Susan Bouchard opened her eyes, but saw little in the thick blackness that surrounded her. Splinters of blue light caught her eye. The underground Maglev train stations used a similar shade of blue to calm the crowds that gathered there. To her, the blue made the platforms darker and more claustrophobic than they were.
But this was no underground station on Earth: she could hear no whine of the train riding the magnetic tracks, or hum of the swollen crowd waiting for the train to arrive. What she could hear, when she turned her head, was an unfamiliar grinding noise far off in the distance.
The smell of stale body odour informed her that she was not alone. She breathed through her mouth and examined the space as far as she could see. Silhouettes of other people came into focus—several rows of them—suspended inside what looked to be a huge warehouse. Where was she? She listened, sensing no other movement around her.
Susan jerked in her seat, but her wrists, ankles and torso moved little underneath the metal restraints. A swell of panic caused her breath to hitch.
Was this the passenger ship to Exilon 5? She felt neither hungry nor thirsty. If this was stasis, she may have come out of it too soon. That would explain her confusion.
Where was Joel? She tried to speak, but her dry and scratchy voice barely registered above a whisper. She frowned, trying to remember back to her arrival on the passenger ship. Her memories stopped at the spacecraft taking her to the ship. She and Joel had sat together. A sense of unease had filled her during the flight. She should have listened to her inner voice.
Susan trawled through her last conscious moments for a clue—something said at the transfer facility or mentioned on board the spacecraft—about where they were going. Maybe the pilot had informed them of the change of plans mid-air.
She and Joel had sat by the window of the spacecraft—Joel hated travelling. The pilot then made a safety announcement. The spacecraft carrying blonde-haired-blue-eyed people had risen out of the Toronto docking station. Joel had closed his eyes to stave off his motion sickness. Then a strange odour had filled the craft—an underlying chemical stench beneath a sweet sanitised smell.
Now here she was, and with no memories after that moment. As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she finally saw what could be stasis pods. Except these open-style ones differed to the closed caskets on the promotional videos for the transfer programme. New edges appeared in the darkness, turning rough shapes into definitive ones.
‘Joel.’ Susan coughed. ‘Joel, are you awake?’
The final layout of the room came into view. She jerked back from the rows of unconscious people wearing identical jumpsuits that surrounded her. People were suspended in bucket seats above and below her, to the front and to either side; how many, she couldn’t tell. She glanced down at her own body, grateful she was not naked.
‘Joel, are you there?’ she whispered.
The blue light made sense to her now. Its purpose was to illuminate a number at the bottom of each bucket seat. A force field crackled below her feet and next to her hands. Its proximity made her skin tingle. She counted along her own row as far as she could see—at least forty people were suspended on either side of her. What she couldn’t see was how long each row was or how densely the rows were packed.
Susan studied the faces in front of her. Also restrained, they were posed most unnaturally, almost as if they were dead.
Oh God, I hope they aren’t dead.
New panic caught hold. Her neck tightened at her proximity to the “dead”. She wriggled against her restraints, but it did nothing to ease her sudden claustrophobia. Sucking in a sharp breath, she reminded herself that she was a lab technician. She was trained to deal with death. Chests rose and fell. Susan released her breath.
Four colour-coded tubes were inserted in each person’s upper left arm, including her own. If one delivered nutrients, it would explain why she wasn’t hungry or thirsty.
Why am I the only one awake?
Slight movement in front of her caught her attention. Her eyes cut to the face of the young man sat opposite her. She could have sworn his eyes had been open just a moment ago.
‘Joel?’ Her voice normalised.
A grunt sounded close by. She searched for the source of the noise. There was another grunt. She leaned forward.
‘Joel, is that you?’
‘Jesus, my head.’ Joel moved in his seat, located two up from her in the same row.
She smiled. ‘I’m so happy to hear your voice.’
‘Susan? Is that you?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Where are we?’
‘I don’t know. I’d like to say we’re on the passenger ship, but it doesn’t feel right.’
‘I can’t see properly yet,’ said Joel. ‘My head aches. Why does it feel like I’ve been slapped around the face?’
‘Maybe you were being your usual charming self.’ Susan attempted to make light of the serious situation. She felt eyes on her again.
