The Agathon: Reign of Arturo (19 page)

They walked steadily through the depths of the space station and arrived at Florence’s quarters. She asked the guard politely if he would wait outside for a moment. He hesitated for a moment before nodding and let her enter alone. Once inside, she moved quickly to her medicine cabinet and injected herself with another dose. The warm calming opiate made its way through her worn veins and all the world dissolved into a pale complexion of what it once was. She inhaled deeply before gathering herself and making her way outside.

“Thank you, we will now be proceeding to the forbidden zone,” she said slightly slurring her words.

The guard nodded and she made her way through the softened haze of the space station, oblivious to the people and things that she passed. The route to the forbidden zone was so engrained in her mind that she guided herself by simple muscle memory.

A few minutes later the pair was standing outside a large metallic door with a large red stripe painted onto its exterior. The paint was old and flaking off, but it still very clearly read; FORBIDDEN ZONE, in large red letters across its front. She placed her hand on the scanner which was located halfway up on the right hand side. It flashed from red to green. She then placed her eye onto the retinal scanner just above it. It too flashed from red to green. The sound of a large locking mechanism giving way filled the hallway as the door slowly slid open. Florence’s ears popped at the change in air pressure as she moved past the open door and into the umbilicus connecting the Earth One space station to the lower levels of the main power reactor.

The brightness of the overhead lights made Florence squint a little. It was the only section of the colony that always had access to
normal lighting. They reached the end of the umbilicus and descended a metallic staircase. The sound of Florence’s hard shoes bounced off the metal. Her escort followed closely behind. Each step he took made the hand rail vibrate with his weight. They reached the bottom and moved into the main reactor chamber. It was huge. Florence took a deep breath and let the feeling of the Morphine now coursing through her veins calm her nerves. This was the part of the station she hated the most. The hundred-meter square power reactor was split over six levels with the reactor itself built in its centre. The long solid tube was just over five hundred meters running from the top of the ceiling of the reactor room to its base six levels below. Walkways surrounded each level with an array of computers built into almost every available space on the outside walls. It was the reactor itself that sent a cold chill down her spine, morphine or not. She walked past it and made her way to another connecting staircase dropping to a lower level.

A few minutes later she was on the lowest of the six levels where the main lab was located. There, sitting with his feet up and seemingly asleep, was Doctor Charles Vishal.

Forbidden Zone

The title of doctor was given to anyone who had reached an acceptable scientific standard, had there been any official educational institutions on board the space stations. It was conferred historically by the sitting chancellor and overseen by the elders of what had been left of the scientific community. In Charles Vishal’s case, he would certainly have attained the position with ease, had there been a planet on which he could have had a formal education, as the ancient data files suggested. He had a brilliant mind. At forty-eight, he had a light grey beard and grey hair. Like so many others, he had been honoured and condemned at the same time to a life of forced isolation. He had not left this section of the space station for fifteen years. His only companion had been the regular communiques from Arturo, and of course
the regular visits from Florence. He had accepted the loneliness as his sacrifice for the colony and he was happy to do it. He was one of the lucky ones. He had two loving parents with whom he had not spoken to since the moment he had stepped inside the umbilicus. He had attained his position mostly through a mistake. A horrible mistake that he had proposed to Arturo while looking at the power requirements to keep the failing space stations operational. It was a mistake he bore on his soul every day he looked up at the reactor that he had built. It had come down to simple math. The sacrifice of one to save two. The power that a human being produced while at rest was roughly one hundred watts. Based on that simple equation, he created one of the most ruthless and brilliant machines ever devised. From the moment he hesitantly proposed it to Arturo all those years ago, he was doomed to a life of solitude. The candidates were selected, usually from the Red Tribe at birth, with some being added later, but never after the age of ten. They were assigned a numerical reference and placed into the pods. Their brains and nervous system were synced up to the power conductors via a network of hundreds of nano fibrous wires that penetrated the skin all over their bodies. The clear pods were sealed and feeding tubes inserted directly into their stomachs. The pods were filled with stasis fluid, sealed and then placed directly onto the reactor wall itself, where they lay suspended until their twenty-first birthdays, when they were then removed, unhooked and disposed of into deep space to be replaced by a younger “volunteer”.

