From: rauser@fraser.sfu.ca (Richard John Rauser)
Subject: Contact  (REPOST)
Organization: Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, B.C., Canada
Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1992 00:58:33 GMT






                       Contact





a story by Rick J. Rauser
(c) 1992 by WNI




"A faint, cold fear     
 Thrills through my veins."   
                 -Shakespeare   


    My new life began when I opened my eyes and realized that I remembered
nothing. The room was small and cramped and covered in dust. I was cold
and naked. My clothes were lying in a crumpled heap on the floor. I picked
myself up off the steel table I was lying upon and tried to ignore my
throbbing head. My bare feet were chilled by the cold concrete of the floor.
   There was a smashed robot crumpled in the far corner of the room, a needle
and syringe still clutched in one pincer. The blank optical lenses surveyed
the room with dead clarity. The robot scared me for some reason, though I
couldn't put my finger on it. I had a strange, disjointed memory of the thing
advancing towards me. I glanced back at the steel table, then back at the
syringe.
    After brushing the dust off of my clothes and my naked body I got dressed
and sat back on the table while my head pounded. I couldn't remember my name,
age, anything. I had no idea where I was or what I was doing here. I could
recall nothing about my life, not family, job, or anything else that might
give me a clue. I was a faceless stranger in a strange land...and as I thought
of that metaphor I remembered a book I had once read, but the name of the
author escaped me. 
    The door, fortunately, was open. The hallway beyond was dark and musty.
Rust coated everything. The place reeked of age and decay.
    I made my way down the hallway and through several corridors, all of which
were smashed and rotting. I saw skeletons with bony hands that still clutched
laser pistols, I saw  the charred remains of blasted robots, and I saw doors
that had been literally ripped from their hinges, presumably by androids.
Strange memories floated through my minds which eluded me as I tried to grasp
them. I saw myself sitting at a desk, talking to an important looking man,
I saw myself holding a gun and sneaking down a dark corridor, I saw a little
girl strapped to a table...she was crying...
     But the memories were only fragments and, in the end, told me nothing.
I was frustrated beyond description by the amnesia and continued to wander
through the massive, apparently deserted complex without weapon or equipment
of any kind, with nothing but the clothes on my back. 
     Another memory flashed through my mind, eluding my attempts to contain
it. I was wearing a dark jacket with bright lettering on the back, hiding
around a corner...
     I came out of this memory facing a large oak door that was slightly ajar.
Peering carefully inside I saw a huge room, the walls lined from floor to 
ceiling with books. There were several heavy oak tables in the center of
the room and the entire place reeked of age. Then I saw something else.
Sitting at one of the tables on the far side of the room was a
woman. She was flipping through a book and looked slightly nervous, though it
was difficult to make out exactly the expression on her face from this distance.
     I stepped back and considered. She could be a guard at this place, and
perhaps I am a prisoner. Some of the best fighters, I reminded myself, are 
females. On the other hand she could be like me...dazed, disoriented, not even
certain of why she is here. I surveyed the rusted walls around me and the 
rows of dust-covered tomes inside the library. The oak door itself looked
aged and decayed. Common sense told me this place was no longer in use. 
Everything I had seen thus far was either crumbling or smashed...even if the
woman were a guard, what would she still find here to protect?
     I made up my  mind and entered the library, walking slowly around the 
rows of tables and piles of scattered books until I stood before her. She
glanced up and a look of surprise crossed her face.   
     "Hello there," she said. Up close she was more beautiful than I had
first realized. Her hair was a dark brown, tied back in a ponytail and her
eyes were a clear, sharp green. She was wearing a one-piece blue jumpsuit
and the top three buttons were modestly done up.
     "Hi," I said carefully.
     There was an awkward silence.
     "Mind if I sit down?" I asked.
     "Please do," she said with a smile.
     I did so.    
     "So are you from around here?" she asked.
     "Ah...you might say that." I studied her carefully, sizing her up. I saw
no sign of a weapon and she seemed perfectly relaxed, though like me, she was
guarded.
     "I don't remember very much," she said with a nervous smile.
     "Really? Amnesia?" 
     "I guess so."
     "I don't remember anything either," I said with relief. It was good
to know I wasn't alone in this. "Just fragments, bits and pieces. I remember
something about a fight, and robots, and..." I paused, confused with teh
memory, and continued, "...and needles."
     "I don't even know that much. Not even my name."
     I considered this. I didn't remember my name either. "I've got the same
problem." 
     "Oh."
     Silence.
     "So...how about we try to get out of here?"
     "That's not such a good idea," she said nervously.
     "Why not?"
     "There are robots running around. Jazebro Senel 500, I think."
     I recognized that model name though I wasn't sure why. Deadly. I
considered. "Weapons?"
     "I don't know. I haven't seen any."
     I had seen some laser pistols clutched in dead hands from my initial
wanderings but they had all been rusted with age and decay.
     I looked around the library again. The only door was the one I had
entered through. I walked to the door and pushed it shut then locked it
from the inside.
     My knees began to feel weak and a throbbing started in my head. 
Was I drugged? Chemicals? I grabbed the edge of one of the tables to steady
myself.
     The woman walked towards me with concern on her face.
     A high-pitched scream suddenly rang through those ancient metal
walls. She stopped and listened, her eyes wide with fright.
     I was even weaker. I fell down.
     She came running to my side.
     All around us, the lights went out.
     So did I.

