Ark-13: An Odyssey (4 page)

Jake sat in his sleeping pod, back against the wall, elbows on his knees, and hands over his face. His journal was opened next to him – his pen in the crease of the page. A bottle with clear, liquid Ether was in his grasp – his vision was blurry from its effects.

Glad Andrew set this aside for emergencies from the supply drops.

He chuckled to himself pathetically as he took another swig of the Ether. Jake looked down in his hand at Meredith’s note again.

TRUST DANNY RYDER, FIND THE X DRIVE

GENESIS has taken Meredith. She was worried that they were on to her, because she had seen something. And how in the hell does she know that hacker kid Ryder? And what the hell is the X drive?

Jake scratched the stubble sprouting along his jaw line and then consulted his personal parcel next to him on the floor of his closet. He flattened his legs to the ground and placed the box atop them before him. He cracked open the box and met his stack of 4x6 photographs. He flipped through a number of them until he found one.

Nora…

A sadness turned his stomach like a screw digging its way down. She was gone. He had left her, wishing for him to be a different man. One who would take a leap of faith. One who would let his guard down and act on what he felt instead of what he thought. One who would put his heart before his head every once and awhile.

But he was not that person on Earth.

He remembered the girls that he let slip through his grasp. He became paralyzed when he met any decision of long-term commitment.

What would Doris say?

He thought back to his secretary at his law firm. Her candid wisdom somehow came through his subconscious.

Get ya head outta ya ass.

Jake started laughing as tears started to pool under his eyelid. He took another swig of the Ether and got up and walked to the mirror. “I left them… I left them all behind…” Jake spoke aloud, his voice cracked into a million inflections. The tears welled up to their limit and began to stream down his face. His throat seized on itself and his face contorted into an unbridled sadness. Regret possessed him at every thought of his life before launch. His body trembled, knowing that he was alone and away from the public eye and could let out his feelings.

Now Meredith is gone... I am so sick of people being taken away from me!

He raised his head to his reflection and met the look of conviction drawn over his face. He was certain in his deliberation and ordained to a new cause – to right the wrongs of the past by living in accordance to a new code.

The very thing that made us human was the blind willingness to love and the unquenchable appetite to be loved in return. If I don’t fight for that than what does that mean for the survival of humanity?

Jake formed a fist on which he leaned. Anger flooded his emotions as his despair had run out and rebellion took its place.

GENESIS took Meredith and I’m going to take her back!

The next morning Jake walked the Stalls, surveying the bustling masses. The large hall resembled an Indian bazaar as different vendors offered their trinkets or crops to the colonists milling about. A middle-aged man approached Jake through the crowd.

“Councilman Hansen!” It was his fellow councilman – the Director of Resources, Andrew Langford.

“How’s it going?” Andrew put his nose up and inhaled a lungful of air.

“Good… good… commerce is running smoothly. I wasn’t sure how it would all run with that second currency infusion from the Bridge last week. But it appears that splitting it up evenly was the right course of action. A few complaints from some vendors saying, that they needed more funds to operate but nothing big.”

“Great. Hey, I’ve been meaning to tell ya that you’re doing a great job with the commerce sector.” Jake complimented, having always liked Andrew.

“Oh… well thank you. And I’m sorry about what happened to Meredith, I know how close you two were… and about the vote yesterday—” Jake interrupted him with a waving hand.

“Don’t worry about it. What good is a Council if we don’t stand up for what we truly believe?” Despite his sincerity, Jake could not keep his eyes from surveying the crowd for any sign of Danny Ryder.

“I think we could pull this off. Well, we have to…” Andrew reflected with an optimistic smile. Jake tuned him out as he found a figure through the crowd of a similar height and build of Danny. All he could see was a mop of black, shaggy hair, walking across the Stalls fifty feet away.

“… we have to always maintain the integrity of our society here…” Andrew continued his soap box, despite noticing Jake’s preoccupation. Jake patted Andrew on the shoulder trying to conclude the conversation.

