Chapter 19: Mini Biomes
The world embraced a new kind of governance dubbed ‘soccapism.’ Some said it was a meld of the good in both socialism and capitalism, and the rejection of the bad. The adage ‘everything in moderation’ was adopted and applied to the commerce of the time.
The good in socialism was the sharing of resources. Everyone was fed, sheltered and educated. Social medical systems looked after all members of society, not just the affluent few. The bad was that it seemed to stifle a primary urge of humans to excel for personal gain. If there was nothing to be gained, why bother to try? All truly socialistic societies fell due to rampant corruption.
The good aspect of capitalism was that it encouraged the primary urge to strive for success. People worked hard for personal gain. The society prospered. The negative aspect of capitalism was the same as its positive aspect. Too much of a good thing can poison the host. Capitalism run wild resulted in a few very rich controlling a majority of very poor.
Both of these systems would inevitably result in insurrection and rebellion. So the society now controlled the important social structures and made them available to everyone. It also controlled just how much an individual or a company could grow. When a commercial entity took in more than it gave back, the checks and balances process was enforced until the balance giving and taking was attained. This enforcement did not stop the growing of huge enterprises, but it did make sure those enterprises benefitted the society as a whole in equal measure to their success.
Biome 3 was in need of constant repair and upgrading. The very nature of the environment was so complex that it required a Quantum Cray Computer running the latest artificial intelligence algorithms just to maintain the environment. That included every creature down to the last microbe. It was critical that the life processes that constantly encouraged natural selection through genetic mutations were kept within the calculated range of the target planet. That is to say, the biome environment must be controlled. It must not go off on its own to do its own thing. It must do what it was told and not anything else. That was a tall order, even for the latest model Quantum Cray Computer. Its side job was to tell the Biome Techs what equipment was broken, where it was located, the safest route and the best repair procedure once inside a biome repair port.
Jayne’s first day was like going back to grade school. She was sitting in front of the usual tech video. She thought, “I learned this stuff almost 10 years ago.”
She flipped through, speed reading the 1,000 or so pages that made up the biome introduction. She quickly completed the comprehension test. It was not difficult. She reached the end and sat back and waited. The room seemed to be created for at least 30 students and she was the only one there.
An older woman entered, walked up to her and spoke. “I see you are finished. I’m glad you were able to finish so quickly. My name is Winchell, Winchell 43. I am your supervisor. You are starting the course load at a bit of a disadvantage. All of the other students have already started their practicum in the mini-biomes. Would you like to join them?”
Jayne smiled, stood up and nodded her head.
“Well then, let’s get you started. I think you should start with filter replacement. Report to a PUT and it will send you to your locker. Find the hazmat suit. It should fit you, but if it doesn’t, please report it. Never use a suit that does not fit you. That is the best way I know to get killed.”
Jayne’s eyes widened.
The woman laughed. “I don’t mean literally. In biome training you get nine lives. If you do, or neglect to do, something that would get you killed in the real biome, it counts against you and you lose one of your lives. Lose three lives in any one practice session and you wash out. If you lose all of your nine lives, you wash out. We don’t want to send anyone into Biome 3 to get killed due to incompetence. That doesn’t mean the mini-biomes are not dangerous. You can, and probably will, get a few scars.”
“Don’t worry. I’m pretty lucky. I won’t wash out,” said Jayne assuredly.
“Look, girly, if you are depending on luck to get you through, you might as well head back to the nursery and call it a day. This is serious business. Mistakes in there will kill you. A suit breech will kill you faster than anything else. The moment any of your biologicals enter the biome system, Q will send in the cleaners,” Winchell said with disdain. She scrunched up her face and stuck out her white lips as if she were going to kiss someone she did not want to kiss.
“Who is Q and what are the cleaners?” Jayne asked.
“The Quantum Cray Computer, aka ‘Q’, and the cleaners are the nanobots that maintain the environmental standards. If you were to take off your suit in this particular biome, the nanobots would see you as a serious threat to be neutralized. Nanobots neutralize alien biologicals by creating new and interesting proteins specifically designed to target and break the alien cells to their elemental components. It would take about four minutes for you to become a little pile of carbon with a sprinkling of calcium and a few other elements. All the gases, like oxygen and hydrogen, would simply blow away on the breeze. That is not a pleasant thought.”
