The Brutus Code

Most of the lights had blown out. Sparks from open circuits rained down on her as she ran. She shouldn’t look back but terror had taken over and she did. They still kept coming, not fast but relentlessly, they hunted her. She forced herself to move and find a hiding place. No, not to hide, she had to escape.

At the next intersection, she needed to go left. She went right. Left was her goal, her lab and maybe safety. Right was storage. One last look back, they were around the bend and could not see her. She went right. Into….

Agnes pouted. She had lots of practice over the years. As the baby, she manipulated her father easily. Mother was a different story. Agnes and her father had been solving a word puzzle together in his study. They often spent lazy afternoons with their heads bent over some puzzle or mind teaser together. It was something they had shared as long as she could remember. But now, Father sent her from his study as soon as Mother entered. They were talking about her. She knew it. So she did what any eight year old would. She doubled back before the door closed and hid behind the couch.

“Don’t give me that look, Virginia,” Caesar said. “You know she will be just fine here. She has more resources and opportunity to learn than most children in settlements on the Frontier.”

“Yes, Agnes is precocious enough to learn like any other child, but,” Virginia was interrupted by her husband throwing his hands in the air and retreating behind his desk. She followed with patient determination. “BUT,” She continued, “she is fantastically gifted and the Central Systems Institute can nurture that. She’ll be back home before we know it.”

Caesar couldn’t look at her, but he countered, “I’ll teach her myself. That’s how she has come this far.”

“Yes, up until your own projects take you away from her. She has no peers to distract her. She has exhausted the resources of the settlement’s schooling systems.” Virginia paused and took her husband’s chin in her hand as she leaned against his side of the partners’ desk. Looking into his eyes, she said softly, “And we’ve got a new baby to prepare for. How much time will you really have for Agnes?”

Joy and sadness competed for his emotions as the confirmation of what they had hoped, a new child, competed with his love for his daughter, the child most like him.

Their eldest son, Jasper, buzzed in, “Sorry to interrupt, Dad. Mom, I’ve got those projection reports you needed on our crop yields this quarter.” He handed her a tablet to inspect his figures.

Still hiding, unseen, Agnes sobbed behind the couch. When her father finally heard those sobs, he knew instantly his little monkey was spying. He crossed behind the couch and gently called to her by her nickname, “Monkey, please come out of there.” He reached out to embrace his child and comfort her.

“NO!” Agnes pushed his arms away and ran from the study to her room and her own hiding place. In her bedroom closet, Agnes flopped down in front of a small box she used as a workbench. She powered on her own tablet and waited for it to sequence through the startup.

“How may I serve, Mistress,” the male voice greeted her.

“Marcus, nobody loves me!” she exclaimed.

“If Mistress desires, I can play her some music,” Marcus’ metallic voice and preprogramed prompts responded.

This distracted Agnes from her personal misery. “Maybe I can install an empathy routine based on tone and inflection of the voice…” She mumbled to herself as she reached for her tool kit and took the back off of her tablet. “I’ll need to install additional memory…”

“Let me know if I may be of assistance, Mistress,” Marcus’ prerecorded response routine prompted.

Agnes waited in the closet until she couldn’t stand it and than waited longer. There was no sound in the hall except the zapping of open circuits sparking as power was sporadically routed through the lines. The screaming stopped. She no longer heard the footsteps of settlers running or the thuds of bodies falling. Even the sound of the maintenance robots dragging those bodies away had ceased. She silently thanked God that the majority of the settlement was evacuated. Those that remained were technicians and scientists studying the problem.

Not sure they couldn’t hear her, she inspected the storage closet more closely. Janitor’s closets all over the known galaxy remained unchanged. There was a deep sink, a mop and bucket, cleaning supplies and a locker. The locker door squeaked as she opened it. She cringed at the sound and waited for the sound of approaching treads. When her hiding place remained safe, she continued with her inspection. Inside, there was a large coverall, and next to that she found a fire suppression canister. She took both and stuffed them in a pack she found in the bottom of the locker. She stepped quietly back to the storage room door.

Slowly, she raised her sweat and grime covered hand to the door release and opened the supply closet. She lost her pursuers. If she cut through the park, she could make it to her lab. She had to make it to her lab in the R and D building. It was the only chance.

