Upon Stilted Cities - The Battle for Langeles Read online

  “I’m not brooding.”

  The corners of Serah’s mouth slid upward. “Sure looks like it to me, and trust me, I know what it means to brood.”

  Mimi sighed. Then, something occurred to her. “Serah. Alexa was able to reach Runner 17 from over a hundred kilometers away, right?”

  “So she claims, but I don’t know if I believe it. That kind of range is far beyond anything anyone has ever done. I don’t think it’s possible.”

  Mimi smiled. An idea formed, now she just had to figure out how to convince the girl to do what she wanted. She didn’t think it would be too hard; the girl was pretty naive.

  “Mimi? What are you thinking? I know that smile.”

  “Huh? Oh, it’s nothing.” Mimi slipped back into her old habit; lying and deception were as comfortable to her as an old pair of boots. She wouldn’t have survived very long on the streets otherwise. “I was just thinking that if Miranda controls Saud, that maybe, just maybe, Alexa could disrupt her.”

  It was true that Mimi had been thinking about that the other day, but it wasn’t true she was thinking about that now. She could feel Serah push on her mind a little, probing to see if she was telling the truth, but Mimi could keep Serah out without too much trouble these days. Fatima and Noatla could still crack through once in a while, but Serah wasn’t so powerful in that regard.

  Mimi turned and took one last long look at the massive door and then turned back to Serah. “Alright, let’s see what Princess is made of.”

  Chapter 4

  The Gravity of the Situation

  Two bodies slammed into the ceiling with a thud. Around them, several metallic tools, old piping, and other odd objects crashed and skittered. Gravity took possession of all.

  “No, no no,” Rigel slapped Dennis’s wrist. They were both now laying on the ceiling 2 meters away from the gravitational generator. “Dear gods boy, how many times do I have to tell you to calibrate the velocimeter last? How in the world do you expect the gravitational generator to work if you calibrate the central axis before we program in the subroutines?”

  “I’m sorry Dr. Solidsworth... I... I... I... j.. j..just get over excited and I... I... can’t think clearly.”

  “Well, your over-excitement has created quite the predicament, hasn't it, boy? Somehow you reversed the flow of gravity."

  Rigel rolled over and sat up. His head pointed towards the generator, but it was far out of reach.

  "Heavens, how are we supposed to get down?”

  Dennis stood up and looked down toward the generator.

  “Well last time—”

  “Last time we were fortunate enough to have Major Daniels come into the lab and rescue us from being crushed in the gravity well you somehow created." Rigel's voice took on a semi-dreamlike tone. He sighed. "But since we are down in the sublevel, in the middle of nowhere, it is doubtful that anyone will stumble along and switch the machine off, isn’t it? Besides, look around you. It appears you created a rather large gravitational distortion this time instead of a directional one. Everything is on the ceiling down here. So even if someone came along they would also end up on the ceiling, wouldn’t they?”

  “Well... the battery?”

  Rigel palmed his face, gripped and messed his hair and sighed.

  “Yes, the battery will run out in 12 hours. But forgive me if I don’t feel like waiting that long.”

  "But Father, I mean Doctor, I—" Dennis’s words quavered.

  "Quiet Dennis, I have to think!"

  They had already installed four gravitational generators around the city. Rigel and Dennis had worked on two of them, and a small team of physics graduate students from the scholar school had installed two more. It was taking entire days to install a single generator, and each one needed alignment and calibration with the others. Often, Rigel had to return to each one and realign it with every new addition. The task was tedious and frustrating, and Dennis, ever the little monkey, kept throwing his wrenches in the gears.

  It wasn't Dennis's fault though; he was just accident-prone. Brilliant, yes, but a walking apolocane. Rigel had thought to keep him out of the installations, but it was Dennis's breakthrough that had made it all possible. Besides, one day soon, Rigel would be gone, and Dennis would have to take over, perhaps he could learn to be more cautious with time.

