Mindguard (27 page)

Some of history’s
greatest disasters were caused by human error. Indeed, to err
is
human.
So why entrust your most valued possession to faulty flesh and blood? 
Kento Corporations presents the new Model Y Nanoguards, the fastest and most
secure artificial mindguards in the world.

Do not err – choose
Kento!

Commercial for the
Model Y artificial mindguards by Kento Corporations. First aired in 2324AD

Sophie was
outraged. He had read her mind. He knew about Opus Caine. Not only was this a
breach of contract, but from everything that Sophie had learned, it was
impossible for mindguards to read someone’s thoughts or take control of another
person’s mind. It was a capital crime, punishable by death.

He had projected
terrible hallucinations inside their heads. He had driven the desert dwellers
to madness and her to despair. The Weixman Barrier was a mental limitation that
no mindguard should be able to cross… and yet, he had crossed it. How?

She felt
betrayed. She hated him for what he had done. In a way, she hated him even more
than the dangerous men who had almost killed them. But she
did 
owe
him her life. 

“You’re dying,”
she said coldly.

“I’m not,” he
answered, though he already looked like a corpse. 

“What do you
mean you’re not?”

“Not right now.
The wound is painful, but it is not as bad as it appears. I may have up to a
few hours until I die of blood loss.” His way of speaking was odd. It was as if
he weren’t talking about himself, but someone else, someone he did not
particularly like.

“How the hell do
you know that?” she yelled. She didn’t know why, but Sheldon’s lack of concern
for his situation made her incredibly angry.

 “I study
medicine.”

“Of course you
do,” she replied sarcastically.   

“What do you
mean?” He had a tone of genuine curiosity.

“Nothing! So,
what difference does it make? You’re still dying, we’re both dead! The mission
is over.”

“Not yet!”

“How much do you
know about Opus Caine?

Sheldon tried to
switch his position, but he couldn’t. He was clearly in a lot of pain. “We’ll
talk about that later, we need to leave. The transporter is in my backpack.
Hand it to me, please.”

“We’re nowhere
near a cave,” she shouted. “I thought the whole point of this deadly hiking
trip was to get to a cave so we can dial out without the enforcers tracking
down our destination!”

“We’re not going
to Ganthic anymore.”

“Where the hell
are we going then?”

He closed his
eyes for a few seconds and Sophie thought he had fallen asleep… or worse.

“Sheldon, don’t
sleep!”

“I’m not
sleeping,” he said calmly, but with a weak voice. “I’ve memorized the stellar
map. I’m trying to think of an alternate route. We got a planet close by called
Thorka. We’ll go there, then we’ll quickly dial out. The planet’s atmosphere is
toxic to us, we can’t be exposed to it for longer than a few minutes. From
there we can head to Thissaia, a federation planet right on the desert border.
We’ll try to find a doctor  there. Hopefully the enforcers won’t be able
to track us further than Thorka… for the moment.”

“Can you even
walk?”

“That will be
difficult.”

“Why are we
going to the toxic planet? Isn’t there another place from where we can get to
Thissaia?”

“Thorka is a
giant desert. Travel via portable gateway generator is very risky when you
don’t have the exact coordinates. This way, we’ll know that at least we’ll
rematerialize on land. Thissaia, on the other hand, will be a big risk, but we
have no choice.” He punctuated his statement with a fit of coughing that caused
him so much pain he almost passed out. Sophie got the backpack and retrieved
the device. She activated it and its screen produced a spectral, ill-boding
glow. As the fire had almost completely gone out, the small device was now
their only source of light. She handed it to Sheldon.

“Do your thing
and get us out of here! Meanwhile, I’ll check out that shed and see if I can
find something for your wound.”

“I doubt you
will, but go ahead.”

Sophie gently
placed his head on the backpack and hurried to the wooden building, trying to
ignore the fact that she was stepping over dead bodies as she did. The main
reason she wanted to get away from Sheldon was that she couldn’t stand seeing
him like that: bleeding, dying.

