‘Don’t they know seventy-five is the new forty in this genetic age of ours?’ Stuart pulled the plate with cake towards him. ‘Commie bastards. Don’t appreciate what they have, that’s their problem.’
Jenny agreed, but she couldn’t imagine Calypso Couriers recognising her efforts any time soon.
She watched Stuart as he polished off her dessert. His mood was off. She wanted to know why.
13
Galen Thompson turned away from the entrance to the eastern canteen. He wasn’t close enough to hear the argument between Stuart and Jenny, but it was enough for him to consider delving a little deeper into Captain Waterson’s background. Perhaps it wasn’t someone at the docking station the ESC were sending encrypted memos about. Maybe it was one of the pilots.
He started to walk away. His communication device rang.
‘Galen? It’s your father.’
‘Dad, I was just about to call you. Listen, I may have found something—’
‘You can tell me in person. I want you to come meet me and your mother in Sydney.’
‘When?’
‘Now.’
Galen’s stomach lurched; he didn’t relish a face-to-face with his parents. He could just about handle his father’s daily intrusion in his life. ‘Look, I can just tell you what I know now. I didn’t—’
‘Your mother wants to see you.’ His father sounded flustered. ‘Come to Sydney. Don’t delay. Please. It’s important.’
Galen disconnected the call and headed back to the observation deck to wait for Stuart to return.
Stuart walked into the office, looking like he was harbouring a secret. Maybe he was, or maybe he was keeping a secret for someone else.
‘Stuart, I need to ask a favour,’ said Galen, meeting him halfway.
‘What is it, lad? Don’t you have some reports to file?’
‘I do but my father just called and he sounded worried about my mother. He wants me to fly over to Sydney immediately.’
Stuart gave him his best unsettling stare. ‘What, now? You’re in the middle of a shift!’
‘I’m sorry Stuart. I wouldn’t normally ask but it sounded serious.’
Stuart stroked his chin and stared at the visualisation screen in front of him. ‘Fine. You have exactly two hours. Make it count.’
Half an hour later, Galen exited the Sydney docking station, carrying his overcoat over one arm. He searched for his parents and found them standing by the water’s edge.
‘Mom, Dad.’
Jack shook Galen’s hand while Penny stared out over the water.
‘You’re fifteen minutes late,’ said Penny ‘But you’re here now, I guess. Your father and I need to talk to you about something. It’s too sensitive to discuss over the communication device.’
‘Well can I at least take a breath before you start?’ He put his coat on, delaying for time.
The temperature was beginning to drop as the daylight slowly retreated to make way for evening. The night-time air had a different—and not so pleasant—edge to it.
His parents headed towards the area just beyond downtown Sydney known as The Rocks. Galen followed a short distance behind his father and mother who had linked arms.
‘Did you know they used to swim in the seas around here?’ said Jack. ‘Well, not here, exactly, but close by where the beaches are? Can you imagine what it would have been like to do that?’
Penny pulled away from Jack’s arm, but kept walking. ‘We have very little time. Let’s not waste it reminiscing about things we can’t change.’ Galen braced himself for an interrogation. When there were fewer people about, Penny spoke quietly. ‘What have you found out at the ESC? Have you managed to catch sight of the ESC memos I was talking about? They might look different, especially if they’ve been encrypted.’
‘I haven’t been able to look at too much. My overseer keeps a close eye on me. He doesn’t like me using the workstations when I’m not on duty.’
‘Sounds like he has something to hide,’ said Jack.
Galen was about to mention seeing Stuart and the captain’s heated discussion, but decided against it. He would look into Jenny Waterson’s background first. He didn’t want to accuse her of anything without having some proof. ‘I’ll keep an eye on him.’
‘You’ll need to do better than that, Galen,’ said Penny. ‘I found a micro file hidden at the ESC. I’ve looked at it and your father now knows what’s in it because I told him, but I haven’t been able to copy the contents. If encrypted messages are being passed between ESC and your docking station, I’m curious to know why.’
‘What file?’ said Galen, stopping.
