Scans from the air made easy work of locating the Dinasc settlement. Hoomer dropped the contact team about a kilometer from the city. Kessler, Paizley, and Osor proceeded on foot the remainder of the way.
“Hey, Captain,” Paizley said. “Why don’t we have any kind of cars or rovers on the ship?”
“We do. At least according to our requisition forms.”
The mission was allotted a sizable vehicle budget. Half of the allocated expenses were utilized in the design phase as the task bounced between the Aeronautics, Propulsion, and Waste Management teams. Each team sat on the ticket for three weeks, wrote an eventual note that they were not the appropriate team for the assignment, and kicked the request along. One month before departure, the ticket lingered in Waste Management’s queue. So they did what they knew best and designed a self-propelled garbage receptacle, able to process recycling and traverse short distances on methane derived from compost.
“So the dumpster we have in the cargo bay . . .” Paizley theorized.
“According to our corporate overlords: All-Terrain Land Exploration Receptacle.”
“I thought the wheels on that seemed a little excessive.”
“You should see the freaking headlights on it!” Osor chimed in.
“Don’t you start,” Kessler warned.
“What’d they end up spending the rest of the budget on?” Paizley asked.
“Undercarriage protection. You could theoretically drive that thing over a field of landmines and that paint won’t even scratch,” Kessler said.
The team approached the Dinasc perimeter security—a twenty-centimeter-deep trench less than a meter wide. Two unarmed guards charged toward the vast pit from the opposite side before Kessler could place one foot inside. Their gargles and croaking noises accompanied wild gesturing toward a single bridge and gatehouse another five minutes’ walk down the path of the ravine. The guards stood in place and watched as the team approached the bridge.
A single Nerelkor was stationed at the cobblestone gatehouse at the edge of the pass. Handrails, footrails, and what could only be construed as headrails lined the sides of the walkway to assure maximum safety and fall prevention. Kessler blasted the guard with the Articulaser.
“Halt please,” he said. “My name’s Klaxi. Welcome to the Grand Bridge. What’s your business?”
“We’re here to speak with your leaders and assist in resolving the war.”
“You carrying any weapons?”
“No.”
“Promise?”
“I do.”
Klaxi took a step forward and tilted his head. His eyes darted around the crew members. Osor was already on his knees, reaching through the guardrails to measure the ravine below with his hand.
“What if it’s a really deep pit but they filled it in with sand to make it look not deep?” Osor theorized.
“If it’s filled, wouldn’t it not be deep anymore?” Paizley asked.
Osor stood, jaw agape. “It could go all the way to the center of the planet.”
“What’s his deal?” Klaxi asked.
Kessler sighed and shook her head. “He ate a bunch of radiation-laced glue, I think. He’s harmless.”
“Promise?”
Kessler glared. Klaxi recoiled and shuffled back to the gate.
“Alright, you can come in.”
Klaxi gestured for the team to follow. They stepped inside the gatehouse. He pressed a button beside a metal panel and waited. The mechanical gate showed no signs of moving. After waiting the government-mandated allotted time between gate operation and troubleshooting, Klaxi pointed to a small sign at the corner of the gate.
“Looks like it’s under maintenance,” he said. “Sorry, but you’re going to have to wait here until it’s fixed.”
“Can’t we just walk around?” Kessler asked, gesturing to the clear path next to the elaborate entry facility.
“Nuh-uh. That’s not the entrance. Can’t you see the danger pit?”
She placed her head in her palm, somewhat missing the straightforward chaos of the Rejault.
“Well, when is it going to be fixed?”
“Don’t know. Union of Wall Gate Laborers are on indefinite paid leave, on account of discovering some graffiti that wasn’t very nice. Gots to get the Graffiti Removal and General Custodial Laborers some pre-work counseling. Then they can clean it.”
Paizley stepped past Klaxi and knelt. A quick smack in the right spot and the junction box near the button popped open.
“Looks like a simple short,” she assessed. “I can bypass it and have the gate functional in a minute.”
Nimble fingers danced around shoddy wiring and the gate mechanism hummed to life. She pressed the button and a blue light on the ceiling clicked on. Klaxi rushed forward, making a humming sound with one mouth and a mechanical clunking sound with the other. He squatted and lifted the gate above his head. The crew stepped through. Klaxi switched to mono-sound effects.
“Wait a second.” He paused. “Have you got a valid Wall Gate Maintenance Association’s General Maintenance and Maintaining Wall Gates Independent Repair Certification Card?”
Paizley blinked and checked her pockets out of instinct. “No?”
“Gonna have to undo this then.” Klaxi tore a fistful of wires from the panel, slamming the gate shut between them. “Otherwise we’re liable for a stern request to please not do that again. It’s terrifying.”
Kessler grabbed Osor by his shirt collar before he could unscrew the bulb in the ceiling.
The crew entered the outskirts of Dinasc City. A single winding path of faultless asphalt wove into the metropolis. Thousands of white cube buildings sat aligned in perfect grids. Each building was equally spaced, equally sized, and equally indiscernible from its neighbor.
“It’s a step up,” Kessler suggested.