“We will… we will… hey I gotta go check on something, real quick, so I’ll see ya later.” Jake rushed off, leaving Andrew perplexed and concerned by his erratic behavior.

Jake was off, walking at a distance, but tailing Danny.

Danny’s mop of black hair turned down the third row of vendor stalls. Jake squeezed through a crowd as he continued his pursuit. He passed by Junior Posey and pretended that he didn’t hear his beckoning call. Danny led him out of the Stalls and started traveling up the Loop.

Because gravity grounded them to the floor, they were able to travel up and around the Loop until they reached the Stacks. They had a horizontal orientation when walking the Loop, while the Stacks turned to being a vertical orientation, all was the same as the gravity shifted from chamber to chamber. The bridge to the Stacks corrected this phenomenon. As the colonists walked the bridge, the pathway twisted like a corkscrew until they turned ninety degrees. Then they walked out onto the Stacks with the floor beneath them and the pods towering to either side.

Then Danny ducked into a nearby sitting area before the main Chamber. Jake planted himself behind a corner and watched him from afar. There was another teenager waiting for him. His behavior toward Danny was awkward and shady, as if he was uncomfortable in his presence. Danny scanned their surroundings and continued the meet.

Danny reached out a hand with a currency note and the other teenager took it quickly and shoved it in his pocket.

What kind of Black Market is going on here?

Then what Jake saw next shocked him. The teenager scrunched his sleeve up revealing his armport. Danny brought out an insertable drive, one that was different from the standard issued holographic, and plugged it in to him. The holographic screen shined from the other end. With a push of a button the screen flashed through the teenager’s body levels. Then after a few moments the holographic screen showed the words:
Download Complete
.

What the hell?

Danny unplugged the drive and nodded to the teenager who went on his way. Danny continued toward his sleeping pod – Jake continued to follow. After 60 yards, Danny began climbing a ladder to the third floor of pods. Jake watched from the ground floor as Danny entered the seventh pod down from the ladder.

“I’ll see you tonight… Mr. Ryder…” Jake murmured under his breath.

⊶
<
>
⊷

When you are floating aimlessly in outer space there is no day or night.

The overhead fluorescents through the Ark had dimmed, denoting that night had arrived. The clock read 1 AM.

What does time mean anymore? We aren’t waiting for anything. We just are… If your future is the exact same as your present, time is obsolete.

Jake knew that most of the colonists would be asleep in their pods, so he decided to make his move to Danny’s. Jake walked on light feet across the steel catwalk that connected the network of pods. He descended a ladder to walk over to the next cluster of pods and then ascended another ladder. Jake finally arrived to Danny’s pod.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Jake whispered to himself aloud.

He exhaled and then raised his hand to the entrance button. Upon pressing it, Danny’s pod opened, revealing an unexpected sight.

Danny was sitting casually facing the door, arms-folded, feet up on the desk, wearing a smirk.

“Jake! I’ve been waiting for you…”

“Welcome to my humble abode…” Danny raised his arms in presentation. His demeanor was much more relaxed and more casual than Jake expected. The pod was a carbon copy of Jake’s and all other colonists for that matter.

“You’re expecting me?” Jake’s brows furrowed as he tried to make sense of the situation.

“Yeah, you really need to learn how to tail someone. Especially if you are going to be sneaking around the Ark. They are always watching…” he nodded toward the corner of his pod where the lone camera was mounted to the ceiling. Jake turned back to Danny with consternation drawn over his face.

“Don’t worry… I’ve hacked it. The Bridge can only see a recording of me sleeping last night. What they don’t know and what they won’t notice is that the feed is on repeat. They won’t notice though… I don’t shift in my sleep.” Danny winked at Jake.

“How did you do that?” Danny pulled what looked like a pen out of his pocket. He twisted the pen into a teepee stance and shined two holograms out of either end. One was a keyboard and the other shined the mini-computers monitor on the wall. Danny’s fingers began tapping on his desk where the hologram of the keyboard showed.

