The Sowing (21 page)

F. 40
– Shooter determined likely participant in Outsider terrorist strike. All records on investigation will be copied to General Falke Aulion of Sector Defense Forces. SDF will now be taking over responsibilities for retaliation against Outsiders. Watchmen investigation closed.

Department closed investigation into Corine Orleán
… apparently without any given reason, and only two days after Eli requested a special meeting to tell them what he heard from the shooter. What led to that decision? Maybe they simply didn’t find any evidence to support his claim. I close my eyes and hope desperately that’s what happened. Other possibilities flood my mind—bribery, threats, blackmail, targeted against the Watchmen to keep them from continuing the investigation. When I open my eyes, Demeter has displayed a new message for me to read.

Demeter: Remember, you came to your mother’s computer for a reason.

Valerian: Yeah, because you told me to. What are you talking about?

Demeter: You’re not restricted to viewing the files in the OAC and Sector Informational Databases.

Valerian: Are you suggesting I browse through my mother’s personal files?

Demeter: There are only two mistakes one can make along the road to truth—not starting, and not going all the way.

Hesitantly, nauseated at the idea of this gross breach of privacy, I type in a search for Hawthorne under “Messages.” An old correspondence pops up from her courriel archives, and I open it and read the string of messages quickly. There are only five in the correspondence.

12 Fall, SA 102, 15h32

Madam Orleán,

I have a research matter of great import that I would like to discuss with you at your earliest availability. Through fortuitous circumstances, I have happened upon a remnant of the old world that could be incredibly beneficial to the OAC and could change the future of the Sector. I am very close to being able to completely unlock this information and would like to share it with you, so that we can discuss its great potential.

Respectfully yours,

Aran Hawthorne

Associate Professor, Biogenomics

Sector Research Institute

12 Fall, SA 102, 16h51

Aran,

What a pleasure to hear from you. It’s been too long since we discussed our research together. You have certainly piqued my curiosity as to the nature of this discovery, and I am particularly intrigued by how you came upon this apparently powerful old world technology.

I would be more than happy to meet with you as soon as possible. Would you be willing and able to meet next week, 18 Fall, at 9h00? You may visit me in my office, and please, bring whatever information with you that will help to explain your discovery.

Your friend,

Corine Orleán

Director, R&D

Okarian Agricultural Consortium

13 Fall, SA 102, 7h57

Madam Orleán,

It would be my honor to meet you then, and I will be sure to have prepared a comprehensive outline of the work I’ve done. I should hint, with a wink, that the information isn’t precisely a
technology
—in fact, it’s something that could be much more powerful. I hope that holds your interest!

Respectfully yours,

Aran Hawthorne

Associate Professor, Biogenomics

Sector Research Institute

18 Fall, SA 102, 18h28

Aran,

I have spent much of the day reflecting on the poor outcome of our meeting this morning. I wanted to send you a note of reconciliation. I am incredibly impressed by the research you and your assistant Elijah have been doing, and I am thrilled that you have chosen to include me in your considerations as we decide how to proceed with this information. That said, however, I regret that we do not agree on how the OAC and the Sector might best use this powerful tool. I would like to meet with you again at your earliest convenience, so that we might discuss more amicably how to proceed.

I also politely request, as your superior and supervisor, that you send me the DNA you have been attempting to decode, along with the information about the key you claim to have found.

Your friend,

Corine Orleán

Director, R&D

Okarian Agricultural Consortium

19 Fall, SA 102, 2h16

Madam Orleán,

You flatter me and underestimate me simultaneously. After our meeting today I am convinced that you have no interest in using this information for the good of the Sector. I, in turn, have no interest in providing you with the details of my research, and I certainly do not intend to provide you with the key to the encryption. I cannot allow this vital information to go to waste or worse, be destroyed, at your hands.

