Cultwick: The Sweeper Bot Plague (4 page)

Chapter 4. Alice the Operative

Operative Alice Page stood in the foyer of Dr. Rowland’s home soaking in everything she could about the people who lived there. She was tasked with hunting them down and bringing them to justice in the name of Cultwick. They had not only refused their obligation to advance the empire, but also flouted extreme disrespect for the church - her church.

Alice had spent her life seeking to rise through the ranks of the church’s extensive hierarchy. She followed their teachings and guidelines in an attempt to become closer to her god.

She had purified herself through biological augmentations and purged herself of the use and need of machines. Her prowess in hunting down and retrieving apostates and heretics was unrivaled in the Reclamation Bureau. She had earned a reputation with her colleagues as an aggressive and cold-blooded woman. She didn’t seem to mind such accusations.

Because this was a very high-visibility case, Alice was brought in at the personal request of the
Lord Reverend himself. She couldn’t and wouldn’t fail his grace in this time of need. The heretic, Erynn Clover, would be caught, put on trial, sentenced to death, and Alice would be there when she took her final breath.

Therefore
, the operative stood in that room, attempting to make sense of who these three dissenters were. Alice walked through the foyer into a nearby laboratory, her hard, blood red leather, tightly laced-up boots crunching broken glass beneath her feet; her black, floor length, ball gown dragging pieces of splintered wood and debris behind her.

She held both hands crossed at the small of her back, the excess strands lacing up the red, top-tier of her strapless gown tickling at her palm. Her platinum blonde hair piled vertically upon itself into a twisting, curly mass, accentuated with a pink, delicate flower weaved into its side.

Alice’s skin was a pale, pasty white except for a slender vertical slit of red lipstick in the center of both lips and a solid line of black outlining her eyes and extending into sharp curves at the sides.

She looked down at a scene of slaughter on the lab floor, two separate pieces of a cat that she could only expect was some sort of experiment gone awry. She wondered what kind of man this Professor Rowland truly was.
Surely, he could have had a promising career if he had only given his mind to the greater purpose of the church's vision.

Scattered about the room were dozens of distinct and separate worktables, each with their own sets of beakers, syringes, and scientific notes. The experiments he was performing must have been wonderful, she thought. She found herself quite impressed at the level of biological augme
ntation that was going on in his home. Perhaps the girl is to blame for his mistakes, Alice thought.

She
returned back to the bombed out living room that the corpsmen had for some reason decided to attack, when there were no living souls inside. She was irritated that they would contaminate her crime scene so fruitlessly. Alice made her way to the stairs leading up, lightly placing a hand on the railing and ascending them with grace, care, and caution.

She found first a
room that she quickly decided must have belonged to Professor Rowland, as there were half-used syringes scattered about the room in disarray. He had clearly been here and gathered several items in a hurry. Clothes appeared to be missing from his closet and papers from a worktable had been shuffled around in a panic.

The next room in the hallway was far neater than the previous and also much smaller and plainer. The butler, Germ, as she knew him to be called, must have occupied
the room. She understood the rat creature was an amazing experiment of the professor's, and she had read about it some years back when she was still studying at the church's institute.

Apparently,
the professor had earned a reward in addition to being offered a lucrative job in the Center for Empirical Research. He declined, it seemed, but she began to find herself aroused by the scientific prowess of the man she investigated.

Germ's room was still mostly in place and she only noted a few missing articles of clothing before moving on. The remainder of the upstairs area was filled with laboratory space where the professor had
performed more of his experiments, but she did note, running her finger along a cylindrical tube, that he may have been spending less time in those rooms as the level of dust on the various apparatuses was higher than in the downstairs lab.

Alice wiped clean her hands and began to search for Erynn Clover's room, the lottery winner herself. She eventually found her target's room on the basement level. This room, she noted to herself, was by far the most disorganized and chaotic.

In fact, Alice thought, it looked like something or someone had been in a struggle in this room. The state of the area was far too cluttered to determine if there was anything missing. The room, however, mostly consisted of mechanical parts, and Alice expected this Clover woman had never given any level of respect for the teachings of the church and its good book.

Clearly,
she was the piece in this puzzle to receive the blame. Perhaps the church would have some leniency on Professor Rowland and his experiment Germ, but this chromesmithing woman and her mechanical inventions were a taint on the greater workings of Cultwick and the Church of Biosynthesis.

Though chromesmithing
wasn’t a new component in the city, many in the church saw them with a certain level of disgust. Those who made these devices and contraptions even more so than those who used them.

Having seen enough at their home, Alice decided to next visit the lab where the professor worked and where, from what she understood, the girl had a laboratory of her own. She made the journey from the mansion to the university - a path that the targets would have walked frequently. Alice took in all the sights along the way, trying to piece together how this young girl could have grown to have such disdain for the place in which she lived.

She passed several upscale restaurants and clothing shops, a postal office, and a railway station that connected to all the major city stops as well as some of the western cities. The buildings she passed along the way were already plastered with wanted posters with Erynn's picture as well as smaller pictures of the professor, his butler, and the automaton.

Periodically a voice would
boom over the loudspeakers spread throughout the city, "Remember! It is your duty to turn in the apostate Erynn Clover and her accomplices. If you have any information about their whereabouts, report immediately to the nearest corpsman or to the Reclamation Bureau building. Your government needs you to stay vigilant in these difficult times."