     Images. Children strapped to cold, metal tables. Robots. Screams. Blood.
I was running, I was horrified, I was looking through a window. A sea of
anguish and terror overwhelmed me as I glanced at something I could not
believe, that my mind could not accept. The buzzing of a saw...
     When I woke up she was cradling my head in her lap, looking concerned.
She was beautiful, like an angel.
     "I remember my name," she said quietly. "It's Carly."
     I smiled weakly. "Hi, Carly."
     I was sick from being drugged. I remembered that all at once. 
     Then I noticed we were in a different room. This one was smaller and was
bare of furnishings save three beds pressed against one wall - one of which I
was lying on - and a computer terminal on the other wall. There was dust
everywhere. A huge, hairy spider crawled casually across the terminal screen.
     "Where are we?" I asked weakly. 
     She gently smoothed back my hair and said, "When you collapsed I carried
you out of the library. I figured this room would be safer. The door here is 
electronically sealed. The Sentinels can't get in here."
     "Assuming the doors still work. This place looks so old," I noted. My head
still hurt, but less so.
     She smiled. "True." 
     I hesitated and sat up with great difficulty, somewhat reluctantly removingmy head from her  lap. "You remember anything else?" I asked.
     "No," she said.
     For some reason I wasn't entirely certain that I believed her.
 
     We stayed in that room for hours, trying to pull information out of 
the terminal. It was hooked into what seemed to be a huge mainframe and it
confirmed my suspicion that the whatever this place we were trapped in was,
it was huge. The date, according to the computer, was 2083. The computer also
told us that all security systems had been activated on June 5, 2030 at 1:14am.
Carly asked the system why the security systems had been activated, and after
bypassing various security codes - I was amazed at her hacking skills, but she
had no memory of how she had aquired them - it told us that an outside force
had attacked the institution.
     "Let me try," I said. Carly moved aside and I sat at the terminal.
     "What is the purpose of this institution?" I typed.
     INFORMATION CLASSIFIED appeared on the screen.
     I glanced at Carly. "Can you bypass this?"
     She shook her head. "It's some sort of CIA file. It's locked up tight."
     "Can you call up some sort of floor plan?"
     She nodded. "I can try." She took the keyboard and got to work.
     "I'm going out for a bit, see if there's anything useful around here." 
I walked to the door.
     "Be careful," she said. I glanced back at her and she was looking at me 
with genuine concern.
     I gave her a half-smile in reply and walked out.
     The hallway was like all the others, dark and musty and rusted with decay.
I walked as quietly as I could and tried to stay alert. I wasn't overly 
worried about running into a Sentinel Droid, though perhaps I should have
been. What I wanted was to find a weapon. 
     Another memory came out of nowhere, briefly running through my mind with
mocking speed. I saw a long line of limbs, artificial, mechanical limbs, 
submerged in stasis fluid. There were men in white lab coats...I remember
being tied down.
     I stopped suddenly and leaned against the wall as my head once more began
pounding. I knew I had been drugged, and I felt quite certain that it was with
something that had been used to put  me to sleep. Something the computer had
told us kept bothering me. The current date was 2083 and the computer had told
us that the installation -the complex - whatever, had been attacked in 2030.
Which raised an interesting question: How long had we been here? I kept seeing
images of this place without rusted walls or dust-covered tables, seeing
fully functional Sentinel droids and men in white lab coats. And children...
so many children.
     Now there seemed to be nothing. Rust, dust, cobwebs, smashed equipment.
_And active Sentinel Droids_, I reminded myself. I considered that...
     I had stepped into another room, not far from the library. There was a
stasis cocoon at the far end, inside which I saw a child. It was a girl, perhaps
eight or nine years of age. She was floating in the yellow-green hibernation
fluid. Electrodes were attached to her naked chest.
     She had no arms. Bloody stumps dangling torn tissue were all I could see.
     Her eyes were wide open, frozen in time. Her mouth was open wide in a 
silent scream of horror.
     She was dead.
     I thought.

