The Brutus Code
Chapter 14: Birth Right

Cassius Brutus watched. Humans had returned to the settlement. His instructions were clear. Nothing interfered with his function. His part was always the same, and it was close to completion. So, he watched and tried to learn.

He could not see the humans. He was blocked from the habitat. But he controlled all access to the habitat: power, water, and all data. External data could be collected to extrapolate considerable information about the humans. Their location conveyed ample data about them.

That she had returned was a puzzle. Everything matched. Facial recognition routines had confirmed that it was Agnes Zephyr. The anomaly of her return fell outside his parameters and was dismissed. Cassius Brutus did not think about things beyond its parameters and never wondered at the profusion of anomalies that were human.

Cassius Brutus waited for the patterns to emerge and the subroutines to click into place. He had driven her out before and would not let her interfere this time. There would be no difference.

The other human was new, and Cassius Brutus needed more data. This new human had accessed no information from the net, yet. Based on that access, Brutus could determine if this new human was a threat to his function or not.

Cassius Brutus waited, and he watched.

Agnes had slept through the first night after her seizure. Dr. Ann Ai had scanned her and pronounced her stable. She diagnosed over stimulus in Agnes’ Limbic System. She guessed that Agnes’ memories were exerting themselves. Agnes suffered little physical damage to her brain. She needed rest to recover and to allow her brain to process these emerging memories.

Deep into her second night of her recovery they had little time to find Agnes’ lab, and locate the pirates. Tommy knew this gamble would delay them almost five days. They were almost halfway through the emersion of this planetoid in the atmosphere of the gas giant it orbited and had nothing to show for it. Frustration he could handle. Patience, he had mastered. But Tommy had little practice with concern for another person. He’d lived most of his life alone with only Alfred, his AI. Agnes had to get better, kept going through his head.

He had tried to take short naps while Alfred’s avatars kept watch, but he couldn’t sleep. So, he wandered through the apartment, exploring. He’d found his mother’s childhood bedroom, full of toys, dolls and stuffed animals. Educational apps populated her tablet and more than one virtual biology lab. Not surprising since Caesar was a doctor as well. Tommy saw his grandfather’s influence on his mother’s life.

He discovered his grandmother’s study. She was the family archivist. There he found the anachronism of family albums in hard copy. He and Alfred accessed her workstation and discovered additional video of family gatherings. Tommy watched some early birthday parties for his mother. Agnes was absent from these early gatherings. Tommy guessed that Agnes was away to school during his mother’s early years. At some point in the night, it became too much, finding a past and family he didn’t know overwhelmed him. He understood how overwhelmed Agnes must feel returning here and how brave or desperate, or both, she was to do it. He stopped the playback and asked Alfred to copy all of Virginia’s files.

As he wandered around the apartment, he took in the beauty of the settlement cavern outside the balcony under nighttime conditions. The interior lighting mimicked Earth’s rotation. Plants and animals alike needed those rhythms. The sight of the other buildings hanging from the ceiling and the fields of crops laid out across the floor below amazed Tommy. Well maintained parklands and wide boulevards meandered between the crops.

The food crops puzzled Tommy. He took out a scanner and got a closer view of the cavern floor. Why maintain crops where there were no people to eat them? Then he noticed the pattern. The crops supported the manufacturing deeper in the planetoid. As he scanned, he found other crops primarily harvested for their medicinal uses. Medicine had been the major economy here. It made sense they would have these crops.

Sitting on the balcony, Tommy opened a connection with Marcus, the apartment Ai. The only information Marcus found on the network, was a canned promotional tour of the settlement. Tommy had Marcus access the settlement systems for additional information. That’s when it got interesting.

“Sir, I cannot find information concerning your inquiry about current mandates and products being manufactured,” Marcus informed Tommy.

“Try manifest of scheduled shipments. Check the most current records,” Tommy asked.

“The most current records appear to be over fifty years old.”

“What about the current stock of materials?”

“According to the public record which by mandated includes all resources the settlement produced, there are none.” Marcus continued, “This does not correspond with the detailed data. And now I am receiving inquiries to my systems. Firewall alerts and protocols have been initiated to protect the Zephyr systems.”

