Binary Cycle - (Part 1: Disruption) (10 page)

Jonathas needed help. Something was going wrong with the nano-DNA. He needed to find Linsya and get to the surface as soon as possible, seek medical attention, find the fitter and ask him what the hell was going on. 

He staggered back toward the rock pile, rolling up his sleeves, preparing for what would be hours of work moving all those rocks.

The rocks were gone.

At least most of them were. Where there had been a blocked corridor, was now a narrow passageway with debris on either side. A dim light seeped through the opening.

What’s going on?

Confused and dizzy, Jonathas headed for the opening and nearly cried out when the angle allowed him to see straight through to the other end of a newly created corridor.

The drone was off to one side, sitting idly by, its digging utensil protruding from its steaming body.

All thoughts disappeared when he saw a shadow on the ground some meters ahead. Linsya lay unmoving, surrounded by a pool of blood, loose rocks lying everywhere.

Jonathas ran toward her, tears streaming down his face, saying her name over and over again. He knelt down beside her unmoving body on the moist ground, his knees getting soaked in her blood. The gore covered her head, face and hands and glistened sickly brown against the glow of orange light.

He was too late…

“Skyia, I missed you so much,” Cassidy said as she took a step back to admire her daughter. “That dress is fabulous on you! You look more beautiful every time I see you. It’s no wonder I never take you with me, I wouldn’t get any work done for fending off all the men.”

Skyia knew this was meant as a compliment, but it stung being reminded that she had never once been asked to accompany her mother on her away missions.

“I missed you too,” Skyia said. “Thanks for coming home, I really didn’t want to spend this Night alone.”

“And of course I wouldn’t make you. I’m always home in time for Night, you know that,” her mom said, setting her bags down beside the door.

“I know. But really, you could take me with you next time. I promise I won’t talk to any boys. They’re all so ugly anyways.”

This elicited a laugh from her mom and she grabbed Skyia’s hand, leading her further inside their home. Skyia’s first thought was that
she
should be the one guiding her mom around the house, but having her home made Skyia feel like a little girl again, not the independent young woman that she morphed into while her mother was away.

“Skyia, there’s so much I have to tell you. Just let me unpack and grab a bite to eat. Then you and I are going on a drive, just the two of us. There’s so much you need to know.” 

Her mom’s expression turned serious as she left the room, and Skyia wondered what could possibly rattle her—that constant and never changing rock in her life.

She slipped back into her silver tunic and a short while later, Cassidy emerged from her bedroom rubbing a shoulder. She had changed out of her travel clothes—dusty and bedraggled as they were from her long buggy ride up from the city—and now sported a Spindex endurance suit, the kind usually worn by athletes or pilots. It hugged tightly against her body and—despite being almost forty-years-old—highlighted a figure that many men lusted over and held in their minds long after she disappeared from view.

Her mom’s sandy-blonde hair was similar to her own, although Skyia’s had an obvious dash of darker shades to it, as if her genes hadn’t been able to decide whether to keep her mother’s dirty-blonde hair, or her father’s ruddy brown. Not that she knew what her father’s hair looked like—she’d never seen a picture of him, nor had her mom even told her his name—but Skyia’s imagination tended to run wild with such extrapolations. She often wondered where her specific genetic traits came from. She had to stop herself from always asking questions about her father: what his name was, what he looked like, how tall he was, and most importantly, what had really happened between him and her mom. 

As Cassidy crossed the room, the skin-tight Spindex revealed her strong, muscled legs. Her motions were powerful, yet graceful. Skyia thought of her own body: a younger, smaller imitation of her mother’s. She wondered if men would look at her the same way; she wondered whether she’d want them to. She’d never had a boyfriend, barely had any male friends, and so far, she hadn’t given a lick about boys. Sure, she had her celebrity crushes—which teenage girl didn’t?—but she’d never felt the desire for an actual relationship with a boy. She always imagined she’d sail that ship when it arrived in port, which it certainly had yet to do. Besides, she didn’t imagine she’d attract men the way her mother did. Skyia knew she wasn’t nearly as graceful, smart, or charming as she was. Maybe some day…

She met her mom at the door and took her hand. Together, they walked toward the buggy, not speaking, just content to be in each other’s presence. Skyia dropped her mom’s hand and walked around to the passenger side. She hauled herself up into the vehicle, grateful for the open top which wouldn’t hamper their view of the gorgeous sunset hues streaming through the clouds.

