Summon (45 page)

Kali repeated that like a mantra; two was as
delightful as three.

“Learn anything last night?” Max asked. His eyes
roamed for food.

He spied the cereal box and grabbed it before
scowling. Reading Max’s DNA, the box turned red, and an advertisement for a new
FloBi flickered on.

“There should be a new box in the bottom cupboard
next to the FeedMe.”

His eyebrows plunged, and he smirked. “Aren’t I a
guest?”

“Do I look like a FetchMe,” she snapped, and dumped
the empty box in the trash compactor.

Chuckling, Max went hunting for a bowl and milk.
“You should upgrade this kitchen.” Kali shrugged. He shook his head. “Weird.”

“Whatever. Last night I watched a martial arts
film. Things got interesting.”

Max dumped food on the table with a clatter. “Show
me?”

Kali jumped off the stool, and opened a draw to
snag a rather large knife. Without turning, she said, “In-between the two
picture frames on the far wall.”

The space she referred to was about an inch thick
in width. As she opened and closed the draw an additional two times with one
hand, Kali quarter turned, and without pausing to blink threw the knife with
her free hand into the opposite wall. It embedded itself in-between the picture
frames, dead centre.

“That was my left hand,” she said proudly, wiggling
her digits. “I’m ambidextrous.”

Max clapped his heavy palms together then clicked
his thumbs to give her gun fingers. “Stellar. You still can’t apply the same
learning technique to analytical abilities rather than physical?”

Kali shook her head then tucked hair behind her
ears before dragging her clip out, wincing when hair pulled. She held the clip
in her mouth freeing her hands to do the ponytail again. “If it’s purely
movement of the body, I watch it once, and can imitate if it’s physically
possible. But anything that requires use of intellect, like cracking ComUni
code, I can’t do.” She frowned as she finished the ponytail with a flourish.
“If I watched somebody hack into a database then was able to hack into the same
database using the same key strokes on a VirtuaPad, sure. I’d be moving my
fingers in a certain pattern, but that wouldn’t work in any realistic
scenario.”

“You’re smart anyway. That’s not a big deal, I
guess.”

“Imagine how useful an eidetic memory would be
considering what I can already do.”

Kali wondered if somebody had both abilities. They
would be a force to be reckoned with.

Max shrugged brawny shoulders. “You can do a lot
already, Kal.”

He was right. What she did was extraordinary by her
own standards. Kali wasn’t known as dim. Compared to average her intelligence
quotient was frighteningly high, and her practical left-handed-outlook to
situations made her approach problems sideways.

Nobody but Max knew about the physical skill she
had, but that was only because she’d only just consciously realised that what
she did was abnormal, and he’d been there to witness the moment it happened.

Max and Kali shared a love of retro culture.
Watching films from the previous century, playing old video games built outside
of the HoloSphere, listening to pre-recorded music that was created by people,
not machines that analyze your mood.

They’d been watching a HoloVid about ballet, and
when the ballerina auditioned for the prima role Kali stood to mock the dance.
Her body took control. She danced the choreography as if she had been a
ballerina her entire life. Leaping across her sitting room like a spectral
being, she’d been graceful, poised ... just sensational. Her toes had bled and
her muscles ached afterward, but she remembered being elated then decisively
terrified.

She didn’t understand how she had been able to do
it considering she’d never had a lesson in her life, and she’d never been to
the ballet. Kali was the kind of girl who screamed profanities at her favourite
HoverBall team, not the kind who strapped on satin shoes and danced around. She
had always been gifted at physical tasks, and her professors said she took
direction well, to the point they always questioned if she had previous
training.

Never before had it been that obvious how she
learnt was different.

Kali watched fight scenes and mimicked everything,
everything
, flawlessly. She watched a
body movement once, and without having to practice, she copied it. Her body
remembered the movement, and she didn’t forget how to do it.

She made Max swear not to say anything to anyone.