“Sorry,” said Jayne. She chided herself for mentioning her luck. Everyone wanted to test her for it but no one wanted to believe her when she used or depended on it. “People are strange,” she thought, as she stepped on the PUT pad and was whisked back to her locker. She took out her beeping VID and saw the list of material and equipment she would need for ‘filter replacement’. She slung the bags over her shoulder and proceeded back to the PUT pads.
She was about to step on a PUT pad when Sara and two others appeared and stepped off the PUT pads on the way to their lockers. They were chatting and laughing with each other.
A tall red-haired girl pointed at Sara and said, “You nearly didn’t make it through the tunnels. I thought you were going to vomit when that rotting mass washed over us. Remember, ‘Puke in your suit and they give you the boot.’ I always squint and lock the odor generator. That way I can’t smell it or see it.”
“Shut up, Josie. Just shut up or I’ll squeal to Canker that you are locking the odor generator. That is not a good habit to get into,” retorted Sara.
In a mini-biome pod, you didn’t actually smell the real thing, you smelled a benign computer generated version of the odor. Smelling the real thing could very well get you killed. To not smell it at all could also get you killed, hence the computer generated odors.
“You shut up or I’ll tell Winchell that you call her Canker,” Josie spat back. Canker was their supervisor. She got the name partly due to the very light pink lip color she used and her tendency to purse her lips and scrunch up her face when she was irritated. It was a perfect name for such a painful person.
Jayne looked at the group.
Sara saw her and smiled.
Josie looked at Jayne and turned to Sara and said, “Who’s she?”
“She’s new,” said Sara. “Guys, this is Jayne. Jayne, this is Josie and that really ugly girl there is Olive.” Sara pointed at a very pretty girl with long dark hair in a pony tail.
Both Josie and Olive wiggled their fingers at Jayne.
“Hi,” they each said in turn.
“She plays GravBall. You remember the kid everyone was talking about a while back, the day of the lockdown; the one who did that move over the center grav line? Well, this is her.”
Jayne blushed and said, “My friends call me Thirteen. It is my nickname.”
“I asked her if she would be on our team. The moment the other teams get wind of who she is, they will offer her the moon to get her to play for them.” Sara turned to Jayne. “Well, have you given it some thought? Will you play for us?”
“Still thinking,” said Jayne. Her VID beeped. She knew it was the signal to hurry and report. “Got to go,” she said and she stepped on the PUT pad.
She stepped off the PUT. She was deposited at the very center of a large hangar-type building. She looked up at the ceiling far above
and then down at the floor far below. She was standing on a circular catwalk made of metal grating surrounded by a metal railing. She walked around it and stared down. She could see what looked like a gigantic snowflake on the ground below. The snowflake consisted of a center hub with a series of enclosed walkways that led to six mini-biomes. Along the covered walkways were a number of side branches. All the walkways were identical. As Jayne walked around the circular catwalk, she noticed two sets of circular stairs that spiraled downwards to the center hub. She walked down one of the stairways, never taking her eyes off the scene below. The ‘snowflake’ took up most of the building. Around the outer walls were shelves that extended right up to the ceiling. Jayne figured the shelves stored supplies. She watched a series of anti-grav transports remove crates from the high shelves and transport them to a FUT (Freight Unit Transport) pad.
As Jayne got closer to the floor, her view was obstructed by the walls of the hub. She soon stepped onto the ground and her VID beeped. She looked at it. It was displaying a map of the area in front of her with some simple directions indicating where to report. She followed the directions and found herself in a small locker room with benches at the center and an exit door at the far end that led to one of the covered walkways. She sat down and waited. She was about to check her VID again because no one came to tell her what she was to do, when she heard a locker door slam shut. She turned to see a person in a yellow hazmat suit step into view. He was walking with jerky, stiff-legged steps, his arms, palms dangling down, extended out in front of him.
Jayne stood up. She heard a moan that was somewhat muffled by the suit helmet. She looked around the room for someone to explain when she heard another moan.
“Thirteeeeeeennnnnn, you cannot escape. Come here so I can gleefully eat your brain. Hahahahahaha.”
