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13:57 MONDAY 15 January 2091
Max ran into the room where Adam was sifting through and cataloguing electronic components whilst eating a large bar of chocolate. He looked up from what he was doing.
“Hello mate.”
He pointed to the chocolate bar.
“Listen. Don’t tell Pip you caught me eating a whole 150 gram chocolate bar to myself. She’d kill me if she found out.”
Max shook his head.
“Don’t worry about the chocolate bar or Pip. I’ve got some mega-news. Do you still have that computer program you used to find Caitlin when she had been hidden in stasis in that prison?”
“It’s an algorithm, not a program. And yes I do. Why?”
“Because we need it to find someone.”
“Who?”
“Zafar.”
“What?”
“We believe that Zafar is being held captive in stasis just like Caitlin was.”
“How? I mean, how did you find out?”
“That doesn’t matter. But if it’s true, then we need to rescue him and try to stop this madness and killing that’s going on.”
“Too bloody right.”
Adam opened his notebook computer.
“Remember how I was able to search the prison computer systems invisibly to locate Cait? That’s what I’ll do to find Zafar. If he’s in one of those places, I’ll find him. Do we know what name he’s in the system under?”
“Shit. I forgot to ask.”
Max quickly called Caitlin and got the answer.
“Brooks. Emmanuel Brooks.”
“That should help. There can’t be many people in the system with that name. It should only take a few minutes; I’ve turbocharged the search.”
The minutes passed like minutes but to Max, they seemed like hours. Suddenly Adam fist-pumped the air.
“Yes! Found him. At least I think I have. We’ll have to get a visual to confirm.”
“Can you do that?”
“I can, but I warn you it’s a bit yucky.”
“Yucky, that’s the technical term is it?”
“Well, they stand them up naked in a tube, connect them up to tubes to deliver nutrients, so they don’t die, and stuff two other tubes into them – one a catheter and the other up their arse – to remove waste products. To top all that, they cover them with a gooey mess they call a placenta. I think the term ‘yucky’ describes it pretty well. I’ll patch into the operational system and start removing the placenta. We have to be quick though because after a few seconds the system starts to automatically refill the tube.”
Max was shocked. He knew that Caitlin had undergone a horrendous experience at HMP666 but he hadn’t known the details. He tried to put the disturbing image to the back of his mind.
“Okay. Let’s go for it.”
The two men watched the monitor as stasis tube number 0431-8 came into view. Adam touched a couple of keys and the placenta level dropped steadily until it was chest height. He looked at Max.
“What do you reckon? Is it Zafar? You’ve had more dealings with him than I have, I’ve only met him a couple of times.”
“Let me have a closer look. Whoever it is, his face is smeared with that gunk.”
“Be quick then. The level’s going to start rising any second.”
“Can you zoom in?”
“Yep. There you go and here comes more gunk.”
“That’s Zafar. That’s definitely Zafar. I’d swear on my dead mother’s soul.”
Max knew the circumstances of his mother’s death and didn’t say this lightly. He wished that he could meet whoever she was now and let her know that he hadn’t died in that laboratory on that fateful day when she was cruelly killed, but he knew that even if she was a Recarn, the FS Virus had almost certainly wiped her Past Life Memory clean. He was an anomaly, in that he still had his PLM. Martin was the only other Recarn that he knew who could still remember his past lives. There were bound to be others but they would be few and far between. Adam stood up.
“Right. Let’s let the others know we’ve found Zafar. We’ve got a rescue to plan.”