Read Habitats (an Ell Donsaii story #7) Online
Authors: Laurence Dahners
Habitats (an Ell Donsaii story #7) (14 page)
“I tell myself that too, but I keep feeling that there
must
have been something…” She sighed, “It keeps replaying in my mind and in my nightmares… Oh Emma, I can’t get my freaking mind off of it!”
Emma stood and dragged her chair around to Ell’s side of the desk. The small office was cramped so it was difficult
, but she got it there, then sat down and awkwardly leaned forward, putting her arms around Ell. After hugging her for a while she said, “Have you thought about going somewhere with Shan for a vacation? You could use one.”
Ell sniffed, “I think it’d be even worse.
Nothing
else to think about except how I failed John. Poor Shan; just got me for a girlfriend and now I’ve turned into this emotional wreck.”
Emma drew her head back and said, “I’m not going to tell you not to feel bad, ‘cause I
know
that doesn’t work. I am going to mention that everyone that was there that night thinks you were amazing and that you did just the right thing. They believe with all their hearts that no one but you could have saved Shelly and no one else blames you for what happened to John.”
“Thanks,” Ell whispered burying her head in the crook of Emma’s neck.
After a bit Emma leaned back and said, “Can I offer a suggestion?”
Ell picked up a Kleenex, said “Sure,” and blew her nose.
“John said you’d told him that the company would help him make a prosthetic hand based on the waldo arms?”
Ell nodded.
“We could really use your help figuring it out. John’s here talking to us about his ideas for how he wants it to work. He’s heard about Ryan’s neurotrodes and wants to be a guinea pig Ca gpanfor them. But even if we can get John’s surgeon to implant experimental neurotrodes, there are huge issues with interpreting the motor signals and inputting sensory signals. I think you could really make a difference. Besides, I think actively helping him create the best prosthesis he can possibly have, would help you get your mind off how you think you let John down.”
Ell tilted her head and narrowed her eyes. “Oh, yeah, sorting out what all the impul
ses mean and converting them into commands will be a real problem won’t it?”
Emma nodded.
Ell wiped her nose and got up. “Let’s go look at the issues together.”
Emma put her hand up in a halting motion, “First, let’s fix your hair.”
They fo
und John dispiritedly hefting the forearm from one of the waldoes with his good left hand. Ell’s eyes immediately darted to the empty sleeve on his other arm. “Hi, John,” she said quietly.
“Hey. I’m having second thoughts about these waldo arms. They’re really heavy, I had no idea
just
how
heavy.”
Ell picked it up. “Oof, that
is
heavy. I’m sure it would be awful carrying
that
around all day.” She tilted her head, “It doesn’t seem like it should have to be that heavy. Let’s open it up and see what’s inside.”
“OK.”
In short order they had a power screwdriver and were removing the outer shell. Inside the forearm they found motors. Lots of motors. Removing the palm they found that cables from the motors in the forearm went up, through the palm and into the fingers. The motors wound up the cables and the cables pulled the fingers down and around into a grasping motion. More motors and cables in the back of the forearm pulled the fingers back out to open the hand.
Ell stared
the arms insides for a bit then said, “I think a lot of that is stainless steel. It doesn’t look like they were striving for low weight when they designed the waldoes. They were probably shooting for durability and low cost.”
“Why put the motors in the forearm and run everything with cables instead of having motors at each joint?”
“That’s the way our flesh and blood hands work. Most of the muscles are in the forearm pulling on tendons—which are like the cables—that go out to the fingers and pull them into position.”
Ell leaned in closer to look at the hand, “Especially to make a hand for John, it will probably be easier to adjust to his neural responses if it works
, as much as possible, the same way as a normal hand. That way we can just have the neurons that normally contract a muscle activate the motor that pulls on the cable that replicates what that muscle normally does.”
Roger said, “We need some way to pull the cables without having all those heavy motors.”
Ell slowly raised her eyes to look up at him. Lik Cp a havie a light dawning she developed more and more of a surprised and astonished look, “My God! How could I not have thought of this before? We’ve been working with ports three years plus now!” She glanced around at the others, “We just put a drive shaft through a port to supply power. Leave the motor back home!” She smacked her forehead with her palm, “We should be doing that with practically all mobile motors. Cars, planes, helicopters. None of them should be hauling the weight of their motors around with them!”
