The forevers fixer 13, p.1
The Forevers - Fixer 13, page 1
The Forevers
Book 1
Fixer 13
By
G. Michael Smith
Copyright 2013
Dedications
To my wife, Cheryl Cameron, for her love; her confidence in me; her support of my work; and, for that most valuable of commodities, her time.
To my friend, Leslie Gilmour, whose superb editing skills helped me get to the end.
To my daughters, Ashley, Lindsay and Christian, whose support I cherish.
To Dev Patel, who found the holes and encouraged me to fill them.
Copyright © 2013 by G Michael Smith
gmichaelsmith.ca
All rights reserved
Published by: Sparetime Solutions
Canada
ISBN: 978-0-9918742-0-0
Cover design and artwork by Carlo - Lightlab (lightlab.tv)
Table of Contents
Chapter 1 – “I Passed!”
Chapter 2 – “The PUT Pad and the Dumb Giant”
Chapter 3 – “The Cube and the Star”
Chapter 4 – “Off to School We Go “
Chapter 5 – “Don’t Leave the Path”
Chapter 6 – “Games and Waiting and TechElecMech”
Chapter 7 – “Theoretical TechElecMech”
Chapter 8 – “The Connectome Scan”
Chapter 9 – “Secret Heart Cupboards”
Chapter 10 – “Gravity Ball”
Chapter 11 – “Lockdown”
Chapter 12 – “Hi Ho, Hi Ho”
Chapter 13 – “Captured!”
Chapter 14 – “The Interview”
Chapter 15 – “Some Truth”
Chapter 16 – “A Trip to the Neuroscience Center”
Chapter 17 – “Tests and Scans”
Chapter 18 – “Biome Tech”
Chapter 19 – “Mini Biomes”
Chapter 20 – “Recruited”
Chapter 21 – “The ‘Sergio Partelli’ “
Chapter 22 – “Weapons and Combat Training“
Chapter 23 – “GB Scouts”
Chapter 24 – “The Doctor”
Chapter 25 – “The Competitions”
Chapter 26 – “Fake’n It”
Chapter 27 – “Blood and Guts”
Chapter 28 – “Safe Space”
Chapter 29 – “Not So Safe Space”
Chapter 30 – “Insight”
Chapter 31 – “In Plain Sight”
Chapter 32 – “Getting Settled”
Chapter 33 – “Liaising in Biome 7”
Chapter 34 – “In the Beginning”
Chapter 35 – “Children of the Biome”
Chapter 36 – “Secret Secrets”
Chapter 37 – “Omie Gallery”
Chapter 38– “Great Balls of Fire”
Chapter 39 – “Running and Hiding”
Chapter 40 – “Captured Again!”
Chapter 41 – “Greenway Safe”
Book 2 Omie 17 Preview
Chapter 1 Omie 17 – “Sprinkles on My Birthday Cake”
Chapter 2 Omie 17 – “Choices”
Chapter 1 – “I Passed!”
The end of the world was coming. It was not some religious prophesy or an ancient warning. It was fact. The end of the world was coming. Exactly when was not as accurate. Two hundred years was the estimated number. There was really only one course of action. Get out. Leave before the meteor field, that some said was as big as the entire solar system, struck and wiped out, at the very least, all living things. More likely, the whole solar system would crumble and join the gargantuan meteor storm on its eternal rush through space. Sol might survive, but without her family, what would be the point?
It was Jayne Ester Wu's 13th birthday. She rolled over onto her back and clutched the pillow to her chest. She smiled in the semi-darkness of morning. She was finally an adult. Not yet a woman, but an adult and as such, she would no longer have to live in the nursery. She would no longer have go to nursery school. She would no longer play with the other kids. She would no longer play at all. She would have to go to work. Today she would go to work as an adult. She would be an apprentice for at least two years before she could get her papers. In two years, if she worked hard, she would get her journeyman's papers and be a full-fledged fixer; a TEM fixer. Two years was an eternity. She had heard stories of washouts. Mostly girls that couldn't hack it. They would get moved to the cleaner class or back into the nursery as a helper or child bearer. She knew she would hate the cleaner class and she was too young to be a child bearer. Some of her friends wanted to be helpers but as far as she was concerned, being a helper sucked. All they ever did was look after old people and babies. Yech! She would not wash out! She was going to be a TEM fixer and that was that.
