Prodigious Alignment: Chapter 4
TAP TAP TAP
Gareth looked up from his Muse and squinted into the dim light. The impromptu workspace he and Rutherford had set up in the machine shop was dark and quiet. The last workers’ shifts had ended hours before and everyone else was long gone. He had been so focused on his drawings that the silence of the shop came as a sudden shock in sharp contrast to the Muse’s illuminated screen. So too did the exhaustion that washed over him as his concentration on the most recent smelter designs slipped.
He closed his eyes, took a deep, slow breath, and then held it for several seconds. When no more sounds came, he shrugged to no one and opened his eyes, which had barely begun acclimating to the darkness. Convinced that his tired mind had conjured the illusion of sound, he indulged himself with a resounding yawn before reverting his attention to the task at hand.
TAP TAP TAP TAP
This time, Gareth jumped. Something was definitely making a tapping sound, the short, staccato bursts startling his attention back to the dark room. Grumbling, Gareth rubbed his eyes and stroked his beard. He usually kept himself clean-shaven, but he had done little besides work recently, and his personal hygiene was suffering. The strange stubble was rough and stimulating when he touched it, and Gareth fancied that the act of stroking his nascent facial hair made him look like a deep thinker.
He stood up and carefully walked to the illumination controls with a sigh. He jabbed impatiently at the digital display, annoyed to be distracted from such critical efforts by some unidentified irritant.
The LEDs built into the floor and ceiling sprung to life smartly, starting dimly but smoothly reaching peak brightness within moments. Unaccustomed to the luxury of such well-maintained infrastructure, he nodded to the light controls with begrudging respect. He wished any of the systems in his living quarters worked as well.
TAP TAP
“Okay, what the hell?” he asked aloud. He received no answer.
Gareth’s mind flashed to horror stories he had read from Earth involving strange creatures rapping on the glass windows of houses. Monsters, demons, beasts — the incarnations of nightmares, scaring the townsfolk and children. The very idea made him want to laugh at himself.
“Crazy old man,” he muttered. No living entities aboard the Arvad more significant than a gnat went untracked and uncontained, at least here in the critical operating areas. Certainly nothing substantial enough to strike such a loud sound, at the very least.
TAP TAP TAP TAP TAP TAP
“Goddammit!” The tapping continued this time, creating a steady rhythm. Gareth’s gaze panned across his desk to the tidy workstations scattered about the room and back into the rest of the machine shop. The sound seemed to be originating from everywhere at once, ricocheting against the metal walls and miscellaneous pieces of equipment, mock-ups, and prototypes.
Growing increasingly frustrated, Gareth started to move through the room, trying to hone in on the source of the tapping. His mind yearned to return to the smelter designs on his Muse, which offered far more stimulation and dopamine than this sudden interruption. He shook his head, willing the fog from another late night to clear as he hunted.
Suddenly, he saw it: nestled between a monitor and a stack of rough steel ingots sat a strange device Gareth had never seen before. The particulars of its design became more apparent as he approached. It was a cylinder and not particularly large, only about the size of an Arvad standard drinking cup. The shape was rough, as if unfinished — no, Gareth realized, it was irregular because it was handmade. Vertical cuts roughly thirty centimeters long were etched towards the top, which Gareth inferred were speaker grilles. Beneath them, facing him, was a small, polished circle. A lens of some sort?
“Gareth! You look like hell!” the device barked. With a yelp of surprise, Gareth took a quick step backward, tripped over a chair, and fell to the floor in an awkward sitting position.
The tapping had stopped when the cylinder spoke, and now the sound of familiar laughter filled the room.
“Rutherford, you bastard, you scared the crap out of me!”
Rutherford’s laughter continued, the nuances of his mirth carrying surprisingly well from the small machine’s tiny speakers. “Good,” he said after a moment. “You’ve been pulling these late nights for weeks. I needed to get through to you.”
Gareth leaned forward, placed both hands on the floor, and awkwardly pushed himself to his feet. “Did you build this thing just to play a prank on me?”
“I’m flattered that you think I am so talented that I could have devised such a thing for the express purpose of scaring you in a month. No, a few years back, I toyed with designs for some short-range intercom devices, primarily for fun. But since the Adalia system’s planets don’t have a single breathable atmosphere, I dusted a few of the more advanced models off recently to attempt to adapt them to the EV suits we’re putting together.
“So when I saw the opportunity to field test one of them AND make a point, it was too enticing to pass up.”
“Oh, yeah? So what’s your point, then?” Gareth grumbled.
“Haven’t you been listening?” Rutherford asked, feigning disappointment. “You need to get some rest. Go home. Have you spent any time with Areanna at all this week?”
“Oh, shit, Areanna. What time is it?”
“Oh-one-hundred. Past her bedtime, and yours. You’re going to take tomorrow- well, the rest of the day off. Make it two days. You won’t be a help to anyone burnt out and sleep-deprived.”
Gareth rubbed his eyes, the weight of his exhaustion more apparent with every passing moment. “Okay, okay, I hear you. Let me just put a few last touches on- hey, why are you up so late?”
“Because I maintain a healthy balance between my work and downtime and can do frivolous things like wake up at one in the morning to scare a colleague straight. And no more work; I’ve already remotely locked you out of your Muse.”
“Wait, how the hell did you do that?”
“I’m smarter than you. But listen, there’s something else we need to discuss. Have a seat.”
Gareth glowered at the cylinder. “Can this wait until I get some sleep? You know, the thing you’re specifically nagging me to do? Also, maybe we can have this conversation face-to-face and get some coffee?”
“No. I can see you just fine, so the inconvenience is on your end and deserved. Sit down.”
