Hard Luck Hank: Delovoa & Early Years (14 page)

ZR3’s attention even encompassed lizards and
insects, whose squashed remains provided Delovoa some sustenance.

Ontakian ships were still visiting the outpost
whereupon the occupants were quickly killed and their vehicles transformed into
large metal sheets of paper by ZR3.

Delovoa managed to get water by building small
condensers, the below-ground pits not triggering ZR3’s fury.

Delovoa would occasionally find pages from O.O.
Onoston’s tome, but the infuriatingly thorough linguist had hundreds of pages
on words for farm implements and vegetation and astral constellations, which
didn’t help Delovoa turn off the robot.

Delovoa wasn’t sure how long he lasted in that
state, anything he tried to use as a calendar was visible enough that ZR3
crushed it or it was consumed by the desert. A dozen Ontakian ships had been
flattened. But they clearly were not visiting any longer.

Maybe ZR3 and Delovoa had done what the entire
Colmarian Confederation couldn’t and wiped out the Ontakian species through a
series of booby-trapped pistols and unwelcome parties.

Delovoa only remained at the site because he
hoped he could eventually find some components small enough and unobtrusive
enough that he could use them to rescue himself. He was surrounded by an entire
high technology building complex and numerous space ships. They were just
extremely well-guarded and two-dimensional.

If he trekked off into the desert his only hope
was to eventually find some other habitation. And the Ontakians likely chose
this spot for its remoteness.

One day, Delovoa was poking around the edges of
the site when he caught a slip of paper on the wind. It had just a few words on
it but one was intriguing.

“Yno’chox-del-fyor.”

There was a lengthy description for it, but most
of it was missing. However, Delovoa did make out “self-sacrifice.”

That could be nearly anything of course. It
could mean volunteer work. It could mean kill the person who speaks it. It
could mean suicide. It could mean absolutely nothing to a robot.

But at this point, Delovoa was ready to try.

He stood right in front of ZR3 because if it
was going to kill him he didn’t want to see it run at him, he just wanted to
die right away. That way he wouldn’t have a chance to cower in fear.

“Yno’chox-del-fyor!” Delovoa shouted.

But nothing happened.

Maybe ZR3 was looking for some disadvantaged
youths to help but none were around.

Delovoa inched over to one of the larger areas
of debris and kicked through it, jumping back hastily.

ZR3 didn’t move.

Delovoa took some more stabs and actually
lifted some scraps with his hands, clearly showing off the non-destroyed
garbage to the robot.

ZR3 remained motionless.

Delovoa had done it!

He constructed himself a quick shelter to
finally get out of the elements. He also built some traps for animals and
better water supplies. He then began the long scavenge for parts. A many-ton
robot stepping over every square inch of a space ship doesn’t leave a lot.

Even if there were some advanced modules that
survived, they were often pressed between sheets of folded steel that Delovoa
couldn’t dream of separating.

Living off lizards, spider, birds, and insects,
Delovoa finally constructed a thirty-foot tower capable of transmitting radio
signals.

Every day for the next twenty-three days—Delovoa
now able to keep track—he radioed for help.

On the twenty-fourth day he saw a ship landing
in the distance. He had thrown a blanket he had scrounged on top of ZR3 some
time ago, mostly because he had been tired of looking at his oppressor.

Much to Delovoa’s fright, he saw the vessel was
a Colmarian Navy shuttle.

The ship landed without problem and the
personnel disembarked. This was further than anyone else had gotten without
being attacked by ZR3.

“Is your name Delovoa?” the Navy officer asked.

“Yes,” Delovoa squeaked.

“We’ve been looking for you. You need to come
with us.”

“Okay.”

“Are these your things?” the officer indicated
the small shelter and radio.

“I don’t need them.”

“How about that?” the officer pointed to the
only other vertical object in the desert: ZR3 under his blanket.

Delovoa paused a long while.

“Yes, that’s mine.”

It was one of the most advanced pieces of
technology that had ever been created! If Delovoa was going to be tried for building
it, he was going to take it to show off at least. To prove it was ingenious.

The soldiers had no problem carrying the robot
by hand. It was back in its gravitonically neutral state and they didn’t once
look under the tarp. That was outside their orders.

The Colmarian Navy never concerned itself with
things outside its immediate orders.

“Are you the Delovoa that secretly mutated much
of the population on Shaedsta-2; who cheated on his Exam Fourteen and destroyed
significant government property in the process; who worked on the Future
Didactic Intelligent Cognition program, which ended in its complete failure;
and who wasted nearly a hundred billion credits building a radioactive waste
pit on Thremostilly, then a meteor, then a Dredel Led?” the Colonel asked
officially.

Delovoa sat quietly.

Was it that easy? Could he just deny he was
that person? He didn’t have any identification, but the Navy probably had
biological data on him—besides, ZR3 was sitting in the cargo hold. Still, it couldn’t
hurt.

“Nope. That’s not me.”

“We were looking to hire him for a top secret
assignment.”

“I mean, yes. That’s me. I misunderstood the
question. What’s the assignment?”

“I can’t tell you until you agree on terms. You
would be a grade 14-D-III Doctor of Biological Technology based on your
seniority and past work. Your starting salary would be 123,848 credits a year.
Is that agreeable?”

“Can I ask for more money?”

“I’m not authorized to grant you more. The
contract is already written.”

“What if, just for the sake of argument, I
decline?”

