Chaos Theory (3 page)

Swiftly following the self-pity was relief he would never give
up, and wouldn’t turn from her because she was different. Her
father cared how she saw herself and worked tirelessly to
understand the issue. In the meantime, he pushed, and gave her the
strength to fight it. If he hadn’t shown such determination in her
childhood, Kali would be worse than she was, barely able to
function.

As she walked past, she acknowledged what he’d done by
touching his hand. He grabbed it, and brought it up to press a
comforting kiss on it.

Kali adored him.

With a wiggle of her fingers to summon Howl, she stepped out
the kitchen into the brightly lit passageway that ran the length of
their domicile. She passed more arches leading to the central room,
guest quarters, utility units, and bedrooms.

There were few doors in the Loklear house because of Kali’s
compulsive disorder. Whenever she had to open a door of any kind
she had to repeat the action before she was able to move on with
her life. Tragic. That was not the only tic Kali had. New ones
appeared and disappeared as she grew and developed, but the doors
were the most disruptive. It was controllable at home. Her parents
remodelled the house, and she was not constantly facing barriers to
enter rooms. Nevertheless, they wanted her to come to terms with
what affected her, and put everyday things behind cupboard doors,
like normal people. If she tried avoidance, her parents gently but
firmly pushed her in the right direction. Kali had been getting
around the discomfort by allowing Howl to grab most of stuff for
her. After being caught red handed using the FetchMe, they’d
berated her on becoming dependant on the borg, and watched her more
carefully.

As she walked the length of her home, Kali took in her lush
surroundings and acknowledged she was privileged. She had
phenomenal parents, and lived on Earth ContinentOne, the birthplace
of the Alliance where the mantra was OEOP; one earth one
people.

Treaty10 was passed in the late twentieth century.
Manufacturers were forced to limit the technological upgrades to
both people and land as long as it remained an economically viable
option. For people with less credit in the bank, limiting
themselves to old Earth technology simply wasn’t cost effective,
and households that fell in the LoEco sectors lived in high-rise
domiciles not detached habitats. If Kali remembered her history
correctly, two super powers had actually resisted the treaty when
first inaugurated. Pressure had been applied, and the detached
countries acquiesced, rejoining the rest of the world under the
Alliance. The land was divided into quadrants, and adhered to
Treaty10 barely a century after declaring independence. Despite the
political turnabout, the economy and standard of living
deteriorated exponentially. Those quadrants were now survival
colonies, living on the ragged edge of existence, barren. The land
had been stripped to make way for the machines. Once the machines
were destroyed there was nothing left. Most people emigrated. The
hardcore stayed. Because of its greenery, brick, and mortar
structures, clean streets, and low crime rate, Quadrant2 on Earth
had become the place to live for all HiCaste families with credit
to spare because it was on Earth ContinentOne. Despite the global
radioactive desolation caused by world war five, Earth remained the
most stable of the planets, and most able to support Human life.
Not that those who lived on the new planets humanity had colonized
had much of a choice. Space was limited on Earth. Unless you won
the Lotto, you had to fly to an out post and make the most of what
you’d been allotted. The alternate option was to move to the
OutRim, wastelands supported by synthesized oxygen and food, and
riddled with pockets of deadly radiation. There were SafeZones, but
if you lived in the OutRim on a permanent basis, it was a matter of
time before you suffered radiation poisoning. The solution? Get on
a shuttle and move off Home World. Politicians and celebrities
preferred Quadrant1, the bustling capital city of Earth. Kali’s
family unit preferred a domicile to a single floor dwelling, no
matter how luxurious the dwelling was. The second quadrant was
perfect. Her parents believed it was good enough for them to live
as their ancestors did, without machines supporting every facet of
their existence.

Safely cocooned within a family of wealth, and the highest of
HiEco class, Kali had everything, and was kept safely away from the
dregs of society.

She walked the hallway to Rickard’s study. Her hand brushed
the smooth white wall.

Her parents were the greatest in the universe.

3.

Hunger woke him. Blue’s eyes opened and he was awake. There
was no grogginess, no yawing, or procrastination.

He stared at the blank wall opposite and listened to the
monotonous humming of his home. Blue threw away the blanket and
rolled out of bed. He dropped to the floor into position for his
usual count of push-ups. Arms burning, he shifted to his back and
worked his abdominals, mind churning with his schedule of the
day.

Disconnected information fractured his concentration and he
fought to streamline his thoughts into clean lines.

His door beeped and opened with a soft mechanical
whoosh.

Bare feet slapped the cold floor, and a shadow blocked the
fluorescent light beaming in from the corridor. “Sunshine,
Blue.”

“
Caesar.”

“
Will you be seeing her today?”

Blue finished his reps and stood to stretch. Touching his
toes, he enjoyed the rush of blood to his head and locked his
wrists around his calves. “It is likely.”

“
You remember what we discussed.”

“
Yes.”

“
I will see you later then.”

Hypatia roused from her slumber and crowed loudly. She flew
across the room to land on Caesar’s shoulder where she would likely
remain for the remainder of the day, as programmed.

The door slid closed.

Straightening, Blue wondered if confessing his obsession to
Caesar had been the right thing to do. They kept nothing from each
other, but maybe he had crossed a boundary by revealing his strange
feelings and the recent changes in his attitude toward
life.

Blue sat in front of his ComUni and swiped a finger across the
hovering symbol. The dark screen flickered on and the VirtuaPad
unfolded. He ran the programme that would keep his profile
anonymous, and typed words that had been swirling in his mind all
night.

His breathing hitched and he paused. Later. He would replenish
later.

4.