     Carly was horrified at what I found and she drained the cocoon of the life
fluid. The little girl's body slumped to the bottom. I helped Carly open the
front and we carefully pulled the girl out. She was dead; Carly studied the
readouts on the cocoon and decided the hibernation fluid had been contaminated.
I stared at the girl's body. No arms. I felt a strange, numbing fear run
through my blood, a feeling that I was glimpsing something that I had no right
to see, something that would inevitably bring me to my death.
     Carly was less philosophical. She said gently, "I think we should get back 
to the room and get some rest. We're both in pretty strung out shape and we
should rest up before we do any more exploring." She paused. "We have to   
try and get out of here." She touched my arm with her beautiful fingers.
     "Yes," I said quietly. "Of course you're right."

     We sealed the door and each took a bed and I fought back an urge to climb
into hers with her, knowing that she would, at the very best, not be overly
impressed. But even if she were receptive to sexual advances, there was a
feeling I had that it wouldn't be right, that there was something inherently
wrong with the idea.
     She set the terminal to monitor for motion in the hall. "Hopefully this
will work," she said with a smile. "It should wake us up if there's something
moving out there." 
     I smiled back at her and went to sleep.

     I saw a long assembly line. There were rows and rows of maintenance droids,too many to count, stationed at intervals along the impossibly long treadmill.
The treadmill was covered with blood.
     Carly was standing there smiling. I turned to her and asked, horrified,
what was going on.
     "43-90-87 Jazebro," she said with a smile.
     I woke up in a cold sweat. The room was dark and silent around me, the
clear green letters on the terminal shining like tiny beacons. I looked over at
Carly. She was fast asleep, her beautiful auburn hair spilling over the pillow
like a child's.
     "Michael," I said to myself quietly. "My name's Michael."
     I fell back into a tormented slumber.

     I wished there was more I could have told her but all I knew when we
awoke was that my name was Michael, and she seemed happy to know it. We
went exploring again. Every passage we followed was in the same state:
rust, decay, smashed robots, human bones, brittle with age. 
     We found more children. More cocoons. Some of them had no arms,
some no legs, some no eyes. We also came across a huge chamber which 
had nothing but mechanical limbs. There was a human skeleton in one corner,
clutching a shotgun. I took the gun from the bony hands with careful
respect for the dead and inspected it carefully. It was loaded. I was
slightly surprised that I knew how to use it. It felt good.
     We had just left the room when the door slid shut behind us, surprising
us both. Carly turned to the wall panel and hit a few buttons.
     "Some sort of automatic  lock-out," she said, more to herself than
to me. 
     Suddenly she screamed and jerked her hand away from the panel. At the
same time my brain registered the sound of a sharp crack. I turned and saw
a Sentinel droid down the corridor, a gun extended from its chest panel,
the barrel smoking.
     Carly slid to the floor.
     I cocked the shotgun and fired three times, blasting the droid
apart. The first two bursts tore the chest cavity to pieces, and the 
third demolished the head.
     It felt good to fire the gun but I was surprised at how proficient
I was at it. I had reacted on instinct alone.
     I ran to Carly who was cradling her hand. "Are you okay?" I put down
the gun and crouched beside her.
     She jerked away from me. "I'm fine," she said quickly. I saw her 
wrapping the hand with some cloth but her back was now facing me and I
couldn't see for certain what she was doing. 
     "Let me help you," I said.
     "I'm fine," she assured me. She stood up, keeping the hand inside
her jumpsuit. "It only knicked me."
     "Are you sure?" 
     She smiled. "Yes."
     I glanced down the hallway as I picked up the shotgun. "We better 
not hang around here too long. I want to find the central control room,
if there is such a thing in this place. We should be able to call up
some floorplans and figure out how to get out of here."
     "Yes," she agreed.  