The park was beautiful, and he was beautiful. They walked hand in hand toward the lift. He stopped and pulled her behind a tree out of sight of the other staff who were enjoying their holiday in the settlement.

“I just love the way you smell. I love your nose, and your ears. Your hair, your smile, I love your eyes. I love everything about you.” He pulled her closer and tried to kiss her again. What was it about sixteen year old guys that made them lose their minds? When Agnes asked Gabriel to come home with her during the holidays, she thought they’d have time to complete their research. Their assignment was a presentation on cybernetic biological adaptations for the human body. After all, what better place to gain experience and maybe first hand examples than her father’s research labs. This is where they had already advanced the science further in ten years than all of the last one hundred.

“It’s true. Boys really do only have one thing on their minds,” Agnes observed.

He gave her a downcast look and responded with, “You know better, but it is a lot of fun, and we are on holiday”

So she giggled and pushed him away with a quick peck on the cheek. “Later, Gabe. We’ve got to hurry if we want to catch the tram to the surface.” And being a good boy, he complied with her wishes, knowing it would be no use trying to distract her. Maybe later he could get some alone time when she wouldn’t protest much he thought.

The tramline opened to the surface halfway up the mountain that sat upon the settlement. It was a short trip down the mountain onto the plain where the observation hut stood. This had been the original survey station for the settlement. It was converted to a recreational excursion point. Agnes and Gabe donned the environment suits reserved for them by her mother and entered the airlock. Once the pressure equalized, the outer door opened, and they stepped out onto the surface. Agnes took Gabe’s hand and bounced over the low gravity surface of the planetoid toward a distant horizon. “Hurry, we don’t want to miss planet-rise.”

After a twenty minute bounce, they crested a small hill, stopped and found a rock outcropping on which to rest. “We made it,” Agnes said with relief. From where they sat, they saw the mountains in clear relief, miles across the plains. On the airless planetoid, light and shadow played out on a razor’s edge. The distant sun cast a weak shadow of the mountains as long fingers scratching across the plain below them.

An aurora of light struck the tips of the mountains from the side. It cut its way across the valley, outshining the dim light from the sun, until finally the gas giant rolled from behind the mountain range to dominate the sky. As the minutes passed, Agnes heard Gabe catch his breath over their coms. “OK You were right. Best morning ever,” he said as the giant fully revealed itself and almost filled the sky from horizon to horizon.

“Yup. As promised, look upon this valley with wonder and awe,” Agnes pronounced. A full ten minutes passed unnoticed for the young couple. They sat drinking in the beauty and wonder of the universe the only way that young people can, in each other’s company.

Agnes broke the spell. “We have to get back or we’ll be late for breakfast.”

“Really, can’t we stay just a little while longer?” Gabe asked. “I mean, I can’t believe that we’re the only ones out here.”

“Planet-rise across this valley happens once every two months,” Agnes explained. And after some moments of quiet thought she added, “I guess that when you can see something so spectacular so often, you take it for granted. Most people don’t seem to see what’s right in front of them.” She snapped a picture of the valley. “Here, turn around,” she instructed Gabe and snapped a photo of them. “You’ll want a copy.”

“Yup, I sure will,” he responded. He took one last look at the valley, turned his suit back to face Agnes and smiled. They didn’t need words. He was looking upon Agnes with wonder and awe.

Agnes smiled back. She didn’t even have to say I told you so. She already knew she was that good.

Agnes skidded to a stop and waited. There was no sound of pursuit, but they hunted her. The only light in this hall came from the observation windows. Through them, she saw out the sheer walls of her mountain home to the valley below and the last rays of planet-set. The tips of the mountain range beyond were glowing in the last light of the planetoid day as if on fire. Unlike the thousands of times she had passed this observation window and ignored the grandeur of the landscape, Agnes noted the light was tinged a deep orange. She saw that the shadow was fuzzy. It should be sharp and clear. There was a haze. Remembering her time in the big cities of the Central Systems, she recognized the haze of an atmosphere. The orbit had shifted, and her home plunged into the gas giant’s atmosphere.

