Authors: Wade Andrew Butcher
Chapter 21
November 13, 2830
I could hear Commander Leonidas Verga slamming his fists on his desk before I entered. Ironically, I was assigned to police surveillance. Maybe ruling the way he did prevented crime, but judging from what I have read from Isla, that is not the case.
My ambition to work for the Commander had been realized, but now that it had happened, I feared he would one day discover my misplaced ambition. He had read all of the imposter receptions, the ones created by me, and now the one that someone else had authored. I no longer desired a position with this much visibility, but it was too late. What I really wanted was to meet my mother, learn my history, and discover what destiny I was supposed to fulfill, if any.
The commander’s office was small like most rooms on the ship, attached to another small room with a table where I entered. A low wall with an opening separated me from him. The combination of these spaces gave him more area to work than anyone else had outside the labs. His bedroom was attached to the other side of the room with the table, and his bed was visible through the open door and neatly made.
“Dammit, which is it – are the transceivers working or not? And you… I learned more from a paragraph than I have from your months of research!” Leonidas yelled over the communicator to some poor soul on the other end. He terminated the link.
“The cloning won’t work,” he whispered to himself as I approached the Commander’s office. It gave me chills as I recalled the phony note from the same room in level seven as Isla’s logs, probably written by her impersonating the person she called Chiara. He mumbled some things he had in mind for Isla, something about pregnancy.
I stood in silence waiting for Leonidas to address me. He finally spoke after a few seconds of awkward silence, still looking down at his hands, “You are the new one from the Ward. August Green, is it?”
“Yes, Commander Verga, I was instructed to come here.”
“You may call me Leonidas, young man, please. I don’t feel the need to mandate respect through unnecessary prefixes on my Earth surname.” He seemed surprisingly calm someone who was in a fit of rage only moments earlier.
“As you wish Leonidas.”
“Good! I like you already,” he said. “I have four questions for you.”
I stood in front of him making no attempt to hide the inevitable. I knew my eyes were different. I was worried the obvious relation to Isla would trigger some unpredictable consequence. He looked astonished at the sight of my face moving into the light. I braced myself for his reaction.
“Make that five,” he said. “Do you know Isla Wington?”
“No, sir,” I answered. It wasn’t technically a lie.
“Interesting. Your eyes are unmistakably hers. I have seen pictures of the girl I somehow never met on the Islands. Do you know your pedigree?” His gaze was unwavering.
“No, they don’t always tell us our lineage, especially those of us who are synthesized.”
“I have become more interested in meeting her,” Leonidas said quietly as he looked down and began to speak as if he were no longer addressing me, but some other entity. “Funny thing, mutations. All the bleeding hearts on board used to think our key to survival was in numbers. I think it’s in smaller, superior numbers.”
Leonidas drew a small knife and slid the blade lightly up and down his forearm and then looked up at me and said, “You know, Master Green, I have my own modifications. I do not feel physical pain. I could cut my arm wide open right now, and I’m tempted to do it as a demonstration, but it would make a mess and I would need stitching. But I wouldn’t feel it. It came in handy in my old life. Pain is such an outdated physiological need…”
I felt like I needed to say something, but I could not find any clever words. Leonidas paused for a moment while brushing the tip of the blade up and down his forearm. Then he brought the blade to the top of his head and continued looking down at his arm.
“Yes, Green, that is not all. I was quite the science experiment back home. Inside my brain, there is an antenna of sorts, sending and receiving thoughts,” Leonidas said while rubbing the top of his bald head with the flat side of the knife. “Anyone with similar construction could communicate with me without speaking. But they are mostly gone, and those that are not gone, I will never see again. So here we are…”
He refocused as if suddenly arriving from a distant place back to the present moment. “Okay,” he continued, “then, first question. What does loyalty mean to you?”
I recognized the line of questioning immediately from the intercepted writings of El Salazar. I quickly felt warm and began to perspire. I could only think of the person in the story who was killed. As I paused, I remembered the one who answered confidently and remained alive. Luckily, I knew the answers. I tried to paraphrase so my prior knowledge about his line of questioning would remain secret.
