment to think of the word, then he said, “So solicitous. I’m not sick.”

Mara raised an eyebrow and smiled. “That tutoring with Mrs. Zimmerman really has paid off.
Solicitous
.”

He rolled his eyes and trailed after them, avoiding the edge of the atrium, until they had sidled up to the glowing column that led to the dome. When they got there, Cam pointed down through the shiny metal railing where it met the column. They could see two-thirds of the floor of the atrium. The portion to the right was blocked by the column itself, but Mara could make out a set of risers at the front of the space and only a corner of that area was out of sight. In front of the makeshift stage stood at least three hundred people.

“I can’t hear anything,” Mara said.

Cam nodded toward the railing. “Lean forward a little. The acoustics in here were designed to minimize background noise and echoing from the open areas.”

Mara crouched down over the railing and tilted her head. Amazing. She could now hear the rustling and shifting of the crowd, and the words of the man who paced at the center of the stage, punching the air before him with a fist, punctuating each statement. He was a handsome thirtysomething with shiny slicked-back black hair and wore a white pinstriped shirt and tie. If not for the pale blue lab coat that flapped at his sides as he moved around the stage, Mara would have pegged him as a motivational speaker.

Bending down, the man picked up a burnt rag—probably a shirt—and wagged it before the crowd and said, “This is not the way. Fire is not light. You can’t
be the light
with a torch or a flame. Technicians cannot build you a new body and stick you in it. You must cast off the chains that have bound your body and mind, and make it happen. I am talking about a new transition to a higher state of being. I am talking about transfiguration! And there is only one way to make that happen. You must believe! Belief is the key.”

He pumped his fist into the air. “See the light. Share the light. Be the light!” The crowd picked up the chant while holding up their sparkling purple diodes, waving them to the rhythm of the chant. Mara glanced at Cam. While he still seemed immune to their influence, a look of disgust filled his face.

“Are you all right?” she whispered.

“It’s nonsense, all of it. What is it that they think they will accomplish?” he asked.

“I don’t know, but we’ve already learned one thing. The burnings were not intentional. Abby isn’t doing this to just cause misery and mayhem. She is trying to do something more here.” Mara turned to stare down at the still-chanting gathering. “I just wonder where she is.”

Sam leaned in to where Mara and Cam crouched next to the railing. “The cops said she was on her way to the atrium, so, I bet if we hang out, we’ll find out soon enough.”

“I’m not so sure. If she gets up and spouts more of the same blather that man is spewing down there, it might not tell us anything,” Cam said.

Mara nodded. “You’re probably right. For all we know, everything she says in front of the gathering might be designed to manipulate them into doing what she wants. We might get more from seeing what they are up to at the terminal in the auxiliary diagnostics lab. On the other hand, we might miss something important if we leave.”

“No problem,” Sam said. “I’ll stay here and watch the show, while you guys see what she’s up to on the network.”

Mara shook her head. “I won’t leave you here alone. What if someone walks up behind you? Maybe it would be best for Cam to take a look at the terminal while we wait here.”

“I’m willing to do it, but I might miss something important. Considering my unfamiliarity with some of the metaphysical concepts you think might be in play, I could easily skip over something that might be key,” Cam said.

“Look, I’ll be fine here,” Sam said. “If someone shows up, I’ll prompt them to leave. That’s a lot quieter than what you might do if you stay.” Sam glared at his sister for added emphasis. “It’s the smart thing to do. Covers all the bases.”

Mara looked dubious for a few seconds. She glanced at Cam, and he nodded and shrugged. To her brother, she said, “You are absolutely sure you feel okay? You’re not going deaf or blind?”

He rolled his eyes and stared at her without replying.

She held up her hands in surrender. “Okay. We’ll go to the office while you keep a watch on things here. But, please,
please
, don’t do anything stupid while we’re gone. You have a habit of just going off and getting in the middle of things when it’s least convenient.”

“You’re the troublemaker in the family. I’m just the helpful little brother who is always bailing you out,” he said.

“Well, do me a favor and resist the temptation to do any
bailing
while we are gone,” she said.

As they walked away, she looked over her shoulder at her brother. He was vigorously rubbing his palm against the leg of his jeans while he crouched, looking into the atrium.
Must have an itch
.

