Broken Mirror: Apophis 2029 (12 page)

  "Cait, or Ciaty if you wish," I blurted back. Unwavering, she looked at me with a raise of her eyebrow, as incentive that she was still curiously somehow awaiting my full answer. "from the surface above Fallhaven ...I think," I uttered finally.

  "You mean you're not sure?" she inquired with a jest.

  "No, I mean we
are
from the surface but there was some sort of subway connection that took us here, and I'm not sure how far away that was," I tried to answer as best I could, though still a little fazed that she wouldn't know that.  A slightly worried look washed over her face again, only to quickly fade with a practiced grace.

  "Oh my, what a journey you must have had," Beatrice began to embellish to change the direction of the conversation, and I too wanted to avoid that subject; not knowing what they would do to us if they discovered we had fought our way through a horde of the infected after our arrival at the rail station.  I could only hope Thorn and Haiti too, had the wisdom to keep their mouths shut and that obscure fact to themselves.

  "We, um, then we made our way down a duct system until we ended up here," I quickly chimed in to draw her off the subject, as I realized I had to be more careful about what I said.

  "Oh, I see..." the old woman trailed off for a moment, "lucky for you then, as a bunch of those diseased animals broke into the compound and we have been trapped down here because of them for quite some time now," she explained.  Her words made sense now, revealing that was why there was a mass of Weeper's in the level above.

  "You mean there is no other way out of here?" I asked with a hint of concern choking my voice.

  "Oh, I believe there was at one time, but it's been so many years that some of this fancy machinery doesn't work anymore and other exits collapsed as a result from earthquakes.  The General and his security staff keep us safe though, so don't worry your little head there, Caity," she smiled as she gave me a motherly tap on the head, and stood up to activate a button by the door.  Shortly thereafter, another woman showed up, "Elise here will escort you too your guest room, which will be locked for the first few days of your stay, for your own safety of course," Beatrice noted with a dry smile as she motioned to the pale faced guide awaiting me at the inner door, "We have a lot of curious people here that will only hound you with questions.  Be assured we will all finally get introduced when the time comes, so you have some time to get some proper rest, dear," she offered as I got up and was placed in the company of the chaperone who escorted me out into the hall and out of sight. 

  Moments after the door closed in the old woman's private chambers, the ornately framed poster of Fallhaven lit up and the image of General Kane blurred in through its display as Beatrice stood before it.

  "So," the wrinkled face of the General asked with a raised brow, his dark penetrating eyes losing none of their effect over the flat screen, "do you think she bought it?" he inquired.  In response, the old woman casually tilted her head with a look of numb disregard,

  "Trust me, Kane; I know what I'm doing." she answered coldly as she nodded in assurance.

 
After exiting my hosts lavish quarters, I could not help but notice there were still a pair of guards clad in starched grey uniforms outside the door, blocking the hall entrance from whence my close comrades and I had been dragged in so unceremoniously.  My escort, Elise, showed me to a private room after winding through a maze of halls, each section was color coded to distinguish their designated areas.  While passing one corridor I got the brief glimpse of two workers scrubbing something like graffiti off the wall that I couldn't quite read in its entirety because they were standing in the way, my pause was noted by my chaperon who hastily turned me back on course towards our destination. 

"May I ask about my friends?" I inquired.

  "You will be reunited with them in due time, I would suggest that you be patient," Elise stated abruptly.  At the end of a hallway I was pointed into a small room, observing at first glimpse that it had all the bare essentials and aesthetics of a cell.  As stupid as it sounds, I was almost giddy to find a working toilet along with a sink and clean running water.  Elise took a moment to demonstrate how to operate the sonic shower and where to dispose my current clothing and pointed over to the sanitary tan jumpsuit folded up on the counter they had left for me to wear.  Following her stern guidance were instructions that my meals would be delivered to my room twice a day.  After my escort left, I gave a glance around the room; noting that it was most likely my guest unit was bugged; but if there was a camera in the room, I had to admit they had done a damn good job of hiding it.

  There was no way to open the door from the inside, so figured I would make the best of the situation by getting some overdue rest, but even that train of thought was difficult to accomplish as I kept worrying about what had happened to my companions.  Likely, they were also being detained for a set timetable as a precaution to check us for signs of exposure to the MN4 virus, under the guise of our complimentary guest quarters, of course. 

  I noticed that there was also a similarly framed poster of Fallhaven shelter decorating the bare wall as the only form of decor in my room.  It displayed a retro twist in the marketing design boasting the shelter as the place for "
health & safety
" and "
all the conveniences of home
" among other such highly inflated claims.  Apparently, though, it was all legit; nobody could deny that this asylum had kept all their sorry asses alive and well down here while the rest of society fell apart at the seams in the world above. 