Jayne stepped back and in one motion the hazmat-suited person took off his helmet and fell on one of the benches, consumed with hysterical laughter. It was Spike. Jayne recognized him right away with the little pony tail sticking out from the top of his head.
“I got you good. You were scared,” he said and he continued to laugh. “They told me you were coming and I thought I would scare the stuffing out of you and I succeeded. Didn’t I? Admit it. You were so scared you were about to pee your pants.”
Jayne turned away from him and opened her bag and removed her own suit. She quietly put it on and stood with her helmet in her hand.
Spike watched her. He stopped laughing. “What is your problem? Can’t you take a joke?”
Jayne set her helmet down on the bench, picked up her bag and put it inside a locker and said, “I can take a joke as well as anyone, when it is funny. That was not. Now that little tuft of hair sticking out of your head, that is funny. And don’t tell me you are in this program and we are working together.”
“OK,” Spike said. “We are not working together. That would suggest we are equals. I am a man and you are a little girl. That means I am in charge and you are my bi—,” he paused and smiled, “my assistant.”
Jayne didn’t mind the jab. Sometimes it was easier to just smile and let it all happen. This time was no different. She knew it was better not to argue with Spike. There would be plenty of time to argue later. Right now she didn’t know what to do next, so she might as well be his assistant. Better to be an assistant than to look stupid and incompetent. She decided her ego would survive the bruising. She stood and spoke in a jaunty voice. “Right, Boss, where are we headed and what are your orders?”
“Very good. As to what is next—I have no idea,” he said with a shrug of his shoulders and a laugh.
At that moment both of their VIDs beeped. They both looked at their orders:
Replace the microbe filters in the air exchange system’s electronics. You will find the basic instructions and a schematic under folder ‘Pod 1’ on your VID. You may encounter the occasional problem. Your job is to overcome the problems and complete the task. Take care of each other.
The final order was one Jayne would see over and over. She would only later truly understand how important it would be to her life. She opened folder ‘Pod 1’ and read and memorized the schematics. It was a common bit of circuitry and would be easy to remove, clean and repair. She smiled. “Looks pretty straight forward, Boss,” she said, clipping a series of tools to her belt and putting on her helmet. “Lead the way.”
They headed out the door and down the tunnel to the sealed airlock and into the mini-biome. Once inside, Jayne was in awe at how much this 100-metre diameter biome was like all the videos she saw of the real Biome 3. She knew there were no people in this biome but everything else was the same, except on a smaller scale. There were monsters in here, both big and small. The gravity was slightly higher. Everything was wet. The jungle was so dense that it was impossible to see where the biome ended. They knew they had to travel on an unmarked path to a rocky outcrop in the middle of the biome. The path was not direct. It seemed to worm its way around in the dense jungle until they had no idea, without looking at the ocular video screen mounted inside their helmets, where they were in relation to the exit. The exit was not important now. They had to get to the outcrop and set the pressure tent over the external opening to the filter system. All biome control devices were placed inside a positive pressure container, all inside a naturally occurring part of the biome landscape. The landscape hid the controls from the inhabitants. The positive pressure system kept all the macroscopic and microscopic creatures out. The filters, at the inner core, maintained sterility of the system. But all filters needed replacing occasionally.
Jayne saw a rocky crag just up the trail where the jungle thinned. She pointed and stopped in her tracks. Something that she could not see was just ahead. She sensed it. The something was very dangerous. Spike, walking behind, stepped past and stepped over what looked like a log across the path, and strode up to the rock.
“Don’t step on that log ’cause it’s not a log. It’s a roller and they can crush you as soon as you hit the ground,” warned Spike.
Jayne knew what a roller was. It was one of the higher gravity beasts that looked just like a rotting log across the path. It captured its prey by causing you to fall when you stepped on it. It quickly rolled as soon as it felt the pressure of your weight. This would pull your feet from under you and cause you to slip and fall. It would then roll back over you and flatten out, sealing you between its body and the ground. If its huge weight did not crush you, you were sure to suffocate. If you ever came across a roller that was flattened on the ground, it was probably eating. Once its prey was dead, it simply attached a million suckers to the body and drained it of all vital juices.
Jayne grinned and said, “Watch.”