She heard them. They were coming after her from two different directions. She already bypassed the safety protocols of the lift, and the shaft was empty of any car. As the doors opened, she stepped in and turned back to the hall. The maintenance bots were scurrying past the debris and aiming for her. One had a pneumatic attachment on its articulating arm, and a nail flew past her, imbedding in the wall of the shaft behind her. She smiled as she fell away. She only had to survive the drop. In the lighter gravity, she fell slowly. If she timed it right, this would place her a few yards from her R and D lab in the depths of the settlement complex, right next to the manufacturing hub. It was also where the biggest source of the manufacturing bots would try to stop and kill her.

For most of the one hundred and thirty-five floors, she held her feet tight beneath her, creating the least amount of drag. At the 140th floor, she tipped forward, grabbed the sides of the oversized coveralls she stole and extended the fabric as far as she could stretch it, creating wings and drag. Facing the bottom this way, she slowed and spiraled toward the bottom. She hoped it would slow her down enough to break her fall and nothing else.

The lift passed from the upper levels of their cavern home past the open levels where light streamed onto the fields below to augment the lighting already in place. Agnes had just returned home after completing all her studies, and her father sent a message to report to the company right away. She’d thrown herself into school and interned briefly in the Central Systems at various engineering firms. She had to admit that she gained a lot from each, and often they gained a lot from her. It always surprised her how those old established companies stagnated their innovation to the point that improvement was staring them in the face. They couldn’t see it because they were stuck in their old paradigms.

The lift doors opened. She stood a few steps from the offices of research and development for Zephyr INC. Her father made her go through all the hoops of interviewing with HR and applying for this position even though it was an open secret that the job was created for her. Still, it felt good to have a job and to be home. Her brother was waiting at the door.

“This way. We’ve been waiting for you.” Jasper gestured her in and escorted her down a central aisle of cubicles where a few of the employees glanced up to see the new arrival. Jasper was in a grim mood. “Sorry to cut the greetings short. It is good to see you, sis.” He threw the comment over his shoulder as they passed into more private offices. “This is a new department of R and D. Dad didn’t think we’d need it so soon. But those idiots on the Fringe have gone and started Wars with each other again, and the Central Systems are sending in troops to ‘mediate’ the warring factions, again.”

“There is always tension out there, what’s changed?” Agnes asked.

“I’ll let Dad fill in the rest. Here we are.” They arrived at the last room on the hall. It was as much a monitoring room as a briefing room. There was tiered seating and workstations. A glass wall on the opposite side of the room was looking over a factory floor. It was empty and clean except for a fine layer of new construction dust settled over the support structures and floor. New machinery was still on pallets and wrapped in clear blue sheets of plastic waiting to be unwrapped and installed.

Caesar Zephyr broke away from several of his staff when he saw Agnes enter with her brother. “Hello, Monkey,” he whispered into her ear as he embraced her. “Sorry. This isn’t the homecoming you expected,” he said as he hugged her one more time and returned to business.

“We’re all here. Let’s begin.” The staff gathered on the lower tier of the room and assumed workstations around a central dais where Caesar took his place. Agnes was ushered to a station next to Jasper. “The Wars on the Fringe have intensified and are now disrupting manufacturing and transport of goods back to the Central Systems.” Caesar addressed the assembled staff. “We are competing for one of the military contracts available.”

“When did we become a military contractor?” Agnes asked her brother.

“When lives can be saved,” her brother whispered back and then shushed her.

Caesar glanced their direction and gave them both a small grin, having overheard the question from Agnes. “Cassius, please begin the presentation,” he ordered the Settlement’s Ai.

“Yes, Dr. Zephyr.” Over the course of the next hour, Agnes absorbed details about the loss of life on all sides of the skirmishes along the Fringe. The Central Systems were looking for a way to transport the wounded back for medical treatment. More combatants on both sides were dying from their wounds than on the battlefields. Additionally, if the military could salvage their soldiers, they could restore them with biomechanical replacements for damaged organs and limbs and return them to duty at a savings.

Agnes knew that hibernation units were used in early settlement ships to save on resources during the long trips by sleeper ships. The process was slow and carefully monitored as settlers were put into hibernation. When tried with wounded soldiers under battlefield conditions, they died from their wounds long before they completed the hibernation process. So she asked, “Have we tried a flash freezing method? It’s quick and there has been success with lab tests.”