‘Keep walking, Galen,’ said his father. ‘Remember, we’re just a normal family out for a stroll.’
Galen started walking again, beside them now. He shoved his hands deep into his pockets, searching for warmth. ‘If what you’re looking for is at ESC, what do you need me for?’
‘Because I suspect that they’ve been sending more than just memos to your station,’ said his mother. ‘Stuff about an investigation happening on Exilon 5? If the ESC wanted to hide something like hidden correspondence, they might try to send it to your central computer.’
‘But I told you, I can’t access encrypted ESC memos. And if I could, I wouldn’t be able to make sense of it without a decryption programme. What makes you think I have access to the central computer, anyway?’
Penny fidgeted with the buttons on her overcoat. ‘Look, just find out if there has been encrypted communication between ESC and the docking station. You can do that without accessing the central computer.’
Galen frowned at her. ‘With your clearance, you have better access to ESC memos than I do.’
‘I’ve tried, Galen, but I’m coming up empty-handed. I want to know if they’re rerouting the information elsewhere so I can’t find it.’
‘Mom, I want to find out what happened to Grandad as much as you do, but this is getting dangerous for me. Do you even understand that?’
‘This isn’t just about your grandfather, Galen.’ Penny turned to Jack. ‘I found these. They were with the micro file.’ She kept an easy pace as she removed a bundle of letters from her pocket and cradled them.
‘Where did you get those, Penny?’ said Jack.
‘They’re addressed to that investigator.’
‘What investigator?’ said Galen.
His father’s brow creased. ‘Bill Taggart? Who on earth is writing to him?’
‘His wife, I think.’
‘Who’s Bill Taggart?’ said Galen, but his parents ignored him.
Jack shook his head. ‘Did you read them? They’re private, Penny. You need to give them back to him.’ He paused before adding. ‘Wait. Why does the ESC have them in storage?’
‘Would someone like to fill me in?’ said Galen.
Penny ignored him. ‘His wife works, I mean worked, for the World Government. I can tell there’s serious stuff in these that she wanted him to know, but I can’t make sense of them because they’re written in code. Why go to the effort of writing them in the first place?’ She waved the bundle around in the air. ‘It has to be connected somehow. I wonder if the ESC discussed the contents and noted it somewhere.’
‘And you think they may have mentioned something in the ESC memos?’
‘It’s worth a shot.’
His father pushed her hand down, glancing around. ‘First thing you’re going to do is put those back where you found them. It’s bad enough you stole the micro file. We don’t need the government on our asses over these going missing. Where’s Bill Taggart now?’
‘On Exilon 5, investigating the Indigenes.’
‘Could someone please explain to me what’s going on?’ said Galen.
Spotting a bench nearby, Jack dragged Penny over to sit on it. ‘Give me a minute to speak with him.’
Penny nodded.
Jack led Galen away and told him what he knew about his own father’s disappearance, along with new
detail about Bill Taggart and the World Government’s investigation into a race called the Indigenes.
‘Your mother and I are close to something. We can’t backtrack now. Help us to determine what’s being sent to your docking station, and if it has anything to do with what your mother found at ESC. The stuff with Bill Taggart is new, but it may be connected to what happened to your grandfather. So you can see we have to at least try.’
‘And Paul?’
‘Your brother knows everything.’
Galen and Jack walked back to where they’d left Penny, only to find her helping some old woman with her mask.
‘Are you having problems?’ they heard her ask the woman.
‘Damn mask. Can’t seem to get it to fit today.’ The old woman wheezed. The poisonous air was seeping into her lungs, making it difficult for her to breathe.
‘Here, let me.’ Penny removed the old woman’s mask, then held it over her face again and waited for the gel to activate. ‘You need to hold the mask in place for ten seconds to give the gel time to form to the shape of your face. Only then will you get that tight seal you’re after.’ She waited until the structure softened, adhered, and then became rigid, before removing her hand from the old woman’s face. ‘There.’
The woman breathed in deeply. ‘Thank you so much.’ She shuffled on.
