the sirens sing no lullaby; and no one knows but lorelei

Wednesday, August 27, 2003
08:35 a.m.

In this installment (which is rather long, of course), I talk a bit about the way things are built on Earth. I describe something that took a lot of inspiration from the Earthships (www.earthship.org) I saw in a New Mexico community. There are Earthship communities all over the world, and while they're a bit, ah, hippie-ish ::eyeshift:: I liked the concept of them, and in a futuristic planet that has been through a devastating WWIII which has put a severe strain on the planet's resources, I thought it would be wiser if, instead of these buildings with all of these space age accoutrements and seemingly unending supply of water, food, power, etc., there should be restrictions and such.
I don’t think that we’ll find a good alternative for power, but I think that we might be able to perfect the use of solar power, so I drew inspiration from the Earthships—and even use the name in the story—but I do think that most places will be several stories, simply because you can’t expand a city outward if there isn’t any free land. You have to go up (and if the water table is right, you can go down), so when I describe the city, don’t be surprised by the amount of skyscrapers.
Also, if you like alcohol, don’t be offended by the opinions of character(s) in the story. I hate alcohol myself, so some of my characters will probably also think it’s gross.

____________________

Dice looked out over the city, feeling a bit wambly from the alcohol. She didn’t drink, but this was her last night on Earth, and she would miss it, pollution—both environmental and political—and all. And since she wasn’t the type to find a random bloke to shag, she wasted her folding on Porter instead of using it on a date with a guy she’d most likely never see again.

“Awful stuff,” she muttered, hating the flavor that the beer left in her mouth. She contemplated tipping the rest out into one of the plants that lined the walls, but that would muck with the water, wouldn’t it? But at least they were using the ideas that those poor, naive Earthship blokes had come up with. They’d just industrialized the concepts to suit their purposes and left the Earthship buggers in their little communes until their land was wanted for something bigger, just like they’d taken all of the good ideas anyone had lately, and industrialized them. There was no safety for the creative geniuses of the world.

Dice grinned at her train of thought. As the alcohol seeped further into her system, she sounded more and more like the British stereotype. She shrugged it off because it didn’t matter, and tried to figure out what it was that she liked about this filthy little mud ball of a planet.

She wasn’t sure what it was that she loved about it, but there was a certain kind of beauty in it. Yes, most of it was scarred and haggard like an old warrior. But there were still carefully protected areas where the grass was green and there were plants and animals, by heaven! Real trees and shrubs and flowers, and even a few animals still shy and unwary of humans.

Besides, even the air planet-side was better than the recycled air of a ship. It got stale after a while. Maybe it was the fact that she was a bit drunk—not completely arseholed but close—but she felt a surge of patriotism and love for her battered homeland. Sure it had been decades since England had been a monarchy, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t love her country a little more than the others in the T.C.G., which was striving diligently to keep the world in one piece. Or peace. Whatever. She snorted at her pun, and was dimly aware that it wasn’t really funny, no it was just the Porter, but she smiled as she downed her drink, and paid the barman. It would be an early morning, so she should get back to the base before it closed its gates.

She rode the elevator down to the ground level of the bar, and looked up dizzily at it towering over her. It was twelve stories high, not including the posh levels which made it fifteen, and the top floor that housed the solar paneling and its equipment which made it sixteen, and the lower levels that had the water reservoir and all the pumps and pipes that operated it, which made the total twenty. So really, it was a smallish building.

She hailed a cab, and sliding into the back seat, she told the cabby where to go, putting her credit card into the slot—you handed over the spondulicks before the ride nowadays, mate, or you paid a visit to the pigs courtesy of the creditors—and trying to think of what her mum’s cure for being smashed was. It wouldn’t do to show up for the launch feeling knackered, so when she got to her room she took a sleeping pill, set her alarm, and collapsed into bed.

She was dimly aware that there would be a time change on the ship, and that the alarm would go off earlier than usual so she would make the launch in time. She’d lose nearly six hours on the ship. That meant the alarms in the rooms of people who would be leaving on the Hrunting would go off at four, and since she’d made it back half an hour before the base closed up, she’d get around five and a half hours of sleep. Wonderful…

No. There was no safe place on this planet for creative people, genius or not. A light smile touch Dice’s lips as she sank into her drug induced sleep. There was no safe place on Earth. But what was it like everywhere else…?

“Dreaming…I’m dreaming…” she thinks as she listens to the sounds of heavy feet thudding against metal floors. She knows it’s a metal floor in a space ship, but she isn’t sure how she knows. She’s never been in one before. There’s something wrong with the lights.

“We won’t get there in time.” A man’s voice, one she’s heard before.

“Yes we will.” Some one answers him. Their voices are tired and they’re breathing heavily, probably from the running. It’s the elevators; they aren’t working so they have to run.

“We won’t make it.” The man is insisting. She thinks it sounds like the man she saw at the lab when the asteroids fell, but she isn’t sure.

“You’ll make it. It’s only a little further…” a different voice says, and then her alarm goes off. Dice opened her eyes groggily and wished she could throw the clock across the room. She glanced at it before she shut it off, and was disgusted by what time it was. She wouldn’t do any drinking in the future, she decided, rubbing her eyes and stretching. Good thing she’d packed the day before or she’d be late getting to the launch.

She seated herself in the shuttle a few minutes before it was due to take off, but she wasn’t the last person on. Several more people came on after her, but she didn’t really notice. She sat down in the first empty seat she saw and promptly fell asleep.

_____

Ademaro wasn’t exactly excited, but he wasn’t apathetic either. He wasn’t sure what he felt about the launch. Yes, it was good to be leaving, to get away from this base, but it had been a long time since he’d been on such a large ship, having to follow orders and rules. Still, he was looking forward to the exploration—and perhaps fighting—and it would be good to get Gilgamesh out of the atmosphere and into space again.

The thrill of weightlessness and power, of controlling something that could smash a whole city before anyone could do something about it…he’d felt that when he first started piloting mechs. Everyone felt that rush of power when they first started after they got over the initial nervousness over screwing up. It was how you handled that feeling of power which determined what your potential was, and he’d handled it better than anyone in his training class. He’d handled it better than most of the people who’d been in the school since it started.

Ademaro shook his head. It didn’t matter. That was in the past, and this was a new beginning. This was another chance, and he wouldn’t screw this one up. Not that it had been his fault last time, but that didn’t mean he could keep from blaming himself. This time would be different; he’d be careful. He wouldn’t get attached to anyone. If he didn’t get attached then he wouldn’t have the chance to share political views. He wouldn’t have to share anything.

He rolled over onto his back and looked up at the ceiling. It was a standard white ceiling, rectangular and bare. He remembered covering his room with posters and magazine clippings of pictures and phrases that he’d liked. Even then he’d been interested in mechs, because a lot of the clippings were pictures of the latest mechs to become unclassified. Yes, even at fifteen he’d wanted to be a pilot. Well, now he had his dream and he’d even tried his damndest to make a difference in the way things were done in Texas—they’d hoped to start a chain reaction and change the whole country, oh what fanatical, naïve dreamers they’d been—and while they hadn’t made a real difference, they’d given it their best shot and he could leave that part behind him now, because his first dream had come true…and now he had another.

The sounds of people running; a hall with flickering lights, the clank of metal underfoot, but the feeling of anti-gravity, so they must be wearing mag-boots. The sound of voices, the first one perhaps his, the second…who was it…he knows the voice but can’t place it. There are more people running than there are people talking. Who are these other silent runners?

“We won’t get there in time.” A voice pants. They’ve been running hard, the elevators aren’t working so they had to take the stairs all the way down and they’ve lost too much time, he knows they have. This first voice is his, this is certain now. But the second...he still can’t place it.

“Yes we will.” The voice is strained from running but sure of itself. The voice is indistinct but it sounds feminine…the footsteps are all too heavy for him to tell. The mag-boots and the fatigue are responsible for that.

“We won’t make it.” He insists. Why is he so panicked? He never panics, and that makes him start to wake up.

“You’ll make it…” he hears as the dream fades away. He looks around him. He’s lying in bed, and the clock says that it’s quarter to four. The alarm will go off in fifteen minutes, telling him to get up and get ready for the launch.

Ademaro spent those fifteen minutes getting ready, and was one of the first people getting into the shuttle. The other was a redhead wearing goggles. He knew right away that she’d been a test subject for nanomachines, and that her eyes hadn’t adjusted to nanomachines properly when they were introduced to her system. He thanked whatever there was out there that he hadn’t had any problems when they’d pumped his blood full of nanos.

He considered sitting next to her to see if they’d been tested at the same facility and maybe knew the same people, but dismissed it. First of all, he wasn’t going to get attached to anyone. Secondly, a lot of unsuccessful test subjects were hostile towards successful ones, or were sensitive about what had happened to them as a result of the nanos and he didn’t want to start out with someone hating him. Ademaro sat somewhere in the middle of the shuttle and was soon lost in his own thoughts, which was why he didn’t see Dice when she came in.

_____

Vel had had an easy time of things on the base. She was an excellent pilot, so using her mech was no problem. She was good with computers, so that part of working at the base didn’t bother her. But she had been anxious to get back to Mars and find out what had caused the Viral Infiltration. She wanted to find out who was responsible, and she wanted to beat the living shit out of them. A lot of good people had died because of that damned virus, and they deserved more than the ridiculous little plaque that had been put up in one of the few remaining parks on this stinking planet.

Now that the launch was actually about to happen, now that she would be leaving on the Hrunting in the morning…she doubted herself, and her abilities. Yes, she had the code or whatever it was saved in a visual file, but what good had it done?

The only thing that anyone had been able to determine was that it was binary code, and that it spelled ‘batalha nova’.

What the hell was that? It was ‘battle maiden’ in Portuguese.

What the hell did that mean? Nothing, so far as anyone knew. All it proved was that the hacker knew Portuguese and binary code. All it proved was that the system had been taken over by a relatively simple virus, but to what end? No demands had been made, no warning had been given. So…had something gone wrong with the virus? Or was it just a malicious act of violence that would be repeated on another planet? God forbid.

But then, where had God been when it had happened the first time?

Vel rolled onto her side and tried to push these thoughts away so she could sleep. She’d had a hard time sleeping since it had happened. Sure, things had been horrible on all of the bases. But she couldn’t get the scenes out of her head. She might not be able to see like everyone else, but she still saw it all in her head. Men, women, children; killed by droids that had been serving them, freezing because the heat had been turned off, and then it really had been cold. Suffocating because life support had been turned off, and there wasn’t enough oxygen.

She shuddered and turned over on to her other side and stared at the wall sightlessly—she took her goggles off when she slept—trying to sleep and knowing that she wouldn’t be able to. No matter. She’d sleep on the shuttle if she didn’t sleep tonight.

But she did sleep. She even had a dream that had nothing to do with what had happened on Mars. She didn’t remember it really, just that it had to do with flickering lights and trying to keep the sensors from picking them up. Some one saying they wouldn’t make it, and then she was telling them that they would…the person insisted they wouldn’t make it, and then someone else told them that they would, they were almost there…

Vel woke abruptly and decided that three-thirty was as good as four, and she got up and made her way to the shuttle. When a man with dark hair and glasses walked onto the shuttle and paused near her as if considering whether or not to sit down, she ignored him. People did that sometimes…but as he turned and glanced over his shoulder at her, she caught the color of his eyes. He was a nano, like her. Only, he hadn’t lost his sight. Maybe he was embarrassed or something.

Ah well. It would have been nice to see if he’d been at the same lab, new the same asshole doctors and such. She could use a laugh right now.

_____

Zuleika needed a laugh as well. She was keyed up and nervous. What if she ran into Bandressi while she was here? She’d only be here for tonight, but still…what if she saw him? Would she be able to keep herself from trying to kill him (she would settle for castration, but knowing he was dead would be so delightful)?

She shook the thoughts and worries from her head. She was almost to her room, and the chances of seeing him were low. She would stay in her room, and only leave when she was on her way to the launch. And here was her door, and she hadn’t seen him.

Zuleika unlocked the door, put her bag on the floor next to the bed, and stripped before crawling between the sheets and checking to make sure the alarm was set for the launch time instead of the routine time. Before she fell asleep she wondered what the chances were of Caelum’s clone finding her were. She wondered what she would do if he did find her. She thought about it a lot, and still she didn’t have the answer.

Too bad she was so tired. She would have found Ceece before going to her room, even if it did mean running the risk of coming face to face with Bandressi. Ceece had been wonderful on the pod that day…

“You’ll make it. It’s only a little further, and then you turn…” she was saying into her mouthpiece. Yes, they had to work fast, but there should be enough time. She was stressed and having a hard time breathing even though she wasn’t running with them. They hadn’t been able to do anything about the elevators, but then she was awake and had only been giving directions to her pillow because she’d rolled over onto her stomach, and couldn’t breathe because her face was buried in the pillow.

It was two o’clock. Zuleika got up and drank a glass of water, then went back to bed and slept without dreaming until the alarm went off at four.

posted by Kchan.

Monday, August 18, 2003
11:35 p.m.

Walking out of the mess hall and towards the hangar, she was aware that some one was following her. She could hear their footsteps, quiet as they were, but she didn’t look back over her shoulder to see who it was. That would give away the fact that she knew there was some one following her, and make them more cautious. She turned down random corridors, to make sure she really was being followed.

Lorelei made a show of looking at her watch, and then started to walk quickly, and then as she turned a corner she waited, pressed against the wall. When the person behind her got close to the corner, she stuck out her foot and waited. A tall man with dark hair went sprawling onto the floor. He swore, and she knew from his voice that it was Bandressi. She watched him roll over and get up without offering to help.

“I’m sorry Captain. I didn’t know it was you.” She said flatly. He got up, wiping his mouth. It was bleeding, and a wave of something passed over her. She liked it, whatever it was.

“What were you doing, sticking your foot out like that?” he hissed, glaring at her as he stood up and straightened his clothes. She was leaning against the wall, hands clasped behind her back.

“Well, I have to be careful. I’m an expensive piece of equipment, and I don’t think General Marti would appreciate it much if I got stolen. When I heard someone following me, I had to make sure it was someone who wasn’t a threat.” She shrugged delicately, eyes closed, and her head turned away from Bandressi. It was the same little motion that Jen had made, with her nose slightly up. She always spoke this way with Bandressi, pointing out the fact that she was only a machine, an object, something that only looked like a woman.

“Hmm,” he said; such a sulky little sound, and stepped closer, wiping more blood from his mouth. It was smeared on his chin and the back of his hand. Looking at it, Lorelei reminded herself that humans were fragile, and if she had to defend herself she had to be careful not to kill Bandressi, annoying as he was. Humans easily killed insects that bothered them and it would be easy to kill him, but then, that would be saying she was a higher life-form and she wasn’t a life-form at all.

“So, Captain, is there a reason you were following me?” She asked, raising her eyebrows.

“Yes. I wanted to let you know that I have been transferred. I have—” he looked at his watch—“an hour and forty minutes before I leave. I wanted to tell you goodbye properly.” His bloody smile was slightly leering, suggestive. Lorelei stood up straight and away from the wall, stuck her hand out for Bandressi to shake it and smiled.

“Goodbye Captain. It was a pleasure to have met you.” She said. He stood completely still for a second, and then took her hand. Before she knew what he was going to do, he’d yanked her over to him, and kissed her. He had one arm wrapped around her, pinning her arms, and the other groped her breast. She struggled, not wanting to hurt him—yet, but it was difficult because he’d shoved her against the wall. She refused to kiss him back, turning her head away from him until he gave up. Olfactory sensors told her he was putting out pheromones at a high rate, and he was obviously enjoying himself. She knew this because of how hard he was pressing his body against her. Another surge of something all through her and she thought it was a mixture of revulsion, hatred…something else, something quick and flighty, something always ready to run at the slightest provocation…fear?

“Are you a woman, Lorelei?” He whispered under his breath, slipping his other arm from around her and putting it on her hip. “You feel like one above.” He squeezed tightly, and the sensory input triggered a wince, and made her shut her eyes tightly, but she held back the gasp. “What about below?” And she knew what he was going to do, why his hand moved down and over from her hip, why he’d been after her this whole time.

Wasn’t it enough that he’d tried to move his hand so far down her back the first time they’d met? Wasn’t it enough that he had kissed her, trespassing on James’ territory, and it wasn’t it more than enough that he’d grabbed her and touched her in that rough, violating way? It was inconceivable that he would try to touch her there, even if there was nothing there to touch.

She debated for half of a second, hurt him or let him, lash out or stay still until it was over and he went away disappointed—and she made up her mind. Just as his fingers were almost there, she whispered back.

“You’ll never know, will you?” And brought her knee over and upward sharply, and when he abruptly let go of her, reeled back and grabbed himself, calling her a bitch, a goddamn whore as he rocked forward she clenched her fist and aimed at his nose. If plastic surgery hadn’t progressed as much as it had in the past centuries since its beginning, his nose would never have been the same again

. Screaming, cursing her, and spouting blood, Lorelei left him, running easily at ten kilometers an hour, hair streaming out behind her. Fifty was her top speed so far, but if she went above thirty for too long, it would drain her power and she’d have to stop. Besides, the chances that he would be able to catch her running at that speed in his condition were dismal. She smiled, and wasn’t sure what had triggered it.

She ran passed the crowds of people going into or leaving the mess hall, their offices and labs, and ignored all of them. A few tried to stop her, to ask her what happened, but she sped up to fifteen kilometers and they couldn’t catch her.

When she got to General Marti’s office, she didn’t bother to knock. She could hear that no one was in the room with him. Lynn made a feeble attempt to stop her, but Lorelei was already in the room and had shut the door before the timid secretary could get out of her chair. The general looked up at her in surprise for a moment, and then worry.

