Deviations and Divinations
While watching Elias' image on the Unabox, Sanchez realized what his
recently acquired gut feeling had been telling him. Onscreen, Elias’ likeness
said, “Sorry, Emilio. There's one
thing I realized in this whole mess:
You and I are not the same.
You are weak and you focus too much on what is now going through your
brain. I, on the other hand, don't
have time to think about this and that.
I want to get off this rock, go home, and screw something. I don't even care what it is but I'm
not going to be like Artemis and take my urges out on a Noman. I'm better than that. So, as I was saying, I've alerted
Captain Raemus to your situation and while he is correcting you - and your
blubbering - I will be on the fast track home. I would send you a message while I'm relaxing in the Recreational Grid...but you won't be
here to receive it. Thanks for
everything, Emilio.”
The Unabox blipped to a white line
running the diameter of the black screen. Elias had betrayed him! Sanchez’s
stomach twisted and heaved. He was alone in the quiet of this sector. The cold
stilerium halls reverberated with Elias’s last words and the whirring sound of
the Unabox as it ended its transmission. He sat there and stared into space,
listening to the echoes bounce off of him. They bounced through the hallways,
the heavily barred Arches, and all the way around the octagonal sector back to
Sanchez. He suddenly, and violently, jerked out of his daze. That son of a
bitch.
“That SON OF A BITCH!” cried Sanchez. He jumped up and looked around
frantically. Sanchez was losing control. He didn’t think that Elias would
betray him. To make matters worse, Elias’s image had seemed...different. It was
if he had somehow become twisted in the brain. Since when did he care about
going home? What the hell was
home, anyway?" Sanchez stared
into space for a few moments and became lost in his thoughts.
Sanchez had been staring into space
a lot during the past few weeks. Thinking was something that tantalized him. He
had a weird feeling in his gut that said something had happened here at Dome
Calimbus. He was beginning to second-guess himself - and that was a host of
problems weaving in and around each other.
“Well, my last gut feeling was
right,” he said to himself, casually.
“How the hell do I even know what it’s called?? He pulled at
his short hair in frustration.
"This is definitely not good. That much I know…besides the name of
this feeling!! What the hell is happening to me?!” he shouted. The shiny halls
spoke back to him in his own voice. They weren’t helping.
Emilio Sanchez’s brain snapped
back to his current situation. He looked both ways down the slick, silvery
halls and wondered what he was going to do. If someone was going to come,
they’d have to be an Elite Officer or Driver. Only the Officers and Drivers had
access to Driver sectors. The
Genetian Elite Officers, or simply Elites, were created to coordinate
operations on Driver Outposts, as well as ensure no genetic deviations went
unchecked. The Drivers, however,
ensured the health and maintenance of the Nomans - which were the Council's
property. Everything was the
Council's property.
Sanchez felt his utility belt for
his Driver Key. He plucked it from the cinch-latch and looked at it
closely. This key was similar to
Optikeys, only the security level was lower. Optikeys had been invented by the Council hundreds of years
ago. There were three Genetian Officers for each Noman Driver Outpost and each
owned an Elite Optikey that, when separated from the body’s electrical field,
ceased to operate. When it shut down, it also deactivated every other Optikey
on the Outpost, including the other two Officer keys. This acted as an alert
system of sorts. Optikeys were swung rapidly in circles shortly before use,
unlike typical keys. The centripetal force of the swinging generated power for
the energy cells inside.
Sanchez ran to the sector Arch,
using it without whirling it, and passed it under the scan device.
“Two seconds, Red.”
“Three seconds, Blue.”
“One second, Green.”
“Click-Clack. Open Sesame,” whispered Sanchez.
Sanchez had started humming this to
himself over the last two weeks but he didn’t know why. He was doing a lot of
things now that he had never done
before. He rubbed his temples, trying to massage away the migraine that
he knew was coming. They’d been happening a lot lately, and for some reason, he
was afraid to do anything about them. One thing he would do something about was
getting off of Dome Calimbus before Raemus came for him.
---
Gellar Elias chuckled to himself as he turned off the Unabox. Gellar’s
laugh was distinct. It was a disarmingly high-pitched chuckle, more like a
giggle. He looked at his reflection in the stilerium walls that formed his
floor of the sector. He leaned back in his chesk, closed his eyes, and inhaled
deeply.
It was too bad about Sanchez. They
had worked well together until they found that ancient cave on Titan. It
sparked something inside them - deep inside them. Soon after Emilio would stop
talking about his "feelings".