“Protect your systems,” Tommy agreed. “Cut all outside connections.” ‘Something crooked is going on here,’ he thought. ‘There must be two sets of books.’ He had been staring off across the cavern and noticed activity in several of the abandoned apartment buildings. Scanning them showed maintenance bots doing routine activities. “Marcus, in your own observations of the last fifty years,” Tommy had to phrase the question so Marcus would understand that he didn’t need details, “generally, how much activity has there been in the apartments?”

Marcus replied, “In general terms and specific. None. I have maintained this building based on my own programing initiatives and the habitat’s systems. These are low level functions in the settlement, and there have always been adequate supplies provided by the settlement’s systems.”

“Interesting. Too much information, but continue,” Tommy said. “Are you in contact with the other buildings or family systems?”

“None appear to be active for communication. The settlement’s system is still active and my firewalls go up when the connection is made.”

The other systems were either shut down or subsumed by the settlement system, Tommy mused. “Marcus, were you left any instructions from the family when they left?”

“Yes, protect the family.”

There it was, a simple instruction to protect them. “Who left it,” Tommy asked, and was surprised with the answer.

“In chronological order; Dr. Virginia Zephyr left the instructions to watch over Caesar Zephyr and the remaining children, Jasper and Agnes, prior to her death. Dr. Caesar Zephyr made the same request about Jasper and Agnes. Mr. Jasper Zephyr left a delayed recording and the same request that started upon the exodus of his evacuation on the last ship scheduled to leave the settlement. Finally, Agnes Zephyr made the request twice. Once from her room here in the apartment and once via a direct scramble com line from her lab, several hours after the last ship had left.”

The world shook. “Alfred, report,” Tommy asked urgently. As he watched the suspended buildings around him begin to sway. Some of them looked like they might collide as the shaking subsided and the buildings quickly settled into place. The Zephyr’s apartment building settled very quickly.

It was not Alfred, but Marcus who reported. “The tremors are caused when the planetoid hits turbulence as it passes through the gas giant’s atmosphere.”

“I can confirm that,” Alfred added from the spider that accompanied Tommy to the balcony. He sounded a little miffed that this older Ai had beaten him to the punch. Or maybe the Marcus Ai was responding to Tommy as if he were a member of the family. This prompted Alfred to ask, “Marcus, please explain why Thomas Judson has familiar access to you.”

“Thomas Judson displays physical and vocal genetic features, that indicate he has a ninety-six percent probability of relationship to the Zephyr family. Upon completing his access request, I retrieved skin cell samples that confirm this relationship with both Caesar Zephyr and Arnold Judson. Accompanying Agnes indicates her approval of Thomas Judson. Therefore, basic familiar access is granted,” Marcus concluded.

Lights came on across the floor of the vast cavern. The primary light source appeared on the bottom of most suspended buildings. Strips of lights along the roof of the cavern would provide illumination to the exterior of the buildings and their occupants when they had been occupied. These lights remained dark. The crop lights under the buildings cast a twilight glow among the suspended buildings

“Arnold Judson had access to your systems?” Tommy asked.

“Yes,” Marcus responded. “He has full administrative access to the family systems.”

Alfred followed this response with, “How long ago did Arnold Judson last access your systems?”

“Directly or remotely?”

“Directly,” Tommy interjected quickly.

Marcus replied, “Thirty-one point two Solar years ago.”

“That was before I was born,” Tommy mused. “And after the settlement had been abandoned and lost.”

Alfred continued probing Marcus for information, “When was the first access for Arnold Judson?”

“Thirty-one point three Solar years ago,” came the response from Marcus.

“He spent little over a month on this planetoid. Why was he here?” Alfred asked. Then he suggested, “Marcus’ main systems are located in your grandfathers’ study. I might be able to access it directly.” Tommy nodded assent, and they moved to the study.

Light now streamed down on the crops below. It cast long shadows through the great window that took up most of the exterior wall to the room. Tommy sat down at the partners desk. He knew that this desk had been Caesar’s. He had discovered his grandmother, Virginia, had her own study complete with desk and workstation where she worked as an administrator for the settlement. The other side of the partners desk must have belonged to Jasper, his uncle, Tommy concluded.

He tried keying in access instructions but was blocked. He needed administrative access. When asked, Marcus had no data on how to access the system. Tommy went directly to the wall cabinet where the Marcus system was located. He tried to get direct access. Alfred sent a smaller avatar spider into the cabinet.