Just as she was
about to enter, she had a quick moment of panic. What if there was still one of
them in there? What if Sheldon hadn’t killed them all? She calmed down when she
realized that Sheldon’s mind would have sensed anyone else, just like he did
when they were in the river. She opened the squeaky door, but couldn’t see much
in the darkness of the small room. An ancient gas lamp was conveniently placed
on a shelf right by the door, for easy access. She recognized the object from a
holomuseum and was thankful for that primitive piece of technology. She picked
it up and lit it with the gas lighter she found next to it. The faint light was
almost beautiful, as it cast its orange hue over the contents of the small
room. There were crates full of weapons, old weapons, some with blades and most
with bullets. Sophie wondered why the desert dwellers had attacked them with knives
and not guns.

They
underestimated us
, she figured.
They looked at us and saw no reason to
worry. Ammunition for these old guns is probably scarce, so they use them
sparingly. They thought they wouldn’t need them to subdue a single man and a
woman. If Maclaine Ross had been here, they’d have probably come at us with
cannons and tanks. By the time they realized who they were dealing with, it was
already too late, Sheldon had trapped them all in the maze of his mind.

She studied one
of the antique weapons, placing her delicate hands on the crude object. In a
way, it was almost beautiful. Modern weapons that fired energy blasts felt too
cold and clean, like surgical instruments. Compared to them, these old guns
that fired bullets almost seemed to possess the burning passion of intention.
How deadly it was, how easily it could have killed them. But it didn’t.
Perhaps
we weren’t yet meant to die
, she thought.
Perhaps the unseen hand of
destiny is guiding us. Maybe the gods of human evolution are watching over us
as we help bring forth the age of Opus Caine, so that there may forever be
peace. 

She decided to
take the shotgun with her, though she wasn’t sure what she actually planned to
do with it. Still, the thought that it was one of the weapons that could have
killed them - but didn’t - made her feel like it was some sort of good luck
charm. When she picked it up, it didn’t feel as heavy as she had expected. For
some reason, that made her happy.

She searched the
shed and found some water bottles, which she didn’t take, because they still
had some of their own in the backpack. She also found a slab of some sort of
smoked animal fat and used one of the knives to cut off a chunk and take it with
her for nourishment. From the moment she had laid eyes on it, disgusting as it
looked, she realized how hungry she felt. Sheldon must also be starved. She
discovered some rags that she could use as bandages and some sort of hard
liquor that would have to serve as disinfectant.

When she walked
out, Sheldon was lying motionless. She desperately called out his name and
hurried to him, forgetting all about the gods of human evolution that were
supposedly protecting her mission. He didn’t answer. With tears streaming down
her face, she kneeled next to him and gently stroked his cheek. When he opened
his eyes, she let out a big sigh of relief. He looked at the shotgun in her
hands and seemed neither surprised nor worried.   

“I placed in the
coordinates for Thorka,” he said. “We can leave.” It was obvious that he was
making a great effort to speak.

Sophie put down
the shotgun and took the portable gateway generator. She had received a short
preparatory course in operating it, so she knew the basics. First, you had to
enter the exact space-time coordinates of the destination, so the device would
know where to materialize the wormhole. It was much safer in the vastness of
space, but that was not the case with a portable device, which only allowed one
person to pass through at a time. The second set of coordinates told the device
where to generate the gateway on the planet of departure, in relation to the
travelers. Everything had already been introduced by Sheldon, before he had
passed out. All she had to do was type the confirmation code. She looked at the
mindguard one more time and he glanced back at her calmly - too calmly - which
terrified her. She had to hurry.

“Off to the
poisoned planet,” she told herself wryly and entered the code. The
Muench-Henriksen space-time gateway emerged. Sophie struggled to help Sheldon
to his feet, as he leaned on her with all his weight. With her mind’s guardian
leaving his body in her protection, she stumbled through the portal.

●

Alex Lea had no
way of knowing what was going on in the world. Ever since the enforcers had
shut down Ayers-Ross and taken Kriss White into custody, Alex had decided to
lay low. He too had been interrogated, like everyone else who worked at the
company, but he had been released after only a couple of hours. It seemed that
they didn’t have a great deal of interest in him, probably because he was still
a newcomer. He didn’t know what had triggered this extreme investigation, but a
gut feeling told him it had everything to do with Sophie Gaumont’s mission.