“I hacked my way in.” Danny’s fingers continued to tap on the desk until they came to a stop. He leaned back in his chair so that Jake could see what he brought up.

It was a listing of all 1,000 cameras throughout the Ark. Jake could not believe his eyes.

“Is there any surveillance feeds of the Bridge?” Danny shook his head emphatically.

“Already checked, those GENESIS bastards are still ghosts.”

Jake shook himself from his own disbelief, returning to his own skepticism. He stepped back away from Danny and folded his arms. He cocked his head to his shoulder and looked down on the teenager before him.

“Why do you think I came here?” Jake challenged him to make sense of it all. Danny noticed the change of posture and tone but did not change his demeanor. He snatched a ball from his desk, leaned back in his chair and chucked it against the pod wall, catching it upon its bounce. He continued to speak with a casual certitude, shrugging as he answered.

“You are here to figure out what Meredith Jones did with me prior to being taken. The question you really want to ask is did I get her in trouble? Or did I frame her by hacking her armport? And the answer is ‘No’. GENESIS did.” Jake shifted in his stance upon hearing this.

“What do you mean?”

Danny raised his arm to show off his armport.

“So these things are called armports. They relay every aspect of our bodily levels to GENESIS. Whether it be protein levels, blood pressure, internal temperature, hell even our hormonal balances. They got it all. The question is why? Why do they care what my Cortisol levels are?”

The answer dawned on Jake as the words, ‘Detain for Treason’ flashed in his memory.

“To sniff out disorder…” Danny smiled and nodded his head. The logic continued to unfold in Jake’s head. His eyes found a peach on the desk, one that Danny stole from the Stalls. He remembered that his vitals indicated that he was telling the truth when he said he hadn’t stolen them.

“But you have found a way around that.”

“Yes, indeed…”

“The kid you met this afternoon… you downloaded his vitals and are uploading them as yours?”

“I already have mine programmed in me. Those vitals were not for me…” Danny’s eyes narrowed on Jake, as he pulled out the drive and shook it near his ear.

“They were for me… You knew I was coming…”

“That’s right, and I think before we go any farther you are going to have to make a decision. I see that you are interested in what I have to offer and are obviously dedicated to figuring out what happened to your girlfriend. But I know that you are a member of the Council.” Jake knew what Danny was implying as he continued to fan the drive in his grip.

Jake thought of the events of the last 24 hours. His distaste in GENESIS had mounted over the weeks and he knew that his vitals had probably already bordered on treason. He used to be a man who played by the rules and never risked anything. A man with his guard up at all times.

“What’s it gonna be?” Danny asked with a tempting grin.

Jake’s last thought settled on the engagement ring in his parcel. The one he hadn’t given anybody. The chance he never took in his low risk life.

I have to find my redemption in this new life.

“Red pill, blue pill?”

“Something like that…” Danny smiled at the reference of one of his favorite classic movies.

“I wonder how much change we could actually make for ourselves. Whether we like it or not, we are still flying into the great unknown. And we are still stuck on this God forsaken Ark. But what are the other Arks doing? Which direction into the ‘great unknown’ are we flying? We aren’t a part of that inner circle of decisions. We have no representation. I don’t know much, but I know that living with armports and constantly being monitored for any sign of rebellion is cause enough for rebellion,” Jake thought aloud, adding justification to his decision. And then with focused eyes he looked up to Danny.

“Let’s do it.”

Over the next ten minutes, Jake sat hooked up to the insertable drive. Jake did not speak as the device in his arm was hacked. Danny remained fixated on the screen as he rattled off different commands on the holographic keyboard. A progress bar materialized on the holographic monitor before them.

66% Complete.

The screen flashed different data points and different command queries as fast as a strobe light. The drive remained plugged into Jake’s arm, as if it were an IV dripping new life into him.

83% Complete

Jake began to process the decision he had made and its implications. He knew that nothing would ever be the same from that point on.

100% Upload Complete

Danny’s eyes lifted to Jake.

“Welcome to the Insurrection.”