She swung her feet to the floor and scanned the room for anything she’d missed. Her knapsack was beside the door as well as two boxes of her stuff, mostly book keys with holographic projections of every piece of equipment she’d been studying in preparation for the TEM Aptitude Exam. She had passed. Most kids her age had to go to INTER (Intermediate Technical Educational Reassessment) or Internment, as it was commonly known, for at least two years. She smiled. There would be no INTER for her. She had passed on the first go. She had received the notice on her VID (Visual Identity Designator) pad. It had simply stated:
ID – Wu F 302875106592253
Name – Wu, Jayne Ester
Class – Fixer
Sub Class – Technician - Electronic Mechanic Apprentice
Exam Result – PASS
Report to the biome HUB 169 entrance M, Friday January 13, 2113 at 1:00 pm.
Jayne smiled. She had passed. That is all these notices ever said. No actual score, just PASS or NOT PASS. She had passed. Her head swam with a warm joy. She spent all that first day packing all her stuff. It didn’t take long. She didn’t have much. Just those two boxes and the knapsack.
She jumped out of bed and headed out of her cubicle to the showers. On the way, she stopped at the sink array and scanned her palm. The sink would promptly dispense 100 ml of water into a container. The water was meant for drinking. She looked down at the glass that was filled to the brim with clear cold water. The glass held at least 400 ml. The dispenser had given her way too much. She smiled at her luck. The dispenser had gone wonky before, usually dispensing less than the required amount. She looked at the glass and smiled again. She furtively glanced up and down the hallway lined with sinks. No one was up yet. She had the space to herself. She took another sip of water and then poured half of the remainder into her cupped hand and splashed it over her face and sleep-crusted eyes. She rubbed it in and quickly dried her face with the tail of her night shirt. She gulped down the remainder, replaced the glass and headed to the showers. The showers used water but you couldn’t drink it. You stood with arms and legs outstretched and a mist of water and cleaners would spray every square cm of your body. It hit you at high speed and stung your skin. After about 10 seconds of cleaning time, a second stinging mist blasted your skin, followed by gusting air and an ultraviolet bacteria wash. The whole process took about one minute. You stepped out of the shower ‘clean as an Omie’s whistle’. (Note: Omie is slang for a biome dweller.) Jayne Ester Wu stepped out of the shower, slipped on her nightshirt and skipped happily back to her cubicle for the last time.
Chapter 2 – “The PUT Pad and the Dumb Giant”
2019 was the year the meteors were discovered. Best new estimates gave planet earth and the rest of the solar system 174 years before the cosmic sandstorm would blow in from intergalactic space and wash it all away. Each grain was 1 to 500 km in diameter. The space between each was less than the smallest of the particles. It was a wall of space rock a billion km across, hurtling towards earth. No one knew how thick it was. That did not matter. The fact that it existed at all spelled doom for all living things and doom for the planet itself.
Jayne arrived at biome HUB entrance 169M at precisely 13:00 hours. She had to get used to using the 24hr clock, after all she was no longer a nursery baby. She was on her way to being a tech. The HUB entrance was an archway made of concrete and steel with three massive rollup steel doors set equidistant across the face. The right door was painted green, the left door was red and the centre door was yellow. To the side of the large left and right doors were two regular man doors painted the same colours; red and green. There were guards at each of these small man doors. Jayne breathed deep and held her breath. She slowly let out the air and sighed. A chill ran outwards from her core, down her arms and legs. It seemed to spark out her fingers and toes just as another chill swelled in her chest and ran the same path. She shook her hands and snapped her fingers as if to speed up the passage of the electricity surging out her finger tips. She slipped the knapsack from her shoulders and set it down in front of her. The rest of her belongings would be sent once she was settled. This HUB would be her home for the next two years.