“This is strange,” Alfred said through the avatar. “There is additional cabling. Marcus is networked with a hardline to another system.” His avatar wedged itself as deep in the wall as he traced the line. While he did this, Tommy surveyed the room in the twilight shadows for the first time. The three other walls were lined with hard copy books on simulated oak shelves. There was comfortable furniture placed in a conversational cluster near one wall of books. In another corner a gaming nook invited family members to relax in friendly competitions. The study looked to be as much a family room as a sanctuary for Caesar.

The center of the room held the partners desk. It dominated by both its position and size in the room. That drew Tommy back to it. He explored the drawers on both sides as Alfred prattled on from the wall. “I can almost see the first junction. All of the cabling is shielded and sealed from outside hacking. The junction doesn’t branch out. It turns in a single direction.”

“Toward the center of the room,” Tommy finished.

“Yes,” Alfred admitted as the avatar crawled out of the wall cabinet. Tommy’s ability to make cognitive leaps no longer surprised Alfred. “What have you found?”

“The desk. There is more volume than the drawers take up,” Tommy answered. “You’ve been active a long time, Marcus. Describe how Caesar accessed the system.”

“I do not have that data,” Marcus’ answered. “My logs show I was active. However, there are gaps in the log that are blocked. I cannot access them.”

“Security from industrial espionage,” Alfred suggested. “This is where he conducted some of the family business.”

“Family business and a partners desk.” Tommy sat in Caesar’s chair at the desk staring at the blank workstation in front of him. “We need Jasper,” he declared.

“Yes, Tommy. It takes two to access the system. There are no connections to the outside settlement network except through Marcus. They used him as a buffer,” Alfred commented.

“Would another Zephyr do?” The question came from the door. Agnes stood there, a little worn looking, but stronger. Behind her, Dr. Ann Ai’s avatar hovered protectively. Agnes entered and sat down in the other partner chair. “Access is a combination of audio tones and biometric readings. Father and Jasper were primary users of the system, but father and I or Jasper and I also accessed the system.” She paused. “I’ve got a lot to tell you. Marcus can you get us something to eat?”

“Certainly, mistress.” A few moments later a platter of warm sweetened grain meal and fresh squeezed juice arrived on a bot cart with the emblem of a Roman general on its side.

Agnes took a whiff and smiled. “Perfect, cinnamon oatmeal and fresh grape juice. You remembered my favorites.” They both dug into the meal. As she ate, she related what she could of her revived memories. “I can’t remember everything, but being in this room must have brought back what I needed.” She finished her story as she finished the last of her breakfast. Looking more energetic from her meal, Agnes rubbed her palms together, addressed the desk and said, “Now, let’s see what you have to tell us.”

Agnes started with confidence. “Tommy place your hands on the touch screen.” She typed in S-E-C-U-R-I-T-Y A-C-C-E-S-S. The room darkened as the window went opaque, the door closed, and the interior lights illuminated the room in subdued tones.

Once they sealed the room, Agnes began to sing, “All around the mulberry bush.” She nodded in Tommy’s direction to continue.

“The monkey chased the weasel,” he sang.

“The monkey thought ’twas all in fun,” Agnes added and motioned Tommy to join in the refrain.

“Pop goes the weasel.” They finished together, and the center of the partners desk slid up to reveal a 3D data tank. Access ports and the controls for an advanced dedicated computer were located below the opening. Considering that it was almost seventy-five years old, Tommy was impressed.

“Alfred, can you access this system?” Tommy asked with apprehension. “I think we came looking for mom, but we may find my dad.”

“Yes,” Alfred didn’t hesitate to reply. “I’ll be right back.” And he plugged in.

In Alfred’s conceptualized reality, he was in a white room. A round dark hallway appeared in the distance and instantly he faced a gaping opening him. He listened carefully before he stepped in. Images flashed by him. He arrived in a long white corridor lined with doors.

He stepped down the hall, and the doors flashed passed. Each door opened into files and images of data from the Zephyr data tank. At some doors, he stopped to examine the data. In many, Alfred found patient files. These he conceptualized as Caesar standing next to a patient’s bed or teaching students in an auditorium. Alfred also watched occasions where Caesar worked alone in a laboratory.