She studied the face of the young man opposite her; his eyes were still closed. ‘Excuse me—you in front of me. I saw you looking. Tell me your name.’
The young man opened one eye, then the other. His fear was apparent.
‘Don’t be afraid. Joel and I can’t hurt you.’ She wiggled her wrists in the restraints. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Robbie—Robbie O’Shea.’
‘How old are you, Robbie?’
‘Twenty-two.’
The man was nearly at tears. He struggled against his own bonds. The more he twisted, the more the bucket seat swung around and fuelled his panic.
‘Shush,’ said Joel suddenly. ‘Listen.’
A whirring noise began. Liquid travelled down the translucent yellow tubes into the arms of the people around them. None appeared to head for her or Robbie’s arm; she couldn’t see Joel’s.
‘What the hell is going on? Where are we?’ whispered Robbie.
‘I’ll tell you where we’re not,’ said Joel. ‘The passenger ship. I got a tour of its stasis room a few years back—my cousin works there—and this is not what I saw.’
‘What was that noise we just heard?’ Robbie’s voice wobbled.
‘They’re topping up the sedative to keep the rest of them under,’ said Susan to Joel.
‘What are all the tubes are for?’ asked Robbie.
‘The red one is most likely for nutrients. The yellow one is a liquid sedative of some kind, the blue one is probably to keep us hydrated, and the green one—’ She leaned forward to look at Joel.
He shook his head. ‘Haven’t the foggiest.’
‘Shouldn’t the nutrients feed directly into our stomachs?’ said Robbie.
Joel sighed. Her colleague had little patience for people in general.
She answered the young man. ‘Our stomach acid breaks down food enough so our bodies can absorb its nutrients. The body then gets rid of what it doesn’t need. It’s likely the compound they’re giving us is small enough for the blood stream to absorb it. They use the same technique for stasis—it reduces body waste. The only thing you should be excreting right now is urine.’
Robbie shuddered. ‘If they can do that, why do we eat?’
‘Because it’s the one pleasure we humans still have,’ said Joel. ‘Never tasting food again—even replicator food? Almost as torturous as having to listen to you.’
The young man looked around him. ‘Are we the only ones awake right now?’
‘Yes, it would appear so,’ said Susan.
His eyes cut to her. ‘Who are you? Who’s that other person with you? Why are we restrained?’
‘Struggling won’t do you any good. My name is Susan Bouchard and that’s Joel Taylor to my right.’
Susan watched Robbie for a moment; this experience was probably more frightening for him than for her or Joel. They’d seen many things at the genetic testing facility in Toronto, where they’d both worked for the past three years. Their lab had recently commissioned genetic trials to better understand the limitations of the human genome. The trials targeted people like Annie Weber, who carried genetic abnormalities that normal nanoid treatments could not fix. While gene therapy had eliminated defects in human genetic code, seven per cent of the population still responded poorly to the treatment. Susan’s role had been to recruit and test volunteers to understand why; Joel was an analyst.
Susan also had the ability to get people to do what she wanted. If she could calm Annie Weber, she could console a frightened young man.
‘It’s going to be fine,’ she said. ‘You’ll only hurt yourself if you keep struggling.’
‘Okay.’
A few moments of silence passed and Robbie settled.
‘Shit, I just thought about a cup of tea and now that’s all I want,’ said Joel.
Despite the situation, Susan smiled. ‘Robbie, you seem a little young to be on the transfer list.’
‘Just what I thought,’ said Joel leaning forward. ‘Did your family transfer with you?’
Susan wondered the same thing. The transfer programme was supposed to move government employees, skilled workers and labourers first with their families, to help normalise the cities.
‘No, I transferred alone.’
‘So they’re already located on Exilon 5?’ she said.
‘No. They’re still on Earth. Why?’ Susan frowned. ‘Why does that matter?’
She didn’t answer him. To Joel she said, ‘That goes against the terms of the programme. Why the separation, do you think?’
‘I’ve no frigging clue,’ he said.
She looked around her. ‘This place looks like a stasis room, but a modified version of it. And this green tube’—she nodded down at her arm—‘isn’t necessary to keep people in suspended animation.’
