Sententia, August 1st, 2238
Using the back of my hand, I pushed aside the hair stuck to my forehead and sighed. Why had I given in to the bombardment of ads and billboards proclaiming the many benefits of nano-managed hair? After three months of the techno style, I wanted my old hair back. But nothing short of major surgery and a total blood cleansing would get the nanites out. Maybe.
I had the unfortunate luck of inheriting my mother’s tight curls and nearly unmanageable hair. I only said unfortunate because at the time I believed my inherited tresses a curse. Yeah, my hair looked sexy as hell in black ringlets, but it had been a bitch getting it to that state—and keeping it there.
The advertisements had beckoned with statements like: Soft as silk. Any color you desire on a whim. Straight or curly. According to the beauty technologists, the nanites did it all. So I bought their promises, having the micro cranial-chip and its nanite workers installed.
My natural hair didn’t cause me half the grief my enhanced tresses did. Now my hair changed colors with my moods, unintentional, totally destroying any poker face I’d like to put on and often at the most inopportune moments. It corkscrewed when I wanted it straight, and the bangs refused to do anything but go where I didn’t want them. I had given my hair a mind of its own, the worst thing I could do because when my Frankenhair had a bad day, it did it with flourish.
But, I had bigger issues to address. Kinky, orange bangs sticking to my forehead and hanging in my eyes were the runt in the litter of my problems.
With the panel open, I had a good view of the hive’s processor but no clue why it malfunctioned. Reaching in, I touched the motherboard. Code scrolled across the screen. It looked perfect, but I knew it lied. Even though it said optimal, I continued to tweak the programming, working out the kinks in the hive’s microprocessor, hoping this would be the last time.
Instinct told me otherwise.
The message scrolling across the hive’s screen read, all systems online, but in the same token, it failed to tell me what the bees were doing or where they’d gone. They sure weren’t pollinating. Not in this sector anyway.
I’d spent months bringing the hives back online in the harbor, and this one unit remained stubborn. If I didn’t get it fixed quickly, the problem would spread through the network again and I’d be back to where I had started.
The panel shut with a click, and I rechecked the readouts. All clear. I reached for the latch again, this feeling wriggling in the back of my brain, a small flash, an alert. No explanation for why. I just knew.
Even if computers couldn’t, it had somehow found a way to deceive me.
I tipped my chin to the sky. The sun had already dropped onto the horizon, quickly descending behind the volcano. Only a short amount of time remained before I had to be in quarters or face criminal charges. The curfew must never be broken if you didn’t have a permit to work at night. No exceptions, even for those who had the responsibility for bringing the life-saving technology back to functional.
I also didn’t want to risk being caught outside to learn firsthand what happened to those who didn’t follow the rules. I’d research more about the glitch, but not now, first thing in the morning when I had the luxury to spend the time digging.
Tomorrow, I had the freedom, given my contract closed at midnight, as the hives reported they were all systems go. It would give me time to look into the why, even if I wouldn’t be paid for it. Didn’t matter, I didn’t leave messes for others to clean up. I’d come back at dawn to dig deeper.
The crisis would be over soon. Things would go back to the way they were. But that wouldn’t calm the unease boiling over Sententia. If it happened once, what would stop it from happening again, and the same question reverberated through the population like a sickness.
As the energy storm settled down, the bees returned to normal. Well, mostly. But the crops would be weak this harvest rotation, and we could do nothing about it. Sententia would have a deficit in its food stores. With the bees back to work, our nation should be able to salvage some of the later fruiting crops to replace the ones stolen during the riots and hopefully get the colonies through the next rotation. It took time for seeds to produce food, and when not pollinated, the flowers dropped to the ground, failing to bear the life-saving fruit. We paid a price to cut ourselves off from the world, an existence which became more difficult as the years passed.
I glanced over at a soldier guarding a sector of the floating field now covering the area once called Pearl Harbor. The man-made island moved little when you walked on it, due to the anchors attaching it to the ocean floor every twenty feet, but it remained artificial, and, as almost everything on the islands, our lives depended on it. How ironic something so unnatural could seem so normal. It didn’t gather a second thought from most.