Her father smiled. “Yes. We can put animals into hibernation almost instantly and reanimate them later with little apparent damage. However, when attempted with human test subjects, there has been damage to the memory centers of the brain. They must be retrained. Although the body still functions, the original personality is lost. And, unfortunately, to the military, retraining is cost prohibitive.”

“This might be a good time to take a break,” her father announced to the staff. They all stood and gathered around a refreshment dispenser. Agnes waited back until the crowd dispersed. Her brother joined her.

“You look deep in thought,” he said.

“Well, I hoped for some time to unpack and say hello to Mother and Annie. But, you know me. As soon as a puzzle is opened, I can’t wait to solve it.”

This played right into her brother’s hands. He segued into, “Let me introduce you to someone who will help us greatly.” They both grabbed a pastry and coffee. Jasper ushered her back to the workstations. “Let me introduce you to Cassius Brutus, our upgraded Settlement Ai. Cassius, this is my sister Agnes.”

A smooth calm voice came from the station speaker, and on the screen, a face appeared and animated with the voice. “Pleased to meet you, Mistress.” The image was excellently animated but just short of realistic. He appeared wearing a Roman toga and a laurel wreath upon his head.

“Pleased to meet you, Cassius,” Agnes replied. To her brother she said, “He’s very formal isn’t he? And very familiar.” She gave her brother a suspicious look.

“I admit it. He’s based on your last update of our home Ai, Marcus. There are a lot of innovations in him, and his subroutines run much more smoothly than Marcus.”

“You haven’t changed Marcus?” she asked with slight alarm.

“No, he functions too well, and the apartment wouldn’t be the same. We needed an Ai with a greater capacity for understanding human subtleties than Marcus could give us. Cassius is still far from what we need, but he is still moving in the right direction.”

“Master Jasper, remember I can hear everything you are saying. My subroutines are sensitive to critiques of my work.” Cassius’ silky voice ushered from the speaker on the console.

“Yes, I know. I wrote those emotion simulations myself. Perhaps you should shut them down while we are working this problem.”

“Would you shut down any part of your brain when working on a problem?” Cassius retorted.

“Superb reasoning, Cassius.” To his sister he said, “See what I mean? He can recognize human subtleties and interact with us to provide us better analysis and even make leaps in reasoning.”

“But he doesn’t really make intuitive leaps does he?” she asked.

“Mistress Agnes is correct. I process the variables so quickly that it only appears that I make cognitive jumps in logic and reasoning,” Cassius calmly explained.

“Sorry, Cassius. I didn’t mean any offense.”

“I am incapable of taking any offense, Mistress,” he again explained.

“That is the first time I’ve ever apologized to a program and been called on it,” Agnes exclaimed.

“You’ll get use to it,” Jasper promised.

Agnes strolled to the window looking over the new factory floor, musing about the possibilities. Her brother joined her to discuss any ideas she might have about the troop transport problem. As he prattled on about one idea for a medical troop transport to be stationed in orbit for the military, she watched as pallets of supplies were unloaded from the large cargo elevator in the center of the facility.

Agnes saw the bottom of the cargo elevator shaft, and she was falling fast. If she didn’t do something, she would be smashed against the bottom of the lift shaft. The calculations came fast and easy to her as she fell toward the bottom. As she passed the factory floor, she pulled out the fire suppressant canister, shoved the nozzle down her coveralls and pulled the trigger. Instantly, the foam filled her extra large coveralls, and she expanded into a ball. She had sealed her feet and hands so no foam was lost there. The only escape for the foam upon impact with the bottom of the shaft was out the neck where her head was. In the low gravity, this acted as thrust, but she couldn’t land on her head.

She did her best she to position herself to land on the inflated belly of her oversized coveralls, but she was off just a fraction. That plus or minus an acceptable margin for error always got you, she thought. Her left shoulder took the brunt of the impact. Grabbing onto a beam, she was able to let her feet bounce up when her belly flipped and hit the bottom of the shaft. The expulsion of foam thrust her gently back up the three floors she needed to get to her lab.