Since he was
currently unemployed anyway, he quickly left Anderra and moved to the nearby
Tagatha 3, a small planet with a very mild temperature, beautiful beaches and a
great number of tourists. Though he knew he had no reason to hide, he felt the
need to disappear for a while. Blending in among the tourists made him feel
safer.

Of course, it
was all an illusion. As long as he had neuroinsertions and was connected to the
holocloud, he could easily be tracked down by the enforcers. Only prototechs could
actually benefit from isolation. That made him think of Sophie, who was one as
well. How odd. Normally, the only people who were prototechs were criminals who
wanted to be harder to locate and people with a strange philosophy about the
human biology. Weirdoes, people like Sheldon Ayers. But Sophie didn’t seem like
a weirdo at all.

Alex discovered
that he missed the vigorous and intrepid young woman. He often thought of her,
wondering if she was safe. If the enforcers had shut down Ayers-Ross and imprisoned
White, then surely an arrest warrant had been placed for Maclaine Ross and his
team. Only a few days had passed since the shutdown of Ross’ company but ever
since then, Alex avoided using the holocloud.

He had the
foolish fear that, the moment he used it, the enforcers would appear, out of
nowhere, and
really
make him disappear. He knew it was stupid, but he
was scared. That’s why, since coming to Tagatha 3, all he did was lay low in
his rented overwater bungalow on the lovely Samaro Sea and take occasional
walks through the Mayu beach resort.    

On this
particular walk, he decided to stop at a café. He felt it was a step forward in
fighting the paranoia that had taken control of him over the past few days.
Sipping a special blend of the planet’s native kannuit coffee, he thought of
Sophie. How fragile and vulnerable she had looked, surrounded by the massive
bodyguards, how tiny she seemed wearing her combat uniform. He remembered how
much he had wanted to join them on the mission. Now, he felt incredibly lucky
that he had been left behind. All he had wanted was a chance to work with
Sheldon Ayers, but who knows where Sheldon was at that moment.

The aroma of the
spicy kannuit had the effect of calming him down a bit. Perhaps he should
access the cloud and see if he could find any news about the state of
Ayers-Ross and its owners. A mindguard should not give way to superstitious
fears. He wondered what Samuel Weixman would have thought if he had seen him
avoid the cloud as though it had some sort of magical powers. Besides, the link
was always active, whether or not he accessed it. If they wanted to, the
enforcers could easily find him either way.

He decided to do
it, but not from the crowded café. He wanted privacy. As if to give himself
courage, he chose to pay for the coffee directly from his cloud acount. He
activated it, registered his name, paid for the drink and then quickly left.
When he reached his bungalow, he searched his pants pocket for the large iron
key.  

In order to
maintain the simple Samarean feel of the resort, the bungalows were not
provided with the usual holoencrypted lock. They opened with an old-fashioned
iron key, like back in the centuries before, on Old Earth. What a calming
sensation, to push and turn a key. He stepped into the cool air of his room and
turned to lock the door. When he turned back around, a tall, muscular man was
standing before him. Alex startled and stepped back, hitting the door.

The intruder was
not wearing his Enforcement Unit uniform but Alex recognized the typical
holotattoo on his wrist. It lit up as the man lifted his hand so Alex could
take a better look at it.

“Mr. Lea, please
come with me,” he said in a deep, emotionless voice.

Ayers’ disease is
a rare form of dementia encountered exclusively in mindguards. It begins
slowly, first involving the parts of the brain that control thought, memory and
language. People with Ayers’ disease will have trouble remembering things as
quickly as before, might find a slower reaction time or increased difficulties
with lateral thinking. Because of the particularities of the mindguard’s brain,
the disease is very difficult to diagnose in its incipient stages, as the
symptoms are practically unrecognizable to non-mindguards. Over time, the
symptoms get worse. Visual and auditory hallucinations develop, anxiety and
aggression can occur and, in extreme cases, the mindguards can lose control of
the Weixman Barrier, the psychological hindrance that prevents them from
interacting in hostile or intrusive ways with a person’s mind. That can make
them a danger to themselves and society. Ayers’ disease begins after age 40 and
the risk of developing it is higher if a family member has had it. The name of
the disease comes from veteran mindguard Kinsey Ayers. He is known to be the
first recorded patient, after the discovery of a journal kept by his grandson,
in which the author follows the development of the then unknown malady in his
grandfather and describes in minute detail every behavioral symptom of the progressing
illness.