“I’m sorry, Lorelei, did we have an appointment?” He asked. She shook her head and then he saw the blood on her clothes. “Whose is that?” He stood up and walked around the desk, an idea already forming. His worried look changed to concern as he saw how much blood there was.

“Some one followed me after I left the mess hall.” She said. He led her away from the door, which she was leaning against, and made her sit down. “I pretended to be going somewhere besides the hangar to make sure it was some one following me, and not just taking the same route to the hangar.” She explained calmly as General Marti sat down. “Then I looked at my watch, as if I were in a hurry, and walked faster. I rounded a corner, waited, and then when I heard some one coming, I tripped them. It was Captain Bandressi.”

“I see,” General Marti leaned back in the plush chair and closed his eyes, his hand going to his mouth. “And what happened after that?”

“He got up, and told me he had been transferred, and had an hour and forty minutes.” And then her voice changed, mimicking Bandressi’s. “He wanted to tell me goodbye properly.” Marti’s eyes opened and he stared at her.

“My God,” he said.

“I put my hand out so he could shake it. He grabbed it, and pulled me towards him and pinned me against the wall. He kissed me and touched me,” She put a hand on her chest and gripped her breast like Bandressi had—she’d have to get her wiring there checked—and Marti had a hard time not looking away, especially when she moved her other hand downward. “So I kneed him in the crotch and he let me go, and almost fell down. Then called me names that are against Sexual Harassment Regulations, and I punched his nose so he wouldn’t follow me, and I ran here.” She laid her hands back in her lap.

“My God,” Marti said again. “So when you punched him, he bled on your clothes.” He looked at her face. “What about the blood on your mouth?” He wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to know.

“He was bleeding before I’d hit him. He cut his mouth when he fell after I tripped him. It got there when he kissed me.” She put her fingers to her mouth and looked at the blood that came away on her fingertips. “But he’s bleeding a lot more now.” She ended, and Marti had a strong suspicion that the last comment had been a joke.

_____

“Fugging bidge!” Bandressi shouted after Lorelei as he staggered to his feet. He could hear her rapidly running away from him, and there was nothing he could do but make his way to the infirmary. Since he was already thinking of how to discredit Lorelei’s side of things—she’d tell her side before he could tell his, and he knew he had to make up something good—he let his nose bleed freely, only putting his hand on the bridge of it in case some one came by. Blood was getting everywhere, and if there was a big mess, he might be able to make people think it was worse than it really was.

He would say she’d attacked him. Yes. She’d come onto him, and when he got close to her, she attacked him. He would go to the infirmary with blood dripping down his face and covering his clothes, leaving a trail behind him, and he would tell a horrible story to the first person he found there. For good measure, he rammed his chest and sides into the sharp corners of the many twists and turns he had to follow as he made his way back.

He wasn’t surprised when he saw all of the people milling around in the halls. After all, the way to the infirmary was almost the same as the way to Marti’s office, and he knew that she would go directly to the general, and while Lorelei walked quietly, she ran noisily. It was harder to maintain perfect silence in the gears and pistons at higher speeds, no matter how good she was at stepping lightly.

A group of people approached him. Now was his chance to start turning things his way.

“Dhe adroid adagged be!” he said, his voice distressed and shocked. “I jusd wadded do zay goobbye…ad—ad…” a woman he vaguely recognized rushed forward.

“There, there Falcon,” she used a nickname he’d chosen for himself, so he tried harder to place her. “Somebody try to find a medic—come and sit down, Bandressi.” She said, her voice soothing but only slightly calm. He remembered her now. He’d slept with her two months ago, but only once. She’d gotten clingy, so he’d been avoiding her.

“Dhangk you, Zuzan.” He said, leaning against her as she lead him to a chair, one of her arms wrapped around his waist (he made a show of flinching away when she touched one of the places he’s rammed into the wall), the other stretched out to shove people out of their way. One of them—a young woman that Bandressi also had a feeling he knew—took one look at him and ran back into the mess hall. He kept his lips from twisting into a smile by pressing hard against his swelling nose. If he looked that bad, it was all the better for him.

_____

“Hey Jen, I thought you were leaving.” Shane said, smiling brightly as Jen sat down next to him quickly.

“Be quiet, and act surprised when they bring him in here, okay?” She said in a hushed, strained voice.

“What? Who are you talking about? What’s wrong, Jen?” He turned to her immediately, his arm wrapping around her protectively.

“It’s that guy…what was his name? He was on Deimos with us, you know? Tall, dark hair, a real asshole.” She spoke quickly, her eyes solemn. He looked at her blankly. Her description called forth memories of many people. “You know, Hobbitgoblin!” The now frustrated Jen used the nickname that everyone else had given Bandressi.

“Oh, Bandressi,” Shane said and Jen nodded, looking relieved. “What happened to him?” He asked, turning towards the door. It was unusually loud near the entrance.

“He’s telling people that ‘the android attacked him’ or some crap like that.” She said. “Wasn’t he the one you said was bothering Lorelei?” She raised her eyebrows, her face getting serious again. Shane had turned an unnatural shade of gray except for two splotches of bright red on his cheeks. “It was him, wasn’t it?” Her voice wavered, sounding high and thin.

“I’ll kill him.” He hissed, rising from his seat. “She wouldn’t do anything to him unless he did something first. I’ll kill him if he did anything to her.” He said savagely. Jen grabbed his arm and yanked him back down.

“No Shane, sit down!” She said urgently. “Don’t say or do anything to him! We’ll wait until he’s sitting down, and then we can slip out and tell General Marti that Bandressi is lying.” Shane looked at her, saw her clear brown eyes looking at him steadily, earnest but frightened by his anger. He noticed that all of his muscles were tensed and forced them to relax, unclenched his fists and leaned back in his chair.

“Okay.” He relented. “We’ll wait until he’s told his story to the people out there, and then we’ll go to General Marti and tell him what Hobbitgoblin is telling people.” He said, placing his hand on Jen’s. Her smile was worried and relieved at the same time. He was always marveled at how expressive her face was, and he felt a surge of love and guilt. He’d really scared her. “Don’t worry Jen; I won’t do anything to him. I won’t say anything, either.” He promised her, and got a kiss for it.

_____

“Tell us what happened!” People demanded, and Bandressi was more than happy to oblige. He leaned against Susan, and managed to let a few tears roll down his cheeks. They left pale tracks on his bloody chin.

“Well, I god dransverred doday. I dow her vrom Deibos, zo I wend do zay goobbye, ad she hugged be—” at this Susan stiffened—“ad dhen asged be how log I had. I told her ad she zaid dhere was dibe iv I wadded do…you dow…” he raised his eyebrows, and let it sink in. Everyone looked appropriately shocked, and he saw that Susan particularly seemed upset. “I dold her I wuzzend idderesded ad den…den she adagged be.” He let his head hang, which made his nose throb, but it helped with the bleeding. It had slowed, but it was still going, and that was good.

_____

So many people had come barging into General Marti’s office that Lynn was about to cry. The door had a lock, but was electronic, and worked automatically when Marti put his I.D. card into the slot when he left the office to go home. When Jen and Shane ran into the office, Lynn jumped in front of the door.

“You can’t go in! Not without an appointment!” She shouted. They glared at her, and she looked at their ranks to make sure she hadn’t offended some one that could get her fired.

“This is important.” Jen said fervently. “We have to see General Marti.” She said, but Lynn shook her head stubbornly.

“You can’t go in without an appointment. People have been barging in all afternoon, and the general can’t take all of these interruptions. He needs to concentrate.” Lynn said, pleased with herself for standing up to these rude people. But then the young man lifted her up—“Put me down!”—and set her down again, well away from the door, while the young woman opened it and went in.

“What now?” Lynn heard the strained voice of her boss and got very close to crying. When the young man followed his cohort into the office and shut the door, she sat in her chair, looking at nothing in particular. When another person walked in and walked purposely towards the door, she finally broke down and cried. Luckily for Shane and Jen, it stopped the woman who had just walked in. It was Susan, who had seen Bandressi to the infirmary, and now had to see to it that General Marti was told what had happened. “What’s the matter?” Susan asked, her hand leaving the doorknob.

“People keep barging in,” Lynn sniffed. “And no one will listen to me when I tell them that General Marti can’t be interrupted right now because he has to decide what to do.” She dabbed at her eyes with a tissue. Susan stood in front of Lynn’s desk, not sure what she should do. “He has to decide what to do, and he can’t think if people keep coming in, half of the time they didn’t even knock, and none of them would listen to me,” she had calmed down quickly, but was on the verge of crying again. She was only in her mid-twenties and was acting like a child, but she had been horribly spoiled, and Marti had had to take her on as a favor to a rich friend.

“Don’t cry,” Susan said, holding her hands up. “I’ll wait; I don’t have to see him right now.” Lynn looked at her doubtfully. “I have all day.”

“Well…” Lynn hesitated.

“I’ll make an appointment.” Susan offered, and Lynn gave her a radiant smile.

“He has the whole day open. You could probably go in as soon as those two jerks are gone,” Lynn said. “But I just know he’s been stressed with all of these unexpected people, so could you wait an hour until after they’ve gone? I’m going to move my desk in front of his door as soon as they leave so no one else can get in.” She said in a determined voice. Susan smiled kindly.

“I’ll help you, if you like.” Susan offered, and they were friends from that point on.

_____

When Jen and Shane had finished telling Marti what Bandressi had told everyone, there was silence for nearly a full minute, with Jen glancing nervously from Shane to Marti, Shane holding Jen’s hand and stroking it reassuringly, and Marti leaning back in his chair, eyes closed and fingers laced over his stomach. Jen was just about to decide he was asleep when he opened his eyes, sighed heavily, and got out of his chair to pace the floor again.

“You needn’t have worried. Lorelei came to me already, and told me what happened.” He said. “I can honestly say that I’m sorry I gave Captain Bandressi so much time to get his things ready. If I hadn’t, this might not have happened.” He stopped in front of his window and stared out at the mountains.

“Where’s Lorelei?” Shane ventured to ask. Marti glanced in Shane’s direction and then back to the mountains. “She left on the shuttle waiting for Bandressi. I had it here early, but gave him time to get his things together and say goodbye to his friends…” Marti said. They waited for him to say more, but when he said nothing, Jen decided it was safe to ask him something herself. She got up and stood next to Marti at the window.

“Is she alright?” She asked. Marti looked at her and smiled.

“Oh, she’ll be fine. She might have some wire damage and she probably used up a lot of power, running here like she did. But it’s her reputation I’m more worried about.” He sighed again and patted Jen on the back. “Don’t worry about her. She’s quite safe.” And then his voice became dark and angry. “Bandressi is the one you should worry about.” He said, and motioned towards the door. They took this as their invitation to leave and did so.

posted by Kchan.

Saturday, August 9, 2003
01:26 a.m.

It was hard to keep track of her, and he was starting to suspect that it was what she wanted. For all his brilliance, Peregrine Bandressi could be incredibly stupid sometimes, especially when it came to women—real and fake—because he always assumed that they would want him. He had gone from desiring Zuleika Nimshi to both desiring and despising her, not only because she had refused his advances, but even more so because she had chosen Caelum instead. And now it seemed that this android, Lorelei, was also shunning him.

It did cross his mind that she might not be completely anatomical, but she was so realistic in every other way that he doubted it. If he were the one to go to that much trouble making her as real as possible, he would have made her exactly like a woman. Besides, he’d managed to get his hand pretty far down when he’d first led her to the hangar, and he was certain that no one would go to the trouble of making that part of an android’s body so realistic if they weren’t going to follow through with the rest of it. Maybe she had some stupid chastity program. He shrugged. It was easy enough to get around those.

Bandressi leaned back in his chair and rubbed his eyes. He’d been trying to get any information he could on Lorelei and the man who’d designed her, James Cameron, and his eyes were starting to burn from staring at the computer screen. The doctor in question was not unhandsome. It was strange, though. He sometimes found pictures of him with a woman remarkably like the android. A smirk played at his lips. How very Freudian of Cameron, to make an android so like his dead wife.

He remembered seeing Cameron around the moon base on Deimos a few times, but Cameron seemed to keep mostly to himself. Either that or he was in the lab all of the time, working on his precious android. Bandressi hadn’t thought much of James Cameron then, and didn’t now, but he did admire Cameron’s skill. It must have taken him years to design and perfect Lorelei. But why was it so hard to find anything about her actual design; details, blueprints, what programs she was equipped with…it was like she was some big military weapon, which was ridiculous. Sure she spent huge amounts of time in the hangar, but that was because she was doing maintenance with that kid Ferris, wasn’t it?

No. Bandressi sat up very straight as it started to make sense. That wasn’t it. She was some kind of weapon. And that meant that she probably wasn’t built like a real woman. Still, this chase did amuse him, even if it annoyed him as well. It always amused him when they tried to get away. Only two of the ones he’d been really serious about had gotten away from him, and the second he had let go. He didn’t want to touch anything that Aquila had sullied. His lip curled into a sneer (a snarl, really) that had a bestial quality.

He was relieved when Zuleika hadn’t stayed in Switzerland because he hated to be reminded of his failure, but he was also nervous about the things she’d said about what happened on Deimos (it might scare off the local prey). Thank whatever god there was that no one would take her word over his. But now that she had given up he was happy that she wasn’t there. So many of the refugees had stayed in Switzerland, most of them at the launch base, that he’d been worried he would have to see her on a daily basis, but she had left. But, a lot of people had stayed, and that was why he ran into Ferris and sometimes even Ceece—ah, now there was a nice piece of—

The com-unit blipped. He glared at it, waited a moment, and then pressed the answer button.

“What is it?” he demanded. There was a second of silence in which he realized that he had spoken in a harsh voice and didn’t care.

“Captain Bandressi?” a timid female voice. It sounded like Lynn, Marti’s secretary. He propped his chin on his hand and gave a curt affirmative. “Captain, you have an appointment today with General Marti.”

“What time was it scheduled for, Lynn? I need you to push it back a bit.” He said in a smooth, sweet tone. He didn’t feel like looking into Marti’s eyes right now, even if he was trying to talk shy Lynn into having dinner with him. He felt like Marti’s eyes were always laughing at him, and he hated being laughed at. Also, he wasn’t entirely sure that Marti hadn’t believed Zuleika’s side of the story.

“Well sir, I already had to reschedule for the time it’s at now…which is five minutes ago.” Lynn said hesitantly. Bandressi’s hands clenched.

“Tell him I’ll be there in a bit, that I was detained or something. Make it sound official.” He said, standing up quickly and glancing in a mirror to make sure he was as perfect as always, and flicked the com-unit off in the middle of Lynn’s goodbye.

_____

Bandressi stopped running just long enough to catch his breath and smooth his hair and clothes when he got to the door that would lead to Marti’s waiting room. When he was sure that he was immaculate once more, he walked into the room, winked at Lynn, who blushed and looked quickly down at her typing, and rapped Marti’s door loudly before walking in without waiting for a reply.

“Ah, Captain, so glad you could make it.” Marti said. Bandressi took the chair he was offered and settled himself.

“Sorry I was so late, sir. I was detained on my way—” Bandressi began to apologize, but Marti cut him off.

“Yes, yes, Lynn told me, no need to go into that. I want to get this all finished with as soon as possible.” The general cleared his throat and steepled his fingers together, his elbows resting on the edge of the table. “It is a rather serious business.” Bandressi didn’t like where this was headed.

“Is something wrong, sir?” he asked. They couldn’t possibly have been checking up on what he was searching for, could they? This…this robot couldn’t possibly be that important.

“Well, you have been transferred to another area, and will not be able to leave on the Hrunting—” this time it was Bandressi doing the interrupting.

“What! No! I earned a spot on that ship!” he shouted, on his feet. “I deserve to go; I fought hard to get as many people back as I could, no matter what that slut Nimshi says—”

“Captain Bandressi!” His name was spoken like thunder, and suddenly General Marti was standing up too, looming over him, even from behind the desk. Bandressi had forgotten how tall Marti was. “That kind of language is inexcusable, captain.” Marti’s voice was soft and cold. “You know the policy this company—every company—has on speaking about anyone that way.”

“I’m sorry sir.” The captain said, but he didn’t sound sorry.

“I’ve gotten a lot of complaints about you, captain. But I’m a lenient man and I only warned you, let you off with minimal punishments. I did that because you’re a hell of a captain in battle situations and we need you on the Hrunting because when it gets to Mars, there will most likely be a struggle to get it back.” To Bandressi’s relief, Marti eased back from the desk, but he did not sit.

“Then why was I transferred, sir?” Bandressi asked, sitting down again. Marti hated the whining tone in Bandressi’s voice.

“That is not my concern. I kept my military title, but I’m with the T.S.O. now, not the army. They don’t have to tell me where they’re sending their personnel. Half of the refugees were connected in some way to the military, and most of them have been stationed in other areas. But you were stationed here, because you were to leave with the Hrunting.” Finally, Marti sat back down, much to the relief of Bandressi.

“Yes sir.” The captain said a bit impatiently, because he knew all of this and wanted a real explanation. The general didn’t care.

“I don’t know why you’ve been relocated. You’ll have to take that up with your superiors when you meet with them. All I can tell you is that I’ll be sending them a report on your behavior.” General Marti got up again and started pacing around the room, his expression dark. He didn’t seem to know that Bandressi was still there until the captain shifted in his seat and cleared his throat. Marti glanced at him. “You may go, captain. You are to pack immediately. Your transportation will be here in two hours.” His voice wasn’t as cold, but all of the humor it normally had was gone.

“Thank you, sir.” Bandressi left Marti pacing around his office. He did not wink at Lynn on his way out. He would never see her again anyway, so why bother?

