Subversive Elements (Unreal Universe Book 2) Read online

  “It is my pleasure, sa.” Naoko zipped through the parkade entrance and frowned at the cost of parking before taking the nearest available spot. As they climbed out, Naoko announced, “They are charging me ten dollars every half an hour for the privilege of parking my Father’s car here, Sa Nickels. I expect to have a very nice dinner in compensation.”

  Startled, Garth blushed when Naoko started laughing. Fuming at his inability to tell when she was joking, he stuck his arm out and damn near floated to the moon when she slipped his arm inside his.

  xxx

  Naoko’s heart sank at the sight of the God soldiers clustering at the far end of the park, but admitted she should have known better; as main base of operations for the Traitor, the Guillfoyle Building was home to the most expensive and innovative equipment available anywhere in Latelyspace.

  Logically, Doans would want to protect Central –indeed, all of Hospitalis- from further treachery. Maniacs the world over were probably at that very minute clambering to find people willing to storm the building for what lay inside. The only beings capable of preventing that right now were God soldiers.

  Immensely more troubling than the soldiers was Garth’s attitude. It was surprising that he saw nothing strange in buying the building. Though they were patently ludicrous, Ashok’s outrageous accusations were hard not to consider; even the most rational citizen had heard of the Traitor’s beliefs by now, and the central part Garth Nickels had played in his downfall.

  As insane as it all was, it was hard not to listen to a Latelian’s cries of foul play. For many, Ashok Guillfoyle had been central to their very existence, offering jobs and hope to millions. For others, he’d been a longstanding example of nobility, honor and self-sacrifice. To witness the abrupt downfall of someone so essentially Latelian … The more outré news and entertainment shows were still running the Traitor’s bizarre public statements, which helped in the destruction of the man’s one-time paragon-esque appearance.

  Naoko knew Garth hadn’t been involved with Ashok’s plans to destroy the spaceport. She knew it, because every time she looked into his eyes, she saw the pain and sorrow that the devastation caused. That a man could suffer so, and in such silence … it was remarkable.

  That being said, she knew as much about Garth Nickels as anyone in the world. She didn’t believe for one minute that his presence at the spaceport at that time had been accidental. Garth Nickels left nothing to chance, and him being there then had served some purpose. She suspected she knew what that might be, but until tangible proof became available, the secret would sit deep in her heart.

  If it were true?

  What a secret!

  xxx

  Lieutenant Gregroy Smith wasn’t having the best of days.

  In fact, he was certain he wasn’t having the best life. Beyond normal issues –his mother still insisted he be a programmer, while his father demanded a continuation of the Smithcott tradition of military servitude- contending with a unit of God soldiers without a Twoesie around to form bigger words into smaller, more digestible words was impossible.

  Blind loyalty and ignorance to your status as cannon fodder came with a price, and that price was the inability to understand complex orders like ‘Don’t kill the workers’, ‘Stop killing the workers’ and ‘For Pete’s sake, take that out of your mouth’.

  After much unpleasantness, Gregroy felt he had come to a viable agreement with all the parties involved. The crew supervisor, a burly fellow with an eye on the bottom line, finally promised to keep his men well within the imaginary border provided by the rough semi-circle of bored Goddies, griping every step of the way that he couldn’t work under such conditions. The Goddies were to get extra food rations if they promised not to try to eat anyone else.

  It was going to be touch and go. The damage to the Guillfoyle Building was extensive, the repairs messy, and if repair crews wanted to avoid penalties, they were going to have to follow Central City’s requirements for tidiness to the letter. This meant waste needed to be shipped out on a regular basis. Coordinating this along with everything else that happened in Central was a time-consuming endeavor at the best of times. Throwing God soldiers –who were notoriously twitchy- into the mix, made things nearly unbearable.

  Without the nearly telepathic ability of a Twoesie to issues complex commands to the Onesies, Gregroy was near tears.

  Every time a God soldier moved, the line of demarcation shifted. They couldn’t understand that when they moved, it wasn’t permanent. Every time they moved, they made the repair crews waiting for materials nervous, and God soldiers smelled fear like dogs smelled food.

