Mel followed. “You can't spoil these kids. We only have so much.”
“Come on, Miss Melody. I've got something for you too.”
They walked to Chase's room. He went in first, moving through the darkness to pull something out from under his mattress.
Mel flipped on the lamp. “What have you got in here?”
“I had this in my flight pack when I got here and I put it away for a special occasion.” Chase pulled out a wrapped chocolate bar. “I thought about turning it over to the rations coordinator, but it's not enough to make any difference.”
Mel took the candy and smiled. “So you kept it for yourself, huh?”
“No. I saved it for you. Just hadn't decided when to give it to you.” He grabbed the bar and snapped it in two. “And now you have to share it.” He handed half to Erin and smiled.
The girl hesitated.
“What's wrong?” Chase asked. “You don't like chocolate?”
“It just doesn't seem fair.” She sat on the end of the bed and lowered the treat to her lap.
Chase knelt before her. “Tell you what, you eat this, don't tell anyone about it, and I'll see if I can get us some more. I have connections, you know.” He took the candy, pulled off the torn wrapper, and held it up.
“Go ahead,” Mel told her, and she peeled the paper off her half. “I'll eat mine if you eat yours.”
Erin smiled and bit off a chunk. She chewed and swallowed, her face gleaming. “It's been a long time since I tasted chocolate. Thank you, Mr. Sterling. I mean, Mr. Redding.”
“Call me Chase,” he said.
“Mr. Chase.” She smiled and took another bite.
Mel closed the door as she bit into the candy.
“What about the rule?” Chase asked. “If it involves illegal snacking, it's OK to shut the door?”
“I don't want the light to bother anybody. Besides, we're not alone.” She took another bite and smiled. “And we sure don't want this heavenly scent drifting through the compound. Might start a riot.”
Erin giggled as Chase lifted off his knees and leaned against the wall. He folded his arms and watched as Mel joined the girl on the edge of the bed. This was what he'd imagined of the underground. Good company. Loving people. No emergency to deal with. Kerstin hadn't popped into the exoself all day. Maybe
that
problem, at least, was over. He smiled with relief.
Then the light went out.
“What's going on?” the girl asked.
“Don't worry,” Chase said. “Maybe the bulb burned out. Old technology in this place. These bulbs don't last forever.” He opened the door and found a switch in the hall. Nothing. “Well, it seems we have an issue with our power source. Both of you stay put, and I'll go to the command center and make sure the systems there are still functional.”
“Chase, if our computers are down then we've got a serious problem,” Mel said.
“Yeah. It's a good thing you put one in my brain. Stay here. I'll be back.”
20
Making his way through the tunnel to the command center, Chase prompted the exoself to check the power reserve supplying electricity. Or at the moment, not supplying it. Did the systems up top catch on that the reserve was being filtered to an unknown location? The exoself searched the company outside Herouxville that gave the town its solar and hydro-electric energy. The panels seemed in proper working order. No red flags in the system.
The command center glimmered with read-outs at a few stations. Chase didn't need to read the code. About three hours of operation remained before power depletion shut down every computer.
He rushed to the closet where he'd seen a resident requesting a laserlight. No choice but to break the lock. Grabbing a couple of the little lights, he hurried back to his room.
“Mel, come with me to the command center.” He handed a light to Erin. “Here, sweetie, go to your room and stay there.”
“What's going on?” she asked.
“We'll figure it out. Everything will be fine.”
The girl headed down the hall, and Chase and Mel went the opposite direction, back toward the command center.
“Should we wake up Amos?” Mel asked.
“Let's just figure out how to fix this.” Chase grabbed her arm and hurried her along. “I've got full connection to the branches of the underground, and the WR is an open book. As long as I have the exoself we can still function. But it'll be awful if you all have to live in darkness.”
“How did they figure out the reserve was getting sucked up?” Mel asked. “Do you think they can pinpoint our location?”