Getting out was more difficult because she lost the use of her left arm. She was trained to accept and work under pain as part of her Central Systems education. Part of her scholarships required she take the yearlong combat training. She never really thought she would use it like this. It was mostly for physical fitness. Citizens on many of the Central System worlds participated in mandatory military service as part of their citizenship contract. As a settler back for school, Agnes had seen no reason not to take the training as well.

After rolling onto the carpet of the research floor, she stood and sprinted to her lab. The foam left a trail on the carpeted floor behind her. Agnes’ DNA scan would give away her location, so she hotwired the door to open and remain identified as locked on the security boards. Once inside, she relaxed briefly. In her office, she broke open the med kit and gave herself a shot for the pain in her arm. She couldn’t fashion a sling because her next step was to shave. Donning a protective mask for her face, she stripped, stepped into the prep booth, and activated the foam spray that would dissolve all of her hair. Next she took a shower.

The results were encouraging. Take the biometric fusion circuits that Jasper developed for Cassius and build a better storage unit. The brain was, after all, an electrical chemical unit. She couldn’t wait to share the results with her father, and the best way was in person. After nine months of work, her team had something to show. They were finally beginning to realize she did have more to contribute than just being her father’s little girl. She was a talented engineer on her own.

The lift stopped on the lowest floor where her father’s office was located. The only things below this level were newly dug out warehouses. She didn’t even pause at the reception desk to announce herself. She bypassed this for most meetings with her father. On this occasion, in her excitement, it was no exception. She heard loud voices coming from behind closed doors as she rounded the corner to the office,. She froze in her tracks, not believing her father and brother could be so angry.

“Dad, you’re not listening. With a fully integrated system, these soldiers need never die.” Jasper yelled.

“Exactly! Because they would no longer be human,” Caesar Zephyr responded in kind. “Replace a limb or an organ and you restore their quality of life, maybe improve them. But when you go mucking around with the brain, what are we doing? Just building more computers and programing them with Ai’s.” He caught his breath and calmed down.

Jasper took advantage of the pause. “This is the best of both. The programing restructures the subject piggy backed on a virus. It rebuilds any damage and restructures it into a better soldier. They send us back cadavers, and we give them new soldiers, new life.”

“Son, don’t you see the ramifications? If we can program those poor young people, we take away free will. We take away what makes us human, and the grave potential for abuse is introduced. You will create a race of slaves to do the bidding of a… of a…” he searched for the right word, “a master race.” Caesar’s voice filled with horror at the thought.

Jasper’s voice reverberated through the closed door. “You are so closed to understanding. This is a better way. Look at the poverty that still persists throughout the Central Systems and in the Frontier. Every soul will finally find purpose and contribute to the common good.”

All this was frightening Agnes. She had to put a stop to it. She pushed open the door shouting, “Stop it both of you. We’re scientists not politicians. We have ethics to guide us not political philosophies.”

Both men were shamed into silence. Agnes caught her breath for a moment. Her father finally broke the silence. “Please, Jasper, Agnes, forgive my passion. Life has always been sacred. That’s why I went into medicine.” He sat down in his desk chair emotionally drained.

It was Jasper’s turn. He was still red faced and breathing heavily. “I’m not afraid of the debate when it could save lives, Dad. This isn’t over.” He didn’t storm out of the office so much as he surged out with the energy of a zealous devotee to his cause.

When calm settled once more, Caesar asked, “Monkey, you wanted to see me?”

“Yes, Father. I’ve got what I thought was good news, but after that, I’m not sure it’s good news anymore.” She shared the results of her team’s test on memory transfer and storage with her father.

He gave her a small smile. “This is good news.” When this didn’t cheer her up, he reminded her, “Progress takes different forms, and it is our human ethics that keep us on the right path, on your razor’s edge between what is best for the good of all civilization and preserves individual dignity and freedom or the alternative.” She gave him a questioning glance. “We must relearn from history harsh lessons about how humanity can be enslaved to the will of a few. We would stagnate, and be sacrificed in a holocaust of individual selfishness and greed,” he spoke softly with a sadness that was breaking her heart.

“You mean Jasper…” her question faded into unspoken fears.