  He couldn’t bear to see another crewmember get an arm pulled off. At least not any time soon. They still hadn’t found the arm and Gregroy had the sullen feeling the soldiers were playing with it.

  “Lieutenant Smiff.”

  Gregroy looked up from his prote –where he was filling out the template for accidental consumption of body parts belonging to non-military personnel- and followed the finger of the field promoted ‘Twoesie’. Private Gern had been given the honorary title for being the first one in the entire unit to comprehend the difference between yes and no, and was taking the job of representative very seriously.

  “Field glasses.” He could see two people walking down the cobblestone path quite clearly, but he needed to be certain his day was going from bad to ‘where did I put my resume’ before things got out of hand.

  Gregroy accepted the field glasses from Gern and put them to good use. Yes, it was Sa Nickels. Spectacular. On his arm was a half-breed! Simply wonderful. “I only just got them into line.” Gregroy muttered unhappily. He dropped the glasses back into Gern’s shovel-sized hand. “Gern.”

  “Yessa!” Gern slammed into a salute with shocking speed, kicking up a small squall that nearly knocked his commanding officer to the dirt.

  “Tell the men there’s a truck coming.” Please, he thought, don’t point out there’s no truck.

  “Dere ain’t no truck, sa.” Gern put the field glasses up to one eye, nodded, and counted aloud. “Nope. Dere’s … two people though.”

  Gregroy heard the Siren’s call of sitting in an office churning out code for twelve hours a day. Being able to say he’d been a lieutenant in the army might even score him a corner office. It was the right of every loyal Latelian to have a dream, wasn’t it? “Practice Run, Twoesie Gern. Tell the lads to run through double-time. I want to see them hustle.”

  To Lieutenant Smith’s great satisfaction, the words ‘practice run’ had not lost their magic. He’d happened on them by mistake and was going to run that particular phrase into the ground if need be. Gern turned to the men and started bellowing Batlang commands at a hundred decibels. A startled flock of laborers, dressed in white, rushed to their scaffolding to avoid becoming overly intimate with size 80 army boots. Gregroy saved his work and waited for Garth Nickels and his unknown female companion to arrive; there were multiple slots for names, which meant that this sort of thing happened often enough, and in crowds.

  In further preparation, Gregroy activated a handful of spEyes. There was no way –no way- a civilian was going to yell at him like that again. Next time, the feed was going straight to Lately Tonight.

  “Hello, sa.” Lieutenant Smith nodded.

  “Smith.” Garth stopped by the soldier and indicated Naoko. “This is Naoko Kamagana. She is a friend of mine. She will be coming with me into the building. She is not to be bothered.”

  “Sa,” Lieutenant Smith cleared his throat, “you own the building. You don’t need to tell me what she’s doing here or who she is. It’s none of my concern.”

  Garth glared up at Lieutenant Gregroy Smith. “Your men are inside the zone. Why?”

  “I don’t have to answer that. The actions of this unit are not under your purview, nor are said actions permitted to be commented upon by you.” Gregroy smiled condescendingly, instantly regretting his choice in facial expressions; Garth’s blue eyes went colder
than a Sunday morning on the moon.

  A steady, incipient whine started ringing in his ears. Gregroy thought it was probably parts of his brain dying out of terror at what was coming out of his mouth.

  Closer to crying than ever before but hiding it well, he continued. “Since you ask, though, I will tell you. The laborers make the soldiers nervous. Their orders are to keep everyone out, and with the workers climbing all over the walls, they are having a difficult time remaining calm. They keep thinking the repair crews are trying to break in. To make matters worse, there is a great deal of vehicular traffic, which also makes them nervous.”

