As Seen In Real Life

The snow on an ancient monitor was the only light in the room. It neatly silhouetted the slim shoulders and thick wavy hair of the girl who sat in the middle of the floor. The floor was otherwise bare, so the girl sat on her knees facing the screen as if entranced.

The snow was not actually snow, like an old Television attempting to turn random signals into an image. It was a two-dimensional representation of machine code that was being translated at light speed by a neural lace in the girls brain and enhanced and maintained by a strict regimen of silicon supplements. Roughly translated from Old Russian, the common phrase went, “A dosage at 3 keeps the frequency clean.”

Each night of her life the girl had spent 2 hours just like this. Sitting quietly and alone, absorbing the events of the day. Milk rations were up by half, productivity within the textile industry was up by 7%, military triumph was guaranteed on the eastern front and so-and-so had been executed for misconduct, etc… She neither enjoyed this ritual, nor disliked it. It simply was the way things were. The same could be said for every aspect of her life. It was just ok. And that, she supposed, was ok.

So it was not without jarring effect when the monitor simply went blank, casting the room into darkness. She did not move at first, but her eyes widened. She tilted her head, but for the first time in her life she could not hear the broadcast. It was gone.

The silence was deafening. 

Cautiously, she pulled her hands from her lap and stood up. She walked to the far wall and drew back the curtains. All across the city lights were being turned on. 

“What… is happening?” She breathed. 

Someone screamed in the unit above. The girl waited for the telltale hum of a nurse drone, but nothing came. She dare not venture out of her unit unless they intercepted her. More lights came on all over the city until the entire grid was shining bright. She checked the time: 2 minutes till 10. Under normal circumstances neural lace would switch to Delta waves at the turn of the hour. If she wasn’t in bed by then she would be waking up on the floor with a crick in her neck tomorrow morning, and that was no way to deal with whatever was going on. She was an engineer after all, and it would probably be up to her section to fix this mess, whatever it was.

Quickly she stripped and got in bed. She listened to each one of the bells and calmed her mind. The tenth toll rang out long and resonant. She was still awake. Something was seriously wrong. The broadcast was still silent, and the absence of it was terrifying and lonely. 

She remembered a grid power outage that had happened once when she was a child. There had been an emergency broadcast from the man in the tower. Instructions for the different work groups, an explanation: terrorists again; and a hopeful message about how they would work together as a city to solve the problem. That had made her feel safe. But now there was nothing. Just silence.

She looked from the blank monitor to the window, where lights were again beginning to turn on all over the city. Sleep cycle had evidently failed across the grid. That probably meant that no one else was getting the broadcast either. Instructions weren’t being received to fix the problem by humans or machines. With a sigh, she cautiously got up from bed and put on her work clothes. 

-

On and Off Again

Dez was the first awake the next morning. He surveyed the destruction of what he had ascertained was the Chancellor’s personal live-in broadcast station. It was impressive. Almost no machines had been left intact. His stomach rumbled, and he eyed the large metal door which seemed to be the only exit. There had been no sign of drones since the night before. The maddening clamor of their attempts to force entry had apparently been connected to some signal the PLSR crew had inadvertently disrupted in the chaos. His stomach rumbled again, louder this time.  They would be dead soon anyways without something to eat. May as well just rip the bandaid off.

He walked over to the vault-like door and with a sly look over his shoulder to Jasper and Zyon, he heaved it open. It moved about a decimeter, but no further. His first thought was that the disabled drones on the other side, several of which were visible in piles through the space in the door, were the cause of the blockage, but he searched the perimeter and found a hole in the floor from which a solid rod of metal was protruding up into the bottom rail of the door. Some sort of emergency deadlock? It must be remotely controlled, he thought, because he could see nothing to manipulate it. 

“Well, that’s not ideal,” he muttered. He moved to the nearest window and looked down, guesstimating that they were about 40 floors up. No hope of climbing down. No signals going out either. Damn. 

He walked over to Jasper and clapped once in front of his face. 

“Jesus,” Jasper said, blinking his eyes.

“Good morning, captain,” Dez said, instilling the title, ‘captain’ with just enough irony to emphasize their current, shipless situation. 

“What time do you call this?” Jasper asked groggily. 

“We’ve got a problem,” he answered. “Zyon?” Dez called, chucking a candle at a still sleeping Zyon’s face. “Oi! We’re trapped in here. Something’s jamming the door.” 

Jasper rubbed his eyes and blinked them purposefully before taking in the partially opened door. There was perhaps a decimeter of space between the edge of the door and its thick frame. 

The candle stick had had no apparent effect on Zyon. Nor did the subsequent fist full of paper clips or a piece of the destroyed service drone. Zyon finally awoke to a shoe being hurled at his face, to which he sat bolt upright. “Have you tried turning it on and off again?”

