Human Pet
Chapter 4
They climbed out of the van and looked around. Zerok had driven it to a new location where he could conceal it.
DBC ports were only allowed to be installed on human pets. The treaty which had ended the war forbade their use in normal humans. It was langauge that existed due to the human fear that the inorganics would turn them all into pets. Insertion of a DBC port into a regular human was punishable by whatever a human jury decided was appropriate for the guilty party.
“She’s a store worker. She sees probably hundreds of people a day. Surely others have noticed it.”
“Her hair is pretty long, but still if it were me I wouldn’t just put her out there in public.” Zerok replied.
“We gotta go back and find out how she got that port.”
“Later, after the sun sets. For now lets wake up Jessica.”
The sleeping chip was removed. Jessica’s eyes fluttered open and she yawned. She looked at Zerok and smiled.
“We got you a present for you. Here you go.”
He handed her the mouse. She held it in her hands, rotated it, then ran her fingers over it. She smiled and stroked its head.
They let her out of the van to explore a bit and do her business. She walked around and looked at the plantlife. She spotted a cactus and for a second Molly thought she was going to accidentally stick herself. Jessica looked at it, but didn’t touch it.
“So who would be inserting DBC chips into these people, and for what purpose?”
“Pets with higher intelligence would be my guess.” Zerok replied.
“Could that be it? Could that city be some kind of hidden resort for owners who want intelligent human pets?”
“It doesn’t add up. If that’s what it is, why haven’t we seen more inorganics? Also, that’s the only person with the port out of the humans we’ve seen so far. And considering it’s illegal, they’d be taking more steps to hide it.”
The twilight faded to a deep purple. The coyotes would be prowling about soon. Jessica was now safely back inside the van, fast asleep.
“Okay Molly we’re sneaking in covertly. By the time we walk there it’ll be totally dark. We’re staying off the paths and entering through the desert scrub. Walk on plants and rocks to leave as few signs as possible. Once in the city we’re sticking to the roads or other hard surfaces to avoid leaving footprints. If we find a suitable computer, I’ll interface with it and search for anything related to pets or DBC ports.”
“Should we try to track down that girl?”
“As a last resort. I’d rather not confront her about it if it can be avoided. It’s unpredictable how she’d react.”
The city had no night life. When they got there, the lights were off, the doors were closed, and the streets were empty. The 4 legged reason was apparent. Coyotes. These weren’t the ones that roamed the plains two centuries ago and ate small mammals. These were big hulking, stupid beasts that saw humans as tasty sacks of meat. A product of some lucky genetic mutations caused by radioactive fallout, they came out only at night. They were the main reason why humans in these parts went indoors after the sun set.
A coyote on the street stared at Zerok and Molly before indifferently moving on. Inorganics had no meat on them. To Zerok and Molly, the sight of the coyote was rather comforting. No humans would be outside to bother them.
“No public access terminals that I can see.”
“No, if there were I’d be surprised. We’re going to have to break into a building.” Zerok replied.
They went back to the store which was now dark and silent. The lock on the door was a crude padlock and chain. One hard yank and the lock popped open.
A search of the entire store yeilded no computers, and nothing of importance. They took care not to disturb anything. When they left, Zerok replaced the chain and even managed to make the padlock look like it was still locked.
“Now what?”
“We find a building that’s likely to have computers in it. Over there is what looks like a small office tower. It’s close to the center of the city. It’s probably an administration building.”
As they headed for the center of the city, a bad scenario appeared in Molly’s mind.
“What if we’re walking into a trap?”
“Yeah, I have the same feeling. Well if we are, we’ll likely find out what’s going on here. Or if they’re smart they’ll quickly eliminate us.”
The office building was just as dark as the buildings that surrounded it. While better built then the shop, its doors were secured with simple non electronic locks. Since they planned to be gone long before morning and nobody was around, Zerok forced the door open.
They found a computer behind a secretary’s desk. He powered it up, waited for it to boot, then began browsing its contents. It was an IX system, a derivitive of an old computing system. Outdated and easily compromised. He established a wireless connection and was past the security in less then a minute.
“Nothing interesting on the machine itself, but there’s a whole network in here. This might take a little while.”
And so he scanned through the data stores on the network. It was just mundane crap. Payroll, customer lists, shipping dates. Shipping what he couldn’t find.
Then he came across a block of encrypted data. He checked the encryption pattern to see if it matched the data he had seen in Molly’s head.
“Bingo.”
“What did you find?”
“Encrypted data with a pattern that matches yours.”
“Can you decrypt it?”
“No. There is a decryption key file here, but it’s locked in an encrypted folder with a different encryption pattern. I can’t open the files, but the filenames here are an odd string of numbers. 33.628342-114.43... Wait a second.”
Zerok ran the numbers through his database and came up with a match for geographical coordinates. And those coordinates brought up an area near the river which once separated Arizona and California, right near I-10.
“These appear to be geographical coordinates for a place about 138 miles west from here. I think that’s where we’ll find some answers.”