Penny walked along the water’s edge, more distracted than before. They followed her. ‘Thanks for coming, Galen,’ she said. ‘I know it was a risk.’ She kneeled close to the edge and dangled her hand over the toxic water.
‘Careful, love,’ said Jack.
Galen wondered what would happen if she plunged her hand into the water’s cool depths. Nothing good, surely. The water’s monochromatic appearance hid a toxic secret: only deadly bacteria lived there now. As if Penny had heard him, she withdrew her hand, picked up a stone and threw it at the water. It skipped once and then sank.
‘So what now?’ said Galen as they all stood together.
‘If the information on the micro file is true, I want to know who ESC has told,’ said Penny. ‘We have to get the truth out there somehow. The people of Earth need to know that Exilon 5 is one big lie.’
Jack grabbed hold of her hand. ‘I hope you’re not thinking of doing something on your own. I agreed to this as long as all of us were careful.’
Her expression hardened. ‘And I promise you I will be, but people have a right to know what’s going on.’
‘And they will. But we do it slowly, through back channels, with minimal risk. You understand? My father would not approve of our crusade in his name.’
Penny laughed and shook her head. ‘This has turned into something much bigger than your father’s death. I’m sorry to be so blunt, but it has. If I had known, if either of us had known, what the World Government was up to back then, we would have tried to do something about it. Don’t tell me you wouldn’t have tried to help. When I think about what they’ve done to those poor Indigenes, it only encourages me to do more.’
As Galen listened, he realised his father had only told him some things about the race on Exilon 5.
‘Please don’t do anything stupid,’ said Jack.
‘I won’t, but I can’t sit around waiting for those fools in the government to make amends, to right their wrongs. We need to do more to move things along.’ Penny’s tone changed. ‘There’s this girl at the ESC, Laura O’Halloran. They’re going to use her. But maybe I can get to her first.’
Jack grabbed her hand. ‘Sweetheart, listen to me, don’t do anything without speaking to me first. Do you hear me?’
Penny nodded, but her eyes were flat.
Jack drew in a deep breath and released it. ‘Look, how about we all go and grab a bite to eat? What do you say, Galen?’
Galen shook his head. ‘I think I’ve lost my appetite.’
14
That afternoon, Laura faced a pile of boring documentation. Eager to avoid a potential burnout, she paced herself. She had another thirteen hours left of her shift and the rate of document delivery about the people of Earth to her monitor didn’t look like it was slowing down.
Spread the work out, take regular breaks from the screen.
She obeyed the mantra religiously, even when the light-starved office brought on a bout of depression that couldn’t be fixed by a shot of vitamin D. Following the mantra had helped her through the darker moments.
While her father had suffered from regular depression, Laura’s own was triggered by seasonal changes. Since the season never changed, she was caught up in a perpetual loop. Most times the vitamin D shot worked and kept the darker thoughts at bay. While she had never seriously considered killing herself, she was familiar with the termination rooms the World Government had provided to deal with a population that lived longer. The oldest living human on record was one hundred and sixty; a vast increase since scientists had cracked the ‘age’ code.
With the law amended to legalise what was once a criminal practice, termination rooms could now be found everywhere. In the beginning, news reporters had seized the opportunity to create mass hysteria and quickly mounted a campaign against the rooms’ existence. But when the government announced to the public that the rooms were free to use, the people got behind them.
She remembered when her great-grandfather had used one. Once a sweet elderly man, he had turned bitter due to lifelong regrets about the things he had not done. He was frail and ready to die on his one hundred and fiftieth birthday. His identity chip had contained a dormant chemical and when he placed his thumb in a specially designed receptacle in Sydney’s termination room, he was injected with a second chemical that mixed with it to form a lethal toxin. His right hand, placed on a flat plate, was punctured with a thousand tiny needles coated in a mood-enhancing drug and hallucinogen. It felt no worse than pins and needles, he had said.
Only Laura and her mother Fionnuala had accompanied him that day. Her father hadn’t felt mentally strong enough to attend. While it wasn’t a bad way to end things, surrounded by loved ones, Laura wasn’t quite ready to check out of life just yet. Those had been happier times for her and Fionnuala, back when they used to talk. Her father’s unexpected death a few years later had turned her mother into a recluse.