Osor plopped himself on the ground, flicking the power switch to a high-powered flashlight. Kessler smacked him on the head.
“Behave or I’m throwing you in the pit regardless of how much sand it has.”
A distant mechanical buzzing neared. Dust clouds plumed and followed in the wake of a small autonomous cube, which rolled up and stopped before the crew. Orange bands ejected from its side, forming a meter-wide perimeter. Text scrolled across the fencing, which translated to: “Warning, this is a safety rail. Now you are aware. We apologize for not informing you sooner.”
A thin veil of blue light shot from the top of the box, projecting a translucent ovoid. The projection growled, croaked, and hissed. Kessler looked to Paizley.
“I think it’s a hologram guide,” she said. “It’s speaking in their native tongue.”
Kessler attempted to zap the box with the Articulaser. She raised an eyebrow when it had no effect.
“Hm, did not foresee that,” Osor said. “Wait, wait.” He paced around. “Idea!”
The flashlight returned to his hand. Kessler and Paizley waited for the next step. Instead Osor played with the light’s focus until Kessler snatched it and smashed the lens with her heel. Osor dropped to his knees, scooped up the pieces, and wailed.
“I might have an idea,” Paizley said, pulling two small probes from the underside of her communicator bracelet. She fished around under the box for a suitable place to keep them affixed. “Gal, do your thing.”
Cerebral scans from the Articulaser gave Galileo a mountain of linguistic data; direct connection allowed him to scan the hologram’s code for the better part of three minutes. He’d already completed the entire language translation in the first fifteen seconds of processing and uploaded it back. The remaining time was used to assess if Galileo needed to be on the defensive around another AI interacting with Paizley. In the end, he deemed it too stupid to be attractive and allowed the translation patch to pass through.
“Nondenominational salutations: residents, travelers, visitors, neighbors . . .” The hologram proceeded to list seventy-six additional groups. If interrupted, it apologized and restarted.
The ground tremored and a dull quake filled the air. One by one the identical cube buildings rotated, shifted sideways or backward, then settled into a new location once the grid reformed. The rearrangement carved wedges into the ground, eradicating roads and walkways. Silver cylindrical fans sprouted from remnants of intact pavement and sucked in surrounding dust clouds.
“What just happened?” Kessler asked.
“Dinasc values equity and equality,” the hologram said. “Every forty-two minutes, all structures shift to a new rotation and location so all structures get to experience all angles and locations.”
“I feel like I should have follow-up questions, but no. Can you direct us to the government building?”
A brief silence elapsed and Kessler asked again, louder, but was cut off by the hologram’s response. Their verbal jousting lasted two more rounds and caused the hologram to screech to a halt.
“You appear to be offended,” the hologram said. “I apologize for the offense. Are you still offended?”
“More now than before.”
“Command received. Initiating apologetic detonation.”
The box crackled and sparked, sending the team diving for cover. After a half minute of increasingly violent noise, the box fizzled with a hair’s-width strand of black smoke.
An additional bot whizzed down the path at breakneck speeds, screeching to a halt in front of the now defunct machine. It placed a protective blast screen in front of the crew, waited, retracted the shield, then disappeared from view.
“I should have stayed with the apocalypse mole people,” Kessler groaned.
Without direction, the crew wandered into the city in hopes of finding their own way. Their arrival onto the perimeter of the building grid was met with the next shifting cycle. Pristine walkways and roads cracked and crumbled as buildings crunched their way to a new location.
Once the fan protrusions concluded their deafening display of aerial dirt swirling, hordes of Nerelkor rushed outside to sweep up the debris from the streets. Lobbed hunks of rock and tar clanked off the sides of a looming machine. The monstrous apparatus sputtered, churned, and spit out a black mushy mix, which the Nerelkor gathered and spread along the ground. Hopeful of some guidance, Kessler zapped everyone around as they passed to facilitate some degree of directions.
“Terribly sorry.” A Nerelkor worker approached the team. “So very, very, horribly sorry. But you’re standing in a work zone.”
“Which we would be happy to vacate if you could direct us to your leadership’s . . . cube thing.”
“I shouldn’t have assumed you were standing here on purpose. Exceedingly apologetic apologies. You’re looking for the light white building marked eighty-four.”
From their initial observation of the city, each cubed building shared the same color. They failed to previously notice the addresses, written in Nerelkor, on the corners of the buildings, which were of course entirely the same on every building. Kessler held out her arm, gesturing toward every structure that matched the description, in part to request further clarification, but largely to present a useless direction.
The Nerelkor worker bent in half, pointing his head to the ground and carried on with profuse remorse for his continued existence. He called in others, who followed his example. Despite any attempt at possible clarification, the group would do nothing else. So the crew wandered away, now followed by a pack of eight Nerelkor spouting nonstop apologies. Kessler stopped and turned back to the group.
“Please don’t hit me.”
“Why would I hit you?”
“You hit him,” the Nerelkor said, pointing to Osor.
Another in the group popped his head up and shrieked.
“Trorar, did you just point?”
“Oh no. Oh no, no. I resign my position effective immediately.”
