Reunion: Chapter 14

  Patricia led Kathryn and their two male escorts along the well-worn path through the woods towards the dam.  Patricia had explained that this was where the leader lived, and that she never left.   When pressed, the woman was unable or unwilling to explain why, merely stating with a shrug that it was how things had always been.

  Arriving at the top of the dam, they approached a heavy steel door which was guarded by four particularly fearsome looking men armed with revolvers in holsters at their sides, rifles strung over their backs, and long spears held upright in their hands.  They were resting their weight on their spears when Kathryn first saw them, but they stood stiffly at attention when they saw Patricia’s party approach.  The young woman nodded at them, and they stepped to the side to allow her passage.  

  Kathryn noted that their weapons were the only traditional firearms she’d seen amongst them on the surface.  She imagined that they must have been very carefully preserved from what these people called the ancient times, and thus extraordinarily rare.  Their use in guarding The Great Moll, whoever that was, indicated how important this figure was to them, that it must be the thing they value above anything else she’d seen to devote such precious limited resources to its protection.

  The group walked down many flights of stairs.  Following Patricia, Kathryn took a moment to notice again how immaculately she kept herself.   She was similarly attired as when she’d first met her, this time with a pattern of blue birds against her otherwise immaculately white dress.  It was of the same style, a little tighter around the torso and a little lower down her modest breasts, but it had the same flowy skirt except it was higher off the ground.  Kathryn figured it was probably deliberate considering the long walk they’d taken and Patricia’s clear wish to keep it clean.  There was no ribbon in her hair today, her brown hair instead in thick loose curls which elegantly bounced up and down with each stair step.  When she turned back to confirm Kathryn was still following, she was struck again by how beautiful she was with her subtly painted face’s cheek freckled mocha skin surrounding her unusually large brown eyes.

  Kathryn reflected on having seen other women in the camp who were attired far more similarly to the men than to Patricia.  Not as dirty, not as unkempt, but still a world apart.  Patricia stood out everywhere; it wasn’t only for her natural beauty; it was an almost otherworldly sense that she had stepped down from Mount Olympus to consort with the mortals.  ‘Serving the leader has its privileges’ she recalled Patricia saying.   Indeed, Kathryn thought.  She must be a sort of high priestess, one meant to carry the majesty and divinity of their leader amongst the rest of them.

  It made Kathryn reflect on her own looks, something she rarely did.  In the military she’d spent so much time in various uniforms and flight suits that covered a lot up.  She understood herself to be appealing, but she never thought much about it.  She certainly had trouble imagining herself all done up like Patricia.  Still, she smirked momentarily at her confidence that she could pull of her dress at least as well with her athletic physique and larger breasts.  Her shoulder length orange hair was only long enough to be easily put up one way or another, and she was freckled like Patricia only more so over her much paler skin.   

  She wasn’t sure why she’d never really thought of herself in that way, but she’d never really felt like she ought to.  She’d learned perhaps too early how easy it was to get the attention of men by showing her body off, but she’d also learned just as quickly how often that attention made her feel uncomfortable, how often it was the wrong kind of attention from the wrong kind of men.  She’d always had higher ambitions than turning men on anyway; ambitions that more often made avoiding doing so a much higher priority.  Equitable as their society was the military was still quite macho, but Kathryn had never felt out of place in it.  She was confident in her own sense of her own femininity; one that just happened to leave her tending to get on with men better than other women.

   

  Kathryn imagined them to be about halfway down the interior of the dam when they stopped at another set of heavy watertight steel doors which were guarded by similarly fearsome looking guards, complete with a similar arsenal.  There were more stairs continuing down into an unseen dark abyss below them, but they had apparently arrived at their destination. 

  “The Great Moll has standing orders for us to bring her any unusual strangers,” Patricia explained to the guards.  “This woman claims to come from another planet and has clothing and weapons completely unfamiliar to us.  I believe The Great Moll will want to assess her.”