However, I wasn’t most.
I always thought the fields looked like giant jellyfish with their glossy domes and metal link tendrils below. As with a lot of our technology, the fields took their inspiration from nature. Like the bees or the hovering land/water train which moved like a centipede across, around, and between the islands, the fields were a marvel I could study for days, if allowed. Because when most saw an agricultural plot, I saw nuts and bolts, parts and pieces which didn’t have a soul but had been assigned one, molded like a square peg to fit into a round hole. How did the technology work? And more importantly, why, when the material used to build it conflicted with the natural world?
With a push of a button, the anchors would release the field and the weight of the heavy lines would act like a ballast to prevent it from tipping. The relocation of the agricultural mats protected the crops from those who would steal them as they began to set fruit. When the field required maintenance, it would be brought in close to shore and attached to the mainland, as they had with this plot. When in harvest, the crops were vulnerable and were moved out far enough from shore they couldn’t be raided. Soldiers guarded the fruiting fields; sometimes half a dozen were posted along the shore to protect the workers and crops while brought inland for harvest.
Speaking of which…I turned my head enough to look at the sole guardian of the barren field I worked on, doing my best not to appear as though I studied him.
The soldier nodded at me. With a shiver, I turned back to my work. It gave me little comfort knowing he patrolled this field. Many of the bee-keepers had been kidnapped lately. Others like me speculated the culprits hoped to get private hives up and running, but when body after body turned up, it became hard to believe they did it for that reason. If they wanted the hives to work, killing the people who worked on them conflicted with their goals.
I wondered if the soldier stood sentry over a fruitless field, because the real commodity in danger was the person programming the hives. This mat had nothing to offer anyone, yet he cast a shadow over me as I worked. Protection or not, the way he watched made me nervous. I scanned the field, looking for other soldiers posted as security, yet couldn’t spot another human close enough to call out to for help. No voices in the area, no movement near the other fields. I picked up the pace, not wanting to linger longer than necessary.
Five minutes later, I dropped the tools back into my bag and wiped the grease on my palms down the front of my shorts. I took a moment to look over to my companion again. Tall and built like a gladiator, his face remained hidden behind a tactical shield built into his helmet. I could only guess what he looked like. Not that I cared. I didn’t like the soldiers, nor could I even claim to be at a place in my life I felt the urge to seek out a relationship, even if soldiers and hive-keepers were considered approved matches.
I shook off the strand of thought, not sure why my mind had wandered to potential mates and companionship, something I had no desire to explore now or in the future. I didn’t like being told who I could see or that I had to acquire a stamp of approval on my sex life.
I wrinkled my nose. The laser barcodes went on to every vegetable and piece of fruit, a certification they were safe. The government regulated every piece of produce carefully, measuring safety, taste, color, size and nutritional content. From there, they decided if it would be sold whole, processed, dried, or for the items deemed unfit, the compost plant.
We, the citizens of the islands, were treated no different than our meals. It bothered me more than I cared to admit. I would not bow down to the system, become another cog in the machine, so I’d chosen to remain alone.
I knew the rules and wouldn’t break them. If one valued their life, they didn’t even think about it. I guess in that manner, I’d stepped into line.
Relationships were sanctioned by the government, or prohibited. The islands issued licenses for everything, from getting married, to having a child. If you had flawed genetics, you were not allowed to procreate or pursue an unsterilized relationship. If you were fertile, sex was forbidden unless you had been approved for a pairing.
When it came to the innocent infants, our government had some heart. An unlicensed child would take one of its parent’s life registrations, therefore condemning its mother or father from the time the child took its first breath. Accidental pregnancies did not happen and were punishable by death of the least valuable parent. The more you contributed to society, the safer your life.
The courts determined which parent would face execution. Their decision weighed your skill and genetics. Those who hadn’t undergone permanent sterilization didn’t have casual sex and avoided it, for fear of the executioner. Through this system, our government controlled our population. Most islanders accepted these laws, understanding we would run out of resources otherwise.