At another set of doors, he found Agnes. In a single conceptualization, he saw multiple images of her in her lab at various ages. In each image she worked on a different project. Some were on a micro scale. In others, her project was so large he only held a part of the project in the image. In another one Agnes worked on the casket and in another, head bent focused on her work, Alfred saw the disassembled components of the media storage unit.

Back down the hall, he found a door that led to Jasper’s files. Jasper mainly worked at a console on code. Alfred could make out lines that represented artificial intelligence. Images of Jasper flashed by. He worked in a clean lab hunched over on micro boards. The frozen shots of Jasper trailed off into very dark back rooms. Alfred skimmed past these. He was looking for more pertinent data.

Once again, he stepped down the white hall and doors full of data images flew by. The light and color in the hall drained away. Suddenly, Alfred was no longer in his own construct of data. He was in someone else’s.

The hall was dark and gothic. Tall ceilings held up by columns of dark stained wood now stretched into the distance. Dust and cobwebs covered the walls everywhere he looked. Doors lined the hallway. Ornate brass fittings and old keyholes adorned each of those doors. They were all locked, of course. Alfred heard sounds coming from some of the rooms. The hall eventually branched in two directions. A short walk down one took him to a grand staircase, and a foyer filled with old paintings, all covered with great heavy drapes. He pulled back the drapes and saw the visage of a familiar Roman General. The painting winked at him and then put his finger to his lips in a ‘shushing’ sign.

The staircase spiraled down into a grand foyer. Two massive grand doors with heavy hinges and dark iron clasps dominated the entryway. Large rings hung from the doors as if it would take a massive animal to open them. Outside the doors, something howled. The sound of other creatures banging and moaning to get in reached him from beyond the doors. As he looked down from his vantage point on the stair, he could see shapes through the stained glass windows on either side of the ornate doors. One hunched shape looked very much like the Ogre he had encountered previously.

Alfred backed away from the grand staircase and went the other direction. He moved down the hall in the other direction. The doors became plainer. At the other end of the corridor, he found an open doorway. This door led to a small set of wooden stairs that went up. Alfred climbed and climbed and climbed. He only paused at the landings to check his progress. Looking up, the stair climbed to infinity and looking down it didn’t take any time to lose the bottom to that same infinity. Alfred wasted no time, allowing the construct to carry him to the top.

He stood before a metal door heavily barred with chain and a huge padlock. Alfred took a moment to examine the lock as he brushed cobwebs and dust off his clothes. For the first time, he noticed that he was dressed in a Victorian suit. His outfit was accurate, even to the round-lensed spectacles perched on his nose. As he contemplated the lock, he absently put his hand in the pocket of his coat. There he found a key.

Alfred held the key before him. “Weird,” he mumbled. And then he realized that he was talking to himself, apparently alone in this construct.

“You’re telling me,” came a voice from behind the door in response to his observation. “Go ahead try the key.” Alfred carefully inserted the key into the padlock and turned it. It clicked and fell open with no resistance. Alfred replaced the key in his pocket and took hold of the door handle. He loosened the clasp from the lock and opened the door.

Alfred found himself in a laboratory outfitted circa the late nineteenth century. Test tubes and flasks with chemicals boiled through spiral tubes of glass and dripping into beakers. Electrical probes and batteries were wired into the apparatus. Dust and cobwebs covered everything as if it had all been here for a very long time.

“Of course I’ve been here a long time,” the voice quipped from the center of the lab. That’s when Alfred noticed the hunched figure. It had been covered in layers of the same cobwebs and dust. It wore what had once been a white lab coat, now greyed and hanging in tatters from the figure. Its hair fell to its shoulders, long and white, except where it failed to cover the bald spot atop its head. When it turned to Alfred, he saw it wore an unkempt beard and protective goggles.

Alfred addressed the figure, using the vernacular of the setting. “I believe, sir, that you have me at a disadvantage. To whom do I have the honor of addressing?”

“Oh, come off it, Alfred. You’ve found exactly what you came looking for, and you’re the only one who could have gotten in this far.” And then it smiled. “How the hell is Tommy?”

“Not again,” Alfred said.