Laura’s loneliness overwhelmed her at times. While she had friends at the Security Centre, she wasn’t close to any of them. She couldn’t talk to them about her strained relationship with her mother or how she blamed herself for her father’s death. She often wondered what Janine’s reaction would be if she told her: horror, disgust, pity?
Laura shook the negative thoughts from her mind and stood up from her workstation. She took a quick stroll along the centre aisle to stretch and relieve stiffness. She would have killed for an hour in the Energy Creation room on the second floor.
She touched her toes until the blood flowed to her cheeks. She felt her cheeks flush as if they’d been pinched by the biting winds that once dominated the shorelines of Dublin. She continued on, walking and stretching. Having completed a few rounds, she stopped at Janine’s workstation.
‘Having fun, are we?’ Janine wore a strange expression; something split between humour and jealousy.
‘I’m dead on my feet. If I don’t move, I won’t make it to the end of my shift.’
‘Well, stop torturing us with your boring exercise routine and just take another Actigen.’
‘Can’t. I’m at my limit of four this week. Plus, they aren’t working anymore.’
‘Look, I’ve got work to do and you’re disturbing me,’ said Janine.
‘And there it is,’ said Chris, with one eye on Laura.
‘What?’ said Janine, irritated.
‘The inner bitch.’
‘Rack off, Chris.’
‘I’ve made my point and you’ve just proven it. So what if she’s exercising? I for one am enjoying the distraction.’
‘You just want to get into her pants,’ said Janine.
‘So? What man wouldn’t?
’
Laura blushed. ‘Stop talking about me like I’m not here. And Chris, watch your mouth.’
‘Fine. Sit down then.’ Chris sounded offended.
‘I need to get over the hump first. I’ll feel better in a moment.’
‘You’re wasting your time, you know,’ said Chris. ‘You’ll only feel worse, especially with Actigen in your system.’
‘Exercise helps me in other ways.’ She wanted to explain about her Seasonal Affective Disorder, how distractions helped with the lack of control. ‘You wouldn’t understand.’
‘Besides there’s only one type of exercise I like to do,’ said Chris.
Janine pulled a face. ‘Oh, keep your thoughts to yourself, for once. Please.’
‘Chris,’ said Laura, keen to move the focus away from her. “Any word from your friend on the lottery yet?’
‘You’re not going to like it. Perth now, Melbourne next, then Europe.’
‘Shit.’ Laura stilled.
‘Why do you want to go so badly?’ Janine’s gaze narrowed.
‘I don’t,’ she said quickly. ‘I’m just interested, that’s all.’
‘Well, seems to me like it’s more than that. What does your family think about it?’
Laura’s pulse raced as she worried about them delving too far into areas that were off-limits. ‘My mother will probably end up coming with me.’
‘And leave all this behind?’ Janine swept her hand around the room. ‘You’ll never get another job as good as this on Exilon 5. You’ll probably have to work as a cleaner. Bet you wouldn’t like that so much. I hear the pay is shit.’
‘Janine, what the hell crawled up your butt today?’ said Chris.
‘Nothing. I’m just enquiring about Ms. O’Halloran’s eagerness to leave Earth, that’s all. She gets so excited every time the lottery sniffs near Haymarket.’
Laura had just about had her fill of Janine and her petty sniping. Beneath all the bravado, Janine was insecure and lacking in any personal ambition. Laura rubbed her tired eyes and began the short walk back to her desk.
‘Is that it?’ said Chris. ‘No more exercise for today?’
‘Bite me.’
‘Give me a reason.’
‘Would you two stop with the sick flirting already and let me tell you what I’ve heard,’ said Janine. Heads peeked up as everybody stopped to pay attention. Janine was a sure thing for the gossip and she flirted with every male in the building to get it. Her powers of persuasion had proven to be quite useful in the past. She usually heard news before the other floors. Janine enjoyed an audience and innocently twirled a few strands of her long brown hair between her fingers while pausing for effect. She took a deep breath.