Anastomosis by David Kutai Weiss
2520
The world faded into view. It was just a dream. The Elders still have no clue about the Opposition or the Arksent. Clinical white walls and bright lights came into focus. The walls were so white. The lights were too bright. Why are they so bright? Stowik’s head ached. Stowik groaned and felt a huge bump and dried blood on his head. His head throbbed in a dull, constant pain. Damn, what happened? Stowik looked around and took in his surroundings. He was sitting upright in a small cot with white sheets. It was the only thing in the room. Three of the four walls were a solid white, and the last wall section had some sort of reflective material on the entire upper half of the wall.
He stood up slowly and immediately felt dizziness overcome his senses. Stowik wobbled and almost fell over, but he managed to grab the side of the cot to stabilize himself before he hit the ground. He hunched over, breathing slowly for several minutes with his eyes closed, before he felt he had enough strength to stand up straight. Stowik took his next step cautiously, and then walked over to the reflective wall and ran his hands over the material. Without warning, the door opened and Stowik looked up. A man walked through the door, clad in a bulky orange suit that covered his entire body. The man looked at Stowik through the plastic window of this helmet and smiled. Stowik immediately stepped back, at a loss for words.
“I see you are up! I am Dalrin Taylor. Welcome! How do you feel?” erupted from the muffled deep voice of the strangely clad man with short blond hair. Stowik eyed the man suspiciously and rubbed his aching skull before he pulled his hand back sharply at the pain.
“Fine,” he said stiffly.
Stowik noticed a dull throbbing above his chin. He ran his fingers across it and felt the bristling stitches that held together a gash just below his mouth. The back of his neck ached painfully.
The man chuckled, “Yes, you seem to have taken quite a hit. When we dug you out of the Opposition cave, you were trapped in ice and that gash below your mouth was clean through the other side. The medics have done a fine job fixing you up, though. You have been given a mild dose of pain medication, but you’ll be fine.”
Dug me out of the Opposition cave? It must have been attacked by the Arksent. I never should have let Imbria in the hopper. I should have made off alone when I had the chance. Is she even okay? Did Imbria and Tharsis make it past the Arksent? What the hell do the Arksent want with me? Did they find the hopper?
“Did you kill them, back in the cave?” Stowik demanded.
“No, they are in custody.” He paused. “You’re welcome,” he added.
In response, Stowik spat on Dalrin’s visor, and was greeted with a puzzled look that Dalrin directed at the reflective wall.
“Where am I?” Stowik demanded.
“You are in the medical unit of the Arksent. You are safe here.”
“We thought we were alone,” muttered Stowik.
“You are not alone. The population of the Arksent is thirty thousand and growing,” responded Dalrin.
“I’m one of fifty,” Stowik responded absentmindedly as he looked around his cramped compartment. He could only spot one door in and out of the room.
I’ve got to find Imbria. Stowik darted for the door, but Dalrin blocked his way in time for Stowik to slam into him, full force. Dalrin was pushed back a foot, but his large frame was braced well so he remained standing.
“We’re not keeping you here,” Dalrin explained soothingly, “but you have to put that on first.” Dalrin pointed to the other orange suit that hung from the wall, identical to the one he currently wore.
Stowik quickly put on the suit and he and Dalrin exited the room. As they passed through the door Stowik saw a group of men in white coats on the other side of the reflective material, which was transparent from this end. They had been watching the whole time, and they couldn’t take their eyes of Stowik.
“You must be wondering if your rocket is all right,” started Dalrin, snapping Stowik back to attention. “It wasn’t damaged in the blast, but we haven’t moved it as we don’t know how to operate it. I ordered a constant guard on it so it does not fall into the wrong hands,” said Dalrin.
Stowik corrected Dalrin, “You are the wrong hands. Get your goons away from my hopper, you piece of shit.”
Dalrin’s lips creased into a subtle smile, “I am the wrong hands? My dear boy, what did those disgruntled savages tell you about me? All I’ve done is find a sustainable energy source and improve the Arksent quality of life. Surely that is not a crime?” he said with the air of performing a rehearsed speech.