“No, but our research can be use by some to gain those same means. The quick and easy answers, the fast results that Jasper is excited about may lead down dangerous paths for us.” He took her hand and looked into her eyes. It was the first time Agnes realized that her father was just a man, with worries and fears like any other person, not a god. It was at this moment she saw him, not from her child’s eyes, but as a colleague. He may even have more worries because he was responsible for so many people in his company, the settlement and even the galaxy. Agnes had to be honest with herself. Her father hadn’t recovered from Mother’s passing. He lost his better part.

Those eyes looked back at her in the mirror. They looked desperate and sad. She treated her abrasions and her shoulder was back in place and healing. It now only throbbed. And her hair, she really liked how it had finally grown back in after her last storage update. This thought brought a small smile to her lips as she stared at her bald pate again in the mirror. I might beat Jasper in the hundred meter crawl now, she thought. And that just brought her down again as she realized that she probably wouldn’t ever see any of her family again.

Was it her imagination or was the room shaking. It was real and too soon. But the toothbrush she kept in her lab vibrated off a shelf and crashed to the floor. Her home was being blown out of its orbit. When their star began to expand, the Astrologic research team gave the planetoid a twenty percent chance of survival. Evacuations started immediately. The tremor stopped. The end had begun, but there was still time to get everybody off, except her.

A few remained until the last ships were prepped, but they didn’t know she was here. The manifest recorded her leaving in the previous round of evacuations with her father and brother. Her father had put Annie on one of the earliest ships with most of his medical staff. But Agnes had been caught where she shouldn’t have been looking, and now there was no escape.

This prompted her to get her aching body moving. She found her workbench to prep the data transfer. From a nearby cabinet, she pulled out one of many identical storage devices. She placed it on her workbench, and plugged in several leads that led to a medical exam chair. Agnes then sat down and pulled several more leads from the chair and attached them to her chest and specific spots on her head. She forced herself to go slowly and be accurate with the placements. Otherwise, she would lose all the data she wanted to transfer, and she did not have time to try again.

“Marcus, please begin data transfer procedure from short term memory,” she said quietly, knowing that her Ai would hear her. Somehow, she had never trusted Cassius. She had installed a copy of Marcus in her lab.

“Confirmed,” was the equally quiet response that Marcus gave her from a speaker near her head on the chair. As the chair reclined and slide into the MRI, she was thankful that she had played with his programming as a girl. He understood some subtlety of human discourse, like the need to be quiet and calming.

She didn’t want to argue with Jasper, but he hadn’t been home for days. He wouldn’t answer any of the family’s calls either. So, she requested Marcus to interface with the settlement’s systems and track him down. Now she used her access code to open the door to his office lab.

“Jasper,” she called. “I know you are here. Please, let’s talk. Father and I are worried.”

“Go away, you shouldn’t be here,” came a tired voice from a far corner of the lab. Agnes followed the sound. She found Jasper slumped over a large lab workstation console. He was in sweat stained lab coveralls, and to her relief, she was sure she saw food and coffee stains on his chest. At least he was eating.

“You look awful,” she tried to joke. When this didn’t get a response, Agnes tried a different tack. She knew her brother, like the rest of the family, could get lost in a problem, but they rarely missed more than a day away from home. Sharing their work at the family table was one way they all had found to clear their heads and find new solutions to dead ends in their research. Both Jasper and Agnes had absorbed most of their advanced education through these discussions at the dinner table. But Jasper had changed as much as father since Mother’s death.

“So, tell me about your day…” She began much the same way their mother would begin discussions around the table.

This brought an unexpected laugh from her brother. “My day. My days have really sucked. Thank you very much for asking.” But then he turned and looked at Agnes for the first time. Now he saw her as his little sister, barely nineteen years old. “You have so much to learn.”

“Jasper, you’re creeping me out. Won’t you come home? At least to get cleaned up?” she asked.

Jasper addressed the surrounding air, “Brutus. Don’t you think I should? Appearances, you know.” He pleaded.

“Yes,” a quiet deep base voice responded.

Jasper stood patting the console as he did. “Let’s go. I’ll have to get back soon.” He had been sitting too long. He took hold of Agnes, and she had to help him across the lab.