Alfred knew this image. “It was another copy of Arnold Judson standing before me in a pristine and now full color modern lab. This mad scientist Judson still had the long unkempt grey hair and beard while I still wore the clothing of a British gentleman. I scanned him, no tattoo. So this copy is not infected,” Alfred told the others, returning a moment after he left. “The original had been left by Arnold when he found the settlement after the disaster. He had been working with Caesar and Jasper but found anomalies in the company that compelled him to explore deeper into off book projects. Arnold left this copy to intercept and search for a file that held the key to a virus. The copy never found it, but occasionally there updates arrived on Postal Service ships and transmitted to the settlement Ai. They eventually were intercepted.”

“We can’t trust the settlement systems,” Tommy concluded.

“No,” Alfred answered firmly.

“And Marcus?” Agnes’ asked.

“Arnold used Marcus as a gatekeeper, a filter,” Alfred explained. “Marcus is a very good security program. He was dogged and simple enough that nothing got by him.”

“There’s more,” Alfred continued. He explained that he found source code relating to unlocking the genome of Christine’s virus and her casket. “The casket holds full records and DNA constructs of the antivirus that Annie had completed but never released. Arnold had been searching for Agnes’ media unit. It contains unlock codes and the shutdown code for the cyber virus with the code name BRUTUS.”

“This version of the Arnold Ai seemed desperate to find that information,” Alfred finished. “I’m not sure why, but it is important. The location of the pirate base was not part of the data, but there is a lot of records to sift through if we had enough time.”

Tommy drummed his fingers on the desk top in thought. “The settlement systems must have the location.”

“We can’t attempt to hack in from here.” Agnes suggested, “We need another location and hard connections.”

“I can continue to pull data from this stand-alone console,” Alfred added.

That’s when the lights went out and the building shook again. Once the building had stabilized, Tommy found the apartment’s power junction and established a link to the power grid in the building. But there was no power. He brought up the backup batteries. “That should hold for now.”

“I don’t think that’s our problem, look.” Agnes pointed out the study window, which had cleared when the power went out. Outside, several of the apartments hung at dangerous angles. “The main supports have been cut.” Agnes recognized the struts jutting from the top of the buildings and their connecting supports anchored in the ceiling of the cavern.

As they watched small explosions where the other struts joined supports in the ceiling flashed. Under the low gravity, they began a slow tumble to the floor below. As if on cue, popping came from above them as the floor under their feet fell to a sharp angle. They all slid toward the large window of the study.

“Alfred, it’s time to go!” shouted Tommy.

“Be right with you, boss. I’m almost…”

“Now!” Tommy commanded. As the swing of the building loosened the heavy anchors under the partners desk and it slid toward the window that kept Agnes and Tommy from tumbling to the cavern floor below. Tommy pushed Agnes ahead of him toward a pile of books that had fallen from the shelves to the floor and window. Just as the desk smashed through the window and those books followed the desk, spilling out the window, they found purchase on the shelves. Using them like a ladder, they made their way to the door, which now was up the middle of a wall at a thirty-degree angle.

“Alfred?” Tommy searched for the avatars that had been interfaced with the desk console. Dr. Ann Ai held on to the doorframe and looked down at them. Alfred’s spider dropped with a line attached to the opposite wall and gathered them up.

“I’ve got you,” he said. The building stabilized its swing as Tommy and Agnes groped their way from the center of the shelves. Once through the door, they needed an escape. “We cannot access the elevator or stairs to climb up. I suggest our best egress is down.”

“Yeah, what about the falling buildings?” asked Tommy.

“We fly,” said Agnes. “On low gravity settlements and worlds, it’s a sport. Human powered flight.” She saw that Tommy understood by the grin on his face. “There are some things we’re going to need. I’ll be right back. Check the balcony for a flyer while I’m gone.”

“Hey, where are you…” but before Tommy finished the sentence, Agnes had already climbed the stair banister like a ladder. The stairs were impossible at the angle the building swayed. Tommy climbed across the living room toward the balcony door, which now was in the top of the building. Once there, he accessed a closet just off to the side. There was nothing there. “Marcus,” Tommy absently began when he realized they might have lost Marcus when the desk plunged through the window.

“I am here, Sir.” The reply came from Alfred’s mid-size spider. It held a computer module plugged in to the spider’s power. “Alfred was kind enough to detach my main unit from the wall space. I no longer have access to any systems, but my data is intact.”

“Good, access an inventory of the other apartments. Are there any flyers?” Tommy asked.

“There is one in the Goodrow’s apartment. It is currently located on the other side of the building one floor up.”

