Dhungwana 2117: A captivating sci-fi novel: The Dhungwana Chronicles (2117-3451) Part 1 (8 page)

Dayla was selecting her dinner of omelet and vegetables when the housenet flickered the image of Ian outside her front door onto the wall. She opened the door and waited for him in the kitchen.

“I wanted to know how you were. You weren’t in the office and you didn’t answer my calls... ”

“And why should I after what happened last night? I had an engagement and I took a half day off.” she replied, without telling him that she had spent the whole morning at home examining the jobs and pastimes of the District 604 people on the list that she had photographed with her drone.

“Have you eaten?”

“Yes” he answered. “I ate early this evening. I was tired of being in the laboratory. It's late for dinner now, don’t you think?”

“Are you staying here then?” asked Dayla, changing the subject.

“No, I'll leave soon.”

Dayla finished ordering her dinner, then she looked at the time and rushed to the wall. It was 10.45 pm.

“Come here, Ian. Come and listen to this… if you can. It’s 10.45 pm: the social sex begins!”

Ian shook his head and turned to go away, but as he saw she was crying, he came back and put his ear to the wall to avoid increasing the tension, determining to come back the next morning to take her to the hospital. However, even if he could hear only an indistinct low murmuring, he clearly heard the sounds of sexual intercourse.

“Yeah, I hear it” he admitted simply.

“Please, come with me. It'll be happening all over the building... ”

Dayla left the apartment and Ian followed her, this time without objecting.

An hour later they were back in the house and Ian, who had decided to stay, sat on the sofa in the dining room reflecting in silence.

“Ian, I'll take you home” Dayla said.

“It’s not necessary.”

“Oh, yes it is! Come on, let’s go!”

When they entered the building where Ian lived, Dayla insisted on climbing the stairs of the first 10 floors on foot.

“Listen to them, Ian. Put your ear to the wall... Here, too!! It’s the day and time for sex in Dhungwana!”

Ian approached her and listened to the sounds coming from the different apartments.

“Ok, you’ve convinced me... Come on, let's talk about it in the house” said Ian quietly in her ear.

A few minutes later they were sitting on Ian’s couch in the living room.

“Ok, Dayla, sit here next to me and tell me the whole story... ” Ian had softened his tone and looked into her eyes which were still red and blurred by her ruined makeup.

Dayla showed the list to Ian, explained what had happened at the hospital, about the drone and how she felt fine without the patch.

“There are too many… we can’t all be suffering from paramnesia, don’t you agree? Besides, we don’t know what is in the patch... To begin with you are deaf to certain frequencies... And in addition, events we considered
déjà vu
are actually repetitive actions, programmed for reasons beyond me… and every day! Some events have a social nature, and occur at the same time for everyone, such as sex, meals or work. People eat under the endurance limit, drink very little and... don`t you think their dialogues are really strange, even impersonal? Sometimes I feel that also our conversations are so... detached. Those who have had flu now have a peculiar smell and are hyperactive while not feeding themselves properly... Consider also that BlueGray operates without competition, and your discovery that rice genes have been modified on purpose… that these genes can modify human immune defenses. They are drugging us, Ian… but I don’t know why” Dayla concluded.

“We must understand the situation, you're right, and I apologize. First we need to keep the drug from getting into our systems. Tomorrow, under some pretext or other, I’ll get some sheets of synthetic skin from my colleague, a bioengineer. We will apply it to our skin under our wristsynks, the active ingredients will be absorbed by the synthetic skin and no alert will be sent to the hospital. I will secretly analyze the patch, preparing a sample before I leave home in the morning, so no one will be suspicious. It will be just one more sample included with many others.

As already arranged, you will go to pick up your new patches, and afterwards go to the office. Don’t let the doctor put the new patch in your device, you should find some excuse.”

Dayla caressed Ian’s face and then kissed him, hugging him tight.

Ian immediately responded to her kiss, searching for her tongue and began unbuttoning her blouse.