‘Yeah, the same thing crossed my mind.’ Joel looked around. ‘Is it by accident or design that we’re awake?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t believe in coincidences.’
‘Where are we?’ said Robbie.
‘We don’t know exactly,’ said Susan.
‘Are we on the passenger ship?’
‘No.’
‘Are we in stasis?’
‘No. It’s a little too sterile for stasis.’
‘Exactly what I was thinking!’ said Joel. ‘So why the hell are we tied up like animals?’
Robbie sniffed. ‘When are we getting to the new planet?’
‘Oh God.’ Joel rolled his eyes. ‘Shut him up, please.’
‘He’s just a kid, and if it helps him to ask questions...’said Susan.
Joel grunted.
‘Stop talking about me like I’m not here,’ said Robbie. ‘Where are we?’
‘My guess is we aren’t going to Exilon 5,’ said Susan. ‘I reckon we’re still somewhere on Earth.’
‘But why are we here?’
She had no answer for him. ‘What did you do before you were called to transfer?’
‘I work... I mean, worked as a trainee in a food replication company.’
‘And your father?’
‘He works in an obsolete technology processing plant. Why?’
‘Doing what exactly?’
‘He’s an engineer.’
‘No, I mean, specifically?’
‘I don’t know.’ He shrugged. ‘Building stuff, I guess.’
‘Is it high end stuff? Does he work with the garbage processing plants or does he build autobots? Help me out here.’
‘Eh, I don’t know.’
‘Try to think. Please.’
Robbie looked up in thought. ‘I think it’s all high end stuff, like military hardware, software.’
Susan let that sink in. ‘Okay.’
‘I can hear the wheels turning over there,’ said Joel. ‘What are you thinking?’
‘The work we do has to be linked somehow,’ she said. ‘The boy is quite intelligent’—Joel grunted—‘His father works in a high tech company. We appear to be important people with the same genetics.’
‘You think this has to do with genetics testing?’ said Joel. ‘But that’s our role.’
‘Yes, but our tests concentrate solely on people with genetic anomalies—that the government regard as misfits. You and me, and this young man here, don’t fall into that category.’
‘What are you saying?’
‘It can’t be a coincidence that we’ve been rounded up like sheep. A group of genetically similar people have been brought together—but for what purpose, Joel? I thought nothing of it when Deighton changed the transfer selection criteria. But now I can’t stop thinking about early twentieth-century human trials—a Nazi dictator and his doctor, Josef Mengele—except in this century, we use volunteers. We don’t test people against their will.’
‘Josef Mengele?’ said Robbie.
‘They nicknamed him the Angel of Death,’ Susan explained. ‘During World War II, Adolf Hitler ordered Mengele to create an Aryan master race of blonde-haired, blue-eyed people. The doctor fixated on pregnant women and twins, and brutally butchered both so he could identify the genetic code that produced twins.’
Joel snorted. ‘Yeah, he and Annie Weber would have made a lovely couple. I read reports that he’d practised medicine in Candido Godoi in Brazil, where there were unusually high twin birth rates. But the reports were later disproved.’
‘What does some doctor who died centuries ago have to do with us?’ said Robbie. ‘Are you saying we’re going to be butchered?’
Joel ignored him and looked at Susan. ‘Okay, say they’re genetically testing us, what are they testing for? Some particular trait?’
‘Intelligence must be a key marker for them,’ said Susan. ‘We know the new treatments have limited success in those with sub intelligence. After that, I’ve no idea.’
‘The kid here is very young,’ said Joel. ‘Not that intelligent, though’—Robbie cursed at him—‘Any thoughts?’
‘Lack of empathy? Maybe the differences between our adult brains and his juvenile brain interest them. He’s not quite an adult yet, despite his age. If it were me testing, I’d check for it—how genetic manipulation affects brain activity in adults with an active medial prefrontal cortex, as opposed to juveniles without one.’
‘Do you two work here, or something?’ said Robbie. ‘Is this some joke?’
She wished it were. ‘No. Joel and I are lab technicians, working for a subsidiary group of the World Government. We administer and monitor results in humans when new genetic code is added.’
Robbie swallowed, as though that terrified him more. ‘So what’s going to happen to us?’
This was new territory for Susan. ‘I have no idea.’