Fixer 13

  Chapter 16: A Trip to the Neuroscience Center

  Governance changed. The planet was now a single political entity. Humans must cooperate if they were to survive. All citizens on the planet had equal rights. No one would go without food or shelter. No one would go without proper medical care and adequate education. Everyone must work together if the species was to survive. At least, that is how the propaganda engines spun it.

  Reality sketched a different picture. There were those who sought absolute power to further their insidious purpose. That purpose had not changed since the cavemen learned how to make fire. They wanted power for power’s sake and they wanted it forever—literally.

  Jayne woke up in her quarters. She sat up in bed. It was morning. The room had not changed in her absence. She could smell food and looked at the table. Breakfast was set.

  “Good morning, Thirteen,” crooned Lucky. “Breakfast is ready. I see you have applied for reassignment. Are you bored with TEM apprenticeship?”

  Jayne smiled and then frowned. She thought it odd that Lucky didn’t ask her where she had been for the last three days. Lucky was nosey that way. She wondered if perhaps a little reprogramming had occurred. The Sentinels told her that they could not be directly involved in changing her assignment without risking exposure. In fact, she was told that they could not intercede at all. She was to do it on her own. All they could do was make recommendations that would be mutually beneficial.

  Applying for Biome Tech was first on the list. Biome Techs were the apex of the fixer class. It was deemed the most difficult and dangerous job of all. It was even more difficult than High Wire Tech. Those were the fixers who maintained the spavators from the counterweight down to the space platform in Geostationary Earth Orbit (GEO). They lived on the space platform 35,000 km up and worked the cable all the way up to the counterweight at 100,000 km above the surface of the Earth, directly above the biome HUB at the base.

  Biome Techs maintained the biomes. These huge habitats orbited the earth. They were designed and built in stages. Some of the final stages started just recently. The biomes were slowly being turned into biome ships that could travel to their designated habitable planets. During the trip, the inhabitants would ‘transvolve’ into humans that could flourish on the new planet. This made-up word defined the process of Evolution by Genetic and Environmental Transformation, EGET (eee get) for short. Genetic scientists introduced specific mutations supported by gene splicing to stimulate physical changes in the omies. The environmental scientists created a biome that would gradually mimic the environment of the new planet. It was thought that these two processes would vastly improve the chances of survival of the omies on their new home.

  You couldn’t apprentice to become a Biome Tech. You could, however, apply, once you proved yourself in one of the other tech areas. A tech apprentice was a very unlikely candidate, even one of Jayne’s ability. Jayne researched the records. She could find no examples of anyone her age being accepted into the Biome Tech program. She felt the silver star grow warm against her skin and thought of the watcher. That was her name for the person or persons she sensed observing her. She also thought they directed her to the Luck Games Room and her appointment with Professor Greenway.

  Lucky spoke again. “Jayne, are you alright? You seem…” Lucky paused, “…distracted.”

  “I’m fine. I am just wondering if I will be accepted,” said Jayne.

  “You will be. Your test and practical scores have been exemplary. I would recommend you,” Lucky said smugly. “I looked up the scores of some of the previous inductees and you have them all beat. But it is not just based on scores. There seem to be other considerations.”

  “Such as?” asked Jayne.

  “Well, some specific scans. I do not understand why they would be deemed necessary for the job, but apparently they are,” said Lucky.

  “Let me guess,” said Jayne, thinking of Professor Greenway again, “—connectome scans.”

  “You have been scheduled for a series of connectome scans this morning. How did you know?” asked Lucky.

  “With Greenway?” Jayne asked.

  “Who is Greenway?” Lucky asked back. “Just a moment, I will check. You are to report to the Neuroscience Center and Training Facility today.”

  “Where is that?” asked Jayne, concern creeping into her voice. The Neuroscience Center sounded like a very unpleasant place to visit.

  “Well, it is not here in the HUB. It is seriously out of PUT pad range. You will have to take a flier. You leave today,” said Lucky and then he paused. “It looks like there will be two of you going, at least there have been two bookings made.”

  “Who else is going?” asked Jayne.

  “I am sorry but I am not privy to that information. It has been blocked,” replied Lucky.

  “When do I leave?” asked Jayne.

  “An hour from now,” answered Lucky matter-of-factly.

  Jayne stood up and ran to the clothes drawer. “I have to pack.”

  “Not required,” stated Lucky. “According to the reservation, you are to leave immediately. You are to take a PUT pad to Flier Station 3. I will program the PUT.”

  Jayne stood and walked out of her quarters to the hall PUT pad. She stepped on it and breathed in deeply. She thought of the Sentinels and the Forevers and of puking and of human hearts in boxes and of murdered omies and of GravBall and, finally, of Joseph following her like a puppy. That made her laugh. She stopped laughing when her nose, which was not quite healed, twinged with pain. She thought of Joseph pushing her into the line-vac that was not a line-vac. She frowned as she stepped off the PUT pad in Flier Station 3. She would make him pay for that push.