“I am instructed to arrest you.”

“Then why are you even asking?”

The Colonel flashed outrage.

“The Colmarian Confederation is a free society.
We don’t compel our citizens to do anything.”

Delovoa shrugged. He was used to military
logic.

“Sure, where do I sign?”

Delovoa and his ZR3 luggage were deposited on
an incredibly remote planet that was pure military. There was so much saluting
going on that Delovoa believed if he could fit small electromagnetic generators
to their elbows he could power the entire facility.

He was met by a Doctor Ahmendt.

A tall, rangy man with clothes that were at
least twenty years old and washed so frequently that they were only considered
fabric at the molecular level.

“What’s that?” Dr. Ahmendt asked about
Delovoa’s large tarp-covered suitcase.

“Nothing,” Delovoa dismissed. “What do we do
here?”

“We work on one specimen. With your background
in genetics and artificial intelligence and killing people, we thought you might
be a good fit.”

“What’s the specimen?”

“It’s a mutant. The most powerful mutant we
have ever classified. As for what it can do, anything it can imagine.”

“That sounds pretty dangerous.”

“It is, but Specimen JY-O is perpetually
sedated.”

“And what’s my part? Keep him sedated?” Delovoa
asked.

“No, find out about his mutations. Figure out
how it works and how it can be duplicated.”

“So when you say he can do anything, do you
mean figuratively?”

“He once lowered the temperature in a fifty
mile radius to a fraction of a degree above absolute zero. Time essentially
stopped because all subatomic activity was impossible. When he raised the
temperature back, most of the life forms suffered significant tissue damage.”

“This sounds like a terrible job!”

“Dr. Delovoa, you aren’t here because you’re
the best man for the job. You’re here because you’re the best psychopath for
the job. You’re a very rare commodity in the Navy in that you’re a brilliant
scientist and no one cares if you die.”

“I’d say I admire your honesty, but I don’t
want to use up all my lies on my first day,” Delovoa sulked.

“I accidentally killed a bunch of people with
my water purification system. We aren’t here because we were given promotions.
It’s either here or jail in my case and you’ve got me beat by a light year,”
Dr. Ahmendt replied.

For the first few months Delovoa had no direct
exposure to Specimen JY-O.

Merely graphs and charts and data and readings
were studied.

But Delovoa was amazed:

“That thing is a Colmarian!” He said in the
break room one day.

“Of course it is. Did it really take you three
months to figure that out? You thought it was a tree?”

“How can it survive with that level of
mutation? It’s changing its own form every day. It should have died ages ago.”

“We believe its own dreams and subconscious are
enough for it to physically alter its own form—which is why we keep it
sedated.”

“But how can we keep a Colmarian here?”

“Same as you or me.”

“We’re criminals. I thought the Colmarian
Confederation was a free society and no one was compelled to do anything.”

“Who told you that nonsense?” Dr. Ahmendt
asked. “This is a military research base. If they want to strap Colmarians to
bombs because they think it will make better bombs, then that’s what they’ll
do. And they’ll make us do it.”

“How long have you been here?” Delovoa asked.

“Eleven years and two months.”

“Wow. How many people did you kill with your
water treatment?”

“Well…no one goes to that planet anymore, let’s
put it like that.”

The Colmarian Confederation had been mutating its
citizens for countless millennia. But it still wasn’t a perfect science. At
this point, they could really only be sure they wouldn’t kill you—most likely.

But the possibility of creating a mutation was
still small and specifically determining the mutation was impossible.

Delovoa was tasked with making a deterministic
formula out of an inherently chaotic process. Mutations
existed
because
of that randomness. He had no idea how he was going to extract it from Specimen
JY-O who was constantly mutating.

Delovoa swept their break room for listening
devices and cameras and any other equipment before approaching Dr. Ahmendt.

“Look, we’re both reasonably talented doctors,”
Delovoa began.

“I’m not a real doctor.”

“I’m not either. But they are never going to let
us leave here.”

“What do you mean? We’re government employees.
Just…somewhat coerced,” Dr. Ahmendt said.

“Our salaries are jokes. I mean they pay
us—what do they pay you?”

“About 112 thousand, why?”

“No reason. They pay us money we can never
spend. We can’t buy or order anything. You obviously haven’t bought any new
clothes since Thad Elon was running the Confederation. They might as well say
our salaries are a million billion credits.”

“I’m not here for the money. I’m here to avoid
prison.”

“But you want to leave eventually, right?”
Delovoa asked.

“Of course.”

“If we ever unlock the mysteries of creating
level-ten mutants, do you think they will let us go back to civilian life?”

Dr. Ahmendt thought for a moment.

“That…makes a lot of sense, surprisingly.”

“Why surprising? I’m a smart guy.”

“You have a Dredel Led in your bedroom.”

“You searched through my quarters?” Delovoa
asked.

Dr. Ahmendt shrugged.

“What else is there to do here?”

“The way I see it, we can either keep poking a very
dangerous monster and hope it doesn’t kill us, or we can work on trying to
escape.”

Since Delovoa and Dr. Ahmendt weren’t
especially dedicated scientists but they still valued their lives, they wanted
to test the minimum amount of effort they could expend and still flee from the
research base.

They took turns sneaking into a shuttle and
hotwiring it with basic launch and flight sequences. They also put a recording
device in the control tower of the base to monitor the response of their
military captors.