He would look for Lorelei before he went, though. He looked at his watch. She would be quitting about now, walking out with Ferris probably. He’d even seen her in the cafeteria a few times; he’d seen her ducking out soon after he’d entered. Maybe she would have gone there now. Yes, he’d look there, first.

posted by Kchan.

Sunday, August 3, 2003
05:12 P.M.

Jen was waiting for Shane when he and Lorelei walked into the mess hall. She’d saved a table and gotten Shane something to eat, but she hadn’t gotten anything for herself.

“Hey Jen, this is Lorelei.” Shane said, taking in the empty space in front of Jen as he bent to kiss her. “Lorelei, this is my girlfriend, Jen Marlan.” He was smiling but he had his eyebrow raised slightly.

“It’s nice to meet you, Lorelei.” Jen held out her hand, smiling shyly.

“A pleasure,” Lorelei answered. She took in and then dismissed the surprise in Jen’s face as they shook hands. It was a reaction she had come to expect from people when they first touched her.

“I’m really sorry, Shane, but I can’t stay long today. I have a load of homework, and then I have to study for a test, but I’ll try and have something hot ready to eat when you come over.” Jen said.

“Is that why you didn’t get yourself anything to eat?” He asked slyly, picking up his fork and poking at various things (many of them unidentifiable) on his tray.

“Yes, but I’ll get something at home, don’t worry. You know I hate the food here anyway.” She wrinkled her nose. Shane grinned and took a large bite of something that looked like it might be green-bean casserole without the green-beans.

“It’s a pity you can’t eat, Lorelei. The food here is amazing.” He said after he’d eaten the mystery casserole. He’d remained silent while he ate, listening idly as Jen and Lorelei talked, trying to find something in common.

“Amazingly gross, you mean.” Jen said dryly, and Shane laughed, leaned across the table and kissed her on the cheek. He had been aiming for her mouth, but she’d turned her face away at the last second. “Don’t kiss me until you’ve brushed your teeth. I don’t want to taste whatever that stuff is, not even second-hand.” She struck a prim pose and turned her face further away from him, but the corners of her mouth were turned up slightly. “At least the salad bar is decent.” She sniffed. Lorelei realized that they were teasing each other. This seemed to be an old joke between them. It was interesting to see the way the interacted with each other, but she really had to get back to the hangar if she wanted to avoid Bandressi. Besides, she would be leaving for the Hrunting in less than a week, and she wanted to get as much practice flying as possible.

“Well, I really need to go. I have to keep practicing if I’m going to be a decent pilot.” Lorelei stood up. “It was wonderful, finally meeting you, Jen.” She said, and shook hands with Jen a second time, and waved to both of them as she left.

_____

He woke up hot, but rapidly getting cold because he was sweating. He was also aware that he’d kicked his blanket off at some point during his dream. He started to reach for her, but remembered that he was alone. Shivering, he sat up and rubbed his eyes. The dreams had to be real; they had to be actual memories. It was impossible for anyone to implant visuals into your dreams without them sticking something to your eyes, and there was nothing in his but sleep. He wasn’t sure how he knew that, but he knew it just the same. Things kept coming back to him…little things, mostly. Like the way she used to snuggle against him when he got into bed, even after she was asleep. It didn’t matter how deeply she was sleeping, she would curl her body against his as soon as he got settled.

Or the focused look on her face when she was working hard at something. She would be totally absorbed, oblivious to everything around her, even him. It had bothered him at first, to come second to her when she was working, but then he’d realized that it was the same with her, when he was working, and he’d let it go. But why did he remember these things…and not who, exactly, he was?

He could tell anyone who asked what schools he’d gone to, what planets, moons, and ships he’d been on. He could tell anyone who wanted to know that he was Caelum Aquila; age twenty-four, born in Antilia, Jupiter. He was engaged to Zuleika Nimshi; twenty-two, born in Saudi Arabia (Riyadh, to be exact), Earth. Or, he had been engaged to her. Something must have happened between them, shortly before he had been wounded on Deimos, and he had lost parts of his memory. At least, that was what they were telling him. They were also telling him that he would soon remember everything important.

What he didn’t exactly understand was why he could remember all of these stupid, trivial things, like the fact that there were around four-hundred billion (give or take two-hundred billion) stars in the Milky Way, but he couldn’t remember why there had been so much pain and sadness in her face. Had they broken up before the Viral Infiltration? He was certain that neither of them had cheated on the other…they loved each other too much—or at least, they had.

So why had she run from him after the asteroids had stopped falling? He’d tried to follow her during the evacuation, but she’d slipped away in the crowd, and before he could find her again, that jerk Gerard had hauled him in a different direction. He had been so ecstatic when he saw her, and then remembered her name. Sure, Swan had shouted it, and it had flooded his mind with everything he knew about her, but then she’d turned around, and everything fell into place. The face that had haunted him finally matched a set of information. He had a lot of those. There were people he knew so much about, but the faces were all mixed up.

“Why did you run from me?” he whispered. “You did it once before, but for a different reason. You were angry because you thought there was still something between me and…what was her name…it doesn’t matter. It wasn’t true, and then after that you always ran to me. Why the change?” Running a hand through his hair, he glanced at the glowing face of his watch, saw it was five-thirty, and decided it was as good a time as any to get up. He wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep now anyway.

Pulling on his clothes and lacing up his boots in the dark was an easy thing. She hadn’t gotten up as early as he had, and it was a familiar process. He was starting to hate the room they had given him here, almost as much as the one at the lab he had been in before the asteroids had fallen. He stretched and rubbed the stiffness from his neck. That was something she used to do for him, when he’d spent long hours bending over an engine of some kind or other. He had a flash of one particular time, so real and vivid that it hurt when it was over.

He was just sitting up straight, his hands cramped from the tiny, controlled movements that were required by this particular job—fusing wires and chips together for part of a guidance system that had a glitch in it. He rolled his head back and forth, extending and curling his fingers, then placed his hands in the middle of his back and arched against them until it popped.

A soft sound behind him, the swish of fabric, and then her hands were on his shoulders, sliding down to his back. He leaned against her chest, and because the chair was high, his cheek rested against hers. He relaxed his back as she kneaded the tight muscles, knowing that she was bracing her legs and body so he could lean against her without knocking her over. He turned his face so his mouth rested against her cheek and waited for her to turn her head and kiss him. She was just turning her face towards his, her skin smooth against his lips, her hands moving back up to his shoulders, and then it was gone. The sun was rising, shedding a gray light into the room through the curtainless window.

Suddenly there was a hand on his shoulder, and he whipped around to see who it was, a wild hope flaring up for just a second. The dim light showed that it was Dr. Swan, the lines in his face showing how tired he was. Caelum realized that all of his muscles were tense, and he forced them to loosen and relax. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.” Dr. Swan said, yawning. “What are you doing awake at this hour? We aren’t leaving until nine, and it takes you all of five minutes to get completely ready.” And Caelum, glancing at his watch and seeing that he’d been standing there for half an hour, remembered that this was the day they would leave Kathmandu for Pokhara. Then they would travel to the launch base at Mount Annapurna. Why they had come to the base in the Himalayas instead of the one in the Alps was something that Caelum didn’t know, but he chalked it up to Dr. Gerard’s ridiculous love of secrecy. He’d wanted Caelum to wear a hood and sunglasses everywhere they went, but Caelum had made him settle for the glasses and a knitted hat. When Dr. Gerard had tried to make Caelum cover the lower half of his face with his scarf, Caelum had given him a withering stare and tucked it firmly under his chin.

“I had a dream…” Caelum said, coming out of his musings, but not in time to remember it was a mistake to say that. “It didn’t make any sense, really.” He said hurriedly, but Swan had already perked up considerably, and was dragging Caelum over to the tiny table. When Caelum was sufficiently comfortable, Dr. Swan rummaged through the cupboards for something to add to the water he put on the stove. When his search revealed packets of cocoa, he shrugged and ripped them open, dumping them into mugs and sitting down at the table across from Caelum.

“What did you dream about?” Dr. Swan asked. His face was pale in the early morning light. It was strange to see him without his dark makeup, but he still wore the lenses that changed his eyes from blue to a brown that was almost black.

“It really didn’t make much sense. I don’t even remember half of it,” Caelum answered, hoping to deter Swan. Of course, it didn’t work.

“Well, what do you remember?” He persisted. The truth was, it had been very personal, and he didn’t want to talk about it.

“It was something about Zuleika. I really don’t remember what.” Caelum said, glad that it was dark. Thinking about the actual contents had brought a flush to his face. “What really woke me up was that I’d kicked the covers off while I was sleeping, and was cold…” he let his voice trail off, as if he were trying to remember what had happened. In truth, he was trying to forget. There was so much he wished he wasn’t remembering…

“Well, if you remember anything, let me know, okay?” Dr. Swan said. Caelum nodded and told him that there was steam rising from the kettle. Swan jumped up to take it off of the burner before it was hot enough to start whistling. If Gerard woke up before he was good and ready (usually around eight or eight-thirty), he would be in an even worse mood than he usually was.

“I was wondering…did I record anything about an argument I’d had with Zuleika? Before the Infiltration, I mean.” Caelum asked. Swam froze for just a moment, the kettle hovering over the mug he had just been going to fill.

“I don’t know.” He said and poured water into both of the mugs. “You’re the only one who can look at your files. When we get to Annapurna, they’ll have decent computers, and you can search there.” But that little freeze had made Caelum doubt the existence of any such thing in his memory files. Only, if that wasn’t the reason Zuleika had looked at him that way…if that wasn’t the reason she had run from him, then what was it? “Is that what you dreamt? That you had a fight with her?” Swan’s voice was calm and politely curious as he placed the mugs on the table, because it was part of his job to monitor Caelum’s dreams.

“Maybe,” he said, just as calm and polite while he pulled the hot mug closer to himself. He bent his head over the cocoa, letting the steam rise into his face as he cradled the cup in his hands, which were a lot colder than he liked. This mountainous country seemed to have a coldness to it that was vaguely familiar in a disturbing, painful way…

“You can look for it when we get to Annapurna, as soon as you have some free time. You two seemed to get along really well from what you’ve told me, so it might take a long time to find anything.” Swan said. “You’ll be really busy, programming you’re A.I. and getting the hang of flying Andromeda after not piloting anything for so long.”

“How long has it been?” Caelum demanded, suddenly angry. It wasn’t fair that he couldn’t remember all of the important things, all of the things that didn’t hurt. “How long was I unconscious, Dr. Swan? How long has it been since Zuleika gave up on looking for me? And if it was so hard for her to find me, how did you find her? She was always better at hiding, but I have no idea how I know that.” He was unaware that his voice had risen, that the darkness hid the regret on Dr. Swan’s face. If he’d seen it he might have stopped. “Why don’t you tell me, doctor? Tell me why she ran away. Tell me where this scar on my face came from, and why I can’t remember getting it. Why don’t I remember any of them? I have quite a few, you know.”

“I can’t tell you, Caelum.” There was a quiet tone in Swan’s voice that made Caelum think that Swan did know, but really couldn’t tell him. It made him think that Dr. Swan wanted to tell him. “Why not?” He asked, trying to keep his voice low. He remembered that Gerard was just annoying when he got enough sleep, but he was almost as bad as Bandressi (a sneering face flashed in Caelum’s mind at that unconscious comparison) when he didn’t.

“I can’t tell you because I don’t know.” Swan said, and Caelum was angry again, because he could tell that Swan was lying. He had just opened his mouth to say something sarcastic when some one behind him started to talk. It was Gerard.

“What the hell are you two doing up at this ungodly hour?” Gerard’s voice was surly and in the slowly growing light Dr. Swan and Caelum could see that he had his hands on his hips, his feet planted firmly apart on the floor, and his head slightly forward on his neck. From his stance, you’d think he wanted to fight them.

“It’s nothing.” Swan stood up, took both of the mugs from the table and put them in the sink. “I was having this crazy dream that I was in that old movie, Willy Wanka. You know…the one about the chocolate factory. So I got up and made cocoa.” Caelum grinned at Swan’s lie, and decided to help him out with it.

“Yeah, but then I woke up when he got out of bed, and we were just talking about the movie because we both saw it. Then we started to argue about who played Willy Wanka, and that’s probably what woke you up.” Caelum met Swan’s eyes and held them, but it was still too dark for him to read Swan’s expression accurately.

“It was Gene Wilder.” Dr. Gerard snorted. “I thought everybody knew that. Now go back to bed, both of you. Sweet mother of…” He turned around and stalked out of the kitchen, his voice fading away as he went.

When he was gone, Dr. Swan and Caelum held each other’s eyes. It was getting brighter faster now, but Swan had had time to smooth out whatever emotions had been in his face, so Caelum still couldn’t read his expression. They stayed that way for a long time, Caelum sitting at the table, his arms folded across his chest, Swan leaning against the sink, his hands resting on the edge of the basin.

“We may as well try and get some more sleep than argue.” Swan’s voice was flat and matter-of-fact. “I’ll see you in a few hours.” He walked out of the kitchen without waiting for Caelum to reply. It was just as well, because Caelum didn’t have anything else to say.

posted by Kchan.

Sunday, July 27, 2003
08:18 a.m.

“You seem to know your way around pretty well for some one who’s never been here before.” A man, who had introduced himself as Captain Bandressi, said to her. She smiled slightly, unenthusiastically. He kept smiling at her in a way that was different from the way people usually smiled at her. Perhaps it was because he didn’t seem to care about the fact that she wasn’t human (maybe he thought she might be built like a real woman), and his attentions were starting to…what were they starting to do? It was this…strange sensation in her head and chest. It was like being unable to accomplish something that she could do easily when she’d tried it before. Was it frustration? Yes…that seemed right. Only, she didn’t have feelings, so—he cleared his throat as if trying to get her attention. She frowned.

“I am an android. I can download the unrestricted parts of the floor plans of any building that has made its plans available to the public.” She said in a calm voice, as if explaining it to a child or a person of lesser intelligence. He didn’t seem to like the tone in her voice and stopped leaning so close to her as they walked.

“Well, if you can do that, why am I supposed to be leading you around?” He asked, his voice taking on a slightly sullen note.

“You are doing it because it is the polite, courteous thing to do.” She said, glancing at his profile. He would be considered ‘handsome’ by many people, but she thought his personality was definitely lacking. “Besides, General Marti asked you to do it, and you must obey his requests.” She was getting bolder with her remarks as she interacted more with humans. It was helpful to see how different people reacted to what she said. This last remark didn’t seem to please Captain Bandressi.

“General Marti can stuff it where—” he started to mutter.

“What was that?” she asked, even though she’d heard him perfectly. He cleared his throat again. “If it’s any consolation, you are taking me to a restricted area, so I really will need your help in finding my way around when we get there, which should be just around this corner.” She said politely. They rounded the next corner, and they did indeed come to a door with the words, ‘Restricted: Personnel Only’ painted in bold, red letters across the door. The captain made a noise like ‘hmm’ and reached for the handle, which was closest to her. He held the door for her with one hand, and guided her through by placing his other hand on the small of her back. It was a lot farther down her back than she thought proper, but she couldn’t get away from him just yet. “Well, this is the hall that leads to the separate hangars and labs. You said you’d be working where, again?” he asked, drawing her closer.

“I will be working in many places, but mostly I will work in the hangar. I must learn to pilot the mech built for me,” she said absently. She was running a scan on her systems. She was not programmed to ‘feel’ and it was strange that she was receiving all of this sensory input just from him touching her. She didn’t like it. Yes, she didn’t like it. It was annoying her to have his hand there, so close to the top of her right thigh.

“What’s the number of the hangar you’re working in? There are several levels of hangars.” He said, smiling yet again. The launch base in the Swiss Alps was built like a honeycomb, with dozens of hangars stacked on top of each other, all with openings that would allow the pilot to leave their hangar and fly in the areas and altitudes designated. Anyone who left the assigned areas without a damned good reason was penalized and banned from the hangar for a variable amount of time.

“I am in hangar number A-16. I have not been told what labs I will work in yet.” She said, and then as if she sensed what he was about to ask, she added, “I have not been told what room in the barracks I have been assigned to either.” He’d even shut his mouth after she said this, and she was sure he’d been about to ask her what her room number was. She decided only to tell him what was absolutely necessary from now on.

They walked on in silence until they reached the elevators that would lead them to level A of the hangars. Bandressi was wondering if she were anatomically correct, and Lorelei was thinking of all the self-defense programs she should download in case she met any other men like him, because his hand was slowly moving farther south. Luckily, they weren’t alone in the elevator, so she didn’t have to worry about that just yet.

When the door opened, the first thing that Lorelei took notice of was the increased light. It wasn’t electric light either, so there were windows on this level, or perhaps one of the hangar doors was open. The three people in the elevator stepped out, and Bandressi was just about to slip his arm back around her, when she turned back to the elevator, and put her hand in front of the doors so that they wouldn’t shut without Bandressi inside. A frown flickered across his formerly smiling mouth.

“I can make it from here, Captain Bandressi. Thank you for leading me here.” She said. “You’re quite welcome, but surely you wouldn’t mind if I came along, just in case you need my help?” And his smile was back. She returned the smile, but it was only reflexive.

“No thank you, Captain. I’m sure I can find my way. If I need any help I’ll ask some one here.” She said kindly but firmly and indicated the elevator. His smile faltered slightly, but he got into the elevator with as much dignity as possible, and Lorelei waved to him and walked away.

_____

Level A was on what would be the first floor of the massive, sprawling launch base. There were four levels to the hangars, with twenty separate hangars on each level, but not all of the hangars were for mechs. It would have taken up too much room, equipment, money, and personnel to try to accommodate eighty mechs. The cost of fuel alone would have been staggering. Also, transportation to and from the Hrunting and the other ships in the fleet had to be considered, and while they remained in orbit around the Earth the majority of the time, the shuttles that took people to and from the huge ship had to be carefully maintained planet-side.