“MiLO says we only have a few days of light left.” Skyia said regretfully.

Cassidy nodded. “I guess I came home just in time. Don’t worry, I’ll have MiLO begin the Night preparations soon, although I’m sure he’s already begun.” 

She looked at her daughter as she inserted the key into the ignition, coaxing the vehicle to life. “So, what have you been up to while I was away?”

“Oh you know me, nothing too exciting,” Skyia raised a hand. “Mostly just studying, reading, spending time up on the mesa.” She didn’t mention the fall, unsure whether MiLO had brought it up. No need to stress her mom out.

“How are your courses going? Did MilO get a chance to go over some of that advanced calculus you were having trouble with last time I was home? I’m sorry I wasn’t much use, mathematics have never been my strongest subject.”

Skyia raised her eyebrows. “…says the world famous scientist?” 

Cassidy shrugged. “I’m a geophysicist. We leave all the complicated math up to the computers.”

“Well, why can’t
I
leave it up to the computers?” Skyia suggested.

“It’s not so much about learning math for real life applications. It’s more to teach your brain how to solve problems and develop good study habits. Very few things we learn in school are applicable to real life. Your studies are designed to train your brain, make you smarter,” she said.

“Well, considering how much studying I do when you’re gone, I’m gonna be the smartest girl on Taran.”

Skyia grabbed hold of the side bar as her mom reversed out of the car hold, spun the wheel with practiced skill, and barrelled toward the pathway leading up the mountain road. They drove in the opposite direction of the electrified gate, and any dangers that might be lurking behind it.

“My muscles feel a bit achey from all the travelling,” Cassidy said over the engine noise, rubbing a shoulder with one hand and steering with the other. “Let’s see if we can find some
lily of the valley,
I’ll get MiLO to mix something up with it once we get home.”

Skyia nodded and started scanning the patches of vegetation lining the road, looking for those telltale white flowers. She thought they may have been one of the flower species imported from Earth, though she couldn’t quite remember.

The noise from the engine and crunching gravel made any conversation nearly impossible. As was their custom, they rode together in comfortable silence, knowing that once they reached their destination they could speak freely.

Reggie gazed upward as they passed through the station door. The flagship Alexendian train port was truly impressive. Marble and glass surrounded him, ferns and exotic plants grew from wall-gardens, and white pillars rose up out of an intricately patterned stone floor.

The tracks were suspended twenty meters in the air and connected to a vast transportation network which formed a loop around the planet, running through every major city on the east-west latitude band of human settlement. The original colonists had chosen their desired climate zone and had built in that latitude all the way around the globe. The only expansion north or south of that lateral line was when it was necessary for operations such as mining—like the titanium mines to the north of Corpoli—or power generation—such as the binary cycle thermal mines in Bangalia. With a total population of only twenty-five million people, Tarans had never needed to move outside their comfort zone.

Reggie pushed through the entrance and was greeted with a rush of brisk air. He relaxed a little as he felt the clinically sterile breeze swirl around him, cooling his body.

“That’s better, eh Reg?” Stevens nudged him in the ribs as they walked toward a long line at the ticket counter. Magnus shot his partner a look that said
please, try to be professional.

Reggie followed the two men as they walked straight past the ticket counters and into the main foyer of the station.

“We don’t need to buy tickets?” Reggie asked, glancing back at the counter.

“Who do you think we are, normal people?” Stevens patted his breast pocket where the outline of three tickets were visible through the thin fabric.