Elias soon realized that feelings weren’t supposed to happen. They were
a deviation in genetic programming and were meant to be corrected. But despite
behavioral protocol, he had had such a pleasant sensation from watching a
another person experience fear for the first time. It pleased him that he knew
a secret. He felt that this made him different and it emboldened him. He
remembered his initial reaction when Sanchez started to talk about how he felt
like he was changing. Elias was changing too, but wasn’t about to jeopardize
his life over it. He had decided that the only thing to do was to convince
Sanchez that he needed to be corrected. Sanchez had disagreed and tried to hide
it from Raemus and the other Officers, but he was unable to keep it together.
It was a good thing, though. Emilio Sanchez' emotional awakening had not only
assured Elias a perfect diversion but it would give him the chance to get to
Genetia unscathed. He would be the first Driver to deviate from genetic
programming and escape his servitude.
He liked that. It gave him a sense of individuality. Until recently,
Elias had never even thought about individuality.
Gellar Elias was an excellent specimen of the Genetian race. He was
tall, stout, intelligent, and good looking - just like the rest of the Genetians.
His hair was gray and closely cropped.
His eyes were parallelograms of gray and his face was sharp and angular.
His shoulders were wide and solid, which matched his other anatomically perfect
proportions. The only part of Elias that one might consider odd was his
skin. During his gestation period,
his skin had been created using multiple concentrations of melanin, so the
pigmentation of his skin was many different shades of flesh. It was as if he
was spotted with different colors of fleshtone acryl paint. However, when
compared to the average Driver, Elias was quite normal looking. This skin
mottling was the same in every Genetian and performed well as a means if visual
identification.
He reclined and planned his ride
home on a Windsol Airship. There
was no need for a disguise since no one on the ship would notice who he
was. It couldn't be any
easier! Elias remembered Raemus
commenting on the air chairs on the Windsol - that the seats would conform to one's
body, even the wrinkles in the clothing.
It was said to be like reclining on air. Though Drivers normally didn't ride on Windsols, none of the
crew would be paying attention to him.
They wouldn't be paying attention to anything but what they were supposed
to. “I am one lucky bastard,”
Elias sighed to himself. “I’ve managed to fool Kadrin, Anderson, Captain
Raemus, and I’ll slip by the Council on Genetia.” He grinned and thought about
how significant he would be in the annals of Genetian history. Unlike Emilio Sanchez - the weakling
deviation. For decades, The
Council of Genetia had required any deviation from genetic mapping to be
reported so that the defect could be corrected. Though this was a protocol not
meant for Drivers, Elias assumed that his initiative would grant him an
absolution from his recent genetic defect. Gellar chuckled his squeak-laugh again. Raemus would be notified through an
elaborate alert system that Elias had programmed and that would buy him some
time. He thought that Sanchez was
probably either panicking or lost in thought, like a fool. Now, Elias' mind was focused on
preparing for the future. First, he would have to get take a shuttle to Septin,
then board the next transport for Genetia - no - a Windsol. Either way, Gellar had to get off this
slave outpost.
Captain Raemus watched his Unabox
intently. Eavesdropping on Driver channels was a daily duty of the Elite
Officers in charge. Each Captain had to
ensure that his crew never mutated. Mutations happened every once in a while and, since the DNA
deliquescing 1200 years earlier, all Elites were ordered to monitor intranet
transmissions. Raemus still had a few OneGen Drivers on his Outpost, so he knew
that a breakdown was coming - it was only a matter of time. His theory and
opinion were shared by many of his brothers and, most especially, his
superiors.
Captain Anthony Raemus instructed
the Unabox to mute with a subtle hand gesture, like a twitch. He slumped back
in his chesk and trembled slightly. Fortunately, there were no cameras to
observe his inner conflict. He bit his lip and squeezed his eyes shut. He
swallowed and regained his composure. Then he straightened in his chesk, his
muscles became rigid. This was a bad week for Raemus. He would have to correct
two Drivers and then he has would have to report to The Council to accept
responsibility. And punishment.
“I don't need this shit.” He cursed. "There should be some kind of safety protocol in place
that will allow us to just terminate them chemically. Why go through all this trouble when we could inactivate
them and render them for fuel on the outpost?!” he ranted. He sat in his chesk
with his head in his hands and struggled to figure out how to fix this mess.
© Christopher Robert Dawson 2000-2013
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