“Allegiance to someone, working together,” I replied.
“Close enough. Why is it important?”
“To help each other to survive.”
“Pretty good. Who has your loyalty, Master Green?
“I assume you represent the well-being of all on board, so my loyalty rests squarely on you, sir,” I answered.
“Why?”
“Because I want us all to survive,” I modified the answer I thought he might be seeking. I was not sure if an admission of my fear was required, but I was prepared to confess if necessary. He did not press me.
“Well, then. We understand each other already my young assistant. You are a snooper, right?”
It seemed a derogatory term to me at first. I did not think he was purposefully trying to be insulting, so I answered ‘yes.’
“I have someone here whose loyalties have been confused, and I want him monitored. See to it and report the transcripts back to me in two days time.” He handed me a small note with a handwritten name and room number:
El Salazar, 11820-7
.
Chapter 22
November 17, 2830
I watched and listened to the Bauvat for two days as instructed. The surveillance yielded little to report. It did not matter. Today I listened from my remote station when he was called to meet Leonidas, who is strangely oblivious to his own ‘snooper’ tapping into his quarters. I can monitor from my issued earpiece after a little rerouting in the switch room. It is a crime, but an undetectable one that helps me with my new duties. I have become adept at using the equipment at my disposal. This was a skill once well known among some of the original crewmembers of the ship, but they have passed on.
When Salazar reached Leonidas to be confronted, there was no conversation. The room was silent for a few moments. Leonidas directed someone else to take Salazar away. There was no audible evidence of a fight or struggle.
Then Leonidas said, “Now that he is out of the way, I can get to the woman undisturbed. Leave the tranquilizer with me, please.” There must have been several others there to take the Bauvat away once he was sedated.
Wondering where they were taking him, I made my way to the camera room. I climbed the ladder tube up three layers, traversed my way through the tunnel and stopped to observe who was present. One of my wardmates, assigned with me to the police, greeted me with a brief glance and head nod as I entered.
I positioned myself next to him and changed the channel. He was just there passing time and did not object. I did not see Salazar. I changed the channel again for a second, third, and fourth time. The fifth time brought an image onto the screens that suggested a severe punishment was in store for him. I covered my face with my hands while continuing to watch through the spaces in between my fingers. My wardmate asked what was wrong, but I did not express an answer to reveal the bond I felt with the creature. There were plenty of infractions with which he might be charged, but they were undeserved, and I held silent hope for the Bauvat who I never met. My ideas seemed to be correct and my hopes diminished, as it appeared he was going to pay the final price.
They were moving in the direction of one of the evacuated water tanks with Salazar’s limp body in tow. My wardmate and I watched the camera feed silently. Helpless tears welled up in my eyes, which I concealed with my hands. I knew the method of punishment in store for Salazar was designed for torture, unnecessary suffering often administered either for revenge or the private viewing of the few who wielded power over the others to satisfy their brutal desire for superiority.
The two police agents with Salazar pulled him to the exterior door of the tank. Inside there was nothing but a large vacuous space with no artificial gravity, only walls, smooth and featureless, a central chamber where prisoners float for days or weeks until they die.
The inside was visible from a camera installed at one of the cubicle tank’s two observation windows. There was no audio. Salazar was released into the emptiness where aside from the two tiny and impenetrable circular windows, there were only two four-inch openings, an inlet and an outlet, intended to circulate water, but also capable of keeping the air fresh enough to prolong the lives of the poor inhabitants.
Stripped of clothing, his flaccid body drifted slowly through the empty space. The relaxed wings emanating from his back opened to reveal his size. Accompanying him was another body, whose lack of movement was a sign either of near death or submission to its circumstance. Its only sign of life were its eyes, noticeable from a zoomed view of the camera, watching its new cellmate from a distance of five body lengths.
Salazar awakened. After a few seconds of dazed observation, his panic became evident. His still powerful wings spread, and he flew angrily from one side of the enclosure to the next demonstrating his agility in open space.
But there was nowhere to go.