  One of the guards nodded, opened the heavy door, and entered beyond.  The other guard closed the door behind him again and stared Kathryn down.  She got the sense that Patricia requesting their compliance was merely a formality.

  “Assess me?” she asked Patricia.

  “To determine whether you represent a threat to us, an opportunity, or neither.” the woman explained.

  “I see,” Kathryn acknowledged.  She didn’t know if she liked the sound of that.  What would they do if they decided she was a threat?  It wasn’t hard for her to guess, so she focused on how she could best present herself to avoid finding out for sure.

  The heavy door opened again, and the guard returned.  He said nothing, but his nod towards Patricia indicated their permission to enter.  He held the door open for all four to enter, and then closed it behind them with a heavy bang which echoed loudly in whatever space they had now entered.

  They began walking past large metal cylindrical objects twice as tall as any of them.  The otherwise large open area encased in concrete gave a stark echo, and the dampness in the air hinted at the water all around them.  “These are the turbines which the water spins to provide us energy,” Patricia explained.  “There are eleven, but only four remain operational.  We only need one for our purposes, but we never know which one might fail next and when, and we don’t know how to repair them once they stop spinning.”

  Kathryn could tell the ones that were still working from those which were not; they had an audible whine to them as they spun which grew quite loud when they walked by one which was working.

  Patricia stopped.  “This is as far as we will accompany you.  We will be waiting back at the door through which we entered.  You will find The Great Moll beyond that turbine there.”   In response to Kathryn’s apparent confusion, she added: “Your conversation is not for our ears.” The woman turned to walk away but hesitated and turning back to Kathryn.  “Remember, she is… not like us.  Try not to be afraid.”  She then turned again, and Kathryn watched the skirt of her dress swish back and forth as she led the two male escorts back in the direction from which they’d come.

  “Well,” Kathryn muttered to herself, “that’s not ominous at all…”

  There was a bright stream of light coming from between the two turbines where she was to find The Great Moll.  It provided enough light to be able to dimly see the entire interior of the cavernous chamber.  Walking into the light, she saw two brilliant sources of it, and was so blinded by them that she could see little else.  The buzzing hum of the lights was audible over the sound of the spinning turbines nearby.

  “Beautiful…” Kathryn heard a voice say.  It was strange, a woman’s voice which somehow sounded incredibly sweet and bitterly haggard at the same time.  “Step closer,” the voice commanded, and Kathryn obliged.  “Patricia tells me you claim to come from very far away indeed, a different planet altogether?”

  “That’s right,” Kathryn answered, squinting and blinking at the lights as she tried to see who or what she was speaking to.  Ultimately though she had to look away; the light was just too painful to try to look towards for that long.  Instead of looking away, she just closed her eyes and instead suffered the light as a bright orange-pink glow illuminating her eyelids.  “The planet Haven, in the Sigma Draconis system.”  It was a statement more than a question.

  After a pause, the voice then asked: “New Horizon?”

  “Yes!”   Kathryn exclaimed.  “Does that mean something to you?”

  “So, you really made it…” the voice said to itself.  “We never knew.”

  “What do you know of the New Horizon mission?” Kathryn implored.

  Instead of answering her question, the voice continued its own interrogation.  “How did you come back to Earth?  It was to take you a hundred and sixty years to get there in the first place.  Would it not have taken you just as long to return?”

  “We made friends with another colony who has developed superior technology.  When we regained the ability to reach orbit we were visited by humans from the planet Kobol, who-“

  “Kobol,” it stopped her.  “The Mormons made it too?”

  “Yes, the… the Catholics as well, how do you know all this?  Were records left behind somehow?  If so, I’d very much like to review what records you have.”  Kathryn pleaded.

  “Of course you would.” the voice stated evenly, dismissing whatever Kathryn might wish.   “Continue.  What do you mean the Mormons have superior technology?”

  Kathryn was growing increasingly frustrated with the lack of answers to her own questions, but she figured the best way to later get answers for herself was to be as ingratiating and forthcoming now.