Back in the van, heading west again. Zerok kept the headlights off, relying on his night vision to guide them. He had the pedal to the floor, and the van was doing about 90 on the flat terrain. Just a few miles west of the city was another small town. They passed it by. They saw a huge crater, created centuries ago by a non nuclear warhead. Other then that, the drive was uneventful.
Time passed. Molly looked out the window at the rolling landscape as it whizzed by. She began to feel some slight echo of familiarity. She started paying closer attention and scanning the features in detail. They were about four miles from the coordinates when Molly recognized one of the rocks.
“I see something! Stop!”
Zerok hit the reverse thrusters and the vehicle came to a halt. They got out and looked around. Molly began to backtrack. She was sure of what she had seen. She just had to find the right spot. The big boulder had caught her eye. She had seen it for only half a second, but that was enough to identify it as the one in the memory.
“Yes! Yes there it is! The rock from the memory! Okay lets get lined up here.”
She began walking forward and sidestepping, trying to make the image in her memory line up with what she was seeing now. The sign that had been there was gone, but she was able to use the bolder to line herself up.
“This is it. She stood right here. The sign’s gone, but the rest of it matches.”
“I agree. Identical rock, same landscape. It fits. It also tells me we’re dead on with those coordinates.”
“Satellite view just shows desert there.” Molly replied.
“Something else is there. Camoflauged or under the ground. I’m sure of it.”
Ten miniutes later, they arrived at the coordinates, and just as the satellite view showed, there was nothing but desert. The river could be heard very faintly.
“Start looking on the ground for signs of an entrance. I’m certain there’s a subterranean complex beneath our feet.”
“Why are you so sure?”
“During the war, both sides built bunkers. Fighting went on in this area, and if humans wanted to build a bunker out here, they would need water. There’s no sign of above ground structures, and this location matches the coordinates.”
They both started scanning the ground.
“What if we find an entrance and the place is inhabited?”
“Then we’ll probably have one hell of a fight on our hands.” Zerok replied.
They searched for almost half an hour, finding nothing but sand and desert scrub.
“There’s nothing here Zerok. Maybe it was a temporary building and they packed up and moved years ago.”
“Possible, but... I dunno. Call it a hunch. Lets keep going for another half hour, then we’ll wake Jessica up so she can stretch her legs and do her business.”
They searched for another ten minutes when Molly’s foot got caught in an old rusty chain buried in the sand. She nearly lost her balance, but steadied herself and grabbed the chain.
They followed the chain, pulling it up out of the ground. After about 8 feet, the chain split into two chains that went into the sand about four feet apart.
“Lets start pulling on it and see what happens.”
Whatever the chain was connected to, it didn’t want to budge. Both of them combined exerted about 1600 pounds of pulling force, but the chain didn’t budge.
“Lets try pulling it the other way.”
They moved to the other side of where the chain was anchored and started pulling. The chain began to move. A slit appeared in the ground.
“I knew it! Keep pulling!”
The slit gradually widened to the point where they could slip in. There was a corroding but still sound ladder that lead down into the darkness.
Zerok turned on his lights. His eyes lit up like mini headlights. He began to climb down into the bunker. Molly soon followed.
“Well we don’t have to worry about this place being inhabited. No one’s been in here for awhile.” Zerok said.
“What do you see?” Molly didn’t have the same type of eyes that Zerok had. Zerok’s eyes were combat unit enhanced, with infrared that all inorganics could see, but that only his eye type could emit. Humans wouldn’t be able to see anything, but Molly saw beams of light coming from each of his eyes.
Molly thought it made him look a bit creepy.
“I see computers, I see electronic equipment, and I see doors.”
He walked over to one of the doors and opened it.
“How about that, there’s computers in here too. Some of them look like they’ve been smashed in.”
His eyes swept the room.
“Somebody trashed this room. There’s broken stuff on the floor, smashed computers and broken lights.”
They left the room and tried one of the other doors. Just an empty room. They tried another door. Zerok saw concrete steps descending into the darkness. A second level. Most bunkers didn’t have a second level, certainly not wartime bunkers. However he noticed a difference in the concrete. It was smoother. He found the border between the smooth and the rougher concrete.
“This wasn’t part of the original design. This was added on later.”
As they descended, it became more apparent that this second level had been added within the last 30 years. Zerok recognized some of the electric cabling that ran along the ceiling. He had done some rewiring in his home a couple years ago, and the cabiling was the same type.
Then he came across something which definitely had to be recent.
“Holy shit!” he said as he looked at the refrigerator sized device.
“What is it?”
“It’s a micro nuclear reactor! An entire reactor from radioactive fuel to cooling system! It probably powers this whole bunker!”
“Whoa. Is it safe?”
“Yeah. They operate at low power, only about 10 kilowatts. The radioactive material is sealed in the middle of the thing. They don’t overheat or anything like that, so no meltdowns. They’re disposable units that typically last about 40 years, which means this baby may have some life left in it.”
He started examining it, looking for a power switch. He found it and flipped it.
There was a loud click as a large relay somewhere in the room was activated. The lights came on, bathing the room in an eerie off white glow.
“Oh excellent! Luck is on our side! Come on lets see if we can get some of those computers up and running.”