Dez squinted at him. “It’s a door.”

“Just try it,” Zyon shrugged, eyes still closed. “Works for me all the time.” With that he collapsed back into a deep sleep.

Dez looked back to Jasper who was still appraising the door.

“Hungry?” Asked Dez.

“Yea,” said Jasper darkly. 

“The only way we’re going to eat is if we get through that door,” said Dez.

“I think I’ve got an idea,” said Jasper. He walked over to the space in the door.

“HAAAAAAALLLLLLLLPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” The blood curdling scream was enough to physically move the hair on Dez and Zyon’s heads. Eventually it was Zyon who made his way through the storm of sound and clamped his hand down over Jasper’s mouth.

“Never,” said Dez. “EVER. Do that again.”

“Well I don’t see either of you doing anything,” Jasper said. 

“Don’t you have any other ideas besides shouting?” Dez asked. 

“Like what?” Asked Jasper.

“Like, I dunno, checking the service panel the drone was using last night.”

Jasper and Zyon shared a look. “Just say that next time,” Jasper said.

Zyon, slowly shook his head at Dez. 

“Goddamnit. Just help me get this thing open,” said Dez.

The three of them pried the sliding floor hatch open and lowered Jasper into the shoot. The floor was only a few meters down but there was a tunnel running horizontally through which Jasper could just make out a faint pulsing light. Jasper crawled along this for a few moments. It was dark, but the ambient light grew stronger the further he crawled and after a minute or so opened into a massive central shaft, the height of the building or more, lit with the soft pulsating glow of millions of fiber optic cables running along the interior.[AR1] 

Jasper dropped a loose piece of rubble down the shaft and waited. Either something at the bottom had diffused the impact or perhaps the shaft was far enough down that the echoes did not have the energy to reach him against the waves of circulating air that reminded him of the ocean. 

“What do you see?” Called Dez distantly.

“Cables,” Jasper called back. “This must be the central nervous system for the whole city!” 

“Any way to get into another room?”

Jasper noted a few other hatches, but the tunnel was astoundingly wide and the closest one was at least 20 meters above and most of the way across the wide shaft. 

“Maybe, but I wouldn’t recommend it.” 

Silence.

“Hello?” Jasper called. 

“Hold on!” Dez called.

Jasper could hear muffled voices coming from the control room. It sounded like an argument was being had but he couldn’t make anything out. 

Then, “Hey see if there’s a circuit control box over your head,” it was Zyon this time.

Jasper looked at the roof of the ceiling. Save for several bundles of slightly rusted, metal ridged cables, the surface was smooth. Rolling to his back he pulled his torso partly into the main shaft. He had a similar impression of the top of the shaft as he had of the bottom. The effect was enough to bring on vertigo. After a moment though he was able to make out a small curved protrusion. “Yea looks like there’s an access panel. I think I can get to it.”

Jasper gripped two dusty cables and pulled himself upwards into the main shaft, standing on the floor of the service tube. He reached upwards towards the control box, but it was just out of his reach. Exhaling deeply, he found a foothold on a cable tether and pushed himself above the service tunnel, being sure to keep his body close to the wall. He pulled the tiny metal door open. The hinges were so old that they gave way and the whole door cracked off and fluttered down the shaft below, spraying rust into his eyes.

“Fuck,” Jasper said. Trying to blink the metal specs from his eyes. He looked at the exposed switches. They were marked in Russian, but they seemed to be power related. 

“You see the red switch?” Called Dez faintly.

“Yea, it’s off,” called back Jasper.

“Throw it!” Called Dez.

“You sure?” Called back Jasper.

Pause. Then, “Yea just throw it.”

Jasper exhaled and threw the switch to the upright position. It echoed loudly in the seemingly infinite chamber. The echo gave way to humming- something that he felt more than heard. At first he thought it was the ancient 220v power in the lines he was holding on to, but it began to crescendo like something distant was quickly drawing nearer. 

“Uh, guys?!” He called.

Nothing.

“Guys, I think we may have just reactivated the drones! I’m gonna shut it down again.”

“Leave it on!” Yelled someone.

“What!?” Yelled back Jasper. Looking below he could already see thousands of tiny tumbling lights accelerating towards him. His foot slipped, but he caught himself. The drones were almost on him. He could see the outlines of their spherical heads. 

“Fuck this,” he breathed and reached for the switch. It was now just too high. 

“Throw the switch!” Someone called.

“Oh, now they want me to throw the switch,” grunted Jasper, trying to reposition himself. 20 meters below a drone was extending what looked like a giant syringe towards him.

