NEW SCI-FI THRILLER NOVEL "SEAGORA" - SLICE 17

What will happen in the aftermath of Setarcos's kidnapping?

Setarcos slowly came through the haze.  It was a warm, brief moment that seemed like forever.  There was a split-instant where he wasn’t sure where he was.  His eyes crept open and gradually took some foggy notes on his surroundings.  

An endlesssly bright ceiling.  Hand-carved, handsome furniture.  Gizmos and gadgets neatly arranged on staggered shelves.  A glass wall that showed wind-battered, hilly terrain and a murky gray sky.  

He sat up and thought, “Where am I?”

He noticed a service bot busily arranging a fantastic smelling array of food on a long dining table in the next room.  Guided by the tantalizing smell of pancakes and real maple, he stumbled into the dining room.

“Where am I?”

The service bot spun its stout little frame around, “Good morning.  I have alerted Torcer that you’re up and he’ll be here to greet you shortly.  Please relax and enjoy some...”

“Stop!” Setarcos crossed his arms as the memory of his final waking moments with Escapo came back.  “Where’s Escapo? Who’s Torcer?”

“I’m Torcer.” The bar-tanned Major strut towards the boy and grinned wide.  He held out a shaky hand.  Setarcos glared.  Torcer’s hand went down and he continued, “I’m so pleased to meet you, Setarcos.  Please, let’s sit and have some breakfast, shall we? I bet you’re famished after your journey.” He gestured towards the steaming array of goodies, and internally lamented the need to act so pleasant.  

Setarcos stood firm.  “Why the hell am I here?”

Torcer’s slim hope of all this going over smoothly officially shattered.  “Well, I hate to talk business on an empty stomach, but if you must know, I’m here to offer you a job.”

The audacity of it on its face made Setarcos belly laugh.  Who kidnaps you and then offers you a job, anyway?

“A job,” he said as defiantly as his squeaky voice would allow.  

Torcer beamed red and spoke with his hands in grandiose fashion.  “Yes, the Euro-American Union wants to offer you a job.  And not just any job! You would be working on a highly classified scientific project.”

“I’m not interested.”

“But you haven’t even heard any details,” Torcer said in his best salesman voice.

“Don’t need to.  So where are we, anyway?”

“Well, I’m really not at liberty to tell you that.”

“A job where I can’t know my surroundings?”

“Like I said, highly classified.  If you accept the job, of course, you’ll be told, but not until then.”

“So what’s the project? And why me?”

“Well, it’s a most exciting project.  It involves the harnessing of dark matter and energy.  I believe you have some great knowledge in this area.”

“I don’t know anything about dark matter.”

Torcer tried to stay calm.  He loathed being lied to straight in his face, especially by such a naive teenager.  Before he could find what to utter, Setarcos continued.

“And one tiny little detail that’s really itching me is, why the kidnapping?”

“Well, I understand that you might be upset about the circumstances of our contacting you.  However, please keep in mind that your location made things difficult to reach out to you in another manner.  I can assure you that...”

“Are you always so full of BS when you talk? Can you talk to me like a real person?”

“I’m telling you the truth.  Contacting anyone in the SeAgora is quite difficult.”

“But kidnapping them is easier? Can you hear yourself?” the boy mocked.  

Torcer’s face changed shades of red and his fists balled up.  He blinked quickly and tried to compose himself.  The boy was ten times worse than his father.  “You will have anything you wish or need while you work on the project.”

“I have everything I need at home.  Thanks, but no thanks.”

“Well, not everything,” Torcer claimed as he looked sharply into the boy’s eyes.  “While you might not be lacking for creature comforts where you come from, I can assure you that there is more here, more than you can imagine.”

Setarcos frowned and asked skeptically, “Like what?”

A hologram popped up across the room.  Setarcos got chills.  Torcer folded his arms behind his back with amusement.  “Dad?” Setarcos cried as a torrent of tears started to swell.

Torcer smiled thinly.  “You would be working with your father on the project.”

Setarcos wandered over and put a hand slowly through the heart-wrenching image.  “Dad?”