She took a few steps backwards and ran towards the log that was really a roller. She landed right on top of it with both feet and jumped into the air just as the roller rolled and flattened itself over the ground. Jayne landed on the other side of the beast that was now sealed to the ground and sending out its suckers for a nonexistent meal. “It is better to set it off, rather than leave it in spring mode. You never know what might happen on the way back,” she said matter-of-factly.
Spike shook his head. “You are an idiot. You are going to lose a life for sure after that little show.”
“I doubt it. It is part of the advanced manual on ‘preparing to return on a path.’ Don’t you read?” she asked, her voice dripping with sarcasm.
Spike shook his head and moved on. He reached the outcrop, removed the pressure tent pack from his pouch and placed it on the outcrop. He was opening it as Jayne stepped up beside him. She was even more tense. Something dangerous was near. She could feel it. She could also feel the silver star, hanging around her neck, start to warm against her skin. A shiver ran down her spine. She pushed the feeling aside.
“Have you checked the location thoroughly?” she asked.
He turned and looked at her and extended his hand as if to invite her to have a look for herself. Jayne
stepped forward and walked around the outcrop. She could see nothing that was dangerous. She nodded at him and he pulled the tab on the tent and stepped back. He held up fingers as he counted to five. The tent zipped opened and encased the outcrop. Slowly the walls of the tent solidified and a door formed in one side. The tent would form a positive pressure container around the rock. Its secondary purpose was to keep techs protected from biome creatures that might attack them while they were working.
Jayne felt another tingle surge from her core and out her fingertips. She quickly looked around and then realized that they must be near. Probably not in the mini-hub, but close by. The shiver told her they were reading her. She wondered if the Sentinels were also reading her. She shook her head and tried to clear the fuzziness that a ‘read’ left behind. A strong sense of foreboding filled her and cleared her head. She reached in her supply pouch and felt around. She had no idea what she needed. She just knew she needed something. Her hand closed over a small cylindrical object about 25 cm long and two cm in diameter, with a recessed button on the side. She pulled it out and looked at it. She knew what it was from her studies but never actually touched or used a real one. It was very high-tech and used for catching small live specimens from the biomes. When you pushed the button, the shaft extended to a metre in length with a shallow net at one end. The netting was made of high strength carbon fibers and almost impossible to cut. Once you snagged a specimen, the net disconnected from the ring that held it open and collapsed over the specimen, immobilizing it. The specimen could easily be placed in a confinement container for transport. The electronics in the netting could then be activated and the netting would relax and free the creature.
Jayne held the netting device at the ready. She had not pressed the button to activate it. She knew it was too soon. Spike had not noticed her and was about to open the door to the tent when she reached up and touched his arm, stopping him.
“Please,” she said softly. She pushed the button on the cylinder. The net popped out.
“Trust me on this, please,” she whispered again. “Please open the door and step to the side as quickly as you can. On my signal.”
She held up the net at head height in front of the opening, just far enough away to allow the opening door to clear the net. She nodded.
He opened the door and stepped quickly to the side. There was a whooshing sound and a rotten smell. The netting flew out and came free of the ring that held it. It flew three metres through the air and dropped to the ground.
The beast inside struggled for a moment and then stopped as the fibers that held it tightened over its wiggling frame. Jayne reached up and shut off the odor-mimic function in her suit. It smelled bad and she knew there was no need to endure it. She walked over to the ball of netting and stared at the creature caught in the webbing. It was what was commonly called a Stink Bomb. It was a small lizard that grew a single horn in the front of its thick skull. It killed its prey by projecting itself headfirst and smashing whatever it hit. She guessed that the odor had its own survival purpose but could not think of what it was. She was not a great fan of the flora and fauna of Biome 3. Whoever had designed it must have done so in order to mimic the assumed creatures on the jungle planet to which Biome 3 was headed. But Jayne thought he or she must have a very bizarre sense of humor. She pressed a button on the net handle. The netting relaxed and the small Stink Bomb scooted away into the jungle that surrounded the pressure tent. She retrieved the netting and placed it in her pouch.
“Thanks, Wu,” said Spike. “How did you know it was there?”
“I just remembered that those little guys like to hide in crevices of rocks above ground level. I thought there would be a good chance one was hiding there. I thought I saw something right before you activated the tent,” Jayne lied.