Vishal’s first test subject had woken halfway through the process. It was one of the reasons he had chosen to assign them numbers instead of names. The terror in the eyes of the young boy as he struggled and drowned in the fluid was something that etched a powerful memory in his mind. Sacrifice one to save two.

The reactor had worked. And worked well. Until now. The demands being placed on power generation for the FTL project on board The Kandinsky was beginning to take its toll on the old infrastructure. The nano fibres were starting to corrode and they had lost nearly a quarter of the pods in the last six months. Arturo had
ordered the construction of a secondary reactor to take up the slack, but without access to the raw materials, like copper and gold, it was becoming a difficult task.

Vishal had been taking a nap when Florence approached him. He had been up for nearly twenty-four hours trying to repair the feeding tube of #3454, who was nearly at the ripe old age of twelve. #3454 had always been problematic. She had shown a greater resilience than the others due to her large muscle mass. It was normally not an issue, as most of the subjects in the pods suffered from atrophy anyway, but this kid’s genes were strong. As far as Vishal was aware, it was the same as being in a coma. He was, however, fairly certain that the subjects experienced some form of dreaming. #3454 had been smiling throughout the repair work. Her eyes had remained closed, but she was definitely reacting to the movement of the tubes. This was the part that unnerved Vishal the most. How could a baby reared in a glass pod, who had never seen or heard anything, dream?

“Good morning, Doctor,” said Florence as she woke Vishal out of his slumber.

Florence’s blurry shape came into focus as Vishal jolted upright. He took a moment to orient himself before leaning over on his hands and finding his bearings.

“Jesus, Florence, you scared the crap out of me,” he said trying to slow his heart rate. He spread his mouth wide and let out an audible yawn, running his fingers through his thick grey hair. He took several deep breaths before sitting back in his seat and looking at the frail woman. She looked bad. Even for Florence. In all the years he had known her, he had never to his recollection, seen her smile. She had been the only real human contact he had been allowed and so he had made the most of her visits. He recognised the sorrow in her eyes as being Arturo’s right hand and pitied her for what he must have put her through over the years. He had caught glimpses of scars now and then, but mostly she kept that side of things to herself. He wondered how she coped. Not well, judging by the dark circles that had become a prominent feature under her once pretty eyes. He noticed the
Colonial Guard by her side. This was something that really worried him. He guessed the reason was obvious and wondered how long it would be before she stopped coming altogether.

“Can I make you a hot drink?” she said softly approaching his chair.

“Let me,” he said standing and moved over to a desk with a rusted old glass pot sitting neatly on it.

He filled it with water and activated the heating element. He turned and looked at the Colonial Guard.

“Guard, will you wait on the upper level please, this equipment is highly sensitive. The chancellor will not be pleased if there is an accident down here,” he said trying to control his frustration.

The guard hesitated before turning and making his way back up to the upper levels. Florence watched him leave.

“Thank you,” she said.

Vishal nodded and poured hot water into two metal cups. He mixed in an array of herbs and handed Florence one of the cups.

“All-nighter?” she said.

“Always,” Vishal replied smiling, “So, what’s on the order for Frankenstein’s lab today?” he said.

She handed him a file and took a small sip of the liquid. Vishal had prided himself on his herbal concoctions. Synthetic or not, he had managed to blend a passable tea even he had been proud of. He drank the tea down letting it work its way around his system waking him up slightly. His body had adapted to function well on less than five hours of sleep a night for years now. He opened the document and read the file number, #3454.

“Ah,” he said, “the trouble maker,” and took another sip.

