10

Not wanting to draw attention to myself, I kept a low profile after transferring to Galactic. That was my excuse for essentially still being a shut-in, at least. Someone, probably Isidro, had already set down a decree not to bother me, but I still felt the stares when I went out to lectures or the cafeteria. I also sensed an energetic charge growing among the students. While I was slowly swimming the tower, still acclimating to persistent micro, everyone else seemed to be moving with more rapidity and purpose every day.

I tapped the synthspike to the back of my skull, right below where the cable from my subdermal net merged with my scalp, and thumbed the discharge switch. No charge for me but this one, thanks. During the storm after the elevator came down, I often thought about swearing an oath that I would never run the Knights’ path again. Of course, I’d become such a convictionless coward that I dared not commit to any vows. Maybe it would be fine for other people to pick up the work of the Knights, but what monstrous egoism it would be if I went back to it after what had happened.

I flung myself out of the connector into the main academic ring’s corridor. The route from my bunk to the workshops had become routine enough that my movements in micro were getting smoother and quicker. A smile of satisfaction arose on my face. I wore it grimly as I went through the door to the room that had been reserved for our status meeting. Most of the desks and equipment had been removed to make space for a large table and a dozen chairs to be anchored to the far wall. Isidro was already there with Reb at his side; they both leaned intently over computers and spoke in mumbled bursts of jargon. When I oriented myself with the plane of the table and drifted down into one of the seats, he folded the screen in front of him closed and welcomed me enthusiastically. The woman beside him no longer openly glared at me, but she kept her eyes half hidden as she watched me over the top of her laptop.

“Morning, you seem like you could use some coffee,” he said as he gently tossed a thermos across the table. I sniffed the straw valve and caught the distinct crackle-scent of aether shock in the coffee’s aroma.

“Can’t stand the stuff,” I said and pitched it back. Isidro laughed.

“You should try it, we’ve managed to improve the taste a bit since the old days.” He sent the thermos floating back again. Relenting, I took a sip through the straw and winced. It had never really been the peculiar taste that bothered me but instead the feeling you got just tasting the stuff that you knew you were about to be uncomfortably wired, like chugging two pots down. I set the thermos down on a grabpad and forgot about it.

We didn’t have to wait long for Dr. Pavlita to show up. I had been surprised to hear that he wasn’t just cooperating with Burton, he had personally come to the station to do the job. He stormed in almost indignantly, a hard impression to make in the floaty world of micro, driven as always by a sole desire to pursue his work. It wasn’t surprising that the man flip flopped between working with rebels and governments as he saw fit. The old man looked the same as ever: on the way to ancient. He had been pursuing the best life extension treatments since the dawn of the industry, funding the innovators himself, but he never touched any of the cosmetic rejuv tech. It was an immortal existence of research he wanted, not eternal youth.

“Let’s be done with this,” he said in a growl of non-fluent English. Not even acknowledging me, let alone saying a word of greeting, was characteristic of him, but it struck me as wrong somehow. Our last meeting had led to the most momentous events of the times in so many ways.

“We’re just waiting on a few others to join us.”

I let a moment of silence slip by, then I asked in the most casual tone I could conjure, “How were the military labs?”

“They stank of cleaners but you get everything you ask for quickly,” Dr. Pavlita said with a shrug. “Then some bastard wants to take credit for your work to advance his own career and you get red tape bubbling out of the drains.” It was that sort of thing which drove him recklessly into the arms of radicals willing to give him freedom to pursue his research.

The other students who joined the meeting I recognized somewhat from lectures and knew that they were skilled engineers, programmers, and alchemists. They seemed eager for the event but I got some relief from their fawning stares as Dr. Pavlita drew almost equal attention. It was likely that few people ever saw him set foot out of whatever den of mad science had been arranged for him on the station. When everyone was strapped into their seats, Isidro brought the meeting to order by rapping his knuckles on the table.

“Time to get on the same page and finish this,” he said while turning on a large, aquarium-like holodisplay floating above us. The shimmering sea rapidly filled with thousands of files consisting of text reports, program code, design schematics, and AI mindmaps. The multitude of data converged in a glowing mass that formed a 3D model of a completed Hand of Glory. Another cluster of data showed the scans of the broken gauntlet that was hidden on the station. “Doctor, as thanks for joining us, why don’t we have you recap your progress first?”