  The fliers were totally automated. They used grav propulsion. All fliers flew between 1,000 and 2,000 metres from the ground. Their flight path was designated by a flight computer system. They travelled like a train along a monorail except the monorail was digital and dynamic. They were fast and silent.

  Jayne entered a thirteen-seater with three sets of three seats, an aisle down the middle and a back row of 4 seats. She slid into the back row. She had never been in a flier before. She had never travelled very far. For short distances, the PUT pads were all that anyone needed. As the time ticked down to departure, she thought she was going to be alone on her two-hour flight, despite what Lucky had predicted. She looked out the window and saw a boy running down the platform, onto the gangway and onto her flier. Jayne slid down in her seat. She would be invisible to anyone entering the flier. The boy, out of breath, flopped down in the front set of two seats. He tossed the small bag he was carrying onto the seat across the aisle from where he was sitting. He exhaled air loudly and said, “Made it.”

  Jayne peeked out the side of her seat and looked down the aisle. All she could see was a pair of feet sticking out from the seats that held the reclining boy. He moved and Jayne ducked back out of sight. Jayne peeked between the seats and could see a head of dark ruffled hair. She blinked and looked again. He turned and she could only see the back of his head. She saw him become alert and start to scan the cabin. She ducked out of sight again. Jayne could hear him opening his bag and she peeked down the aisle again. The boy was reaching into his bag. Suddenly he stopped and froze. Jayne ducked back. There was silence. The silence seemed to go on forever. Jayne could wait no longer. She slowly stuck her head out into the aisle. Her eyes grew wide as she stared into the wide eyes of the boy looking down the aisle at her. They both stood and they both looked quickly from side to side as if searching for an escape route. They both knew there was no escape.

  Jayne recognized the dark-haired boy from the bean bag game. Number 91. She never knew his name. The dark-haired boy recognized Jayne. Fear clouded his eyes but it soon dissipated and was replaced by anger.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” he spat. “I am not sure what you did to me that day in the Psi Center but you sure are not going to do it again. After I looked at you, it was all gone. You somehow su
cked it all out me and took it for yourself.”

  Jayne pulled her head back behind the protection of her seat. Her body tensed. Questions rumbled through her mind. What was he talking about? She had not taken anything from him. Was he sick? Had one of the bean bags caused permanent damage? Was he going to the Neuroscience Center too? Maybe he suffered brain damage. She remembered one of the bean bags hitting him in the head.

  She heard him start down the aisle toward her. She stood up. The idea of him standing over her was an unpleasant one. They stood facing each other with the width of one seat between them.

  Jayne did not know what to say. She spoke anyway. “I’m sorry you got hit. Is your head OK?”

  “What are you talking about? Does my head not look OK?” he asked viciously.

  Jayne stepped backward for a moment and then forward again. “You must be deluded. I never took anything from you. That day, playing the bean bag game, you made a wrong choice and got hit. I made a wrong choice right after you left and got hit. That’s just the way it goes sometimes. Sometimes you’re lucky and sometimes you’re not.”

  “I am always lucky unless you are around. And, no, I do not have a head injury. I am going to the Neuroscience Center because I am being sent there. Why are you going?” the dark-haired boy asked.

  “I have no idea. I am being sent there too,” she answered. “I had nothing to do with you being hit, so don’t go blaming me. What is your name anyway? Mine’s Jayne Wu. My friends call me Thirteen.”

  “Alright, Thirteen, I’m 91. That is as much as you get to know,” he said, as he menacingly pointed his finger at her face. He was wearing a silver chain around his wrist. Dangling from the chain was a silver star slightly smaller than the one around Jayne’s neck.

  She instinctively reached up and placed her hand over her star. It was almost hot against her skin. She looked from the star to his face and back again. “He is being watched by THEM just like me,” she thought as he dropped his arm, concealing the star once again.

  “Alright, I get it. You hate me because you think I did something to you. Which I didn’t. So let’s agree not to have any more conversations, especially those that end up with you threatening me. You sit up there and I will sit back here. Hopefully, this will be the last time we see each other. But, somehow I doubt that will be the case,” Jayne warned.

  “Why do you say that? After all, I am still pretty lucky,” he said with a smirk.

  Jayne shrugged and turned back to her seat and sat down. She stared at his back as he walked to the front of the flier and sat down. She muttered to herself, “Not as lucky as you think. Not with that star on your wrist.”

  They spent the remainder of the trip in silence. Jayne could not help but wonder if 91’s star made him sick when he took it off. Were the Forevers reading him too? Did the Sentinels know about him? Were they going to the same place for the same reasons?

  She closed her eyes and only opened them again when the flier arrived.