Of two worlds

I looked at a leviathan playing in the clouds; a creature that looked to be a mix of an eel, and a dragonfly while I sat in the plaza outside a donating center. While I was sitting, and waiting I pulled out a small telescope, and examined the creature better. I pressed a button on my scope that let me measure distances, and lengths, and the thing measured about nine feet long, with a chitinous skull, and claws. Don’t ask me how it’s able to fly. I'm not a xenobiologist. While I was watching this creature soar through the clouds I heard “Warrant Officer Duncan?” I raised my hand, and the lady said “come with me please.”

I put away my telescope, and followed her into the center, she guided me to a seat, and asked “So, what are we donating today?”

I replied “Blood, stemcells, and marrow, and please just call me Duncan, or if you have to be formal, mister I haven’t been in the PMC for five years now..” She smiled, nodded, pulled up a tablet, and started the interviewing process. “Do you have any permanent gene therapies?”

It took me a moment to gather the info “The standard post birth anti-congenital treatment, the non-native adaptation inoculation, the PMC ‘s basic training sweet, and the advanced recon augmentation.”

Her eyebrow raised when I mentioned the last one. She seemed pleased. “Hmmm, any implants?” Before stating “I didn’t know you were an Earther, did you go into anaphylactic shock when you landed?”

I pointed to either side of my nose “Electromagnetic sensor sweet, and a ceramic ossification.” Before answering her second question “I was actually born on the ship, I didn’t touch real land until I was ten years old, and yeah I was living off of cortisone for a few months till the gene therapy kicked in.”

She raised her eyebrow “How did you acquire your ceramic bones?”

I grimaced “I got in a crash, and shattered nearly every bone in my body. I’d rather not talk about it.”

She flushed, and nodded “Forgive me, understand though, that a bone marrow donation will be… difficult.”

I smiled at her, “It’s ok, I can understand your curiosity. If it can be done then get the marrow.”

She nodded “One last question, what vaccines do you have? Besides the standards?”

I rattled off about a dozen viruses, I was immune to that most other people weren’t thanks to my time in the military, and she noted them ,and smiled. “Good news Mr. Duncan, you qualify for a twenty percent bonus to our standard payouts. How do you want to be paid? Platinum, credits, or cash?”

It didn’t take long for me to decide on cash platinum notes to be precise. After the negotiating was finished, I settled into the medical chair, and relaxed, donating blood has not changed much in the last few centuries, a large caliber needle was inserted into your arm, and blood flows into a machine that spins out the blood cells, and such, and pump them back into you with an equal amount of saline. Stem Cell donation is pretty simple as well, a needle is inserted into your fatty tissue, and a few ounces of fat is removed from your body to harvest, and clone them from the fat.

After they had siphoned my bodily fluids, it was time for my bone marrow donation. For this I had to lay on my side, while the technician braced me in such a way that I couldn’t roll, then a device was placed on the back of my neck that once activated made me paralytic. I didn’t register any pain, and I could not move my body… It was an odd sensation. Once the technician made sure that I was unable to feel any pain, she took an incredibly long hardened needle, and syringe, and pushed it into my flesh, through it, and into the bone. That’s where the struggle began, as my ceramic ossification caused my bones to be several times stronger than normal. I'm actually not sure how much stronger but not quite Wolverine, as there are benefits in being able to reach the inside of your bones.

After she struggled for a few moments I felt the point of the hardened needle passing through the ceramic shell, and into the bone itself. I felt pain like a pinch, but if I could feel that while being paralyzed, and numbed as I was I didn’t really want to think of what I might feel otherwise.

Afterward, I exited the donating center, and made my way to the parking garage. I noticed a light had gone out in the forty five minutes that I was donating tissue samples… Interesting. It made things darker, and therefore possibly more dangerous. I scanned the area, and found the conduits providing electricity to the area with my extra sensory perception.

It didn’t take very long for me to find the issue, wires were pulled from a junction box. It was deliberate, and meant an ambush was probably waiting. I continued walking, expecting someone to come out of the darker shadows. Which he eventually did, a man in his middle thirties approached, and his right hand bent in an unnatural way, with a blade extending out of his palm. He said in a voice that told me he smoked way too much “you’re wallet and watch, or your life!”

I nodded, pinching my lips together, the idiot had an unnecessary augment. He was better off keeping a knife hidden on his person. But hey what do I know? I feigned compliance, and pulled off my watch, and placed it on a nearby car, saying “watch” then I pulled out my wallet slowly, and again I put it on the care saying “wallet”, then when he looked at my wallet, I pulled a snub nosed revolver chambered in .357, and pointed it at my would be assailant saying “gun”, aimed it at his kneecap while he was still surprised, and fired “knee cap” shot his other knee, “other knee cap”, and shot him in the shoulder connected to his bladed hand “shoulder.”

Then as the man was writhing in pain, I put the barrel of my gun between his eyes, and called the police. Twenty minutes later, after giving them my position twice, they showed up. The ambulance showed up, five minutes after that. I was not arrested but was taken to the station to make a statement, and answer questions, and my mugger was taken to the hospital.