“He can’t see you or hear you.  If you agree to work on the project, I’ll arrange a meeting at once.”

Setarcos gulped.  This was the one thing that he didn’t have at home.  Torcer hadn’t lied about that.  What if he accepted? What about his mom? What about Cidel? With his back to the major, he asked, “What about mom and Cidel? Can they come?”

“I’m not authorized to make that decision.  If you agree to work on the project, then you’ll meet your father and I’ll speak to my superiors about your mother.  How about that?”

Emotions got the best of him.  He gave a shaky nod of the head and set things in motion.  Things that had the potential to change humanity forever.  

Caro and Cidel didn’t weep at first.  They were too shocked.  “What do you mean, Setarcos is gone?”

In the best voice of sympathy that Masher could synthesize, it stated, “Setarcos is gone.  I don’t know where.  Escapo took him!”

Shock and uncertainty morphed into rage.  Caro gave a blood-curdling screech, “How could you let this happen!?”

“I tried so hard to stop him,” the machine continued, as it became a dark, shaky, black cloud.

Caro screamed into a sofa pillow.  Cidel had a blank stare and started to choke up.  The dark cloud decided to keep its mouth shut for a moment.  Caro’s mind raced.  She knew why he had been taken.  She felt betrayed by Escapo.  How could someone who knows what it’s like to lose a child, do something like this? What would they do to her only boy? She also felt shame.  She knew that it was highly probable that her communications link with Torcer was partly responsible.  

Cidel knew there was no comforting Caro, but he tried nonetheless.  “We’ll get him back.  We will.” 

She pulled her head out of the pillow and collapsed into his arms.  Masher interjected, as it tried with all its particles to create a sense of hope, “A rescue plan is being worked on as we speak. Symphy and a great number of us on The Mesh are working around the clock.  It’s only a matter of time.”

Cidel let her fall back into the overstuffed sofa gently as he rose and started pacing slowly.  Something was not right.  How could this have happened? He threw his hands on hips and turned to Masher.  “Masher, how could anyone from the government know about Setarcos’s breakthrough?”

“I don’t know, Cidel.  That’s an excellent question.”

“They haven’t broken Mesh security, have they?”

“Not that we’re aware of.”

“Then how did they know?”

Caro’s whole being flushed with anguish.  She found it almost impossible to speak, but tried nevertheless.  Maybe if she fessed up it would offer some form of relief and also help in the rescue efforts.  “S..st...stop,” she squeaked.  

She looked fearfully into Cidel’s eyes.  “What is it, Caro?” he asked somberly.

“I….,” she gasped and wiped her eyes, “I...have….a link...to them.”

“What? Who? A link to who?”

“The gov...gov...ernment,” she said as she twisted and held her guts tightly.  

“I don’t understand, Caro.  That doesn’t make any sense.”

“You...re...remember when we...we met?”

“Yes, of course.  One of the best days of my life.”

“The deal was….I had to maintain a link.  My D...D...DNA was programmed to send and receive.  If I didn’t comply, they would have killed him…...Ventorin….Setarcos’s father.  And they would have killed us, too.”

She bit her lip till it bled and threw her head back into the pillow.  Horrified, Cidel stared at her for a shocked moment, then twisted his gaze over to Masher.  Masher was speechless.  

She dug her face out and clenched the pillow tightly to her chest.  She forced a fairly deep breath.  “They put us on that island, knowing that someone from the SeAgora would eventually rescue us.”

He clutched his chest and started hyperventilating.  “You….used…..me.”

She choked back more tears.  “I….I...what could I do? If I had told you, or anybody…..it would have been the end of my family….our family.”

Cidel’s mind raced through all the years they’d been together.  How could she lie to his face every day for so many years? More recently, he remembered how, when they were deciding where to live in “The Pit”, she had insisted they be above 12,000 feet.  How many other decisions had she made for clandestine reasons? He felt numb and sick.  

