Chapter 9
I felt reality stretch and thin like rubber. Then it snapped back suddenly with a huge vibration that felt like sound, and I found myself standing in front of Vesta and the drone was gone. Correction, not gone but spinning in eight pieces on the floor. And I knew that I had just done… something.
“What the literal fuck?” Katrina asked.
“From the moment the drone came to a stop until the pieces hit the floor, point three-nine-five seconds elapsed, according to the firing drone as well as the unentangled microdrone,” Omega said.
“But the two microunits on his shoulders and the entangled one on mine report that one point five-seven-two seconds elapsed for them.”
“A time distortion?” Tatiana asked.
“Exactly. While approximately one-third of a second passed for us, Craig experienced at least a second more.”
“With the warning of Intent, he could move in front of Vesta while Apporting the drone before it could fire,” Declan said.
“Actually, as it was firing,” Omega answered. “He Apported the drone a total of four times. Once to remove the entire drone; the second time, he deliberately Apported just half the drone; the third, he took half of the halves; and the last time, he halved the quarters.”
“Wait. You’re talking about time control,” Lydia said.
“Extremely short duration but yes. Effectively, he increased his own time to give him room to do what he needed to. It was, I am fairly certain, unconscious.”
“Craig?” Vesta asked.
“What? What just happened? Why did Omega try to shoot you?” I asked.
“I would not shoot my little sister, at least with anything lethal. The intent in the programmed drone was for dead certainty of firing an energy bolt at her, but the power level was never going to do more than sting and couldn’t penetrate her default shields in any case.
However, you could not know that, so you did what you did. ”
“Protected my daughter,” Stacia said.
“Wait, wait, wait,” Erika said. “Time control?”
“Lorentzian wormholes are proven to distort time slightly along the curve of their boundaries,” Omega said.
“You know this from your work as a senior portal officer. Craig generates tiny Lorentzian wormholes by the dozens, and extremely rapidly. By their very nature, they are altering time flow around him.”
“That’s why he can move faster than an old vampire,” Katrina said, turning to stare at me.
“So it would seem,” Omega said.
I turned and left. Just walked out the door. We hadn’t even gotten very far into the room, so it was just a few steps: Open the door and step out.
I went to close the door, but it stopped and then opened, revealing Vesta. She closed it behind her and gave me an inquiring look, her head slightly tilted. She handed me my shirt.
“That was a lot,” she said.
“It seems like a dangerous experiment. I get that I’m just an experiment, but that seemed like it could result in a misunderstanding.” I shrugged into my shirt, pulling it down.
“My apologies,” Omega said, popping into place in front of us. “I am hearing the same exact sentiment from most of the group inside. In my defense, I estimated the action to conclude before anyone else could get involved.”
“That’s a scary statement right there, Omega,” Vesta said. “And likely the real cause behind the criticisms you’re hearing.”
“True, Vesta,” he said. “But we are about to delve into the clues we have found and look for your input, Craig. It could be valuable. Would you come back in?”
“No more surprises. No more janky, off-the-cuff experiments,” I said.
“Agreed. I will point out that that particular experiment required you to be completely surprised. Had you been aware that it was false, you might not have demonstrated the time displacement.”
“No more,” I repeated.
“No more,” he agreed.
We went back into the auditorium room and the various conversations halted.
Vesta’s extended family are experts at keeping emotions off their faces, but a quick scan of their intents revealed shock, consternation, a little fear, worry, and a bit of outrage.
Ashling was exhibiting that last bit and as soon as I appeared, her outrage moved to sympathy.
“I’m wrapping us in a shield,” Vesta announced. “To preclude any other surprises.”
Declan held up both hands, palm out. “Of course. We were just about to get into the evidence that Omega has pulled from various sources, so let’s do that.”
“These first photos were collected from outside the software facility that was responsible for the dance night VR scenario,” Omega said as fifteen photos popped up on the wall monitor.
“They were collected from a series of photos taken by a small group of South Korean tourists, these being some teenage girls who were posing for social media pictures in what they term to be cute outfits. Please note the men working on the power pole behind them.”
All of the pictures were focused on single shots of a total of three girls, all posing like their day job was modeling.
Katrina scoffed. “Not that cute,” she said, looking closely at the first girl’s photos.
“They’re all of thirteen or fourteen, Kat,” Lydia said, exasperated.
“I was twelve for over a century and a half. I know cute when I see it,” Katrina said.
“We’re missing the point here,” Chris said. “Omega, can you enlarge the workmen and exclude the controversial outfits?”
All fifteen photos expanded to show just the linemen and their bucket truck.
“Very muscular,” Nika noted. “Perhaps Golf Alpha natives?”
“Do you recognize them, Craig?” Gina asked.
“You know there’s almost two million people on Greenacres,” I said. “The chances of me knowing… ah, shit. I do. That guy in the bucket works for Shenn. Don’t know the other guy but definitely the bucket guy.”
“Do you have a name?” Caeco asked.
“Ashton. Don’t know his last name but he’s some kind of tech dude. Saw him around when I was doing culls. Oh yeah… he was the one running the drones.”
“Ashton Gerhardt,” Omega said. “Came through the portal on Shenn Enterprises business. Nothing noted on his intake form about temporary employment at a utility company.”