“No no NO!” Said Jasper. He hoisted himself higher with a single arm and grabbed the switch, slamming it down and swinging himself to a cluster of tiny fiber optic cables just in time to see the drone with the syringe sail past him. Another drone slammed into his feet, head first. He lost his grip on the cables and had to hang on to the drone, which slowed with his weight, but did not change its trajectory. 

It was difficult to place himself spatially in the tunnel since the surroundings were much the same, but he could feel the rush of air all around him. The other drones were beginning to overtake him, passing him strait by. They didn’t seem to be interested in him anymore. He had enough time to wonder whether this was because they couldn’t attack one of their own, or because, having cut the signal again, they were unable to modify the last command they had been given from the network. Then he saw the drones in front of the charge explode onto the ceiling. Must be the latter then.

Jasper threw himself off the drone and towards the wall of cables and just as gravity decelerated him to equilibrium, he grabbed hold of another bundle of fiber optics swinging himself flat with the wall. Drone after drone smashed into the ceiling, raining sharp debris all around him. He hung on tightly with both hands feeling the tiny fiberoptic wires popping one by one under his weight. He kept his eyes closed until there was nothing but the ocean of circulating air and the ringing of his ears. 

——

“What do you see?” called Dez.

Only one of them had been able to fit through the tunnel that lead to the central shaft at a time. 

“He’s not here,” said Zyon.

“Well where could he have gone?”

“Most likely… down. This hole is so deep he’s probably still falling.”

“Well…” said Dez again. “So that’s it then. Man down.”

Zyon said nothing but began backing back down the service shaft.

They climbed out onto the floor of the broadcast room.

A wiry framed girl stood looking at them with hands on hips. Dez managed to communicate to her in broken Old Russian that their comrade was gone.

She blew out a puff of air and shrugged mournfully. Then she said something that sounded like a plan. Zyon looked from the girl to Dez who had a slightly alarmed look on his face. Dez protested this remark and tried to explain something to her. She insisted. Dez squared himself between the girl and the service shoot as if he was prepared to fight her.

“Whoa whoa whoa,” said Zyon. “We’re all friends here, right?” And then out of the side of his mouth to Dez, “What’s going on?”

“She wants to repair the signal. Power everything up again,” he said without breaking his gaze with the girl.

“Why?” Zyon said, half to the girl. “Didn’t we just free them from some kind of… authoritarian machine rule or something?”

“She doesn’t see it like that.”

“Hmm, so…” 

The girl launched herself towards the hole in the floor. Dez intercepted her, but he hadn’t anticipated the upward jab she threw just after they collided. He regained balance and bear hugged her. She yelled something in protest.

“A little help,” he suggested to Zyon. He was attempting to waddle her towards the now open door to the hallway.

“Right,” said Zyon. He tried to grab her feet, but he caught a kick to the head, and then another. “Ouch! What the hell lady.” He let out a long slow breath. “Ok let me try something,” he said. “Hold her still.”

“What are you gonna do?” Asked Dez.

“Just hold her still,” Zyon said. He expelled another long breath and made eye contact with the girl, still struggling against Dez’s bear hug. She looked back defiantly but stopped struggling.

“What are you doing?” Dez asked again.

Zyon didn’t respond but let out another exhale with a whooshing noise. The girl’s expression softened. To Dez’s surprise her body relaxed in his grip. With a swift but gentle movement, Zyon closed the distance between himself and the girl and kissed her lightly on the forehead. She went completely limp.

Dez’s eyes were wide. “What the fuck was that?” he whispered. 

Zyon put a finger over his lips and shook his head. He picked up her legs and the two brought her to the hallway and sat her up against the wall. 

Dez began to move the giant door shut, but he stopped and whispered to Zyon, “You sure he’s gone?”

“He wasn’t there. He must have fallen.” 

Dez nodded and shut the door again. The electronic failsafe lock snapped back into place. 

“Well, no one’s getting in or out of there for a while,” he said. “Hopefully that will solve our drone problems. We need to get to the roof.” He gestured to the girl, “What about her?”

“She’ll probably be out for a few more minutes.” 

“What did you do to her?”

“These people are obviously under the constant influence of some sort of hypnosis,” he said tapping his temple with two fingers. “People who are used to that kind of influence are susceptible to… stuff,” he finished, unhelpfully. 

Dez chewed his lower lip, still appraising her. 

“I think we’re gonna need her.”

“For what?”

“She knew about the circuit breaker and the failsafe lock on the door,” Dez said shrugging. “All this equipment was putting out a wide band signal to the entire city. If we can get to the antenna, we can modify it to send our own signal to a low orbit ship dock. 

“Hmm,” said Zyon.

“Yea,” said Dez. “Let’s get to the roof.”

The girl had not woken after several attempts which Dez found mildly concerning for several reasons, not the least of which was the fact that Zyon did not seem to be in full control of whatever psychological influence he had imposed upon her. The two men had managed to haul her into a nearby lift and were watching the numbers wiz by.

