The silence of the night was broken by the faint scrape of metal on pavement. Ruben winced at the noise and stopped to secure the offending tool, ensuring that it wouldn't poke out of its pocket again. He had just started to penetrate Biomia's defences, not yet far enough in that such a small sound would give him away, but it might have done so later. This wasn't exactly an encouraging beginning to tonight's job.
Ruben was not one to believe in omens or luck, however. Having fixed the problem, he saw no rational reason to be hesitant in going on. So onward he went, down the utility tunnel and under Biomia's lab complex. It was a route so obvious and cliched that normally it would be foolish to try; indeed, the tunnel was riddled with sensors that were watching his every move. But the tunnel was weak in another way, one less tangible than concrete and motion detectors. An associate had, at reasonable cost, hacked the city's maintenance computers and given him a forged ID card. As far as the city and Biomia's computers were concerned, he had every right to be here.
As he walked openly down the deserted tunnel, Ruben reflected that if Biomia had relied less on those computers these little holes wouldn't be exploitable and he would have a much harder time getting in. Ironic, really. Biomia's area of expertise was in animal macroengineering, yet they hadn't even saw fit to place ordinary guard dogs on the premises. Perhaps, knowing living things so well, they were too aware of their weaknesses and not enough aware of the computer's. No matter. Ruben dismissed the chain of thought as he reached the next stage of his plan.
He had reached the closest manhole to his goal that he could get to without being flagged as an intruder, and from here on he would be at constant risk of discovery. Getting out tools and wire, he bypassed the manhole's lock sensors and climbed up into a parking lot. A car, carefully parked by bribery, shielded him from the security cameras as he replaced the cover and opened a small junction box. It was dedicated to the parking lot's car recharging system, but as with all power systems these days there were data cables in there as well. Working fast, he spliced a small box into them.
Waiting tensely, the minutes ticked by as the custom-designed viral program snuck through I/O ports and into power system processors. Finally, a little green light flickered on the box. Fervently hoping the box had been worth the price, Ruben stood up and walked across the lot to the building's door. No sirens sounded; the green light remained flickering. Ruben smiled. The stupid computer had been convinced that its sensors were being temporarily fuzzed by a geomagnetic storm, and was busy switching over to shielded lines. It would be blind for several minutes.
Wasting no time, Ruben opened the lock and went inside. Another little box was connected to the keypad next to the door, and within minutes he was again considered authorized personnel. This time the computer thought he was a janitor with access to all the halls in the building. He smiled grimly. This hack had been even easier than the computer outside, but he would have to be more careful not to run into anyone. He was playing a game with big stakes, and was now approaching the most dangerous stage of the mission.
Walking down the hall toward the lab rooms, he made a mental inventory to be sure he was ready for it. There were three adjacent rooms that might contain his target; one for animal storage, one for actual chemical and biological work, and one design lab. The design lab was probably his goal, but beyond that he hadn't been able to get much in the way of information. He didn't even know which room was which, though he could extrapolate enough about the security systems that he felt confident of fooling them. There remained an element of uncertainty, however, and he might have to get out in a hurry.
Arriving at the first of the three doors, Ruben checked his own sensors for watchmen and then began to work. First, he quickly overcame the door's locks and sensors. Breaking the seal and opening the door a crack, he slid a tiny sensor wand into the room. No ultrasonics, no IR, no EM fields or active cameras. There were only lasers. Ruben frowned. This seemed too easy, but it did fit Biomia's pattern. They sometimes used a shell defence strategy, which would mean that he'd already passed the tough stuff. Withdrawing the sensor, he put on his goggles and slipped quickly inside.
Ruben examined the room slowly and carefully. The goggles enhanced the dim light to full visibility, and outlined the laser tripwires in red. They formed a sparse grid on the floor, obviously only good for catching someone who didn't know they were there. Ruben would be able to step over them easily. But he could also see the reason for the lax security, and silently cursed. This didn't look like the design lab. Still, he decided that he should make sure before leaving to try the next room.
There were racks of small cages along one wall, containing small animals that were probably rats or mice, and other shelves held supplies related to them. A bare table was in the middle of the room, with a sink and other utilities but no computers. And along the other wall . . . Ruben froze. There were three large reinforced windows, each next to a small door. The cubicles beyond the glass had padded walls and cots, like psychiatric cells, and lying on one of the cots was a large hairy form. Ruben could easily see that it wasn't an animal, or a man. He'd known Biomia was experimenting with bioroids, animals designed to do human jobs, but he'd never seen this particular type before.