“No indication that the energy supply company has found a breach in their systems, or that they even know they've lost some of the reserve. It replenishes faster than we can use it.”
“Then why the power outage?” Mel dropped in front of a computer in the dark room and began searching for an answer.
“Whole town's gone dark,” Chase told her. “The local police just reported it.”
“But we're not on the power grid, so why are we included in the blackout?”
The exoself searched deeper. Intel gave no reason for the blackout, or how it had managed to work its way to the underground. No storm damage. No accident reports.
Lots of drone activity.
“Crap.”
“What is it, Chase?”
“Fourteen minutes ago, every drone connected to its charger. Even the ones still on the assembly line.”
“So what? They drained the town's energy? That's not possible.”
“No, they didn't drain anything. But something drained them. They wouldn't disconnect. So the system shut off their power source. And the town's power went out too.”
“The reservoirs shut down too?”
“Yep. I told you it couldn't be that easy. Putting in all those orders at once kicked the system at the plant into overdrive. I confused computer operations.”
“Well, we'll just have to set it straight.” She typed faster. “Can you cancel the orders? Put the drones back to sleep?”
“Yes, but that'll mean taking a more human approach to reuniting Windsong with her plane.”
“Maybe she needs to resign herself to the idea of staying put.” Mel crossed her arms. “Then you won't have to go off with that woman. You could end up in all sorts of trouble.”
Chase didn't cancel the orders for the drones to deliver themselves to various bases, but he did power them down. Too bad he hadn't given personnel
this
night off, as well as the following night. They must be scrambling, trying to figure out how every drone in the place came to life without a programmer. They hadn't even been trained on how to cut power to the equipment they guarded. So they called the energy company and declared an emergency, which led to shutting down the entire grid.
No wonder it'd been so easy to put in the orders. The plant was in the hands of amateurs. Not to mention the incompetents in charge of the energy supply.
“Human beings are inept,” he said with a grin. “Anybody with half a brain could have handled this without turning off the whole grid. No wonder the government wants to make us over. Of course, the government is full of half-brained humans as well.”
“When you're through insulting the human race, check the code I just put in the energy company's system.”
The exoself ran the intel and approved.
“Good, that'll work. The power should be coming back on in town, but the plant will remain dark until the clumsy workers there are sure the drones are through stirring.”
“You know, boss, human beings designed the transhuman prototype. And they were no dummies.”
“Are you standing up for the geeks at the Helgen?”
“That depends. Are you saying the rest of us aren't good enough to keep up with your computer brain? I helped program it, you know.” Mel's voice got louder. “Maybe you could make
yourself
a designer brain now, but you couldn't have a year ago.”
What did he say to get her mad?
“I was just kidding. There are a lot of dumb people in the world. That's all. I didn't mean you, Mel. You're one of the smartest people I've ever known.”
“Until you met yourself.” She pointed the laserlight at his face. “Why don't we have power yet?”
“The reserves are on lock-down. It happens during an outage. The system thinks it lost its source, so it's hanging on to what it has.”
“Did you just learn all that from the exoself?”
Chase crossed his arms. “Yes, I did. I pick up on the obvious a little faster than mostâ”
“Most what? Regular humans?”
“I was going to say faster than most computers. I caught a trail into the energy company and read their policy. It's a closed system, but I got in.”
“Well, good for you. How long until our lights come back on?”
Before he could answer, the computers preparing to shut down flashed a repletion code. The room filled with sound and light. Chase found the nearest light switch and pulled it up. “They're on.” He pushed the bar down. “Let's get some sleep. It's gonna be a long day preparing to move the drones and getting Windsong to her plane.”
“I though you canceled the orders on the drones.”
“No. You told me to, but I didn't,” Chase said. “Everything is on schedule. Just the way I planned it.”
“And the drones aren't going to light up again before they're supposed to?”
