Anton's Odyssey (20 page)

Cotton gasped for breath. “Oh, that’s much better.”

“Okay, last piece of equipment.” Allen reached into his drawer and pulled out a set of glasses identical to the ones on his face. “Okay put these on.”

Cotton complied. “That’s strange. These don’t make my vision all blurry.” Cotton once tried on an old pair of spectacles that belonged to Billy’s great-great-great grandfather who was legally blind.

“Of course not, they’re not intended to correct a refractive error.” Allen said dismissively. “Okay, active in three… two… one….” He typed another key and eyeball holograms projected onto Cotton’s face.

“What the heck!” Hammond exclaimed.

“Huh? What?” Apparently Cotton couldn’t see the hologram globes, and they weren’t affecting his vision.

Allen was turning green. My guess was that the cyborg part of his brain was processing two different sets of visual data, and the fleshy part of his brain couldn’t keep up. He pinched the hinges on the pair he was wearing and his own hologram eyes disappeared. “That’s much better.” Allen took his glasses off and put them in a drawer.

Hammond gasped at the sight of Allen’s scar. I elbowed him sharply in the ribs to prevent him from inadvertently saying anything cruel. Ellen seemed pretty unfazed, so I guessed she had seen Allen’s true face before. Cotton shrugged indifferently. As long as Allen was good for a laugh, my brother could care less if our friend was deformed.

Allen braced his head against his seat back. “Cotton,” he said. “I will see what you see. The visual data will conflict with input from my vestibular system, so try not to move your head too quickly, or I’ll get motion sickness. I suppose the rest of you are going to want to see what Cotton and I will see, so I’ll dump the video data to the big vid on my right.”

Allen pressed another key. An image popped up on the big screen but it didn’t make much sense to me. Cotton was looking right at Allen, but on the screen I could barely make out the image of a small boy sitting in a chair. Everything seemed pixilated, with wavy lines, and odd flashing colors that weren’t actually in the room. Every now and then yellow circles and polygons would blink in and out in an instant, transiently providing shapes and contours to items around us.

“Is that how you see the things?” I asked curiously.

“It is,” Allen said. “Based on what Ellen tells me she sees when we look at the same object, I have been able to create an algorithm that approximates the vision of normal people. Here, let me bring it up for you.” He typed in a few more commands and the screen flickered. “Now keep in mind that this image is complete nonsense to me. I will continue to see what you saw on the screen previously.”

Though easier to interpret than the previous display, the new image was off slightly. Compared to what I saw around me with my own eyes, some colors on the screen were way too vivid and others seemed washed out. The depth of field was also exaggerated, items in the background seeming much farther away than their true location. Soft boarders had been sharpened, and items that were normally hidden in shadows or dark corners were much more apparent.

“Will Cotton be able to hear us?” I asked.

“Oh, glad you reminded me. Can you reach into the drawer where I just put my glasses and retrieve the audiopiece.”

The drawer was cluttered with bits of circuitry and parts of electronic gadgetry, and I had no idea what I was look for.

“Tiny pink cylinder in a small clear case,” Allen advised.

“Got it.”

“Okay, pull back and out on Cotton’s pinna —”

Had Allen just asked me to touch Cotton’s dong?
I thought, panicking
.
“His what?” I asked.

“The fleshy part of his ear. Pull back and out on his ear and place the metallic end of the audiopiece into his canal.”

I complied.

“Ouch.” Cotton protested.

“Don’t scrape the hard end against the walls of the canal. It’s very sensitive,” Allen explained.

“Sorry,” I said, making an adjustment.

“No! Anton, the earpiece needs to go in much further.”

Considering Allen was literally seeing from Cotton’s eyes, there was no way he could know the exact placement of the earpiece. “It’s in pretty deep,” I lied.

“No it’s not,” Allen said assertively. “I can tell from the reflection off the lamp in front of me, which is itself a reflection from Ellen’s lapel pin, that the ear piece hardly clears the tragus.”

We all turned to look at Ellen. Indeed, she wore a silver pin in the shape of a polar bear. Environmentalists wore them to protest the species’ extinction. Ellen’s pin was tiny.

“No way!” we said in amazement.

“I don’t want the ear piece to get stuck.” I said.

“Don’t worry. I have a device to get it out. There will be no need to visit Dr. Zanders.”

Ready to go, Cotton asked, “Where’s the nearest vent?”

“There’s a vent above the closet, but I haven’t taken the grating off.”

To reach the vent, Cotton had to stand on Hammond’s shoulders. We handed the real bayonet up to Cotton so he could pry off the grate.

“If you’re going to take that with you, you better wear a belt and bring a sheath. I don’t want you to nick the suit by mistake,” Allen said. We found the items in Allen’s closet, and Cotton disappeared into the ductworks.

Allen typed a line and a schematic of the ship popped up on the monitor directly in front of him. “I put a low frequency wave emitter in the right pant cuff of the suit. We can track your brother from this monitor,” Allen explained.

“How does Allen see the screen without his glasses?” Hammond asked Ellen in a whisper.

“The femtoprocesor in his head can receive the image wirelessly and superimpose it on the visual data he receives from the glasses Cotton is wearing,” Ellen whispered back. “Doesn’t make him sick like getting data from two pairs of glasses.”

“That’s wild.” Hammond whispered. “I kinda wish I had a computer in my brain too.”

“It certainly has its benefits.” Allen said. Apparently his hearing was on par with his bionic vision.

For the next hour, Allen gave Cotton directions. “Left... right... left... no your other left.” He would occasionally comment on Cotton’s location as if he were a tour guide. “See how the ducts suddenly changed from very dirty to very clean. That’s from the recent retrofit. It was done a bit carelessly in parts. Some sections of the ship are completely walled off from the passageways.”