  I remembered seeing advertisements for places like this long ago, and it was common knowledge that they did not come cheap.  Some very well to do families invested their entire life savings into reserving spots in these types of sanctuaries for their own children as an insurance measure rather than putting their kids through college.  In hindsight, of course, some might agree it ended up as a damn wise investment.

  I think it was back in the early 2020's that 3D and holographic gamers were the new surge in technology design.  Most everyone alive had an alternate persona they rendered in the digital world.  In most cases, overseas resource wars were purely fought with unmanned drones and robotic counterparts so there was little human-to-human contact on the battlefields.  Unless of course, you were from a country that wasn't flush with such high-end technological advancements and military hardware, and their soldiers were forced into personal combat against a faceless enemy. 

  In my opinion, I thought it was a pretty chicken-shit method of combat by utilizing armed droids and bomber drones while sitting in a safe little room far out of harms way.  Especially so since the worlds governments used the taxpayers funds to create these robotic innovations and entered into hostile incursions and initiated wars by invading and occupying foreign lands without any form of public approval, whatsoever.

  That is where the hallowed gamer community came in.  Most everyone knew that there was little privacy left in the real world and that tabs were being kept on everyone and everything from our bank accounts to copies of our digital messages sent across the net.  Everything you did and said was analyzed or scrutinized by national security agencies or all-powerful corporations for marketing purposes.  Everyone had their personal life monitored in either one fashion or another. 

  There were astonishing but believable rumors that surfaced every now and then from the media that supported those facts, but these rare occurrences were quickly snuffed silent and white-washed from existence.  Every government on the planet abused their ability to cleanly snip public information from the net communications, as if it had never occurred; even people working in the field of media were far from candid about their jobs.  It was a scary thought to think that everything said and done was being either scripted, censored or controlled to a certain extent.  Any bad publicity about the questionable conduct of the Government or their military personnel were promptly drowned out with a landslide of misinformation. 

  More than once I remember hearing stories that the military industry created combat drones on such a grand scale that they began utilizing video games played on the net by the unwary public to service real-world war engagements.  Nobody really believed it, but pretty much everyone knew a hardcore player who liked to brag about their stats, and there were also well paying prizes for those qualified to enter international contests who sought such highly skilled gamers. 

  I remember back when I was in college and reading recent historical data about how tens of thousands of people would endure unpleasant and hostile weather simply to watch a live sports game held within massive arenas, and they were frequently assigned so far out in the stands where they couldn't actually see crap.  On top of it, the majority of the audience would actually pay enormous sums for seats to suffer abysmal conditions of blaring heat, rain or snow, just to watch a bunch of ghastly overpaid sports players who were usually pumped up to their eyeballs with steroids just to dink around with a ball?  It sounded nuts to me, but the history records proved it happened. 

  It was a fad of the times to pay personal income just to watch a small group of idiots run around on a field to play a game; fortunately, our society had progressed past such idiocy.  Sports were originally invented for personal fitness; and were actually a degree of healthy exercise and a bit of fun to play for the individual, but tedious and excessively boring to watch for those who were actually educated and cultured.  Fundamentally, in our modern world, someone monitoring any type of sports as a spectator considered it about as entertaining as watching the participants exercise at a gym.  Truly, it was boring as balls.

  The fine line of friendly competition between schools, cities or countries was blurred when the tyrannical police state was introduced.  Everyone had a much smaller picture back then of how the world actually worked, and patriotism was expected of all.  Now that I think about it, I could imagine it was possible that combat programs could have been infused into real-world controllers through the gaming net, but nobody could truly believe mere rumors they read online ...could they? 

  The Gaming community evolved into a different shade than the nefarious social networks that were so popular at the time.  The governmental departments of our paramilitary police could eavesdrop on personal communications over satellite; targeting virtually anyone.  However, they seemed to be clumsy if not outright incapable of intercepting online games, where the social gaming communities passed information and data among themselves in real time.  It soon became clear that if government security agents were able to actually access and 'play' within digital arenas alongside other gamers, they would usually stick out like a sore thumb and were promptly booted from the privately owned servers. 

  Gamers further had their own identities hidden through server jumps and the virtual world soon became the only place where people could converse with confidentiality and without fear of reprisal.  It soon expanded into a unique niche that outsmarted the government spooks.  The nosey authorities that be, tried to counter this by creating their own gaming servers to entrap members into their web of surveillance with the lure of contests and valuable prizes; but most of us were too savvy to fall for that ruse.

  Like an idiot, I had no idea that that poster on the wall was a communication and surveillance device until three days later when it suddenly blinked onto another background and Beatrice was there to greet me on its screen.  I was so startled I jumped. 