The rest of the little group stared at her. Manuel said, “Damn, it’s
so
obvious now that you said it!”
Emma said, “
As usual, great ideas
are
obvious in retrospect.”
John said, “Couldn’t we just pass the cables through ports? Then the arm wouldn’t even have to have the pulleys that wind up the cables inside of it.”
Ell’s eyes widened, “Oh yeah, great idea John!”
John grinned, “I’d high five you guys, but…” he shrugged and waved his empty sleeve around.
A moment passed while everyone tried to decide whether he meant it as a joke or whether they should be appalled. But then he grinned at them and they broke into a laugh.
“Treat me normally
, guys,” he said, “you’re going to build me a great hand and I don’t want you dancing around worried that you might offend me.”
Emma frowned, “Do you mean, treat you like we would a normal human, or treat you like we’d normally treat a weird dude like you?”
He snorted as the group laughed, “Hah, I thought it would take longer than
that
for you to start giving me shit. I think I’d like it better if you were still on tenterhooks around me.”
“Oh,
hell
no! You’ve given us permission, now you’re going to have to suck it up and take the crap as we dish it out.”
Ell watched this interchange with raised eyebrows, partly ap
palled and partly relieved. “Uh… back on task? Seems like we need to buy the design files for the waldo hands. That way we won’t have to reinvent the wheel from the ground up. Then we modify them as needed in order to size a hand correctly for John and create one that has four fingers instead of an index and a mitten paddle. To get the weight down further we need an engineer to tell us which parts we can make out of titanium and which ones we can make out of carbon fiber. We might be able to hire the engineering from the company that makes the waldoes in the first place. Using a braided polymer instead of cables will save weight, but we need to find out which polymer will best tolerate the wear from rubbing up against the sleeves they feed through. We also need more and smaller sensors on John’s hand than there are on the waldo hands. Oh and temperature sensors too.”
Roger said, “We’ll nee
d to provide proprioceptors too.”
Ell frowned, “Proprioceptors?”
“Yeah, propriocept C, pem">
“Oh, yeah. Joint
position sensors?”
“I’ll bet the body uses tendon position
and tension sensors too.”
“OK,” Ell said, “Hire people and companies to do this stuff for us
wherever you can so you guys can continue thinking creatively. I’ve got authorization from the board to spend as much as we need on this.” She stood and looked around. To her dismay John’s eyes were shiny with tears. Her eyebrows drew together, “John?”
He waved dismissively, “Tears of joy my friends, tears of joy.
” He croaked and then wiped ineffectually at the tears, “Thanks for what you’re doing, not just for me but for everyone else out there who’s missing a limb.”
Chapter Five
Having put their name on the list with the hostess, Vivian and Chardet picked their way into the bar and took two adjoining seats. Vivian wondered for a second whether she’d ever feel comfortable using her newfound wealth to pay off a hostess so that they could be seated immediately. Mentally she shrugged. It certainly would be pointless tonight, she and Char were having a night out to enjoy themselves. Rushing to get a table would be counterproductive to the whole “evening out” endeavor. Besides the Wolfpack were playing tonight and she might be able to keep up with the score if Char didn’t catch her eyes on the screen behind the bar too often. After a glance at the score Vivian said, “So which denizens of this bar should we discuss?”
Char
got a wicked grin on her face, “Let’s talk about the lesbian couple down at the end.”
“Oh, come on! Those two are
absolutely straight, hoping to meet some handsome young men in here tonight.”
Char extravagantly
rolled her eyes, “Not a chance, look at…” she trailed off looking at the people on the other side of Vivian.
Vivian glanced into the mirror to see what was happening at the barstool
on her left. A man handed the young lady next to Vivian something and she and her young man got up. Vivian wondered if the woman was a prostitute. She frowned, but why the guy? Her pimp? The guy who’d given the young lady something didn’t go with her however. Instead, he sat down in the seat next to Vivian! Vivian had felt like she’d been surreptitious, watching the events in the mirror, but the man caught her eye in the mirror and gave her a little wave.
Vivian’s eyes narrowed. This guy obviously had paid the couple off so he could have the seat. She glanced around, wondering what could be so desirable about the seat. It didn’t seem particularly special other than being next to her. Men just didn’t
usually… pursue Vivian. Besides, the fact that she and Chardet were a couple was obvious to most people. That couldn’t be it.