Soaring above her were half a dozen skyships. Among them, she spotted several corpsmen vessels that she believed were undoubtedly scouring the city looking for Erynn and the others.

Alice entered the university entrance, winding her way through the halls until she found the professor's office and laboratory. In the corner of the room, she found an out-of-place workbench with mechanical contraptions and parts - clearly used by the Clover woman.

She inspected the pieces lying out in front of her, coming to the conclusion she was building some sort of weapon. Bullets, tubing, and gunpowder were in ample supply, yet not a single syringe or beaker in sight.

“Disgusting,” she said to herself. “She couldn’t have worshiped god, when she spent so much time worshiping her machines.”

Walking across the room, she stopped at a dummy that had been torn apart by bullets and then cleaned and piled up in the corner. Alice reasoned that the woman had a way with the mechanics of guns.

The operative found a list of classes lying on the professor's desk indicating a lecture that was scheduled to start soon. Perhaps some of the students would still show up, she thought. Not everyone pays such close attention to the workings of the government and church - especially students too focused on their own lives. Alice made a note of the room number and walked to the lecture hall where Professor Rowland was soon supposed to be teaching.

The room was a large, empty auditorium that could house up to one hundred students should the need arise. Alice wondered how many students the professor was teaching in his classes, how many young minds he was shaping, and how many he had led away from the teachings of the church. She found a chair behind a desk and took a seat, waiting patiently for students to arrive.

It wasn’t long before a young man and woman entered the room, looking surprised to see her. He asked, "Where's the professor? Are we still meeting today?"

Alice looked up at them and simply responded, "Take your seats. We'll begin soon.”

The two complied, still looking confused; they all continued to wait for others to enter the classroom. Soon more began to join them and Alice asked them to do the same. When roughly twenty students had come in, the operative stood and began to speak to them.

"My name is Operative Page," she began. "As I’m sure you can guess I work directly for the Reclamation Bureau."

At this, many of the students began to quietly whisper to one another looking very surprised indeed. She gave them a moment before continuing, "Since you all showed up today, I'd expect you haven’t heard the news about what happened to your dear professor, though I expect most of you have heard that the C.E.R. was attacked last night.

“The two events are not unrelated. Yesterday the professor's ward, Erynn Clover, was selected as a lottery winner, and she was taken into the center’s custody. For reasons we have yet to fully ascertain, Professor Rowland decided to break into the center, leaving a path of destruction in his wake and free
ing the young woman. They haven’t been seen since.

“The Cultwick authorities are now offering a considerable bounty for their capture. In
addition, any information that can be used to hunt down these individuals will be rewarded.

"I, meanwhile, have been selected to investigate the professor's actions, find him, and bring them all to justice.” After a brief pause, she continued, “That brings us to you, his dear students. I humbly ask you for any and all information about what the professor would do, why he would choose to dishonor himself in such a way, or even any details about the professor's moral and social character."

Alice waited for anyone to speak up and after a moment added, "Please. Don't be shy, now. Cultwick greatly appreciates any information you can provide and of course advancement in the church could certainly be a perk to anyone with usable data."

There was another brief pause before a young woman spoke out, "He was opposed to the church teachings."

"Is that correct? In what way?" Alice asked.

Another student answered, "He didn't believe in using unwilling subjects."

"Really?" she pondered. "Why is that?"

"Who knows," he continued. "Though he did say that if you weren't willing to test something on yourself you shouldn’t give it to anyone else. But the church teaches us that the
inferior members of our society are doing their part by giving themselves for experimentation."

"Quite right,” she noted. “So he was opposed to our fair lottery system, then?"

The crowd of students all agreed easily, nodding their heads.

"Did he ever speak on what he would do if he didn't work here?" she continued.

There was a longer pause this time and one student made the comment, "I heard he was offered a job at the center once."

"Yes," Alice began, "but that's not exactly useful information. That was some time ago and that's obviously not an option for him at this point, now is it?"

The student, admonished, looked down and spoke no further on the subject.

"Well," a quiet student upfront started.

"What's that, my dear? Speak up," Alice encouraged gently.

"Well, it's just,” she spoke a bit louder, "it's just that whenever he was upset with us... he'd make vague statements about finding a group of students who hadn't... his words... been 'brainwashed' by the church.”

Alice looked taken aback by such hostile words. "Brainwashed? Whatever did he mean?" she asked stepping toward the young girl.

"Well," she continued. "I guess he thought we had all already made up our minds on what we thought was right and wrong. That we had taken our sense of moral guidance from the church's
teachings... so... maybe he would want to go somewhere the church didn't have as much of an influence on things."

Alice stopped to think for a moment. "I see," she eventually said. "What was your name, my
dear?"

"Uh, Emily Waller, miss," she answered.

"Thank you, Ms. Waller. You've been a substantial help. I'll be sure to pass that along. And thank you all for your cooperation." Alice turned and quickly took her leave of the students and the lecture hall. She had one more stop to make - the center itself.

The operative arrived at the Center for Empirical Research to find the facility being cleaned up - bodies of guards and the lottery winners both were spread about the whole area. The guard detail looked to have increased dramatically since her last visit here - no doubt to stop any further breakouts from occurring in the wake of the previous evening's troubling events. She approached the set of guards at the entrance.