It was why the soldier made my skin crawl. Nobody watched anyone of the opposite sex so intensely. I glanced his way again and had to fight the urge to run. Sliding my hand to my chest, I rested my palm over my heart, willing the beat to slow and the fear to ease back to where it had come from. The soldier had done nothing to make me think my body might be the next one found floating in the harbor, and yet the thought lingered. And why should it not? It wasn’t like any of us could forget we weren’t the ones in control.
The military hung over the food plots as a threat, armed and able to kill with the pull of a trigger. The nagging question of where those who had resisted had gone hung silently in the minds of the people of Sententia.
If the solar storm had continued much longer, the people would have starved, or worse. We weren’t violent by nature, if anything, a bit complacent, but we would’ve killed each other to prevent our families from suffering through a famine. We were scared and hungry—trapped with nowhere else to go. Flocks of fowl, ducks, chickens, turkeys, and herds of beef, goats and swine had been slaughtered in the riots, the meat stolen away, leaving little in our food stores to maintain our carefully controlled population and fewer breeding stock to repopulate the flocks and herds.
It would take years to recover our animal populations, so the scientist tested the ocean and found it safe to consume the wild food there. Still, many refused to eat the fish for fear of radiation poisoning. Defects, cancers, we’d all seen the results of the fallout one hundred and fifty years before, and continued to see it. The sickness, once witnessed, couldn’t be forgotten.
Some asked, why not expand our horizons? Well, the Mainland had been turned into a wasteland, and on the islands, we had conveniences it would take centuries to bring online elsewhere. The mainland wasn’t fit for man or beast, or so we’d been told.
This made what I did all the more in demand. I had a job, earned lots of credit, but all I’d worked for wouldn’t be worth a damn if I were dead. What I did long ago stopped being about the money and became about survival. The more viable the hives, the better chance Sententia stood. God help us if another storm flared up.
Hummmm. One of the ento-robites buzzed around my head, the first I’d seen on this field in days. With the lack of blooms, I wasn’t surprised there weren’t more, but this one caught my attention for the very same reason. Curious. They usually didn’t approach anyone. I popped the panel back open and glanced down. Nothing looked off in the programming.
The drone landed on my shoulder. Heavier than it looked, it seemed more bird than bee perched there, watching me. Another odd action. They always avoided contact. I lifted my hand to brush it off. Zap. The jolt bit into my shoulder, leaving the painful sting of a burn behind. Startled, I backhanded it into a tree, where it sparked and popped, dropping to the ground. A little wisp of smoke floated up. The scent of burnt oil and fried circuits followed.
What? I grabbed a glove out of my bag and slipped it on, picking up the ento and stuffing it into my pack. Perhaps the bots had the defect and not the hives? I’d have to take a closer look at the ento later when I had time, if the bee’s internal workings hadn’t melted together into a big glob, which I suspected given the stench.
Whoooooooweeeewooo. The shrill wail of a warning alarm started, indicating I had one hour before curfew. I dropped my glove into my bag and wiped my forehead with the back of my hand. A glance at the sky told me I’d miscalculated the time I had left. Later than I’d thought. With fifty minutes between the field and my high-rise, I’d have to break a few traffic laws to get home before lockdown. Everyone waited until the last minute to head in, congesting the roads and playing chicken with the law. Not something I’d liked to do.
Unless you were authorized to be out at night, medical, emergency personnel, police or one of the handful of occupations which required night work, you’d better get your butt home before the final alarm sounded. The fines were huge. And then there were those who blatantly broke the regulation, who were never seen again after they were caught.
And that meant I needed to leave. Now.
I grabbed my gear bag, slid it over my arms and onto my back, and looked one last time at the guard before starting toward my glider. He lifted his hand to wave, but didn’t move to follow. It should have made me feel better, but it didn’t.
The sky had darkened, and a sense of foreboding sank onto the landscape. I shivered and rubbed my arms to chase away the phantom chill. It wasn’t the curfew prickling along my nerves, triggering the warnings flashing through my mind like a strobe. I’d long since acclimatized to the evening lockdown. Something else bothered me, something I couldn’t pin down. The sooner I got home, the better. Right now, everything looked and felt like a threat, as though eyes watched me from every angle.