Checking a sensor for pressure plates or silent alarms, Ruben cautiously stepped over the lasers to get a better look. He really shouldn't be bothering with this, but his curiosity was piqued and if he didn't look now he'd never find out what it was. Leaning close to the glass without touching it, he adjusted his goggles and peered inside. The bioroid was a good approximation of humanoid form, the proportions being roughly right even if the details weren't. It was obviously of bovine stock with hooves, a tail, and a bull's head. A minotaur out of greek legend; large and muscular, especially in the shoulders, it was probably designed for hard labor and construction work.
Still examining the sleeping bioroid, Ruben distractedly put the sensor he had used back into its pocket. It slipped, and Ruben's heart clenched with sudden fear as it fell from his grasp. He retained the presence of mind not to make a grab for it; the last thing he needed to do right now was to knock it into the lasers. But he still winced as it hit the floor; the noise seemed almost as bad. Standing frozen as the clatter faded, Ruben strained to hear the sound of alarms. He couldn't hear any, so he bent to pick up the fallen sensor. Then he froze again as the sleeping bioroid twitched its ear, groaned, and turned over in its cot. Shoddy design! He thought angrily. That cell should be soundproof! Holding his breath, he hoped the bioroid would go back to sleep.
His hopes were dashed as the tossing bioroid bumped a horn against the wall. Though the blow wasn't very hard it grunted in pain, grabbed its head with blunt two-fingered hands, and blinked bleary black eyes. Then it looked directly at him and moaned softly. Ruben looked back, momentarily held by the bioroid's gaze. It looked at once puzzled, fearful, and pleading. Then, with an expression of dawning comprehension, it crawled off the cot and staggered unsteadily to its hind legs while grunting urgently and incomprehensibly. Ruben almost took a step back into the lasers, but kept a grip on himself and turned to watch where he stepped. He had to get out of the room, and fast, before anything more went wrong. Silently cursing his curiosity and clumsiness, he hurried out the door.
The bioroid pressed his muzzle against the glass, watching the thief leave. A tear trickled down his broad, hairy cheek. If only I could still talk . . . he thought longingly, and sat heavily back on the cot. OW! Damn tail . . .
Ruben closed the door behind him, and took a moment to regroup. That had obviously been the animal storage room. The next room down the hall would probably be the working lab, then, and the one after that the design lab. But should he abort? He had been seen, and if security was alerted he would have just enough time to get away. But it had only been a bioroid, a caged research animal. It hadn't seemed very clever, he reflected, and training was one of the major costs of producing bioroids, so perhaps they hadn't bothered teaching it how to speak. That made sense. Calming himself down and checking his sensors for silent alarms he might have tripped, he decided that he was too close to back out now. He could finish the job and be out within minutes. Wasting no more time, he walked to the third door in line.
Working carefully but more quickly this time, he unlocked the lab's door and inserted his sensors. He had to restrain himself from working too quickly; if this was indeed the design lab, it would be better protected than the animal storage had been. And it was; he detected laser, IR, and cameras within. This would take some time to defeat, and he again questioned the wisdom of continuing. But no silent alarms were active; he still hadn't triggered any security devices. So he pushed the thought out of his mind and focused on his work.
When he finally heard the sound of the guards running down the hall, he barely had time to leap to his feet and trigger the destruct on his data modules before he collapsed under a barrage of stunner fire.
Ruben was barely aware as they picked up his limp form and carried him through a door, searching him and securing him to a padded surface. Through the numbing haze of the stun he heard people talking, coming and going. He couldn't make out any words, but they seemed to be arguing. After a long but uncertain time the stun finally started to wear off, his twitching muscles beginning to obey him again and the room coming into blurry focus. He subtly tested his bonds, hoping they had only taken into account an unconscious prisoner. No good; he was tied tight. He heard someone say "he's awake," and the voices died down.
Ruben turned his head toward the voice. A small cluster of men stood beside his platform, a mixed bunch wearing lab coats and security uniforms. One of the lab-coated men seemed to stand out, clearly in charge; the others stood slightly and respectfully away from him. He turned to a security man and told him "go and check with Chief Sampson. I think he'll agree to my handling this, and we won't do anything irreversible until you're back. I'll just start the preliminaries while I wait." The guard nodded and left the room. Then the lab-coated man went to a cabinet and loaded a hypospray. "Just a mild truth serum," he explained as he gave him a small dose and checked his watch. Ruben tried to suppress his nervousness, but even with the stun's remaining aftereffects he remained tense.