He stretched his arms into the inlet pipe searching in vain for something, anything, to grab. One flap of his wings propelled him to the other pipe where he probed pointlessly again. Ignoring the collisions with the person that accompanied him, he jumped from wall to wall undeterred.
He bounded to the window and pounded. The transparent surface was unbreakable, and his efforts resulted only in a smearing of his blood to partially obstruct the view. After a few long minutes, he resigned. There was nowhere to sit, nowhere to stand. He relaxed his wings once more and just floated, finally noticing that he was not alone.
The nameless and pitiful remainder of a man was struck with fear at the countenance of the formidable creature in his presence. Unable to propel himself, he flailed in the center of the voluminous area. Salazar looked at the half-dead human. The man shrank helplessly with nowhere to hide.
Nothing happened. Salazar and the man just looked at each other while moving about like two particles, inanimate objects drifting in the emptiness. They spoke to one another, but I could not hear their conversation.
Minutes passed into hours, a small fraction of the horrific time it would take Salazar to die. A short burst of water entered the room from the inlet and hovered indistinguishably alongside the beads of urine in the air. The nameless individual drank in an instinctive effort to survive, a cause that was clearly hopeless. Salazar just watched.
There was nothing I could do. There was no action to take. The situation was no different from any other cruelty that took place at the hands of the police. But this time it felt different. I briefly considered intervening, but it would have been suicide. I was not ready to sacrifice myself for the unperceived good, the moral yet unobservable and uncontrollable right versus wrong, but I had to do something.
Chapter 23
November 18, 2830
I entered the cold Ward in the dark and approached my sleeping brother Stavros, who I could see along with his roommate with my infrared vision. Their heads and faces were easily discernable, giving off body heat in the cold surroundings. Some of the weightless sleeping sections of the Ward were no longer heated in an effort to conserve energy, and even in my brief lifetime it had gotten worse. My teeth chattered, but not loud enough to be noticed.
My brother and his roommate were destined to be mechanics and would possibly be assigned to work on the reactors. Those positions required strength and agility, traits gifted them by their makers, which made me question my judgment in attempting what I was about to do. The lights were automatic on timers, so at least the darkness would remain in my favor.
I did not want interference from the other youth in the room, so I quietly unstrapped his sleeping cocoon and held it tight by the top collar. My grip on the top of the zipper might have bought me an extra few seconds if he awoke. As he was beginning to stir, I pulled him to the door and expelled him into the near-weightless central hallway. It reminded me briefly of Salazar, but I had to keep my focus on my imminent plea to Stavros.
By the time the roommate was fully awake, I had locked the door. He banged on the door and shouted, but I only needed a moment alone with my brother. Yet, if I failed in persuading my brother to join me, there would be big trouble upon my exit. Practical jokes in the Ward were common, but so were scuffles, and I would not escape a beating without my brother’s alliance.
“Stavros, wake up,” I insisted. Despite the racket outside, he did not. I slapped him square across the cheek a little harder than necessary.
He came out of his deep slumber only half aware of his surroundings. I patted his cheek a few more times telling him to wake up. I backed away out of reach when I could see his eyes were open.
“Who’s there?” Stavros asked.
“Don’t get mad. It’s August. We need to talk,” I said while backing into the corner ready to spring myself away from any hostile advances.
“How did you get in here? What’s going on?”
“Not important – will you listen to me?” I asked. I tried to make the question sound as sincere as possible - an honest and urgent appeal from one brother to another. I didn’t actually know how to make it sound like that, but whatever I did, it worked.
He responded in a surprising reciprocal tone, “What?”
“I want to find our mother. I could try alone, but I could use your help. So I was hoping you might want to also.”
After pausing to let the request sink in, he responded, “How do you know who she is?”
“I’ll explain on the way.”
“When, tomorrow?”
“Actually, now if you’re up for it. If not, I understand, but I’m going right now.”
“We would probably get in trouble from the police.”
“Stavros, I
am
the police. That is where I was assigned. I think I can get past the patrollers. There aren’t that many, plus we can go mostly in the dark if we go now.”