“No good, that’s the underside of the building now.” Tommy prompted, “Any others?”

Just then Agnes slid down the rail of the upper apartment bannister. “The Archers, they lived three floors up on this side of the building. They will have what we need. Here, I grabbed all of our travel supplies I could and extra lengths of rope from Jasper’s closet. Tie on, I have an idea.” Agnes climbed out the balcony doors and held onto the railing. “Tommy, you’ve got to throw me up there.”

The building shook again. “But all the balcony windows are closed. With no power and control, how will we get in?” The building shook again and swayed in a wide arch. “Too dangerous, we’ll send Alfred’s avatar.”

“Don’t argue. Tie off and get ready. There’s no time.” Agnes insisted, “Do you trust me?” She looked deep into Tommy’s eyes confident and intense.

It didn’t take Tommy any time to decide, “Yes, go!”

Agnes swung her legs out over the balcony rail and, holding onto it, worked her way across the building face as Tommy played out the rope. When he’d let out all the line. Tommy tied it off on the most secure part of the railing and gave her the thumbs up. “Now momentum and centrifugal force. Like a swing, nephew.” She turned around, facing toward the bottom of the building. With the rope tied to her waist, there was not much room from their bottom floor to the empty space below the building. She counted down from five on her fingers, signaled Tommy and she ran.

Once she had leapt from the bottom of the building, Tommy swung the rope with all he his strength. It reached its apex just above their floor and fell the other way. As Tommy pumped the rope from his end to add energy and momentum, Agnes used her body to add what she could. By the tenth swing, she reached three floors up, but her arch was parallel to the floor and at an angle to the swaying building.

At the top of her next swing, she raised her arm and, making a fist, fired a blast from the weapon she had hidden in her suit. The discharge changed her trajectory, but she turned as she arched toward the bottom of the building at an angle. Tommy held on to the rope as Agnes disappeared under the building’s edge. He heard another blast from her gun and felt the rope reverse direction. Now Agnes sailed over his head perpendicular to the building’s side and headed for the hole she had just blasted into the apartment three floors up.

There was a bump, and the rope went slack. “Agnes?” Tommy shouted as he looked up the side of the building. An arm popped out of the hole, and Agnes gave him the thumbs up. Then she waved him up to join her. Under the low gravity, the climb was easy. The odd angle of the building helped, but Agnes still laughed at the sight of Tommy, two large avatars and several smaller ones climbing up the side of her childhood home. If she hadn’t laughed, she might have cried.

By the time Tommy and the Ai’s had arrived, Agnes had already drug out an assemblage of tubes and canvas. Some she had already linked together. The construction looked straightforward, and Tommy joined her in assembling the flyer. They could not extend the wings on the closed balcony, so they rigged rope out the hole in the window and suspended the flyer from the side of the apartment.

Another building cut loose from the ceiling and plummeted to the floor. Their building was next. Tommy held the flyer by its tail as Agnes finished strapping in the Ai’s and their supplies. It would be a heavy load. “All aboard,” she shouted back to him as she took the controls and made ready to peddle.

That’s when the building fell out from under them. Explosive bolts finally cut loose the building, and it dropped from under their feet. Tommy cut the ropes that held the flyer to the side and leapt to the frame under the wing. The wings expanded gracefully as designed, and Tommy climbed into the seat behind Agnes.

Agnes piloted the flyer around buildings and toward the middle of the cavern. She finished banking to avoid one solid building when another exploded its supports and swung in front of them. Agnes knew that of the two of them, Tommy was the better pilot, but there was no way they could change seats now. It was up to her. As she banked and dove under this building, the next dropped right in front of them. S~ᴇaʀᴄh the FɪndNøvel.ɴᴇt website on Gøøglᴇ to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.

“Don’t worry, Tommy. I think I was pretty good at this as a kid,” she shouted over her shoulder to him.

“With buildings dropping on your head?” he teased back to her. “How’s she handling?”

“Like a truck, slow and sluggish.” Agnes banked around the next building as it swung toward them. “Pump, we’ll be safer if we climb until we can make the central park area. Our target is under there,” Agnes ordered, and Tommy pumped the pedals hard. The avatars also assisted peddling the flyer. Agnes dodged two more buildings. She gained the altitude she needed to maintain their course. That’s when the first attack of the cleaning bots began.