Regretfully,

Aran Hawthorne

Associate Professor, Biogenomics

Sector Research Institute

I have to bite back the urge to laugh bitterly at his sarcastic response. I can picture her cold anger as she read his last courriel: narrowed eyes, pursed lips, slight frown. Did her desire to possess this information drive her to murder? Was this why Hawthorne and seven innocent students died four days later?

I bury my head in my hands. In the blackness, I remind myself that it could be sheer coincidence. It is possible. It’s possible that an Outsider terrorist just happened to target Hawthorne and his classroom four days after he and my mother argued about—whatever this was. It could be nothing more than a coincidence. I can’t assign blame based on an email argument and one line—hearsay from Elijah and Remy, traitors to the Sector—from the mouth of a murderer. I have to keep looking.

I instruct the computer to do a system-wide search for Hawthorne, but not much else turns up. Only a few mentions of his public research projects, a bizarre black-and-white image file, and the obituary my mother wrote for him in which she called him a “martyr to the cause of Science.” I do the same search for “Elijah Tawfiq,” and this time two results come up: A correspondence between my mother and Evander Sun-Zi, within the last few months, and a map of the Okarian Sector and surrounding territory with a list of known sightings of Elijah. I recognize the map; it’s my own. I made it to use in my board presentation for the mission. My mother has added her own touches: highlights and numerical references that don’t mean anything to me. In the courriels with Evander, he asks my mother if she’s made any progress on the encryption—is he referring to the same project that Hawthorne mentioned? And, in her response, she asks for any new information on Eli’s last location. But why are they so interested in Elijah? And why is Evander involved? He doesn’t have anything to do with pursuit of the Resistance, or with military affairs.

The only possible reason is Hawthorne’s project. Is she tracking him so she can get more information? Is that why she was so eager to have me bring him in to the Capitol? Does this explain her disappointment when she heard that I returned, not with Elijah, but with Remy and Soren?

I do several searches to see if she’s tracking any other members of the Resistance. There are a few hits for Dr. James Rhinehouse, but a quick check reveals that those have to do with assigning people to fill in his place in the research department. All professional business. Nothing on anyone else other than routine notes about people who have disappeared. No vested interest in tracking their movements, as far as I can tell.

Valerian: I can’t leave without confirming or denying whether she was involved in Hawthorne’s death, but I don’t know where to look.

Demeter: Search her research files for the information she and Hawthorne discussed in their courriels and in the meeting that went awry.

She’s right. If my mother has a copy of whatever Hawthorne was working on, then she’s most likely complicit. She could only have obtained the information if she were willing to kill to get it. My face goes hot at the thought, and my breath comes up short. I pray that I won’t find it, but I have to look. I have to know.

A few quick searches for “DNA”, “old world,” and “technology” turn up hundreds of hits, but they all look like legitimate projects my mother is working on or supervising. I search again for “Elijah” and “Eli” and “Tawfiq” but nothing comes up. I search for keywords included her courriels with Hawthorne, such as “powerful tool” and “for the good of the Sector”, but those just direct me back to the correspondence. I run a search on Hawthorne again, but all it brings up is the obituary, the image file, and the courriels. I open the obituary and read it again. Nothing interesting—my mother singing Hawthorne’s praises as a scientist and saying how tragic it was that he was murdered by the Outsiders. I open up the image file. It looks like a sunflower, but it’s in black and white, and when I zoom in it appears to be made up entirely of dots. I try to zoom in further, but then, strangely, a passcode prompt appears.

Valerian: Can you hack it?

Demeter: The password is not contained online. I cannot access a passcode for this file.

That’s fascinating. I’ve never heard of that happening. I don’t even know how that technology would work. I type in a few quick ideas. “Sunflower,” “Hawthorne,” “Elijah,” “old world,” and “DNA” are all busts. I jot off a half dozen more, to no avail. I punch in my mother’s birthday, her wedding date, “Okaria”, “Resistance”, “Philip”. Nothing. In a fit of frustration I try my own name in about ten different incarnations—first, last, initials. I try my birthday. I want to punch the computer. I lean back in her chair, exhausted and irritable. I rub my eyes and stare at the sunflower image.

