ABC - Penance

Hall of Remembrance, Central District, Spitfield

January 23rd V27 (2047AD)

I had woken up alone and confused until I remembered Minke had elected to stay at Papa’s place last night. Her plan was to alternate living with Papa and I, sharing the love she had declared but I think it was more about having the best of both worlds.

It was fine by me, as I was still getting used to having a regular house guest again. I had showered then dressed in my new blue uniform, strapping a light armour vest beneath my shirt. A non-issue bike jacket, the one I bought yesterday, was zipped up over the top of everything and then I headed out.

It was just after Ten in the morning when I rolled to a stop outside the Hall of Remembrance. The skies were a leaden grey shot through with streaks of pale blue, shedding an intermittent mist over the city. With the recent long dry spell it made the roads slick and treacherous, forcing me to pay attention while I rode the police bike here.

There were a couple of narrow bike bays still available on the street so I parked the big blue beast in one, facing inwards to the sidewalk. The borrowed machine dwarfed the electric scooters already filling the other bays and I gave them a glance of contempt. I’d rather walk than ride a scooter I spouted to myself, sure in the knowledge that bikers versus scooter kids would always come up trumps.

The entrance to the Hall itself was covered by a broad awning formed of clear Ceramiglass, stained with swirls and blotches of rainbow colours. At the centre was a circular pool, filled with splashing water jets that added their own mist to the air, competing with what the heavens were sending down.

Surmounting a pedestal at the centre of the fountain pool were three figures rendered in bronze, larger than life, representing two men and one woman. These were representatives of the Police, the Doctors and the Scientists who protected and guided humanity through the dark days after the V-Bomb.

I stopped and glanced at the statues, seeing the stoic bronze features of the female Police officer, her hand raised in warning as she drew a baton with the other. My Papa had brought me here once, when I was a teenager, and the image of that brave figure had forged a lasting change in my psyche.

There were other reasons, but I always thought of this as the first time and place I decided to become a Police Officer. The woman represented by the statue was one of my first role models, made even more significant to me when I discovered the figure was based on a real person.

She had been Marchesa Reubens, a street cop in Brooklyn at the time the Virus started infecting the locals. A third generation Police Officer she had been serving at a small Elementary school when the Virus had swept into New York. It had been less than two weeks since the first Changed had rampaged across California, spreading the Virus to everyone they could reach, sending infected survivors scrambling for a false safety in other states and countries.

Officer Reubens had been alone at the school that morning, her fellow officers drawn away to deal with other outbreaks. No-one had expected the Changed to be so close, or so desperate to attack a barely attended school. Most of the students were absent that particular day, some fleeing with parents to the north or south, others kept home in the mistaken belief the outbreak could not reach them there.

The Police Officer had seen the crowd swarming towards the school, breaking down the gates and pushing over the hasty barricades. She had alerted the few teachers in time and they herded nearly eighty terrified children into the gymnasium, locking the doors and pushing gym equipment against them as a final barrier.

Reubens had stood alone in the corridor as the deranged horde of Changed men, women and children had rushed her. Surviving security camera footage recorded her brave stand, her left hand held forwards as she implored the once-human mob to turn away.

I always remembered her words, inscribed beneath the statue modelled from that moment in time.

“Go home, you assholes!” she had shouted without a trace of fear in her voice, “There are kids in there and I won’t let you past!”

Video footage showed the mob charge and Officer Reubens valiant stand as she drove them back by sheer force of will and a good right arm swinging that baton of hers. They bit her and clawed at her and still she fought on, unwilling to let a single one of them get past.

She died of course, swarmed and taken down by the screaming horde. Yet her defence of the gym had bought the children and teachers the time they needed, a strike team of SWAT troopers storming in to finish what Reubens had started.

In the end it was futile, the deadly Virus infecting everyone and turning many of those children and teachers, the SWAT troops too, into the Changed. What mattered was that humanity had fought back against the onslaught, acts of bravery and cowardice occurring thousands of times in every town, city and nation across the world.

I was pleased that Reubens had been honoured, her statue one of many that dotted similar Halls around the world. They even built a smaller scaled Hall at the Olympus colony on Mars, proof of how deeply the V-Bomb had affected humanity.