  "Good morning Caity," she gleamed as the lights in my room began to gently lighten, proving she had control of environmental conditions in my cement cage, "I hope you've caught up on your rest.  A brief excursion has been planned for you today, please be ready in fifteen minutes to meet the Director." she smiled at me through the screen, giving momentary pause as if awaiting my reply, but I was too dumbfounded to say anything until after the screen switched to the countdown of a clock, giving me barely fourteen minutes to prepare myself. 

  I had washed my clothes by hand in the sink days before and set them out to dry.  Against the escorts repeated requests that I place my old attire the disposal whenever they brought my meals, though I noted that she never once made a move to actually touch them, nor me for that matter, which confirmed my suspicions that I had been held here for quarantine observation.  Regardless, I donned the placid tan jumpsuit they had furnished and tucked away my old clothes in a dark corner behind the counter beyond line of site from view-screen.

  The door opened on cue when the timer on the screen ran out.  This time, it was Beatrice herself who was waiting outside the doorway, and I attempted to display a decent degree of false pleasantries as I could muster for the moment.  After responding in turn, she motioned me to join her as we made our way down the corridor.

  "The General has granted an audience to just to learn a little bit about you and hopefully find a place for you in our community, Caity." That shocking revelation caught me off guard and worried me a more than a tad.  Did they really have the mind to keep us trapped down here?  I was sure our friends up top were starting to get concerned that we had not yet returned since several days had already passed in our absence.  She handed me a clip to tie up my hair, which was now gratefully clean from using the hydrosonic shower, of which I cheated and used water from the tap to finish the job.  Having steam and soap bubbles vibrating across your naked body at high frequency was a sensation I don't think I could ever actually get used to.  Admittedly, it was a highly efficient use of water for such a mundane task, but in my own personal opinion I found sonic showers to be a slightly unnatural if not just a measurably unpleasant experience.

  I accompanied Beatrice down the corridors with a pair of armed guards following in our step.  I wasn't too terribly anxious to meet this brash Kane fellow again face-to-face, but admit I was actually curious as to how this group of people had survived so well for over half a decade all bottled in like this underground.  They must have had a great deal of supplies in stock and resources to spare for such an extended stint. 

  Hoping, as I was to see my friends, after being ushered through a set of steel double doors a brief smile of relief crossed my face as I saw both Haiti and Thorn sitting at a large oval table before us.  Across from them sat the General; a smug gleam in his eye and cheerless thin line of his lips as he turned his glared my way which was surprisingly effective at quelled my spirits or making any attempt to openly greet my comrades.

  Haiti's crazy dreadlocks were now replaced by a mash of hair that looked like a botched attempt at being cleaned without the advantage of running water.  One would imagine that sonic showers were not prominently designed for his type of hairstyle. Thorn himself looked just as joyless, sitting there in his identical brown jumpsuit.  Both of the men looked at me uncomfortably when I walked in, which swiftly set the tone in the room.  I was assuming this was going to be an unpleasant conversation.

  Beatrice sat me down next to my companions and moved around the table to take her position in a chair behind the General while a pair of guards took their posts at the door.  I really didn't know what to expect and began to get nervous from the heightened tension hanging in the air.  Being under the spotlight like this really wasn't my cup of tea.

  "Now that you are all here, we need to address certain issues about your continued residency here at Haven," Kane granted his stern words without meeting us eye to eye.  A quick glance over my shoulder showed my companions were just as disturbed by the General's statement. 

  By the way he carried his words, Kane was the Alpha-male around here and made sure everyone knew it.  In short order, he assigned us various job duties and made it clear that we would only have limited access to sections the facility until the day we earned the privileges the other residents enjoyed.  Apparently, the earth-toned jumpsuits we donned were status marks of the lowest status level one could have here in their improvised community.  A pseudo-totalitarian society had evolved here over the years of confinement that relied on subordinates who were valued solely by their skills, position, and above all, loyalty to the General who was now Top Dog; and had been for quite some time. 

  Both of my male acquaintances were ushered off with a set of attendants who directed them to their new accommodations and were dictated their new responsibilities in the 'social group' as Kane so tartly titled it.  When the verbal thrashing was over, I had a sinking feeling in my stomach, even though Kane abruptly ignored me altogether as he got up to leave the conference room.  Thankfully, Beatrice, who had been quietly sitting in the background without uttering a whisper the entire time, came over to offer a kind hand to let me up out of my seat.  I think she could see the sullen look in my green eyes, and I didn't feel well to say the least.  Honestly, I wasn't very good at handling sudden amounts of stress dumped upon me in such an unceremonious manner.