“Well, I doubt that his horn would have broken this helmet,” he said, tapping his helmet with his finger, “but I sure would not have liked to put it to the test. Let’s get these filters replaced and get out of here. I heard there might be a drop-in game tonight. I would like to play soon. Have you played yet?”
“No. Some of the girls in my dorm asked me to play for them though,” she answered. She stepped into the tent. She stepped out again and said, “Sorry, Boss. After you.” She bowed deeply as he walked in front of her.
Jayne followed and quickly closed the tent door. It pressurized with a hiss. A light in the ceiling of the tent came on. Spike took out his VID and started to read the instructions on how to open the access port. Jayne carefully reached past him and pressed on two protruding sections of rock. There was a hiss and a small door slid open, exposing the electronics.
Spike looked up at her, slightly irritated. He looked back at the VID.
“Do you want me to do it?” she asked.
Spike looked up at her again and then back at his VID and then at the opening in front of him and then back at Jayne.
“I think you need more practice at filter replacement than I do, so I think you should do it,” he said and he invited her to the open door in the rock.
Jayne turned so her helmet would hide the huge grin that took over her face. “Yes, Boss,” she said and she began the filter replacement process. It only took Jayne a few minutes to replace the filters and reseal the circuits. “Shall I run the tests?” she asked.
Spike looked at his VID screen and flipped to the next section. He looked up at Jayne. He shook his head, rolled his eyes in amazement and breathed out. He made a decision. “Wu, I am going to say something that will cause me a great deal of pain both now and into the future,” he said and he sighed again. “Here goes.”
“What?” snapped Jayne. She was expecting a long and not very accurate list of the things she had done incorrectly in replacing the filters.
“I’m not stupid. I may not be as mind bogglingly quick as you, but I am not stupid. So here goes,” he said and he stared at her.
“What?” snapped Jayne again.
“You need to promise me something first,” he said and he sighed dramatically again.
“I ain’t promising you nuttin’,” she spat in her best slang.
“Hear me out. You must promise that what I am about to say never gets repeated to anyone,” he said.
“What?” she said again, the exasperation evident in her voice as her head nodded in affirmation and she turned to leave.
“I’m… I’m sorry. I’m sorry for being an ass. From now on, when we are working together, you are the boss,” he said glumly.
Jayne turned and looked at Spike. She expected to find a smirking face staring back at her but Spike stood with his arms out inviting a hug.
“What?” she queried. She turned away to conceal a flush of blood to her face.
Spike put his hands on her shoulders and spun her around. He pulled her close and pressed his faceplate against her faceplate. “I mean it, Wu. I am sorry I was such an ass. Please accept my apology.” He hugged her to him once again.
Jayne knew her face was red hot. The inside of her faceplate was fogging up. Her heart was hammering. Her knees were weak. This feeling was not embarrassment. It was something else. Exactly what she did not know. She liked it and hated it at the same time.
Jayne broke from his embrace, turned and started to walk back to the tent entrance. She spoke with her back to him hoping to conceal what was happening to her body. “Are you kidding? The last thing I want to be is your boss. We are partners. I have just forgotten what you just said. Let’s get this tested, closed up and put away. You know they are timing us. I want to get back as soon as possible,” Jayne babbled, as they completed the task and headed out of the biome pod.
They entered the decontamination chamber where jets of fluid sprayed and cleaned their suits. A blast of air dried them off. They headed out of the chamber and removed their helmets. Suddenly both their VIDs began to emit the emergency klaxon sound. They both looked at their VIDs and read:
EMERGENCY
Report to Mini-Biome Pod 6
. Fixer contact with ‘Baby Q’ has been unexpectedly interrupted. The last location is being mapped to your VID. Determine the nature of the problem that resulted in the loss of contact and report the situation. Administer medical aid as required. Take care of each other.
“What is ‘Baby Q’?” asked Jayne.
“It’s the small Quantum Cray they use to run the mini-biome pods. That computer tracks all individual life forms that are present in the biome, with the exception of some bacteria and viruses. Those are tracked as a population. All visitors, such as us, are followed and all actions recorded. When contact is lost, an alarm goes off. Now, that could mean something as simple as a communicator malfunction all the way up to the total destruction of the fixer in question,” he said as he jogged to the entrance to Pod 6. Jayne followed.