Hammond yawned. “This is boring!”

“Feel free to leave.” Allen said, but Hammond stayed put.

“Are you okay Cotton?” Allen asked, concerned. “You’ve been in there for over an hour. Are you getting claustrophobic?”

“Oh, I’m fine. This is great. I move much faster with this suit on.” Cotton’s voice came out of the speakers built into the back of the large monitor.

“We’re almost at the jano-bot! Hang in there!”

“I wouldn’t worry about him staying in the ducts for too long.” I said. “He’s pretty much used to it by now. It’s like his second home.”

“Is that true Cotton?”

“Yes.”

“So you do this a lot then.”

“Yes.”

“Anyone ever see you.”

There was a pause. “Maybe.”

“What happened?”

“I was in a duct that went through someone’s living unit, and the duct wasn’t bolted down very well so it would shake when I moved. Then this guy comes home from dinner. My face is right by a grate, so I can see the guy watching a video”

“What was he watching?”

“Some program for piety-freaks. It was really dull.”

“What makes you think he saw you?”

“Well, I didn’t want to move because that would rattle the ducts, which might make the guy want to look in the vent. I had been in the ducts a while, so I was pretty tired. I decided to take a nap to wait the guy out, figuring eventually he’d go to bed. As I put my head down, I bumped the grating, and it popped out and landed with a crash. The guy looked up. We didn’t make eye contact or nothing, but I’m certain he saw me.”

“Then what happened?” Allen asked curiously.

“What do you think happened? I booked it out of there. I wasn’t exactly going to stick around, now was I?”

“No, I suppose not. Did you recognize the guy?”

“No, I didn’t get a good look at his face, just the back of his head.”

“Well, what could you see?”

“He was bald.”

“Hmm... did the guy have family there?”

“No, or at least not right then.”

“What color jumpsuit was he wearing?”

“No jumpsuit, he was wearing regular clothes.”

“Not an officer’s uniform?”

“No.”

“What was his place like?”

“Pretty big, or at least much bigger than our unit.”

“Let me think.” Allen thought aloud. “No jumpsuit or officer’s uniform around dinner time, so he probably works the early shift. Big place, so he’s probably an officer or able starman. Bald….” Allen paused and scratched his head before reaching a conclusion: “Frederick Chaucey. He’s a certified level five electronic technician who works the early shift. He rated able starman a while back. My uncle says he does good work. No family. I didn’t know he was religious, but he keeps to himself. How long ago did this happen?”

“Few days ago.”

“And Jim Boldergat never said anything to you about it?”

“No.”

“I think you’re in the clear. Fred’s pretty focused on his work. Doesn’t poke his nose into things, and probably could care less about kids farting around.”

Cotton let a noisy one rip just to make a point. Hammond giggled.

“Don’t do that!” Allen snapped. “The ventilation system will fan your smelly farts through to the next vent, giving away your position to any person with even a subnormal sense of olfaction.”

“Sorry,” Cotton said.

“Just don’t do it again!”

Cotton wisely let the reprimand go unchallenged, and continued down the ductworks, making a few more turns.

“Should be the morgue up on the left,” Allen observed, “so we’re getting very close.”

“What’s the morgue?” Cotton asked.

“It’s where Dr. Zanders keeps dead bodies.”

“Really?”

“What are you doing? Don’t pry off the grate!” Allen pleaded.

“Yeah don’t go in there, Cotton!” Ellen said, concerned.

“Hey it’s really cold in here!” On the big screen we could see cotton’s breath condense into vapor. Cotton removed the grate, revealing a large room bedecked with rows of long shiny tables. On a table near the center lay a sealed black body bag. “I don’t see any dead bodies!”

I covered the microphone with my hand. “If you tell Cotton not to do something,” I advised Allen quietly, “you can be sure he will do it.”

“Then what do I do?” Allen asked in a panic. “He’s going to get caught.”

“Reverse psychology usually works,” I explained.

“What do you mean?”

I uncovered the microphone and said, “Hey Cotton, let’s go check out that dead body.”

“What dead body?”

“The one in the black bag.”

“There’s a dead body in there?”

“What are you doing?” Allen whispered, exacerbated.

“Just trust me!” I said softly.

“Do you know who he is?” Cotton asked.

“I know of him.” I said. “Fell on his head. Smashed it in pretty bad. Check it out. It’ll be cool, all gory like in the movies.”

“Naw, I dunno.” Cotton said. A slight tremor in his voice gave away that he was afraid of what he might find. “I should stick to the mission.”

“Okay.” I said.

Allen sighed with relief. Cotton continued to crawl down the ductwork.

“Hey what’s that?” Cotton said looking through the next grating. Human embryos and fetuses at various stages of gestation bobbed around in large tanks of pinkish liquid. An umbilical cord tethered each embryo to a nutrient-impregnated gel at the bottom of each tank.

“How do I keep him focused?” Allen pleaded with me, covering the microphone.

“Just tell him what it is.” I said.

“You’re next to the clinic. This is where Dr. Zanders incubates the pre-viable gestrulates from female crewmembers. He takes them out of the vat when they reach 40 weeks.”

“Oh,” said Cotton, indifferently. “I was born the old fashioned way.”

“Really!” Allen, Hammond, and Ellen said in unison. They sounded shocked.

“Hey is that why your brother’s messed up?” Hammond asked me tactlessly.

“No,” Cotton answered, “because Anton was born the old fashioned way too, and he’s not messed up.”

I felt my face flush scarlet.

“That could explain why you’re so bad at math,” Hammond observed astutely, “why you have to repeat with all the puny 7
th
graders.”