Before I headed into the Hall itself, I paused and gave Officer Reubens a salute. If I had been in the same situation, I wondered if I would have stood guard in front of that door, willing to give my life for people that were not my own loved ones.

“Thank you for your sacrifice” I told her statue and walked away.

=====

The inside of the Hall hadn’t changed much since my school days, the lobby an open circular space with 3D holoscreens arrayed around the perimeter showing scenes of the world under siege from the Virus. A central information desk was operated by a pair of dapper looking hosts, male and female and dressed in matching uniforms.

I strode up to them, my eyes drifting to the images that moved and horrified me in equal measure. It had been traumatic to my teenage self, barely settled in Spitfield after surviving the outbreak in Mexico. Seeing the events again after my recent experiences, I wondered if I was going to suffer from Post Tramautic Shock Disorder.

“Good morning, Officer” called out the male host, a dark skinned guy with a brilliant smile and silvered eyes, a subtle data stud visible on his right temple. “Welcome to the Hall of Remembrance. How can we assist you today?”

“Ah, good morning” I stammered out. I could see behind the pair of them a holoscreen showing the fall of Mexico City, government operated security cameras showing the veritable army of mis-shapen Changed limping, crawling and running through the streets. Uninfected people ran in terror, most with useless face masks trying to stop the airborne Virus getting into their bloodstreams. The irony was many of the Changed still wore their own masks, some bitten through as they attacked a victim or dangling like a strange scarf from their necks.

“Are you Okay, Officer?” asked the female host, her face concerned as she observed my distress.

“Yeah” I lied to them both. I nodded at the surrounding screens, each showing views that a public broadcast would be required to heavily censor. “Aren’t those images too intense for the school groups that come through here?”

They looked around themselves as if startled to see the images being played out.

“Our apologies, Sir” the woman said, “These are the images we only screen for older groups. When the schools attend the Hall we project a more edited series of events”

“Thank Christ for that!” I muttered. Looking at the pair, I realised both had to be only in their early twenties, too young to have experienced the horror of the V-Bomb directly. To them, the events shown were only history, like the Global Wars or the creation of the AIs.

“Anyway, I am here to speak with one of your colleagues. Her name is Nona September”

“Ms September?” said the man. “Yes, she is one of our researchers. She is working on the first floor today. Shall I page her for you?”

“No need” I replied. “I’ll find her myself”

“Very well” he answered and gave me directions to the section of the floor where she could be found. I gave my thanks and headed to the bank of elevators, while over my head the Virus was being spread around the world, thousands of victims at a time.

=====

Nona September was seated at an interface terminal, her hands flying over virtual screens as she sorted through hundreds of image files. Each one seemed to show remote cameras and drone feeds from the Virus outbreak, records of the misery that humanity had endured twenty six years ago.

“Ms September?” I called to her from the open doorway to the research laboratory. She was alone, the half dozen other work stations vacant. Security to the research area seemed non-existent, although I had noted a plethora of remote cameras dotted around the walls and ceiling as I had approached.

The woman turned to regard me, her face of a narrow and very pretty Asian cast, quite likely Japanese in origin. There was no denying this was the same woman from the Wonder Bar factory and who also rescued me from Victor.

“Inspector Alvarez, we meet again” she replied easily. With a single gesture she closed and deactivated the data files she had been working on and stood to face me. “I am glad to see you have recovered from your ordeals”

“Yeah, thanks I guess. Do you mind talking to me for a bit? I have questions that I am hoping you will answer”

“Ah, will answer and not can answer” she observed thoughtfully. “You assume I know the answers and hope I will give them to you, is that right Inspector?”

“Uh-huh” was my response. I gave her a challenging look and she smiled faintly in return.

She stretched, adjusted her trim skirt and blouse combination and gestured for me to follow her.

“I need to take a break anyway” she said. “Let’s go sit in the diorama room”

Ms September lead me down the same corridor I had arrived by, then took a series of turns until we came into a public viewing area. It was deserted other than for us and she sat herself primly on a padded couch. I sat beside her and looked outwards, seeing a life sized model of a torn open blue van in a field of yellow flowers. Holoscreens beyond the fake field showed a river, with a major road intersection nearby. On the far side of the illusionary river a railway line could be glimpsed, a dirty yellow engine sliding across the background hauling a long line of tankers and cargo cars.

