Aurona, page 16
He held up his hands. “In conclusion, let me remind you of one thing: the Truth never changes. It’s us knuckleheads who need to change to conform to the Truth. All Kron needed to change his whole life’s situation was a sense of urgency, the right motivation, and a bit of help to steer him in the right direction. He’s fortunate, guys! A note attached to my recording said that all four of his pals died a few years later from the same cause. The wolves devoured them!”
He turned to Kron and held something up, something that glittered brightly. “This small token visually represents what we already feel is right in our gut.” Without further ado, he pinned it on his chest. “There. You are who this pin says you are. The symbol is pure gold, hammered out by someone in an unknown civilization.”
Kron glanced down, surprised. “What does it say, sir?”
“It’s a Runic word,” he answered. “It means ‘Leader.’
As one, the crew stood to honor them both with a prolonged, heartfelt, standing ovation.
Chapter 9: INCIDENT IN QUARANTINE
Adam used his wrist programmer to retract the long black stalk, then lifted off the holocamera. As he tapped out a numbered sequence on the sensitive surface, the crew felt an immediate, physical response: the massive floor began its descent.
“I have an assignment,” he announced. “I need a few strong, beefy, volunteers to go downstairs and get something for us.”
Immediately, there was a buzz of anticipation.
“When this big disc reaches the bottom, they can hop on a freight elevator down the hall and zip down to a warehouse on Level E. According to the ship’s inventory, they should find four large crates stenciled with the word ‘Bitron.’ Load ‘em onto some antigrav barges and shoot ‘em back up here.” As the excited buzz grew louder, a few hands rose in the air. He turned slowly on his heel, contemplating.
A short distance from the crowd, four men quickly slid their cushions together. Whispering in hushed, nervous tones, they bent their heads low, keeping a wary eye on the crew and Adam’s back.
“Hey! Level E? That’s right above our pod on Level F!”
A beefy one interrupted. “Yeah, an’ what if he’s awake?”
The other two broke in, talking over each other in haste. “Worse still, what if he’s walkin’ around down there? That’s bad news. Real bad news!”
The first one scowled. “I think it’s about time you knuckleheads check in on him, huh? Just go down one more floor, take a look, and then go get the crates!”
They pulled back, alarmed. “But boss, boss, we dunno….”
The first one interrupted, glowered darkly. “This is important!! Quick! Raise your hands, dummies! Look eager! It’s a perfect opportunity! You’ll be alone!”
“Ah, okay, boss!” they whispered. Glancing nervously at each other, they scrambled to their feet.
Adam noticed the men immediately and let out a laugh. They were almost comical in their enthusiasm, jumping up and down and jabbing their hands into the air. He gave them a thumb’s-up. “Okay, okay, guys! You three just got the job!”
They plopped back down on their cushions, giving each other high fives.
“Wow, that’s what I like to see,” Adam chortled. “Excitement! Enthusiasm!” He held up his hands for quiet. “Okay, guys, we’ve got short time to talk before the floor stops and our three friends over there bring those crates up. There’s a huge collection of Bitron goodies to rummage through and it’s gonna take a while take to explain them! For instance….” He raised the black sphere above his head. “Let’s talk about this gem! You already know that this holocamera is a prime example of Bitron manufacturing! What you didn’t know is that the ship’s log says that we’ve got four hundred of ‘em downstairs in the hold. That means there’s one apiece with a bunch of backups. Here! Take a look at it!” Unexpectedly, he tossed the ball out into the middle of the crowd.
A woman jumped up and snatched it deftly from the air, landing lightly on her feet. Holding it at eye level, she squinted deeply into it. “How’s it work, sir?”
Kron elbowed Adam appreciatively in the ribs. She was an extremely pretty blonde with long, flowing hair. “Wow!” he whispered. “That woman sure can catch!”
Winking at Kron, Adam turned back to the woman. “Joelle, is it?”
“Yes, sir!” She brightened, surprised that he remembered her name.
“Oh, I-I’m sorry, I meant Doctor Joelle. You got your MD from Harvard, top honors, summa cum laude, valedictorian, and then on to Emory for postgrad, right?”
She reddened as the crew studied her with sudden surprise and admiration.