Florence tilted her head in a questioning fashion.

“She’s been squirming more than usual. That’s what kept me up all night. I had to reinsert her feeding tube. The damn thing nearly ripped her stomach out. What seems to be the problem with this one? Early retirement?” he said.

Florence shook her head.

“Arturo wants her kept in the pod for the time being,” she said.

Vishal frowned at Florence. Arturo had never requested a subject be kept in the power plant before. Quite the opposite. He had recently insisted that once the subject reached maximum output that they be replaced by a younger model. Most of the humans inside the power plant at the moment were well under the age of ten.

“That’s odd,” he said, “what’s so special about her?”

Florence looked over at the power plant not answering. She looked back at Vishal and hesitated before answering.

“An opportunity,” she finally said.

This peaked Vishal’s interest. He recognised that Florence, given half the chance, would probably kill Arturo herself were she not so frail, but for her to even suggest something like an opportunity meant that this was important. He looked down at the photo in the file. He read on. He rarely looked at the bottom of a subject’s file as he never wanted to know their name, but in this case, Florence’s nudge had forced his eyes downwards. At the bottom of the page in block capitals was the name of subject #3454.

Maya Elstone

The Unity

“That was a human voice,” said Oliver from underneath the communications console next to Aron’s feet.

For the last several hours he had been rebooting the primary software that ran the ship’s systems in the hope of finding a back door into the locked out comms system. Aron and India had been rerouting the flight control pathways through the secondary computer buffer which meant less compacted coding in the main frame. Aron called it cleaning out the trash. In order for Oliver to reinstall the software, all the original programming had to be erased, which meant all the flight data that the computer had recorded since its operation began. This would not be good, as the navigational star charts, which directed the ship where to fly to while at sub light speeds, were stored on the
mainframe. It was slow work. India had been manually doing memory core dumps to the secondary back up. Each logged flight plan took thirty or so minutes to transfer and there were a lot of them.

They had been quietly working away when the distinctly female voice crackled through the speakers of the cockpit. The sentence had been broken and for a second Aron thought it had just been one of his crew contacting the flight deck. Then came the voice again.

“… Agathon … Jycorp Orbital, do you read?” said the woman through the static.

Oliver poked his head out from under Aron’s legs.

“Did she say Agathon?” he said.

“Everyone shut up,” Aron said sitting upright and looking at the readout on the console.

The signal was coming in on the frequency set for The Agathon’s beacon.

“What the hell?” India said.

Aron ignored her and tried entering in his clearance code into the computer. It was rejected. He looked down at Oliver and frowned.

Getting the hint, Oliver’s head disappeared under the console again.

“Give me a minute,” he said.

“Couldn’t be,” India said sounding astonished.

“Ollie?” Aron said trying his code again.

“Keep your shirt on, Cap, I’m not a miracle worker,” he said grumbling.

Aron looked at India who looked genuinely shaken.

“Tell me that didn’t come in on The Agathon’s beacon,” she said.

Aron double checked.

“It did,” he said, “look!”

India leaned over Aron and looked at the frequency. It was definitely along the same carrier wave as the locked signal.

“Holy fuck!” said India.

“Jycorp Orbital, this is The Agathon. Do you read?” came the female voice.

The signal was strong now. Coming through like a ship to ship communication.

“I don’t recognise the voice,” said Oliver under the computer.

“No shit, Ollie,” said India.

She turned to Aron.

“Jycorp Orbital?” she said to Aron.

“It’s what Earth One used to be called hundreds of years ago,” Aron said.

“That doesn’t make any sense,” she said.

“None of this makes sense, India. Ollie, I could have built a radio by now, what the hell are you doing down there?” he said looking under his legs.

“No disrespect to you, sir, but you couldn’t tie your own shoelaces without me around,” said Oliver.

Aron gave a light smile, but looked intently at the bearded man.

“Don’t make me come down there and kick your ass, old man,” he said.