Zyon was thinking of Jasper, probably still falling into the infinite abyss. As he thought of this, he imagined he could actually hear the Jasper’s screams. He tried to stop himself having such a morbid fantasy, but the screams were growing louder. 

“Not again,” Zyon muttered to himself. He shook his head to rid himself of the phantom.

“Hey what is that?” Dez asked. They were closing in on the top floor. 260/317, 265/317, 270/317.

Zyon raised his eyebrow at Dez.

“You don’t hear that?” Asked Dez. It’s getting louder.

“What?” Asked Zyon.

“That screaming.”

“Zyon’s other eyebrow raised. Oh, you hear that too?” 

“Yea,” said Dez. The screaming was almost loud enough to make out now. “‘Please… dear God… Stop…’, oh,” he finished. Dez pressed the emergency stop button. They came to a screeching halt between floors 293 and 294.

They listened intently. At first there was nothing, but then they heard the muffled clacking of metal above them. Then a startling THUMP which shook the whole elevator.

“Who’s there?” Demanded Dez.

In response, the emergency hatch lifted and in dropped Jasper. Dez and Zyon just stared, dumbfounded.

Jasper grinned crookedly. He was shaking a little and said horsely, “Hey boys. You know for a moment there I thought you weren’t going to stop.”

“How did…” Zyon began.

“Hello there,” Jasper said looking at the unconscious local girl. When she didn’t respond he looked from Zyon to Dez.

“That’s our local engineer,” said Dez.

“Oh?” Said Jasper. “She looks a bit useless.”

“Well at the moment, yea,” said Dez. “Zyon did a bit of a…” Dez redirected, “How are you alive? We thought you fell.”

“Well yea. I mean no, I did that opposite of that I suppose. Flipping on the signal again sent a swarm of those drug bots after me and I ended up riding one to the top. Found an access tunnel that put me in the path of your homicidal lift,” Jasper explained with a kick at the side of the elevator. At this, the girl’s eyes fluttered open.

“Huh,” Dez said simply, still appraising Jasper and disengaged the emergency lock. The elevator, somewhat chunkily, resumed its ascent.

The girl began to stand. “Well well,” said Zyon, “Look who’s back?”

She muttered something in Old Russian. Zyon and Jasper looked to Dez.

“She wants to know what you did to her,” said Dez looking at Zyon, “Which frankly, so do I.”

The lift stopped, and an automated voice said something which Dez translated as, “It wants an access… something. Key or command or something.” 

They looked at the girl. She and Dez had a brief exchange during which she seemed completely nonplussed by his request. ‘Нет’ was the general take away from her side. An easily recognizable word that was being used a lot.

“She won’t help us,” said Dez.

Zyon turned to her, but she backed even further into the corner of the lift. He put his hands up and also backed away.

“Don’t think she wants to trust me,” said Zyon.

“Well she hasn’t met me yet,” said Jasper. “This is the bitch who told you to tell me to turn that signal back on?” Jasper crossed the lift and pressed the emergency halt button again. Again, the lights turned red. The emergency halt button alone was evidence for the primitive tech of this isolationist society. It was a physical button that protruded slightly out of the main panel and was easily dislodged when he put his boot into it.

“Hey!” Shouted Zyon. 

With the button gone there was no way, without tools anyways, of going back down. This Jasper communicated to the girl with a gracious wave of his hand and then jerked his thumb towards the doors of the lift and said simply, “Здравствуйте.”

“You know that just means ‘hello’ right?” Asked Dez, fully unimpressed.

Jasper sat down on the floor of the lift. “May as well get comfortable, cause we’re staying here until she gets that door open.

——

These were obviously terrorists. Terrorists! She’d been told of them her entire life. They were always doing something awful, but she’d never seen one in person. She’d actually began to wonder if they were just some sort of ploy from the government to keep people… But she dare not think of that. A thought crime was just like any other crime after all.

But… the broadcast was not functioning. This thought came from the back of her mind. Creeping in like a pretender and becoming comfortable as she had the realization that for the first time her thoughts were fully her own. Not connected, not searchable. 

The image of the Chancellor, long deceased and in pieces in front of the broadcast board flashed before her eyes again and she longed to process it. Had it all been lies? The city’s beloved, immortal leader. It had looked as though he’d died before she was even born. Maybe before her mother was born. Who was running this city? How had this happened?

Each question brought a reflexive bout of guilt, but it was mostly overshadowed by the bewildering situation in which she now found herself. She looked from one man to the next. They all sat on the floor of the lift with her now, evidently waiting on her to break in to the broadcast array deck. This had been made clearer by the one who spoke some of the language. 