I stepped onto a side runner on my glider, swinging my leg over the seat and pressing my palm onto the scanner. A soft, gel-like material scanned the chip in my hand and activated the vehicle’s processor. The engines started. Its soft whirring reminded me of a kitten purring—well, the digital ones a lot of people kept as pets. I’d yet to see a real cat. The only animals kept for reasons other than food on the islands were the dogs, and they served a purpose of searching for stolen contraband, illegal technologies, and lab created drugs banned from our country before the war. Definitely not pets.
A roll cage rose from the lower frame, encasing me. The glider lurched and lifted off the ground.
I slipped on my viz-gear. The clear half visor dropped over my eyes, and the holo visuals activated, offering me a multitude of navigational choices. Staring at the control indicator, I engaged the navigational systems. I gripped the handles, pressed my thumbs into the guidance controls on the ends. The thruster activated, and off we went. I eyed the main strip, and the glider turned into traffic, following the movement of my eyes. I popped my thumbs off, taking control again. Sometimes I enjoyed a mindless trip, sometimes I wanted to be in control.
“Music.”
“What would you like to listen to this afternoon?” the drone voice of my glider asked.
“Urban buzz.”
The nape of my neck twitched. I glanced back. Nothing appeared out of the usual. However, it seemed as though eyes were upon me, and I couldn’t shake the niggling in my mind. I usually chose silence to accompany me home, but today I yearned for a distraction, something to ease the tension winding up inside like a wire spring, tighter and tighter.
Dum, dum, dum. The speakers in my headgear kicked on. I jerked. “Volume down.” The beat softened, throbbing through my body, striking my core, all but blocking out the horns and yelling of people who’d long since lost their patience. I pulled my thumbs off the guidance control and tightened my grip on the handles, not wanting to relinquish further control.
A police escort home and hefty fine sat in the future of all the gridlocked motorists, but not mine. As I drifted between them and around the knot in traffic, I couldn’t help but smile, not regretting the trade-in of my more expensive sport utility for the one person ride six months before when the government announced the curfew.
I owned the glider for one purpose: to navigate through traffic bound hovers and get inside my apartment before the city locked down. The demand for one had grown so much that few were able to acquire them now. I was a have, the people crammed into their full-sized hovers, have nots. I weaved in and out of traffic, ignoring the rude gestures some of the have nots displayed for my benefit, eyeing instead the shifting halo-boards covering the surfaces of skyscrapers in Tetran, Sententia’s capital city.
Models smiled at me from the changing ads with perfect, glowing white teeth, flawless skin, and glossy hair, as perfect as the cyber-cosmetics could make them. They peddled everything from the latest styles of clothing, to plastech surgery which could create shifting hues in the client’s eyes, or erase age like magic. The nano-cosmetics industry had boomed on the islands.
I’d heard throughout history the skirts got shorter in times of crisis as people craved distractions from hardship and turmoil. Perhaps the technology driven makeovers were how Sententian citizens responded to the chaos brought on by the storms.
In twenty minutes, those billboards would contain warnings about breaking curfew.
For now, they seemed normal, almost excessive for what people were going through, reminding me of what a self-centered society we’d become. Even I had bought into it, much to my shame. Everywhere, color vibrated in brilliant shades of pulsing blues, electric pinks and neon greens.
“Propaganda.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t understand your music selection. Did you request propaganda?”
“No.” I sighed. Even my vehicle seemed to eavesdrop on my every thought. “Shut music down.” I didn’t like soldiers watching me in the field, the government in my home, and now my vehicle picking up on a mindless mumble. I’d never realized how monitored we really were. Did my vehicle pass on information to others, sharing bits of my private life I’d thought I’d kept to myself?
The beat ceased. Blessed silence followed. I exhaled. At last, alone. I settled into a mode, moving through the trip without calling the music up again, contemplating why the bee had stung me and how the hives managed to lie. I knew they were linked, but as I rolled what I knew around in my head, I ended up where I’d started—without answers.
Fifty minutes later, I looked to the left to turn the glider, pulling into a parking garage. I navigated into a space. “Disengage engine.” The glider sank onto the parking pad, and the motor died.