     We walked for hours. All of the terminals we came across were smashed
and useless, and we got no further information from the terminal we had
been using before. One thing didn't change, however: there was no sign
of life. 
     Something else had been bothering me, something I had been unable
to  put my finger on. I remembered walking through this place when it
was still active, fifty-three years ago. I wasn't sure how old I was,
but I doubted if I were over thirty-five. I had lain on that table
for fifty-three years. It made no sense. All I could guess was that 
the drug I knew I had been injected with had put me in some sort of
comatose state. Something like that.
     Questions, questions, questions. Carly didn't seem to have any.
She was beautiful, and brilliant, and brave, but she didn't seem to 
have the same frustration that tormented me. She didn't seem afraid,
or confused. It bothered me. 
     The robots, the children, the factory. I knew there was a missing  
piece to this puzzle. What it was I had no idea.
     Carly stopped me. Up ahead there was a buzzing noise, echoing down
the dismal corridor, snapping me from my reflection. I held the shotgun
ready and carefully made my way down, Carly behind me.
     It was a maintenance droid, repeatedly ramming itself into the wall.
The room here was large and cluttered with tables. Paper was scattered
everywhere. Some sort of office, I guessed.
     The droid was comical, but harmless. 
     "This room looks familar," Carly said.
     "Really? You know where we are?"
     She nodded. "Yes, I think so." She gave my hand a squeeze. "Follow
me."
     She led us through the office and down a flight of stairs, then
through another endless jumble of corridors and stairwells. But in the
end, she obviously knew what she was doing, because before long we found
the central control room.
      There were about twenty or thirty terminals in a circle with chairs
facing each one. I counted ten skeletons slumped in the chairs, some
with rotted remains of clothing hanging from their bones, others with 
nothing. I glanced up and saw about fifteen monitors affixed to the ceiling.
Two of them still displayed readouts of incomprehensible information.
      "What can you do here?" I asked. 
      Carly laughed. "Just watch me." She made her way to one of the 
 terminals and flipped it on, then got to work. Within minutes she had
bypassed the front-line security and was calling up all sorts of charts. 
      "Carly, why do you suppose those children are in those cocoons?
Why are they all mutilated in some way?" It was the first time we had
brought the subject up. 
       She paused and half-turned from the screen. "I don't know," she
said in a somber tone. 
       "I keep having flashes," I said quietly, "seeing droids and the
children, and hearing screaming, and so much blood..." I trailed off.
       Carly hesitated, then said, "Whatever was going on here, this
place has obviously been shut down. Let's focus on getting out before
we either die of thirst or get mauled by an active Sentinel Droid."
       I nodded. "You're right."
       She smiled gently. "We'll be all right."
       "I know."
       She got back to work and I sat down on the other side of the
chamber. My headache, thankfully, was diminishing and I felt that I was
getting over the drugs that were flowing through my system.
       The children...the droids...and...
       I remembered something else. I had snuck in here, into this
massive place, this towering (factory) in the middle of...the desert. 
       "We're in the middle of the desert," I said to Carly, excited with
this sudden knowledge.
       "Arizona," she said.
       I walked over to her. "What have you got?"
       She sighed. "Not as much as I would have liked, but the basics.
We're somewhere in the Arizona Dune Sea, but our exact location is 
classified. This place is called Population Rehabilitation Center #2234,
but its purpose is also classified."        
       I licked my lips. My heart was pounding in my chest. "What do you
think this place is for?" I asked her. I had been part of an infiltration...
had been captured...then a raid...I must have been missed...
       "I'm not sure," she said. She hit another key and a detailed area
map appeared. "We're right above this area here," she said, pointing, "which
is Hanger Bay 4. According to this they store their ATVs there. We can 
get one of those fired up and get the hell out of here."
       "Phoenix?" I asked.
       "A safe bet," she agreed.
       Something was bothering me, nagging at me, something I still
couldn't remember. Absently, I said, "Great work." Then I hesitated 
and kissed her.
       She was surprised, but let me. Then she hesitated and put her
arms around my neck and kissed me thoroughly. We held each other for
what seemed like a long time.
       "Let's go," I whispered.
       "Okay," she smiled.
 