"All right then, young man. Who do you work for and what were you after?"
"I work for Palamar." Ruben answered immediately, speech still slightly slurred by the stun. He knew that no human, no matter how well trained, could resist modern interrogation drugs in the end. It was best to cooperate fully, to save himself the discomfort of harsher chemicals later. "I don't know what I was after."
"No?" The man seemed slightly puzzled. "How would you find it?"
"I mean that I don't know the exact purpose of my job," Ruben explained, keeping his voice calm. "I was to get into the design lab, where I was told would be two GeneBlaster workstations. I was given data modules to plug into them, presumably to copy data or insert viruses."
The man nodded and muttered "they were probably after the restructuring genes . . ." under his breath. Then, after a long, thoughtful pause, he continued. "Palamar's good. They wouldn't hire a dummy, or tell him more than he needed to know. I think I believe you." Ruben relaxed slightly. But there was still the possibility that he'd seen too much here already, and Biomia could easily afford to make him disappear. The slight buzz of the truth serum couldn't hide that unpleasant possibility.
It did, however, make him a little reckless. "If I may ask," Ruben asked, "how did you catch me? I didn't detect any silent alarms go off." They were undoubtably going to change the security system anyways, so there seemed no harm in asking.
The man seemed unperturbed. "The experimental subject you found is wired with medical sensors. When he woke up, a tech turned on a camera and saw you there. He called the guards directly."
"Oh." Ruben said with a sense of irony. Biomia had ended up relying on living guards, after all, even if not an intentional one. And he, himself, had relied too much on his knowledge of the state of Biomia's silent alarms to decide when to run.
"And speaking of the experimental subject . . ." The man continued. Uh oh, Ruben thought, and started to sweat slightly. "Tell me everything you saw."
Ruben tried to focus his description on the room itself, trivial details about the size of the table and number of rat cages. But important items about the bioroid he'd seen also slipped out, and Ruben feared that those items were damning.
The man remained silent for some time. "Unfortunately," he resumed at last, "we can't tell exactly how much Palamar knew when they sent you here." Ruben winced as he received this confirmation of his fears. He knew too much. "What you saw could be useful to them," the man continued heedlessly, "it could at the very least tell them how far we've gotten in our work."
Before he could continue further, however, the guard he'd sent away earlier returned and the man turned to speak quietly with him in the corner. While they talked, Ruben's gaze darted around the room. The drug had weakened his composure, and he was starting to panic.
The man came back smiling. "Good news, for all concerned," he said. "I've used my influence as head of research, and you're going to live." Ruben let out a breath, but remained wary. "Why?"
"You're going to be useful in helping me finish this project," the man explained. "A new way to make bioroids, quickly and economically." Ruben didn't want to hear about the project, every word dug him deeper into his hole. But at the same time a terrible sense of foreboding gripped him and he felt a need to know.
"Basically, I take a normal adult human and inject a virogenic macrophage that turns him into a bioroid. No need for tanks, gestation, or all that much in the way of teaching. When we finish working out the designs, we'll get a steady supply of raw material from the jails, or perhaps welfare . . ."
"No!" Ruben cried, realizing exactly what, or rather who, he had seen in the room next door and exactly what kind of help he could give to Biomia's research.
"Oh, don't be such a baby!" The man snapped back. "Sure, we haven't got the change process balanced exactly right, yet. We lose speech and some manual dexterity. That's why we're doing a brute-labor-type prototype design first, you see? It's marketable as-is. But we haven't figured out how to do a selective mindwipe yet, so you'll still be you. Better than death, eh?"
Ruben wasn't so sure, but he was hardly in a position to argue. Instead he strained at his bonds, thinking perhaps to escape and avoid both options. But the bonds were meant to hold creatures far stronger than he, and the man waited patiently while he exhausted himself.
"Finished? Good. Now, we'll give you a quick physical workup, that'll take maybe a day. Then we get to work. The process isn't too painful, but it's tiring." The man began to walk away, writing on a pad. As he left, he spoke over his shoulder "Oh, by the way, since we'll be seeing each other a lot over the next few weeks; I'm Doctor Gormel. Pleased to meet you."
END (Not really. Bryan has promised me a sequel - th)
Please address all comments or questions to Bryan Derksen at bderksen@gpu.srv.ualberta.ca