  He licked his lips and continued. The whine was decreasing, directly in proportion to the level of acceptance in Garth’s eyes. “In order to keep everyone from being killed or stomped into the ground, I have had to train these soldiers in the high concept of personal boundaries, something I suspect they’ve never had. For example, most of them believe the two of you are a truck. Some are pretending, and some are following everyone else’s behavior because that’s what they do, but most think you and the … the woman here are a truck. Showing an impressive amount of deductive reasoning for gigantic third graders, they have moved out of the way. With the three of us standing around talking, they will eventually forget this is a training exercise and they will begin wondering where the truck went. Inevitably, they’ll think the truck snuck past them and they’ll want to mount a search party. They will continue to look for the truck until they find any truck. Insurers do not cover Act of God Soldier, sa, and I warrant your neighbors will not be pleased if my men knock down a building looking for a nonexistent vehicle. I cannot bear to imagine what would happen if they actually found a vehicle matching whatever imaginary truck they’ve invented inside their cavernous skulls. So please, go inside or go away.”

  Naoko buried her face behind Garth’s neck and giggled quietly.

  Garth nodded. He’d known God soldiers to be stupid, but … wow. “Awesome. If they eat any of the people who’re working for me, where do I send the bill?”

  “Bill?”

  “Shit, man,” Garth hollered over his shoulder, walking nervously through the double row of soldiers with Naoko beside him, “I’d have to hire someone else to replace said eaten guy, right? Think for a change.”

  Lieutenant Gregroy Smith watched the two ‘citizens’ make their way nervously past the God soldiers. When he was certain that he was too far away, Gregroy gave Garth the finger. Willfully ignoring the sniggering, giggling God soldiers, he ordered ‘Twoesie’ Gern to tell the men to shuffle back into position.

  Then, because sometimes the days are too long, he went inside his command post and put his head on the desk for a few hours.

  xxx

  “That was not nice of you.” Naoko said teasingly, pulling away from Garth until just their fingertips touched.

  “Yeah, I know.” Garth admitted, unable to get over how … electrified … he felt around Naoko. Watching her dance and spin, connected to him by the smallest of whispers… it made him dizzy. “But I don’t want them here, and since I can’t get rid of them until I hire my own security teams, the only thing I can do is make fun of him.”

  Naoko toed a broken chair out of the way. She’d seen live coverage of the assault on the building, but seeing the destruction up close was very different. God soldiers were very efficient. “So why don’t you do that?”

  Garth angled Naoko towards the only working elevator. “Not in the plan, toots.” A raised eyebrow made him regret the word ‘toots’. He wanted to facepalm himself into the next century. The word immediately vanished from his lexicon, as did all ‘toots’ related phrases and implications. He smiled apologetically, happy that Naoko had no idea what the now non-existent word meant. “Ahem. Not, uh, in the plan.”

  “You have a plan.” Naoko hopped into the elevator and pulled Garth along. “What is it?”

  Garth thumbed the eighth floor button. He turned around and waggled his eyebrows mysteriously at the woman he was quickly falling in love with. “Too soon to tell. Mwahaha!”

  “What is it we’re here to get?” Naoko hoped she sounded merely idly curious instead of aching to waste days in any one of the labs. For as long as she could remember, Naoko had yearned for access to the kind of equipment Garth now owned. With unfettered access to machines he undoubtedly would never touch, dreams of designing computer systems to bring Latelyspace out of its Depression would no longer be dreams. More importantly, she could easily resurrect Lady Ha. She was certain the netLINK systems inside the building were on par with –if not better than- those used in the spaceport.

  “Uhh.” Garth stalled. He looked at Naoko, who stared right back at him, innocence and curiosity magnified. “I can trust you?”

  “I don’t know, sa,” Naoko replied cryptically as she stepped through the open doorway, “can you?”

  The eighth floor was the central security wing for the entire building. From the relatively central location, guards could make their way to any trouble spot without difficulty; when designing the building, Ashok had ensured that his security teams could move quickly and quietly without interfering with -or even exposing themselves to- research staffers. Sadly, all the internal security corridors were in permanent lockdown. They had been since he’d come to have a chitchat with Ashok Guillfoyle.

