The Softwire: Betrayal on Orbis 2 (2 page)

I hadn’t seen an R5 since we first arrived on Orbis 1. The robot was used to implant neural ports behind everyone’s left ear allowing them to link up with the central computer. Everyone but me, that is. I don’t need a neural port. I am a softwire — a leap in human evolution that allows me to interact with any computer using only my mind. Some of the other kids, especially Max, think my ability is really golden, but I find it just makes most Orbisians very nervous. The Citizens think their precious computer is some kind of all-knowing sentient being. It doesn’t make them very happy knowing I can get inside it whenever I want.

“Who’s that for?” Theodore asked.

“Who do you think, split-screen?” Switzer said, rolling his eyes and snickering with Dalton.

Ketheria stepped forward and said, “That’s for Nugget.”

“You are correct,” Theylor told her.

“But why didn’t Weegin take him to get this done earlier?” I asked.

“Yeah, it would have made life around here a lot easier,” another girl said, frowning.

Theylor looked up toward Weegin’s office. “It seems your Guarantor has been avoiding contact with us for quite some time.”

I looked up and saw a mound of unanswered messenger drones stacked outside Weegin’s office. They waited patiently to uplink the screen scrolls they carried with Weegin’s neural implant, if he ever let them.

“What are they for?” I asked.

“First we must deal with . . .” Theylor began.

“Nugget. His name is Nugget,” Ketheria reminded him.

Theylor looked at my sister and smiled. He placed his long, slender hand on her head without touching the strip of metal now physically attached to her skull. When Madame Lee exposed Ketheria’s telepathy, Keeper decree required that she be fixed with a prosthetic to diminish her abilities. Ketheria didn’t seem bothered by it, though, and her hair had grown back nicely, almost covering the sculpted metal that banded her head. My sister said she even liked the large amber crystal placed in the metal over her forehead. I asked her once if it hurt. She just shrugged and said, “Not anymore.”

“How are you, Ketheria?” Theylor asked.

“I’m fine.”

“I’m glad,” the Keeper replied. “I am also glad Nugget has a friend.”

“He’s different from his father, isn’t he? Weegin is a Choi, but Nugget is a Choisil,” she said.

“I am afraid you are right,” Theylor said. “It will be hard for Weegin to accept Nugget. But he has you now, Ketheria.”

“Yes, he does,” she replied.

I looked at Nugget, frozen in the middle of the sorting-bay floor, and I actually felt sorry for him, even though I didn’t know what Ketheria was talking about.

“Can you unfreeze him?” Ketheria asked.

“Certainly.”

Theylor raised his hand again, and the startled Nugget shot off across the bay.

“Enough with the reunion — let’s implant the little bugger!” Switzer cried, scanning the room for Nugget.

Switzer had hated the implanting procedure more than most, but he smiled and rubbed his hands together. I think he enjoyed watching people suffer.

“C’mon, freak,” Switzer growled, moving a crate to expose the small alien shaking behind a metal container.

“Stop it!” Ketheria yelled at him.

“Please, big thing. Please,” Nugget begged as Switzer closed in. Switzer reached out for the alien, but Ketheria stepped in front of him. Even though Ketheria was eight years old now, she was still only half the size of Switzer.

“Stop,” she said, holding up her hand.

“Get out of my way, freak,” he said while taking a cautious step backward. Switzer never seemed comfortable around Ketheria after we found out about her mind-reading abilities.

I moved to intervene, but Theylor stepped between them.

“That will be enough, children,” Theylor said. “Ketheria, could you bring Nugget to me, please?”

Ketheria knelt in front of Nugget and spoke softly to him. I could not hear what she was saying, but I knew he couldn’t understand her anyway. She tickled him under the chin some more and then stood up, taking his big hand. Ketheria led Nugget over to Theylor and the R5.

“Thank you,” Theylor said.

“Freak,” Switzer mumbled under his breath.

“Nugget will not be hurt. As you all remember, the procedure is painless and only takes a moment to perform,” Theylor said.

Theylor reached for Nugget’s hand, but he wasn’t having any of that, so Ketheria had to lead him over to the chairlike robot. She helped Nugget get comfortable and gently pressed his face down on the headrest.

“Please,” Nugget whimpered.

“It’s all right, Nugget,” she comforted him and caressed his dark-purplish wings.

The robot shifted, making adjustments for Nugget’s size. Nugget struggled to free himself, but the machine held him in place.

“Danger! Danger! Daaaaann . . . !”

Before Nugget could finish shouting, the R5 had implanted a small port at the back of Nugget’s left ear.

“What about the codec?” I asked. The central computer interprets all of the different alien languages for us using a translation codec that is uplinked through the neural port. It even connects with your optical nerves so you can read in any language.

“This R5 is now equipped with the translation codec. Everything is done at once,” Theylor said. “Nugget should now be able to understand everyone.”

The R5 released Nugget, and he scrambled to the other side of the sorting bay.

“Danger! Danger! Danger!” he screamed, and found a crate to hide behind.

“Hey! Freak! Can you understand what I’m saying to you?” Switzer shouted at Nugget.

Nugget cocked his head to the side and slipped out from behind the crate.

“Yes?” Nugget said, but it was more like a question. He squinted his eyes and waited for a reply from Switzer.

“Good. Now get out of here and leave us alone.” Switzer pointed to Weegin’s office. That was not a good idea. Nugget puffed out his chest and stomped his oversize feet toward Switzer.

“No. Work. Work! To work now, big thing!” Nugget cried, pointing at the conveyor belts and snapping his jaw. “Work!”

“Great,” Theodore said.

“Thanks, Theylor,” I said. “I guess.”