That evening at dinner, Jasper had cleaned up, but remained mute as he ate. No one wanted to intrude into his wretched solitude. They were just happy he was home. The family felt incomplete with the loss of Mother, and another one of them was hurting, Jasper. Wrapped up in his own pain, Caesar did not know how to help his son. They hadn’t really spoken as father and son since their big argument months ago. Mother had always been the peacemaker. Her death left a void that neither crossed. They only shared the compulsory communication of employer and employee.

Agnes tried to fill her mother’s shoes and took the lead. “Jasper, I’m glad you’re home.” This only elicited a pause in Jasper’s slurping his soup and an apologetic look around the table at his family. Agnes pressed on hoping normalcy might relax the heavy mood of her family. “Did anything interesting happen at work today?”

After a pause to allow Jasper to start, Agnes began, “We finally licked the speed issue with the personality storage units. Now we can upgrade the medical caskets and begin shipping them to the frontlines where they are needed.”

“That’s wonderful,” her father beamed self-consciously.

“Yeah, Agnes.” Five-year-old Annie clapped her hands in pleasure as she often did when she heard good news about the family projects. She eat contentedly, oblivious to the mood of the room.

Uncharacteristically, her father mumbled, “Got to find a better name for those damn things than casket. Too much death.” Agnes looked at him with concern.

Jasper smiled into his soup and then lifted his head. “I’ve had a great success, too. But I don’t know how many will like it. I’ve finally been able to combine human brain cells with….” That was the beginning of the end.

The emergency claxon sounded. Everyone knew what the sound meant from regular drills. Shockingly, this was not a drill. All the apartment monitors activated as the family moved to the common room. There on the large screen, the Governor spoke. “This is not a drill. This is a Type One emergency. Evacuation procedures will commence immediately. Via drone report, our sun is expanding. This was triggered by an accident with our deep astrological research teams. We have roughly ninety-six hours to complete total evacuation. This will only allow a twenty-six hour margin before the outer crust reaches our orbit. Projections are that there is an eighty percent chance this planetoid will not survive the impact. Please, follow all Type One emergency protocols now.”

“I’ve got to get to Operations, they’ll need my help,” Caesar said already crossing the room to leave.

“I’ll go with you, Dad. My evacuation station is there with you,” Jasper said, following his father to the door. Caesar stopped to let his son catch up. At the door a moment passed between father and son when both men looked into each other’s eyes and found forgiveness in the face of bigger issues.

Agnes picked up Annie in a protective hug. Their father embraced them both. He held them both close for just a moment longer than a ‘goodbye’ needed. “The first transport out. You are on it,” he said.

“Yes,” she promised. But even though she would take Annie and put her on the transport, her heart remained here with the rest of her family until they were safe.

Agnes wasn’t safe. The settlement’s population was safely evacuated by now. Only Ai controlled bots remained to monitor all systems. They would continue any manufacturing processes and load vital personal items into automated ships until forced to stop.

She pulled off the last lead when a quiet buzz alerted her she might have been found out. Still naked, she checked the dedicated security monitors that kept her lab protected. “Mistress, there are several maintenance bots approaching. They signal a chemical leak is eminent, and that you must evacuate. As per your instructions, I am denying access until you indicate they may enter,” Marcus’ voice issued from the speaker at the security station.

“No access,” she whispered, almost afraid that even her voice behind several layers of metal walls would give away her location. She had to buy some time. She entered instructions at the security station to reroute several internal systems. Then she grabbed a tool kit and popped a panel next to the lab’s main hatch. She spliced in several lines of wiring and extended them to a generator.

“Marcus, you are to manage this power supply as long as you can. When any bot attempts access to this lab, send out a variable EMP to knock out those systems. I have set up shielding to protect the systems of the lab. You are to protect this lab at all cost. Acknowledge instructions,”

“Acknowledged,” Marcus responded.

“Good, start with these bots, please,” she commanded as she ran through her lab to an area where her prototypes were kept. There, she found and opened her casket. Desperate now, she had to warn the galaxy. She knew the truth about the Wars and how to stop them.

Agnes was due out on the next transport. Most of the settlement had been evacuated. Only key personnel remained to shut down delicate systems and batten down the hatches hoping, if the planetoid survived, there might be a home to which might return. That slim hope was based on the twenty percent chance that the gas giant they orbited with their twin moon might block the approaching apocalypse.