They walked through long narrow passages with glossy white walls and bright overhead lights. They came across a security checkpoint and the guard stared curiously at Stowik for an uncomfortable period of time before waving them through. Dalrin opened the door and they continued through a large room filled with equipment of war. Stowik looked around and observed hanging on the wall hundreds of replicas of the plastic device Imbria first held to him. Numerous rovers were arranged neatly throughout the room. Stowik counted several dozen of these before he was led to the opposite side of the room to a large piece of equipment the size of a rover, but it wasn’t a rover. It was shiny and seemed to Stowik to be emitting light. Nothing reflects that much. Stowik had only seen a material like it before on a few occasions. Spacefall. Alpha India used the metal from meteorite impacts for their circuitry, but never in such huge amounts. Dozens of cylinders twenty meters long and one meter wide stood upright against the wall adjacent to the device and shared the machine’s strange luster.
“The original colonists called it metal. There’s nothing quite like it on Titan, besides the rare meteorite,” said Dalrin as he followed Stowik’s stunned gaze. Material from Earth?
“What is it?” asked Stowik as he pointed to the strange machine.
“That is our Sat-cannon. We used to send test-satellites into Titan’s orbit with it. We hoped that the satellites would shed some light on Titan’s weather patterns,” explained Dalrin.
Curious, Stowik asked, “Did they?”
Dalrin hesitated and then spoke, “Well, they would have. But when the energy crisis and the civil war broke out, the whole proejct was put on hold. You see, the Sat-cannon required an enormous amount of energy to power it. To launch one satellite would take up to a year of constantly pumping electricity into it. This technology was left over from the original colonists, and we don’t understand how it stores the energy.”
“Don’t you mean in a capacitor?” asked Stowik.
Dalrin shot him a quizzical look, clearly unfamiliar with the term ‘capacitor,’ and resumed his explanation, “The last launch, which by now was twenty years ago, was a failure, and as a result the project was nixed in favor of focusing our resources on the war effort.”
“What went wrong with the last launch?” asked Stowik.
“We lost contact with the satellite. That was, oh, 2500,” speculated Dalrin. “It wasn’t the first time we lost a satellite, though. Our first few launches caused the satellites to burn up in the atmosphere—the friction was so high. We found that reducing the charge, and thus the velocity, could prevent the satellites from burning up. But, the last launch was not at full power, so presumably it crashed somewhere on Titan’s surface.”
Stowik nodded and then pointed to the metal cylinders against the wall, “Were those the satellites?”
“In unfinished form,” replied Dalrin, “As I said, the Sat-cannon was left over from the original colonists along with those metal cylinders, which are the projectiles. We think that this thing was designed to be some kind of weapon. But, we found that we could shorten one of the projectiles and hollow it out to put our instrumentation in. Then, the Sat-cannon could launch it into orbit.”
“Why would the original colonists need a weapon that could fire into orbit?” asked Stowik.
Dalrin paused and looked down at Stowik, “Stowik, the original colonists never intended on landing here. It’s just as likely that they wanted to use it to fire from orbit,?
?? he shrugged.
Dalrin guided Stowik past the Sat-cannon and they went through yet another door. Stowik looked at an enormous poster on the wall. It had big bright letters: “The Turbine, bringing the Arksent together.” Behind this was a backdrop of the Titan landscape with an enormous cylindrical tower sticking out of the ground, with a helmeted man standing next to it clearly guiding other workers. Stowik looked closer to see that the man in the poster was Dalrin.
“If your facilities and equipment are so advanced, why haven’t you defeated the Opposition yet?” asked Stowik.
Dalrin nodded, “We have more resources and infrastructure at our disposal, but defeating the Opposition is not our goal. We’d rather negotiate peace. Unfortunately, there’s no way to establish communications with them without locating their headquarters. The Opposition is completely off the grid. Which brings me to my next question: how did they find you?”
Stowik eyed him wearily, “I was looking for a way to replenish my colony’s ethane aquifer. I stumbled across an Opposition soldier. Speaking of soldiers, I’ve only seen people in uniform walking around here—where is everybody else? Kids, civilians?”
“Arksent is compartmentalized into four sections. At the age of sixteen, an Arksent can choose to specialize in food production, education, applied science and engineering, or mining and construction. My own boy just chose education. Oriya and I couldn’t be prouder! As you can imagine, each section works quite closely with the others, but are housed in different structures. This section houses applied science and engineering operations. Military operations also fall under this section, and our soldiers are doing a fine job sorting out this Opposition nonsense!” Dalrin added this last bit with a raised voice, receiving nods of thanks from passing soldiers in the hall. Dalrin stopped for a handshake with one of the men in uniform, plastering on a smile before sweeping Stowik further down the hall.