Nugget darted around the room corralling the other children and goading them toward the belts. Theylor smiled with his right head while his left head turned toward me. “Will you give this to your Guarantor, please, Johnny?”

“Sure, Theylor,” I said. “What is it?”

“You will know everything shortly,” Theylor responded. I hated it when he was so vague. It usually meant something was about to change. “And Johnny?” Theylor turned before he was out the door. “Enjoy Birth Day,” said both of Theylor’s heads, and then he was gone.

“It’s Birth Day?” Theodore asked.

“I guess it is. Happy fourteenth,” I said, just as surprised as the rest.

“What’s on the scroll?” Max asked me, motioning to the glowing screen scroll the Keeper left for Weegin.

Max and Theodore stood there staring at me.

“How would I know?” I asked them.

“Take a peek.” Max nudged me.

“Maybe he shouldn’t do that,” Theodore argued.

“Oh, give me that,” Max said. She grabbed the scroll and unraveled the organic screen from its metal container. She pulled the uplink from the scroll and inserted it into her neural implant. The glow from the metal casing flashed:
INVALID USER.

“Told you,” Theodore said.

“Here, you do it,” Max said, holding it out to me. “Do the
push
thing,” Max said. She knew very well I could sneak into hard drives, network arrays, light drives, anything to do with a computer.

I was about to push into the scroll when an alarm went off. I looked up and saw the field portals at the top of the outer metal dome sparkle to life and begin to fade away.
Could a cargo shipment really be arriving?
I wondered. Nothing had come through those portals in over a phase. I stood next to Theodore and watched as the robotic cranes warmed up by stretching out their huge tentacles. But before they were in position, a small metal crate was thrust through the opening. It dropped from the sky like a meteor, right toward my sister.

“Ketheria, watch out!” I yelled and leaped forward, catching my sister’s arm and yanking her aside.

“You all right?” Max questioned her.

Before she could answer, Weegin burst from his office and scurried down onto the sorting-bay floor.

“This has to be it. It has to be,” he said, rubbing his three-fingered hands together.

“What
has
to be it?” Switzer said, inspecting the metal projectile.

“Shut up. Get back, you imbecile. Move away from here,” Weegin scolded him.

Switzer simply stepped aside, scowling, but that didn’t stop me from creeping forward. What was in the crate? I wondered.

“I said get out of here!” Weegin snapped before I could get close. “All of you. I’m deducting one chit for not listening.” He used his small body to shield the contents of the crate. Nugget scrambled next to his father, but Weegin only pushed him aside.

“How can you deduct chits? You haven’t paid us for a whole phase,” Switzer protested.

Weegin ignored him and attached a thick data cable into his own neural port. He glanced over the ragged nubs on his shoulders to make sure none of us could see him tap an access code into the O-dat. Satisfied with Weegin’s entry, the crate hissed open and Weegin jammed both fists inside the container. Quickly, he pulled out an unmarked plastic box and clutched it to his chest. His eyes darted over each of us without looking at anyone in particular. Then he grinned and raced off toward the lift. If Weegin still had wings, I’m sure he would have flown.

“I wonder what was inside,” I said, walking over to the empty carcass Weegin had left behind.

“Nobody is to disturb me!” he shouted from the second floor as the latest messenger drone slammed into the closing office door.

“Never mind the crate, JT,” Max said. “What does this scroll say?”

“Oh,” I said, looking at the screen scroll still in my hands. I pushed into the scroll, and the message instantly appeared in my mind’s eye as if an O-dat was mounted inside my forehead. I read it aloud.

“Weegin has to give us back,” I said, glancing up at his office.

“He’s not going to like that. We’re the only valuable thing he has right now,” Max said.

“This is not good. I feel it,” Ketheria muttered.

I looked over at Theodore, who was rummaging through the discarded shipping crate. He froze, his eyes widening. “And I think it just got worse,” he added.

“A replicator?” Max said, glancing up from the instruction screen Theodore had found in the crate.

“Where did he get it?” Theodore asked.

“Probably in some corrupted corner of the universe,” I replied.

“What good is it going to do him?” he said.

“He’s going to try to replicate things: yornaling crystals, chit cards, ID scans — anything of value that he can fit into the machine. A gadget like that will get him into a pile of trouble by the Center for Forbidden Off-Ring Materials,” Max explained. “Citizens call the stuff F.O.R.M.”

“How do you know all this?” Theodore questioned her.

“It’s all in the central computer,” she replied. “There’s a kabillion things that are forbidden on Orbis, especially a replicator.”

Switzer snatched the electronic paper from Max’s hand.

“So what can it do?” Switzer asked, trying not to sound interested.

“It will make Weegin a very wealthy alien if he starts replicating crystals. That’s why the machines are forbidden,” Max told him, and snatched the instructions back. She wandered toward the rec room, poring over the replicator’s diagrams. Theodore and I followed.

Inside the rec room, Ketheria was sitting against the glass wall that led to the fake courtyard. Nugget sat next to her.

I moved to the far side of the room, away from anyone that could hear me. “Vairocina.” I whispered for my friend. She was the little girl I had found inside the central computer. No one on Orbis had believed me when I told them something was inside their computer, but together she and I saved Orbis from an attack by Madame Lee. Now she lives inside their enormous mainframe helping the Keepers protect the Rings of Orbis. My ability as a softwire lets me contact Vairocina by simply calling out her name. She usually responds in an instant if she is monitoring the same frequency the central computer uses to translate all the different alien languages.

“Yes, JT?” she said inside my head. I turned my back to the others.

“Is it hard to get a replicator on Orbis?”

“A replicator is a F.O.R.M. item,” she said. “Not only is it impossible; it is very illegal. Someone of your status should not be looking for such an item, JT. I am afraid the Keepers would not be very kind if they caught you with a F.O.R.M. item.”