“Ah, how does it actually work?” he repeated. “Well, first of all….”
A strobing flash interrupted him. Joelle almost dropped the sphere, astonishment written plainly on her face. It was inevitable: with all her poking, she’d accidentally triggered the holo-camera’s menu function and the choices were scrolling by at a rapid clip. “Wow!” she gushed. “It can do all this?”
Adam walked over to her and retrieved the sphere. “That’s right,” he said, smiling. “All this and tons more. We’re gonna make very good use of these amazing instruments. Hey, speaking of good use, we’ve got about five minutes before the floor’s down all the way, so let’s make good use of our time!”
As they got comfortable on their cushions, he waved a hand over the sphere with a mysterious air. “As I gaze into my crystal ball, I look ahead to our mission on Aurona….” Egged on by the laughter, he silently contemplated the depths of the mysterious orb, turning it over and over in his hands. “Ah! I see exploration parties,” he exclaimed. “I see groups going out into the mountains, desert, or jungle with one or more of these small, black dots hovering over their heads, documenting everything in 3D. The camera can beam everything back up into this room in real time, or just keep a record of up to a month of action. At our convenience, we get together from time to time to review and edit the most interesting footage. But there’s far more here than meets the eye. This little eight-inch wonder’s not just a 3D camera!”
“He’s right!” Joelle bounced on her cushion excitedly. “It does a zillion other things!”
He held up a finger. “For instance!” Chuckling, he tapped out a few sequences on the smooth surface. “Sssh! Wait, wait,” he mumbled, his voice barely audible. As the mysterious lights blinked to life, he released the sphere and it shot up ten feet over his head. “Watch me now! You all have remotes on your wrists! You can control the altitude and direction of your own spheres by using your wrist programmers!” He rocked a few virtual buttons back and forth to make it jiggle up and down. “See? Follow the bouncing ball, everyone!”
They got the connection, studying their wrist programmers and chuckling.
“That leads up to the next function, and it’s an extremely important one: it’s called ‘SEEK,’ where the sphere actually homes in on someone’s PIL signal!” Stifling a smile, he glanced around the room. There was a sea of blank stares. “Oops!” he teased. Poker-faced, he reached into his pocket. “Oh, the PIL? I didn’t mention this?” He slowly drew out a small, round object.
They squinted at the speck, craning their necks to peer over each other’s shoulders. He held it high in the air, pivoting slowly around on his heel. “This little red dot is called a Personal ID Locator, or PIL! You might call it an RFID chip on steroids! Everyone’s getting one—it’s vital, and some day it may save your life!”
A hand shot up. “Ah, what does it do, sir?”
“Good question. It emits a specific, powerful frequency in a radius of three hundred and fifty miles assigned to your name, to you only!”
Ensign Rico raised his hand. “This sound like an obvious question, sir, but where will this PIL thingy be, ah … located?”
Laughter rang out. Nearly everyone joined in, shouting out answers and grinning from ear to ear. Several imaginative places were suggested.
Adam hooted, waving them all down. “My, what a raucous group! Yeah, you got it,” he chuckled, nodding. “You’re gonna swallow it!”
A contagion of grimaces passed through the crowd. They’d suspected as much.
“Hey! They’re totally safe, guys, don’t worry. These PILs have a unique structure of advanced biomaterials and your immune systems won’t recognize them as foreign objects. They’ve got millions of noninvasive nanohooks that lock securely onto the wall of your stomach, and then for about three months they stimulate tissue to grow around them.” He looked up. A man in the back row had his hand raised to speak. “Yes?” As Adam nodded, the man stood up slowly.
“Sir….”
“Yes?”
“Is this all, ah, voluntary?
“Sorry, I’ve forgotten your name. It’s been seven hundred years.”
As the crew chuckled, the man grinned. “Dexor, sir.”
“Thanks, Dexor. Well, I must say I did a lot of thinking about this when I reviewed the specs on the PIL, but the answer’s quite straightforward: it’s a ‘No.’”
“Huh? How so, sir?” The man’s voice faltered ever so slightly.
“Well,” he shrugged, “the PIL’s only function, its only reason for existing is for your safety.” He noticed a few green faces. “Hmm … think of it as an internal GPS. There’s no equipment to carry, it’s inside you.” He turned back to Dexor, grinning disarmingly. “Thanks again,” he said, smiling. “I was hoping someone would bring this up.”