Swinging my leg over the seat, I dismounted and pulled my helmet off, shaking turquoise, butt-length hair loose before tossing the viz on my glider. I grabbed a strand and studied the silk like texture, letting it flip through my fingers. It actually looked toxic for once, and unlucky for me, nobody would see it. Figured.
“Lock down.” I stretched and twisted side to side. My shoulders ached from stooping over hives all day, and I only cared about going inside, changing into my comfy clothes, and throwing my feet up. At the moment, I couldn’t care less about the mystery of the malfunctioning hives, the rogue bee, or even where they’d send me next to work.
A solid dome extended over the vehicle, securing it for the night. I started for the lift which would take me to my apartment. I hummed the song I’d started to listen to on the ride home, while checking my wrist chronograph, knowing I’d made good time. Ten minutes to spare. I’d eat, toss on my pajamas, and maybe look into why the bee malfunctioned, or not. I should still have time to watch my favorite holo show before hitting my mattress.
And maybe a night’s sleep would be all I’d need to figure out the odd event I’d witnessed today. There had to be a simple answer for the bee’s behavior, even though my instincts screamed there had to be more to it than a programming glitch.
Fatigued and distracted by the entos’ bizarre behavior, I failed to notice I wasn’t alone until someone clamped a hand over my mouth.
“Don’t fight,” he said and dragged me toward the lift.
Right. Why did attackers always tell their victims not to fight? Possibly because docile females were easier to kill? Not this woman. I’d taken self-defense classes and had no intention of making it easy for him to kill me. I kicked back, driving my heel into his shin.
Oomph. The air whooshed out of his lungs as one of my elbows impacted with his gut. His grip loosened for a second but not enough to break free. I grabbed his elbow and tried to twist. He lifted me from my feet, where I flailed and kicked like an angry toddler.
“I told you not to fight. I’m not going to hurt you. I only want to talk, somewhere not in the open.”
Not going to happen. Rule number one: Don’t let the attacker take you someplace private. Nine out of ten times, the aggressor did it so he could kill without getting caught. I kicked again. Even our island paradise had a few sickos. Somehow I’d managed to find one.
“I have a tranq-gun. If I remove my hand and you scream, I’ll use it.”
And some rules were meant to be broken. Staying conscious would be key to getting out of this. I knew not to chance it. Better I go with him now and take the first opportunity presented to introduce his balls to his tonsils with my boot. My odds of escape improved if I remained awake and in control of my body. I gave a nod to let him know he could take his hand away.
“What’s your unit number?”
“I’m not letting you into my apartment.”
“We can’t stay out here, unless you want to get shot.” He grabbed my arm and escorted me toward the lift with the business end of the tranq pressed against my neck. “And that’s what our illustrious leaders do to bad little boys and girls who don’t follow the rules.”
Was it? Those soldiers carried blaster rifles for a reason and I wouldn’t be surprised if what he said was true. Sure, I had to be awake to escape, and what he’d said struck a nerve. I gave up the number for my flat. “B-four-two-three.”
“Do you live alone?”
“I have a big scary boyfriend with lots of weapons.”
“So you live alone. Let’s go.” He shoved my shoulder, forcing me into the lift. Grabbing my hand, he pressed my palm and chip against the reader. “Bravo four-two-three,” he said to the control panel. The door slid shut, and we began our ascent.
Damn, he knew I’d lied about the boyfriend. He hadn’t even second guessed. I studied him. He could be good at reading faces, or my hair might have flashed the tale-tell funky green it gave off when I lied. I lifted a strand. No color change, but it didn’t mean it hadn’t exposed my lie.
As if reading my thoughts, he looked up to where my apartment sat. “It doesn’t take a genius to know if you had a big scary boyfriend up there with an arsenal at his disposal, you wouldn’t warn me. Plus, if you had a sanctioned relationship, you’d have a barcode on your left wrist, or if you were sterilized on your right. Nice hair by the way.”
“Thanks,” I mumbled and frowned, glancing down at my bare wrists. Yeah, he had me there. Wrist seals—good for one conception—or none at all.