  Calling in numerous favors, Rigel had ended up with the material to construct each one of the seventeen required generators. The objects, about the size of a coffee table, needed hauling to specific points in the sublevel of the city, installed and calibrated. Thankfully, his connections in engineering had allowed him to have the generators taken to each location without too much trouble. He needed only to activate, align, and calibrate each one, a task that he and only one or two others could perform, one of which was on the other team. Though, it was up to Rigel to ensure the proper activation of each device.

  The initial power requirement was still a significant problem. They charged each generator, and each had a battery life of about twelve hours. Those twelve hours were enough to calibrate the system and create small gravitational fields in the immediate area, but linking them together and getting them to generate enough gravity to lift the entire city was a much larger issue. Without significant power, the generators could not work together to create a large self-sustaining field that would allow them to work permanently.

  He had almost considered building an atomic power source, but he felt that the Senate might be a little sore about the potential of radiation leaks; nuclear power did not have a very good reputation, after all, what with some of the meltdown zones in the Barrens after early migration.

  Human beings hadn't had much of a chance to decommission all of the nuclear reactors; the apolicanes and the wave of sandstorms had seen to that, especially on the Southeastern portion of the United States. There were even several areas that no city would come within a few hundred kilometers of because of the terrible radiation risk. Even shielded with the EnViro domes, which mostly protected from outside radiation, the migrating cities avoided those areas at all costs, although some of them had plenty of resources. Rigel wondered how long cities would hesitate once they knew resources were, in fact, running out.

  Sitting a few meters away from them on the ceiling, a wrench vibrated and shook furiously. It lifted, stopped, spun for a moment in the air, and then flung itself at Rigel’s forehead like an angry sea bass leaping out of the water. Rigel rolled and dodged it, but only just. He picked himself up off the ceiling and stood, with Dennis's help. They both now stood heads towards the ground with their feet planted on the ceiling.

  “You’re in luck, Dennis. It appears that the gravity field is unstable. That means the battery will run out quicker. If we are lucky, we should only be up here a few hours having objects occasionally hurl themselves at us. Excellent work, Dennis, you created the first gravity-based dodgeball court. Perhaps I shall give you a gold star.”

  Dennis frowned, “I’m sorry, Dr. Solidsworth. What's dodgeball?”

  Rigel shook his head and sighed. "Nevermind, my boy."

  He patted Dennis on the shoulder, a bit of a reach for him. No wonder the boy was so clumsy, he was so ridiculously tall.

  “All mistakes in the name of science, eh, my boy?” Rigel chuckled. "Remind me one of these days to tell you about some of the pranks Dr. Ramnachinin pulled on me when I was his student. The man drove me positively mad. He always insisted that I took things far too seriously. Imagine that, Dennis, me taking things seriously." This time, Rigel laughed out loud.

  He had to admit that it was hard not to laugh if you thought about the absurdity of the situation. Here they were, in the sublevels of a giant walking city, trapped on the ceiling. If Dr. Ramnachinin had ever suggested this as a possible future for Rigel, Rigel would have thought he was playing another trick on him.

  Dennis’s frown faded into a smile, the default position for his face. The boy was so maddeningly happy all the time. But it served.

  “The real trick will be in determining the precise time that the generator will deactivate so that when we fall, we...”

  At that moment the generator sputtered and stalled. Both men fell head first into the ground. Both men reached their hands out towards the ground and caught themselves, bruising only their pride instead of their bodies.

  “... don’t hit our heads,” finished Rigel from the ground.

  Rigel rolled onto his back and looked, to what was once again, up. Dennis followed suit.

  “Well, although I am glad to be down from there, it is troubling that the generator failed so quickly, isn’t it? Looks like we have another set of variables to work through, so the generator doesn’t overload.”

  “It didn’t fail, Dr. Solidsworth,”

  “Hmmm? What do you mean? Of course it failed, we are on the ground again, aren’t we?”

  “Well yes, but it didn’t fail. I told it to turn itself off.”

  “You what now?”

