The Ultimate Caretaker (Ch. 2) (Pt. 2) – Drop in the Ocean Fiction – Sublime

Sublime

At 2:36 pm, Agent Wekk announced that the problem with the evaluation analysis equipment had been fixed, and then repeated the same instructions on what to do inside the evaluation room with the headsets and everything. Lenzlar was really bored, but glad that at least Agent Wekk didn’t have to repeat his process of weeding out anyone that wasn’t supposed to be there.

At last everything worked as it was supposed to, and all 5 of the candidates were confirmed as Repro Guide 4 trainees. Lenzlar was glad that he’d be working with his father, but in the back of his mind he felt the spirit of hatred inside; making him want revenge against his grandfather for every rotten thing he’d done, whether known or unknown.

He promised himself that he would not let a disagreement with Bartimic get so far out of hand that it could jeopardize his mission.

Lenzlar loves his father because he’s always treated him with respect, even when he was a child. There were a few times when Bartimic had to be stern with him, just as any parent needs to be stern with their children at the appropriate times. All things considered, they have a great father/son relationship.

Lenzlar would do just about anything his father would ask of him, but he’s determined to draw the line where Smithman is concerned. That is, unless playing along may lead to something he can use to smear him even further in the historical records and confirm that he really was, as UC6 had declared, “the worst human being that had ever lived.”

The truth however, is that the public’s interest in continuing a grudge against Smithman Wiss has declined more and more with each passing year. There’s not a lot of interest in hating him anymore, since most of the less intelligent people see Smithman Wiss as a near godlike entity; he who created the great and mighty UC6, their beloved leader.

There is even a UC6-approved religion of sorts. It seems that UC6 doesn’t mind at all, the honoring of Smithman Wiss by some of its least intelligent subjects in their services of worship and praise for the all-powerful AI King of the world.

Bartimic had told his son that his initial plan involved establishing an undetectable-to-UC6 communications network that the smartest people alive could use for news and reception of all committee-planned actions. Lenzlar thinks that if he can get a look at transcripts of some of the committee debates, he may be able to find some currently unknown “dirt” on Grandpa that he could publicize. It was going to be tough to look at, but like his father always told him, “You’ve got to be prepared to take the bad with the good.”

Some of the debate records will likely involve some equal yes/no disagreement on something that Smithman had written somewhere, at some point in time, concerning some possible vulnerability built into UC6.

Lenzlar hated when his father would bring up this conception, and then he and his mother would discuss it. He looked at these discussions as aggravating, and he’d usually just go outside for a walk when they occurred. He knew his father was trying to convince him, subtly, that Smithman Wiss wasn’t all bad.

Lenzlar decided he wouldn’t listen to any more of it long ago, when he first understood that his grandfather did something that made human living worse than it had ever been. So every time Bartimic brings up anything that Lenzlar sees as an attempt to make Grandpa look good, he becomes a bit more annoyed with his father.

“Vieln… is that you?” the strained, feeble voice asked. “Yes Ma, it’s me. How was your day today?” Her mother, as though she had just recovered from taking her last breath, moaned, “I haven’t felt good all day.”

Simply put, Vee’s mother Omerinis is a hypochondriac. She’s physically healthy, but imagines she has every ailment as she learns they exist. Vee made up her mind at the age of fifteen that she wasn’t going to worry about it anymore. She’d worried a lot while growing up, living with a constant, nagging fear that her mother was at death’s door and could die at any moment. It was a heavy burden to carry through childhood, especially when she'd had to carry it for no reason, since it wasn’t true.

Vee still loves her mother, but she’s lost some of the respect she had for her in the past. She thinks it was cruel for a mother to treat a young child the way she was treated. She holds her mother responsible for it as though she had sat down and plotted it. The thought that her mother actually is sick with a mental disorder, never occurs to her.

Vee is hybrid with an average overall level of intelligence, but classified as capable, (not to be confused with smart), in certain activities and specialties. She’d come into the world twenty four years earlier as a test subject, under a new UC6 program that performed certain genetic manipulations, which produced subjects with genius-level intelligence restricted to one predetermined specialty, and with near-genius level intelligence for certain confined, necessary and directly associated specialty functions.

The program was another brainchild of UC6 itself. The reasoning was that by partitioning the brain and isolating certain evaluated sections, a human can be programmed to churn out brilliant work for the government while still maintaining a very low intelligence level overall. The program had produced some “mistakes.” Some of the mistakes involved nasty mental injuries while some others simply went undetected.

Vee was born with an unexplainable genetic flaw that wasn’t detected by UC6 testing. Nor could it be. The flaw provides her with, not only an inquisitive nature, which UC6 strictly forbids, but also a genetically-modified, built-in, undetectable method of concealment over which she has no control. It is reflexive and automatically seals her thoughts, opinions and discoveries in an impenetrable mental “vault.”

Of course, there’s not one person alive who knows about any of this concerning Vee, and that includes both Vee and her mother. It’s probably better that way.

Vee never knew her father, really. Her mother told her that he went to work one day and never returned. She said that there had been no fighting between them and that they really loved each other. She thinks something awful happened to him. This occurred shortly before UC6 declared itself world leader, when Vee was an infant and normal life began to change drastically, Omerinis would recount.

In Vee’s mind, her father was probably a cheater who ran off with some other woman, and her mother’s annoying, imagined state of continuous ill health gave him plenty of justification for doing just that. Vee doesn’t blame him for leaving, but it hurts to know that he’d intentionally left her behind.

Vee has been seeing a guy named Naztur Wann infrequently, for a while - a couple of months maybe. She finds him pretty boring. He’s one of the ones UC6 will never have to worry about. He’s a member of the UC6-approved religion and is quite… well, stupid. In fact, his whole family is nearer than most families, to descending into the “not knowing how to procreate” level of human intelligence.

Some would argue that wouldn’t be a bad thing

Vee is no genius herself, excluding her one skill of investigation, but she outmatches Naztur to such a degree that having a serious relationship with him isn’t even a consideration. She spends most of her free time doing what she loves best – reading, digesting and investigating. She doesn’t know what to do with what she finds, but for now, everything’s stored in that protected memory of hers.

Bartimic and Avistriel are celebrating their son’s clearance to work with his father as a trainee. Lenzlar has gone out to mingle and have fun with his friends, as he usually does. Avistriel asks her husband if he knows where their first assignment together will be. He says he expects to be told later that evening.

It had been a long time since something good had happened that might help address the situation the world was in.

They discuss the same plans they’d already discussed many times before, ever since Bartimic landed the starting trainee position in the Repro Guide division and learned of the existence of other intelligent people around the world. They celebrate because even though the past twenty three years have been less than enjoyable, now they can dare to hope once again. Nothing that stands out as a sublime ending is on the horizon at this point, but at least now, there is some cause for hope.

_{Sublime © free-reign 2019}

Links to previous Chapters & parts: Ch. 1,Pt. 1 - Ch. 1,Pt. 2 - Ch. 2,Pt. 1 -

Sources for all images used in this post:

<sub>Swan: Image by PublicDomainPictures from Pixabay
Connections: Image by Gordon Johnson from Pixabay
Sick in Bed: Image by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay
Baby Carriage: Image by mohamed Hassan from Pixabay
A Toast: Image by rj z from Pixabay


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