A Girl Called Badger

TWENTY



As the machine rumbled into the earth Wilson focused on his breathing and heart rate. He couldn’t see the panel in front of his face but certainly felt it. His nose and forehead bumped against the hard surface with every jolt.

After a few minutes the casket rotated back to the horizontal and he was flat on his back. The vibrations continued and Wilson counted to himself. At three hundred and twelve everything stopped.

The silence made him sweat, but not because he was nervous. He’d forgotten to calculate how long the air inside the casket would last.

Wilson ran his fingers over the smooth panel. The tip of a fingernail caught on a razor-sharp line in the center. He wedged a thin screwdriver into the seam then the flat end of the pry bar. In the tight casket he couldn’t put any leverage on the bar.

His heart started to beat faster, but he remembered the strength trick. He breathed out and whispered the poem, then twisted the bar with his hands. A gap opened and stale air rushed inside.

Wilson put his hand in the crack and shoved the panel up and to the left. The panel snapped and fragments pinged away in the dark. As he sat up from the casket a line of golden lights flashed along the wall.

The smooth ceiling of a tunnel curved only centimeters from his outstretched fingers. At his feet and beyond the casket a metal track led to a small circular hatch. Wilson twisted his body to look at the front of the casket. Between the light-dark-light flashes he saw another door blocking the tunnel.

The air hummed loud enough to make his teeth hurt.

“Lay down. Clean cycle startup,” said a voice like the snapped branches of a falling, long-dead tree.

Wilson lay beside Badger but kept the pry bar ready. A hiss filled the tunnel and Wilson covered his face from a stinging mist.

“Air cycle startup.”

Wind roared through the tunnel and rustled his hair. When it stopped, Wilson heard a grinding sound at the head of the casket. The tunnel brightened with a red glow and the entire casket jerked forward.

A number of narrow tracks covered the ceiling of the red-lit room. Long silver spikes unfolded and moved along these tiny railways like the ripped-off legs of a ghastly metal spider. One leg followed the path of the casket from above and held a cylinder, the end glinting with lights and tiny, circular windows. Wilson looked to his left and saw rows of black caskets, most with open wings and exposed beds.

“Keep still,” said the dry, broken voice.

“What if I don’t?”

Static noise filled the room, and sounded almost like a sigh.

The casket bumped along with Wilson and the still-unconscious Badger, constantly followed by the mechanical spider-legs. After passing through another tunnel and into a dim chamber, all movement stopped. Spider-legs whirred along narrow tracks on the ceiling. A dozen circled the casket with sharp needles and dangerous-looking blades.

The black panel over Badger folded away and Wilson peered over the edge.

“Can I get out now?”

“Be my guest,” said the voice.

Wilson dropped down to a tiled floor, slick and pale gray in color. White panels along the walls illuminated a large number of medical beds and tables loaded with strange silver and white equipment. Pinpoints of green or red glowed and darkened from a few machines like a breath of light. Some of the equipment Wilson recognized from the lab at Schriever.

He put his hands under Badger’s shoulders and started to lift her from the casket.

“Wait,” said the voice. “I have to do a body scan.”

Wilson laid her down and stepped away. “Don’t hurt her or you’ll be sorry.” He felt silly as soon as he’d said it––how can you threaten a circuit board?

“Just trust me,” said the crackling twigs.

The silver spider legs zipped into action and attached wired contact patches to Badger’s head, chest, and arms. With a needle, one inserted a clear tube into the cubital vein on her right arm. A spider leg with a glowing sphere hovered over Badger’s head and slowly glided down to her feet.

“I can’t see what’s wrong,” said the voice.

“What?”

“She’s not well, I can tell you that.”

Wilson wandered a circle around the casket. “I don’t understand. All these machines and that’s all you can say––she’s not well?”

“You got it, boss.”

“I don’t believe this. You’re not really a machine, are you?” asked Wilson.

“I could be.”