Cam leaned his head against the door next to the sign that read Auxiliary Diagnostics as he turned the doorknob. He had not heard anyone inside, but he wanted to make sure they didn’t stumble into the room and get discovered by someone who had been compromised by the diodes. Mara leaned against the wall next to the door frame and nodded as he cracked open the door just a bit.

All he could see was a large half-moon-shaped desk topped by a huge curved terminal monitor. No one sat at the desk. When he released his breath and untensed his shoulders, Mara picked up on it and pushed herself off the wall, getting ready to follow him into the office.

He swung open the door and quickly scanned the large room. It was unoccupied. Glancing back, he waved for Mara to come into the room.

Other than the desk and monitor, the only furniture was a free-standing cabinet in the corner. The wall opposite the door was glass from floor to ceiling, and, through the window, Mara could see the twinkling lights of the western valley stretched below. She had almost forgotten they were on top of a large butte overlooking the city.

After Cam closed the door and punched the push-button lock at the center of the knob, she turned to see that the wall on both sides of the door were actually monitors themselves—large tinted panes of Plexiglas—reminding her of the walls of the conference room at the repository. Data scrolled next to several graphs actively rendered and updated with lines zigzagging over bars that continuously grew and shrunk.

“Wow. I was expecting something a little more mundane, like an old PC and a telephone sitting on a discarded army surplus desk,” she said.

Cam walked around the side of the semicircular desk and pulled out the chair. He nodded to the curved monitor, as he sat and said, “This is the closest thing you’ll find to a personal computer on this side of that blue bubble you travel through. Come around on this side so you can watch. We’ll take a look and see what we can find.”

She moved to stand next to him as he pulled a retractable keyboard from below the desktop. “I never thought I would see one of those around here. You guys are so connected to everything, it’s hard to imagine ever needing to type,” she said.

“Actually I never used one before I traveled to your realm.” He laid his fingers on the keys. “Typing is the one skill that I picked up while stuck in your world. Now let’s see if we can find out what’s going on.”

He typed a few commands into the system, but Mara could not discern what he was attempting or how he was navigating through it. The display showed seemingly random lists of letters and numbers, mostly numbers. After studying the screen a little longer, she noticed only the letters
A
through
F
were mixed in with the numbers and asked, “Hexadecimal?”

Cam nodded, typing without saying anything.

“You can read that?”

“Of course.”

“Doesn’t look very user-friendly,” she said.

“It’s friendly enough for this user,” he said absently. Absorbed in his typing, his eyes scanned back and forth over the screen.

That struck Mara as odd. “I thought you said that you see through your skin, that your eyes were largely cosmetic.”

Cam frowned but didn’t look up. “When did I say that?”

“Back when we first met, when you were inactive on the gurney and talking to me through my cell phone. You said you get your sensory information, including sight, through your skin.”

“Um, hold on.” He stopped reading and looked up at her. “That’s true. Our sensors are located in our skin, but it was probably an oversimplification to say our eyes are only cosmetic. In the case of reading, the eyes work as a targeting mechanism that focuses the sensors on the characters. The eyes also are pivotal in interpersonal communication and conveying emotion. Like right now—my eyes are focused on you, and that’s how you know I’m paying attention to you, but that’s not really how I’m seeing you.”

“Sorry to interrupt with silly questions. Why don’t you keep going, and I’ll stay out of your hair.” She turned to the large windows behind the desk. The city lights looked pristine. Almost like they twinkled. It made her wonder where all the smoke that hung in the air earlier had gone. Perhaps a front had blown through the valley and things were calming down.

“I think I’ve got something here,” Cam said. Mara leaned on the edge of the desk next to him as he pointed to the screen. “Here’s the subroutine they uploaded earlier this evening.”

“So they’ve uploaded some kind of alteration to your physiology software through Sig-net?”

Cam shook his head. “No, the subroutine was injected into the energy matrix, the code that manages distribution of power through the transceiver node. It looks like it is designed to emit a series of pulses.” He sat up straighter in his chair. “It’s isolated to all light-emitting devices—display screens, streetlights, lamps, anything that casts light. I think it’s the same sequence that was programmed into the diodes.”