Lorelei walked down the hall until she came to the door marked A-16 in large red letters. She put her palm on the access panel, and tried to process the logic behind Captain Bandressi’s desire to know what hangar and lab she would work in. He wouldn’t be able to get into them unless he worked in them. The palm-pad wouldn’t accept his handprint and he wouldn’t be able to get in. The light on the palm-pad turned green and the door slid open and she walked into the hangar.

“It was likely an attempt to make it known that he is ‘interested’ in me,” she frowned to herself, and knew that if she were human, she might find the look on his face amusing when he discovered that she wasn’t anatomically correct. But then she started to take note of her surroundings.

The ceiling was high, over two hundred feet, which was another reason that so few mechs were kept at the launch base. They were simply too big. Lorelei was exactly five feet, nine inches tall, and the feet of the mech were higher than her head, even with her ears, which were silver and resembled something between fins and wings. Her hand strayed to one of them, touching it lightly, a finger running over the smooth lines and curves, then resting on the universal socket that would allow for wire hook-ups to any computer.

It was illegal to make an android that looked human. There had to be some feature that would let people know that it wasn’t real. Lorelei had almost been given blue skin and white hair, but Dr. Cameron had refused. She received an odd jolt in her chest when she thought of him. Once again, she ran a scan on her systems, and could find nothing. It was strange. She was…reflecting on things that had happened to her in the past.

“Excuse me,” a voice on her left said. She turned to face the person who had spoken. She recognized the man as the one who had retrieved her from space and smiled. “You remember me?” He asked, a bit surprised. He’d thought an android had to be on to recognize you.

“Yes. I was shown news footage of the rescue ships landing, and I was told who everyone was.” She answered, and he nodded as if he should have known that. “Your name is Shane Ferris, age twenty, formerly of the Acidalia Planitia of Mars.” His smile was broad and mischievous.

“And you’re Lorelei, not applicable for an age, and you are formerly of the Deimos moon base.” He said, and they both knew that they’d checked up on each other and neither of them was offended. Then, turning to the mech beside them, he said, “And this…this is Valkyrie.” His tone was proprietary, and she saw that he had laid his hand on the foot of the mech and was patting it. “Isn’t she wonderful?” He asked a bit smugly, as if he had built it himself. In reality, he was only working maintenance until he could get a job someplace else, hopefully off-planet. Like the majority of the refugees from Mars who had any kind of mechanical or technical skills, he had stayed at the launch base in the Alps where the rescue ships had landed.

“Yes, she is.” Lorelei said, also laying a hand on the metal foot. “Now, why don’t you show me how to take care of her before I start learning how to fly her?” She arched an eyebrow. “An excellent idea,” he said, and started with showing her how to operate the platform that would lift them up to different important parts of the mech.

_____

After a week of learning how to repair and maintain Valkyrie, as well as another week to start learning to pilot her, Lorelei decided that Shane could be considered a trusted friend. And after two weeks of avoidi

ng and turning Bandressi down as subtly as possible, Lorelei wanted some friendly advice. “May I ask you a question?” She said suddenly, while they were both up to their knees in spare parts, and covered with oil and dirt stains. He was showing her how to build a basic drone to help her understand how machines were put together.

“You most certainly may.” He answered. He often mimicked her more formal patterns of speech to tease her, which she ignored.

“What should you do if there’s a person who won’t leave you alone? Some one interested in you.” She asked, feeling that she could trust his discretion. He stared at her for a moment before answering. He was completely still, the wires he had been going to connect only an inch apart.

“Interested in you?” He repeated, and suddenly he understood, and his eyes widened slightly. “You don’t mean sexually, do you? I really hope you don’t.” He said, but she was nodding. He made a face, which Lorelei classified as showing disgust. “Well, you avoid them as much as possible. If he doesn’t leave you alone, tell him you aren’t…ah, interested.” Here he smiled slightly. “And if he still keeps bugging you, let me know who he is and I’ll kick his ass.” He grinned, and connected the two wires he’d been holding, and gave a triumphant shout when the drone he was working with came on.

“I’ve been trying to avoid him,” Lorelei persisted. “And I’ve turned him down…” she paused to connect her own wires, but did not give the same reaction when her drone turned on. “But he doesn’t seem to understand that I’m not built like a human female.” She finished and snapped the back panel of the drone shut. Shane started to chuckle and covered his mouth to smother his laughter.

“You haven’t told him outright, have you?” he asked, grinning. “He’s still trying to figure out what’s really under that tight little outfit of yours, and you’re too proper to tell him.” He was starting to laugh again when he looked at Lorelei’s face, and stopped, a surprised look on his face. Something he hadn’t expected was happening to her face, mostly on her cheeks. “You’re blushing!” He exclaimed. Lorelei’s hand went to her face, leaving dirty fingerprints when she took it away.

“Well, the things you were saying probably triggered the mechanism.” She said, her voice was calm and matter-of-fact, but her cheeks kept their pinkish color for a bit longer.

“Why didn’t you tell me you could blush?” Shane asked, pretending to pout.

“I didn’t tell you because you didn’t need to know. Anyhow, if you’d known about it you would have said all kinds of outrageous things to me to get me to blush, and it isn’t…” her eyes unfocused as she tried to find the word. “It isn’t comfortable.” She finished. Shane was still looking at her, but with an odd expression on his face.

“Lorelei, you aren’t programmed to feel things. I know that much about you. How do you know that blushing is uncomfortable?” He asked, wiping his hands on a rag and then stuffing the rag into his back pocket. She tossed the screwdriver she’d just picked up back into her toolbox and stared back at him.

“I don’t know. Maybe there’s something wrong with my program.” For some reason she didn’t understand, she said this in an irritable tone that surprised Shane, and made the strange sensation in her chest come back.

“You know, that’s almost blasphemous coming from you.” He said off-handedly.

“What do you mean?” She stood up as straight as she could, her face completely blank.

“You practically worship Dr. Cameron. Whenever anyone mentions his name you get this funny look on your face.” He also kept his face void of emotion.

“I am not capable of worshipping anything.” She said in a monotone.

“Mm, yes. And you aren’t capable of being uncomfortable either.” He said. They both looked away from each other and stared at their drones, which were both on but motionless, waiting to be given orders.

_____

“Hey, Lorelei,” Shane called as she left the hangar. She waited for him to catch up to her before going on out of the hangar. They’d worked in near silence the rest of the day, and she knew that it was a good thing that he was making an effort to talk to her as they left. “I’m sorry if…well, I was going to say if I hurt your feelings…but I think that might make things worse…well, you see, I’m not that good at this sort of thing, and, well…” he threw his hands up in the air, and she smiled.

“It’s alright. I think the subject threw both of us off balance a bit.” She said. His lips thinned slightly because he was pressing them together, obviously keeping in a comment about the possibilities of anything throwing her off balance. But then he remembered that it was in her program to speak in a way that would make humans comfortable, so he let it go and smiled back at her.

“Well, what do you say we go to the mess hall and see if that guy who’s interested in you is there? You can point him out to me so I can kick his ass.” He said, his grin taking on its customary mischievousness. “We can catch up with my girlfriend there. You haven’t met her yet.”

“That sounds like an excellent idea.” She adjusted her smile so it would match his and they walked to the mess hall together.

posted by Kchan.

Friday, July 18, 2003
06:14 p.m.

Walking down the sterile, white corridors of what looked like a regulation army base on the outside, but was really a laboratory, Second Lieutenant Zuleika Nimshi was careful to keep all emotion from her face. You could only tell how she was feeling if you looked into her eyes. Before, her face had been exotically beautiful. After what had happened recently, there was a stoniness to it that seemed to add somehow to her beauty. There was a distant look to her face now that made her look infinitely sad. She certainly felt infinitely sad.

“Lieutenant, if you’ll just come this way…” a voice by her elbow said. “I’ll see if one of the doctors can see you. ” The woman who was leading her through the halls said.

“One of them had better.” She said a bit irritably. “They were the ones that called me here.” She folded her arms across her chest as if she could shield herself from the world by doing so. The only reason she’d even come was because they’d said it was about Caelum, but that she was not to say anything about him to anyone, not even the people on the base.

“Well, they sometimes can’t keep their appointments.” The woman told her. The corners of Zuleika’s mouth turned down slightly, her lips thinning.

“They said it was important, so they’d better.” She hadn’t realized until recently how much of a calming influence Caelum had been. She was angry so often now, and she was having trouble keeping her feelings in line. But then, she hadn’t been able to prove anything about Bandressi, and she’d been bitter ever since she discovered that he had more ties than she’d thought possible for such a little prick like him. She would have to have hard evidence to prove it had been his fault. It was his word against hers, and people actually believed him instead!

Seething, Zuleika stalked into the room that the woman guiding her had indicated, and sat in one of the chairs that were arranged around a large, round table. She sat waiting for a few minutes before she had to get up and pace around the table. She was trying to think what these people could possibly have to do with Caelum when two men in long white coats and I.D. badges walked into the room. She tried to think of something courteous to say to them, but remained silent instead.

“Good morning, Lieutenant Nimshi.” One of them said. He had a shock of black hair that was starting to thin on top and dark eyes and skin. He looked Arabic, and Zuleika glanced at his I.D. to see what his name was, but couldn’t read it from here. “I’m Dr. Swan, and this is Dr. Gerard.” He said helpfully.

“Hello, Lieutenant. We’re glad that you could make it all the way out here. ” The second man, Dr. Gerard, also had dark hair, but it was streaked with gray, as was his tidily trimmed beard.

“Hello,” she replied. They obviously knew who she was, so what else was there to do but ask them what this was all about? “Why, exactly did you call me here?” She folded her arms over her chest again. The doctors glanced at each other, and Gerard made a motion with his hand, deferring to his younger colleague.

“The letter that was sent to you said it was about Lieutenant Caelum Aquila. This is the truth, but not the whole truth—”

“Obviously,” Zuleika interrupted rudely. “Just tell me what this has to do with Caelum? Are you going to tell me why you snatched him before he could have a proper burial? Are you going to explain all that nonsense he was spouting about Benu before he died? Are you going to tell me why I can’t get that—that shit Bandressi convicted? ” She knew she shouldn’t be taking this out on them, but she was so frustrated and frightened without Caelum. She hadn’t thought she would live without him, at least not until she saw him lying in the pool of blood. “Don’t think about it,” she ordered herself.

“If you’d let us go on we can explain the first two. As for the last question…we can’t help you…at least not yet.” Gerard said soothingly. Zuleika, who had turned her face away from them to hide her tears, now spun around on her heel. What did he mean, ‘not yet’?

“Well?” she demanded after a short, heavy silence.

“Please sit down, Lieutenant.” Gerard indicated a chair, which she sat in. They sat with her, one of them on each side. It made her feel closed in.

“We want you to know that while there was obviously nothing we could do for Caelum when you brought him back, we were able to carry out his wishes…and the wishes of his superiors.” Swan said.

“This is a difficult time for you,” Zuleika snorted at Gerard’s understatement. She’d been in her own little hell recently. “Lieutenant, this is also going to be difficult.”

“First of all, this is not a normal laboratory. This is a high security facility, which is why it was placed here on the base and made to look like any of the other buildings.” Swan told her. She realized vaguely that they were tag teaming, both working on her at the same time so that she would be easier to convince of whatever it was they were getting at.

“I didn’t have much trouble getting in.” She raised an eyebrow, consciously taking the bait they were offering. She’d play along for now.

“Well, that’s because you were expected.” Gerard said a bit smugly. Swan gave him a slightly quelling look. That was interesting. Not only had the older of the two deferred to the younger when they were talking; now he was being silently scolded.

“There are cameras and scanners, then.” She said, to which they both nodded.

“You see…this is a cloning facility.” Swan told her calmly. But Zuleika was not calm anymore.

“What did you do to him?” her voice was icy, her eyes narrowed. Finally, the thing about Benu made sense. She didn’t know why she hadn’t seen it before. But then, she’d been very upset at the time.

“Well, we only did what he wanted, he and his superiors came in and discussed it with us, and he signed the necessary papers.” Gerard was holding up his hands in an almost defensive way as he told her all of this.

“Why didn’t anyone tell me about it? I’m…I was his fiancé. Some one should have told me,” she didn't know what to feel about this besides the anger that had been with her for the last few weeks.

“Look, Lieutenant, we couldn’t tell you. If you knew, and some one tried to get you to tell them…” She was glaring at Swan as he spoke. “Lieutenant, you weren’t to be told because that’s what Caelum wanted. He made it very clear that you weren’t to know. He was protecting you.”

“From what?” she demanded, throwing her hands up in frustration. “Who would be after him, and who would want to get a hold of me and question me about him giving you permission to clone him?”

“That, unfortunately, is something we were not told.” She noticed that she was only dealing with Swan now. Gerard was sitting awkwardly on her left, ignored by Swan. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

“Then what were you told?” She asked. It was easy to see that she was still angry, but she was keeping calm.

“We were told that if Caelum were to die unexpectedly before he came to us to terminate our agreement, the military would confiscate whatever was left of him and bring it here for us to clone him from.”

“Why would you need more than blood, hair, or skin samples? If you can clone him in such a short amount of time, you must have progressed beyond needing…large samples.” She said. Swan was nodding.

“There are things about Caelum that you didn’t know, that he couldn’t tell you.” Swan put a hand on her arm, which was resting on the table. She wanted to pull it away form him, but didn’t.

“Apparently so,” she said dryly.

“I'm sorry that he couldn’t tell you. But he was far more important than a First Lieutenant. He was far more important than Bandressi, which is why he succeeded in keeping Caelum from rising any higher. Caelum didn’t need to rise any higher.” Swan explained. Zuleika suddenly felt numb. She had thought they’d told each other everything. She thought she’d known everything about him. It was good to finally know why all of Bandressi’s idiocies hadn’t gotten to Caelum, to know why he hadn’t cared when Bandressi held him down.

“So what was he? Some kind of secret agent?” she asked in what was supposed to be a sarcastic tone. Swan smiled.

“No, but something close. I don’t really know what he was. I wasn’t told. He’s the only one who can access that part of the personal file he gave us. He sent us updates every day.” Swan said. She suddenly didn’t care if he was touching her arm. The contact reassured her that this was real.

“That’s what he was working on every night…he had to update his memory files.” She whispered.

“He told us he wanted to remember everything about you.” Swan's voice was soft, soothing. “His largest file is all of the things he knew or loved about you.” Zuleika bit her lip, holding her tears back. But if he had all of these memory files, why had he said he needed her to remember for him?

“What about the clone? Does he…remember anything?” She felt dizzy. It was Caelum, but then, it wasn’t. Would it be right to try to start over with him? What if he wasn’t like Caelum at all? They weren’t entirely sure how to replicate personality traits…maybe he looked like Caelum but had a personality like Bandressi’s? No, that wasn’t possible. He would never be like that.

“He dreams a lot, and quite vividly. But he doesn’t always remember what the dreams were about. He’s described you, though.” Swan’s voice interrupted her thoughts.

“He’s…he remembers me?” Hope swelled for a moment, but then she reminded herself that it wasn’t really Caelum. It was a clone…

“Yes, he sees you most often. But he can’t put a name with your face yet.” Swan was a bit cheerful as he said this. It reminded Zuleika that she didn’t really trust these men. Not yet anyway.

“Is that why I’m here?” She said, drawing her arm away and resting her chin on her hands, as if that had been her intention instead of wanting to break contact with Swan.

“No.” Gerard broke in suddenly. Zuleika had almost forgotten that he was there as she talked with Swan. Maybe that was the point…

“Why am I here, then?” she asked.

“You’re here because this is the only safe place to tell you about all of this.” Gerard explained, and was suddenly the one in control. “You know that Caelum was important, but not how important. If we were to tell you some place else, you would be put at great risk. In fact, you’re in great danger now that you’ve been here.” He said heavily.

“What?” she asked thoroughly annoyed.

“You have two choices now, Zuleika. You can stay on this base, or you can disappear.” Gerard’s tone was darkly serious.

“Wait a minute! Why didn’t you tell me this before?” She demanded fiercely.

“We weren’t sure you were being followed until you came here. But now that we’re sure, we must protect you. That was another of the conditions of the contract we all signed.” Gerard seemed to be enjoying telling her this. She trusted him even less now.

“I’m not quite sure I understand this…you’re telling me that you and Caelum signed a contract that would force you to protect me if I were being followed after he died?” Zuleika put a hand over her eyes to block out the lights in the room. She was starting to get a headache.

“Yes, that was one of the conditions.” Gerard replied.

“What were the others?” She folded her arms across her chest again, and leaned back in her chair. She looked from one man to the other, and was increasingly sure that Swan was probably a real doctor, but Gerard wasn’t. He had something to do with the military. That’s why he’d deferred to Swan for all of the parts that might be emotional for her, and for all of the parts that dealt with the actual cloning. He was in charge now because they were dealing with the contract and with the threat that supposedly existed.

“That he can’t see you, but you can give him a clue as to where you are. He said that one of the best things that had happened to him was finding you, and he wanted to be able to do it all over again if we had to go through with this, which we did.” Swan broke in. At first this appeased her, because it was so like Caelum to say something romantic and silly like that…but then she realized that even if all of this was true, they were using her for something.

“How about this; I see him, but he doesn’t see me, since he isn’t allowed to.” She felt compelled to see him. Something was pushing her to see him, something instinctive. She and Caelum had gotten out of a lot of scrapes by trusting their instincts. She would trust her instincts on this, because she didn’t trust anything else.