Wilson sighed. “She needs re-sequencing, whatever that is. I thought we might find something here.”

“Oh, I get it. That’s why you two went east.” The voice paused. “There’s something coming up as a sequencer over here.” Two spider-legs flew across the ceiling and quickly returned with a large cylinder between them. Like a smooth silver barrel, it was hollow on the inside.

“Oh THIS,” said the voice. “I’m definitely losing my mind. I should have smashed it to bits years ago.”

“Please don’t, she needs it.”

The metal spider-legs lifted Badger’s hand and slid the barrel of the re-sequencer over her left arm, completely obscuring it. The legs attached cables to points on the device and tiny yellow lights began to flash in the center.

“This will take lots of power,” said the voice. “Is she worth it?”

“What! Are you serious?”

“No sense of humor, I see,” said the voice. “Now down to the gritty-nitty, as they used to say.

“Who?”

“Never mind. Now here’s something ... I’ll read it out loud because you probably know more about these things. The system is asking me, ‘Do you want RS3 to shut down all version 4.30 integration with mobile framework S4 Bryant Chen?’”

“I don’t know,” said Wilson.

“I need a yes or no answer.”

“Yes!”

The spider-legs folded into the ceiling and the lights snapped off, turning the room pitch black apart from tiny needles of light on the sequencer. These lights changed from flashing yellow to a steady green.

For a few seconds, the cylinder hummed around Badger’s arm like a furious bee. As the lights snapped back on, the spider-legs dropped from the ceiling and took the sequencer away.

Wilson touched her pale hand. “Wake up, sleeping beauty.”

He felt Badger’s pulse gradually increase and skin become warm. After a few minutes her fingers twitched and she groaned.

“Head ... hurts.”

The voice cackled. “I did it!”

“Ugh ... what is that ungodly noise ...” Badger opened her eyes. “And where am I?”

“That’s a long story,” said Wilson.

“Speaking of long stories ... I feel like I’ve come out the wrong end of a bear. Got any water?”

“Sorry.”

“Wait a second,” said the broken-twig voice.

In seconds a metal spider-leg appeared with a glass. Badger’s hands jerked to her waist and felt for a knife.

“What’s that thing?”

“Relax. It won’t hurt you,” said Wilson. “These are machines from before the war. We’re in the Tombs under Old Man right now.”

Badger kept her eyes on the mechanical arm. “I went to sleep in your father’s room. I didn’t wake up, did I?”

Wilson shook his head.

She took the glass from the metal fingers. “How did you carry me all the way from David?”

“I had some help.”

Badger finished the glass of water then hugged Wilson around the neck and kissed him.

“Hey, where’s my kiss?” asked the voice. “I’m the one who fixed you.”

“That does it.” Badger grabbed the hunting knife from Wilson’s belt. “When I find this guy––”

“Take it easy,” said Wilson. “He’s the reason you’re awake. He did something to your framework with the sequencer.”

Badger rubbed her arm. “He did what to my what?”

“Your main implant is dead,” said the voice. “But the two others still work. You won’t get the virus.”

“My implant is dead?”

“No more playing murder in the dark,” said the voice.

Badger closed her eyes and whispered the four verses of the sight-trick. She opened them and shook her head.

“It’s not working!”

“Don’t worry, babe, I still love you. You survived twelve years without an implant. You’ll still be the same wild and fantastic girl,” said Wilson.

“He’s right about that,” said the voice. “But let’s have a face-to-face before all this mooning and squishy talk makes me spew digital vomit.”

Across the room a red light flashed over a steel door. Round bolts covered the face.

“I don’t understand what’s going on and I don’t like any of it,” said Badger.

“We’ve been in his power since we’ve been here and nothing horrible has happened,” said Wilson.

“At least, not yet,” said the voice.

Machine-arms ripped off the wired discs and the tube in Badger’s arm. Wilson helped her down from the casket. She stretched her stiff muscles and walked with him across the room.

