Chaos Cipher (28 page)

Laux stepped
around to a large sheet cover which lay over another work desk. He
smiled proudly, reached down and drew back the dust
cover.

‘
Like this
for example!’ He said.

Kyo stood up
and stepped away from the wooden stool where he was sat and looked
curiously at the device. It was a round cylindrical machine, plated
with a strange copper like material and he could see disks and
dishes of varying sizes.

‘
What’s
that?’

‘
It’s a
holographic projection unit,’ he said excitedly. ‘A
photo-holography prototype. Although, it is not functioning very
well just yet. The holograms are only very small and the power it
takes to run it outweighs the rational basis of having
it.’

‘
So…’ Kyo was
confused. ‘…why?’

‘
Because I
can!’ He smiled giddily. ‘I’m doing everything I can to test my
construction abilities. The more I do, the quicker I become, the
more I learn. Trial and error kid. Trial and error.’

‘
You can make
holograms in there?’ he asked.

‘
Yup!’ Laux
announced.

‘
But why do
you want to?’

‘
Well in the
Atominii materialism took on a digital form.’ Laux explained. ‘Many
of the Atominii people believe themselves to be mystics of a sort
because they can make immaterial items transmogrify into material
ones. It was more efficient for them, you see, economical and
resource friendly to have exotically designed digital concepts and
beautifully designed artificial things. There are one or two items
that I will be able to get back, things I used to own and love
aesthetically speaking. And speaking of nostalgia I would greatly
like to see them and hold them again. But first, I’m going to need
to build suitable fuel cell electrodes. I’m working on some
individual ceramic plates to contrive the ancient lost art of
hydro-carbon fuel to-’

‘
You lost
me,’ Kyo suddenly broke in.

‘
It’s a big
battery.’

‘
How do you
know how to do all this stuff?’ Kyo said folding his
arms.

‘
When they
kick you out of the Atominii they burn off your neural implants so
you can never get their high-tech update assurances,’ he said
pointing to his own head. ‘Well I feel I’ve a right to keep hold of
my own research and access it whenever I want. When I knew I was on
my way out I took all the data I would need to build a lab and the
blueprints and material itinerary to construct whatever I want.
Essentially there’s about sixty thousand full scale plans and a
hundred thousand material inventories all stored away into my DNA
memory, information I can access using a mnemonic recall node.
After they burned out my implants, the hardest part was finding a
technician in the hardlands who could get the recall node
operating. After that a whole world of engineering information
could be translated from my DNA and uploaded as a real memory. Once
I found the person for the job a whole wealth of information burst
into life within my head. Too much I should say!! It was maddening!
That’s why I’m seen as a little odd because I’m always working,
Kyo. Every time I remember and recall those mnemonics takes me back
to that very day when all that information was first unzipped in my
head. Memory is a strange thing, you see. When we remember
something, we are actually remembering the last time we thought of
that thing, if you can get your head around that! I was cursed to
have a brain with infallible access to information without needing
an update.’ Laux was pacing around eccentrically, eyes wild with
excitement. ‘What better subject to test out your ideas than on
one’s self? They said it was madness…but I did it! I robbed the
Atominii of that which they hold most sacredly private, that which
they have stolen from so many others for their own avaricious
deeds.
Information!
’

‘
Jesus Laux,’
Kyo gasped scratching his head. ‘You just never stop do
you?’

‘
Well no,’
Laux laughed, ‘why would I do that?’

They were
suddenly alerted to footsteps hurrying through the hangar. Kyo and
Laux turned to see Pania step into the laboratory space and she
dropped her backpack and saw Kyo.

‘
What
happened?’ she gasped, approaching him.

‘
Some asshole
jumped me.’ He said, wincing painfully as Pania turned his head to
check the wounds. ‘I’m okay though.’ He assured. ‘Professor Laux
patched me up.’

‘
Sure he’s
okay!’ A voice announced from the upper platforms.

They cast
their eyes to see Edge Fenris leaning over the rails with a
cigarette in his mouth and a vial in his hand.

‘
That kid is
an Olympian.’ He announced rakishly. ‘They don’t come much tougher
than those things. That’s why they’re banned from being on the
planet. If the Atominii ever caught him they’d burn him alive and
somebody here knows that. Somebody here doesn’t like him being
here…’

‘
Everybody
here knows that,’ Pania asserted. ‘You been drinking?’

‘
Just a
slosh!’ He smiled holding high one of Laux’s empty
vials.

‘
Sure but
Kyo’s accepted here,’ Laux pointed out. ‘Most people have loved him
for years. He’s a citizen and nothing less. A betrayal to him is a
betrayal to the whole East B’One community. Lord knows if the
Atominii learn we’re keeping an asylum for an Olympian boy they’d
have all the reason they need to invade this heathenish place and
neutralise us for cultivating genetic terrorism.’

‘
There’s only
one son of a bitch who would want to betray the whole city.’ Edge
Fenris growled leaning dangerously far over the rails with a
virulent and bloodthirsty grin. ‘Pierce Lewis!’

‘
Did Pierce
do this to you?’ Pania asked the kid.

‘
No,’ Kyo
said shaking his head. ‘Somebody named Hattle.’

‘
Hattle?’

‘
I’ve seen
him around,’ said Kyo. ‘He’s always at the sports complex. He’s a
boxer. Got red hair.’

‘
The champ!’
Fenris shouted. ‘Hattle The-Uppercut-Kid! He’s the city fighter,
one of our best. You’ll be interested to learn he’s also Pierce’s
son. Pierce organises fights for him. There’s one coming up staring
our culprit in question.’

‘
You follow
boxing?’ Pania asked.

