Darwin's Paradox (18 page)

This was too much! Her grandfather, too?! Were they all murderers? Angel feverishly read on:
It is now thought that Vogel, and those with him, may have been veemelds and were attempting genocide in favor of veemelds, given that these genetically unique individuals were immune to the ill effects of the disease. Although not proven, they were considered to be Dystopians attempting to create anarchy.

DARWIN DISEASE: A neural disorder, caused by the artificial human endogenous retrovirus Pro-V and named after Darwin Clinic in Icaria-11 where the first case was diagnosed on April 21, 2080. Known to be sexually transmitted, the disease may have also been spread by other means. In its pathogenic state, Darwin selectively interfered with several neurotransmitters, eventually destroying cholinergic neurons of both peripheral and central nerves. Symptoms included simple memory loss, heart problems, muscle spasms and eventually dementia and death from complications.

Duration of the disease from initial symptom presentation to final stages of dementia and loss of critical brain functions varied from a few weeks to five months. The rapid spread of the disease resulted in a major pandemic and the eventual collapse of Icaria-11. Despite full quarantine measures by the Centre for Disease Control, the disease spread to most other Icarias with cases documented as far as Icaria-37. Veemelds, because of their unique genetic makeup, were immune to the pathogenic form of the virus and may even, as in the case of Prometheus (the veemeld, Julie Crane), have served as carriers.

Icaria-5’s Pielou Lab of the CDC, headed by Zane Nakita, elucidated the origin and specific etiology of the disease and discovered a cure in 2096. Following CDC’s aggressive vaccination program and removal of environmental triggering vectors, the pathogenic aspects of Darwin were reversed. While this HERV remains a part of the human population’s genetic makeup, it is considered benign. Current work by CDC researchers have actually demonstrated some beneficial effects of the virus such as mildly enhanced cognition.

Angel was devastated. Vogel’s assistant, Janet Hardy, was her grandfather’s cousin! At least the cousin had done the right thing and committed suicide because of her involvement in creating and spreading the worst disease ever known on the planet. Angel’s grandfather was executed in the Pol Station when Julie was twelve years old, before they even knew of his involvement in creating and spreading Darwin.

Angel clamored for alternatives: perhaps they’d thought to make one thing and had created another, like a huge, failed experiment. Too bad they all died before anyone could piece together what had really happened. Still, how could Angel’s mother have lived with herself, knowing that she was responsible for the death of a hundred million people? And then there were her other terrible acts of violence to consider.

As Angel watched the vid-clip of her grandfather destroying his laboratory in a terrible rage—no doubt from guilt—Angel was reminded of her mother’s temper and how it flared up like birch-bark tinder at times. No wonder, thought Angel Julie was the end product of a family living a legacy of anarchy, criminal behavior and violence. It was in her mother’s genetic make-up, which meant it was also in her own.

Angel cupped her face in her hands and wept.

Angel
walks the smooth corridor, bathed in rainbow light filtering through glittering jewels above. Although she is not sure where this place is, she feels at home as though she has been here before. In fact, she has, in a previous dream, one she has been having since she came to Icaria.

She approaches a corner in the bright hall and knows she will see a figure in a brown cloak. The same one she’s overheard her mother describe to her father from her own recurring nightmare. Incredible, Angel thinks. I’ve entered my mother’s nightmare. But Angel does not feel foreboding like her mother—only curious anticipation.

As she turns the corner, the cloaked figure stands before her and raises its arms toward her in greeting.

[Hello, Angel]
, it says in a chorus of multi-timbral voices.

Angel smiles.
Hello. You’re Proteus, aren’t you? My mother told me about you. You’re the reason my mom and I could sometimes talk to one another.

[Yes. We can speak to you in your dream state. When you join with us, we will be able to speak to one another when you are awake, during veemeld.]

I think I understand. Does that have anything to do with those other voices that were in my head but have stopped?

[No, child. Those voices came from the machines, now silenced by your mother.]

I think I understand. You mean the A.I.-core of the city?

[Yes. The city lies vulnerable now, as do those who rely on the machines.]

Angel smiles darkly. Proteus has given her a prize. Escape will be far easier now that Gaia and her people are busy accommodating this new limitation. Angel frowns suddenly, remembering Gaia’s conversation with Brian Dykstra.
But, Proteus, Gaia wanted my mother to shut down the core. Why would Gaia do that if it caused problems in her city?