One of her last jobs as a department head in the family company was to confirm evacuation of the offices and labs of her section. She completed the labs and was checking her department head offices when she ran into her brother doing the same thing.

“All clear?” Jasper asked. Agnes found some hope because her brother looked more like his old self now that doom was descending on their home.

“Yes. I’ve just got my office to close down. How about you?”

“No one is left. You’d better get on your transport. I’ll take care of the last of it when I close mine,” he offered.

“OK Thanks.” She started to hug her brother when he put one hand on her shoulder and stretched out his other hand in a formal business shake. She ignored the strange gesture and hugged him anyway.

Jasper held on to her for the hug but again offered the handshake. This time, she took it out of reflex and astonishment. “Keep solving those puzzles, Monkey,” he said and then released her.

As Jasper walked away, Agnes clutched the piece of paper and data chip he secreted in her palm tightly. Somehow, she knew not to look at it or reveal that she had it. Her brother never called her ‘Monkey.’ That was only for her father. And he never solved the puzzles with her. Again, that was father.

There was only one place she could solve this mystery unobserved before she had to meet her transport. She went back to the apartment and the closet in her room where she long ago disabled any access from outside systems. A girl wanted her privacy.

Her casket cycled through its preparation sequence. The lid stood open waiting for her. More power surges ripped through the lights. It was one of the few external links that her lab had to the rest of the settlement and their only way to get to her. As a final shower of sparks rained down on her bare skin, Agnes heard banging coming from the main door to her lab. “Marcus, show me the exterior view of the hall, please.”

Without a word, Marcus brought up the view just outside her lab on an auxiliary monitor in the prototype room where her casket waited. She saw several incapacitated bots lying on the floor. The banging came as several smaller delivery bots from the Postal Service were lined up and rammed the door. As each came in range, Marcus sent out an EMP. They went slack, but not before each built up momentum and their inertia carried them into the door to batter it down.

The Postal bots gave her an idea. She only had time to climb into her casket and hastily give instructions. “Marcus, please set up a false signal and mask my presence.”

“Done, Mistress,” Marcus now appeared on the same auxiliary monitor in his full Roman armor, sword drawn and ready to defend her. She smiled at the protection subroutines she wrote when she was eight, asserting themselves now to protect her.

“Thank you. Now I must mail this casket. Please have it sent to the Postal Service,” here she paused. “Send it general postage and lose it.”

“Lose it, Mistress?”

“To protect me, it must be lost so that my attackers cannot find me. Can you do that?” Agnes asked, not sure that her beloved Ai had the creativity to make this happen.

“The Hide and Seek routine, Mistress?”

“Yes, play Hide and Seek. Hide me so I win the game.”

“And the duration of the game is to be what, Mistress?”

“Randomize the duration,” Agnes began as she snuggled down into her casket. “No, wait, make it no less than three years and randomize the duration above that.” She thought she could lose three years as long as Marcus got her aboard one of the outgoing mail barges that still waited to leave. “Now, please initiate the Big Sleep Program on this casket.”

“Closing casket and initializing hibernation mode. Casket to be mailed general postage to Agnes Zephyr care of the Postal Master General Office, Central Systems, Jupiter Station.”

As the frost built and drowsiness overcame Agnes, her eyes popped open wide as she realized she had forgotten it. The hibernation sequence could not be reversed, and she was already too far gone. So, her last complete thought as she closed her eyes again and fell into a sixty-three year sleep was her personality storage unit. It was still sitting on her workbench. She hadn’t installed it in the casket. She would awake with no memories.

In her closet, Agnes pulled out her childhood tablet. She quickly disconnected it from any outside systems. It only needed to read the file her brother had hidden in her hand. She plugged in the chip. Music played the children’s song Pop Goes The Weasel. Then the document file opened with her brother’s last confession typed out. She must get this information out to the galaxy. It had to be stopped.

Agnes ran from her room to the apartment’s main door. It was locked. Banging on the door hurt, but it made her feel a little better. That’s when she looked out the balcony and saw the lights begin to go out across the cavern valley. She might have a chance. Opening the balcony door, she saw her childhood toy still where it was always stored. She grabbed it and jumped over the protective railing out over the open cavern floor. And she fell.