“Let’s go later, I’m tired. What’s the rush?” He clearly did not understand my hurry after I heard what Leonidas said about wanting to get to Isla, and I really didn’t want to get into a detailed explanation. There was not enough time.
“Can you just trust me? We really, really need to go now.”
“Forget it,” the words came out of his mouth right before I slapped him hard in the ear. I could see the look of surprise on his face followed by anger.
“What the hell?” Stavros held his hand up to his head. “Was that you?”
Instead of answering, I slapped him again. Hard. Then I slipped up to the ceiling and quietly watched as he swung his arms in the vacant air in front of him. I held myself in place in the corner using the friction from my shoes against the walls pushing upward into my hands on the ceiling. It took some effort, but the artificial gravity in the room near the center of the ship did not produce a strong force, and I was able to hold myself there for a few moments.
“You little runt…” he continued his flurry.
I said nothing as he tried to locate me in the darkness. He stopped in frustration. I gently pushed myself through the near-weightless dark room onto his back. Before he could react, I clamped onto his neck with an unbreakable chokehold. It was the safest location for me, from where I could try to reason with him. Unable to think of anything else productive to say, I recalled the recent conversation with Leonidas, and I asked a question that confused him enough for him to stop struggling.
“Stavros, do you trust me?”
He finally relaxed. After I loosened my grip, he replied, “Yeah, I guess I do.”
I immediately released him and confessed, “I can see in the dark. Just follow me to the weighted perimeter, and don’t let your roommate kick my ass on the way out, okay?”
Stavros laughed, which put me at ease.
…
We travelled down, at least that’s the direction everyone called it, which I never understood. It seemed more like across. I’ve only seen the whole ship in pictures. There have been glimpses of small sections on the feeds from some of the repair walks, but those are of such small sections that the overall shape of this place we live cannot be visualized. I was apprehensive about the lower levels to say the least, but I knew the general area I was seeking.
I had never been that far down before, and I was pretty certain nobody from the Ward had been either. We continued down the perimeter and came across an individual squinting in our direction. It was a patrol. The lighting was very dim, but I could clearly see his hand was on the weapon on his belt. By my estimation we were just shadows to him. I had only been at my assignment for a short time, so I had not met all of the patrols, and they had not met me. To protect myself, I pointed to an emblem on my suit that symbolized my new position and continued walking. As we got closer, his vision was clearer. He gave a head nod at the emblem and let us through. Stavros, to his credit, remained silent.
Before the corridor where we were walking came to an end, I wanted to get off the main artery and approach the lower levels on a less-travelled path. Even though I did not know that much about the ship architecture, I did know it was arranged in levels. After a little less than an hour of walking, I read a designation on the wall suggesting we were on level ten. We climbed the ladder tube up one floor to a parallel longitudinal hallway.
We pulled ourselves out and into the unguarded hallway. I had never ventured into that area of Gambler. We encountered a handwritten index on the curved wall that read:
Level 1: Quarantine and Expulsion
Level
1,
2: Hospital
Level 3,4: Genetics
Level 5: Birth, Nursery
Level
6,
7,8,9: Staff
Level 6: Detention
This tunnel ended some levels down. We held onto the rails and continued in that direction. The little light in the hallway dimmed significantly until it was gone. Stavros was having a hard time walking in the dark as we approached another sign on the wall with the numeral ‘6’ written upon it. He walked with one hand on the rail and another on my shoulder in front of him. I reached my hand to grab the handles of another ladder tube.
“Hey,” Stavros whispered.
I turned. In the background, visible only from the heat difference, and harder to make out in the warmer section of the ship, I saw a figure emerge from the tube into our corridor. The light of his flashlight swept toward us as if he was following.
“Hide,” I instructed. We entered our ladder tube undetected and lowered ourselves back to the main artery on the perimeter. We arrived in the large corridor, and I stopped to look where we came from while trying to quiet my heavy breathing. Stavros tightened his grip on my shoulder.
“I can’t see jack shit,” he whispered.
“Shh,” I uttered keeping my gaze back through the tube we had scaled. The same figure entered. Had the guard reported us? What cause or concern would there have been? I hesitated, finally glimpsing of the figure’s face.