‘
Of course I
do!’ Edge smiled tipping back the last drips of spirits. ‘It’s a
pastime. Though I’ve never tried it personally. I’m better with my
words than with knocking heads.’

‘
When’s the
fight?’ Pania asked, putting her hands on her hips. ‘I think I’d
like to go see this asshole Hattle.’

-20-

M
ax was leaning over Tanya’s chair
as she worked, smoking his vapour pipe and muttering in her ear as
she tried to pull up recovery data from the Erebus’ personnel path
trackers. Ed Rufus didn’t have to stay with them, but he felt
obliged and the billets had an old pool table in the room. He and
some of the rig workers tested their shots quietly behind Tanya’s
work station. They drank from a bottle of cheap rum which they
poured into various sized jam jars, the glass spotted with grime
and age where they’d been left on dusty shelves in unused parts of
the facility for decades. The potency of the alcohol was sure to
kill anything growing in them. They drank joyously.

‘
What’s this
here?’ Colonel Max Elba asked pointing towards the sheet-screen
ahead of them as it displayed a three dimensional schematic of the
Erebus and a red ribbon coiling and entwining around various areas,
knotting and twisting about like the manifold fretwork of some
intoxicated arachnid.

‘
You’re
looking at Scott Barnes’ ambulation pattern,’ she explained,
‘basically a record of everywhere he has stood on the piezoelectric
floor panels of the Erebus. Every part of the Erebus he has been
during his time there, every step he’s taken and how long he was
standing in one place or moving to another. The panels recognise
his signature by recording things like weight changes and foot
pressure. People have a particular way of walking which is
characteristic to them. The computer’s discrimination programs
recognise all these variables. There’s even a point where everybody
on the ships gets heavier, a ratio that’s constant for everybody.
I’m not assuming they all ate the cake either, it’s probably
because they got close to the Charybdis black hole.’

She sighed
and pushed back her fringe, continuing to give the Colonel a run
down on the data. ‘As you can see it’s just a pattern, but from it,
we can see which departments of the ship Barnes was in, we can see
which areas he’s visited and what times according to the ship’s
internal clock. But...well...the clock does sort of go weird after
a while and...I think it gets confused. Probably due to the
radiation leak because look what happens to the pattern
here.’

She
illuminated the knots and coils of paths around the Erebus and Max
scratched his head in confusion.

‘
What am I
looking at?’

‘
Sir,’ she
said clearing her throat and turning over her shoulder. ‘This
pattern shows that Barnes was in two areas at the same time on more
than a few occasions. He was in two different parts of the Erebus
at the exact same time, hundreds of metres apart. He is upstairs on
the bridge command and the computer terminal can confirm he logged
in. There...’ she pointed to one of the lower engineering areas,
‘at the same time, he was also down in engineering passing through
a door. The door activation history correlates with the pattern to
confirm that the origin was real.’

‘
How can that
be?’

‘
I’m not
exactly sure,’ she said with a mild laugh, ‘technically it can’t
be, right?’

‘
Realistically it can’t be,’ Max said, ‘practically it can’t
be. Is it a glitch?’

‘
It gets
weirder,’ she said, ‘the patterns are the same for other crew
members. They literally are in multiple places at once.’

‘
How do you
explain that?’ Max asked.

‘
I don’t
know,’ she sighed irritably, ‘I’ve got an idea though. I think the
ship’s internal clock is broken. It is possible the data converged
with the shortcomings of the elapsing time records and we’re
looking at two different moments overlapping. It could be caused by
damage done to the ship. But the data itself is accurate even if
the chronometers are screwy. That’s definitely Barnes tread
pattern, that’s definitely Penelope’s, there’s Serat.’

‘
Does the
same happen with Serat?’

‘
Yes,’ said
nodded. ‘There’s a moment on day ninety five where his tread
pattern can be seen in his personal quarters and also appearing on
the bridge command.’

‘
Maybe you
can check the clocks,’ said Max.

‘
Yeah,’ she
sighed sitting back, ‘well, I think we better get the Erebus
research engineers to do that and report their
findings.’

‘
I’ll request
a report,’ he said.

-21-

‘M
ister Lewis I’ve tried to reach
you now for the fourth time regarding my son Kyo-’ Sonja said
evenly as she spoke to the Q-net’s screen. The text before her read
Audio-Mail Only, Pierce Lewis had contact settings whereby only his
private contacts knew how to reach him. He had a right to it;
personal privacy was sacred in Cerise Timbers. But she knew he
could only duck her calls for so long.

‘
I would deem
it good manners if you would at least get back to me about this
issue.’

Kyo was stood
awkwardly by Sonja’s side with his hands in his pockets.

‘
If you
continue to refuse to see me I will take this further and we can
arrange to meet via the local Federal forum. Please be advised. You
can reach me at the hospital. My work contact node is registered on
the Q-net.’

Sonja touched
the screen and closed the call window, returning the Q-net to its
general inquiry and news board. She turned to her son and smiled
softly.

‘
Want
something to drink?’ she asked.

‘
I don’t want
to get others involved in this,’ said Kyo.

‘
But he can’t
be allowed to go around doing this to people,’ Sonja said angrily,
pushing a thread of her hair behind her shoulder. Her office space
was large, a part of a diagnosis and prognosis ward where the
doctors assessed patients. There were a few sick people in the
other rooms outside her office space, some with broken limbs, and
others with more serious issues. Each was being seen to by
somebody, having a conversation or simply resting under
medication.

‘
Yeah but it
could make things worse,’ said Kyo, ‘if not for me then for the
Lewis family. I know a lot of people are already pissed off with
them.’

‘
With good
reason,’ Sonja piqued. ‘That boy’s at least three years older than
you; you’d think he’d pick on someone his own size at
least.’