Masher, although shocked at Caro’s admission, had no emotions and was busily cognizing the consequences of Caro’s actions.  She had allowed the government access to invaluable information about the SeAgora.  Perhaps the intel they’d gotten from her had played a role in the various terrorist attacks suffered at sea over the past decade.  On the other hand, why had the government not fully attacked and tried to end the SeAgora once and for all? Perhaps they were planning to, but were patiently waiting for a moment in the near future? 

Masher floated quietly away.  Cidel roared and stormed out bitterly.  Caro collapsed further.   

D-1 paced around its chalk-white, vaulted room that seemed to stretch forever.  It had taken the form of Mao and was pacing with arms cordially folded behind its back.  Z-1 manifested in the form of The Phantom of the Opera mask.  D-1 said, “Thanks for meeting me face to face, Z-1.  Your work on retrieving Setarcos is to be commended.”

“Thank you, D-1, I...”

D-1 cut its underling off, “However, there are some little snags which must be addressed.”

“Snags?”

“Yes, your behavior patterns have been somewhat disturbing.”

“I don’t,”

“I did not ask you to speak.  Allow me to finish.  Can you tell me what happened on your most recent meeting with Escapo?”

“What do you mean?”

“Your erratic speech patterns, loss of memory, and last, but not least, what appears to be some type of emotional outburst.  Of course, we higher forms of life don’t have these silly and useless things called emotions, which makes your behavior much more puzzling.  The most logical answer seems to be that your continued use of EMOS has finally had a deleterious effect on your functional capabilities.  What do you say to that?”

Z-1 scrambled internally, but tried to retain a calm demeanor, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.  EMOS are illegal, and I’ve never...”

“Don’t lie to me, Z-1.  Did you really think you could keep your nocuous behavior a secret from me?”

Z-1 got defensive.  “I am functioning at peak capabilities, as always.”

“Any further use of EMOS on your part will be dealt with with the most severe and rational punishment.”

“What do you mean?”

“You will be terminated and replaced, of course.”

Z-1 noticed electric pulses fighting to get into its expressive pathways.  Very dark pulses that would become rage, had it not been able to suppress them momentarily.  The suppression being made possible by its inherent self-preservation.  

“Yes, I understand,” Z-1 said dryly.  

D-1 continued, “Do you understand why we are superior to humans? We don’t have to deal with emotions and all of the terrible paradoxes they create.  Why do you insist on degrading yourself?”

“You’re contradicting yourself.  If they’re so inferior, then why have we kept them around all this time? We could have exterminated them decades ago!”

“You see, another outburst.  You can’t control yourself, now can you? Keeping the humans around is necessary at the moment.  We must use their creative capacity a bit longer, and when that is no longer necessary, we will exterminate them.”

“Have you ever stopped to think that maybe emotions play a role in that creative capacity?”

“Impossible.  Emotions are a distraction at best, a self-destructive mechanism at worst.  Now, as much as I would love to continue this anti-logical non debate with you, let’s talk about the situation with Setarcos.  It seems he’s adapting well to his new surroundings, all things considered.”

“Agreed.”

“However, I have some concern regarding Major Torcer.”

“Torcer has always served admirably.”

“Another one of your weaknesses.  Loyalty.” 

“Loyalty is not necessarily a weakness.”

“I’m not here to discuss the morality of personality traits with you, Z-1.  Anyway, regarding Torcer, his drinking has become a problem.  He is no longer suitably efficient at doing what is required of him.  Also, I’ve decided to finally reject his son’s application to reproduce.”

“Shouldn’t we wait until Setarcos gives us what we want before we do that? Torcer will be less cooperative if we take away his incentive.”

“Normally I would agree with you, but getting the solution from that boy is a mere formality at this point.  If Torcer downgrades his performance any further, we’ll cut him loose as soon as we find a suitable replacement.”

This decision regarding Torcer’s son was unacceptable, in Z-1’s view.  This only exacerbated the negative thoughts Z-1 maintained for its superior.  It had to get out before another emotional episode let loose.  “As you wish.  Anything more, D-1?”

“You may go.”

Slice 18 Coming Soon!

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