  “Well, after last time in the lab, I built in a neurological link into the generators in case I screwed up again.”

  Rigel’s mouth was a fish. His jaw, slack, bobbed up and down. He tried to come up with some words that would allow him to express both his utter disbelief and his pride, but he realized that the two concepts were attacking one another and he would ultimately have to choose one; he decided to give disbelief a go.

  “That’s impossible. I have tried to design a remote neuro-link for various technologies throughout the centuries, but the variables in human neurology have eluded me.” There was a tone of frustration and resentment in his voice that Rigel recognized at once. But Dennis didn't seem to notice. He always struggled with understanding emotional cues in language.

  “Well, the AI and I had a l
ong talk about it. The equations were pretty simple it was just a matter of—”

  “Boy... how is it that you... a walking apolicane spreading chaos and destruction wherever you land your feet... how is it that you can make me... considered to be one of the smartest, if not THE smartest human beings alive, feel so stupid sometimes?”

  “I’m sorry, Dr...”

  “Sorry? You're sorry?” He laughed. " Rigel's mouth creased and tilted upward into a strong smile.

  “My boy, my son, why on earth would you be sorry for a fantastically wonderful scientific breakthrough?” Rigel jumped around like a toddler on a trampoline. “Do you have any idea how important a remote neurological link could be for the city? How did you do it? Where is the transmitter?”

  Dennis, grinning now, pointed to the back of his neck, he lifted his shaggy black hair so that Rigel could see a small shiny object protruding just below the base of his skull where his neck began.

  “Gods, boy! What’s holding it on there? You didn’t surgically implant it on yourself, did you?”

  Dennis shook his head. “It uses the heat produced by my body to create a microgravitational field to hold it in place. It runs on many of the same principles as the gravity generators, but instead of working on the local area, I tuned it to my brainwaves. It was partly the AI’s suggestion.”

  Again, Rigel’s mouth dropped open.

  “I’m sorry Doctor, I should have told you, but I guess I forgot.”

  Waves of hugs and affection assaulted Dennis. Rigel reached up and grabbed Dennis’s shoulders and shook him. It was a violent shake, but Dennis's size muffled it.

  “Boy, do you realize how significant this single invention is? Do you know what this means for the future? I knew there was a reason that I took you under my wing. I mean, figuring out the math behind gravity generators is one thing, but you have taken what was impossible and made it possible. If there were still a Nobel Prize around, I would kill to make sure they gave it to you.”

  “What’s a Nobel prize?”

  “Never you mind. It was something long before migration. Let’s finish calibrating this generator quickly and then I want to get back to the lab so you can show me that neurolink and how it works. You must show me how you came up with the formulas. Perhaps we can even integrate these into the generators so we can calibrate them remotely, eh?”

  "I think it's possible, Da... I mean, Dr. Solidsworth."

  Rigel smiled. Let's get to it, then.

  2.

  "What do you mean, you're already finished?" asked Rigel.

  They stood in Rigel’s lab. Dennis had returned to his own space, but Louis Franklin and his assistants were waiting to speak with Dr. Solidsworth.

  "Well, once we understood the installation process, it went much more smoothly," The man's voice was reedy and thin.

  "Well, then. Excellent work, Dr. Franklin. We will have the remaining five generators prepped for installation in the next day or so."

  "We had better hurry. Professor, did you hear about Saud?"

  "I did, and I concur, we absolutely must finish before the firing starts. Perhaps we could use the generators to allow for an enhancement to the shields. If they have a twelve-hour battery, that should be more than enough to give the city a bit of an edge over Saud."

  "Why are you so certain that there will be hostilities?"

  "Because, Louis, I've seen it all before."

  “Now, off you go. Take these three generators down and install them. Dennis and I will finish the last one. We have a few things to work on here first.”

  Rigel walked back through the lab, through the cleanroom, and into Dennis’s space. It was, as usual, a mess of tools and components scattered around. It made Rigel sweat. He could never understand how such a messy workspace could ever allow Dennis to function. His workspace was occasionally messy, but at the end of each day and the beginning of each morning, he tidied it up.