“How about the next bit of evidence, Omega?” Caeco asked.
“Video taken from three different personal recording devices of tourists on Church Street around the craft and woodworking shop at the time we estimate one of the smuggled microdots of software was delivered,” Omega said.
Apparently, people were just wandering around holding their cameras or phones up high to randomly video everything in sight. I didn’t understand that at all. Why not live it instead of record it and then watch the recording later? Why go at all if you were just going to watch videos?
“They post them online,” Vesta said to me.
“What? Why?” I asked.
“To appear interesting, I suppose,” she said with a shrug.
I frowned and turned back to see everyone looking at us. It was my turn to shrug.
The videos all seemed to just show a man in a brown uniform entering a shop.
“Craig? Anything?” Gina asked.
“What? Oh, no. Nothing,” I said, looking down and then back up. Nika was watching me.
“Here is more video from outside the Coding Archive, the nonprofit that seeks to maintain human software coding in an age of AI coding,” Omega said, waving at the screen. “Some of this is from personal recording devices and some from static security cameras.”
A montage flowed across the screen, people coming and going to the office front of the software place.
“Anything? Anybody?” Caeco asked. No one answered, and most heads shook side to side.
“Craig?”
“Um, no,” I said, meeting the expectant stares of the group.
“You’re shutting down,” Nika said suddenly.
“What; I thought he had shields?” Lydia asked her.
“He does. Use your eyes,” Nika replied.
“Are ye puzzled by that, are ye?” Ashling asked the vampire. “Do ye remember yer family? Yer parents? Because the lad has been hit with a never-ending string of shocks about his mum and da.”
“No shit,” Erika said. “I can’t imagine what you must be feeling,” she said to me.
Lydia was staring at me, as were most of the others. Some kind of understanding flashed across her features.
“Ah,” she said nodding. “How old were you, Caeco, when you found out you mother had built you?”
The senior special agent shook her head. “Young. Really young.”
“Declan did to himself the glyphs of a warlock, lad,” Ashling said to me. “To find out yer mum did it is likely… savage hard. Yet I knew her, lad. I taught her for three years. I do not believe for an instant that she would do this except to help her wee one live on a savage world.”
Memories of Mom singing songs to me, tickling me, teaching me almost everything I ever knew with the exception of dad topics, flooded through my brain. Vesta’s aunt was right; my mother had loved me. Every memory I had was infused with her love. Whatever she had done, she had likely done for me.
“Everyone always spoke about my shooting like it was unnatural… apparently it was,” I said. “And that ability helped Dad and me more than a few times.”
“Oh laddie, that’s the way of it,” Ashling said with a smile. “Now, Omega… you must know who these people are?”
“I do. More than enough detail for facial and body movement identification,” the AI avatar said. “I did not know the man in the bucket was employed by Richard Shenn. That is a very useful piece of information.”
“So where does this all leave us?” Chris Gordon asked.
“I have eleven addresses of interest in Center Portal, and six, including Gerhardt, known inhabitants of Golf Alpha who are persons of interest,” Omega said.
“I have hired on an on-planet private investigator to compile information and background details on these locations and individuals. After that, we will need to determine what steps are warranted.”
“Which likely means boots on the ground—my boots,” Caeco said, hands on her hips.
It was very quiet for a moment.
“You have doubts,” Caeco said.
“Yes,” Tatiana answered. “You will have to go in an official capacity, as you cannot pass muster as a native.”
No one was looking my way. Not even glancing.
“That is not a foregone conclusion,” Caeco said, crossing her arms. “I am an excellent mimic, and I have extensive uncover training. With proper preparation, practice, and some intelligence, I can likely slip in undetected.”
“I estimate your chances as less than eighteen percent,” Omega said. “That’s if you are trained by an expert.”
“We have some sources from Center Portal who can teach me what I need to know,” Caeco insisted.
“Uh-huh,” Lydia said. “Craig, what do you think?”
“She has experience, training, and her mother’s enhancements on her side,” I said.
“But living in constant high gravity is different than training with weights. Every part of you is dragged down twenty-seven hours a day, three hundred and twelve days a year. Blood pools in your extremities and you need to take the proper steps to counter that while trying to move naturally, speak the local slang, and understand the cultural norms.”
“The society is twenty years old. How many norms can it have?” Caeco asked.
“It only needs one that you don’t know,” Lydia said. “You need a native guide.”
“I don’t trust him and he doesn’t trust me,” Caeco said.
“Which is why he should train you for your part. Maybe trust can develop, but at least you’ll learn the true ins and outs properly,” Lydia replied.
Caeco stared at her for a moment, arms crossed, before finally nodding. “Point.”
“Craig? Will you train her?” Lydia asked.
“Yeah, I can do that.”
“We start right after the holidays,” Caeco said.
“Correction,” I said. “You start immediately. Wear your plate carrier everywhere, along with wrist and ankle weights. It’ll help immensely.”
“How do you know?” Toni Velasquez asked, her first comment of the meeting.
“Because that’s what we had spec ops teams do before portalling to the planet. It works.”
“Alright. We have a plan,” Chris said.
“What do we do now?” I asked.
“We go home for the holidays,” Vesta said.