He let me go, and I spun around and stepped back to lean against the other side of the lift, attempting to get a better look at my attacker. It proved to be impossible with his face half covered by the thick padded-rubber mask soldiers all wore to create a light-proof seal when they pulled their helmets on. The viz controls functioned best in the dark, and many navigated the streets by the technology alone, not bothering to use their eyes when they had heat sensors and motion detection technology in the helmet. Seeing a soldier wearing the half padded mask was less surprising than if he didn’t wear one.
“Nice outfit,” I complimented him back. No sane person but a soldier would dare to wear what he had on, and this man was no soldier. I eyed his hand, not missing the fact he’d burnt his chip.
“I think so.”
I glared at my captor. “So, where’d you steal the uniform from?”
He smiled back. “It’s not stolen.”
“Right.” His black pants were bloused in equally black but very shiny boots. He wore a military issue, black tee without rank or insignia of any kind, the type worn by special ops. The outline of something not body armor underneath his stolen uniform couldn’t be hidden from anyone who really looked. An electrical insulating suit and a membership card in what group he chose to hang with.
An anarchist.
The radicals were the primary reason the city went into lockdown. They incited the riots. They’d created doubt in society about the technology we’d relied on for years. They had otherwise peaceful communities at each other’s throats and encouraged the people to revolt and migrate to the Mainland, to never be heard from again.
His agenda could be anything, but one thing would be a guarantee. It wouldn’t be good.
I slid my hands along the rail and gripped it tightly on both sides of my body until my fingers began to tingle. Nobody would miss me. I had no family here, and I worked an on call job. Since I’d finished out my contract for the next week, nobody would know I’d vanished for a good long while. I had at least a week before my boss would call me in to run the hives through another test. By then, I’d be dead or who knew where. Which made me question how long he’d been stalking me.
“I know you’re scared, but I assure you I’m not here to hurt you.”
“Yeah.” I bit my lip. “Of course not. Forced abduction is always a sign of good intention.” Freaks. Running around in rubber suits in tropical heat, believing the bees would attack. They were determined to shut down the power net, our lifeline. I knew there would be no reasoning with him. As if the malfunctioning hives didn’t cause enough problems, his people wanted to ensure the extinction of every man, woman, and child who lived on the islands through the starvation and the violence which would follow.
My heart pounded against my ribs, and each second felt like an hour ticking by in the silence of the lift. What did he intend to do? Rape and murder me? Could he be the one responsible for kidnapping the beekeepers? If so, the situation brought me full circle and back to option B—dead. Regardless of the disguise, something felt familiar about him. The more I engaged him, the better chance I’d have of figuring out why. “Come here and abduct women often?”
“Just you.”
“I feel special.” I took note of the soil on his boots. With the cities covered in pavement and moving sidewalks, and where most took the travel-pede in between the train stations, the only way he’d picked up the dirt on his foot gear had to be from tromping through a field or one of the floating food plots.
“You have no idea how special.”
“I have credit, lots of it.” I did. I’d banked it for months with no particular goal in mind. A rainy day fund, and today the forecast called for storms.
“I don’t want your money, sweetheart,” my abductor said.
“Don’t call me that.”
“Then tell me your name.”
“Fuck off.” I stared. He could have my credit, but I’d be damned if I gave him any more.
His brilliant blue eyes flashed with amusement from the holes in his mask. One corner of his mouth twitched. “Nice to meet you, Fuck Off. My name is Eli.”
“Well, Eli, if Eli really is your name, what do you want with me?”
“And that would be the billion credit question, wouldn’t it?”
“I think if you’re going to abduct me, the least you could do is answer.” I glared back, refusing to show him my fear. “Especially if you expect my cooperation.”
“Ah, so we’re negotiating now?”
“Are you a negotiating man?”
“No. I take what I want. Deal done.” He shrugged his shoulders.
Yeah, I’d called it. Nothing I said would make a difference. “And what is it you want?”
“You. I want you.”
I swallowed the knot lodged in my throat. “Why?”
“What if I told you there were real bees, not the flying hunks of metal you call bees, on the planet, thriving across the sea, and it’s safe to travel there, bring them back? We don’t have to rely any more on the little monsters we use now.”
