Preview

 

Billy Joe busied himself with minor repairs on the containers’ exteriors for the last few hours as the Sierra Madre coasted along at a dead slow pace.

He had given up doing repairs inside. It was almost impossible to get anything done inside with all the refugees. They were always underfoot and the staff in his way asking questions. One patient was desperately trying to eat his utility liquid skirt because it looked like “smoked maple syrup with sugar crystals” to him.

An educated guess suggested the refugees had enough water, emergency rations and medical supplies to last them a day or two, but he sure hoped they could offload these people before things got ugly. Bionts got dangerous when deprived of the essentials of life and comfort.

Then there was the constant flood of questions from passengers that he had no answer for.

Yes, we were safe. Yes, we would disembark soon. Don’t touch that! No, I don’t know what time dinner is. How should I know if that was infected? See a nurse. No, I don’t want to play cards. Stop grabbing my nanosand, I don’t grab your hair!

Billy Joe gave a little shudder at the memory, then ground away the last remnants of his spot weld on the container. Now the lock worked properly. Satisfied, he went forward to the cab. The airlock closed behind him, making the sigh he wished he could make.

While putting his tools away, he heard the nav computer bleeping they were an hour out of their destination. Next to it, the comm suite showed Mother sent the note. He tapped to open and saw she was in livecomm range.

Close enough for him. Winston must have gotten eight hours sleep according to Billy Joe’s internal clock. The indu slid up to the sleeper door and gave it a good rap.

“Yo, Hoss!” he yelled. “Time to get yo’self up!”

No answer came.

“Hoss!” he shouted again. This time he banged the door a lot harder.

Someone moved, but again, no answer from Winston.

“Come on, son, Mother’s on the horn and she wants ta talk.”

Billy Joe hoped Winston had not locked himself in his Levitown instance again. Switching to his own virtual interface, he dove into the Sierra Madre’s server and called up Winston’s private node.

Billy Joe attempted to dive in. An error rebuffed him, refusing access. Did it shut itself down? His second login attempt responded to his password, and he found the simulator program. He did a quick diagnostic and found the bio-rhythmic data report looked frozen. The simulation had not crashed. It looked to be locked in the loading montage, like it failed on loading. Winston would have rebooted his software within seconds for it would have kicked him out as a safety feature. A power failure might have done it but they hadn’t suffered any disruptions.

Billy Joe ran the only files he could access, the error log. When it opened, he saw the same message ran on every second for tens of thousands of seconds.

 

ERROR: #1279374.34VIT

<!Simulation could not connect!>

<Reason: Medical obstruction to neural relays>

<!*SYNAPSE BURN DETECTED*!>

<!*SEEK IMMEDIATE MEDICAL ASSISTANCE*!>

 

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