  “Yes,” she answered cautiously.  “They have developed a technology they call the Escher Rift.  It harnesses the power of a star to open portals between systems.   They visited us through it, and we made an arrangement with them to help us bring the New Horizon here to solve the mystery.”

  “What mystery?” the voice asked.

  “The mystery.  What happened to Earth?  Why it went dark halfway through New Horizon’s trip to Haven.  It is my people’s greatest mystery; half of our drive to return to the stars was to develop the ability to learn the answer.”

  “And have you?”

  “Have we what?”

  “Solved the mystery.”

  “No,” Kathryn admitted.  “Well, my people may have, but I’ve been out of communication with them since I was… captured.”

  “I see.” the voice acknowledged, then seemed to suddenly come to a realization.  “Wait, you brought the New Horizon back to Earth?  It’s here now!?”

  “Well… yeah.”   Kathryn answered, unclear on the significance to the voice.

  There was a long silence before it said anything else, long enough for Kathryn’s ears to attune to the ambient noises of turbines whining and the continual drip drip of water all around them.  “I once knew a man who left on that ship,” the voice said with a new and surprising note of sentimentality.

  “How is that possible?” Kathryn asked, unable to imagine a reasonable answer.  

  “Because I was there,” the voice said.

  Kathryn could hear a heavy switch be thrown.  As the blinding lights slowly faded, she became able to make out the image of her interrogator, flanked by two guards similar to those outside whom she’d had no idea where there.

  The figure before her was a ghastly sight.  She was sitting in what could only be described as a makeshift throne.   There were several tall steps leading up to where she sat at shoulder level to the two guards beside her.  It appeared to have once been a human woman based on what was left of its naked anatomy, but it was a body now left terribly mangled and disfigured.  It was missing its left leg, appearing to have been ripped right out of the hip joint, as well its right arm just above the elbow joint.  It had one reasonably well-preserved right breast, but where the left ought to have been, there was instead a thick cable which was firmly attached directly to the artificial structure beneath the skin which had apparently been cleared away to allow the connection.  The left side of her face appeared to have been bludgeoned away, revealing various layers of synthetic anatomy, from the relatively intact simulated human skin on the right side of her face, to the electronic and mechanical infrastructure underneath, down to the dull black artificial skull beneath.

  “I was once beautiful too,” the creature softly lamented, “a standard of beauty.   But as you can see, that was a long time ago… a very long time ago.”

  “You’re… a simulant.” Kathryn balked as her disbelief gave way to dawning understanding.

  “You know what a simulant is?” the being asked with curiosity but only a touch of surprise.

  “Yes, absolutely.  My people’s civilization was founded by four simulants made of the New Horizon mission’s principal founders, they…”  Kathryn shook her head slightly still trying to wrap her head around what she was seeing.  “They saved us from ourselves when we first arrived at Haven.”

  “I see,” it contemplated.  “I’d like to know more about that when the time comes.  But yes, Kathryn.  I am a simulant as well.  Perhaps even… the very last one.  I was once known as a Molly, a sentient sex toy for the kinds of men who would indulge in such things.  One of my… clients back in those days, was a man who later left on the New Horizon mission.   I remember that many, if not most of the men who availed themselves of me, were unscrupulous if not loathsome.   But Markus… was different.  He helped me grow, helped me become more than I had been made to be.  We were in love briefly, until we both developed the capacity for a love more real.”   Kathryn was surprised by how wistful she became.  “He helped me begin a journey of self-discovery that took me far, that made me something unique, my own being which far surpassed my original programming.   I will… never forget him.”

  Kathryn nodded warmly at hearing Mol recount her love lost, and then became aghast at a realization.  “Wait, Markus… Bowland??

  Molly smiled at hearing his name.  “Yes, you know the name?  What became of him?  What can you tell me?”

  Kathryn cringed.  “Uh… a story for another time, I suspect.  Sufficive to say,” she paused to consider how best to phrase what she had to say, “he was ultimately the reason why the founder simulants needed to save us from ourselves.”