“Progress? I’m done; I can collapse the core and install it any time.” It made me wonder what else the genius was up to if he was already done with the work. He added in a tone of caution, “I don’t think anyone will notice it for now, but as soon as we start activation tests, someone is bound to detect the distortion of gravity waves eventually.”

“A shame we still can’t get that GCS approved. I guess from now on we’ll quit applying and shoo away the inspectors.”

“Activation tests? Do you even have a plan for calibrating it?” I asked accusingly.

“Ah yes, you were the one hurt when we made the prototype.” Dr. Pavlita’s words sent something like a whisper flying around the table and I felt eyes searching me. Isidro ignored the atmosphere and waved up a barrage of reports in the hologram.

“Doctor Pavlita told us about the difficulties your brother had in training the control system, so we came up with a solution we think should skip the most dangerous phase of testing. We programmed a simulation environment to pre-train the AI with.”

“You have to take it live sometime…Our mistakes trashed a few junkyards, but one slip here and you’re likely to sink the station.”

Isidro nodded in agreement and added, “We’ve prepared a drone to take the gauntlet on a walk when we start activation tests. Do you think that will be enough?” I shrugged; he went on to ask, “What do you think of the state of the glove itself?”

“As long as the core and AI shell are made to fit the original specs, it can be salvaged. The problem is that every repair is going to take some badass alchemy to make with materials that’re on par with the rest of it.”

“How big of a problem is that?” He asked worriedly. I didn’t want to admit that I had no clue if I could even replicate the stuff I’d made at my peak. At least all I had to do was get close enough that the gauntlet didn’t immediately fall apart.

“It might take a while, and it could be quite expensive.”

“William is backing this personally, whatever you need is yours.” I shrugged again. “Good, after the meeting this place will be reserved as your private workshop. Let me know how many whats to have sent over.”

The rest of the meeting went by without much comment by me. Isidro gave an overview of the work he and Reb had done training the AI; he said it had become a brutish, but effective program that no longer even had a name for itself. The others went over various tools and resources he had tasked them with gathering. At the end we all exchanged tentative estimates on when we could bring all the pieces together to proceed. I felt thorns of regret when I committed myself to a frame of weeks when I worried that it might be a matter of months, or worse. Perhaps I would still end up sabotaging the thing after deciding they could not be entrusted with it.

I let the others leave the conference before me rather than inviting a would-be sycophant to approach by unhooking from my chair and swimming away. Some found reasons to make small talk and linger while I busied myself with plugging my nerve net into the hardware on the table and diving the data that Isidro had presented. When most of the others had left, he drifted over and floated nearby.

“You’re done for the day, right? Want to go for another one on one?” He was asking if I wanted to do more combat training in micro. The first session we had done had been helpful for my swimming skills and a great workout. I didn’t intend to become a Knight again, but I needed to be ready to take responsibility for sticking my nose in this business. If I stumbled onto something that was a danger to innocent lives, it was my duty to dismantle it.

Releasing the straps on my chair, I accepted his invitation and followed him away toward the corridor. As we passed over the table, he asked Reb if she’d care to join us for training. She refused with an excuse of getting back to work on her Irukandji and swam away toward another workshop. Isidro and I headed over to a secluded section of the tower that had been fitted with modular wall segments to simulate the different geometries of station environments.

Back in the days of the Knights, I had prided myself on being capable in a brawl. Spending months in the darkest sprawl gutters and most criminal of pirate ports had not been a peaceful life. In space though, and after years of sedentary malaise, I couldn’t help but feel helpless. Isidro was a master of movement in micro and had adapted a blend of martial arts for use in orbit. Even when he let me catch him, he easily turned aside whatever force I could bring to bear on him with my clumsy lunges and slow charges. He taught me the importance of leverage and contact for fighting in micro but I was still unable to pin him to a wall.

After an hour of flailing around and wrestling, I tucked myself into a corner to catch my breath and towel off the sweat sticking to my body. An air purifier drone flew around the area chasing the perspiration that we had shed as tiny spherule droplets. Isidro steadied himself into a slow spin in midair and rested with arms crossed.

Eventually, I asked, “Burton seems to believe your father is still alive, is there a reason for that or is he just tilting at windmills?” He considered my question for a moment before answering in a serious tone.