Wilson spun a large wheel on the door and pushed. The pair held hands and wandered into a vast cavern that soared high into the mountain. A blue light glowed in the center of the room and illuminated rows of vertical caskets along the walls. Thick, dust-covered cables linked each casket to bulbous metal shapes along the sides. Many caskets were in the open position. Wilson saw only a few blinking lights in the levels that stretched up into the darkness.

“In the center,” said the dry voice.

A low glass dome in the center of the chamber was the source of blue light. Four other dark and dust-covered domes formed a complete circle with the lighted one.

The dome was filled with a pale blue liquid and a naked, hairless man floated inside like a drowned sailor under glass. A mass of cables linked metal points on his body to dark machinery underneath. Wrinkles and scars covered his thin face and his eyes were closed. His right arm was missing at the shoulder and his left hand was gone. Instead of legs the emaciated thighs ended in pink, rounded stumps.

“That can’t be alive,” whispered Badger.

“Oh, but he is,” said the dry twigs somewhere in the ceiling.

Wilson touched the glass. “But there’s no air. Does he breathe water?”

“It’s not water, it’s an oxygen solution. I don’t know exactly what, but it keeps me alive.”

Badger stared wide-eyed. “That’s you?”

“The pretty girl gets a blue ribbon!”

“You were part of the Hyperion project,” said Wilson. “To carry man to the stars.”

“And woman. They made these before the war to sleep through the boring part of space travel. Actually, I’m lying. It’s all boring except for the launch and the part about not hitting a planet with your face.”

“Where’s everyone else? Did they actually travel to the stars?”

“They left all right. Took a long trip off a short cliff, if you know what I mean.”

Wilson stared at the empty caskets on the wall. “No, I don’t.”

“They’re dead,” said the voice. “Do I have to draw you a picture?”

“Sorry.”

“You never think something bad will happen until it does. The Chinese nuked a city in Taiwan, invaded, and we reacted. Some wild-eyed Ivan in Siberia got an idea and we reacted. I don’t know why it happened when it happened. One morning you’re fine and the next you’re eighty-sixed. The geniuses working here had already studied the problems of living on alien planets. Your people have been living in bunkers they made as a full-sized test for long-term living quarters. Everything was designed be foolproof and low maintenance, because they expected people to forget how to fix most of it, or to lose the replacement parts. Contrary to popular belief, there’s no Ace Hardware on Venus. Anyway, I guess they already had some kind of plan when the war drums started banging. The survival platoon––the astronauts with the implants––they stayed outside in the test bunkers. Most of the scientists left in a big group to the south. The big bosses and the rest got in the hibernation chambers. They figured they could sleep until the radiation and virus cleared out. The joke was on them, wasn’t it?”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because I’m the only one left.”

Wilson pointed to a pair of caskets with blinking of green and blue lights.

“What about those?”

“That’s Dreamer and Twitch, they don’t count.”

“Why not?”

“They’re vegetables. They’ve never woken up or said anything to me. I keep them around just for kicks. There’s not much else to do in this joint.”

“So the caskets don’t work?”

“I didn’t say that. At the ten-year wake-up a few of the sleepers left and didn’t look back. I remember one of them talking about the horrible dreams she had in the casket. Others hit the snooze button. At each wake-up a few more left. Nobody ever took the time to tell me why, I had to figure it out later. I’m just an old freak with no arms and legs. I never had a choice like them. I could have killed myself, sure––cut off the CO2 scrubber or the power and I’m gone in a few minutes. But suicide ...”

The voice trailed off. Wilson gave it a full minute then tapped on the glass dome.

“Suicide is what?”

“It’s never the answer,” said the voice. “One of my friends killed himself when the war started.”

“I’m sorry. So everyone left the caskets?”

“Left or died from power failures, coolant leaks, electrical shorts, or the huge earthquake. Not counting Dreamer and Twitch, the last one flat-lined fifteen years ago. I used backup power to reset the nuke plant and he didn’t wake up.”