Kali knocked on the archway before popping her head around the
bend. “Sunshine?”

Ash blonde hair wild, Rikard Loklear sat curled over his
ComUni. The hovering screen was black and covered in colourful bits
of code. He sort of muttered his own greeting in reply, but did not
actually register she was there.

Kali walked behind him, nosey, but ready to back off if he
commanded it.

She watched with daughterly pride as her father’s long fingers
nimbly streaked across the electric blue keyboard being
holographically beamed in front of him on the desk. To an observer
greater than five meters away it would seem as if he tapped the
air.

“
Ten minutes and I’ll be right with you.” His hand shot out to
pat Howl twice on the head before his fingers went back to work on
the VirtuaPad. “Did you enjoy the breakfast dumplings I smelt your
father creating for you?”

“
I have yet to taste them. He wants you to come now not five
minutes from now.”

“
Standard. I’ll come ten minutes from now.”

She scrunched her face, knowing ten minutes and the sarcastic
message would make Creighton pissed.

They would fight, and she hated that.

Distracted by the code, Kali figured if she pointed out a
mistake, he’d be pulled from his focus. She bit her lip. As usual,
his work was near flawless. It needed to be when you were a highly
ranked security officer for the Alliance.

Kali had been taught to be as masterly as he was, maybe better
in the future.

“
Mistake,” she murmured and pointed it out to him two rows from
the top. “See here. This sequence won’t work in the mark-up
language you’re using. You probably need to redo this whole
section. You don’t have time to do that, and carrying on is a waste
of time until you’ve corrected the error.” She patted his
shoulders. “Come now. Please?”

Flying fingers froze, and Rikard blinked at what she pointed
to. There was silence before the tension and disbelief vanished.
His expression shifted to pride. “Thanks, princess.” He rubbed his
hands tiredly over his whiskered cheeks.

He turned to pierce Kali with sea blue eyes, a genetic trait
of the Loklears, and ran an appraising look at her thick pyjamas,
fighting a smile when he figured out the pattern emblazoned on the
fabric was fluffy bunnies on fire. “Kali, my dove, what happened to
that lovely sleepwear we bought you last weekend?”

She cringed. “Max spilled sauce on it. It stained.” She
grabbed his hand and pulled. “Come on, Papa wants to go. He has a
meeting, and he’s got the, “I’m stressed and going to get more
crows feet,” look on his face. You know how cranky he gets when you
make him late.” She looked at the ComUni. “Computer,
hibernate.”

The VirtuaPad folded until it was a symbol floating in front
of the blank ComUni screen.

Kali pulled again, and Rikard lifted out the high-backed
chair. His eyes twinkled when she tugged on his hand.

Rikard was a gentle giant whom loved Creighton and Kali, and
would do anything for them. Raised in the upper echelons of HiCaste
society, as the second born son in the Loklear clan it was expected
he lead a privileged and blessed life. His peers cringed at what he
had; thinking him better than what he “settled” for, but to Rikard,
life was bliss.

He was in love with a man who was handsome and intelligent,
tempered severity with kindness, and who loved Kali as much as he
did.

He had married that man, and given him his last name,
something that was not done in modern society, but something Rikard
had to do. It was insurance. If anything ever happened to him,
Creighton and Kali were lawfully able to demand the sanctuary his
family name provided.

His daughter was precious, rare, and every day he thanked the
stars she had been given to him.

Kali was part of the reason he worked hard. Creating a better
world had driven him as a youth, but the need to create one for his
child drove him as a man.

Society was a mess.

Genetic tampering had changed mankind into something other
than Human. Technological advances had seen more than two thirds of
the world living in a post apocalyptic squalor. It wasn’t even
contained to the quadrants that had come late to the
treaty.

The Continents off Home World were an abomination.

His family had a house, a garden, and real food rather than
cubicle rooms, and nutrient liquids. They knew what it was to sit
in the sun and breathe fresh oxygen rather than dying under toxic
smog and manufactured air. His child laughed and relaxed rather
than trained in weaponry to learn how to defend herself in the
harsh OutRim.

The LoEco quadrants sickened him. They gave him night terrors
he woke from drenched in sweat.

Treaty10 hadn’t been as successful as the ignorant reckoned it
to be. There were sectors on the continent that were fully
computerized. Cold, impersonal, barren areas of metal that
supported the basics of life but hindered its growth. The people
were weak, breeding into emotionless voids and genetic
misfits.

The very thing the treaty had been created to
avoid.

He was ashamed to say his family, his ancestors, were one of
the direct causes of this horror, but Rikard was determined to
become part of the solution.

“
Princess, next time, don’t read what is on my screen. That
habit must stop. It’s dangerous for you to know the things I work
on. Not again, do you understand?”

Kali’s grip on him tightened in fear at the warning in his
voice. She knew her father was a powerful man from an even greater
family – one she was not welcome in. He dealt with sensitive,
top-secret information, most of which never saw more than a few
pairs of eyes. Ever. It was not safe for her to know it. That it
was so classified worried her. He screamed at night. She knew there
were things he sometimes did that sickened him to the core. He
wanted her away from that. These unwholesome things he did aside
from his humanitarian work were because of the deal he had made
years ago to ensure her safety.

“
Sorry,” she muttered, concern shadowing her eyes and causing a
downward tilt to her lips.

She shrugged it off and beamed at him, tugging
again.

Love is why Rikard let Kali take him from his crucial work and
prod him towards the kitchen. The sooner he got to his other desk
the sooner he’d carry on.

“
Let’s take off,” she rushed, and released him to clap her
hands three times.

“
Cosmic. Let me grab my things–”