“On the Mainland?” I choked back a laugh. Serious delusion there. “Now, there’s a fairytale I haven’t heard before. I’d say you’re full of shit. Nobody has ever come back from overseas to verify the validity of the myth. Besides, our bees work fine—well, they will work fine once we adjust the programming—and are superior to the real thing, nothing monstrous about them. We don’t need to replace them, merely fix them.”
“You really believe there isn’t a problem? No, you know there is, and no technology can ever replace nature without consequences. Is it also impossible the Teslan power grid is responsible for killing the honeybees in Sententia. And if we didn’t have it, we could live a better life without being dependent on someone else to make sure we had what we needed? What if I told you I know someone who’s traveled across the ocean to a place called the United Regions? There are people there, and most important, there are vast spaces of land which can be farmed and settled. Our every move doesn’t have to be approved. We could be free to do what we want, have marriages with anyone we want, and as many children as we desire to make.”
“I’ve heard your conspiracy theory too, and no, I think our scientists would have figured out long ago if we could settle there. The rest of the planet is dead. It has been for years.”
“No, not dead. As for our government lying to us, certain individuals stand to make billions off the power grid here in Sententia—and are. Of course they will lay the blame on something else. Do you realize how much credit they will lose when we shut the grid down and leave the islands?”
I shook my head. “The towers have been around since before the war. If they were the cause of the bees’ demise, we’d have done something long before. Besides, it’s impossible to shut the Net down. You have to get to the satellite in space to disconnect. You can take down the towers, but unless the uplink is cut, they can always be rebuilt. We don’t have the resources to build vessels to travel into space.”
“They did do something. They created the ento-robites. And no, it’s not impossible to shut the Net down and from right here on the islands. In Sententia, our resources are limited. Out there, in the rest of the world, they won’t be. We can change everything, break out of this prison. The Net isn’t our only issue though. Your mechanical bees have default codes, designed to turn them into a weapon. Did you know they have the ability to override your programming and take matters into their own wings and opt for self-preservation? The ento-robites are an interactive intelligence and learn from experience. Since we’ve been trying to shut the power grid down, they’ve gone on the defense. They need the power grid to continue, and they’re smart enough to know without it, they’re useless scrap. They’ve already begun the process of becoming independent of the hives and have started writing their own programming. I hate to tell you, but the storms are not the issue. There are no storms. It’s the bees. And thanks to the Net, they have unlimited resources when they finally go rogue.”
“You have no proof.”
“I saw one of the entos shock you, and you recognized the problem too, because you stuck it in your bag. This issue isn’t new. They’ve displayed this behavior since the hives were brought back online.”
Saw—as in, at the field? I reached up and rubbed my throat. My pulse throbbed under my fingertips. The soil on his feet now made sense. How long had I been watched? Had he been the one responsible for the missing beekeepers? The ones found dead later? Did he work alone or with other rebels?
Until I knew exactly what he wanted and who he worked for—if not alone, I’d remain silent about my conclusions. “And your point?”
“The bees are going to attack, and when they do, they’ll do it in swarms. The shock you felt will be thousands times the voltage, turning anything they touch to ash.”
“Unless I slip into the stylish rubber suit you wear.” Weirdo. The radicals ran around in their rubber in ninety-degree heat, proclaiming Sententia’s apocalypse sat on the horizon, instilling panic in the portion of the public who bought into their conspiracy theories. And he really believed I wanted to join his brand of craziness?
Not likely. The entos were not going to attack. The power grid did not cause the real bees’ demise, and we were alone on this planet. Any hivekeeper worth their salt would know if the bees could do what he’d claimed. I snorted and rolled my eyes. How could he seriously believe this?
“You’ll be glad you suited up in one of our stylish outfits. There’s nothing like being grounded and safe when you’re surrounded by a cloud of high-voltage.”
He’d said our. And now I knew. Not an independent anarchist. One I could handle—possibly escape in pretty quick order. More than one could prove to be a problem. “Where are the rest of your group?”
“They’re around.”
Okay, on to plan B. If I could figure out what it was.