Jayne turned slowly in a circle and let the sights and sounds and smells waft over her. The cacophony of machinery swelled and ebbed around her. The big transports clicked on to the monorail and entered the green door while others exited the red door, clicked off the monorail and drove away. There was no way to tell which was loaded and which was empty. There was no way of knowing what was inside. There were people all around her, some moving purposefully and others just standing in place. Jayne took her VID out of her hip pouch and pressed her thumb over the scan core. The VID lit up.
Jayne sniffed and wrinkled her nose. A person had appeared and was now standing one meter to her right. She looked to her right and then quickly looked away. A boy had appeared and was adjusting his knapsack. He fumbled around inside with hands that seemed too big for his arms and came up with a VID. He checked his location. Jayne could see a red glow from the VID screen through his big fingers. The boy looked down, then up, then around. Panic seemed to swell in his eyes, partially covered with a shock of dark hair that dropped down in front of his face. He tapped the VID screen and looked around for someone to help him. He did not see Jayne standing one meter to his left. He looked right over her, for he was very tall. The fear on his face swelled and his eyes flicked back to the VID screen that continued to glow red. Jayne made a noise. She had interlaced her fingers, inverted her hands and stretched them out in front of her. Some of her finger joints popped. The tall boy turned toward the sound and looked down at Jayne, seeing her for the first time. Jayne smiled up at him. He breathed out and glanced back and forth from his VID to her face.
“It’s red. It won’t go green,” he said, managing a weak smile.
“You sure the COORs match?” Jayne asked. (Note: COORs is slang for coordinates.)
“Yeah!” he retorted, irritated that she would even ask the question.
“Sorry, I was just trying to help. I didn’t mean anything by it,” she replied. “Sometimes the VID sensors can be off by a few centimeters. That’s what I have noticed in the past.”
“The past! You sound like you are 30 not … what …” he paused as he looked her up and down trying to come up with an accurate age, “15 or 16? What’s a kid like you doing here anyway? There is no way you could have passed the TEM exam.”
Jayne didn’t react. She had dealt with this before. She looked at him, starting with his head. It rested on shoulders at least a meter above her. His hair was dark and course and clumped into short and long blocks. It had probably been cut by a butcher with a dull knife. His eyes were dark, so dark you could not see where the iris stopped and the pupil began. They were hard to read. Pupil reaction was impossible to determine. He could lie with impunity. His jaw was strong with just a few wisps of whiskers. The rest of him could be described with one short word. He was simply big. Her eyes swept down his body and came to rest at his feet. They were not big, they were monstrous. He stood with both those monstrous feet sticking out to the side, like bow legged Bozo the clown. A smile crept slowly over her face. She looked up at him and said, “Never mind how old I am. I got here fairly.”
He seemed to dismiss her and went back to the problem at hand. He had to figure out why the VID screen had not gone green. He was in the right place on the right day. He looked up at the digital clock that inexorably counted down to the end of the world. Over the years, it had been adjusted in the light of more accurate measurements. The latest adjustment had given the earth a little more than 82 years. Right below was the local time. The clock read 12:46. “Crap!” he said and he tapped his VID screen again and looked frantically around for help. There seemed to be hundreds of people in and around the PUT area, but none close enough to talk to without shouting. He was unwilling to move, in case that made the situation worse. Finally he looked down at Jayne. She grinned back up at him. “What are you smiling about? This is a serious situation.” He looked up to the sky as if he was imploring the deities to come to his aid.
“I think I can help,” giggled Jayne.
“Yeah right. You’re just a baby and you don’t get how serious this is. If this VID doesn’t go green…”
“Like this,” she interrupted, waving her VID, glowing green, in front of his face.