With a final glare of stubborn resentment at the device, Gareth pulled the chair that had tripped him and sat down. His bottom was still sore from falling on steel plates, and an unintentional groan escaped his lips. “God, never get old.”
“You’re telling me,” Rutherford replied. “It’s about Areanna.”
The tendrils of tiredness that had wrapped themselves around Gareth suddenly loosened. “What’s about Areanna? What are you talking about?”
“I thought that would get your attention. She’s starting to behave, uh, inappropriately.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“A few weeks ago, she made her way into the administration office on your floor of the fore living section,” Rutherford said.
Rutherford’s words hit Gareth like a punch to the gut, and he leaned back in his chair. How could the council have known about her indiscretion? “That’s not possible,” he muttered.
“Not only is it possible,” Rutherford said, oblivious to his meaning, “but she returned a second time. And she took Natalie Allen with her.”
Tears began to well in Gareth’s eyes, which had become unfocused. It was one thing for the Scrubber’s Rebellion to stay squarely in the past and out of their lives; it was quite another for it to become a literal part of Areanna’s life. “She can’t go back there,” he said quietly. “No one is supposed to go back there.”
“Hey, Gareth, snap out of it,” Rutherford said. “Attention back on me. Look at the shiny machine and focus on what I’m telling you.”
“No one should go back there. That’s why it’s closed; it’s locked. It’s deadly back there.” Tears flowed freely down Gareth’s face, and a sob shuddered through his body. “No one can go back there.”
“Clovar, don’t lose your mind on me. I need you lucid. Talk to me.”
He was back in time, twelve years ago. The memory of that day encompassed him, playing out as if sped up. The fore living quarters, his floor, the same bright lights, and shining steel were the same as they were now. News of what was happening was spreading like wildfire, and people ran to the administration office door, only to find it locked. The yelling, anger, fear, noise, gunshots, screams, and blood were overwhelming.
“Gareth!” Rutherford shouted, interrupting the nightmare.
His voice still quiet, Gareth returned his focus to Rutherford’s device. “Sorry, it all just kind of came back all of a sudden.”
“I’m sorry, my friend,” Rutherford said, “We’ve talked of the past so often that I didn’t realize you still felt this strongly about what happened. I should have been more delicate.”
Tears continued to stream down Gareth’s face, and he did not attempt to wipe them away.
“It’s fine. I’m fine.” Gareth wiped his eyes and nose on his right sleeve with a strong sniffle. The vision of that day faded, and he felt himself returning to the present. “I’m good; the news just took me by surprise. How did she get in there in the first place? I thought we sealed it up.”
“We aren’t entirely sure. Since it was closed off, we don’t exactly maintain a full sensor suite in that section. As best we can tell from the IR scanners at the edge of the communal areas on that floor, she must have slipped through a hole in the wall.”
Areanna, his precious daughter, was going into the Administration offices. She had no idea of the horrors that place saw twelve years before; how could she? Those events took place three years before she was born. And no one talked about that day, the witnesses and survivors so horrified it was as if they had reached an unspoken agreement to pretend it had never even happened. Only it had happened. The grief and pain it caused in Gareth were all too real.
Rutherford waited a moment before speaking again. “Look, if it makes you feel any better, she spent less than two minutes in there each trip. Even less when she went with Natalie; something like ninety seconds. But you know as well as I do that this leads nowhere good. Her safety notwithstanding, her grades have begun to slip…”
“I noticed that,” Gareth said quietly.
“… and the leadership is starting to ask questions,” Rutherford finished, without acknowledging that Gareth had spoken. “Areanna is one of the brightest kids on the Arvad. She might be one of the most intelligent people ever on the Arvad. You must realize this.”
“Of course I do,” Gareth said meekly.
“Her future is wide open. With her mind and drive, she can have any job and perform any role. Several department heads have already begun casting lots, trying to claim her talents for themselves. I don’t think Edwards would just let them choose where Areanna ends up without her consent, of course, but you take my point.”
“Jesus, she’s only eight years old.”
“She turned nine last week, Gareth,” Rutherford said gently. “And it isn’t as if we have the luxury of an infinite pool of genius from which to pull.
“But this is a dangerous path Areanna’s starting to walk, whether she knows it or not. We don’t want to need to stop her — her tenacity is one of her most endearing qualities. However, we need to deter her. You need to deter her.”
Gareth considered Rutherford’s words for a moment. He did not doubt any one of the points laid before him. Areanna was a unique, brilliant child; he was immensely proud of her and knew her future was limitless.
He also knew what could happen if Areanna continued to push forward. The Arvad contained some secrets so painful, so shameful, that they could disrupt the fragile peace they now enjoyed. In just over six months, they would arrive in Adalia, and their survival depended on everyone aboard the Arvad remaining cooperative with one another the entire time.
And if the Arvad fell apart, so did his daughter’s future.
“I understand. What do I need to do?”
Rutherford sighed. “First, you need to get some rest. Spend some time with your daughter. I have it on good authority that she misses you.”
Gareth felt tears begin to well again.
“Come back in two days, and we’ll discuss this further. Based on the cadence of her last adventures, I doubt she’ll be heading back there within a day or two. She seems to be making a point of drawing as little attention to herself as possible. But you know how she can be, and I’d bet a week’s worth of rations she’ll make another attempt soon. We don’t want to draw attention to this, so we’re relying on you to parent her.”
“Ha,” Gareth laughed, amused by Rutherford’s understated recognition of his daughter’s nature. Areanna was stubborn and would almost certainly try breaking into the Administration office again. Persistent, clever, and kind, just like her mother was. “Okay. Thanks. I’m heading out, and I’ll keep an eye on her.”
“Good. I’ll see you in two days. And Gareth?”
“Yeah?”
“You could really use a shave.”