They debated possibilities in-between the endless
search for employment, and ruled out her ability being supernatural or
paranormal in nature. There was a logical process her brain and body went
through. She couldn’t think of anything then do it. She had to
see
the movement to replicate it.
Anything she watched enhanced or altered by special effects became apparent.

“I searched the IntraWave for the characteristics
I’m displaying,” she said. “I didn’t find anybody who has ever reported similar
abilities, but I think I found something relevant. If I’m right, I have an
extreme muscle memory syndrome. I found an article written by a scientist that
suggested a skill called Implicit Procedural Memory might be possible in
humans. I think that’s what I’ve got.”

Kali spoke of the ability like an illness, and that
reflected how she felt. She was already a bump in the elitist road. This was
another oddity that would single her out as a freak.

HiEco society demanded perfection and uniformity.

It burned her parents were shunned by their peers
and not invited to Alliance banquets because of her, because she was
‘defective’.

“Alright.” Max shrugged. “That’s better than what I
had.”

Kali cocked her head. “What did you think it was?”

“That you’re an alien superhero thrown off your
home plant because you have mental problems.”

Pinching her lips, Kali threatened to throw her
TalkMe. He pretended to duck and chuckled as he munched from an overloaded
spoon. Milk dribbled down his chin. He swiped it away with the back of his
hand, and wiped it on his grimy tank top.

“Not funny,” she grunted and smacked his beefy arm.
“I have a serious–” Whack. “Medical–” Thump. “Condition.” Slap.
“You’re not allowed to take the piss.”

He fended off her blows by jerking to the side and
kicking her stool. She squealed when it tilted dangerously and grabbed the
tabletop to keep from falling.

“We’ll do more research.” The spoon he shoved
inside his mouth muffled the words. “Is the scientist still around?”

“No.” Kali made a sad face. “He died early
twentieth, a dead end there.”

“Ah. Message me the link. Maybe we can follow up
somehow. He must have published other articles or research on this theory.
Don’t worry. If it’s there, we’ll find it.” He paused. “Ask Rikard. If there’s
anybody who can help it’s your father, Kal.”

She grimaced. “I don’t want to worry my parents
right now. They’re concerned I haven’t found a job. Each day the light in
Papa’s eye gets more intense when he asks how it’s going.”

He patted the top of her head. “How is it going?”

“Awful.” She was too depressed to even take a swing
at Max for the head patting. “They see the name Loklear and start salivating,
but the nanosecond they realise who I am the excuses roll in. I’m too young,
too educated, not educated enough, or I’m lying when I say I graduated already.
If by starlight they get past all of that they get prissy when they find out I
have no experience.” She raised her hands and let them fall to slap her thighs.
“Of course I have no work experience. I finished studying three years early a
month ago.”

“I’d get you a job at Pluto’s if Dod was hiring. He
had to let people go last week. I’m waiting for the day he slaps my shoulder
and tells me to take a hike.”

“Yes, because I’d love to tell my insanely
successful parents I’m working as a serving girl for LoEco citizens. If things
were different I’d be grateful, but I’m an embarrassment to them already.” She
sighed. “At least you have a job. It’s something to put on your profile.”

“Yeah. Freezing my ass off on my bike for four
hundred credits an hour doesn’t exactly impress, Kal.” Max shook off the
melancholy and grinned. He was a cup half full kind of person, always able to
push everything away to have a good time. The tabletop got drummed. “I want
more action.”

Kali plucked the knife from the wall in case she
forgot to remove it before her parents got home. “Max?”

“Yeah?”

She flipped the knife and caught the tip on her
forefinger, balancing it on the point. Grabbing the hilt, she hurled it at the
chopping board on the other side of the room. It landed dead centre in the
block of wood. The blade wobbled, rooted at an angle.

Max swallowed hard and dropped this spoon into the
mixing bowl he’d been using as breakfast crockery.