[We do not know. SAM, our interpreter, is no longer with us.]

Angel swallows down a rising apprehension. But her curiosity overcomes her trepidation.
Who’s Sam, Proteus?
Terror of what her mother has done spikes inside her.
Sam, according to Gaia, is Julie’s friend and Julie has obviously killed him
.

[SAM is a machine-intelligence, an A.I.]

An A.I.?
Her mind soars with sudden realization.
SAM’s a machine? Not a person?

[Part of the A.I.-core, which your mother shut down. SAM was also your mother’s AI-symbiont many years ago.]

Symbiont?

[Co-existing in a symbiotic relationship, as we are with her and with you. Every cell of every human being contains the remnants of bacterial symbionts—mitochondria—without which you could not live. We are just another symbiont in your body. We accomplish a mutual benefit by creating more than the sum of our parts.]

Like what a friend does.

[That is a good word to describe the interaction. Your mother also used this word to describe her A.I.-symbiont]

Why would she do that to her friend, though? Shut it down?

[We do not know...]

I know...
Angel wilts with sad acceptance, her mind reliving Julie’s vivid acts of atrocity.
Because she’s not what I thought she was...I only saw her one way, in the heath.

It’s simple
, Angel thinks.
She’s a living paradox.

Her mother spoke of stable chaos, the theory that describes how nature and the universe work based on paradoxes. How can chaos be stable, though? Julie tried to explain but Angel’s young mind had balked at understanding. She thinks she does now. It’s all a function of point of view and scope of vision. It’s impossible for any living thing to see the entire world all at once or experience the past, present and future at the same time. Through her limited perception of her mother’s behavior, Angel reduced this obviously complex person into a simple being. Her mother is truly those things kind, loving and tender but she is also a ruthless assassin, capable of killing another human being or a machine-friend without remorse. Perhaps stable chaos, itself a paradox, represents her mother life itself with more accuracy than Angel cares to admit.

[We do not understand this...]

I wish I didn’t either...

***

Angel woke suddenly. She sat slouched at the vee-com with her head resting on her arms. Wiping the sleep from her eyes, she straightened out of her stiffness and heard again what must have roused her: a brisk knock at the door and an urgent whisper: “Angel?”

It sounded like Manfred. Angel bolted to the door and found she could now open it. Manfred darted past her, into the room, throwing a wary glance behind him. Angel shut the door behind him. In reply to her look of confusion, he waggled a card in front of her and said with a smirk, “I have a special key. Besides, the A.I.s are down—the big-brained ones—so the city’s a mess.” He studied her critically for a moment then half-smiled. “So are you. You look like shit.”

She wiped her eyes and briskly ran her fingers through her sleep-tangled hair, feeling suddenly self-conscious. “Did you wake me up—” She glanced at the clock on the vee-com screen. “—at four in the morning just to insult me?” She scowled at him.

“No,” he gave her a lopsided smile. “I came to take you to see my friends.”

“Now?” She stared at him. “I don’t think Gaia will let me out “

“Then we won’t tell her.” He grinned conspiratorially. “Like I said, the A.I.-core is down and half the city’s in chaos. It’s running on an emergency automatic system of non-AIs.”

“I know.”

He simply nodded. “So this is a perfect time to break you out. Everyone’s scrambling to keep the basic support systems going.”

She grinned back. “Well, what are we waiting for, then?”

***

“Just stay right behind me,” Manfred whispered over his shoulder as Angel followed him quietly through the long corridors of the Med-Center. “I know this place like the back of my hand.”

“Yeah, but how well do you know the back of your hand,” she challenged.

“Smart aleck,” he said, not looking back this time.

He led her along a route she’d never taken before, down several small hallways and stairways until she felt sure they were lost. She was just wondering why they hadn’t reached a security door yet or seen a guard, when Proteus’s insect voices spiked her danger sense.

“Someone’s coming!” she hissed.

“I know!” he snarled back. “Quick,” he grabbed her hand and pulled her into a side corridor then pelted to the end of it.

“It’s a dead end!” she heard her voice rasp in dismay.