She didn’t have access, obviously. You would have to be a party member- a high ranking party member at that, to have the clearance codes to get through this door. Of course, she could manipulate the circuitry. Tricky without tools, but she knew the system pretty well, having repaired several of them. Still, party members behind those doors would have her arrested and executed for aiding these terrorists. There was nothing to do. She was just surprised no one had come along already. They’d been in there for almost an hour. She couldn’t hear anything from the other side of the door. No other elevators coming or going either.

The tallest of them, the one with the long shaggy hair said something to her in his strange tongue. The one who knew the language translated.

“You’re starting to question it.”

She glared at the translator and then shifted the glare to the one with the shaggy hair.

“You know,” he said, “where is everybody? Who’s running the show?”

“Who are you?” She asked.

“Us?” He asked sweeping his hand to encompass his two companions. “We’re survivors of a shipwreck several clicks east of here.”

“Bullshit.”

“Swear to god,” he said raising his hand palm to her. She was not familiar with this gesture, but it seemed to indicate good faith. 

“God is a silly thing to swear to,” she said. “You terrorists are all alike with your radical religious beliefs.” 

“Terrorists?” Intervened the one who spoke the language. The one with the long hair and earrings asked him something and he chuckled and replied. Apparently, a joke at her expense.

“Look I don’t know what you think is going on here, but we just need to get a signal out to a ship dock. The sooner we get a signal, the sooner we get out of your hair,” said the tallest one.

The last phrase didn’t translate. “You are terrorists trying to escape.”

The man shook his head slowly. “No. We are survivors of a shipwreck seeking aid, but your…” he looked around as if searching for the right word. “This place is insane. It’s completely cut off from the outside solar system.”

“Solar system?” She asked incredulously, a half smile on her face as though she’d just discovered a chink in his reasoning.

“Yea. Solar system. And probably the rest of the planet too,” he said.

“Your craft… is a space vessel?”

“Yup.”

The girl let out a ribbon of chiming laughter like bells. She raised her voice, “You expect me to believe that you are cosmonauts?” 

The man cast a sidelong glance to one of his compatriots. “No. Definitely not cosmonauts. Just. You know what? Sure, we’re cosmonauts.” 

The girl laughed again, “You are a funny man.”

“Glad you think so. Tell you what,” said the man chewing his bottom lip for a moment, “let us through this door and we will prove to you that we are from space. If you’re not convinced, you can turn us in.”

“You would never keep this agreement,” she said flippantly. 

The man gestured towards his crony, the one who had come through the ceiling shaft and asked for something. A small object was tossed over and then the he presented to her. She took it. 

It appeared to be a small multitool, but one like she had never seen. The design was certainly not Zato. 

She pressed a small indentation and out flicked a series of impossibly tiny mechanical legs which moved individually as if seeking something to grab on to. This surprised her nearly to the point where she dropped it, but she repressed the indent and they quickly re-tracked. Another indent produced a hologram of a red-tailed fox which spoke in a foreign language, addressing the man who had produced the strange device. The man said something back and shrugged. The fox looked at the girl and asked in perfect Russian if she needed assistance with anything.

Her eyes were huge. “What is this technology?”

“That’s what we’re trying to say,” said the first man. “You’re living in some kind of time capsule. The world has moved on.”

She looked back at the fox. “Hello?”

“Yes hello,” said the fox, unimpressed. “Was there something I can help you with?”

“Who are these men?” She asked it.

“A bunch of assholes,” it said. 

She chuckled nervously. She pressed another button on the multitool. A blade of sheer light came out about 2 decimeters long. 

“O hey now,” said the first man getting up. The other two were on their feet, apparently nervous at the sight of the blade. 

“You don’t want to mess with that,” he said. “That thing will go strait through bone.”

“So, I suppose I am in charge now,” said the girl also standing up.

“You know what, sure. What you say goes,” said the man.

“I say kill ‘em,” said the fox. 

The girl walked to the other side of the lift. The men moved in diametric opposition to her. Curiously she dug the light blade into the panel. “Oooo,” she said with pleasure as it melted the alloy in a clean line. With four swift cuts she had exposed the wiring. Unfortunately, one cut had been two deep and had apparently cut the lights. They were plunged into darkness except for the blade and the glowing fox which casually walked onto the wall near the panel so that she could see what she was doing.

“Thank you Foxy,” she said. She looked back at the 3 men who were now on the far wall. “Perhaps we will see what is on the other side of this door, but if we are arrested I am turning you in.”

“Sure. Sounds good.” Said the first man.

She set to work about bypassing the security circuit and within 10 minutes the doors opened.  