“Ian” said Dayla “not now. I don’t want to take part in programmed sex; you're still under the effect of the patch. It’s just unnatural!”

Ian looked at her and smiled, turned on some soft music and suggested: “So dance with me.”

Dayla relaxed in his arms and smiled, then whispering in his ear, she said: “Turn the volume down, honey... ”

The next day Ian obtained a dozen sheets of synthetic skin from the bioengineer, exchanging them for a reagent which his colleague needed urgently, having forgotten to place an internal order.

After having inserted the synthetic skin between his wristsynk and skin, Ian worked all day on the analysis of the active ingredients in the patch. He struck lucky; he obtained the results using obsolete machines which were no longer connected to the central system and that were only in the lab because they were waiting to be scrapped and recycled.

Finally, Ian looked at the time. It was already 8.30 pm… late, but Dayla might still be in the office. He wanted to go home with her and tell her everything. He took two pieces of synthetic skin and put them in his pocket, then went down to the 304th floor to Dayla’s office.

Ian entered Dayla’s office, greeted her and asked if she had finished her work; he knew that the cameras were recording everything and he couldn’t say anything until they were outside BlueGray Corporation offices in a quiet place to talk.

“Hello, Ian. Sure, I'm ready... Before leaving, I guess you also need to go to the bathroom” Dayla said.

Ian nodded, even if he didn’t understand what she meant to do, but since the toilets had a single entrance for ladies and gents, dividing only once inside, and above all had no cameras, he figured Dayla had something important on her mind.

Ian and Dayla headed together to the toilet where, instead of entering into the area reserved for women, Dayla followed Ian into the men’s room.

She looked around, checking there was no one else there, and closed the door.

“We've only got a little time, honey” she said, as she unbuttoned his pants and began to massage his penis.

“But what are you doing !? It’s dangerous, they could catch us!”

“There are only a few people around. It's late, Ian ... I want you alive again... I am against the standardization of the system... Fuck me, Ian. Let’s do something forbidden, just move my skirt and panties... ”

Dayla knelt and began working with her tongue until he felt ready to fill her, then, still standing, he took her astride. Dayla wrapped her legs around his waist and he began to move rhythmically, holding her buttocks in his hands.

“If you are tired, just lean me up against the wall” she whispered huskily in his ear.

Ian, now filled with a burning need for her, leaned her against the wall, detached one hand from her buttocks and started stimulating her sex, smiling into her eyes as she reached orgasm. Dayla put a hand over her mouth and let out a juddering wave of pleasure, then, knowing her lover very well, she got on her knees again and started working with her tongue and hands, stopping occasionally to give him a French kiss.

Despite the risk of being discovered, Ian, overwhelmed by the pleasure that Dayla was giving him, never stopped looking at her until, catching his breath, he felt the wave of orgasm spread upward from his legs. Then he could only think about the ecstasy of the moment, barely containing an explosive groan.

An hour later, at his home, Ian inserted the synthetic skin between Dayla’s wristsynk and her skin.

“That's it, perfect, no one will notice” he said.

“Let’s hope they’re not spying on us” replied Dayla

“I don’t think so… they’d be here already. The Constitution doesn’t allow state surveillance in private homes and certainly not on wristsynks. There are too many cyber raiders out there that are more advanced than our internal services. They observe the network, and they’d notice immediately if the government started spying on private citizens. It would be a disaster: the social order we have painstakingly built over the last hundred years would immediately go belly up.”

“Ok… so tell me… what did you discover?” Dayla asked.

“You were right, they are drugging us as well as all those included on the list. But there's more. It’s a cocktail of active ingredients that has a very strong impact on the region of the brain that controls memory and our five senses. The cocktail clouds our senses while leaving brain capacity and lucidity unchanged. In addition, the mix is a vehicle made of totipotent cells... in my case, they have lost the battle as my body has rejected them... I am practically immune to them. And I think the same thing is happening to you and to everyone on the list... ”

“What the hell are these totipotent cells?” asked Dayla, rather frightened.