Kali’s fists met her hips in satisfaction. “Do you
know how to use the FeedMe? I need to make a dumpling.”

5.

Lara
stood in the middle of her single-roomed dwelling and stared at the middle
distance, grinding her back teeth together. She was jittery. Not only did she
have to deal with everybody thinking she used all her credit for freaky
enhancements, her body was going through
something.

At least the pressing need to learn about the
weapons that lined her walls was gone now. The information she had on
constructing weapons of mass destruction was tucked away in her memory banks,
and her fingers no longer itched to test out the explosives she was able to
create from substances as common as grain and bleach.

Should she be relieved or afraid she no longer felt
the urge to gather such information?

She wasn’t stupid it was all connected. What she
was, why she did the things she did, and why she needed to hide it from
everyone. The question she had was why all of a sudden had everything either
stopped or accelerated. She had noticed subtle changes in the last few months,
as if her body geared up for something.

Her hair was driving her crazy. She used to dye it
bright pink, now the colour wouldn’t hold on her new hair growth. It was that
horrible freakish white-blonde. Worse, her eyes kept changing hue. It was like
a kaleidoscope behind her irises.

Before it had been easy to lie about why she had
fangs as enhancements, and why she had decided to dye her irises. Now the
excuses were flimsy. She was a waiter for one of the slummiest strip bars in
the quadrant. How was she making enough credit to keep altering herself? Nobody
bought it. Even her boss was wary. He kept hinting that maybe it was time for
her to pack up and move on.

She dragged on a lightweight bodysuit and grabbed
her rucksack. It was already packed with supplies to last weeks.

Lara slipped her favourite laser knife into the
secret compartment in her pocket. It stopped the weapon being picked up by the
pesky BodyScan.

It was time to stop hiding, time to reach out and
discover what was wrong with her.

She even had a place to start.

Grabbing her TalkMe, she scrolled through the blog
that grabbed her attention months ago. Lara sniffed at the encrypted data
hiding the blogger’s BMID, and started hacking.

6.

The
door slammed open, and a muscular body crowded the doorway. “I found
something,” Max bellowed. He shut the door, waited, and then shook his head.
“Your parental units are too understanding. If the A.I. in my house logged a
male in Madeleine’s bedroom closing the door the alarms would go insane.”

“Madeleine’s four years old,” Kali grumbled. Up to
the chin in the bedcovers, she squinted at the time projected onto the wall. “
I’d
go nuts if some strange man was in
her room.” She scooted over, and Max sprawled out on the bed beside her.

He took out his TalkMe, fingers swiping lazily. The
harsh glare of the artificial light had Kali tucking her face into his arm. She
loved it when he let her snuggle, he was like a big teddy.

He prodded her stomach. “I’m going to message you
the blog I found.”

“Read it aloud.” When Max started talking, she
pinched him. “The last update, not the feed address.” She yawned, her jaw
cracking. Jamming the heels of her palms into her eye sockets, Kali rubbed
hard. “Do I have my ComUni in bed with me? And what does quadrant U stand for?
Which quadrant is the blogger’s BeepMe ID registered?”

“U stands for Untraceable. That’s what’s
interesting about this feed. This citizen is blocking his BMID from the network
making him anonymous. No one can trace the wave mark. You’re bounced a link to
the address of an empty junkyard in Quadrant18.”

“We know it’s a he because…?”

“I can tell. Where’s your TalkMe?”

Kali waved a hand toward the discarded clothes.
Depression had knocked her flat after another rejected employment application.
Sleeping off the hurt was more attractive than crying. Folding clothes, and
removing the TalkMe hadn’t been high on the to-do-list when she tumbled into
bed. “There somewhere. Wait, nobody knows who this citizen is?” That was
strange. Privacy of that magnitude didn’t exist. Citizens of the Alliance were
registered in the BeepMe network. Period. It was unifying. Knowing an
identifying username was the only way you were able to communicate unless you
stood face to face.