What they saw was a penthouse walled in glass that curved upwards to form a scaffolded ceiling. Through the ceiling rose a mighty pyramidal antenna array tower that ascended 70 meters or more. A conference table sat underneath the antenna on a large rug, green with mold, and surrounded by tall leather chairs with devices that were evidently intended to cradle the head while perhaps interfacing with the neural lace. There were several wet bars, a series of terminals and some kind of telescope. Strangest of all, the entire floor appeared to be empty except for a single floating drone, which slowly decoupled from its charging station and wafted over to them. 

“What is your name,” asked the tallest man as she walked out of the lift. The fox was translating for them now.

“Evina,” she said, still scanning the room for signs of life.

He put his hand on his chest, “My name is Zyon. This is Dez,” he said gesturing to the one who knew the language, “and this is Jasper,” he said jerking his thumb towards the silent one whom they had apparently presumed dead until an hour ago. 

She nodded. She was relieved to see one of the sentries after the disaster, though after a second glance she saw that it was not powered on, but suspended in a century’s worth of spider’s webs, apparently crafted around it while it hovered passively for untold years. She walked over to it and waved a hand in front of its optical sensor. 

“What happened here?” She asked, finally.

“Nothing good,” said Zyon.

“Look, clearly this place was running on autopilot before we showed up. It seems like you were unaware of that, but we will respect your culture, providing it doesn’t try to kill us, and you can reboot it if you want. We’ll stay out of that. All we ask is that you help us get a message to a repair facility so that we can leave. Does that sound acceptable to you?”

She looked at the man named Dez. He seemed earnest. “Yes, I will help you.”

“Great,” he said clapping his hands together loudly. “Let’s get started.”

It had not taken Dez and Evina long to conclude that the coms network was not only for local broadcast, but also had an integrated, though dated, near orbit “receive and transmit” module which could be calibrated to modern specifications enough to get the party started. It might as well be morse code, but fingers crossed someone would be able to distinguish from junk frequencies and give them a ring. 

While the dynamic nerd duo was occupied, Jasper busied himself with finding a decent souvenir. He’d been to some desolate outposts in his travels - several on Titan that seemed stuck in time because of the sheer amount of time it takes to make the journey - but this situation was unique. These people had been isolated in the midst of a cornucopia of life on this planet. As bad as things had gotten, Earth was still the crown jewel of culture in the solar system. And yet these people had lived for generations in ignorance or perhaps denial of it. 

He ran his fingers along the bold oak mantel on the other side of the room and across a dusty, iron scepter with a fist crafted into the handle that seemed vaguely authoritarian. A small, ornately framed photograph, metal printed, showed a group of party members dressed in gray. They looked happy. Proud even. There was an inscription in Old Russian. He reflexively reached for his multi tool, but then remembered that the woman still had it, and, he remembered begrudgingly, that the animus had defected to her personality. It would only work for her now. Too bad really; it was a custom piece. Such were the throwbacks of modern AI – always changing their minds.

He stepped over to a piano and picked off a few jangly notes. Not terribly out of tune. It had been a decade since he’d seen a real piano, and back then he’d never had an interest in music. He’d spent untold hours on “rec deck” picking out melodies on the computer’s projected Steinway. Enough, anyways, to make him reflexively pull out the bench with his left hand as he kept the theme from Puttin’ on the Ritz and sit down. He couldn’t remember verse, so he fabricated one, but when he got to the Bb the key sank and wouldn’t come back up. He tried it a few more times, but it was dead.

He sighed and yelled across the room to the others. “How’s it coming over there?”

“Yea good, just running into a bit of a snag with the neural lace interface.”

“Right, right of course,” mumbled Jasper still staring at the keyboard and trying to think of something in A minor, that wouldn’t have any Bb’s native to the key.

“You wouldn’t happen to have any conductive wire over there would you?” Called Dez.

Jasper frowned. “Would Piano strings work? I think this ol’e girl’s due for a restring anyways.”

“Yea maybe,” said Dez. “I guess we won’t know until we try.”

Jasper stood up and pushed the lid up on the upright piano. He peered down and saw the arrangements of the strings, all in neat, diagonal lines, save for those that had already snapped. He was about to call Evina for the multitool when he noticed an odd device connected to several of the keys. 

He ran his fingers across the keys in a maddening descent of microtones and noted that the first device in the high register was connected to the Bb that key that had gone dead. 

There were 5 such keys. He played each of them. They all seemed to function normally save for the Bb. “Cheeky bastards,” he muttered. 

“Still waiting on that wire, Jasper.” Called Dez.

“Yea, give us a second,” said Jasper, but not quite loud enough for Dez to actually hear him.

Jasper walked around to the back of the upright piano and tried to pull it out from the back of the wall. It seemed as though there was a separation, but it absolutely would not budge. 

“Why would…” he spoke softly to himself, “why would someone fuze a piano to a wall in a clandestine meeting place for the societal elite?” Then he grinned. “Ok piano,” he said straightening up and addressing it with respect, “we’re going to find out what you’re hiding. 