“With a vent,” he said, stopping under a head-height screen on the wall. He reached up and pulled hard, dislodging the ventilation screen.

“That came loose easy,” she said, frowning.

“That’s ‘cause I use it all the time. This is my escape route.” He hauled himself up and reached back to pull her up. “Come on!” He glanced nervously past her to the end of the hall. The person they’d both sensed must be close by now. She scrambled up and he gruffly pulled her inside the shaft, then planted his hands on her behind and pushed her past him, drawing out a flare of embarrassment from her despite the situation. He quickly and deftly replaced the vent screen in its place.

She looked back at his smirking face and felt her own lips curl into a sloping smile. “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”

“Almost as much as you,” he whispered. “Let’s go. This’ll get us past all the security checks but it’s a bit cramped.”

“Cramped is fine,” she said, managing a broad smile as she thought of what Gaia was going to look like when she discovered that Angel was no longer there.

Julie
had been pacing the luxurious suite like a panther in a cage. She’d roamed from the window to the open door to her large bedroom, to the plush couch and chairs to the large wooden desk with vee-com, to the full-length mirror and holo art and back to the window. She finally stopped and with effort stood still in the centre of the living room. She closed her eyes and took several slow, deep breaths, focusing her mind inward. She opened her eyes and pushed out one steady, relaxed, pressure-relieving breath. As she started to draw in her next breath, she began the fluid movements to a meditative Tai Chi pattern. She performed her graceful slow-motion dance, limbs coiling and releasing to an inner rhythm, seeking that place inside her that was calm and at peace.

As her body performed the stylized postures of the dragon, the tiger, and the crane, Julie found her mind drifting back to the heath where she’d practiced Tai Chi with Angel. Using the movements that Aard had taught them, mother and daughter had performed the graceful dance in unison each and every morning. They’d stepped through the eighty-three postures in complete synchronization: mind and body united with nature and the universe; mother and daughter linked in spirit and soul.

When she completed her routine in her suite, Julie found that she’d only gained a momentary reprieve from the morose melancholy embracing her soul. She realized now that no amount of meditation could erase the memory of what she’d done. She finished her last posture, held it one last moment, then released the energy, bowed her head to the plush carpet and sighed.

She’d been here for several hours. A Pol had brought her a meal, otherwise she’d been left alone with her doubts and regrets. What was in store for her now that she’d done the ‘wonderful deed’ of shutting down the core and killing SAM? Good Earth, how stupid she’d been to believe them, especially Frank, she thought. The mayor no doubt had planned for this event, setting up a contingent A.I.-human network to ensure that the city climbed to a new paradigm and did not suffer a standstill from the shutdown. Life in Icaria-5 continued while Julie Crane once again served as the public scapegoat, this time for disrupting the city’s public services.

Julie dropped into a plush, overstuffed chair and put her head in her hands. She’d wanted to believe Frank so badly; and so she had. But in retrospect, the logic of what he said and what she knew of his character all pointed in the opposite direction. No, she couldn’t blame Frank—she had only herself to blame. Once again, she’d fooled herself.

Julie rose and wandered to the window that gave her a limited view of the heath and pressed her face against the duraplast. The sun had just set, casting a warm tangerine glow over the darkening horizon and carrying her imagination back to her family. In her mind’s eye she saw them turn and run toward her. Angel reached her first, flying up into her arms and hugging her around the neck. Then Daniel flung his arms around them both. She basked in the warmth of the imagined moment but was snapped back to reality by the cold window on her skin. The loss of her family tore open a rift in her gut and the ache inside her flooded through her in a convulsion of weeping.

The moment of self-pity passed quickly and Julie fiercely choked the tears back and fisted the moisture out of her eyes. She refused to fall apart and succumb to grief over first SAM’s needless death and now the distinct possibility that her mission to come here to free her family from harassment was not only a dismal failure, but had been orchestrated by that miserable virus all along!

Unless she did something to stop them, she was doomed to remain trapped here, a servant to the vagaries of the Head Pol and Gaia and possibly Proteus. If she didn’t cooperate, they might even haul Angel to Icaria-5 to take her place. She had to stop them all of them, including Proteus. And she had to find Victor Burke. He was the key to unlocking the door to the insanity Icaria-5 had become. She felt sure that Burke’s absence had everything to do with the mess Icaria and she was in right now. Gaia had taken over and her insanity was sending Icaria-5 to Hell in a handbasket.