       Who ran Population Rehabilitation Center #2234? The question pounded
at me over and over as we made our way to one of the ration supply rooms
Carly had found on the diagram. I knew that I had been part of a...a plan 
to shut it down, to shut a lot of places like it down. But who ran them?
Was it the government? Was I part of the government also? Was I a criminal?
       I remembered the raincoat with the bright lettering that I had
worn. I decided I had to find it.
       "Carly, load up on the rations and take them down to the ATV. 
I'll catch up in a minute. I have to find something first."
       "What?" she said, confused.
       "Something I lost." I handed her the shotgun. "I'll be back."

       Using the terminal that Carly had fired up I located a room called
Subject Lockers. It rung a bell, triggering another memory. I checked
the location. It wasn't far away; two levels up.

       There were hundreds of small lockers in this room, some of them 
rusted shut, some smashed open. Needle in a haystack. I walked up and
down the rows for several minutes before finding one marked,
   HATCHER, MICHAEL J.   And I knew it was mine.
       I pulled it open. Inside I found my dark blue raincoat. It said
FBI on the back in bright yellow letters. I also found a wallet and a
gun. The wallet contained fifty-six dollars and a driver's license as
well as a badge and an FBI I.D. card. The gun was an automatic pistol,
a Jazebro Mongoose. Powerful. FBI issue. I left the jacket and the
wallet but took the gun.
        I searched the room for several minutes more but didn't find
a locker with Carly's name on it.
        There's probably dozens, maybe even hundreds of rooms like this
one, I reminded myself.
        Probably.

        I had taken twenty minutes and decided I should get back to the
ATV before Carly started to worry. But I felt so close to that final,
elusive memory that I decided I had to do something else. I went back
to the Central Control room and sat down at the terminal again.
        HELP, I typed.
        READY, the system replied.
        I considered. Carly had already said that the purpose of the
institution and the organization behind it were classified. So I tried
something different.
        WHY IS PREVIOUSLY REQUESTED INFORMATION CLASSIFIED?
        The answer to that question was also classified. I thought of
Carly's skill with the previous terminal and it bothered me that she
couldn't crack this one.
        I sat at the terminal in complete frustration. The children
were used for their bodies, I reasoned, but also their minds. I thought
hard and remembered seeing something about cerebral implanting, or
memory implanting...something like that.    
        I noticed a cloth lying on the floor. I picked it up and
examined it, mildly puzzled. There was a faint, acrid scent and I
saw that it was soaked with a yellowish fluid. I dropped it.
        I had been an FBI agent who had infiltrated this place, been
captured, then forgotten when the large-scale attack had been launched.
        But who were we attacking?
        And why?
        I got up and left the terminal.

        "I was about to come looking for you," Carly said, a pained
expression on her face. "What took so long?"
        "I found a gun," I said with a smile. "I have a feeling the
worst isn't over."
        "You're probably right," she said. She embraced me and I hugged
her back, enjoying her beautiful scent.
        We settled back into our respective chairs. I started up the
engines and guided the ATV out through the gate. Carly punched up
some information on the navigation computer.
        The desert before us stretched out for an eternity. The sky
was a bleak orange, the sun a faint blot in the distance.
        Behind us, Population Rehabilitation Center #2234 clawed at
the sky, towering over us like a gnarled oak in a haunted forest.          
It was huge. It looked like a small city.
        I looked at Carly. "How's your hand?"
        She smiled tenderly, rubbing it. "Better."
        I saw that her bandage was gone.
        That's when I understood.
        I stared at her for a moment, then out at the vast, empty 
desert.
        The only question was, what do I do now?



--
Richard J. Rauser   The Bat       The Cat       The Penguin
rauser@sfu.ca
WNI                               June 19

 

  	   
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