An hour later, my story was corroborated by some video footage showing that my assailant had damaged both the camera, and the light, in addition to his multiple counts of doing the same thing. I was free to go, and my revolver was returned.

A uniformed policeman drove me back to my car, I thanked him, and drove myself to my office.

My office was in the old town.

Old town was the site of the initial colony development. Most of the buildings were over a hundred years (that would be Earth years mind you) old, but burgeoning entrepreneurs like myself have worked to keep that section of town updated, or at least preserved. The building my office was in was a three story office built from the recycled parts of the first colony ship to make it to this star system. It wasn’t ramshackled! None of the buildings were ramshackled. The colony ship was set up to be repurposed into colonial buildings.

All of the old town buildings were nearly identical white sided, nineteen thousand square foot per floor, with a lot of windows looking out onto the world. The outside were sectioned off into smaller offices, with access from the street level, with the upper floor offices accessed through a central stairwell. These office buildings weren’t shoehorned into one small space either. In nearly every roundabout, there was a natural space filled native flora, and between every five buildings was a large garden to produce food, or a park filled with native flora, and fauna.

I reached my office, and as I stepped in I said “Hi Helen!” Hellen was my office's computer, a home, and office assistant A.I.

“The A,I responded with “Good afternoon boss! You have three messages.”

I flopped into a big comfortable chair, not one of those cheap assed office chairs found in cubicles on at least two planets in the Sol System, and another three planets in this system, who knows how many more worlds in the galaxy, but a comfortable chair and asked ‘Hellen’ “Well what are they?”

One was an advertisement for my car’s insurance, “delete” I ordered.

The next was in a language I couldn’t even understand, “delete” I ordered.

The last one started with “Warrant officer, don’t delete this message.”

I recognized the voice, it was Conrade Mercer, an old acquaintance of mine. I looked at the holographic display of my A.I who had a faux coy look on its face like it was surprising me. Heuristics, I rolled my eyes at it and listened to the rest of the message.

“Don’t delete this message, I need a man with your skill set, I can’t tell you the specifics online. I need to meet with you in person, at our usual place.” Then there was a tone which sounded a lot like a beep you hear when ending a call to someone. I recognised it as something of an on the fly way to encrypt messages when you don’t have the time, or resources to do it the right way. It wasn’t always reliable as A.I were crafty things that could spot such anomalies, and if it was what I thought it was, and given enough time could puzzle out what the message said. But that required humans to be paying attention.

“Hellen,” I called up my office’s A.I “Did you hear the tone at the very end of the message?” I asked, leaning back in my chair. The A.I’s hologram flickered into view a moment later, and said “no boss, let me analyze the message.” A moment later, Hellen confirmed “Yes boss there is a five nano-second period where a tone can be heard before the message ends.

“Slow it down, cut the speed in half” I requested, and Hellen did just that. The tone was an octave lower, and twice as long.

I requested “do it again.” And again the tone dropped an octave, and its length doubled. But this time, I heard separated portions of the tone a kind of a bebebebebebebeeb. I had Hellen slow it down a few more times to make sure I was hearing what I thought. I pulled my pad, and stylus, and began marking little dot’s, and dashes --. .- .-. -.. . -. / -.-. .- ..-. ..-.. / .. -. / - .... . / -... ..- ... .. -. . ... ... / -.-. . -. - . .-. .-.-.-

Hellen piped up, and said “I have analyzed this code, I recognise it as binary, but neither variant of one’s, and zero’s make any sense. It's all I believe the term is gibberish.”

I chuckled, “the code is even older than that. It predates computers so it’s not a programming language.”

I matched the dot’s, and dashes to the letters I was taught, and held it up for Hellen to see my translation ‘Garden cafe in the business center’ not our usual meeting spot “My grand dad taught the language to me as a way to keep my mind busy, he learned it from his grand dad, and so on, and so on.”

Hellen flickered as she processed the information, and asked “Shall I process this data?” The A.I’s way of asking if I wanted it to learn morse code.

I shook my head to the negative “not unless you want to.”

Hellen flickered again processing, the A.I had a hard time with the idea of wants. After several seconds she finally replied “I have over five terabytes of unused storage. I will process this data.
I nodded “Ok then.”

I took care of some other business, and made my way across town to our meeting place.

The drive took me about an hour to get from my office in old town to the business center, and like in any city that has grown for a few decades there was a transition. As I left old town, and entered the new town the buildings changed into stone worked flattops. For lack of a better term downtown was the commercial district. It was where one went to find a professional anything, architect, lawyer, accountant etc. The stonework buildings ranged from five to seven stories and ranged from tan to brown as primary colors with lots of natural blues, purples, and greens making up the accents. These stonework flattops were topped with communication antennas, and rookeries for lesser leviathans. Large multi acre swaths provided more green works, and parks for all to enjoy.

The business center came into view next. Skyscrapers dotted the landscape, not the super skyscrapers of the Capitol that were over a mile tall; the tallest one here was fifty stories, but beautiful glass structures and more than just buildings. They were ecosystems, special capacitors collected waste heat from the building, natural sunlight was filtered in through windows, and where the sun couldn’t touch was light by incredibly energy efficient lights, fruiting plants grew inside, and out to freshen the air, give the people within a healthy snack, and collect even more waste heat, and were watered with the gray water. The building tops housed antennas, and rookeries for flying fauna.