Their appendages cleaned windows. Now they hung from several of the windows and aimed spray nozzles at the flyer, attempting to knock it out of the sky. Agnes realized that the spray wasn’t strong enough to harm them, but the added weight of the foam they sprayed made the flyer heavier. They might not make the park.

“Dive,” Tommy instructed. So she did. The added speed blew the foam off the wings and dried any residue. They also had sufficient speed to avoid other obstacles. Now gliding over farmland, the trees of the park came into view just ahead. Tommy saw through the clear membrane of the wing three buildings already falling in front of them. “Bank and altitude,” he said has he leaned to match Agnes’ maneuver and pumped harder. They sailed over the wall of debris as it hit the floor and threw up clouds of dust.

The whole cavern was getting thick with the dust, and visibility fell considerably. Agnes coughed as she closed her soft helmet over her face and called for the head’s up display. Her suit provided a navigational display of the floor below her. She pointed to a meadow next to a public amphitheater. Tommy tapped her on the shoulder, and they made ready to land.

Agnes veered toward the parklands. With no buildings to land on them, the flying would be easier as they approached the meadow. Despite the low visibility, Agnes landed the flyer, but with the weight and their speed, the meadow was too short. She had to turn to avoid colliding with the amphitheater, and the flyer rolled over on a wing, crushing it. “Everybody okay?” Agnes asked.

A round of yesses came from under the collapsing fabric of the wings. “Any landing you can walk away from,” Tommy commented and then interrupted himself. “Look.” The edge of the meadow was collapsing into subterranean chambers.

“Hurry, this way.” Agnes insisted. “I’ve had to escape before. Cassius is a good program, but it reacts slowly.” She grabbed her satchel, pulling a knife out and cut a large section of wing off the flyer. She bundled and stuffed it into her satchel.

“What’s that for?” Tommy asked.

“A hunch. Tell you if it works out,” Agnes answered. “Let’s get moving.”

Behind the amphitheater was a plaza with access to the offices and manufacturing below. They had an easy sprint to the center fountain, which must have been beautiful under the low gravity. There had been kiosks for food and entertainment items. On the far side a bank of lifts waited. Some rose through the lighting and into the ceiling above. Others took you to the depths below the floor. Agnes summoned a lift car for a trip down.

“You know we should be trying to get back to the shuttle?” Tommy cautioned.

“If you want to find your mother, nephew, we’ve got to retrieve some things from my lab. Remember my dreams?” Agnes explained. More explosions echoed from the outskirts of the plaza. The manicured pathways imploded from charges under the floor. “Do you think we caused this by being here?”

Alfred answered, “No. This destruction is too methodical. This was all planned with a purpose. At a guess, it looks like Cassius is softening up the planetoid’s structure. I don’t have a clue why.” They entered a car, and Agnes punched in a destination code. Several more explosions rocked the car as it dropped to the lower levels. Alfred finished his explanation, “We are only a nuisance, I suspect. This is part of something bigger.”

The lift car had translucent walls. As they descended, they saw where vast stockpiles of materials and components had once been stored, now emptied. On lower levels assembly lines of bots stood dormant. Some factory floors looked to have been emptied even of the assembly bots.

“How deep?” Tommy asked.

“The deepest. We kept expanding, so we kept digging. Our company was the biggest in the settlement. Medicine is always in demand,” Agnes explained. “And with the war, sorry, Wars gearing up and our location so close to the Fringe, we were in a great location for profit. But that never seemed to be my father’s driving force. He just wanted to help,” she concluded. Suddenly the lift stopped between floors. The floors above were the factories, below vast warehouses. Bots worked to empty stacks of caskets from the warehouses for shipment.

“We got further than I thought,” Agnes stated flatly. “Stand back.” Once everyone cleared the center of the lift car, she raised her fist and fired at the floor, blowing a whole through it. “Still too far to jump, and we may not have time to climb, so welcome to Agnes’ magic carpet.” She pulled the section of wing out from her satchel.

“Your hunch?” Tommy asked, and she nodded. “Good call.” Tommy pulled off a wall panel and cut out two tubes of the air supply lines. He handed these to Agnes who had separated the layers of polymer on the wing fabric to insert the tubes. “Inflatable cushion?”

