Fallout

I groaned slightly, still moving from the balcony back into the living room. Even after a week, my body still felt the lingering effects of the fight. I really didn’t want to do that again, but I probably needed to improve my training. There would always be a disadvantage.

Waving my hand over the screen as I entered the kitchen, it popped up with the latest news. A bullet list of the top subjects cascaded down. Once again the headlining article read “Basilica Cover-up Exposed!” Each day new updates came down from the Corpus. The summary said that top ranking Clergy were being charged by the Corpus for the cover-up and neglect of the citizens. I was surprised they managed to get that far considering how much power the Basilica had in the town.

The follow-up news came as even more of a shocker, “Corpus to Appoint New Basilica Leadership and Discuss Redistribution of Responsibilities.” Those two branches never played well with each other no matter the town I visited. So to see them telling the Basilica who’s in charge was a first. Not sure what it would do to the separation of the two entities. What I exposed may cause an even worse power imbalance. But I didn't know the future.

Better news, I finally saw what I wanted to find, “Coulen Announces Cure Complete for Pecqueur’s Disease”. Pecqueur was apparently patient zero for the disease, buried even deeper in the Basilica than I saw. Apparently, the disease mutated enough to finally catch up with the bio machinery. It rested within the gels and bio-organics that ran through the whole body. Signals got confused with the foreign element and everything slowly fell apart as it infected everything. The berserk state was the last sign of it corrupting pathways to the brain sending out invalid responses until an overload.

The Corpus carried out a thorough investigation. It had been something the Basilica knew about for two months. Which shocked me that it didn’t get people more aware of something strange. And then I remembered how everyone acted about it with me.

A schedule for making appointments and examinations came up first after it. The Basilica and satellite buildings around the town would be used to do the work. Anyone sick with the disease got top priority followed by those testing positive. Eventually, everyone would get cured, though limited interactions was the only recommendation. Thanks to the work from the Basilica and Corpus, they figured out that the transmission came from physical contact between two augments. Which was probably why it had a slow advance.

But the fact that diseases evolved to be able to infect bio-circuitry now scared a lot of people. I saw far fewer out on the streets from my balcony. A general unease settled in the air that I didn’t consider when realizing the exposed risk this created. But I felt certain they’d bounce back in time.

I pulled out of the oven my dinner, a home recipe for lasagna that I learned from my dad. He was the cook of the family and the smell made me miss home. But I had a promise to keep before that. I slipped on a sweater and grabbed the steaming lasagna with some mitts.

Carefully navigating down the stairs of the House, I came to the door of the Lalonde, knocking awkwardly. It slid open before even three seconds passed with Louise jumping up at me. I dodged away to avoid burning her by instinct, which in hindsight only I could have gotten burned.

“Miss Val! Dad says I’m all better!” She bounced around hugging onto my waist nearly making me spill a couple times. Leonce managed to get her in earlier today with the cure finished yesterday. Though I admittedly wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference without a little more time with her.

I smiled down trying to balance dinner. “That’s great! Your mum must be so relieved.” It was as I said that, that I noticed we weren’t alone. In the hall were the parents. Leonce with a lighter expression while Adelphe still looked pretty sour with me. The intensity seemed dialed down, though I got the feeling the emotions came from less about my origins anymore. Ideally, only they would know about my hand in what happened in the town, so I didn’t have to face more of that sort of attention.

Louise tugged on my sweater very interested in the food I carried. “Is that lasagna?”

“Yup, as promised for a full recovery, a recipe from outside.”

She bounced and ran back to her mother. “Can we have dinner, mum? Can we?” Did she already forget what time it was? But regardless, they invited me inside. The interior looked far better than last week, though more sparse with some furniture removed. Hopefully, the repairs weren’t too expensive. If I was a more petty person, I’d tell them to charge the Basilica for it due to all of their silence.

Adelphe looked to have prepared everything else for the meal. She had garlic bread toasted on the side along with a beautifully arranged salad. There was even a chocolate cake out in the corner for later. She really went all out for it, but it was a special day.

I placed the main dish down and cut up the servings, though Louise enthusiastically insisted on getting her own portion. She needed a little help with the slippery nature of the pasta and cheese. It looked pretty in the pan, but outside it spilled out. It still tasted the same as Louise smiled with the first bite.

Conversation stayed pretty light through the meal until dessert came around. Louise’s attention fell on me. Apparently the appeal of new food was the only thing that distracted her. “Miss Val, what’s the outside like? It’s your home!”

I choked a little on my bite of cake. While clearing myself, I took a read of the room. Neither looked especially thrilled by the question though for very different reasons. Adelphe’s face said everything, she didn’t want her daughter learning about “Hackers”, while Leonce had a different stern look. If I had to guess, he had the more practical issue of that no one left a town.

Only Couriers could do so because they weren’t tied down to the network. Anyone else their home was the network and leaving it would mean losing all of the support it provided. It was death. With every town isolated on their own networks, the augments only functioned while in the radius. The only way to leave was to become a Courier and cut yourself from the network, which was a specialized process. But parents were against it for obvious reasons, just as Leonce.

Unfortunately, Louise wouldn’t take silence as an answer. “It’s wild and a hard life. Most of the technology you rely on doesn’t work out there.”

“Nothing?”

“It’s complicated, but it’s not the easy life you're used to here. They’re used as tools to help us live, not replacements.” She tilted her head a little with confusion bleeding in. Yeah, she wasn’t going to get all of it. But I hopefully gave her a not too idyllic image to generate wanderlust.

“What about the sky?”

“It comes in many colors. It’s vast and comforting when you’re alone on the road.” I was reminded of her Torucube projection. That really was her only idea of the outside, but it wasn’t like I could do anything to change that. “Deep blues with big fat fluffy clouds on warm days. Scary gray and green when it storms. Endless blankets of white like a mirror in winter. It’s always different each day.”

“Can you record it for me?!” She bounced up as I forgot myself in describing things. I think I overdid it. The cake wasn’t even moving anymore from the plate. Sorry. The fortunate thing for Louise was she always seemed to have this interest, so they couldn’t blame me for putting in her head, just not dissuading her.

Though her request made me close up. The obvious answer seemed to have flown past her. Leonce leaned over nudging the plate of dessert a little closer to her. “Miss Valeria is a Courier, she doesn’t get to choose where she goes, Louise.”

“You’re not coming back?”

“I don’t know, Louise.” That disheartened her more than I expected. I sort of figured she understood how capricious my work was.

That answer soured the atmosphere the longer it stayed in silence. Louise had a lot to take in. She was very quiet the rest of dinner. I wanted to say something to her, but I didn’t want to make any promises. I really had no idea if I would be back. The likelihood was high with enough time, but it could be years later.

I couldn’t make a child hang on a ‘maybe’ for years.