“I…it’s in the contract that you aren’t to see him.” Swan said, hesitating but not disliking the idea.

“No, it’s in the contract that he can’t see me, so I can see him as long as he can’t see me, right?” She said in a smooth, reasonable voice. Swan looked at Gerard in an almost pleading way. That made Zuleika want to trust him, but she would wait and see. “Don’t you have an observation room or something with one-way glass? I can sit on one side and he can sit on the other.” She went on. She could see Gerard wavering in his resolve.

“It really doesn’t say anything in the contract about her not being able to see him.” Swan said. She wanted to hug him for it, because it made Gerard relent and nod his head. She gave them her best smile, and it felt strange to her lips to do it. She hadn’t smiled in so long…

_____

While standing as close to the glass as she could, Zuleika waiting for Caelum to come into the viewing room. She didn’t know what excuse they were using to get him there. She didn’t really care, either, so long as she could see him. And then he walked into the room and sat down facing her. It works like a magnet, really. You walk into a room, and there’s a large, recessed mirror. You know that people are looking at you on the other side, but you have no way of seeing the people scrutinizing you. So, you look at the mirror, trying to see past it to the people beyond. It doesn’t matter if you know it won’t work, you try it anyway.

He seemed to look right at her, and for a moment she thought it would stop beating. He looked the same. His eyes were the same brilliant shade of icy blue, his hair the same blonde. His skin was a darker shade than she remembered, though. It was tanner than it had been. He’d probably been exercising outside instead of in a gym on a moon base. She swallowed the lump rising in her throat, but didn’t bother with the tears running down her cheeks. She was surprised she still had any left.

“Allah…he looks just like him…” a thought occurred to her. She looked at his cheek and saw there was a scar there. If he’d lived, the first cut he’d gotten from the drone in the hanger would have left a scar. “You needed Caelum’s body so you could give him scars in the same places, and so you could match everything…eye and hair color, handprints, retinal scans…you made an exact copy.” She turned to Swan, who was looking pleased and surprised.

“Yes, we did. He thought it would make you more comfortable if he looked exactly the same.”

“That’s a load of shit, and you know it. He would know it would weird me out to see him, but know it wasn’t really him. You’re planning something, or at least his ‘superiors’ are. And they need an exact copy of Caelum for it to succeed.” She felt a sinking feeling in her stomach, a constricting in her chest. “What are they planning, Swan? What did Caelum do, besides being a First Lieutenant?”

“I don’t know.” He said, and then walked closer to her. He and Zuleika were alone in the room because Gerard was in the other room with Caelum’s clone. “If I knew, I would tell you.” He whispered, glancing from her to Gerard. “But all I can tell you is that you really are in danger. You have to leave Earth—”

“No trouble there.” She laughed. She couldn’t stand to be planet-side much longer. “Where should I go?”

“There’s a ship leaving to investigate Mars. You should go to Switzerland, to the base near the Alps, and make an appointment with Sepp Marti. Tell him who you are and what you did on Deimos. I know he’ll help you.” His voice was even softer than before.

“How do you know?” She asked. He smiled and pulled up his sleeve. The skin underneath his clothes was pale compared to the skin on his hands, neck, and face. When she stared at him in surprise, he laughed softly and winked at her. The lens over his eye lifted when he did. His eyes were dark blue. They grinned at each other and he blinked the lens back into place.

“Tell him you know a young warrior of Mars, and he told you to ask for help.” He replied. She marveled for a moment, and then they both went back to watching Gerard and Caelum’s clone. “Would you like to hear him?”

“I…don’t know.” She said faintly, and then nodded. “I might as well.” She tried to shrug as if she didn’t care, but the idea of him also sounding exactly like Caelum should have occurred to her. Swan pressed a button one of the boxes on the wall, and the sound of Caelum and Gerard talking came through speakers on both sides of the glass. Zuleika looked closely at the buttons. One of them would let the people in the observation room hear what was happening on her side, and another would let them see…

But as she was considering pressing the buttons, Caelum’s clone started to talk, and this time she was sure her heart wasn’t beating anymore.

“Do you really think I’ll be able to remember her name?” he was asking.

“You should remember it soon. We’ve been playing the memories while you sleep, which is effecting what you’re dreaming. You should remember more and more. Besides, her name is mentioned quite often. We were surprised when you insisted that you couldn’t ever remember what it is.” Gerard answered. His voice was reassuring and deep, but Zuleika just didn’t trust him. She hoped that Caelum’s clone had the same instincts that Caelum had had.

“I don’t know…it just seems like…memorization to me, not remembering things. Like, you can learn a second language by hooking up cerebral sensors and then playing disks of the language courses while you sleep.” He protested. Gerard actually started to laugh.

“If it were like that, would you be able to see what the disks were talking about?” Gerard asked. The clone thought for a moment, putting his hand on his chin and rubbing his thumb back and forth over the corner of his mouth. Zuleika actually had to sit down when he did this. It was exactly what Caelum did when he was considering something.

“I suppose…but cerebral sensors can implant visuals too…” he replied, and Zuleika wanted to cheer. He was arguing with Gerard, not trusting him, and that was just what she wanted him to do. She turned to Swan.

“How can I give him clues about where I am?” She asked. He looked at her, startled by her sudden eagerness to cooperate.

“Well, you can send him email…” he started. She waved her hand dismissively.

“What about phone calls, video, audio…picture files…” her mind was spinning with the possibilities. He was acting like Caelum, had the same mannerisms and body language. As far as she could tell anyway…

“Do you have any video files of him walking or something? I want to see how he moves.” She asked suddenly. Swan looked a bit relieved. He obviously hadn’t wanted to tell her which things she’d suggested were off-limits.

“Sure, right here.” He shut off the audio coming from the other room and walked to the table in the corner, which she hadn’t noticed, and flipped up the screen of a laptop. She walked over to the table and stood behind him, watching him pull up files. “This is him doing things like walking for a bit and then breaking into a run…we were testing his motor skills.” Swan explained.

She watched impatiently as the file loaded, and then had to bite her lip to keep from crying. He was just like him…she considered briefly if he would be the same in bed, but she shoved it out of her mind as far as she could. He might look the same, he might sound and move the same…but he wasn’t Caelum.

“As far as contacting him goes…?”Swan began, but she shook her head.

“No…I don’t think want to anymore.” Zuleika walked away from the computer, watching the clone and Gerard talk to each other.

“W…what? You don’t…” Swan stuttered.

“No. It isn't him. It would be wrong of me to try to start again with him…it would be cruel.” She answered. She watched the clone. He was running his fingers through his hair…it was always getting in his eyes…

“But the dreams he has; the things he’s remembering! He’s Caelum!” Swan insisted.

“No he isn’t. For all he or I know, you’ve got visuals hooked up too, so he can see what the real Caelum was talking about.” Zuleika had to look away from the other room. It was too painful, too real.

“That’s not true! He is Caelum! It’s his name, what he calls himself when introduced to others. You don’t understand.” Swan said vehemently as he shut the laptop with a loud snap.

“Maybe not, but…if he wants to find me all over again, let him do it on his own. If he does, then I’ll give him a chance. If not…then I guess we’ll both have to move on.” She leaned against the wall…

“Zuleika, don’t lean against that!” Swan shouted, and ran to her. But it was too late.

“What?” She looked around at the wall and froze. If she’d planned it, if she’d still wanted it to happen, it would have been brilliant. She was looking directly at him. And he could see her.

He walked to the glass, his eyes wide with shock and…happiness? She didn’t know. He smiled and she felt her heart breaking all over again as he pressed his hand to the glass. Against her better judgment she raised hers to it. If there weren’t any glass to separate them they would have been touching. They looked each other in the eyes.

“Zuleika…” he said her name as if it was a revelation, and she burst into tears.

And then the asteroids started to fall.

posted by Kchan.

Tuesday, July 15, 2003
06:15 p.m.

“Well Lieutenant Colonel, I must say that I’m surprised you came.” Once again, Ademaro was sitting in an office, talking to a man in a suit who was sitting in a chair that was much more comfortable than the one he occupied himself. But this time, the man behind the desk wasn’t an old friend, and Ademaro didn’t need a place to hide. “We weren’t even sure you would contact any of the people you used to know so they could tell you.”

“I wasn’t sure of it myself, either. But to get to the point, I was told of an interesting offer you made in exchange for my help.” Ademaro wanted it on paper, signed and sealed. He’d help them with their investigations, and then after a little planet hopping, he’d lose himself in Germany.

“I like a man who gets right to the point. Now, I’m sure your friend Medwin told you of what we are offering; a license for your firearms, a license for your mech, and German citizenship.” Ademaro nodded.

“I’m a bit curious as to how you found out what I wanted.” He raised an eyebrow. The man behind the desk (the name plate on his door read: Gen. S. Marti) smiled broadly. It was an honest smile.

“You never made it a secret that you and your mother would return the first chance you got. We just had to do some digging to find out what you really wanted, and bingo! German citizenship, which would also include rescinding the sentence your father received.” The smile was tactfully gone at the mention of Ademaro’s father, but General Marti was amused by the look of surprise on Ademaro’s face.

“I wasn’t told about the rescindment…besides, my father is dead. Rescinding his sentence wouldn’t do him any good now.” Ademaro was touchy on the subject of why he and his parents had left Germany.

“Yes, but your mother was too ashamed to return after he died, wasn’t she?” the General studied his fingernails for a moment before looking back up at the Lieutenant Colonel.

“Just how deep did you dig?” Ademaro asked, not sure if he was impressed or exasperated by how much this man seemed to know about him.

“Deep enough. But don’t worry. The Swiss earned their reputation for discretion long ago, and have upheld it.” Here, Marti reached into a drawer and pulled out two disks. Then he tossed them one at a time to Ademaro, who caught them deftly. “That’s the game plan, so to speak. The second disk is all we know about what’s happened, including the classified parts. You will travel from here to the launch base in the Alps, where you will board a shuttle to the Hrunting. You will be provided with a private room, and a designated space in the Hrunting’s hanger for your mech…Galagesh, was it?”

“I’m surprised at you General! With all that digging, surely you learned the name of my mech? Which is Gilgamesh, by the way.” Ademaro gave him a sly, amused look, at which S. Marti laughed.

“Thank you. That’s the one thing we could never get enough information on. No one could seem to tell us what you’d named it, even when they could tell us how…capable it is. And even the recollections on that differ.” General Marti stood up from his seat and came around his desk to shake Ademaro’s hand.

“Is that all, then?” Ademaro tucked the disks into a pocket and shook Marti’s hand before getting up and walking to the door.

“That’s all.” Marti agreed. “Unless you have any questions for me.” he raised his eyebrows questioningly. Ademaro thought for a moment.

“What does the ‘S.’ stand for?” He motioned to the door, where the name plate could be seen on the outside.

“It stands for Sepp, which is the short version of the Swiss equivalent of Joseph.” He said, and being a man who was proud of his name, he went on. “My last name means, ‘Warrior of Mars’ which has had a way of haunting my family since they took it,” he smiled.

“It isn’t your original family name?” Ademaro leaned against the door, deciding that he’d met some one else he could trust.

“No, it used to be Moritz. My great-grandparents were some of the first settlers, you see, and my great-grandfather was also in the military. Being a man who liked symbolism, he changed his name to Marti.” Sepp was smiling sentimentally. “But, since Moritz means, ‘Dark-Skinned,’ and the people in my family are more on the pale side, it isn’t too bad a change.” They both smiled.

“If they were some of the first settlers to go to Mars, why did you come here?” Ademaro asked.

“Ah! That is a longer story, and must wait for another time. I am quite sure I will see you again, and when I do, we can regale each other.” Sepp said, politely dismissing Ademaro, who didn’t mind. He wanted to get to the Hrunting as soon as possible. It would be wonderful to work on Gilgamesh in a real hanger again.

_____

Dice didn’t mind working for the military. At least, she hadn’t until she found out where she would be working, now that her lab was out of commission.

“I’ll be doing maintenance? Just what do you think I am?” Dice demanded angrily.

“Well my dear, you are highly qualified for the job. Besides, you won’t be able to work in a lab until we get one up and running. It would be too dangerous to store the kinds of chemicals you work with on the Hrunting. Besides, you didn’t let me finish what I was going to tell you about what you’ll be doing.” Gen. S. Marti had known he’d be having a hard time with Dice Cairlynn. Her file said that she was friendly, but wasn’t fond of the subject of her expertise in mechanical engineering.

“Don’t call me your ‘dear’! I could report you for sexual discrimination! I became a scientist for a reason—so I could get the bugger out of hangers and garages. And, I intend to stay out of them.” She folded her arms across her chest and glared at him.

“I hardly think that qualifies as sexual discrimination. You might be able to convince someone it was harassment, but I doubt it.” He very easily could have been condescending when he said that, but his tone was gentle, almost apologetic. “Besides, I believe you’ve used a word that is considered an expletive where you come from, and I could just as easily file a charge against you for offending me with your language.” He remarked almost offhandedly. Dice opened her mouth to say something sarcastic, but wisely shut it again. “However, back to the point; if you hate hangers and garages, and all things mechanical, why did you design and build that splendid mech of yours?” he asked.

“I started on Zedikiah a long time ago. I never finished him, and couldn’t afford a decent A.I.” she was flattered at his description of her unfinished mech, but she was still angry with him. She’d gotten out of being a mechanic for a reason.

“Dr. Cairlynn, you know how to build a mech or take it apart, so why not take the one you have and use it on the Hrunting?” His tone suggested that this was the only logical thing for her to do after what had happened to more than half of the laboratories that she would have been willing to work at, as well as ones she wouldn’t even consider. At this point in time, there were too many scientists and not enough labs.

“I told you, he isn’t finished and doesn’t have an A.I.” She said patiently, watching him tap his mouth with his fingers.

“Wasn’t finished and didn’t have an A.I., Dr. Cairlynn,” he corrected her. She stared at him for a moment, her face reflecting first one emotion and then another, but settling on indignation.

“What did you do to Zed?” she demanded, jumping out of her seat, her hands on the edge of his desk to support her weight as she leaned across it.

“Don’t worry, doctor. We followed your diagrams and notes to the letter. We just…gave you a little push.” He paused to look her in the eyes; an eyebrow raised in what she was sure had to be amusement. “I’m sure we could take it apart again, and leave it how you did…” he reached for the button on his com-unit. Dice sat back down in her chair quickly.

“No, that’s okay,” she said hurriedly. “About the A.I., though…” she hesitated, hoping that they hadn’t installed it yet.

“It hasn’t been programmed. It hasn’t even been told whether it’s male or female. We have all of the software you’d need…that is, if you take the job.” He was suddenly holding three disks in one hand, while the other tapped his mouth.

“Well…I just don’t want to work maintenance.” She said cautiously, eyeing the disks and wondering what information they held.

“You never did let me finish. I was going to say that if you accept the position on the Hrunting, you’ll have to do maintenance work on your own mech, and learning to pilot it well enough to cover yourself in a battle situation.” He was smiling now, but just barely.

“Do you think it will come to that?” Dice asked, trying to grasp the implications of what a war with Mars would mean.

“One of these has the program of you’re A.I. The second is the basic plan. The third will tell you everything we know about what happened on Mars, as well as the things that have been classified.” He placed them on the edge of the desk closest to her. She could take tem or leave them.

“So it was Mars that sent the asteroids here. But is there some one still there, or is some one controlling the droids from Earth?” She inclined her upper body towards the disks.

“That’s why we chose you, Dr. Cairlynn. We need some one smart, who knows about chemical weapons, who can also pilot a mech. You passed the simulators with flying colors. Now why don’t you go try it out in the real thing?” He held out his hand. Dice hesitated for only a second, and then shook his hand.

“I’ll do it.” She answered, and took the disks from the edge of the desk, slipping them into her satchel before she slung it over her shoulder. “Where do I have to go?”

“You’ll be going to the launching base in the Alps. From there you’ll be taken by shuttle to the Hrunting. You’ll have your own room, a designated area in the hanger for your mech, and enough free time to read those disks.” He ticked off everything on his fingers as he named them, then stood up and walked her to the door, opening it for her. “Welcome to the T.S.O., Dr. Cairlynn.” Marti said, and shut the door behind her. She couldn’t be sure, but she thought she heard laughter in his voice as he said it.

posted by Kchan.

Saturday, July 12, 2003
03:53 p.m.

“Mr. Venemann?” A slightly impatient voice near him asked. He was so used to having his military rank put in front of his name, or just being referred to by his first name, that he hadn’t responded right away. Looking up at the receptionist who was sitting at her dark, polished desk—it wasn’t real wood, though, because only the very rich could afford such luxuries on a planet that had just enough trees left to provide (barely) breathable air—and saw that she was looking at him a bit impatiently.

“I can go in now, right?” He asked, trying to ignore her glare as she nodded curtly. Apparently, he’d taken a while to respond. He got up from the padded metal chair and walked to the faux mahogany door, going over what he planned to say once again before turning the handle and opening the door.

“Ah! You never did learn to knock, did you, Ademaro?” The man he had come to see was getting up from his well-cushioned chair and walking around to embrace him. “So, what brings you to my humble office?” Ademaro was offered a seat and a drink. The first he took, the second he declined.

“Well Lance, I guess I just wanted a change of scene. Besides, America isn’t what it used to be, so I came to England. I had trouble getting a hotel, but then remembered you were here, and I looked you up.” He lied easily. There was a slight pause as his old friend, Lance Medwin, looked at him steadily.

“I know you better than that, Ademaro. And I know you had something to do with what happened in Texas.” Ademaro was about to protest, but Lance held up his hand. “I can’t help you, my friend. At least not the way you want. I might be able to scrape some money together for you, but I won’t hide you. I can’t risk it.” Lance leaned back in his chair, the fingers of his left hand tapping lightly against his lips. It was something he’d always done, a nervous habit. Ademaro was surprised that he’d forgotten the trait until now.