Quietly the man said, “Hello, Ms. Varka.”
Vivian felt astonishment wash over her. Was this someone she knew? She looked at him a little more closely. He seemed Middle Eastern. She would swear she’d never seen him before. “Uh, Hello. Do I know you?”
“No, I’m afraid not. However,
I
know
you
very well.”
Vivian frowned and glanced at
Char. Char was watching the conversation suspiciously. Vivian shrugged at her and turned back to the man. “So how do you come to know me?”
“It’s my business to know you. Your expertise is
extremely precious and my employer would desperately like to hire you.”
Vivian snorted, “You people are getting to have more and more gall all the time. The answer is ‘No,’ just like it would have been if you’d contacted me through email, or calling me at work,
or
through a head hunter. Nope. I’m happy where I am. I make enough money.”
The man smiled and held his hands out palms up, “You haven’t heard my offer yet.”
“Not interested.”
“
Five million dollars a year.”
“Not interested,” Vivian said, turning back to
Char.
“Ten million.”
“Go away.”
The man had ruined the bar for Vivian. He got up and left after a few more minutes. Vivian tried to get back to
her snarky discussion of the various denizens of the bar with Char, but her heart wasn’t in it. Fortunately, a few minutes later their AI’s told them the hostess had a table for them.
After a nice dinner and a few too many glasses of wine, Vivian and Chardet made their unsteady way out to the curb to wait for their car. A large limo pulled up to the curb just as Vivian’s AI said, “Your car’s AI is not responding.”
A couple of large men crowded the walk behind her, making
Vivian and Char step closer to the street. The door of the limo opened and hands reached out for her as something struck her buttock. She felt her muscles all give way and someone behind her lifted her into the outstretched hands of the men inside the limo. Bonelessly Vivian was dragged inside. Dropped into a seat like a sack of potatoes, she saw them dragging Char inside too. The limo door closed. The man from the bar sat across from Vivian. He shrugged apologetically, said, “Sorry,” then reached forward and pulled off the headset of Vivian’s AI. He turned it over and popped the PGR chip out. Another man dropped into the seat next to Vivian and applied cable ties to her wrists and ankles. Her head lolled to the side as the limo pulled away from the curb. It all had taken less than a minute.
A few minutes passed before Vivian felt her muscle control returning. She worked her mouth and tried a groan. To make sure she could speak she glanced at the man from the bar and said, “Asshole.”
He shrugge K0"> curb justd unrepentantly, “I tried to negotiate.”
Vivian
spoke her emergency activation signal, “Hamlet.” She hated Shakespeare so the chance of her accidentally setting off her emergency alert by saying “Hamlet” had seemed miniscule.
The man
tilted his head quizzically, “What?”
Vivian
worked her mouth and said, “I mean dammit!” To her relief she heard her AI speak in her ear. “Message received. Have contacted the police, D5R security, and Ell Donsaii.”
Vivian felt surprised. She
hadn’t thought Donsaii was on the list of contacts… But, on reflection… she was very glad. “Who are you?”
“Call me Abe.”
***
Lying in bed, Ell had been scanning through audio-video snippets from Tau Ceti Three that had been marked “interesting” by whoever had viewed them originally. Her AI Allan spoke in her ear. “Vivian Varka has been abducted. She has activated our emergency procedure via her implanted port. Per her request when the implant was placed, its activation has released the AV archive from her AI to us. Your security team and the police have also been notified.”
Ell had her jeans on and was pulling on a shirt, “Do we know her location?”
“Yes, at present she is proceeding east on I-40 at typical highway speeds.”
Ell snatched her
“emergency” backpack and flew down the stairs, “We’ll follow her. Power up the car and connect me to Steve.”
As Ell dropped into the driver’s seat of her car
, Steve’s voice came through her earpiece, “Let me get back to you. I have the police on the line.”
“OK Steve. Allan, have this car follow Vivian. Let me see the last 10 minutes of
her audio video record prior to her call.” Ell leaned back in the seat to look up at her HUD. Vivian and her friend Char appeared to be leaving Maggiano’s restaurant. “Speed up to 4X.” The viewpoint of Vivian’s camera wiggled rapidly through the restaurant and out to the sidewalk. There was a squeak of high speed sound and Ell got Allan to play that segment back at normal speed.