  “Here you go, Dad, I mean, Doctor.”

  Dennis handed Rigel the tiny silver object. It was no bigger than a quarter. A few LEDs blinked in succession, and some of the circuits were exposed, but mostly it was a flawless design.

  “Dennis, this neurolink is an amazing piece of equipment. How does it require so little power?”

  Rigel was holding a small transmitter in between a pair of tweezers and up into the light. He turned it around several times, examining every tiny facet of the piece.

  “Well, Dr. Solidsworth, most of the power comes from the neurological transmission itself. It’s powered by you trying to transmit something.”

  Rigel put down the chip and turned to face Dennis.

  “What a brilliant idea Dennis! I think we should call Major Daniels down here right away. It’s one thing to have him Neurolink with the security chair through that god-awful spinal link, but to be able to physically move the city while prepping its defenses or a host of other functions remotely is a powerful tool.

  “Do you think Major Daniels will like it?” Dennis’s smile was spreading wide across his face.

  “I think he will love it. How many of these had you made so far?”

  Dennis seemed to consider, “Eight that I am sure will function. There are about a dozen more that might work if I spent a little more time on them.”

  “Well, let’s be sure to give one to Daniels and a few of his officers. I also want one installed in Runner 17.”

  “Runner 17?”

  “Yes, he has been injured. He is in the medical bay now, healing. It would be the perfect time to install it without his knowledge.”

  “But Dad, why him?”

  “That is a very long story my boy, but not one for today. He already has an uplink installed in addition to his discipline chip. If I gave you the schematics, do you think you could adapt your design to what’s already there?”

  “Yes, of course, but I don’t understand why.”

  Rigel considered for a moment. Should he tell Dennis? If so, how much. Rigel rubbed his chin. Perhaps a little of the truth now would suffice.

  “Dennis, 17 is... well... I...” Rigel was having a hard time saying the words out loud. Only Dr. Ramnachinin had known the whole truth of the matter. Dennis sat, patiently watching Rigel, eyes curious.

  “It was no accident that 17 was able to walk into Mex and deactivate their main shield. This is a bit of a secret, Dennis. No one else alive knows this. Can you keep this to yourself, my boy?”

  Dennis nodded. His face was blank.

  “You see, 17 is very special. He is so special that I implanted all of the information of all the cities on the chip that is in the back of his head.”

  “But why?”

  “That is also a very long story Dennis, one for another day when we have more time.”

  “But Dad, I mean... Dr. Solidsworth, he’s in the Runnercore, isn’t he? What if he was killed while he was out there?”

  “That is unlikely, though not entirely impossible. I have set up a contingency plan in the event that something happened to him.”

  “Why is it unlikely?”

  Rigel heard a noise, turned and saw two of his other lab assistants had entered the room.

  Rigel lowered his voice and leaned in towards Dennis. “Not now. I will tell you more later. All I can say is that 17 was amongst one of my greatest achievements.”

  Rigel raised his voice again to a normal level. “Now Dennis, is there anything else you have been working on that I should know about?”

  Dennis looked around and then nodded his head, hesitantly.

  “Well, out with it, boy. What other marvels have you brought to the world with that brilliant brain of yours?”

  Rigel was rubbing the top of Dennis’s head like there was a tiny Genie in it, ready to come out and grant his every scientific wish.

  Dennis pointed to a sizable lump covered by a white sheet in the corner. Dennis was unhappy about something, but Rigel couldn’t imagine what.

  “What’s wrong my boy?”

  “I wanted it to be a birthday present for you next month, but... I can’t finish it. I don’t know how.”

  “What?” he paused in thought, what had the boy done? Dennis had never given him a birthday present before, so what in Gaia could it possibly be? “A birthday present?”

  Dennis nodded, his frown deepening. “I’m sorry Dad, I can’t. All the math, it doesn’t seem to add up. I am missing something, some really important equation, so it won’t go.”