“Stem cells that still haven’t differentiated. It’s really serious. If you consider the additional impact of the modified rice gene, the main source of nourishment for people living in Dhungwana, you can understand the situation becomes complex... They are trying to modify us, Dayla... and probably the people we see behaving strangely who have that peculiar smell have already been transformed... ”

“They who? Who is trying to modify us?”

“You told me who they are... the BlueGray Corporation… they monopolizes Dhungwana under the orders of the Federal Communities… the government of the planet!”

Dayla was silent, stunned, and then recovered herself: “We need to understand what they want to transform us into and why. Apart from the effects that we see in the people around us, we don’t know anything.”

“I'll find out. I’ll work on it in the lab. You should try to understand that list better, give me as much information as possible, but for now we mustn’t talk to anyone about this. We have to live as usual otherwise we’ll attract the attention of the authorities like the first time… with the enormous difference that now we run the risk not only of being banned... ”

“Sure, tomorrow we’ll invite some friends for dinner and I’ll organize the party as though nothing has happened” Dayla concluded.

“Next week we have the appointment with Bickler, who obviously knows everything and is colluding with them. We'll have to remove our synthetic skin for a few hours to let them give us the second part of the treatment and avoid arousing suspicion... ”

“Hey… ” Dayla interrupted him with a flirty smile: “you didn’t tell me if you liked the
déjà vu
in the toilet, Ian.”

“Never again, Dayla, never again... I was scared we'd get caught... but it was absolutely amazing... ”

The check up with Charlie Bickler the following week went well: he didn’t notice anything, and was pleased to hear that after three months of therapy Dayla and Ian suffered only sporadically from
déjà vu.
He told them to continue with the patch another three months.

It was 5:35 pm when Ian, having performed a series of tests in his laboratory, carefully hidden from BlueGray Corporation’s intranet, managed to find the last piece of the puzzle. He was exhausted. He couldn’t believe the results, and sat there wondering if he had omitted some procedure or was simply mistaken. He went over all the procedures he’d performed and repeated the tests to avoid false positives, and finally concluded that there could be no doubt.

He used Dayla’s fly drone to document his discovery, and then decided that he had to get out of there. He was consumed with anger; he couldn’t stand being in the laboratory a moment longer. He needed to move, and decided jogging might diminish the rage he felt within.

He directed the fly drone under his shirt collar, turned off his workstation and walked out of BlueGray Corporation without saying goodbye to anyone.

He went home, changed, jogged ten miles, and then returned to his apartment for a shower. He stood under the falling water, emptying his mind of thoughts, trying to relax and clear his head. He had to talk to Dayla, and they would decide what to do.

When Dayla arrived, she found him asleep on the couch.

“Ian, wake up… it’s dinner time... Ian… are you not well?” Dayla asked, stroking his cheek.

“I fell asleep, I guess. I was simply exhausted, but I'm fine, thanks” he said, sitting up on the couch, smiling sleepily at Dayla: “I forgot to program dinner. Could you take care of that? And I'll tell you about my findings. I have the results of the analysis.”

Dayla let the biometric scanner send her data to Ian’s housenet, then she set a one-dish fast dinner. It was late, she was anxious to know what Ian had discovered, and she wasn’t interested in food at all.

Ian got up and sat at the dining table.

“I'm sure, now” he said, looking anxiously across the table at Dayla: “There’s no doubt. The corporation project is designed to merge the characteristics of humans and robots to create humanoids, a rational, programmable and extremely efficient hybrid life form. The goal of the Federal Communities is to create a new recombinant organism, a humanoid that consumes a tenth of the oxygen, water and food we consume, and will live forever using tissue and DNA self-repairing functions at a molecular level thanks to the ahsadigits injected into its bloodstream. The ahsadigits are totipotent systems that integrate into human tissue and DNA, reducing human dependence on food and liquids. These hybrids will cease to be ‘alive’ only in the event of sudden and violent death, a situation in which regeneration is impossible. The consequences, as you can imagine, will be extreme: births will be strictly regulated to artificially replace deceased hybrid humanoids through the use of totipotent cells and ahsadigits. But there is still hope… the BlueGray Corporation hasn’t solved the problem of ahsadigit rejection yet. There are people like us who haven’t suffered contamination precisely because of this rejection. The patch was an attempt to insert the recombinants into our bodies using another approach. The great pandemic flu this year was created specifically as a vector to spread ahsadigits through bodily fluids as though they were viral agents... I dare not even think of the possible side effects of this manipulation. We will only see that in a decade... ”