“Your car’s AI is not responding,” it said in what Ell assumed to be the voice of Vivian’s AI.
Ell said, “Are we able to contact Vivian’s car?”
Allan responded,
“No, it’s off line.”
Ell went back to watching the audio-video record. Vivian’s sudden collapse into the limo gave Ell a flashback to her own kidnapping several years ago. Once Vivian had been stabilized in a seat Ell tried to see if she could recognize the people in the car with her. None of them looked familiar however. “Allan, are any of these people in the D5R database?”
“No, however, I must point out that all of them are wearing some form of facial disguise to change Kse >
“Oh.” Ell narrowed her eyes as she tried to pick out the various silicone p
rosthetics they must be wearing. She wondered if she could help the AI in determining what they might look like without the devices but concluded that they were made up well enough that she wouldn’t be much help. “Search Vivian’s record for any earlier encounters with any of those men.”
A moment later Ell watched Vivian’s encounter with “Abe” in the bar at Maggiano’s. Someone wanted Vivian badly enough to offer her large sums of money and then abduct her when she didn’t agree. Someone with numerous accomplices and
with the capabilities to carry out an abduction in a very polished fashion. Professionals.
Ell worried about what it meant. Allan said, “Mr. Jacobs is ready to talk to you now.”
“Put him on. Hi Steve, what have you found out?” Ell took the wheel and ordered her car’s AI to disconnect itself from control of her car. She accelerated far above the speed limit.
“Hi, you probably already know that Vivian is in a vehicle heading east on I-40 at highway speed. Presumably
, said vehicle is the limousine that she was initially abducted in. The police are aware and have dispatched unmarked vehicles to approach the limo but not to try to stop it as yet. The three members of your security team that were there at your house are following you. I and the three members of the ‘ready team’ are also on our way.” He sighed, “I don’t suppose there’s any chance I can talk you into slowing down, dropping back and waiting for the team you hired for this kind of stuff to help the police take care of this?”
“Yeah,
” she sighed, “no doubt that would be the smart thing to do. But if there’s any chance that some of my, uh, special abilities might make a difference for Vivian… I… couldn’t live with myself if I wasn’t there. I already feel bad enough about John.”
Steve sighed again, “OK,
I see you’re exceeding the speed limit. I must point out that if you’re stopped by the police rather than just being sent a speeding autosummons, they will delay you enough that you will have
no
chance of catching Vivian.”
“Yeah, but if I
don’t
speed there’s no chance that I’ll catch up to her either, I’ve got to take the chance.”
“OK, I’m sending Randy ahead of you to spring any speed traps. I assume y
ou’ll support his legal defense if they arrest him?”
“Oh. Of course. Tell him to be careful.”
“He will. He’s had extensive training in high speed driving.”
“Now, let’s talk about what’s going to go down. The police are plan
ning to put up a road block out in the country beyond Raleigh, at the end of a long stretch between off ramps so there won’t be any egress from I-40. They’ll appear to be checking all cars but will really only be interested in the limo. They plan to have enough men at that site to control the situation.”
n>
Ell frowned in concentration. “That sounds pretty foolproof, but looking at the A-V from Vivian’s abduction, the team that took her looked pretty professional to me. What did you think?”
Steve sighed again, “I agree, but there’s a limit to what professionalism can buy you when the other guy has all the cards. We know exactly where Vivian is, they don’t know that we’re aware she’s been abducted. We have the police on our side whereas they are outlaws. The police can choose the location of the encounter so that it’s at a site where the limo won’t have any egress.”
“I hope
this works.”
“Me too.”
***
“
Sir,” one of the men in the front said, “the lead car reports a police road block up ahead. They appear to be doing a “look-see” check of vehicles.”
Abe said, “Shit,” glancing at Vivian, then back toward the front. “Take the next exit.”
“There isn’t an exit between here and there.”
“Goddammit!”
He leaned back and rubbed his eyes a moment. Then he sat back up and looked around at the men with him. “Slow the limo down to just under the speed limit. Tell the truck to catch up to us. Have the lead car leave a weapon in plain sight to get the roadblock cops excited and distracted.” He narrowed his eyes at Vivian then turned to the burly guy next to her, “Cut her loose.” To Vivian he said, “Strip.”