Finding Burke meant first escaping from this room and the Pol-Station and that was no small challenge in itself. Once she got out, she’d still have to find Burke in the huge city without drawing attention to herself and getting caught, somehow. She was getting ahead of herself! “One step at a time”, she whispered. First she had to get out of here.

She’d had a lot of time to think of escape, yet all she’d come up with was a tenuous plan at best. Her initial survey had revealed two hidden cameras in this main living area, one in the bedroom and one in the bathroom. The main door likely led to a monitored hallway—she hadn’t heard any stirrings of a guard outside. Each room had a window with no balcony and no ledge. Basically there was nothing between her and thirty stories of free-fall to the ground if she went that way.

Time was running out and since there was no time like the present, she kicked her hair-brained plan into gear and began her daily floor exercises. Aware that she was no doubt entertaining whoever was monitoring the camera, Julie worked up a good sweat with stretches, push-ups, squats and anything else she could add into the mix to get warmed up for what lay ahead. She pushed herself harder and harder, her heart pumping both with the exercise and with determination. For half an hour she kept it up, finally cooling down and bringing the workout to an end. She strode into the bedroom, feeling the flush of her body. She pulled out some new clothes from the dresser then stripped the bed, rolling the bedding into a pile, obviously meant for the laundry chute in the bathroom. She tossed the clean set of clothes on the bed, ready for her to change into later, then sauntered to the bathroom, where she carelessly dumped the pile on the floor by the chute. While she undressed, she avoided looking up at the poorly hidden camera, but imagined someone leering at the other end.

Julie stepped into the shower and turned the water as hot as possible. In short order, hot steam filled the room and, she hoped, fogged the lens of the camera. Now to work, she thought, breaking into an old English ballad she’d learned from her mother and used to sing to Angel when she was a baby:
“One morning, one morning, one morning in May...I spied a young couple, a making up hay...”
She dearly hoped that the singing drowned out any sounds she was about to make.
“...For one was a fair maid and her beauty shone clear...and the other was a soldier, a bold grenadier...”

Under cover of the steam, she quickly redressed in her sweaty workout clothes, swiftly tied the bed sheets together into a makeshift rope then fastened one end to the toilet by the window. She trembled with the excitement, fear and the razor-sharp edge of adrenaline coursing through her system.
“Good morning, good morning, good morning said he...Oh where are you going, my pretty lady...”
Trying to keep her singing voice steady, Julie picked up the heavy toilet lid and slammed it into the window. “
I’m a going a walking by the clear crystal stream, to see cool waters gliding and nightingale sing...”
The lid bounced off the durable plastic. Damn! She tried again and then a third time before the window finally shattered with a quick, loud thud and crash that made her flinch.

“Oh, I thought I’d drop that one day!” she exclaimed for the surveillance team, knowing full well they’d send someone down pronto. She probably had a minute or two, no more.
“Oh soldier, oh soldier, will you marry me...Oh no, my dear lady, that never can be...”
Knowing the steam would dissipate quickly and reveal her escape, Julie brushed the duraplast shards off the lower sill of the window with a towel.
“...for I’ve got a wife at home in my own country...”
She threw out the bed sheets and climbed up on the sill, squeezing through the small window.
“Two wives and the army, too many for me...”
She felt the blast of cool air and the thrill of being a short step and a long fall away from death.

Grabbing hold of her sheet rope, she rappelled down without giving herself the luxury of either looking down or thinking about where she was. The cool wind blew the sheet hanging below her and whipped her hair across her face as she lowered herself down. Her muscles were alive with activity like they hadn’t been since that day on the cliff face so long ago when she had discovered Aard’s hidey-hole.

She finally hazarded a look below her and inhaled sharply. Amidst the alarm of her precarious position, she felt a thrill of amazement for the beauty three hundred feet below her. The heath was in full bloom a mosaic of colours blended like a pointillist painting brought to life by the brushstrokes of Mother Earth in a warming sun. A gust of wind snapped at her and her reverie vanished. She swallowed hard, then she set her fears aside and focused on her task.