Speechless, the man shrugged and raised a brow at his three companions.
“Hey, look, perfect timing! We’re nearly down!” Walking to the edge of the circular platform, Adam parked the sphere in midair, turned off the platform’s force field, and hopped down over the edge. Grinning mischievously, he poured himself another cup of coffee. “Now watch carefully, everyone: here’s a demo. I’m punching out ‘SEEK ADAM’ on my wrist programmer and then adding my own PIL frequency. In a few seconds I’ll punch the ‘Enter’ button.”
The crew was doing their best to piece everything together. They glanced at their leader’s poker face, and then the sphere. Both remained emotionless, masklike and enigmatic.
Adam put his coffee aside and lightly tapped the ‘Enter’ button.
A brilliant green laser beam sizzled out of the sphere’s interior. There was a collective gasp as it swept the room, searching. Brightening, it focused intensely on Adam’s chest. Hurtling through the air at a blinding speed, it stopped impossibly fast and hovered motionless over his head. Unruffled, he calmly reached up and retrieved the holocamera from the air.
“Oh, and one more thing!”
They exhaled as one, their eyes wide.
“All PILs are to be ingested within at least two hours!”
A groan went up. “I think I’ve lost my appetite,” someone griped from the back of the room.
“Okay, the stage is down! It’s crate time! Go for it, guys!”
The three beefy men hopped to their feet, picked their way through the crowd, and sprinted through the bronze doorway, their slate-blue uniforms a blur.
He turned back to the group with a twinkle in his eye. “Now as for the rest of us, how about breakfast? I could go for some real food now! How ‘bout you?” The words hung in the air, their tantalizing echoes repeating in the round room. The crew’s answer came roaring back, rivaling the impressive sound system in the holosphere.
“Food! Food! Foooood!” the gleeful, ravenous chant went up.
He’d pegged it; their small, carefully crafted biosnack didn’t cut the mustard after seven years in sleep mode. “Be back up here in an hour!” he yelled over the din.
Delicious odors were starting to waft through the open bronze doors; an automeal, yes, but it sure smelled good! The hungry horde streamed out, pulled by irresistible magnetic waves emanating from the cafeteria.
Down in Warehouse F, the three men stood shoulder to shoulder, their faces pressed tightly against the pod’s darkened glass. Its monitor’s chronograph clearly showed that it was working, but the sleep mode’s timetable remained blank.
“Where’s the switch? Damn! Is there a switch anywhere?”
Their hands flew, sliding over the smooth surface.
“What? No openings anywhere? This-this thing’s like Fort Knox!”
They searched earnestly, frantically. Finally, way down low on the back of the pod, someone’s hand bumped into a small computer connection hanging limply from its cord. He twisted it toward the light to read the label. “Crud!” He slapped the cord away in frustration. “The plug’s been crushed! One of the pod’s wheels musta run over it! This mother never got plugged into the ship’s mainframe! We BLEW it!!!”
Their panic rose to a peak as they realized their mistake. Their eyes met.
“Dexor’s gonna kill us!” The three chorused.
“Well, he helped push this thing down here, didn’t he? He can’t finger us for….”
One of them held up a cautionary hand. “Forget Dexor, he’s the least of our worries!” He glanced at the pod. “We sure don’t want to be anywhere near this room when HE wakes up!”
The crew was in high spirits as they ate, filling the cafeteria with laughter. Off to the side Joelle sat by herself, finishing off the last of a hasty meal. She wasn’t especially hungry, just ravenously curious. The lengthy menus inside that black sphere had really sparked her overactive imagination. She got up determinedly.
Elena had been watching her wolf her food down and swiveled on her seat. “Hey! Where ‘ya going, Joelle?”
She turned in surprise. “Ah, ah, I just wanted to, um, walk around a little, do some exploring? You know … snoop?”
Elena chuckled. This lively one seemed to share her own basic instincts. “Have a good time, kid,” she winked, her eyes scanning the room discreetly. “Just be careful.”