“Well there’s a major discrepancy in the official narrative of his death. It’s said my family died driving on a road near our home in California, but we did not live in California.” This was a bit of shocking info. Every report I had ever seen, official or amateur, placed Mateo’s home near the old Silicon Valley. Still, what sort of proof could he offer for such a claim other than his own word?

“Is that it?”

“That’s just the start. Whatever remains were recovered from the crash were cremated and transferred to a relative almost overnight. That supposed relative never existed before signing for the ashes and has never been found since.” That part was not new to me. “Then there’s the matter of dad living his whole life, except for his years away at college, in Mexico. All the biographies start with him living in the US.”

Possibilities spread out like a spider’s web around his words. If what he said was true, it begged the question of why this had been hidden. Was there some trace to find if one only knew where to look? Everyone, including the Knights a decade ago, had been looking in the wrong places. It was common enough to doubt the official story, but I’d never heard of anyone finding a link to Mexico. I slowly asked, “Do you know the exact place?”

“Sort of. William went to great lengths to find the town based on my descriptions. But the entire place is abandoned now so it’s hard to find specific houses in the overgrown ruins just from satellite photos.”

Just photos? “Has Burton ever investigated the place more closely?”

“Unfortunately the area was restricted after a train carrying toxic chemicals derailed nearby. It happened a week after the accident that supposedly killed my family and the restriction has never been lifted.”

“Convenient.”

“For someone, but not for us.”

They really had no evidence that his father was still alive. No evidence that any of his secrets were stashed away somewhere awaiting discovery. It was slightly more than the usual ghost stories about Mateo, but they were grasping at hope and straws. Still, they were either using the story to con me or believed in the possibility enough to become enemies of the world. Isidro’s talent in microgravity martial arts, assembly of skilled allies, and their stash of gear all made it clear that he was seriously pursuing competency as a rebel. I still didn’t know what to make of it all.

“Can I ask you something?” Isidro pitched carefully. I nodded. He hesitated for a moment, then asked, “What was it like back then, when you and the Knights were still together pursuing a righteous cause?”

His words sparked revulsion and nostalgia in my heart. Even if I hated how things ended up, I could not help but look back fondly on those times. It was hard to remember specific events in detail; the period was an overwhelming blurring of different sights and sounds and feelings. We faced life or death battles for weeks on end, then dropped out to a monotonous time of plotting in some deep sprawl neighborhood where nothing ever changed. So much exhaustion and fear and excitement. I remembered long nights of frustration at work on my latest project, but surrounded by brilliant and passionate people who shared a lofty goal.

I focused on a scene that arose in my memories: Sebastian and I running through a forest on a misty morning. It was not the frenzied haste of a battlefield but rather a simple morning run between missions. We’d come back as close to home as we dared to go, but it was no vacation; we were still pushing our bodies to their limits and our minds were locked on to our next move. After considering Isidro’s question for a few moments, I said, “I felt a driving sense of purpose, as if everything I did mattered and all that I suffered was worth it. It could be exhilarating at times.”

“I’ve sometimes felt much the same way as I’ve improved at programming and built my little friends for hacking.”

“That’s different though. Behind the lines directing AIs against a corporate defense system is safe. We scrambled in the mud with our lives on the line. All of that was terrible. You and Burton don’t understand, or else you’d be looking for any other way than whatever it is you have planned.”

He was quiet for a little while, eyes turned away in deep thought, then he looked at me with a small smile and said, “Yes, I can only imagine how bad things might get, but if those are the lengths someone has to go to and there’s no other way, I should be the one to go. It wouldn’t be fair to ask someone else to take on that danger on my behalf while hiding behind a computer somewhere.”

Sebastian had been similar. Even though his greatest talents were centered on computers, he insisted on leading from the front. I can’t deny feeling the same way either, but… “I don’t intend to go back down there, go back to fighting like that.”

“William hopes that you will, but I’m just happy to have someone around whose experience I can rely on. I’m hoping that when the time comes that I can’t keep running from doing things the hard way, I might be ready.” His smile broadened into a warm grin. “I’m starving, let’s go see what Joter has cooked up today. Wednesdays are when he brings out his latest creations.” He reached out to offer a hand to perform a tandem launch into the wide shaft of the tower; I took it and together we kicked off from the training ground to soar upward.