He called back, “I am surprised that you don’t know this.”
“None of the mini-biome pod manuals refer to the Cray as ‘Baby Q’. That is all I asked,” she stated, her voice edged with irritation that he would think she was not prepared.
They both put on their helmets and entered the tube to Pod 6. There were few differences between Pod 1 and Pod 6 in terms of the overall environment. Both were designed to mimic aspects of Biome 3. Pod 6 was used to test the student’s gravity prowess. If a biome fixer entered Biome 3 to repair a gravity malfunction, how would he contend with the other aspects of the biome in, for example, zero gravity situations?
Jayne flipped on her helmet video and scanned the fixer assignment for Pod 6. It was a solo run. One fixer was required to enter Pod 6, locate and repair a gravity fluctuation. It sounded pretty simple. She wondered what went so wrong that contact was broken. They both entered the pod and scanned the edge of the jungle. The fixer in question was hard to miss. He or she was floating in the air, halfway between the ground and the ceiling. Jayne could see some movement but not much. Floating around the fixer was the source of the problem. There were at least a dozen acid spitters floating near the fixer. The gravity malfunction affected a whole brood of these little guys. An acid spitter was a bizarre creature, about half the size of a mouse, that was able to spit a highly corrosive acid from a gland above its nostrils. The acid was really digestive juice that the creature used to disable small insects before consuming them. Since it had no teeth, it used the acid to break down the tough exoskeleton on some insects before eating them whole. A fixer suit was more than enough protection from this small amount of acid.
Jayne stared at the floating fixer. He was caught in zero gravity. Normally you would just turn on the suit grav unit to let yourself settle slowly to the ground. If, for some reason, this was not possible, you would contact the Quantum Cray that controlled the pod. It would then adjust the gravity field for you. As she watched, an acid spitter bumped into the floating fixer. A mist formed in the air at the point of contact. All of a sudden, the problem became obvious. The mist that gathered around the helmet was slowly being sucked into the filter system of the suit. There was so much of the acid vapor that it probably destroyed the filter system and eaten away at the suit’s control and communication circuitry. As far as the computer was concerned, the moment that circuitry died, the fixer disappeared. It had no way of manipulating the gravity field for something it could not see. They needed to get him down fast before there was a breach in the suit. The low gravity area was only about 25 metres square. If they stepped into the area, they would also become weightless and susceptible to the acid vapor.
“I’m going to jump up into the zero gravity field and grab him,” Spike said. “As soon as I have him, notify Baby Q to lock onto me and increase the gravity. We should slowly drift to the floor.”
“Are you kidding? That air is filled with acid vapor. You could both end up stuck in a zero grav field,” she warned, just as an acid spitter bumped into the floating fixer and spewed more acid vapor. The spitting acted like a propulsion system and sent the spitter into the fixer. The fixer began to slowly float toward the edge of the zero grav line. If he floated into normal gravity he would drop 30-metres without the protection of Baby Q. She watched as one of the spitters hit the normal gravity area and fell to the trees below. The same thought hit both Jayne and Spike at the same time. There was no choice if they were to save him. “Go! Go now!” she ordered.
Spike stepped back and ran and jumped into the zero gravity area, propelling himself right at the floating fixer. At the same time, Jayne sent a command to Baby Q to increase the gravity on her mark. As Spike reached and grabbed the fixer, his momentum sent both of them careening towards the high gravity of the rest of the biome pod.
Jayne screamed, “Mark!”
The two bodies were now tumbling and slowly falling at the same time. Spike’s foot entered the normal gravity area and both he and the fixer began to fall. Spike felt the speed increase and pulled his foot back. They slowly fell toward the ground and landed in a small clearing. Once down, the gravity returned to normal. The brood of acid spitters fell like hail into the undergrowth of the jungle.
The rescued fixer was not responsive. Jayne and Spike carried him to the decontamination port and allowed the washers to clean them. The green light came on and at the same time, the outer doors opened. Medical personnel entered and removed the fixer’s helmet. He was breathing, but as Jayne looked closer, he opened his eyes. They were white and cloudy, burned by the acid vapors that entered the suit. He was blind.
As Jayne turned away, her eyes welled with tears.