“Where exactly are we?” asked Stowik.
“We are in the Cortex, One kilometer below Ksa crater. Well, the crater rim.”
“The Cortex?” Stowik pressed.
“That’s what we call the applied science and engineering section. The Cortex,” repeated Dalrin.
They traveled through the white-walled passage for a number of minutes, taking sharp right angles occasionally as the passage diverged at intersections until they came through another door that lead to a breathtakingly large room filled with large tubes, silos, and dials.
This looks like the Concrete…But then…“This is an ethane processing plant,” said Stowik, half statement, half question.
Dalrin looked over at him, unsurprised. “Yes, atmospheric ethane used to fuel the entire Arksent. We’ve left it as a reminder to all that the energy crisis has been solved by the Turbine”
“Imb—” Stowik stopped himself, “—an Opposition soldier told me the Turbine is causing cryovol…,” Stowik repeated, racking his brains to remember the words..
Dalrin’s face grew red and he was instantly a hair away from Stowik’s face. “Cryovolcanic activity? It’s a propaganda stunt. The Opposition will lie through their teeth to recruit,” he spat, the words crawling across his tongue in a menacing tone.
Stowik froze. Dalrin backed off and rearranged his features into a forced, diplomatic half smile. He collected himself and kept walking. Stowik followed.
Dalrin sighed, “I apologize; that was unwarranted. This war took my daughter from me. You must understand my lingering bitterness,” he paused for a moment. “Unfortunately, it wouldn’t do well to take everything the Opposition says as truth. I’ll explain everything.”
He led them through a side door and into another glossy white room with an enormous rover in it. Stowik looked up in awe—the rover stood ten stories high and was many times bigger than even his hopper. That thing could hold at least a hundred people.
Dalrin stopped and faced Stowik. “Once, the Opposition was part of the Arksent.” So that much is true. “We discovered the location of a previously unknown colony of humans—your colony, incidentally. A group of us wanted to leave you be.”
“Why didn’t you want to reach out?” asked Stowik.
“We’ve been living separate for hundreds of years. We haven’t co-evolved, so we were concerned about the spread of disease through both populations. That’s the technical reason, but also we were afraid of a culture clash, and the possibility of the Arksent way of life influencing the development of your society. Safer just to leave you be. This wasn’t everyone’s school of thought, however. Quite a few people felt it was their responsibility as fellow humans to reach out. That was twenty years ago.”
“So they are waging a war over it?” challenged Stowik.
“Correct—or correct twenty years ago when the war broke out. At this point, the Opposition is strained for labor. They likely want to recruit you to help fight us,” responded Dalrin, “but they’ve been unable to find you. That is information we at the Arksent have been guarding quite carefully. As for Imbria? With a bounty that big on her head, her future relies on finding your colony, and ultimately staging a coup in the Arksent. Our intel shows she leads the scouting parties seeking to find your colony. Then, it was her idea as second in command of the Opposition to drain all of the liquid ethane aquifers in the area in an attempt to force you out.”
Second in command? Stowik felt his throat go dry. “Well, it worked. They know where to find us. They are already on the way to Alpha India,” he croaked.
Stowik saw Dalrin’s eyes go wide. “What? How?” he demanded.
“I told them. They said they were going to protect Alpha India. From you.”
And now they have a head start. How could I have been so stupid?
Dalrin immediately pushed a button on the side of his visor and spoke rapidly into the air. In moments, a steady stream of soldiers were flooding into the hangar, grabbing the plastic tube devices off the wall and putting on body armor.
“We can take you to your hopper, but we only have rovers. It may be too late before we get there,” said Dalrin urgently.
They backed into the previous room and jumped in a rover with several other soldiers. Large steel doors groaned as they opened and let the darkness outside into the stronghold. One by one, rovers began pouring out of the hangar onto the jagged icy terrain, partially revealing it with their feeble headlights. Dalrin spun the wheel of the rover he and Stowik had jumped in, and diverged from the pack. They drove on for a while, racing full speed in the darkness to the canyon rim where Stowik’s hopper was perched.