“I really don’t care,” Kessler said. “Let’s go.”
The defeated Nerelkor rolled on the ground and curled into the Nerelkor equivalent of a fetal position—fully prone with arms and legs fanned and outstretched and both mouths open. The drama seemed a tad on the extravagant side—even for this lot.
“Hey, are you okay?” Paizley knelt beside Trorar. “We know you didn’t mean any offense.”
“How about you redeem yourself by helping us get where we need to be,” Kessler offered.
Trorar appeared on his feet before the crew could blink. He waddled ahead, taking inventory of the buildings and their current position. Disposition now pleasant and mellow, the team followed him.
“Are you going to be alright without a job?” Paizley asked.
“Oh sure. I’ll get paid the same.”
“How’s that work?”
“All jobs are paid equally. From road recycler, to road engineer, to road statistician. We keep 2 percent and the other 98 percent gets reclaimed,” he said. “Housing is free. Fresh food every day.”
Trorar carried on with his utopia pitch as they walked, explaining the intricacies of measuring daily air intake so as not to breathe more than anyone else. Those breathing too much were asked, by the honor system alone, to offset their breathing footprint with a voluntary purchase of air-tokens. This and other honor-based shame purchases accounted for the entire personal cost of living. Local government agencies supplied just about everything else needed, which still only managed to encompass 5 percent of the total municipal budget. The remaining 95 percent was set aside for “discretionary projects.” Which was spent in its entirety on roads.
“With all the roadwork, where are the cars?” Paizley asked.
“We got rid of them all,” Trorar boasted. “Vehicles are bad for the environment.”
They continued down the sidewalk adorned with cracks, splits, and missing chunks. Pristine and beautiful, the road sat next to them as a still black river waiting to be torn asunder and rebuilt in twenty-six more minutes.
A light white cube building marked with an eighty-four meant the team had arrived at the Dinasc government building. Probably. Trorar apologized for an unpunctual arrival and dismissed himself before causing more irreparable damage to his public image or career prospects. The building itself was indistinguishable from the hundreds of others around. No posted guards, added security, or so much as a camera outside.
“Be ready for anything,” Kessler cautioned.
“Anything that can fit inside a tiny little box,” Paizley added.
Osor wept and dropped back to his knees. “I can’t even light them up.”
Kessler yanked him up by the collar and they entered.
One Nerelkor wearing more wrinkles than clothes occupied the front room. She turned and glanced at the menacing-appearing yet benign Articulaser as Kessler zapped some English into her.
“No weapons allowed, dear,” she said. “You’ll have to promise.”
“Sure, that’s great,” Kessler replied. “I assume you’re in charge here? My name is Captain Elora Kessler. My crew and I are—”
“Oh, no. I’m not in charge. Come, come.”
The old Nerelkor pulled aside a beaded curtain and welcomed the crew into a small room painted with streaks of bright color. An open bassinet sat pedestaled upon a throne of pillows. Dangling toys and swinging shapes decorated the arch above a wicker cot. Inside, a bejeweled miniature Nerelkor nestled into a shaggy blanket. He kicked his feet about, striking a toy by coincidence of it occupying the same space. The aides surrounding the bassinet scribbled a hurried note and rushed it to a desk in the corner. A stamper the size of a human torso marked the note with a raised golden seal.
“I’m sorry, but you’ll have to remove your footwear,” the old Nerelkor said. “It is now highly offensive.”
“How now?” Osor asked.
“Why, this very second. You’ll be the first ones to have to publicly apologize.” She gestured to the stamped document, which was in the process of being sealed and shoved into a protective sheet half its size. “The newest decree of our glorious and wise President GaLvaz.”
The infant Nerelkor let out a shrill squeal and a series of increasingly viscous streams from both mouths.
“The baby?” Kessler asked.
Aides rushed to wipe away the secretions and categorize them in jars based on relative density to account for the upcoming regulatory changes on fiduciary responsibilities of banking agencies. The third jar cemented a decisive crackdown on short-selling derivative securities, while a tapering fourth jar made it legal to pelt stones through the windows of parked vehicles while standing on one leg, if any vehicles could be located. Subtle variances between pelt, throw, and lob would be assessed during the next diaper change.
“Yes. We’re very proud of our young leader who has proven most fair and kind.”
President GaLvaz had ruled with an iron fist and full diaper for the last six Earth-equivalent days, replacing his predecessor, the now three-week-old President Gamtop. Presidential coronation occurred with regular frequency. Newly spawned Nerelkor were bestowed presidential powers. That leader remained in office until a new youngling was born. This methodology ensured that the president in power was always the youngest member of Dinasc society, as the youngest both knew and understood the least and therefore was unbiased.
“Replace the yellow block with a purple rattle,” an aide instructed. “Two shakes if you wish for us to fix the leak in the ceiling. Three shakes and we shall remove and outlaw roofs.”
Kessler sat on the floor. She held out her hand, palm up to Osor. He removed a small flashlight from his pocket and placed it in Kessler’s palm, who proceeded to snap it in two. She took a deep breath and stood.
“Great.”