Dayla looked at him in astonishment; she felt anger and fear running up her spine. She took a deep breath and said: “Is there an antidote?”

“I'm not in a position to know whether one exists; and creating one would take months of work and a team of researchers and equipment so sophisticated that it would be impossible to carry out in secret. And, unfortunately, they have already gone further: the infection is ubiquitous, they have developed intelligent ahsadigits that don’t stop at mankind but also pass to other mammals. They began with primates and then gradually jumped to other species. We are the underdogs, Dayla. They must be stopped in another way.”

“My God... Dhungwana is crystallizing itself into semi-artificial life forms that replicate reality, blocking the essence of life in predefined routines that repeat every day... now including animals!” realized Dayla, already imagining the next hundred years on planet Earth.

Then she spoke again: “Listen, Ian! I analyzed that list thoroughly and I found some very interesting data. From what you told me, everyone on that list is immune to ahsadigits. The list includes only residents in District 604 because the other districts have their own hospital, doctors, researchers and dispensary. Calculating a quotient of the population from our district, it appears that 20% of residents, the number of people on the list, remain for now, I repeat for now, immune to ahsadigits. This means that 80 per cent of them have already incorporated the ahsadigits into their DNA, but it also probably means that 20 per cent of each district will have rejected the ahsadigits... Multiply that 20 per cent by the number of districts in Dhungwana... It’s true, there will be four times more recombinants than us, but... we can... we can destabilize… we can try to subvert their power... ”

Ian gasped; he had suddenly seen where Dayla was heading.

“Go on, I’m with you!” he said to Dayla.

“The other members on our list will also have their suspicions; they will have noticed that something is wrong. I checked their occupations: there are doctors, engineers, mechanics, teachers, soldiers, and surely undercover cyber raiders... So we’ll have every skill excluding, of course, politicians and the leaders of BlueGray Corporation. And I bet that the situation is the same in all the districts. We should organize guerrilla warfare, beginning with a surprise attack by cyber raiders on the central nets and, simultaneously, with the occupation of the BlueGray and government buildings... History teaches and repeats itself... ”

“It won’t work. We have been indoctrinated since childhood to be obedient and accept their authority” Ian interrupted her.

“No! It will work!! There is every reason for the movement to go viral. We will use word of mouth, we will search for leaders, a small number, we will gain the support of the local population of the districts, the communication network already exists... Remember that we are men, remember the wars of past millennia... That is still part of our DNA... or were they able to remove the dark side of man, too?”

“How are we going to proceed?” Ian asked.

“I’ll contact the most authoritative person on the list: Roger Brickes, 50 years old, a former command pilot in the air force, an aerospace engineer. He had a brilliant career at the Department of Defense, then 15 years ago he was suddenly transferred for insubordination to manage the production of a commercial aerospace division in the Land of the Banned. He was there for ten years. Now he works as a meteorologist at the university, but he is an external consultant.”

“It may be a cover... and a trap” said Ian, thinking out loud.

“Yes, it's a risk… but as he’s on our list, I guess not. And anyway, we must start with someone who can understand the situation and has military experience. Tomorrow I will contact him, and then I’ll go to his house with the results of your analysis. We'll take care of the BlueGray Corporation Food Division” concluded Dayla satisfied.

Ian took Dayla in his arms and hugged her. They both knew that the era of social peace was over, and that this was the only viable solution for their survival.