Badger walked around the dome. “But what about you? How did you get here?”

“I worked on Hyperion, the big star-travel boondoggle. I used to be one of those guys who did everything. I climbed K-2, Chimborazo, and peaks on just about every continent. Me and a buddy hiked through Austria and Peru just for fun. I was in the Rangers during the war and got my hand blown off, but that didn’t stop me. The Army wanted me to put in my papers, but I told them to pound sand. My captain pulled some strings and got me TDY in this Air Force project as a survival expert. When the virus blew up for real, I was sent down the mountain to get something from Schriever.”

“From Schriever ... the sequencer? Wait––you’re the guy who took it? Jack Garcia?”

“The one and only. On the way back the sirens started. We made it to the western edge of the city when the nukes hit. My van rolled and I got messed up bad. You can see the stunning results of Chinese minivan technology right here. I found out years later that a buddy of mine called Padre pulled me out and drove me and the equipment here to Altmann. They had to amputate just about everything. These doctors were like, hey, let’s put him in this fishbowl, he won’t survive in the bunkers. Let’s keep him from his family and friends. He can watch them grow old and die. Bastards.”

“Did they give you an implant?”

“No. I never wanted one and they only asked once.”

“What were the implants for, again?” asked Badger.

“To keep the astronauts alive. It kills most viruses and speeds up healing. Ever wonder why you never get the flu?”

“What’s the flu?”

“Exactly.”

“So why did all of this have to be secret? And why do we have to come back to the Tombs when we die?”

“Listen, I didn’t make all the rules, it was the guys in the program and they’re all dead. I heard they made a religious thing out of it because there’s nothing like the fear of God to make people do things. One of the survivors in the bunkers used to be a priest. It was Padre, the same friend who saved me from the wreck. He helped develop the stories and rules. Everything else was kept secret, and when the children grew up they didn’t know anything but the stories. Everyone had to keep using the implants in case someone brought the virus here. You probably wondered why you’re named after a founder. It’s because you’ve got the same implants in your body as the first Ensign Wilson. These implants are given to new people at the name-giving ceremony, if that’s what you still call it, and recycled when they die.”

“Do you handle the surgery?” asked Wilson.

“Look at me––I can’t even butter bread. All the surgery is automated, I just start the right machines when the body gets delivered.”

“But why reuse the implants?” asked Wilson.

“There wouldn’t be enough to go around if we didn’t. I remember at the beginning they talked about creating an assembly line, but those guys all left. Nothing came of it.”

“Wait a minute,” said Badger. “If everyone with my implant got sick and died, why did you keep using it? Why’d you put it in me?”

“The other controllers thought the implant worked long enough. But you’re right, I should have stopped using that one a few cycles ago.”

“Other controllers?”

“I’m in a controller bed. Look around, there are three more.”

“It’s not the same as a casket, then,” said Wilson.

“No. They didn’t completely trust automated systems. The controller beds were designed to monitor all cameras, sensors, and machinery inside the mountain and outside up to five kilometers. When it’s your watch-cycle any warning alert or maintenance issue will wake you from hibernation. You fix it then go back to sleep. There were four controllers and I was just a backup. Basically floating eye-candy. But if something can go wrong, it will. Some things were patched together, it’s not like they pulled this stuff off a shelf. So a few years after the war, Dave––that’s his controller bed on the right––didn’t wake on schedule. The emergency system brought the rest of us out of sleep. The other controllers talked themselves blue and tried everything, but Dave just died in his sleep. Other problems came up. I woke decades later and Angela was singing. She wouldn’t stop or respond so the other controllers cut her off from the systems. She didn’t last a week. The same thing happened to Sun and Victor. About fifty years ago, when he could still speak, Victor tried to teach me everything about the controller systems. But I’m still a stupid grunt inside, he couldn’t change that.”

“If you can see everything that goes on outside, why didn’t you stop us? We were looking for the sequencer and it was here the entire time!”