“Yeah, like that. If mine doesn’t go green, I will have to go back to INTER (Intermediate Technical Educational Reassessment) and start over. I would rather die,” he said sighing, “and you are so stupid you don’t get it.”
“Oh, I get it alright. Give me your hand,” she commanded. She held out her hand to him. He hesitated. “Give me your hand. I will make that VID of yours go green.” She glanced up at the clock. It read 12:47. “You have 13 minutes to solve this problem or you can put your hand in mine and I will solve it in a few seconds.”
“What are you going to do?” he asked tentatively.
“Just give me your hand. I don’t bite …,” she paused and smiled, “hard enough to draw blood anyway.” His eyes widened. “I am just teasing,” she retorted, as she reached up and grabbed his hand. “Now follow my instructions carefully and precisely. First, look down.” He looked at her as if she was touched in the head. “Look down at your huge feet, you silly boy.”
He found himself following her instructions and looked down at his feet. “That’s right. Now I want you to concentrate on moving the toes on your left foot closer to the toes on your right foot. Do you think you can manage that?” she said, suppressing a giggle as she let go of his hand.
“What?” he said.
“Just move your feet together so that the heels touch and the big toes touch,” she said.
“You want me to take my shoes off? What good would that do?” he asked.
“No, silly, just place your feet together, with shoes on, like mine,” she said, pointing at her own feet. He moved his feet together. “That’s right. Well done. Now check your VID.”
He stood, with feet together, and snapped open his VID. It was glowing green. He looked at her with relief and said, “How did you do that?”
“It’s the PUT pads. You cannot have any part of your body extending more than 50 cm past the COOR center point. I figured, with the way you were standing, legs apart and feet sticking out, that you had gone past the edge. If the PUT pad were to activate, it might leave your toes behind.”
“Thanks,” he said.
“You are welcome,” she said, “and don’t ever call me stupid again.”
“OK,” he said. “But why did you want to hold my hand?”
“People are more willing to listen to each other when they are connected in some way. I just figured a little hand-holding would calm you down,” she said.
They both turned and looked straight ahead. They stood in silence, tension mounting, as they waited for the PUT pads to activate and take them to whatever awaited them in the HUB.
Chapter 3 – “The Cube and the Star”
The human race was not about to go down without a fight. There were a lot of ideas bounced around for at least 10 years after the discovery of the meteor swarm. That is how everyone thought of the those rocks hurtling through space. They were not inanimate like a ‘hail storm’. They were viewed as living things; evil flying insects or blood sucking bats. You could hate living things. You couldn’t hate rocks. So the meteors became malevolent monsters that were bent on the destruction of the human race.
The PUT had dropped Jayne off in front of a metal door. There were no knobs or locks, just an outline in the metal where the door retracted into the wall. The number 2197 was etched into the frame above the door. She was standing in a hall that curved in the direction of her door on the left-hand side and away from her door on the right. An ‘S’ curve is what she pictured in her head if she viewed the hallway from above. You could not see very far. The curve blocked her sight after about 10 meters. There were other doors spaced three meters apart on her side of the hall. Across the hall was a smooth metal wall that followed the same ‘S’ curve. Jayne turned and walked across the hall away from her door. She wanted to get a better view of where she was going to live for the next two years. As she approached the opposite wall and was about to turn around, something happened to a one meter circular section of the wall in front of her. She stared. It was as if a hole had formed in the wall. She reached out to touch it, expecting her hand to go right through, but it felt just like the metal wall would feel; cool and smooth. It showed the huge tech floor below. There were hundreds of workers milling about in the largest tech floor she had ever seen. She stared and walked to her left and the large screen followed her as she walked. It was an instavid; new tech she had read about. Instavids were activated by the presence of the viewer and moved as the viewer moved. Jayne smiled and ran quickly to her right. The viewer kept perfect pace. When she jumped, it jumped. If she were to jog along the wall, she could see the screen beside her. She returned to her door and opened her VID. She pressed her thumb to the VID screen and pointed it at the door. It opened silently and she stepped inside.