The Garden cafe was a beautiful open air restaurant that resembled a very old school moorish tiled garden. Something resembling palm trees swayed in the wind as cliff hoppers, small bird-like carrion eaters took advantage of leftover food, and a low sitting fountain. In a corner table sat Mercer reading a tablet. As I approached, he put the tablet down, and greeted me “How ya doin buddy?” He extended his cybernetic hand, a black, and white number made of carbon polymers, titanium, and some ceramic parts.

I took it, and complimented him “quite the professional arm, you got there. Much better than that clunky, oversized one you had last time I saw you. You must be doing good!” I tested my grip on it, and he won, and I took a seat and asked “How can I help you?”

He smiled a bright white toothy smile; the guy stood at just slightly over two meters, and was just as capable as I was in a fight, but he was way smarter than I was, and I often wondered why he never took his exams, and became an officer. This was the guy that if you gave him the contents of the enemies garbage can, a naught magazine found in their latrine, and the newspaper found on a sergeant's desk, he could tell you what they were planning, and when they were most likely going to strike next. All while reading his favorite novel.

“Oh, I just wanted to catch up, is all.” I knew this guy well enough to know that this was mostly true. It had been a while since we had lunch together, and it was good to see old friends. But I also knew he had pressing business.

I didn’t say a thing.

I sat down, and ordered a burger.

It doesn’t matter, rather you’re on earth eating ground beef, or on Hyboria (yes they named the planet after Conan’s world) eating ground tube worm. A burger is a delicious meal that restaurants have to intentionally work at to get wrong.

“How’s the wifes” I asked, smiling, as I the waiter took Mercer’s ordered mushroom salad with a tangy vinaigrette..

He chuckled, “Oh, you know how it is, one of them is pissed off at me for doing something, and the other is happy with me for doing the same damn thing.”

We both had a good laugh at that, and we did start catching up. We both bragged about the high points in our lives, and lamented the lows.

When the food along with a beer, and a bottle of wine arrived Mercer leaned back, and told me “Got me a lucrative government contract, my company's first one.”

I chuckled, "a company getting a government contract, is like saying “I’m happy for you.” Then asked, “What are you doing?”

Mercer smiled a sociopath's smile, it never reached his eyes… a tell “my firm is contracted to analyze incoming media from rival nations to determine what they’re really thinking.”

“Oh yeah, how's that going?” I asked; (read ya loud n clear sergeant, tell me more about the real issue at hand)

“Well one of my employee’s has decided to go on an extended vacation. So far he’s been gone for about three weeks.”

“That’s too bad” I said, listening to the issues he was having with his business “was he working on this new contract?” I asked, leaning forward, paying attention to the conversation.

Mercer shook his head “only tangentially, no he was working on a different contract, mostly accounting stuff. Too bad he had to go on vacation at such a crucial time.”

Ah that’s where I was to come in, to become a Warrant Officer I had to go to college, and I majored in accounting, and minored in investing.

Then my phone rang, it was my office, there was no one in my office aside from Hellen, she normally spoke to me via the car’s speakers, or just the phone's speaker. Ok I would play along. I answered the phone “This is Duncan.”

Hellen replied “Boss the is A.I Hellen”

“Go on,” I said in a conversational tone.

“And due to the clandestine conversation you had with Mr. Mercer, and what you have told me before about him, my heuristics have calculated it would be statistically advantageous to you for me to monitor the area for activities that one may deem suspicious. “

“That is fascinating,” I told Hellen in the same conversational tone.

“I have observed a police patrol unit circling around the block.

“Ma’am, I appreciate the information but that hardly counts as any sort of evidence.” I hoped Hellen would catch the innuendo.

“Boss, the police patrol unit has the wrong alphanumeric sequencing for its unit number. Further the police radio frequencies indicate that there are no police patrol units within three blocks of your position.”

“Thank you Ma’am I will take this information under advisement, and will contact you shortly.”

I looked at Mercer, and said “we’ve got company, how do you want to play it?”

Just then the “police patrol unit” stopped in front of Mercer’s car “play dumb, but be ready to move… to your car. We might get something from these mooks.”

A few moments before the “cops” approached our table, our food arrived including a milk stout beer. I mentally slunk knowing what might happen to it in the next few minutes. I smiled saccharinely at the nearest “officer”. “How may we help you?” I asked the too professional looking mook, taking a bite from my burger… It was an exceptional burger. The other two “cops” stood nearby.

He glared at me then spoke to my companion “Mr. Mercer, we would like you to come with us for questioning about the disappearance of one of your employees.” He placed his hand on his pistol to really punctuate the request, also confirming what Mercer had said. Interesting, Mercer had hinted that he hadn’t reported the guy missing.

Mercer remained just as serious as the “cop” “Yes sir, no problem just name your prescante, and I will meet you there, or I can follow you there right now.”