Chapter 1.4

Freeman was in his office, outside of Honolulu. He felt very sick, probably because of what he had witnessed in the last few days. He knew that most people on the Earth felt that Willem Wallace, his brother, deserved to die for what he had done to so many people, and if he was honest, he agreed, but there was still a part of him that felt that Willem had deserved more.

There was a knocking at his door. He tried to say come in, but he couldn’t get the words out. He tried again. “Come...” his voice faltered, but he figured he could try a third time and it would probably work if he had to. Thankfully, he didn’t have to try.

The door opened, and his friend Paul Robson opened the door and walked in. One look at his friend, Fredrik, and Paul stopped in his tracks. “If now’s not a good time,” He began.

Freeman shook his head. “It’s okay, Paul. Come on in.”

Robson had been hurrying, but now, he reached out and carefully shut the door behind him. He moved to one of the chairs sitting in front of Freeman’s desk and slowly sat down.

Are you going to be okay?” he asked.

Freeman shook his head. “I know it had to be done, and I understand why Mr. Vetters did what he did, but I don’t think I’ll ever be okay after what I saw done to Willem.”

It’s a complex puzzle,” Paul told him. “What was done to us, without us even realizing it, and what was then done to those people on the station…” He stopped. “Fred, you know I’m your best friend, right?”

Freeman nodded.

You also know I would never have allowed what was done to Willem under any other circumstances, right?”

I know, Paul. And I approve. What is getting to me is he was my brother.” He sighed for about the hundredth time in the last hour. Suddenly, he raised his hand and slammed it down on his desk. “Stupid kid!” he shouted, as his hand smashed a coffee cup from the force he brought it down at. A considerable amount of blood erupted from his wrist as the ceramic cut through the skin and tendons.

You idiot!” Paul yelled as he stood and ran to get a towel from the private restroom. He came back to find Freeman standing with his left hand covering the huge slices. The blood had slowed, and Paul carefully pulled the hand away. There was a bit of seepage, and as he watched, that stopped as well. The nanites were working hard.

Would you watch what you’re doing?” he yelled at the top of his lungs.

Freeman just looked at him. Paul tried a different tack. “That ‘kid’ as you call him, was almost eleven thousand years old! He wasn’t a kid anymore. Hadn’t been for a long time.”

Then I’m eleven thousand seventy-six years old. Regardless of his age, he was my kid brother, Paul.” He glared at Robson. “You knew him almost as long as I did.”

Robson sat down and motioned for his friend to sit as well. “Yeah, I know,” Paul conceded.

Fred finally sat. He hadn’t taken his eyes off of Robson. For his part, Paul’s gaze was lowered. He didn’t want to look up at that accusatory stare. Finally, he murmured, “I’m sorry, Fred. If there had been any other way….” He broke off as he really didn’t know what else to say.

I know, Paul.”

The two of them just sat, their minds in their own private hell, until the sun had set.

Fredrik met with Paul and several scientists the next morning. They discussed at length the information they had received from Wallace. There were several things that had been planned for the people of N21. Before any communication with the people on the station, they wanted to do some research with the programming of the station.

A couple of months later they resumed their meeting. In the palace where Wallace had lived with his slaves, they found a room that had been sealed. With several drills, and explosives, they were able to remove the door, and inside, they found a laboratory where it was obvious Willem had worked on his changes to the station. It was insane, which was no surprise. The people had so many more problems in store for them. The computers were designed to go completely crazy. Stranding people in separate parts of the station, venting other parts. One tidbit of information showed that the command center hub was supposed to seal itself off on each end of the J walkways, and then blow some explosive bolts. This would send the hub away from the rest of the station, effectively dooming those in it to death.

Another spoke about a similar idea, but with different bays.

There were subroutines that controlled the temperature, both overall, and in each bay. By shutting the interior doors, the computer could vent bays, or make them freezing, or hot enough to kill the people caught inside.

Of course when a section was blown off, or a bay vented, the hatches did not have to be shut, and they could also be opened once the bay or command center was blown.

It was paramount that they send this information to the station as soon as possible. The problem Earth’s scientists had was they could not tell how to disable this programming. It seemed as though nothing would stop it at all. Even trying to disable the doors or ejection systems would kill a person, as they had seen on the video scene.

With a heavy heart, Freeman wrote a communique to send to N21.

(Excerpt from N21, Chapter 3)

“Hello, people of N21,” he said.”I am President Freeman of Earth. I know when you were sent away, Willem Wallace, or ‘Caesar’ as you referred to him, was the ‘Chancellor’.

“Approximately three hundred years after you left, Wallace had shown enough of his character to make those of us still on Earth recognize what you had long ago seen. There was an uprising, and we were able to remove him from power. He was in prison until we received a signal from you.

“Every computer around the world came on at the same time, and showed Wallace seated at his desk. He told us that we were all going to join him in a celebration of your exile. We saw what your camera’s recorded, Wallace telling you he wanted to ‘play’; the death of your maintenance worker. Then we saw a bay of the station open, and the people dying on the floor.”

For a moment, Freeman stopped. He looked somber, then rubbed his face with his hands.

“Wallace was questioned at length. That was an experience I never want to have again. He was, quite simply, insane. He wanted to toy with you as a cat toys with it’s prey. Revelling in your suffering was what he wanted most of all.

“He tried to bargain with us with his knowledge. He wanted freedom, but we refused. It took several months to obtain what we wanted. He spent that entire time in and out of consciousness. It wasn’t pretty. What we got from him, we want to pass on to you.

“There are several… surprises, in the computers of the station. They have been left there. There seems to be no way to remove them from the memory. Even a complete shutdown will reload the same information when you start them again.

“Much of what is programmed will be worse that what has already happened. Some not as bad. We will append a file to this message that will tell you what we have found. I hope you can find something on board that we didn’t think of here.”

Freeman sat back and pressed the send button. It was hard to make that call to N21, where his brother had been the one who arranged all these problems to the people aboard the station. He had deliberately not told them that the Wallace was his brother. He figured it would be better if they didn’t know that. He wanted their trust, and admitting that he was brother to their antagonist just didn’t see to be a smart thing to do.

After a bit, he found that he couldn’t sit still. He had to move. He went out and got his craft, then drove out of Diamond Head. He was feeling dejected after sending the message, so he wanted to be away from people. That was hard in Honolulu, but he figured he could head out onto the bay. He really didn’t want to be noticed, so he raised the top until he got a substantial distance onto the bay. He headed west, so he could circle the island and once he was out of sight of Pearl Harbor, he let the top down.

Once he was heading North, he paused and cut his anti-gravity system. The craft gently sat down in the water and he could feel the waves. That was the problem with anti-gravity. No matter what was under him, it was designed to give him a smooth ride. It also didn’t effect what was underneath the craft, so he didn’t have the ability to really take his frustration out by creating wonderful rooster tails. As an archaeologist, he had seen many old films, and he loved the James Bond movies. He wished he had an old style boat, but petroleum was never used anymore, so running an engine like James Bond had wouldn’t work. He would dearly love to run a speedboat and do some daredevil driving. He knew that people used to do the same thing in cars, but you didn’t get the huge spray of water while doing a sharp turn at high speed.

Instead, he reclined his seat and just let the ocean current carry him for awhile. His communication system started beeping. Someone was trying to reach him, but he ignored it. It beeped again, and he picked it up, looked at the name if the person calling him, and threw it as far as he could. He saw no reason to speak to anyone at the moment. Besides, Paul would still be there when he got back to the capitol building.

He leaned back again and closed his eyes. Eventually, sleep claimed him.