“V-Point” I said, recognising the scene instantly. Every child and adult in the world would recognise this place, the blue van containing the remnants of the Viral Bomb that had been detonated from within.

The original site of the detonation was in California, a place that had no significance other than it had been close to transportation links. An out of the way place where the conspirators had left their van, the bomb detonating from a simple timer.

Nowadays the V-Point was a memorial, with a stone marker showing the location of where the wrecked van had been. A Hall of Remembrance was close by, with the wreck locked into a clear Ceramiglass viewing cell. Thousands of people went there every year, some to pay homage to those who had died in the Virus, others to spit and curse at the unknown perpetrators of the greatest of crimes in human history.

“You’ve seen this image before, haven’t you Inspector?” Ms September asked me. She sat with her hands folded in her lap, eyes staring straight ahead at the van.

“Every kid has” I reminded her. “They teach us all about it in school. What about you?”

“I see it every day, Inspector”

“That’s not what I meant, Ms September” I snapped. “Have you seen this before? At the V-Point”

She turned to regard me with her dark eyes, her expression as flat as a Guards.

“I honestly can’t remember” she told me. “I don’t think so as I am not that old, but I have no way to be sure”

“What the hell does that mean? If you were at V-Point, you’d bloody well remember it!”

Ms September sighed gently and turned to the diorama once more.

“My memories only begin about ten years ago, Inspector” she admitted. “I believe the Society erased all my organic and quantum memory caches prior to that point. I am uncertain if I agreed to the procedure or it was done without my consent, but that is a moot point. Either way my past life and experiences are a complete mystery to me”

“Does that mean you have a Quantum Processor inside your head?” I asked, shocked and intrigued in equal measure.

“Yes, in fact one of the first networked processors that was made. Mine is number nine from the original batch of twelve, that I know for certain”

“So you worked with Professor Rackman to develop the first Quantum Processor? Did you help him create Archimedes too?”

September laughed, a light tinkling sound that was almost child-like.

“How old do I look, Inspector?” she said with a smile. “On second thoughts, don’t answer that. I am worried what number will come out of your mouth”

I glanced at her in profile, struck by how her features reminded me of someone dear to my heart.

“You’re a clone!” I gasped out aloud. She was nowhere near as tall or solid, but she was a dead ringer for Bingo and every other Jill in the Guard! The woman nodded her head, seemingly satisfied I had worked it out.

“Yes, I believe I am” she agreed. “One of two test runs to prove the assembled DNA files would produce a functional male and female body. As you can see, I am the female clone. My sibling and I were fitted with the eighth and ninth processors from that original batch, although we were spared all the other Enhancements and augmented skeletons”

“The Jericho Clones were created in V-Oh-Five, right” I asked her. “So you had to be born after that”

“The first Guard clones were deployed in V-Oh-Seven, so I suspect I was decanted around V-Oh-Six. That makes me approximately twenty years old”

“Pardon me, but you don’t look twenty” I said aloud. She shrugged her shoulders, a gesture that belonged to a much younger person.

“The Clone bodies don’t really age, Inspector” she replied. “I think your associate, Detective Gaunt, should be proof of that. I only remember the last half of my life so far, yet in all that time I haven’t aged at all. My body’s nanites keep me regenerated in this form, like some kind of living vampire”

What she was intrigued me, but what I really wanted to know was what role she played. I had to press the issue, regardless of how pleasant she was being.

“Tell me about the Darwin Society” I demanded, turning my body on the backless couch to face her.

“I can’t” she said, looking at me with what seemed to be frank honesty. “Like many of us, there are limiters programmed into my processing core. I can’t betray them or discuss their plans in detail to outsiders. Professor Rackman has the same limitation so there is no point pursuing him either”

“Programming can be broken” I growled. “Archimedes could bust your cores open without breaking a sweat if I dragged you into custody”

“No, he couldn’t” Ms September assured me. “Even if he were inclined to try, he would not succeed. Our minds would trigger a self-erasure the moment the intrusion was attempted”

She looked down at her hands, slender fingered with pale blue painted nails. They were beautiful hands, as expertly crafted as the rest of her. Destroying any part of her would be a crime against beauty at the very least.