The Shorter Maartens
Interstellar Encyclopedia of Neurology, 98
^th
Edition, 2387

As a man
suffering from Soixtet’s Disease, Brother Dogan was no stranger to pain. He
lived with it every day of his life. Pain was there when he slept and it was
there when he woke. It was there while he ate, worked, prayed and went back to
sleep. Every part of his diseased body felt like it was fighting to rip itself
free from the rest. The pain was constant. It was certainly not a friend but it
was
a companion and, like with all unalterable things, Brother Dogan
eventually got used to it. He felt like he had such a vast experience with it,
that he was immune to its effect, like he had somehow developed a superhuman
tolerance for all forms of pain. He was wrong.

Lying on the
ground, with the voidman standing over him, Brother Dogan was in more pain than
he had ever imagined possible. He had been exposed to physical suffering of all
kinds, but he did not remember ever before losing bladder control.

When the voidman
surprised him in front of his home and took him hostage, he was just seconds
away from a torture that not even his horrible disease had ever managed to
inflict. Brother Dogan was of the belief that there had to be a certain balance
in the universe. As a Christian of Kalhydon, he had been taught that the
afflictions of the righteous are many, but that the Lord delivers him out of
them all. At that moment, he felt that not even an eternal afterlife of relief
could compensate for what he had just endured. 

The man had
accosted him in the walkway, in front of his house. He was dark and dangerous.
His skin was covered in something that looked like fish scales and had the
color of tar. There was no spot on his body unshielded by the strange black
scales. Brother Dogan could see no hair, and he could not make out the man’s
eyes. The entrance to the house was hidden by the large leaves of the Mathessia
plant, so no one could see the shadowman grab Brother Dogan by the throat and
push him inside.

“Who are you?”
the diseased man asked. The answer came in the form of a backhand slap. To his
beleaguered face, it felt like a stab wound. He fell to the ground with tears
in his eyes. They were tears of pain, those of frustration would follow later.

The assailant
crouched beside him and grabbed his face in his right hand. At that moment,
Brother Dogan realized something peculiar: the attacker did not shy away from
touching him, in spite of his very contagious affliction. He had seen only one
other healthy person who had not turned away in disgust from him and the rest
of the brothers. That was Brother Torje. But Torje was a saint, that’s what the
brothers were saying. He was blessed by God. How else could he have spent two
years on Kalhydon without contacting the disease? This man, however, was
definitely not a saint. He was a man of darkness, and nothing but darkness
resided in his heart.

“Where is
Torje?” he asked. His voice matched his form, for it had the consistency of a
shadow.

Brother Dogan’s
reluctance to answer was rewarded with agony. At first, he could not recognize
the source. The pain seemed to  penetrate him through the man’s
fingertips, where strange shapes glowed red on the black, scaly plate. It
seemed to be a highly advanced weapon that sent a surge of intense pain to
every free nerve ending in his body. A second shock caused him to lose bladder
control, and he started crying.

The man had come
after Brother Torje, their most valued friend. He had come to hurt him or to
kill him and Brother Dogan was crying because he knew he would give the man the
answer he sought.  

“His house is
further away from the village… on the hill,” he whimpered. “We didn’t want…
him… to live close to us, for fear he…. might get sick. But he…. but he
insisted… to be close to us….” His body convulsed and he choked at the thought
of the dear friend whom he was now betraying. He cried, cursing the weakness of
his spirit, which was entirely different from all the times he had cried
damning the frailty of his body.

The tormentor
said nothing. Brother Dogan continued speaking without need for further
stimulation. In very short time, the assassin knew the way to the house of
Brother Torje, the Doctor. Like his voice, his body too was a shadow. When he
made his exit, he almost seemed to evaporate, though Brother Dogan was no
longer alive to witness that