He stretched his fingers and allowed them to hover over the keyboard delicately. 5 notes, 2 are octaves of each other. Depending on the key it could be 1, m3, 5, 6, and the octave which would put it neatly into a minor pentatonic scale. He grimaced. That barely narrowed things down at all. Maybe… he played the keys as a chord. Nothing. He tried a few combinations of melodies, but to no effect. He deflated. You win this round, Piano,” he said, managing to put some real disgust behind the last word.

Evina and the fox walked over. “Do you need help with the piano wire?” She asked, the fox translating.

“Yea can I see that thing?” Asked Jasper, gesturing towards the multitool. 

“Nyet.” She said simply and stepped back.

“Ok, cut some strings for yourself.”

Evina switched to the small blue laser and cut all the strings in three quick swipes. The cacophony that ensued was brief, but tumultuous. She giggled, apparently at the destruction of something so seemingly grand. And pulled a handful of wires from the top of the piano. As she did her foot pressed the sustain pedal. What happened next was that the wall to Jasper’s rotated towards him at an astounding speed. The floor was moving too. He barely had time to shield himself against the blow. Evina still had her head in the piano and was evidently the center point of the rotating circle, so she was barely effected, but Jasper was thrown against a shelf on the other side of what had seconds before been a wall.

He dusted himself off. “Well, the sustain pedal. Hadn’t counted on that.”

Evina pulled her head out of the piano. “What was that?” She said something else that didn’t translate well, and the fox just stared blankly at Jasper and shrugged in the slightly off-putting way that holographic animuses sometimes could.

“Secret room,” Jasper said simply. They looked around. There were rows and rows of what looked like old-timey, metal file cabinets. Jasper opened a drawer and found that they were actually servers with data cards made of synthesized crystal that glowed pink.

“What is this place?” Asked Evina, touching one of the cards which reacted with a soft pulse of light.

“Beats me,” said Jasper. “Maybe this place is just some kind of social experiment and this is where they kept the data?”

Evina looked as though she wanted to slap him.

“Just shooting from the hip.” Jasper walked down one of the corridors and she followed.

“We should find a way out of here,” she said.

“We will. First though I’m going to find a souvenir.”

“A souvenir?” She asked bewildered.

“Yea, something to remind me of this magical experience we’re all sharing.”

“This is the property of the state!”

“You’re the property of the state.” He knew this time he was getting that slap. When it came, he side-stepped it. “Ok, ok too far. Tell you what, you try to find an exit and I’ll…”

He stopped short as Zyon walked up behind Evina. “Hey guys.”

Evina jumped and shrieked. 

“Zyon,” Jasper smirked, “What the absolute, hell, are you doing here?”

“I’ve been here for an hour at least. Just letting off steam really.”

“Really?” Jasper asked.

He nodded.

“Just letting off steam in a super secret…”

“How did you get in here?” Interrupted Evina. 

“Not sure about that actually. I was meditating on a tea cushion near the billiards upstairs. When I opened my eyes, I was in here. 

“Wow, this place is so rife with secret entrances that you can help but end up inside the secret room!” Exclaimed Jasper in disbelief. 

“Hmm,” said Zyon. “Been doing some perusing. Found something you might like for your souvenir collection?” He said with a grin towards Jasper.

“Oh yea?”

“Come on,” said Evina, pulling Zyon and Jasper by their jackets. “We’re getting out of here.”

The “tea cushion” that Zyon had evidently been sitting on was inside of a dumb waiter of sorts, and was not a secret entrance at all, but just a tiny lift for the synthetic crystal drives. They emerged one by one to find Dez still hunched over the open panel of the broadcast terminal.

“Ok look,” he said. “The good news is that I’ve definitely bypassed the drone network, so once we fire back up the power any other drones that may still be in the city or,” he cast a sidelong glance to the drone suspended in spider webs, “in this room, will remain offline.” Dez gave a little head shake at the fox to not communicate this bit, which, for some reason, it complied with and stretched itself on the moldy carpet. 

“Ok, so what’s the bad news?” Asked Jasper.

“Pffftt, well yes. So the bad news is that I couldn’t bypass the neural lace interface so the only way we’re getting a message out of here is if she,” he placed a firm hand on Evina’s shoulder who immediately shrugged it off, “jacks in so to speak.”

“Riiiight,” said Jasper. “Well, it’s not ideal, but that’s not so bad. What do you think Evie?”

“Before you make your decision,” Dez said to Evina, “you should know that this interface could be connected to other systems that we don’t know about. There could be side effects. I’m not familiar enough with how your implant works, but there are a myriad of unknowns.”

“I’ll do it,” she said. “I need to know what has been kept from us. She looked around to the chairs circled around the conference table. What they kept from us.”