The world faded into view. It was just a dream. The Elders still have no clue about the Opposition or the Arksent. Clinical white walls and bright lights came into focus. The walls were so white. The lights were too bright. Why are they so bright? Stowik’s head ached. Stowik groaned and felt a huge bump and dried blood on his head. His head throbbed in a dull, constant pain. Damn, what happened? Stowik looked around and took in his surroundings. He was sitting upright in a small cot with white sheets. It was the only thing in the room. Three of the four walls were a solid white, and the last wall section had some sort of reflective material on the entire upper half of the wall.
He stood up slowly and immediately felt dizziness overcome his senses. Stowik wobbled and almost fell over, but he managed to grab the side of the cot to stabilize himself before he hit the ground. He hunched over, breathing slowly for several minutes with his eyes closed, before he felt he had enough strength to stand up straight. Stowik took his next step cautiously, and then walked over to the reflective wall and ran his hands over the material. Without warning, the door opened and Stowik looked up. A man walked through the door, clad in a bulky orange suit that covered his entire body. The man looked at Stowik through the plastic window of this helmet and smiled. Stowik immediately stepped back, at a loss for words.
“I see you are up! I am Dalrin Taylor. Welcome! How do you feel?” erupted from the muffled deep voice of the strangely clad man with short blond hair. Stowik eyed the man suspiciously and rubbed his aching skull before he pulled his hand back sharply at the pain.
“Fine,” he said stiffly.
Stowik noticed a dull throbbing above his chin. He ran his fingers across it and felt the bristling stitches that held together a gash just below his mouth. The back of his neck ached painfully.
The man chuckled, “Yes, you seem to have taken quite a hit. When we dug you out of the Opposition cave, you were trapped in ice and that gash below your mouth was clean through the other side. The medics have done a fine job fixing you up, though. You have been given a mild dose of pain medication, but you’ll be fine.”
Dug me out of the Opposition cave? It must have been attacked by the Arksent. I never should have let Imbria in the hopper. I should have made off alone when I had the chance. Is she even okay? Did Imbria and Tharsis make it past the Arksent? What the hell do the Arksent want with me? Did they find the hopper?
“Did you kill them, back in the cave?” Stowik demanded.
“No, they are in custody.” He paused. “You’re welcome,” he added.
In response, Stowik spat on Dalrin’s visor, and was greeted with a puzzled look that Dalrin directed at the reflective wall.
“Where am I?” Stowik demanded.
“You are in the medical unit of the Arksent. You are safe here.”
“We thought we were alone,” muttered Stowik.
“You are not alone. The population of the Arksent is thirty thousand and growing,” responded Dalrin.
“I’m one of fifty,” Stowik responded absentmindedly as he looked around his cramped compartment. He could only spot one door in and out of the room.
I’ve got to find Imbria. Stowik darted for the door, but Dalrin blocked his way in time for Stowik to slam into him, full force. Dalrin was pushed back a foot, but his large frame was braced well so he remained standing.
“We’re not keeping you here,” Dalrin explained soothingly, “but you have to put that on first.” Dalrin pointed to the other orange suit that hung from the wall, identical to the one he currently wore.
Stowik quickly put on the suit and he and Dalrin exited the room. As they passed through the door Stowik saw a group of men in white coats on the other side of the reflective material, which was transparent from this end. They had been watching the whole time, and they couldn’t take their eyes of Stowik.
“You must be wondering if your rocket is all right,” started Dalrin, snapping Stowik back to attention. “It wasn’t damaged in the blast, but we haven’t moved it as we don’t know how to operate it. I ordered a constant guard on it so it does not fall into the wrong hands,” said Dalrin.
Stowik corrected Dalrin, “You are the wrong hands. Get your goons away from my hopper, you piece of shit.”
Dalrin’s lips creased into a subtle smile, “I am the wrong hands? My dear boy, what did those disgruntled savages tell you about me? All I’ve done is find a sustainable energy source and improve the Arksent quality of life. Surely that is not a crime?” he said with the air of performing a rehearsed speech.