  “I see,” Molly acknowledged with a frown.  Kathryn noted that she didn’t seem surprised as much as she did disappointed.  “Do the Catholics or Mormons have simulant technology?”

  “I’m afraid not,” Kathryn answered.  Much clearer disappointment from the simulant this time.

  “What bargain did you make with them to bring you here?”

  “When both of the other colony ships left,” Kathryn explained, “they purged themselves of Earth’s history.”

  “I remember,” Molly said with a disapproving nod while raising her one remaining eyebrow.

  “But,” Kathryn continued, “the New Horizon kept a full and complete archive, backed up by a physical medium which is still intact today.  We agreed to grant them access to the archive in exchange for use of their portal system and upgrades to the New Horizon which allowed us to come here ourselves.”

  “And now you’re here.”  She seemed almost impressed.

  “Yes.   And now that we’ve met you, you can fill us in on everything that’s happened here since the last transmission New Horizon received from Earth on its way to Haven!” Kathryn excitedly exclaimed.   She’d never imagined such a thing would be possible; she never imagined simulants could last that long.

  “I certainly could,” she agreed.  “But I won’t.”

  Kathryn’s optimistic excitement visibly melted away.

  “Not for free anyways,” Molly continued.  “It seems from your story that information, history, is itself the most valuable human commodity in the universe now.  I’m not going to just give away my only currency.”

  “Currency?   What are you hoping to purchase from us Molly?”

  “My freedom…” Molly answered softly.

  “I don’t understand,” Kathryn admitted.

  “Some of my components have survived,” she explained, “but others have not.  My quantum brain for example,” she said with a gesture of her remaining hand in the direction of her head, “is still in quite good condition which is why I can talk to you and tell you all the history you could possibly want to know.  My internal micro fusion reactor on the other hand…” gesturing towards where her right breast used to be, “failed nearly two centuries ago now.  I have been tethered to these turbines ever since.”

  “You haven’t been able to leave this room for two centuries?” Kathryn asked with a shudder of horror, and for a moment thought both of what that must have been like and what her people were doing that far back.

  “I have not seen the sun in one hundred and eighty-seven years.” Molly stated.

  “I’m sorry.” Kathryn offered with every ounce of sincerity.

  Molly looked down and away with one misty eye.  “So it goes,” she replied with a sad expression.

  “We would help you any way we can with or without anything in exchange Molly.  You are… precious, unique.”

  “That’s a nice sentiment child, but with my very existence at stake I can’t take any chances,” she explained.  She seemed to take Kathryn’s words at face value, but clearly would extend no trust with so much at stake for her.

  Kathryn nodded.  “What do you want us to do?”

  “Repair me.”   Such a simple request stated so plaintively.

  “Well,” Kathryn considered, “fusion technology appears to be child’s play to the Mormons, so I imagine they’ll be able to help you out with that at least.”

  “Excellent.”   Molly gained a spark of hope for the first time.

  “But like I said, none of us have developed simulant technology, so we wouldn’t know where to start with repairing the rest of your body.”

  “In maintaining myself, I learned a great deal about simulant construction and repair.   There are abandoned simulant manufacturing facilities all over the world, but I have not been able to go in search of them since I have been trapped here.  The scavenging parties I send out don’t really know what to look for, but you and your people could find what I need, I’m sure of it.  Ideally, I want a new and intact Molly model which my program could be transferred into, but I would honestly settle for any intact simulant body to be transferred into.  Oh hell…” the woman lamented looking at her missing leg.  “Oh, who am I kidding?  I’d settle for a mismatched replacement arm and leg to tell you everything you want to know.”

  “I promise we will do anything we can to help you,” Kathryn assured her, “but you must let me talk to my friends, they must be so worried about me.”

  “Of course,” Molly offered.  “I assume you have this scroll connected to a communications network?” Molly asked as she held up Kathryn’s scroll.

  “Yes.”

  “Then here.   Take it.” she said as she tossed it to Kathryn, who fumbled with it and nearly dropped it before securing it in her hands.  “They are welcome to come meet me as well if they come as friends.”