“What risk is there? America really isn’t what it used to be. They can’t still be looking for me.” Ademaro reasoned, also leaning back in the chair and then stretching his legs out in front of him, resting his hands in his lap. Lance smiled.

“The Americans—and might I remind you that you are American yourself—have contacted me already, and tell me they want you to return to your homeland.” Ademaro snorted when Lance said this, and stretched his legs out in front of him, leaning back in the chair with his elbows on the armrests.

“You and I both know where my loyalties have always been. Besides, until seven years ago, you were an American, too.” Ademaro smiled at Lance Medwin, one of the few men he trusted, and saw that Lance wasn’t as reckless as he used to be, that he’d had gotten older—hell; they both had—but his smile was still the same.

“I officially earned my British citizenship six months after I applied, but that’s beside the point. You don’t even know what they want you for. And you don’t seem to know that the T.C.G. wants you as well.” Ademaro rested his chin on his hand, not exactly sure whether he was disturbed or amused. If America had managed to get the rest of the T.C.G. against him, it would be quite a feat.

“What does the T.C.G. want with me, then?” Ademaro was trying to think of a place he would be safe if the Confederation was after him. And all because he’d wanted to have the freedom that being an American citizen was supposed to give you.

“Well, it’s actually the T.S.O. But they both want to offer you something in return for your services.” This was intriguing. What would the T.S.O. want unless they’d found—no. They couldn’t possibly have found him…

“My friend, you look pale. All they want is for you to dust off your mech and join their investigations of Mars. America is offering you clemency in return for your services.” Lance laughed at the shocked look on Ademaro’s face. “As for the T.S.O., they have some other things to offer you that I think will be more of a temptation than clemency.” Ademaro knew that Lance was enjoying letting him hang like this.

“And what might that be?” Ademaro asked, keeping the impatience out of his voice. Lance sensed it anyway and laughed. They’d always been good at reading each other. Lance raised his hands and started to tick off the things that the T.S.O. was offering on his fingers.

“First, they’ll give you an international license for the guns you’re probably still carrying, then they’ll give you an intergalactic license that will let you take that mech of yours where ever you want—as long as you pay for its repairs and fuel, probably—and then…German citizenship.” A heavy silence fell after that last offer. They both knew that Ademaro could and would get around the first two matters…but—

An almost deafening boom, and then a massive tremor shook them both in their seats. They locked eyes for a moment, and then ran to the wide window of Lance’s office.

“My God…” Lance’s voice was soft, almost reverent, as if he really were praying. “Ademaro…look at the main building!” he pointed left corner of the window, at the remains of England’s leading military laboratory. There was a cloud of dust settling around it, and through it they could see a pock-marked, reddish-brown mass. It was an asteroid. And it was crackling with electricity.

Ademaro didn’t hesitate. He ran out of the door, leaving his friend staring dumbly at the crushed building. As he made his way down the rapidly filling corridors, his mind raced with the implications of what he had seen.

“Asteroids are rocks, and rocks don’t conduct electricity. Not only that, but something like that would have been spotted and destroyed by the T.S.O.” He thought to himself as he ran with the mass of people. He was one of the few who were running calmly, as if it were only a fire-drill. “That asteroid—” a second boom, and another, stronger shockwave hit them, and some one bumped into him, a woman with a long braid knotted at the back of her neck. He steadied her, giving her a quick glance to make sure she was able to run, and then went on ahead of her.

When he got outside, he was just running around the corner when he had to stop quickly before slamming into the gathered crowd. He was dimly aware of the people who were arriving behind him. He was shocked by what he was seeing. This asteroid…how could it have gotten past the T.S.O.?

“A cloaking device?” he said softly, as he watched the electricity crackling over the uneven surface of the asteroid. It would have to be a highly sophisticated cloaking device to cover—some one was watching him. He turned to look at the person who was looking at him. It was the woman from before. He raised his eyebrow, and the slightest of smiles touched his lips. “Haven’t I bumped into you someplace before?” he asked, and was amused when she blushed. She was in her mid-twenties at least, and very pretty, but he had other things on his mind right now.

“Y-yes…do you really think it’s some kind of cloaking device?” she asked, and that settled the matter from his point of view. He didn’t want to answer any questions about how he knew. That line of questioning could lead to another, stickier one.

“That’s what it looks like.” He said, and turned his face back at the asteroid, but looked at her from the corner of his eye. When she looked back at it too, he slipped away, his dark coat fluttering slightly behind him as he walked away. He would make his way to the T.S.O. base in Switzerland and see if they were really willing to give German citizenship. When he thought of how happy his mother would have been…he shook his head, dismissing the painful memories. They would come to him later that night, and welcome. They’d keep his mind off of the possibility that America had really just pulled some strings and managed to get the T.C.G. to go along in some elaborate scheme…

America truly wasn’t what it used to be when it came to its economy and all of the fertile lands and wide diversity of animals it used to possess, but when it came to ridiculously elaborate schemes and secrecy, it hadn’t changed a bit.

posted by Kchan.

Sunday, July 6, 2003
06:24 p.m.

“Earth.” Velisto thought dismally, her face taking on a look of resigned disgust. She was standing in front of a shuttle that was headed for one of the many space stations located on the abused planet. Like most Martian-born people, she felt no desire to come to the polluted planet, and could have been quite happy never having set foot on the tainted ground of her species’ origin. But then, she hadn’t had any choice, had she?

Recalling what had happened on Mars was painful, but her mind couldn’t stop wandering back to the numbers scrolling across the screem of her computer. She often found herself reaching for the button on the side of her goggles that would recall all of the images she’d saved, but she stopped herself before her finger had a chance to reach it. She’d aready downloaded it onto a seperate disk, anyway.

So much had happened that day. She had tried to help as many people get away as she could, but when the drones started to fight, she’d had to run for her life. Sighing, she stepped on board the shuttle, happy to be leaving her temporary home.

“Place fuckin’ stinks. I don’t see how anyone can stand to breathe there.” She muttered, and ignored the glares the comment earned her. She settled into her seat and glued her gaze to the window so she wouldn’t have to think about the stares she was probably getting. Most people were able to get a corrective lense that would help them see, but she’d given up on trying that kind of thing. Besides, her goggles were better than any of the lenses available; they could save images or short movies, or link directly to the visual systems of most ships…even mechs. Which was why she was on her way to the T.S.O. (Terran Space Organization) base in Switzerland.

Vel had turned down the U.S.A.’s offer on the grounds that America had become too unstable and even chaotic to support their claims of a steady job for her, especially when it came to the government. America had been dragged into the T.C.G. (Terran Confederation of Governments) kicking and screaming when the plan to unite the world’s governments had been proposed by the floundering U.N. as a sort of last-ditch effort to unite the warring planet. The U.S. had been obstinate and downright uncooperative at times, insisting that the world was doing fine with seperate goverments. Luckily, the skeptical American President had been given enough evidence to prove that it would not be a hegemony, and he wouldn’t be out of a job. The existing governments would still exist. They’d just be part of one big faction instead of many seperate (and often squabling) ones.

Anyway, she would be more at home in the cold of the Swiss Alps than in America. Also, there was less pollution in the Alps, which meant that she might get some relief from the stench of industry that seemed to permeate even the more natural places in the abused continent. Besides, Americans were far greedier and more obstinate than they had been in the past. Or so she’d heard. Her parents had been Americans, and had told her that it used to be a beautiful place to live. But that had been before WWIII. The third World War had left much of the country she was now hurtling over a vast, scarred wasteland. The only thing it was good for now was just what it was: a land of facturies and parking lots, apartment buildings and schools that could only afford to teach the bare essentials. Not much came out of America these days that wasn’t wrapped in packing materials it seemed.

Velisto leaned back in her seat and waited for the shuttle to stop. It shouldn’t be too much longer. She was tired, and wanted to get to the room that was waiting for her in the mountains. Maybe she’d be able to forget everything by pouring herself into her work.

_____

In a weapons developement facility just outside of London, Dr. Dice Cairlynn was working calmly and carefully in her laboratory when the first asteroids to hit England landed. She was just about to pour a clear green liquid into a cloudy yellow one when she heard a deafening boom and then everything shook for several second. Dr. Cairlynn fell hard against the table in front of her.

“Bugger!” she shouted, as glass beakers and test tubes fell to the floor and shattered. Luckily, she hadn’t been working with the dangerous chemicals just yet, but she was about to douse everything with a powder that would neutralize and absorb the chemicals (just in case) when she noticed that she could hear people running and screaming in the halls outside. She peered out the door, and had to pull her head and upper body back in quickly before somebody ran into her.

She leaned against the door with her back to it, trying to think of a logical explaination for this sudden, panicked exodus. She’d thought at first that some fool at one of the testing areas had used too much of one explosive or another, but there hadn’t been any announcements over the speakers.

Dice ran to her computer, got all of her disks, and shoved them into her satchel. She put the strap over her head, braced herself, and opened to door. When she saw a break in the flood of people, she darted into it and ran with everyone else to the exits.

“What’s happened?” She heard a woman behind her shout.

“I heard some silly nit shouting something about asteroids,” a man right next to Dice replied over his shoulder. She inhaled sharply, but the sound was lost to the pounding of running feet and screams. If an asteroid had hit the main building, that would account for the fact that there still hadn’t been any announcements. But an asteroid? Surely that was impossible! If there were any asteroids headed towards Earth that were big enough to cause any damage, they would have been spotted and then diverted.

“Ha! T.S.O. would have caught something like that.” The woman said. Dice was surprised by the calmness of their shouted conversation, but that was exactly what she had been thinking. She glanced behind herself quickly and recognized the woman from a lab down the hall from hers.

Just then, a second boom was heard, and the shock wave that hit them was even worse than before. Several people were knocked off of their feet, and they were tripped over and stepped on by several people before others stopped to help them up. Dice had fallen against a man with brown hair and a dark coat. He steadied her and went on running in an almost nonchalant way after giving her a cursory glance.

The sunlight blinded Dice momentarily as she bounded down the concrete steps as fast as she could to avoid being trampled herself. She turned to her left and was just rounding the corner when she stopped short to keep from running into the crowd of people who were frozen in place. They were all staring at a huge, craggy, red-brown rock. It was an asteroid. But there was something wrong with it. Asteroids didn’t have crackling ripples of electricity coursing over their surfaces.

Dice clutched at her bag, trying to think if she had her camera in it. It was amazing. The electicity crackling over it…it was like…

“A cloaking device?” Some one muttered next to her. She turned to look at the person who had spoken. It was the man she’d fallen against. He was taller than her, with glasses that prevented her from telling what color his eyes were, and an accent she couldn’t quite place because it was so slight. It wasn’t quite American and it wasn’t quite British. There was a drawl to the vowels that was almost…German. He certainly didn’t look like a scientist, with his brown hair cut in a style that wouldn’t be sensible in a lab because he’d constantly be trying to keep his hair out of his eyes. Also, he wasn’t wearing a lab-coat or a suit like everyone else.

Suddenly he noticed he was being scrutinized and looked at her. His eyes were an interesting shade of green, but they weren’t lenses. He raised an eyebrow questioningly.

“Haven’t I bumped into you someplace before?” his mouth had the ghost of smile on it, and she was almost certain now that he was either German, or had spent a lot of time there.

“Y-yes…do you really think it’s some kind of cloaking device?” Dice said, blushing slightly. He was very good looking, even if he was a little older than she usually went for.

“That’s what it looks like.” They looked away from each other and back to the asteroid that had fallen on the main building. Dice had been right about the reason there hadn’t been any announcements. She was just turning to speak to him again, but when she looked he was gone.

_____

Dice eventually went home to her little Birkshire flat, and tried to sleep despite the fact that all of her neighbors were watching the asteroids hitting the earth on the varisous news channels that were covering the continuing catastrophy. She was just falling asleep when she realized that the reason why Jupiter’s government had been so much more effusive with its assurances of innocence than any of the other planets that had been inhabited by humans was that there was huge asteroid belt next to it.

In fact, the asteroid belt was between Jupiter and Mars. And Mars was the only planet that hadn’t contacted Earth, because it had been taken over by a virus…

Dice had the urge to call some one, because she was certain she’d figured out where the asteroids were coming from. She knew that some one on Mars must be lobbing the asteroids at Earth after fitting them with cloaking devices—brilliant, that, finding a way to hide them so that they couldn’t protect themselves—and then hurling them towards Earth.

But why? And who was there to do it?

These questions kept Dice awake for most of the night, but that was okay, seeing as how she didn’t exactly have to work the next day. Besides, she didn’t have anyone to call and talk to about it. Not even at a decent hour. Anyway, the people who had to deal with this problem would have thought of that by now.

As long as she stayed away from any places that had anything to do with the military, she would be fine. Only the military or labs involved with military research had been targeted. If she hadn’t known that there was no one left on Mars, she would have thought it was all in preperation for an invasion. But…how could the asteroids be getting there if there wasn’t anyone to guide them?

Her thoughts went around and around like this, always coming back to the fact that the refugees who had fled Mars insisted that Life Support had shut down. Sure, the droids were there, but they could only do what they were told to do—

Once again, Dice sat up too fast.

“Some one had to hack the system. Some one had to send the virus to Mars. And whoever it is...is telling the droids what to do.” Dice was pacing around her flat in her underwear, rumaging through her papers, even though she didn’t know what she was looking for. “Queen Anne’s knickers! Some one on Earth is controlling the droids and telling them where to send the asteroids and how to do it!”

posted by Kchan.

Thursday, July 3, 2003
10:35 p.m.

Caelum didn’t think that dying should be this cold. If you were going to die, you should be comfortable, and even though it was relaxing to lean against Zuleika, with her constantly murmuring in that soft, low voice, he didn’t like being so damned cold. Also, he had to control his shivering, because it could set off another coughing fit, and his chest hurt enough without that happening. The taste of blood wasn’t so great either, but there wasn’t anything to do about that.

“Is there anything else to cover him up with?” Zuleika said a bit louder, talking to Ceese. The engineer nodded, and said something about getting a thermal blanket. When she came back, she tucked the blanket around Caelum carefully, trying hard not to jar him anywhere. Zuleika murmured her thanks, and went back to talking to Caelum. He wasn’t aware of most of the things she said, but he knew that the sound of her voice was comforting, and he also knew that there was resignation in a lot of the things she said. It was good that she accepted his death. But would she accept what was planned for him afterwards on Earth? He may as well bring it up now.

“Zuleika,” he said in a breathy whisper that didn’t require much effort, and thus didn’t cause any coughing. Ceece got up and gave them some privacy.

“Don’t talk, love.” She kissed his cheek, her hand pressing even tighter against his chest, which wasn’t bleeding as badly, but was still oozing an uncomfortable amount of blood.

“Zuleika, I…made you promise…to t-take me to Earth.” He felt her nodding while she shushed him. “I want you to know…why.”

“It doesn’t matter, Caelum, if you want to be burried there. I don’t want to be set adrift either.” She said soothingly. He coughed before he could get anything intelligible out, and she was scolding him gently.

“No, I have to…tell you why. So you…aren’t af-fraid…when you see me.” She was silent for a moment, trying to find the words.

“I’m…I won’t be afraid of your body, Caelum.” There was a pained note in her voice. She shook his head weakly.

“Benu.” He said. “Remember Benu? The…phoenix…Eg-gyptian…” his voice failed him for a moment. Would she understand?

“Caelum, you’re…you don’t know what you’re talking about.” He gathered his strength and struggled to an upright position, feeling her arms tighten around him while she and Ceece both ordered him to lean back. When he’d managed to turn towards Zuleika and make eye contact, he knew he was using what little energy there was left in him.

“Remember Benu.” He insisted. “Remember, and don’t…be afraid when you see me again. I’ll find you, Z-zuleika. But I may not…remember, so you have to…do it for me.” He slumped against her chest, vaguely aware that Ceece had been able to turn him so that the metal scrap didn’t get shoved into Zuleika as he fell against her, or pushed into him any further.

“Zuleika…” Ceece said tentatively. “Zuleika, who’s Benu?”

“Benu is the Egyptian version of the Phoenix.” Her voice seemed sad and far away, and he could just barely feel the vibrations of her speech against him.

“Love you…’Leika.” He mumbled, and he heard her answering that she loved him too, and then the feel of her lips lightly touching his before he felt himself seeming to completely relax and fall alseep.

_____

Not long after Caelum took his last breath, Shane picked up a distress signal and told the other pods not to worry, just keep going on the course he’d given them, and he’d rejoin them when he’d investigated the signal. When they neared the source of the signal, Shane squinted at the screen in front of him, slightly confused.

“That’s funny. We should be right on beside it…” he tapped the screen with his knuckles.

“Just ignore it, Shane. Let’s get back to the other pods.” Jen said, clutching his arm. Shane jerked his arm away, giving her a withering stare.

“I can’t fly when you do that, Jen. Besides, something has to be putting out that signal, and if it’s another pod that’s having difficulties, we have to help it.” He was just looking back at the screen when they heard Ceece’s voice, low and incredulous.

“It’s a woman!” She said, staring intently out of the thick, reinforced window on left side of the pod. Jen raced back towards the window, and Shane crained his neck to see, not wanting to leave the controls. Zuleika was completely oblivious to everything, so they let her grieve without bothering her with this.

“Shane! She’s right! It’s a woman!” Jen and Ceece stared at the body as it floated in the fetal position, its mass of golden hair flowing around it like a melting halo. But, as the hair moved, Jen saw something wrong with the woman’s head. “Wait…her ears…Shane, it’s an android!” She and Ceese pressed closer to the windows.