They walked through long narrow passages with glossy white walls and bright overhead lights. They came across a security checkpoint and the guard stared curiously at Stowik for an uncomfortable period of time before waving them through. Dalrin opened the door and they continued through a large room filled with equipment of war. Stowik looked around and observed hanging on the wall hundreds of replicas of the plastic device Imbria first held to him. Numerous rovers were arranged neatly throughout the room. Stowik counted several dozen of these before he was led to the opposite side of the room to a large piece of equipment the size of a rover, but it wasn’t a rover. It was shiny and seemed to Stowik to be emitting light. Nothing reflects that much. Stowik had only seen a material like it before on a few occasions. Spacefall. Alpha India used the metal from meteorite impacts for their circuitry, but never in such huge amounts. Dozens of cylinders twenty meters long and one meter wide stood upright against the wall adjacent to the device and shared the machine’s strange luster.
“The original colonists called it metal. There’s nothing quite like it on Titan, besides the rare meteorite,” said Dalrin as he followed Stowik’s stunned gaze. Material from Earth?
“What is it?” asked Stowik as he pointed to the strange machine.
“That is our Sat-cannon. We used to send test-satellites into Titan’s orbit with it. We hoped that the satellites would shed some light on Titan’s weather patterns,” explained Dalrin.
Curious, Stowik asked, “Did they?”
Dalrin hesitated and then spoke, “Well, they would have. But when the energy crisis and the civil war broke out, the whole proejct was put on hold. You see, the Sat-cannon required an enormous amount of energy to power it. To launch one satellite would take up to a year of constantly pumping electricity into it. This technology was left over from the original colonists, and we don’t understand how it stores the energy.”
“Don’t you mean in a capacitor?” asked Stowik.
Dalrin shot him a quizzical look, clearly unfamiliar with the term ‘capacitor,’ and resumed his explanation, “The last launch, which by now was twenty years ago, was a failure, and as a result the project was nixed in favor of focusing our resources on the war effort.”
“What went wrong with the last launch?” asked Stowik.
“We lost contact with the satellite. That was, oh, 2500,” speculated Dalrin. “It wasn’t the first time we lost a satellite, though. Our first few launches caused the satellites to burn up in the atmosphere—the friction was so high. We found that reducing the charge, and thus the velocity, could prevent the satellites from burning up. But, the last launch was not at full power, so presumably it crashed somewhere on Titan’s surface.”
Stowik nodded and then pointed to the metal cylinders against the wall, “Were those the satellites?”
“In unfinished form,” replied Dalrin, “As I said, the Sat-cannon was left over from the original colonists along with those metal cylinders, which are the projectiles. We think that this thing was designed to be some kind of weapon. But, we found that we could shorten one of the projectiles and hollow it out to put our instrumentation in. Then, the Sat-cannon could launch it into orbit.”
“Why would the original colonists need a weapon that could fire into orbit?” asked Stowik.
Dalrin paused and looked down at Stowik, “Stowik, the original colonists never intended on landing here. It’s just as likely that they wanted to use it to fire from orbit,?
Dalrin guided Stowik past the Sat-cannon and they went through yet another door. Stowik looked at an enormous poster on the wall. It had big bright letters: “The Turbine, bringing the Arksent together.” Behind this was a backdrop of the Titan landscape with an enormous cylindrical tower sticking out of the ground, with a helmeted man standing next to it clearly guiding other workers. Stowik looked closer to see that the man in the poster was Dalrin.
“If your facilities and equipment are so advanced, why haven’t you defeated the Opposition yet?” asked Stowik.
Dalrin nodded, “We have more resources and infrastructure at our disposal, but defeating the Opposition is not our goal. We’d rather negotiate peace. Unfortunately, there’s no way to establish communications with them without locating their headquarters. The Opposition is completely off the grid. Which brings me to my next question: how did they find you?”
Stowik eyed him wearily, “I was looking for a way to replenish my colony’s ethane aquifer. I stumbled across an Opposition soldier. Speaking of soldiers, I’ve only seen people in uniform walking around here—where is everybody else? Kids, civilians?”
“Arksent is compartmentalized into four sections. At the age of sixteen, an Arksent can choose to specialize in food production, education, applied science and engineering, or mining and construction. My own boy just chose education. Oriya and I couldn’t be prouder! As you can imagine, each section works quite closely with the others, but are housed in different structures. This section houses applied science and engineering operations. Military operations also fall under this section, and our soldiers are doing a fine job sorting out this Opposition nonsense!” Dalrin added this last bit with a raised voice, receiving nods of thanks from passing soldiers in the hall. Dalrin stopped for a handshake with one of the men in uniform, plastering on a smile before sweeping Stowik further down the hall.