“It was glitch in the systemâthat's what they think at the plant. The programmers will have the whole day to make sure the drones don't ever turn themselves on again. And when they've all gone home and the sun goes down, I'll turn them on anyway and fly them out of there.”
“Like you said, it seems too simple.”
“I made it simple. It'll work.”
“Yeah. Goodnight then.” Mel headed to the dorm.
“Goodnight.” Chase sat at a station and stared at the coded screen. Did he and Mel just have a fight? They'd had plenty over the years. Most of them involved him screwing something up and Mel fixing it. Now things were different. Weren't they? In the short time he'd been here he'd hurt her feelings more than once. Now he'd ticked her offâhe wasn't sure how.
“Women,” he said.
Before he could power down the work station and head for his room, a flash of red appeared in the darkest corner of the room.
“Oh, no you don't.” He charged at the image appearing before him. “You are not going to haunt me. I refuse to allow it. Now get out of here!”
Kerstin was there and gone in a matter of seconds. He'd done itâchased the intruder out of the exoself.
But he still heard her voice.
“You are a transhuman, Chase. Those Bible thumpers don't deserve to have you on their side. You want to help the world? Come back to me. Together, we will
rule
the world.”
Chase didn't respond. The voice said nothing else and the image didn't return. He headed for his room. How far could Kerstin go with the technology they'd put in her? How many other people had been programmed like her? Soon there might be a rush of wired-up brains popping in and out of the exoself. Telling it what to do. Knowing its plans. They'd all be working togetherâan army of exoselves.
“Exoselves? Is that even a word?” Chase swung open the door to his room and peered into the darkness. No sign of the unwanted visitor. She'd always been pale as a ghost. Now she was one, in a sense. He could conquer her at this game. He was a transhuman, after all.
He laughed. “
You
are nothing special, Chase Sterling. You're a human being. You're not invincible. You're just a prideful, stupid man.”
The voice from his dreamsâthe last of the dreamsâengaged his mind as plain as Kerstin's had been only moments ago.
You are still mine.
“What does that mean?” Chase asked. “I was never yours. I don't know how to be yours.” He sat on the bed, pulled off his shoes, and stretched out to stare at the low ceiling.
“I don't know who I am,” he said. “Somebody tell me.”
21
The sun rose at six twenty-eight, so said the exoself. Chase had been awake for an hour. He crawled from the bed and opened the door to make sure the hall light had come on as usual. It had. A few people in bathrobes carried towels and toothbrushes toward the bathrooms. Chase made eye contact with the new guy, Kirel, who nodded his head as a silent greeting. Chase returned the gesture and closed the door.
It seemed no one else knew the lights had gone off. Of course, a teenage girl couldn't be trusted not to tell. She'd enjoyed some chocolate and then the power went out. And, by the way, Chase broke the lock on the supply closet and then handed her a laserlight, which she wasn't allowed to have without permission.
No, she wouldn't snitch. Would she?
How many kids were in this place? He'd better find Erin, retrieve the light, swear her to silence, and fix that broken lock.
“I can't fix the lock. I'll just have to explain the whole mess to Amos.”
But he had to do something else first. He pulled on his pants, tucked in the wrinkled shirt he'd slept in, and opened the door. He met Kirel in the hall.
“Heard the power went out last night,” the man said.
Chase let his head fall forward and sighed. “Let me guess, a girl named Erin told you.”
“No. One of the twins. But he probably heard it from the girl who was eating chocolate in your room.”
Chase shook his head and laughed. “I guess I'd better go talk to the boss.”
Kirel shrugged.
Chase started for Amos's quarters. Then he peered down the hall leading to Mel's room. He had to talk to her.
But they'd both be eating breakfastâit started ten minutes ago. He headed for the dining hall.
Whispers rose as he entered the room. He smiled. “You know I can hear you.”
Amos rose from the table, his stoic expression unbroken. “You want to explain how you managed to knock out our power and then turn it back on? And why you broke a lock? And how you picked one kid out of many to gift with a chocolate bar?”