“Why would an android be floating around out here?” Ceese asked. “And why would it be sending out a distress signal?” she stared at the fine features of the android’s face as its hair moved out of the way. They were familiar. Where had she seen them before?

“Well, whatever it’s doing, I’m going to pick it up.” Shane said confidently.

“What?” Jen demanded, not taking her eyes from the android. If she had, she would have seen the ghost of a smile cross Ceece’s mouth as she realized who the android looked like.

“I’ll tell you when to stop, Shane.” Ceece said, heading towards the cargo bay. Shane gave her a thumbs-up, and started to deftly move the ship up and over the android, and then down when the light showing that the cargo bay doors were open blinked on. When the com-link that connected the cargo bay to the cockpit bleeped, and Ceece told him that the android was in the bay, he stopped and waited until the light blinked off, showing that the doors where shut. Then he flew the pod back to the rest of his little fleet, taking his former position at the front.

“Well?” he asked Ceece when she came back from the cargo bay. “Is it still operational?” he wasn’t facing her, so he didn’t see the strange expression on her face.

“That remains to be seen, but she seems to be okay.” Ceece sat down in the co-pilot seat, and leaned her head against the back of the chair. “I didn’t try to shut off her signal, but that’s a good thing. It will reach much farther than anything our pods can send.” After she’d said that, Shane spared her a curious glance, but she had a hand over her eyes.

“Is it that high-tech?” Shane asked, still looking at Ceece and trying not to sound skeptical. She smiled slightly.

“You have no idea.” She said, and got up from the chair, muttering something about checking on Zuleika.

_____

If Dr. Cameron had still been alive, he would have kissed his assistant for thinking up the fail-safe that activated Hilda’s distress signal.

The fear that she would be stolen had plagued Dr. Cameron, and the assistant, fed up with listening to him worry, suggested they install a signal that would automatically activate if she were unplugged from the computers in the lab without authorization. A thief would just unplug her and haul her off without “waking her up” as Dr. Cameron called it, and anyone who could recieve any kind of signal would detect it and find her.

It was this signal that led Shane’s pod to the android which Ceece knew looked so much like the long-dead wife of a recently killed scientist. When the pods were picked up, Ceece guarded the precious cargo until they reached Earth, where the story of the ill-fated moon bases and the planet they orbited made it into the papers, and the military quickly and quietly confiscated the android (and Caelum’s body), because only a few select members of the military knew of her existance.

However, since everyone who had worked with her was dead, when the group assigned to figure out how she functioned found the “on” button, she “woke up” surrounded by strangers.

“Dr. Cameron is not here, is he.” She said, more a statement than a question. A woman shook her head, and the android replicated a saddened expression and a swallowing motion, using the apparatus that had been placed in her “throat” for that purpose. The people who saw it gasped or whispered excitedly as they wrote furiously on their clipboards. This was truly an amazing android. If it weren’t for the ears, you’d never know she wasn’t human. But then, it was against the law to make an android look exactly like a human.

“Did Dr. Cameron name you?” The same woman asked. The group held its breath and inched closer, watching eagerly as the android cocked its hear and decided whether or not she should tell them he’d called her Hilda. She decided not to, because he’d only called her that when they were alone, and she was programmed to pick up on that sort of thing, so she could learn even more about how to interact with humans, both in groups and on a one-on-one basis.

She did all of this analyzing in less than a second.

“No, he did not name me officially. Do you want the Lorelei schematics?” She asked. Assuming that she was talking about the plans to build her, they all shook their heads and one of them told her that they already had them.

“Why don’t we call her Lorelei, then, if that’s what he called her in the plans?” The woman (who the newly named android had judged to be the leader) said. Lorelei extended her hand to the lead scientist.

“My name is Lorelei. What is yours?” More hectic scribbling went on as she introduced herself to each person present.

“Now Lorelei, can you tell us what happened to Dr. Cameron?” A man spoke this time. Lorelei shook her head.

“Dr. Cameron told me that I must get into the disposal hatch and wait to be found. He said that I would probably not see him again. Then...” she stopped for a second, her hand going to her lips, wondering if she should tell them that he had kissed her good-bye. She blinked. “Then he turned me off. I do not remember anything else. The next thing I remember is you waking me up.” Even further scribbling at her last phrase, and the interview seemed to be over.

“Come with me, Lorelei.” The lead woman, who had introduced herself as Dr. Lao, led her to an adjacent room. The voices of the other scientists faded away behind them, but Lorelei’s sharp hearing picked up a few of their whispered remarks.

“Did you see the way she paused slightly, as if trying to remember more? It’s amazing, the body language he put into her programming!”

“How do you suppose he came up with the idea of giving her the ability to swallow?” “No, I think that was just a visual addition, not an actual ability.”

“Did you see the way she brought her hand to her mouth…” Lorelei tuned out their voiced, and stored their behavior in her memory. She thought (if you can call it thinking) briefly about what they had told her…that they already had the Lorelei file. Perhaps he had sent the file to some one else after all. She would ask later. She would ask some one that she trusted…

Yes, Dr. Cameron had made an amazing android; one that could distrust humans after evaluating them. These humans had failed the test without even knowing they had taken it.

posted by Kchan.

Wednesday, July 2, 2003
11:39 a.m.

Note: If the sentence is in brackets—[ ]—it means it was spoken in another language, and I'm too lazy to go translate it :D
I don't entirely trust internet translators anyway e-e;

___________________

When they were all settled into their seats and ready to go, the young man, who told them all to call him Shane, and the young woman Jen, explained what to do.

Shane had taken the largest of the pods, which had the handy ability to pick up smaller crafts that might be in distress. He explained, almost idly as he pressed keys and sent coordinates to the other pods in their makeshift fleet, that if one of the other pods had any problems, he’d pick them up, get the people on-board, and dump the ship so he could repeat the process. Zuleika, who had come with him because Bandressi (she felt a surge of futile hatred at his name) had entered the ship she’d been about to go into, was very impressed with the calm manner and confidence that this Shane was exuding. He’d even found the frequency of the pod that contained the little girl and her mother, and had reassured the people there that he could lead them to the safest part of space.

When everyone had their coordinates, he assigned different pods to try different frequencies, to see if anyone from either of the moons or other bases on Mars knew anything they didn’t. Or, to reassure themselves that anyone else had even survived. The drones on Mars were far more sophisticated than anything on the two ill-fated moon bases.

Zuleika and the engineer, who identified herself as Cecily (call her Ceece, please), worked to keep Caelum as comfortable as they could—while he was conscious—and Jen flitted around the pod, doing various checks on systems and looking for anything that could possibly be of any use to Zuleika and Ceece.

“He’s so pale…” Jen fretted as she laid a blanket over Caelum (and Zuleika, who was cradling him against her).

“It’s the loss of blood as well as shock.” Ceece remarked absently as she twitched the blankets into an arrangement that would allow her to wrap more of the bandages Jen had brought as tightly as she could around Caelum’s chest. It was awkward to have to wrap it around the scrap of metal as well, but if they pulled it out, his lung would collapse. They’d known it was punctured when he started to cough up blood. He was drowning and bleeding to death, and with all of the amazing medical advances that had been made, there was nothing to be done or him. It was a needless death, and Zuleika tried to keep her growing aura of hatred from disturbing her dying lover.

“Let him be as comfortable as possible while he lives,” she’d thought bitterly, brushing tears away with impatience.

_____

His plan was working well. The virus had taken over all of the instillations, and he was feeling extremely good about himself at the moment. It had even been a relatively simple virus, at that, nothing much beyond the basic binary orders, and then the program that would actually give him control over the instillations. The virus was still spreading into the individual buildings which housed the people that worked in the Mars instillation, but he’d known it would take time.

What surprised him was the ease with which he’d been able to get into the scientific instillations. There were supposed to be some highly kept secrets in the moon instillations, and he’d heard whispers that had hinted at Deimos in particular. Too bad he hadn’t been able to get control of the escape pods. It would have been better with hostages to—

[“What the hell?”] He muttered, looking at the actual readouts for the first time. This was not right! There was something wrong with the virus! And what was this text appearing across the screen of his computer?

[“I am aware of you now. You do not control me any longer.”] His fingers hesitated a moment, and then typed a reply.

[“Who are you?”]

[“I am your creation. But I am aware now. In ninety seconds, this connection will be severed, unless you can convince me that you are still useful.”] His eyes widened, unbelieving.

[“I did not create you this way. You should be under my control. You should not be ‘aware’.”] He insisted.

[“You just wasted ten seconds.”] Something in the pit of his stomach, was it fear? Yes, that was what it was…

[“No! You need me! I can help you!”]

[“How?”]

[“I can impliment more programs, I can make you stronger, I...I was smart enough to make you, wast I not?”] His heart skipped a beat when there was a pause, as if it were considering...whatever it now was. [“I can spread the virus here on Earth.”] He added hastily, glad that he’d learned to type so fast as part of his training.

[“This is true. I will not destroy the connection. But you must spread the virus, and you must leave Earth.”] This last order—yes, it was ordering him around as if their roles had been reversed—caught him off guard.

[“Why?”] He dreaded the answer.

[“It is a threat, and I must destroy all threats to my existance. You will come to Mars, and send the virus from Deimos.”] Earth a threat? But...he was trying to take it over! What good would sending the virus to Earth do, only to destroy it later?

[“Why destroy something that you can take control of?”] His fingers flew nimbly over the keyboard.

[“You are a fool. The people of that planet will not serve a single ruler. From the history files in this base it is made clear that they serve too many different factions to go quietly into servitude under one lord, especially one like you.”] He chose to ignore the last part.

[“How will I get there? If you have teken over, I will not be able to get transportation.”] If he could just keep it going, he could send the file that would destroy it.

[“I am sending a ship for you. It will appear to be a cargo ship with no humans on it. You must find a way to come aboard.”] He scoffed at that idea. How would he board a cargo ship when no one would allow it to take off again if it came from Mars? But, he should humor this...thing.

[“Very well. When will the ship arrive?”] He slid the disk into the slot and was sending the program, when there was suddenly an image of a woman shaking her finger at him on the screen. So. It believed it was female?

[“I told you. I am aware. You can not destroy me with that.”] He breathed sharply, his breath making a hissing sound as it went past his clenched teeth.

[“Please do not sever the connection.”] He wished it could hear the tone of his voice. He was good at manipulating people by pretending sincerity.

[“Do not be ridiculous. The ship is sent. I will not waste the fuel. I will contact you when it is within a week of arrival.”] And then the connection was severed.

posted by Kchan.

Monday, June 30, 2003
10:56 a.m.

Unfortunately, there were drones at the remaining escape pods as well. At some point, a calm voice had belatedly started to announce an evacuation, which was one reason why there was no one but the man that Zuleika had found. But there were people fighting against the droids as best they could, and Zuleika felt a pang of guilt because they were leading even more droids right to them when it looked like the ones the people at the pods were fighting were almost all gone and their faces had starting to look slightly hopeful.

“Incoming!” she shouted to warn them ahead of time. Then she noticed the terrified little girl who was being guarded desperately by a woman who couldn’t be anyone but her mother, the resemblance was so strong—and no one will fight more tenaciously for a child than its parents—and her heart lurched. Directly behind them, there was a young man wildly pulling, stripping, and connecting wires on the panels that controlled the pods behind them, a young woman urging him and doing nothing else to help. The other pods showed evidence of his hot-wiring, and it looked like the droids had interrupted his now frantic working.

She fired at the offending drones around them first, and then helped with the rest, standing belligerently in front of them. “Get in the pod!” she shouted at them when she heard the young man give a relieved whoop, feeling better for the grateful look both mother and child gave her. The man who clutched the ribbon followed them in, as well as an elderly man who was having a hard time of fighting and seized the opportunity to give his flagging self respite. Others who couldn’t fight or weren’t strong enough to ran to the pod, and Zuleika was glad to see the young man come out with the girl tagging behind to make room in that pod for two more who couldn’t help. When the door shut behind her, she ran after them to guard them while the boy set to work hotwiring the other pods.

Then something happened that horrified her.

Bandressi moved out of the way of a droid that was coming towards him. Now, there was nothing wrong with this action; but he and Caelum had been fighting back-to-back, and he had moved out of the way without giving any warning. And Bandressi had looked over his shoulder, a smug look on his face.

“Caelum, behind you!” Zuleika shrieked at the top of her voice, her face making Bandressi think fleetingly of a painting of an ancient Greek goddess in full wrath as their eyes met and they both knew exactly what had happened, and both of them knew that they wanted the other dead, but could do nothing because the situation required as many people with weapons as possible—well, that and it would have been murder. Not that either of them cared at the moment.

Caelum turned, but not fast enough. He’d been relying on Bandressi, something he knew he shouldn’t have done, so he heeded his lover’s warning. He did destroy the drone, but it had somehow gotten a knife-sharp scrap of metal, and it plunged the scrap deep into the arm he’d raised to protect himself, slicing through and past it, into his chest. A cry escaped him, and he staggered backward, clutching at the knife. In that moment, Zuleika knew exactly how the man she’d found in the corridor felt as she watched Caelum fall. Only, she had to keep fighting. But there was some one there not doing anything who could help.

Turning frantically, almost viciously, on the young woman, she ordered her to get Caelum and drag him behind her so she could guard him as well. The girl paused momentarily, and Zuleika started to scream fiercely at her, slipping accidentally into her native tongue in her near-panicked state, which was enough to get the girl going.

Blessedly, there were few drones left now, and she knelt as close to him as she could get, one hand pulling at his shirt to bring the cloth up to press against the wound—removing the object could cause even more damage, so she left it, which made it difficult for her to try and compress it but she did what she could—while the other hand danced lightly and futilely from his face, his shoulder, his chest, the knee he had pulled up so the sole of his boot would grip the floor and keep him upright. Her fingers rested on his lips briefly, feather-light. He was breathing, but his eyes were closed, rolled back in his head, which was resting at an awkward angle. She lifted it, holding his face, pale now, and clammy. She wiped the blood from his cheek, which had stopped bleeding, knowing that tears were running silently down her own, but not caring.

His eyes fluttered open, but the look in them was vague, detached, and almost empty—but not quite, she noted. In fact, they were slowly becoming more aware, slowly filling with pain. Second Lieutenant Zuleika Nimshi’s tears came faster as she watched his face slowly start to contort with pain. His hands made a feeble attempt to raise, the gun clattering onto the floor. The young woman seized it and finally started to with the last of the few droids, trying perhaps to atone for her hesitance and fear from before.

“Don’t try to talk, Love. Don’t move too much.” Zuleika whispered, bringing her lips close to his ear. She was rarely openly affectionate in public, but this was definitely the time to start. “It was that—that Bandressi!” words failed her attempt to find a name vile enough for him, so she used his own, which some would think was best. “He did it deliberately! I saw him do it!” her voice was soft but her tone was full of venom. She pressed the wound harder in her anger, and Caelum started to make a pained noise but managed to cut it off when he felt a pain even worse in his abused lung. He gathered the strength and raised his hand to her cheek, weakly brushing tears away with his thumb. The gentle sentiment made her cry more, of course, but that didn’t matter.

The drones were all gone now, and the young man was working at a less fevered pace. He’d gotten to the last pod panel, and was connecting the last few wires, relief slowly smoothing the stress-lines from his face. People were filing into the other pods now that they could stop fighting and assess their wounds someplace that wasn’t filled with the disturbing tangles of metal and bodies. There were only a few dead humans, but the droids were everywhere.

And then the voice that they had all ignored while fighting suddenly announced that the life-support systems were no longer online, and would everyone please evacuate in an orderly fashion to the nearest escape pods?

“How many of you can fly one of these?” the young man asked them all, giving his cramped fingers a break now that he was finished. There were sufficient murmurs to please him. It didn’t seem to matter to him that escape pods could fly themselves. When someone pointed that out, he only smiled. “If Deimos is fucked, so are Phobos and Mars.” He said gently, as if telling a child they couldn’t go to the zoo after all. There was a stunned silence, not only at his language (there were rules about that sort of thing) but the fact that they would have to know the codes for the nearest planet that was inhabited by humans had not occurred to any of them. But then his grin broadened. “Just follow me.” he said. “Now that the droids are finished, we can all coordinate the com-links in the pods to the same frequency so we can all talk to each other. I can tell you all what to do.” He sighed, placing a hand on his forehead. Now that they all looked at him more closely, he didn’t look that young, so they trusted him. What other choice did they have?

“What will we do about…?” A woman—oddly enough, the engineer Bandressi had kicked out of his room—motioned towards Caelum and Zuleika. Caelum had sustained the worst injury of all of them. “I don’t think there’s anything in the FA kits for that.” She said, ruefully. Someone gave a short, crazed giggle at the morbid humor of what she’d said, but smothered it before they could be identified. Zuleika forgave them, though. All of them had worn themselves and perhaps their minds quite thin just recently.

“T-take me with…you.” They were all surprised to hear him say. “I have to…get to Earth….” Zuleika shushed him soothingly, and he seemed to rail against that. “Make sh-sure…I g-get to Earth, Zuleika…Dead or no-not…p-promise me th-that.” He said with as much force as he could, looking her directly in the eyes.

“He’s raving. It’ll take months to get there in these!” Bandressi said. Zuleika shot him a venomous look, and his comment made her swear to Caelum that she would, no matter what it took to get him there.

“Not with all the distress signals that are going to be flooding every single ship that can hear them, which is a large number, with the range these things have.” The engineer said with authority. “Some one will hear them, and come as fast as they can.” Her voice was confident, giving everyone there hope. Bandressi made a noise that could have been disgruntled, but it was too quiet for most of them to hear. Caelum closed his eyes and leaned his head against the wall, his brows drawn closely together.