Braced against the wall with her feet and hanging on to her makeshift line, Julie saw a window just below her on the next floor. Even though she had no time to be picky she couldn’t go for that one. It was a bathroom window, just like the one she hung from, and definitely much too small to break from the outside. The window beside it was a lot larger.

Julie took a deep breath, and mentally prepared herself. She’d done a similar maneuver dozens of times with Aard, but with rope, gloves and a safety harness, and not with the hope of smashing through a duraplast window. It was quite possible that the force of her weight and momentum still wouldn’t break the window and she was afraid it might take her a few attempts, just as it had with the bathroom window. Her biggest worry was that she wouldn’t get the time to try more than once because her ‘clever’ maneuver could simply rip the bed sheets and she’d unceremoniously plummet thirty stories or so to her death.

So be it, she decided with a grimace and kicked off the wall at an angle and swung down in an arc toward the larger window. Her feet met resistance for a fraction of a second as the window flexed inward. Then there was a crack like a gunshot and the large window smashed through and she tumbled inside what she hoped was another suite. Scratched and bruised, Julie scrambled up from the floor and came face to face with a little man with close-cropped burgundy hair. He stifled a shriek. His startled pale eyes blinked rapidly in shock, and something else she could have sworn was recognition.

***

It was time to finally get out of this place, Victor thought for the hundredth time as he watched the glow of sunset paint the heath below in stunning, rich tones of ochre and russet highlighted with the splashes of yellow, red, and purple. This time he was going to do it, he promised himself. This time he’d go through with his egress. Pivoting on his heel he decided to try the door first. To his amazement, he found that it wasn’t locked and opened without resistance. A quick peek into the empty hallway revealed that a guard was no longer posted. This was too much!

So, Gaia hadn’t even given him the benefit of that much motivation. Perhaps he’d earned her disrespect, though. Vee knows he hadn’t ever done anything to earn otherwise, he thought grimly. He’d been her willing lackey from the moment she’d ensnared him in his own trap many years ago. Even his final insubordination had been underhanded—he’d never faced her directly and openly defied her. Well, he thought as panic surged up to choke him, again, all that was going to change right now! He went back into the dusk-darkened suite to retrieve his droid, but halted in mid-stride. Something large and fast was swinging down toward his window, partially blocking his view of the blood-red sky.

Before he could react, the duraplast shattered and a body tumbled into the room. Silhouetted against the sunset, a lithe, slender woman gracefully picked herself up out of the wreckage, dusted herself off with a sense of urgency and regarded him with a mix of fear and challenge. She took a step forward into the light cast by the toppled table lamp and he recognized the feral green eyes.

It was
her!

Instinctively he recoiled with a cry and stepped back, fidgeting with his collar. Her face was flush, her disheveled hair sparkled with duraplast fragments, and her standard Com-Centre-issue clothes were sweaty and rumpled. But to him, she was impeccably and terrifyingly beautiful.

A glimmer of recognition crossed her face and she tipped her head slightly as if trying to recall an elusive memory. But the look disappeared as she attended to business. Quickly ensuring that no one else was in the room, she said to him, “Sorry, I’m just passing through. I won’t hurt you. Just stay out of my way, please.”

“You’re...Julie Crane,” he stammered, following her.

She turned back to him and regarded him carefully with narrowed eyes, visibly annoyed that he was still there. “Listen, I don’t know what you’ve been told about me or what you’re doing here,” she said in a cool voice, sizing him up and down, possibly checking for weapons, “.…ut you don’t look like a Pol, so, I’m not your business. Understand?”

“Maybe...” He swallowed nervously and took in a shallow breath, his eyes still downcast. “Maybe I can help you.”

She came close to sneering but cut herself off and said sharply, “I don’t think so.” She’d obviously dismissed him as insignificant, like so many others before her. “I’m looking for someone.” She headed for the door again.

“I know lots of people. Who are you looking for?”

Hand on the door handle, she turned her head and gave him an appraising look, one eyebrow raised. It was obvious she didn’t believe him. After a brief pause she made a decision, perhaps strictly out of politeness and said, “Victor Burke.”

He almost laughed with surprise. Then he took a deep breath, stood up straight and saw that she noticed the transformation. “I’m Victor Burke,” he said with a confident smile, meeting her eyes for the first time.