“There is no point in arresting myself or Professor Rackman anyway. Neither of us belong to the Society any longer. He had the power to break himself out of their grip and I have been set to one side, given a minor role they needed fulfilled. The core of their conspiracy is hidden from us, just as it is from you”

“So what role have they given you, September?” I insisted.

“I am the Observer” she answered. “I am to record everything that happens in this grand experiment for the future children of the world”

I looked around us at the displays, thinking of the images she had been working on and the many thousands already comprising the Hall of Remembrance. This is why she was working here, helping to finish cataloguing the evidence of the last Virus.

“They really are going to set another Virus loose in the world, aren’t they” I whispered to her.

“I think so” she admitted just as softly. “They want to reset the world one more time, to bring it closer to their vision”

I shook my head angrily, my fists clenching at the arrogance of the pricks like Acres and Tan who thought they had the right to fuck the world over at their whims.

“You have to help me stop them, September” I said through gritted teeth.

“I can’t, I am only allowed to Observe” she stated in a flat tone. “They won’t let me take an active role, neither to aid them or hinder their plans”

“But you saved me that time in the Wastelands. You took me to a hospital!”

“I was paying back a favour to someone I owed, that is all” she replied. “The Society aren’t as united in their goals as you may think. There are dissenters in the ranks, but they have to play it safe or the others will dispose of them”

I had so many questions I needed her to answer, yet there was one I really had to know.

“Why were you trying to kill me at the Wonder Bar factory?” I asked. “Especially when you rescued me from another certain death right afterwards?”

She laughed a little then, catching me off guard.

“I supposed it looked like that” she agreed, her teeth shining white between her red lips. “I was there making my own observations and I was trying to get away from you. I hadn’t counted on your dogged pursuit though, so I used my intrusion skills to lock the tank hatch behind me. I was pretty sure that would stop you following me”

“Why lock the other hatch and try to boil me alive then?”

“That wasn’t me, Inspector” she answered. “Someone else at the factory took that opportunity to try and kill you. By the time I found out about it I was too late to try and get you out. You had already escaped using your own talents”

“Assuming I believe you, I need you to answer a lot more questions”

“If you survive what is coming next, I’ll offer what help that I can” she assured me. “Right now though, you need to call your next appointment”

“Georgia?” I said, perplexed by this change of tack. “I’m not seeing her until later today”

“She has gotten too close to their secrets, Luisa. You need to call her now, before it is too late!”

“Okay, Okay” I snapped. “We’ll continue our little talk another time” I had gotten to my feet and taken a half dozen steps, giving myself some distance from the still watchful Ms September. Georgia’s phone answered me after only two rings.

“Hey Luisa, are you so eager to come and see me today?” she greeted me cheerily.

“Hi Georgia” I said, trying to sound calm. “Um, how far ahead is your consciousness right now?”

“Thirty seconds” she said. “Why do you want me to maximise my vision to ten minutes?” She had already known what I wanted her to do. The line was empty for a few seconds, only her steady breathing audible, then a sharp intake of air.

“Luisa!” Georgia said in sudden distress. “Luisa! The futures are going black! I’m losing my connection to the future!”

“It’s the Darwin Society, Georgia” I said urgently. “They are coming for you! You need to get out of there, go someplace safe”

“I can’t go outside!” she was screaming now. “Oh my god Luisa, it’s all black! There is no path out! I can’t see a way to escape!”

“Georgia! Listen to me, I am heading over right now. Focus on that, on me coming to save you. I’ll be there in less than five minutes”

I was already running, slamming open the emergency stairs and taking them three at a time. As my feet slammed down on the ground floor landing, I heard Georgia compose herself.

“I understand, Luisa” she said, a calmness flowing from her voice like a soothing summer rain. “I’ll activate my emergency protocols. Get here as soon as you can, dear heart”

Georgia disconnected the call and I was barrelling into the lobby, my boots slapping out echoes like gunshots as I ran to the exit.

“Have a nice day” the hosts called out to my retreating back.