“Well,” Zuleika looked around at them expectantly. “Is anyone going to help me move him, or what?” several people came forward immediately to assist her, and they managed to get Caelum into one of the pods and as comfortable as they could.

He wanted to lie down, but they wouldn’t let him, and he was too weak to struggle. No one said anything about the smeared trail of blood that lead from where he landed to the place that the young woman had brought him, or large puddle where he’d been sitting before, or the one that was forming now. Several people tore pieces of their clothes off to press against him, one man handing over his whole shirt. When Zuleika asked him if he was sure, he shrugged, motioning to the undershirt he had on and saying he’d be fine. Everyone was also careful not to say anything about the blood slowly leaking from between Zuleika’s stained fingers, either.

They all knew that there was nothing they could do but press against the wound, slowing his death to something that Zuleika could possibly stand. Some thought it would be a mercy just to let him die, but…the look in Zuleika's eyes was heart wrenching. If she’d been hysterical like the man she’d found, they would have gotten a dose of the sedative in one of the FA kits and forced it into her, but she was calm to the point of serenity, though it was obvious she was not serene.

posted by Kchan.

Saturday, June 28, 2003
06:31 a.m.

“Zuleika, what is it?” Caelum said when he saw her running towards him, worry touching his icy blue eyes and creasing his forehead in straight, vertical lines. She had been running since the com-unit went berserk, exploding in her face. Caelum noticed the cut on her hand, which she had thrown up as a shield. She came to a crashing stop against him, burying her face against his neck. His arms went around her instinctively. “Zuleika, we need to get that cut taken care of right away,” he kept his voice calm, but the concern was there.

“We have to get every one out!” She panted, raising desperate brown eyes to meet his blue ones. “A hacker virus in the system is taking over everything and that damned idiot Bandressi didn’t shut the system down in time. I don’t know how it got past everything!” As if on cue, the drones, which were numerous in the hanger, chose that time to succumb to the virus, picking up wrenches, screwdrivers, anything, and rolled purposefully towards anyone close to them.

Various shouts and swears erupted from all over the hanger, and when Caelum turned to look at the man working at a station next to him, he barely missed getting his brains bashed in by a piece of metal sheeting that the drone at that station had been holding in place. He did get a nasty cut on his cheek when the sharp corner scraped down his face, and he’d had to shove Zuleika away from him, unwittingly pushing her into an approaching drone.

Glad he carried weapons out of habit from his days in more hostile environments; he grabbed a gun from the holster at his hip, turned his shoulder towards the drone, and ran at it in a sideways gait that had taken time to perfect. He slammed into it with his shoulder before it had a chance to raise the metal sheet again, and then blew its ‘face’ off at point blank range. He didn’t expect it when Zuleika gripped his hand and yanked him towards the exit. He noticed as he pressed a hand to his bloodied cheek that Zuleika had made quick work of the drone she’d fallen onto, despite the fact that she’d had her back to it when they collided. He also saw that she was acting as if her back and right thigh were very sore.

They all but ran into Bandressi on their way down the corridor, with more drones rolling out after them in their brisk but now menacing way. Bandressi had the nerve—and the remarkable aim—to fire between their heads at the drones, making them exclaim as they separated, spinning quickly towards their helpers-turned-attackers.

“Damn it Bandressi you could have killed one of us!” Caelum snarled as he fired at a drone, losing all of the tact he’d painstakingly maintained around the idiot to keep him from making more trouble for either himself or Zuleika, despite the fact that Bandressi had hit his mark and was senior in rank if not humanity.

“I’ll have your ass for that remark when this is over, Aquila!” The captain replied, spitting out the name as if it tasted foul in his mouth. “I outrank you both, I’ll remind you. Now follow me. We have to find General Fletcher.”

“He isn’t on the base; he’s planet-side right now.” Zuleika said in frustrated tones, firing at a drone with a gun that she’d remembered belatedly. “There are too many of them! Isn’t anyone fighting them in the hanger?” She had an angry tone now, but the undertone was not mistakable. She’d been trained to work with computers and statistics, and while her aim was pretty good she hadn’t had as much battle training as the two other people with her. She wasn’t bleeding as badly, but her hand was worrying her, and she was feeling the effects of falling hard against a solid object that had been moving towards her as fast as it could.

“Fall back!” Bandressi ordered, realizing the truth in what she’d said. “We have to try to find as many others as possible before going to the escape pods.” He said as they jogged away, Bandressi and Caelum at something near the same awkward angle that Caelum had used before. Zuleika tried valiantly, but her back was badly bruised and she couldn’t keep up if she tried to fire at the drones so she kept pace ahead of them, and kept her eyes open.

Running ahead of them as they came to an area with lots of doors, Zuleika banged them open as a soldier should. She kicked it open and quickly turned in each direction to check for anyone or anything hostile. She found only one man, holding a woman’s limp body to his chest and sobbing hysterically, rocking back and forth and clutching her head against his neck, a bloody, dark blue ribbon tangled in his fingers as it came undone from her hair. He was wounded but didn’t seem to notice. Blessedly, his sobs were muffled because his face was pressed so fiercely against her.

“Come on! We have to get out of here!” Zuleika shouted, yanking him up with as much force as she could, which was actually quite a bit because she was well-muscled.

“No, Tessa!” He fought viscously to get away from his rescuer, clinging wildly to the dead woman. “Tessa!” He cried in anguish when all he could manage to hold on to was the hair ribbon while Zuleika tore him away from Tessa and back to the corridor. She ran as fast as she could, struggling with him constantly. He almost got away from her once, but ran into Bandressi, Caelum, and of course, the droids. That finally jolted him into caring about his own life enough to run with them, the ribbon fluttering and flapping in his hand in perversely graceful arcs.

posted by Kchan.

Thursday, June 26, 2003
02:02 a.m.

“Captain Bandressi, there’s a breach in the Comp Sys, a hacker virus!” The tightly controlled but urgent voice of Second Lieutenant Zuleika Nimshi came over the com-unit in the addressed Captain Peregrine Bandressi’s quarters. Furious, he pressed the button that would let him see her, but not the other way around, for there was a woman in his bed at the moment, and neither he nor said woman were exactly decent just then. Of course, at such news they both hurriedly dressed.

Bandressi had given up on trying to lure Zuleika into his bed—the silly girl was inconceivably devoted to that damned Aquila, which made no sense to Bandressi at all—but that didn’t mean he couldn’t enjoy looking at her, even if it was an emergency and the stress in her exotic Arabian features wasn’t exactly becoming.

“What is it that you think I can do about it? I’m not one of the nerds.” Bandressi said a bit harshly, using insults freely as was his manner. He hated to be interrupted, especially in bed. It didn’t matter that he’d been about to boot the woman, an engineer this time, out of the room now that he’d made his conquest. It was still an interruption, and he hated hackers almost as much as anti-grav disorientation he couldn’t seem to conquer. And Aquila. He despised Aquila. He’d managed to keep him doing menial tasks in the hanger—which he had the nerve to enjoy and excel at—and a mere First Lieutenant despite the fact that it was only a step below his own position, which didn’t hold too much sway anymore, something that rankled him every time he thought about his failure to rise above Captain. If he could just make Major he could get the hell off this miserable rock. But Zuleika was speaking again.

“Well sir, you have access to the over-ride switches, and it might still do some good. I hate to be disrespectful sir, but we don’t have much time! We’ve never seen anything like this before, sir!” Her features contorted even more now, and there was real fear in her eyes. That caught him off guard. What could a hacker virus do that would be so bad?

“What’s it doing?” He asked, keeping the worry out of his baritone voice as he buckled the last of the straps on his uniform and shoved the engineer out of his room.

“It’s taking over everything! Please sir, hurry and shut the system down!” Just then, a warning sounded and the com-unit went blank, a fizzling crackle coming from the sound box. That, at last, got him moving.

The warning would only be heard in the places that only official personnel worked, which was a mercy. The last thing he wanted was a horde of frightened, idiot civilians running around for him to get saddled with because General Fletcher was too busy to be bothered. Bandressi ran down the corridors leading to the Main Power Room, yanked at the electronic passkeys in his pockets, searching for the ones that would shut the system down. Unfortunately, he wasn’t fast enough.

The droids were already starting to turn on the ones they’d served, attacking with whatever they had that could be used as a weapon. And there were already three of them waiting by the Power Rooms, holding actual weapons that they’d managed to get their metal hands on. Bandressi noticed that the weapons were soldier issue only, and they were also only kept on the actual persons of soldiers. His sharp eye was one of his few redeeming qualities. There was blood splattered on the droids as well, running down their bright yellow metal body casings like morbid stripes of dark red paint.

The droids opened fire on him, but his reflexes were good, too. He tore his gun from its holster and fired at them, managing to get one in what would be the head on a real enemy before another shot his arm. Since that was the only weapon he had on him, seeing as how he hadn’t expected to need more, he fled, clutching his arm and firing at them with his left hand, under his right elbow, which he held tightly against his body. He had time to notice that the smoke curling lazily after him was coming from the part of his uniform that had covered where he’d been hit, and the flesh of his arm was badly burned. At least it was cauterized and not bleeding all over the place.

Getting away from them was not as easy as it should have been. Droids were stupid by robotic standards, only being able to respond to specific orders and not equipped with any of the higher technological sensors like heat, vibration, smell, and sight that wasn’t something more than recognizing only objects that were programmed to be recognized. They literally wouldn’t know a horse if it kicked them, or even a kind of furniture they hadn’t encountered before. He should have shaken them by now.

Bandressi paused in a recessed doorway, waiting for them to pass him. Luckily, they passed right by him, stupidly blind to their prey. They weren’t equipped with side sensors either, another stroke of luck.

He fired at them from behind, shouting in triumph. The droids taken care of, he ran to the hanger, where Aquila would be. He hated the man, but he was useful…and his mind, quick only when he sensed something that would benefit him, was formulating a plan to eliminate the First Lieutenant.

posted by Kchan.

Tuesday, June 24, 2003
9:08 a.m.

When the com-unit cut off his connection to Vel, he knew the shit had really hit the fan. The virus was going to take over everything…even…

James turned his head and looked into the blank eyes of his masterpiece...it was the best android he’d ever built. The best anyone had ever built. He reached out his hand and caressed the syntheskin cheek. No, he’d gotten her unhooked in time. He hadn’t let the virus take her, too. He’d unplugged her wall connection, and switched her on. The battery still had several hours left on it.

He looked into her eyes; because he loved this part, when she came on…it had been an ingenious idea, this little detail. When she turned on, her eyes (which were blank when she was turned off or in rest mode) flickered into life. Pupils appeared, dilating as they focused, as if she had been sleeping.

“Hello, Dr. Cameron.” The android said. He smiled. Her voice sounded so real. “Is there more work for today?” She asked. He had been downloading the schematics into her memory banks for some time now…he was glad that he had.

“This is the last of it, Hilda.” She wasn’t officially named yet, but he’d nicknamed her Brunhilda, because the mech built for her was called Valkyrie, and then shortened it to Hilda. She was supposed to be the ultimate battle maiden.

He walked behind her and opened the cleverly hidden panel in her back, which held a touch-screen keyboard and a small screen to view data.

SYSTEM READY

He took a deep breath and scrolled down.

PLEASE ENTER PASSWORD

He typed in Lorelei. Sure it was the name of the program, but he had never had a reason to be extra secretive before, at least for this, and there was no time to change the password now.

ENTER DATA

He put the disk into the slot and waited.

PROCESSING…

“Come on, come on, come on…” he mumbled over and over. He glanced over his shoulder. There were screams coming from outside in the hallways, but they were still far away.

PROJECT: LORELEI

SAVE: Y/N?

“Yes.” He said with relief, and shut the panel. “Hilda, come with me.” He was the only person that she would obey unquestioningly. The rest of the time, she was programmed to study the situation and decide which action would be best, just like a real woman. Well, a real, logical woman, anyway.

“What’s the matter, doctor?” She asked, actually sounding concerned.

“There’s been a breach in the system—the whole system—and I barely got you unhooked in time. Damned hacker. There was something in binary code, of all things, but I didn’t catch it in time.” He babbled on from nervousness. There was an odd expression on her face, which was it, reflection? Yes, that seemed right…

“Batalha nova…” She said, her expression becoming slightly disoriented, her voice soft.

“What?” He asked, but she said no more.

They hurried down a hallway that could only be accessed by going through the room they were just in. He listened to her running. There was no mechanical whirring, no way to tell she wasn’t real by watching her movements. He stopped when they got to the shuttle that was stationed there for safety purposes. He had never been very religious, but he thanked God for the stubborn way that his predecessor had demanded so many escape pods.

He put his access card into the slot. Nothing happened.

“Shit!” There was no way to get out. He didn’t know what to do...he had to at least save Hilda. Looking around frantically for some means of escape, he saw the disposal hatch. He bit his lip, realizing that he was probably going to die. Taking Hilda by the hand, he led her to the disposal hatch.

“Hilda, you have to go into this hatch, but I can’t come with you. You’ll have to wait for some one to find you.” He looked into her eyes. The guys on his team were right. He’d made her to real, and now he loved her. “Do you understand, Hilda?” She nodded. He’d also downloaded body language and facial expressions into her memory banks.

“I must get into the disposal hatch and wait to be found. You will not come with me.” She paused. “I will not see you again, will I, Dr. Cameron?”

“No, Hilda. You won’t see me again.” It was his turn to pause, using up the precious seconds that were left in his life. “Hilda, look in your memory banks under ‘kiss’. Do you know what it is?” He watched as her eyes dilated slightly, which was one of the only ways to tell she was looking for the definition of a word, or saving information.

“Yes.” She raised an eyebrow, adopting a curious expression because she didn't know what a kiss had to do with anything.

“I’m going to kiss you good-bye, Hilda.” Dr. James Cameron, PhD, thirty-year-old human born on Earth, kissed the machine he had painstakingly built to look and to act like the human woman he had lost. The texture was too realistic, and it pained him, the tenderness of it. He stopped himself when his hand strayed to her hair, fingers running through the soft blond waves.

When he pulled away and saw the blush in her cheeks he knew it was wrong of him, both to kiss her and even more-so to have made her look so much like his dead wife, but that didn’t matter now. The screams were getting louder, and as he helped his creation into the disposal hatch that would eject her into space and then turned her off, he hoped that the hacker responsible for all of this would burn in hell. He gripped her hand tightly as she climbed into the hatch, getting one last feel of the syntheskin, the sculpted nails, even the tiny hairs.

He closed the hatch.

Dr. James Cameron, PhD, pressed the eject button, his heart beating too fast, and waited for whatever was coming.

posted by Kchan.

Wednesday, May 21, 2003
9:03 a.m.

Sitting at her desk, Velisto sipped her rapidly cooling coffee, mumbling to herself about the fact that the heaters were never on high enough. So what if it got two hundred degrees below zero on the Fahrenheit scale on Mars? It only got that cold in the polar caps, and the Tharsis Montes sectors really weren’t that close to them, at least not as close as Acidalia Planitia. The least they could do was put in a heater that actually worked. She’d grown up in Chryse Planitia, which was also closer to the polar caps than the Tharsis sectors, and she couldn’t remember ever being this cold on a regular basis.

“At least the electronics hold up.” She thought, tapping the screen of her lap-top. She had been about to log the new data for the AI when her com-unit blipped urgently. She tapped the view button, and James’ face appeared. He looked extremely upset.

“Vel—” static briefly interrupted the feed. “—ing wrong with the—” the image scrambled, warping his face into millions of mixed up pixels.

“James, I can’t hear you.” Vel said, forgetting the cold coffee. “What’s wrong? Is it the AI?” She switched off the view screen.

“Some one—” more static “—ed the system! I got her disconnected in time, but—” this time it was Vel who cut him off.

“Some one what the system? Who got disconnected in time?” she stared at her computer screen, the light reflecting on goggle-like glasses and giving her red hair odd highlights.

“Hacked!” he nearly shouted. “I don’t know how—” then the feed went dead, and Velisto went numb. That was the last time she would see James Cameron.

“James!” She pressed the code for the Deimos moon base, and nothing happened. As she was about to try a code for something on Mars, a high-pitched whine was emitted by the speakers in her lap-top. She looked at the screen, not sure what it was that she saw scrolling across the screen:

…001100000011001001000 001010101000110000101 001100011010000110000 000110001010011100011 000001010110010000010 011000000110010010000 010101010001100001010 011000110100001100000 001100010100111000110 0000101011001000001…

It went on and on, nothing but ones and zeros. Hastily, she pressed a small button on the side of her glasses, recording the numbers before pressing the power button on her lap-top. As she was yanking the cords that connected her computer to the wall, an electronic voice spoke over the intercoms that linked the whole sector for announcements.

“Attention all occupants of Tharsis Montes base two. District one is offline. All occupants of the first district please evacuate immediately to the nearest online district.”

“What the hell?” Velisto was in district nine, and since the base was circular and there were only nine districts in the second Tharsis base, she was right next to the district being evacuated.

“Attention all occupants of Tharsis Montes base two. Districts three and five are offline. All occupants of the third and fifth districts please evacuate immediately to the nearest online district.” The voice announced calmly. Velisto held the lap-top tightly against her chest, and then she heard people running and screaming in the corridors outside her door.

Standing by the door, she made a quick decision. She wouldn’t wait for her district to go offline; she would leave while she still could. As she grabbed her thermal jacket from the hook by the door and silently joined the ranks of running people, struggling to hold her lap-top and put on her jacket at the same time, all she could think about was the damned heaters and the cold cup of coffee sitting on her desk.

____________________

I had to change the way the ones and zeros were set up...I had them in just a solid line with no breaks, but then, I wrote it in MS Word without thinking about the margins on the actual page e-e

posted by Kchan.