Then it hits me. What has she hid behind in this whole situation? What is her shield? I type in “Outsiders” and the passcode prompt disappears. My stomach does a flip. I attempt to zoom in further, and I realize that this time I can manipulate the image: It’s not 2D, it’s 3D. I can spin it and look at it from different angles. I select a spot and hone in on a line in the sunflower and notice that the dots aren’t disconnected from each other. They’re connected by a thin filament that weaves around the shape of the sunflower. I select one of the dots and a little symbol “AT” pops up next to the dot. My heart is pounding so hard I’m wonder if it will break through my ribcage. I force myself to breathe and I select a string of dots. “AT-GC-CG-AT-GC-TA-AT,” it reads, and the symbols appear on the side of the screen. I zoom out, struggling to control my breath, my sweating, and I see a message pop up on the corner of the screen from Demeter, but I ignore it. She whispers determinedly into my ear:

“Vale, you’re breathing too fast. You’re going to hyperventilate. You need to calm down.”

I try to relax, but I can’t stop twirling the sunflower. I zoom in on it and select a string of hundreds of dots, and the base pairs line up both on the image and in a dialogue box at the bottom of the glass panel. This must be what Hawthorne was working on. There’s no reason why she would hide this as an image file, encrypt it, and use the word “Outsiders” as her passphrase. Unless she wanted to be absolutely sure that no one but herself ever saw it.

Valerian: This is it.

Demeter: So it would appear.

17 - REMY

Fall 90, Sector Annum 105, 17h30
Gregorian Calendar: December 19

 The drugged haze eventually faded from my mind, and Soren was kind enough to inform me that I may have put our lives in far more danger than they already were. I remember the shifting, dancing shapes in front of me, the almost hallucinatory revelation that came from being able to see the shape so vividly in my mind. I remember watching, almost as though the transformation was beyond my control, the sunflower broaden, expand, shift into the lotus. And I remember coming down out of that euphoria to hear Soren calmly inform me that I’d probably destroyed everything.

Thanks, Soren.

He’s right, though. Now that my eyes are working again, I can see the cameras up in the corner of the room, recording everything we do or say. If we thought our project was a secret, it certainly isn’t anymore. And if Corine is after the key to the DNA, she’ll know we have it, too.

Fortunately—or unfortunately, depending on how I look at it—no one seems to have noticed. We’re still being ignored, driven to insanity by our hunger, thirst, real sleep deprivation and uncomfortable position. My sense of time has disappeared altogether, but even I can recognize that it’s been many hours since our encounter with Vale and the old man with the scars. I asked Soren why he was so afraid of the old man, but all he would tell me is that he’s a general in the Sector Defense Forces, and his name is Falke Aulion. I pressed him, but he wouldn’t say more in front of the cameras.

Since then, I’ve been drifting in and out of sleep, trying to dream that I do not in fact have to pee. Just when I’ve finally convinced myself that I don’t, the door opens, and at the prospect of getting let out, I suddenly have to pee so much worse. The stream of bright light hurts my eyes and my heart lurches. I try to focus. It’s not General Aulion or Vale; that fact alone sets my heartbeat at a steadier tempo. It’s just a guard, carrying what looks to be a tray heaped with food.

“Breakfast! Eat up, kiddos.” I scowl at him and can only imagine the look the kid’s getting from Soren. He kneels down and, with a smirk, places the food just out of reach. “The best and the brightest, huh. Maybe you can figure out how to eat with your feet.” Then he leaves.

The rage is hard to contain, and the hunger overwhelming.

“They’re goading us,” I say.

“Assholes.” Soren curses in agreement, but we can do nothing but wait and seethe. The smell wafts towards me, and after so long without food, my stomach is twisting into nauseated coils. I simultaneously want to vomit and devour the entire tray. I close my eyes and force myself to relax.