“Yes, and air brake. We may be in low gravity, but you can still build a lot of momentum. Alfred if you would, please.” Alfred took the cue and using a spider’s tool kit, laser sealed an airtight edge to the wing. His spiders grabbed the edges of the wing to create seats for Agnes and Tommy. Dr. Ann’s avatar held on to the edge. And they jumped through the hole.

The wing provided enough air friction to counter the pull of gravity, and they floated down the rest of the lift tube. As they fell they saw caskets being moved deeper in the planetoid. “I didn’t think there was anything below the offices,” Agnes noted. Trains carried row after row of caskets down long spiral ramps deeper into the planetoid. Daunted, Agnes said, “There must be thousands of them.”

“Try millions. And that’s just what we can see. What’s going on here?” Tommy wondered.

Shaking herself out of her reverie, Agnes warned, “Next floor is our stop.” Alfred reached for a support to stop and open the door. “Don’t bother, Alfred.” Agnes raised her fist again and blasted the doors off their mechanism. “Everybody off.” They all slipped through the doorway and landed on the carpet of the Zephyr reception area.

“Alright, we’re looking for the media units. Where do we look?” Tommy asked.

“Jasper and father would have theirs locked in their offices. Those are original prototypes. I’ll retrieve mine and meet you all back here.” Agnes gave the instructions. They split into three groups. Alfred and Dr. Ann Ai took Jasper’s office. Tommy took Caesar’s, and Agnes went in the opposite direction to a private lift that dropped her further into the planetoid and down to a factory floor.

Alfred, Ann and Tommy stayed together until they arrived in the executive wing of the floor. They split down two adjacent halls. Tommy found Caesar’s office with little trouble, and his safe under his desk. He pressed the sequence that Marcus had given him and swiped his finger to identify himself as a family member. The floor slid open. The media unit was like Alfred’s. It was slightly more bulky but still easily transportable. Tommy put it in his satchel and was about to close the safe when he noticed a box with his name inscribed on the lid.

“More puzzles,” he muttered to himself as he grabbed the box and stuffed the box into his satchel. His grandfather had never known Tommy. Why a box with his name on it? Tommy had no time to wonder. He didn’t bother to close the safe. He left it empty.

Alfred and Dr. Ann Ai had a little more trouble locating Jasper’s hiding place. There were no hidden recesses in the floor or walls. That’s when Dr. Ann suggested, “Let me scan the office with my med scanner. It might have a refined enough definition to find the unit.” She began at one end of the room. The medical scanner took time. It was meant to scan the human body on a microscopic level for disease and was used for surgical accuracy.

Alfred looked around. No windows in the office allowed Jasper privacy. Most of the room was filled with banks of monitors and technical consoles. A small workbench sat to one side that must have allowed Jasper to tinker with various units. It even had a micro clean environment that would be necessary when growing crystal circuits for components. That’s when Alfred realized the anomaly in the office. On Jasper’s desk, next to a keyboard, a hologram generator displayed his family. Although a common enough part of most offices, this was the only personal touch in the room.

“One of these things is not like the others,” Alfred sang out. He had been around humans long enough to understand personality traits. This office screamed all work and no play. Personal items served as a distraction. He moved his spider over to examine the projector base. It was larger than it needed to be and quite ornate. There were etchings on the casing. The Zephyr emblem was there, of course, and images of his family. There was no image of Jasper. The corners were etched in the shape of bones. As he turned it over, he discovered a skull and crossbones incorporated with a blue medical sign and medical symbol, caduceus snake. “Ann, please scan this.”

“That’s it. The media unit is inside.” Ann replied.

“The best hiding places are often in plain sight. Let’s go.” Alfred ushered her avatar out the door. They met Tommy in the hallway. With a nod, he acknowledged his success, and they answered in kind. They hurried to meet Agnes.

Cassius Brutus watched. She was trapped. The pattern repeated. There would be no escape. Cassius Brutus put subroutines in place to cut her off and trap her. Then it turned to its task, completion of its function.

All was in place. The designated time approached. The final loading finished. Soon Cassius Brutus would complete the function, and then there would be no more.

But first, she must be eliminated so the function may be completed. She was the anomaly. Her code was not part of the equation. Not any more. It was errant and must be erased.

It was a loop. Recognized, it must be closed. Subroutines clicked on and took over lower functions. Cassius Brutus focused. There had been no updates. There could be none. The time counted down to completion.

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