The ceiling opened up as they passed into the platform area. Above, steel beams criss-crossed the vast enclosure and the suns shone in through a glass ceiling. During the Night, the glass would display serene blue skies and puffy white clouds: a gimmick to calm weary travellers as they waited for their trains. Many homes and buildings employed such visual trickery at Night. Even Reggie’s apartment had holo-glass windows that he could program with an almost infinite variety of weather conditions. He liked to set it to random and speed up the simulation, watching weather patterns shift and change at an impossibly fast rate. For some reason, swirling clouds and frantic rain storms made him feel at peace.

“Here we are,” Magnus said as they approached platform seven.

Reggie hadn’t been on a mag-lev train since his last foray into the Andalusian province, where he’d filmed the butterflies. These mag-levs were the most sophisticated trains ever built by human hands; even compared with what they supposedly used to have on Earth. The lighter Taran gravity allowed humans to do many things which would have been impossible on Earth. On a proper straightaway, the mag-levs could reach speeds as high as six-hundred kilometers per hour—by far the fastest way to travel around the planet.

Reggie stepped to the edge of the platform and examined the tracks, which weren’t really tracks at all, but an intertwining series of powerful superconducting electromagnets. They interacted with equally powerful magnets on the bottom of the train, enabling the train to hover a meter or two in the air. An ion engine at the rear of the train propelled it forward, allowing it to quickly accelerate to high speeds. The only friction occurred due to air resistance, none from the track itself. On Earth, such a train would have been too heavy for this system to work, but at eighty-percent of Earth’s gravity, Taran transportation was safer and more economically viable.

Of course, Earth had also had airplanes. With the increase in orbital disruptions the past two decades, Taran could no longer afford such luxuries. The intense gravitational and electromagnetic disturbances saw to that. When the first major disruption struck, the delicate navigational tools used by pilots went haywire, and dozens of planes crashed and burned. Some lucky pilots were able to make crash landings using no technological assistance, but air travel had been banned shortly after that disastrous event.

After a short wait—Stevens whistling some inane pop song—Reggie saw their train approaching in the distance. Its hulking frame grew larger as it neared the station. A sleek white nose glistened, gently curving up to meet the main body of the train. It possessed the wind resistance of a bullet, and was nearly as fast. The train slowed gracefully, a soft swish of displaced air the only sound betraying its entrance into the station.

Swooping into the platform, passengers instinctively stepped back from the tracks, as if the great emerging beast would lash out at them without warning. It hissed to a halt and wide doors opened up along its glossy hull, accepting passengers in a torrent of moving bodies.

Magnus grabbed Reggie by the arm and pulled him into one of the foremost cars near the front of the train. They climbed the steps and passed under an arch into the cool compress of the train’s first compartment. Even though the doors were open, the interior air had a sterilized feeling, created by rapid pressurization that would occur in less than ten minutes when the train would zip out of the station. 

A man with dark sunglasses and a large briefcase bumped into Reggie from behind, giving him a sour look as he pushed past them into the train.

A gash cut across Linsya’s head the size of a man’s hand. 

She lay on the rocky ground—eyes closed and breathing shallow. Blood  seeped out of a deep wound in her skull and oozed down the side of her face. When it reached the bottom of her cheek, it gathered there a moment and then dripped, spilling down her neck.

Jonathas brought a hand to his forehead, surveying the gruesome scene. Linsya looked like a corpse, laid out in the basement of some crematorium, ready to be placed inside a kiln and fired up. If only he’d found her sooner. If only she had stayed with him after the disruption. If only their planet wasn’t getting knocked about its axis, turning their home into a fucking deathtrap.

This was his way of grieving, blaming events out of his control in a futile attempt to shirk the blame off to some other place, some other person. But Jonathas knew the truth: had he not lost consciousness they would still be together right now, both healthy and alert, trying to find their way out of this mess together.

Or would they?
Perhaps they would have been walking through the hall where poor Fletcher had perished and would have succumbed to that same grisly fate?