It was Leonidas. We could not have been spotted in the dark. Was he following us?
I grabbed Stavros by the arm and pulled him vigorously behind me. As quietly and quickly as possible, I navigated the hallway. I checked back to assess our progress.
Leonidas climbed out of the tube and entered our corridor. I tensed and was prepared to run. I clenched my brother’s arm. Then the flashlight pointed the other way. The silhouetted figure in the darkness turned away from us and walked in the other direction.
“Shh,” I reminded him. “Follow…”
Against my better judgment, I crept back in the direction of the Commander. I kept a distance at which we would not be seen or heard. He stopped and turned to open a door with a key. He replaced the flashlight in the other hand with an unrecognizable object. I approached closer, closer. He stepped through the door, and a shriek came out of the room a few seconds later.
If I went back, everything in my life would have been fine, no different than it was before. But I knew I had to continue. I was drawn to the scream, as if it was directed to me, compelling me to press on with my brother. His hand on my shoulder was tight but comforting. Something other than logic was drawing us to investigate.
I peered carefully into the doorway. It was a sleeping room not much unlike the one where I had retrieved Stavros over an hour earlier in the central weightless area. There were bunk beds. On the top bunk, a man, or a boy, lay motionless half covered with a tranquilizer dart stuck in his neck. I did not know who he was. On the bottom there was a woman with her legs bunched up against her body shielding her from the perpetrator.
Leonidas stood next to the bed. I held my arm back to signal to my younger brother to hold his ground, and I backed up out of sight.
“What did you do to Eon?” the woman in the room screamed.
“He will be fine, Isla, please relax. Mild sedative.” replied Leonidas.
We had found her. But it was not time to celebrate. I feared for her as well as my brother and me if we were detected. We remained behind the corner and listened.
“What do you want?” Isla inquired.
The Commander paused and answered, “Many things. It has been a long time, hasn’t it? I didn’t really know you on Bishop Islands. You were younger than me. I now remember seeing you, the pretty little one with mysterious eyes.”
Isla did not answer. Leonidas interjected, to my horror, “I got your message. It was finally pinpointed to this room. You know the one I’m talking about? My advisors in the communications room told me that someone tried to conceal its origin. I will find out who that was, but in the meantime, I’m curious why you would write it. Falsifying communications is a punishable offense.”
“Punishable by death? I guess I’m already signed up.”
“I’m not really worried about punishment for that, Isla. I’m just curious why you did it. I’ll tell you what I really want, but first, what do
you
want?”
“Commander, that’s a really easy question to answer. Do what you want with me. I’m tired. But give my son a job and don’t kill him without cause.”
“You know, the ship operates a certain way. It’s not easy to place him at this point.”
“So what are the some of the many things that you want?” Isla asked.
“I want the same thing we all want – to find an inhabitable planet. That’s still what motivates me the same as it did when I agreed to leave the Islands and work for the General. What is best for us in that pursuit is not always what every individual would agree with or appreciate.” Leonidas spoke in a subdued tone characteristic of the cruel expectations I had.
“Let us help with that. We’re not going to reach that goal at this rate…” Isla reasoned.
“That is what I intend. You will be cloned.”
“I know. But you can’t clone my breathing ability, if that’s what you mean.”
“Not unless you are the surrogate.”
“What? Another pregnancy would kill me. I can’t do it again.”
“That is a chance we will take for the greater good. I’m going to take you away now. Come quietly or I will sedate you.”
“Wait, what are you doing? No!”
He did not speak. I moved into the doorway to see. She kicked the flashlight out of his hand. It hit the floor and no longer shined as it rattled around in the room. Leonidas stepped forward and found her kicking feet in the dark, holding her ankles and forcing himself forward to assert control. He subdued her legs with his body and reached into his pocket for another syringe. She screamed while trying to back away, but there was nowhere to go and no way around.
In the dark, her eyes met mine, and her flailing stopped. A second passed, maybe two. Her screaming had stopped, and I could tell she was not only looking at me but could see me clearly through the darkness. I sensed she recognized me from the appearance of my eyes.