“Wonderful,” said Dez clapping his hands together. “Well just take a seat then, anywhere you like.” 

Evina made her way over to the nearest chair and sat. She leaned her head back between the array field manipulators and looked forward. 

“What do I tell them?” 

“Well, depending on who you find… that is to say, you will need to navigate the digital substrate that connects earth to lower orbit structures. I’ve been able to tune our frequencies to get you that far, but you will need to locate a suitable recipient for your message.”

“Please make sure that none of them belong to any of the big 5.”

“Big 5?” She asked.

“Jesus,” said Jasper. “Just ask if they are independent contractors. If not, check the next one.”

 “Right,” said Dez. “Assuming you can do that, the message is simple: ‘Mayday, mayday. Ship down. PLSR class, coordinates approximately 6 clicks North, North East of my position. Send transport to this location for immediate extraction.”

Evina thought about this for a moment and then nodded to Dez.

Zyon walked over to her and took her hand. She smiled a nervous little smile at him.

Dez entered a sequence into a small projected terminal on the table and Evina went limp in the chair.

“There she goes,” said Dez thoughtfully. 

“Well, while she’s off surfing the extranet, I’m going to see if I can scare up some food.”

“And where are you going to do that?” Asked Dez.

“There’s this room in the back… did you really not notice that we were all missing for like 30 minutes?”

“An hour,” Zyon corrected.

“An hour for Zyon,” said Jasper pointing all 5 fingers at him, but still looking at Zyon.

Dez shrugged. “No, can’t say that I did. And you found food?”

“Well no. Really there were just tons of this old school looking crystal drive servers.”

“What?” Dez asked, looking alarmed.

“Yea, there’s a server farm on the other side of this wall.”

“And you didn’t think to tell me, before inserting this girl into a neural network, that we might be giving her access to God knows what top-secret information this regime had on her kind.”

Jasper shrugged, “Wellll, yea that did cross my mind. But she’s got to learn some time.”

You realize that the human mind is storing teraflops of packeted information. It may not all be accessible to her at the same time, but if she chooses to download things we could be getting back a very different person than the one we sent in. Christ, she’s our point man.”

“I’m just not seeing that we had much of a choice,” said Jasper. “Que sera, sera.”

“Someday your half cocked, fly by the seat of your pants attitude is going to get you into serious trouble, and I’m not going to be there to bail you out.”

“Calm down, Chief. Somebody’s got to bust some heads around here if we’re ever going to get to the bottom of this drug ring, and the old guard just hasn’t been cutting it lately.”

Zyon rolled his eyes. They’d been doing this bit on the PLSR ever since they’d left Mars’ orbit. He doubted either of them really cared what sort of mental state Evina came back in, but he did, and he was beginning to understand why. She was connected to things in a way that other people were not. She was apart of an invisible collective that functioned as a whole, and while he had never been apart of a hive mind, he respected it. 

The sun had set and the lights were again beginning to flicker on all over the cityscape. Jasper was sleeping and Dez was staring out the window. “We got lucky this morning,” he said to Zyon.

“We got Evina this morning,” he replied. “If she hadn’t been along, who knows.” He finished ambiguously.

“Let’s not forget that she nearly killed me,” said Jasper.

“Yea. That massive door though,” said Dez. “10 decimeters to freedom.”

“Yea,” said Zyon. “10 decimeters. That was my assessment as well.”

“Mhm, seems accurate,” said Jasper.

Evina gasped awake and nearly broke Zyon’s hand. 

“Whoaa, we’ve got a live one,” said Dez. “How was the ride?” He asked her.

She said something, but her voice was dry.

“Quick,” he said to Zyon give her your water. 

Zyon pushed it towards her on the table, massaging his hand.

She drank for what seemed like an eternity and then said, “I was able to contact the chief dock engineer of a station called The Wheel. They have agreed to fix your ship, provided you can afford to pay them. They have arranged extraction in good faith. 0800 local time. You will be guests on their,” she seemed to struggle here, “their vessel while your ship is repaired on the ground and until such time as payment is remitted. Suggested repair technique uses,” she paused again, “a network of self healing carbon nanotubes. Or something,” she said and put her head in her hands.

“You ok?” Asked Zyon.

She looked up at him from the chair. She seemed older somehow, and a million miles away. He waited for her to speak. It was a while before she did, but then she simply said in accented English, “Ze day ‘as been full of revelations.”

“Ah, so you did tap into that data base,” said Dez. 

“Leave it,” said Zyon. “She needs to rest.” 

She nodded thankfully to him. “Transport should be along in the morning. You all are welcome to spend the night at my place.” Jasper, Zyon and Dez looked at each other. “There’s food,” she added.

“Right, yea that sounds good,” said Jasper a little too quickly.