A sigh of white noise filled the room. Wilson and Badger covered their ears.

“I’m no scientist,” said the voice. “Even if I’d known exactly what you wanted, how am I supposed to get the message out? Would you have believed any of it?”

“But you could have done something,” said Wilson. He listened to the low hum coming from the dome as the voice took time to respond.

“It’s not easy to explain.”

“Try,” said Badger.

“I don’t wake up and drink my morning coffee or read the newspaper in this thing. Right now, I actually see myself in an overgrown garden with trees and flowers everywhere. The power plant is a huge cinnamon tree in the middle; brown and strong-smelling. It doesn’t matter that I’ve never seen a cinnamon tree; it’s how I created the interface for the power controls. If I concentrate hard, I can see the two of you in this room, but it’s not real to me. It’s the same way you two are picturing the garden in your minds right now.”

Wilson shook his head. “That’s not an explanation, that’s a description of your conscious mind.”

“I’m getting to that,” said the voice. “By walking to this azalea bush, I can access all the video feeds in the valley. It’s not like I’m turning a switch. In the last year the garden has been changing, and last month even went away for a few days. Imagine being locked in a silent, pitch-black room, all by your lonesome.”

“Don’t worry, we can,” said Badger.

“To answer your question, yes, sometimes I know everything that goes on aboveground, but other times I feel like an old man trying to find his glasses.”

Wilson nodded. “What do you see now?”

The top of the dome flickered with black-and-white images. Static popped and a girl’s laughter echoed in the cavern. On the dome’s surface, a girl set a bowl on the ground and a dog ate from it.

Wilson pointed. “That’s Kaya!”

“And one strange, ugly dog,” said the voice.

“The only strange thing is why it kept following us,” said Badger.

“Dreamer always liked dogs when she was alive. I bet it was her,” said the voice.

Wilson touched the moving images. “What are you talking about?”

“The dusty corners of my old brain remember something about animal implants. But who can tell? I just transmitted a signal and he’s not answering.”

“But you just said Dreamer was a vegetable.”

“Listen, she doesn’t talk to me directly like we’re doing now, or wake up if I ask questions. I’m always by myself in the garden. But sometimes a dog will show up and we’ll play around. It’s always a golden retriever. The dog tells me things when I’m sleeping. Stupid jokes, never anything important. Dreamer liked to tell them before the war. That’s how I knew it was her and not one of the systems. Or my own mind.”

Wilson’s eyes widened. “Wait ... she tells jokes? Dreamer is Parvati!”

“How do you know her name? Did you read a medical log or some database?”

Wilson shook his head. “When I was under– ... when I almost died, I saw things. I shot Sergio. I gave my––your revolver to Mike. I took the sequencer from the base. It seemed just like a dream before, but now–”

“Somehow she’s linked us together,” Jack said. “Because killing Sergio .... that’s something I’ve never told anyone.”

“Did the black dog pull me out of the ground? Or was Parvati controlling him?”

“Does it matter? There’s no way to ask her.”

The flickering images of Kaya and the dog disappeared and left just an old man under a dome. Wilson looked around at the lines of black caskets lining the walls and felt a sudden urge to be anywhere else.

“We have to go. Reed’s waiting for us,” he said.

“I know,” said Jack.

The floor vibrated and a rectangle of wall slid away with a cascade of dust. Tiny cadmium-yellow lights snapped on and revealed a spiral of metal steps.

“That’s an old rabbit hole that leads out of the mountain. Just don’t be like the others, kid. Come back and visit me.”

“I promise.”

Wilson spread his hands on the dome. On the old man drowning in a web of cables.

“Thanks, Jack, for watching over us all these years.”

“Well, everyone needs a hobby.”

Wilson joined Badger in the yellow light of the stairwell. As they climbed the steps, ancient powder swirled into the air like sparkles of fairy dust.

The motes of dust tickled his nose but Wilson barely noticed. He listened to the faint sound of an old man singing.


END