  Garth was the tiniest bit irritated over that. If he’d known about the access tunnels built into the foundations, he wouldn’t have gone gonzo all over the security systems. Every hatch and door leading into the maze-like warren of corridors were going to have to be cut loose and replaced if those areas were to be of any use.

  Following Naoko out into the hallway, Garth tugged gently on her arm, and pointed her in the right direction.

  “Of course I can trust you.” Garth said as they made their way down the hallway, their fingertips lightly touching every now and again. “But there’s trust and then there’s trust. Know what I mean?”

  Naoko, suddenly uncomfortably aware that she knew virtually everything there was to know about Garth Nickels while he knew next to nothing about her, nodded quickly to hide her blush. “Of course.”

  “Well.” They came to a door marked ‘Security Proteus Design Station’ in big yellow letters. Below that, in threatening red block letters, were warnings typical to a facility such as this. There were a great many warnings, many of them involving intimate and abrupt physical death.

  Naoko sensed what Garth had done and gasped. Her eyes widened comically. “You didn’t.” He couldn’t have. It was … unthinkable!

  Garth slapped his Sheet against the Ident scanner and kicked the door open the moment the security locks clattered loudly. Beyond the door was the proteus station he’d fiddled with for hours in a tech-fugue before heading back to the Hotel for food and sleep. “I sure as he… you bet your fu… yeah. I totally did what you think I did.”

  Naoko shoved her way past Garth and into the design room, eyes roaming over every surface. She’d seen the ones used by commercial designers, of course: every programming student had temped in at least one proteus sales shop for school credit. But a security protean fabricator? Being in the same room with one without proper clearances was tantamount to treason. She half expected part of the wall to be torn away as God soldiers came bouncing through to arrest them. Naoko ran a hand lovingly across the Primary Interface Module. Then she eyed the … changes.

  Of which there were many. Naoko, close to getting the highest degrees possible in both avatar programming languages and protean creation, was very intimately knowledgeable about PCU technology and, eyeing the coarse physical alterations done to the insanely dangerous machinery, found herself fretting.

  A lot.

  Very little of the original devices remained. It looked to her as though he’d scavenged parts from a hundred different places and rigged them to the security-level PCU at random, transforming a relatively sleek –if bulky- item into a scrapyard of exposed wiring, unshielded power sources and
… and … it was too much. It was ridiculous to believe he’d somehow managed to do something that no one in the entire history of Latelyspace had ever achieved, yet evidence to the contrary was overwhelming.

  And so … imperfectly. Clearly, Garth was more function over form, but there were … there were limits…

  She looked shrewdly over at Garth, who was busy grinning from ear to ear. It was also obvious he had absolutely no clue whatsoever that –if he actually had been successful in creating a proteus with all these hardware adjustments- what he’d done was as impossible as it was. Or of the impending troubles.

  Naoko smiled calmly. From the level of modification, it was apparent it’d taken Garth quite some time to complete his task. Since they hadn't been arrested for violating several thousand different laws concerning protean technology, she decided it was safe to assume that –while doing the impossible- he’d also managed to avoid triggering any alarms. For the time being. She smiled again, this time sweetly. “Do you know what all of this is?”

  Garth shrugged nonchalantly. He pretty much expected all the names he’d come up for the things in the room were nowhere close to official terminology. “I figured it out.”

  Naoko pointed to the much-altered PIM. “This is a Primary Interface Module. With it, you can design a proteus that doesn’t need a primary netLINK. I assure you, sa, commercial versions of this machine do not compare! The legalities of designing such a prote are … difficult to acquire.” She swiveled on her feet and indicated the bank of monitors behind her. “This is a Surveillance Integration System, where all the design prints for any amount of security protocols and hardware are stored, and if needed, redesigned on the fly.” She spun again, pointing to a smaller machine next to the PIM. “This is a biometric scanning device that can adjust your proteus’ design structure to integrate flawlessly with the natural curvature of your arm. It also adds multiple layers of protection by rendering the unit inoperable by anyone but the intended wearer. It can also,” she added, stepping very close to Garth, “make your proteus sensitive to your mood, if one is to believe rumors.”