Joelle melted away. She’d already spotted a back door to the kitchen, shielded by a row of auto-ovens, and slipped out unnoticed. Stepping over pipes and cables, she followed a long, curving corridor past several similar doorways. As she rounded a sharp corner, a formidable door suddenly stood in front of her, closed tightly with a large wheel and several clamps. There was a small panel on the wall next to it at eye level.
“QUARANTINE ROOM,” it read. She shuddered, then read on. “ENTER ONLY WHEN GREEN LIGHT FLASHES.”
Wow, this was great stuff! Her eager eyes scanned downward. Below the printed warning was a red and a green lens, underscored by a small bar marked “PUSH.” She hesitated only a millisecond before tapping the bar. As the corridor became flooded with pulsing green light, her hand shot to her mouth. She leaned way back to peer down the hall toward the kitchen and paused, composing herself. In a burst of determination, she twirled the big wheel and unfastened the latches. The door gave a slight, hermetically sealed puff, then swung open.
It smelled clean. Antiseptic-clean. White counters and cabinets lined the walls as far as she could see and stacks of enormous cages filled the center of the cavernous room. She walked over and eyed them suspiciously, rattling the doors. “Good grief,” she whispered, “what could possibly go in these?”
True to her nature, she began to snoop. Cabinets were peeked into, jars were opened and the contents sniffed, drawers of ominous dissecting tools were gingerly poked through, syringes were squirted and reams of empty plastic bags ruffled. Suddenly she stopped dead in her tracks, almost falling over in her haste.
An odd cabinet particularly intrigued her. It was really different from the rest, being up on wheels and sitting at an angle behind wide restraining straps. This time there was no hesitation whatsoever. She unfastened the straps and wheeled the whole thing over to a counter. The cabinet opened from the top with a hinge. Straining, she raised the heavy lid and peered inside. Immediately, there was a faint scratching sound emanating from a large, translucent five-gallon bucket in the bottom.
“Hello?” Her heart began to pound. “M-maybe I shouldn’t….” Her hands shaking, she reached inside and grabbed the handle, testing the weight. “Hmm, not too bad, I think I can….” Taking a deep breath, she hefted it out and set it precariously on the edge of the counter next to her. “There!” She exhaled. A thin booklet was lying on top of the lid. As she turned on a light bar under the cabinet to read the cover, the odd scratching intensified, growing louder.
Suddenly, right behind her, the heavy lid of the wheeled cabinet slammed shut with a tremendous crash! She spun around, her heart in her mouth. Too late, she felt her elbow whack the bucket. “Oh, noooo!” she wailed. As it hit the floor, both the lid and booklet flew off, sailing across the room. She jumped back, gasping in horror.
Hundreds of black, alien insects boiled out of the bucket! With audible snaps of their pincers and loud pings, they flicked themselves impossibly far into the air and proceeded to scurry up every vertical plane within reach. In less than a heartbeat, thousands of wriggling legs were swarming up and over her, digging under her clothing, scratching her skin and twisting her long hair into knots. She clenched her fists, drew in a long, deep breath, and let loose.
Down the corridor, all conversation stopped midsentence: about twenty men flew to the kitchen’s back door with drawn Stiflers. Clustered in a tight knot, they peered down the corridor. Suddenly they backed away in a rush. Some kind of screaming apparition was hurtling toward them!
A path opened wide as something resembling a human burst through the doorway and stumbled out into the cafeteria. Covered from head to toe with a roiling, glittering black mass of insectlike creatures, the silhouette of a female body was thrashing at herself in panic, yanking off handfuls of the bugs and flinging them everywhere. It was only when the hard black bodies started to bounce off the crew’s uniforms that they came to their senses. They sprang into action, stomping and squashing the bugs in oddly loud crunches.
One scurried across the floor toward Adam. Thinking quickly, he grabbed a potholder and dropped to his knees, pinning it down. Suddenly, a purplish puff of smoke squirted out, followed by a horrible odor! A defense mechanism? He gagged, backing away. Here and there, more insects began to rise up and let loose with stink-clouds of their own! The stench quickly became overwhelming, sending waves of people staggering out into the halls. Fighting his heaving stomach, he pinched the strangely quiet form with his potholder and turned it over. Suddenly, his eyes widened, his jaw dropped, and he got up shouting.