“Where exactly are we?” asked Stowik.
“We are in the Cortex, One kilometer below Ksa crater. Well, the crater rim.”
“The Cortex?” Stowik pressed.
“That’s what we call the applied science and engineering section. The Cortex,” repeated Dalrin.
They traveled through the white-walled passage for a number of minutes, taking sharp right angles occasionally as the passage diverged at intersections until they came through another door that lead to a breathtakingly large room filled with large tubes, silos, and dials.
This looks like the Concrete…But then…“This is an ethane processing plant,” said Stowik, half statement, half question.
Dalrin looked over at him, unsurprised. “Yes, atmospheric ethane used to fuel the entire Arksent. We’ve left it as a reminder to all that the energy crisis has been solved by the Turbine”
“Imb—” Stowik stopped himself, “—an Opposition soldier told me the Turbine is causing cryovol…,” Stowik repeated, racking his brains to remember the words..
Dalrin’s face grew red and he was instantly a hair away from Stowik’s face. “Cryovolcanic activity? It’s a propaganda stunt. The Opposition will lie through their teeth to recruit,” he spat, the words crawling across his tongue in a menacing tone.
Stowik froze. Dalrin backed off and rearranged his features into a forced, diplomatic half smile. He collected himself and kept walking. Stowik followed.
Dalrin sighed, “I apologize; that was unwarranted. This war took my daughter from me. You must understand my lingering bitterness,” he paused for a moment. “Unfortunately, it wouldn’t do well to take everything the Opposition says as truth. I’ll explain everything.”
He led them through a side door and into another glossy white room with an enormous rover in it. Stowik looked up in awe—the rover stood ten stories high and was many times bigger than even his hopper. That thing could hold at least a hundred people.
Dalrin stopped and faced Stowik. “Once, the Opposition was part of the Arksent.” So that much is true. “We discovered the location of a previously unknown colony of humans—your colony, incidentally. A group of us wanted to leave you be.”
“Why didn’t you want to reach out?” asked Stowik.
“We’ve been living separate for hundreds of years. We haven’t co-evolved, so we were concerned about the spread of disease through both populations. That’s the technical reason, but also we were afraid of a culture clash, and the possibility of the Arksent way of life influencing the development of your society. Safer just to leave you be. This wasn’t everyone’s school of thought, however. Quite a few people felt it was their responsibility as fellow humans to reach out. That was twenty years ago.”
“So they are waging a war over it?” challenged Stowik.
“Correct—or correct twenty years ago when the war broke out. At this point, the Opposition is strained for labor. They likely want to recruit you to help fight us,” responded Dalrin, “but they’ve been unable to find you. That is information we at the Arksent have been guarding quite carefully. As for Imbria? With a bounty that big on her head, her future relies on finding your colony, and ultimately staging a coup in the Arksent. Our intel shows she leads the scouting parties seeking to find your colony. Then, it was her idea as second in command of the Opposition to drain all of the liquid ethane aquifers in the area in an attempt to force you out.”
Second in command? Stowik felt his throat go dry. “Well, it worked. They know where to find us. They are already on the way to Alpha India,” he croaked.
Stowik saw Dalrin’s eyes go wide. “What? How?” he demanded.
“I told them. They said they were going to protect Alpha India. From you.”
And now they have a head start. How could I have been so stupid?
Dalrin immediately pushed a button on the side of his visor and spoke rapidly into the air. In moments, a steady stream of soldiers were flooding into the hangar, grabbing the plastic tube devices off the wall and putting on body armor.
“We can take you to your hopper, but we only have rovers. It may be too late before we get there,” said Dalrin urgently.
They backed into the previous room and jumped in a rover with several other soldiers. Large steel doors groaned as they opened and let the darkness outside into the stronghold. One by one, rovers began pouring out of the hangar onto the jagged icy terrain, partially revealing it with their feeble headlights. Dalrin spun the wheel of the rover he and Stowik had jumped in, and diverged from the pack. They drove on for a while, racing full speed in the darkness to the canyon rim where Stowik’s hopper was perched.