111: riot! part two

Afnen slept fitfully.  he was fully aware of the chaos surrounding this place; in fact, even in his sheltered quarters, the noise from the riots was audible.  but, he had spent forty eight of the last fifty hours awake and in Mellor’s employ — Afnen had nearly ceased to function when Mellor had ordered him to get some rest.

reluctant at first, Afnen had ruefully made his way to his bunk.  he had been there perhaps ten seconds when he had fallen into a deep sleep.

time had passed, though, and the noise of the riots was beginning to unsettle him.  so were his dreams.  they challenged him violently now, and his attempts to retreat into wakefulness were thwarted turn after turn.  he saw the future and the past colliding, like two immense spiral galaxies smashing together at astronomical speeds, ripped apart by the inexorable forces of gravity and inertia, becoming disjointed and chaotic, swirling, twisting.  he saw massive armies on foot, in ships, piloting enormous mechanized terrors that crushed cities beneath their feet.  he saw the emblem of the red sun bleed from the eyes of the unfaithful.  he watched as worlds were reduced to rubble, as the galaxy slowly retreated a thousand generations into the past.

he knew that this dream was not entirely his own.  there was a sort of shared consciousness, a bleeding of thought and energy that oozed from the cleric Mellor Devers to all that surrounded him.  his dreams became the dreams of his followers; his future, their future; his past, their past.  it was one of the things that had struck Afnen so powerfully the first time he had seen the cleric.  that was over two years ago now, but Afnen could still remember it clearly.  he often did remember it, in fact, in dreams like the one he was having now.

he saw the giant armies fade away, ships take off benignly.  he saw himself in the city of Daadavem, an industrial center a hundred miles from his native Caulmen.  he saw the white and ragged sheet of paper stapled to a lamppost.  it was that paper that had caught his attention, and the fact that it was exactly that — paper — had first drawn his eye to it.  it was an unusual sight in any modern city, and stood in stark contrast to the myriad electronic and holographic messages and signs that plastered the walls of buildings and the faces of street signs.  Afnen saw himself touch the white page with his fingertips, feeling its softness, its ancientness.  he read its headline:

ARE YOU AFRAID OF THE FUTURE?

yes, he heard himself think.  terribly afraid.

he’d had the dreams even then, of galaxies tearing through one another, of worlds bombarded with heat and stone.  and he was afraid.  he gazed down the poster.  below the headline was a crudely-sketched picture.  it appeared that it had been drawn by hand in a display of what had long ago become an esoteric art form.  the image depicted a battle scene fought between two men that appeared to represent the past, for the one on the left, and the future, for the one on the right.  in his dream, the images were vague, blurry, and he did not know with any certainty how these black-and-white scrawlings came to mean what they so obviously meant to him.

it had started that night, the energy, the shared consciousness, and had brought him to where he was now.  but his dreams had changed, slowly.  it had been a gradual process, so evenly measured that it had gone undetected until now.  the armies of the past had fallen into retreat now, facing defeat for a lack of veracity.  and, Afnen knew, somehow, swirling in the chaos of his dream, that Leah’s appearance had turned the tide of the battle once and for all.

at least, Afnen thought, as he slowly regained consciousness, the battle for my dreams. he dared not make any predictions for the war at large — there were forces so far beyond his scope in time and power that he could not begin to calculate the scenarios and probabilities of a million separate futures, of a million distinct galaxies.

he thought of Leah’s words, what she had said to him in her holding chamber.  open your eyes, she had said. Afnen did so, slipping his legs over the side of the bed and onto the floor.  he checked the timestrip next to his bunk: he’d been asleep for almost three hours.  he rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands.  open your eyes.  the truth of her implication began to swell in him like the rising of the tides on a binary world.  and all at once, as Afnen fully awoke from his dream, finally, the reality of his position struck him with terrible force.

he was propagating evil.

the man and the message.  you think they are one in the same. he heard Leah’s words in his mind, and their clarity cut through his brain with razor sharpness.  there was truth to the message — Afnen knew that, and he knew now that nothing could dissuade him from that.  the man and the message.  but this was not what Aurorism was supposed to be.  for a moment, Afnen rolled his mind over itself in confusion.  how had this happened?  how had the man and the message become one?  how had the man perverted the message so completely?  was it too late?  was it too late to change it?

Afnen stood suddenly.  you’re responsible for the decisions you make. again, Leah’s voice.  he felt the truth in her words.  they were words he’d heard before, but only now did he understand them.  he made his way to the door briskly.

his eyes were open.

*

they held his body in the air, supported by the fingertips of a dozen men.  roars of injustice carried his name on their wings, burning galaxyward like a soaring conflagration of shared vengeance.  Nosraut Probel! Nosraut Probel!  Nosraut Probel! the seething chorus gained momentum with each repetition of the dead man’s name.  Nosraut Probel!  Nosraut Probel!  NOSRAUT PROBEL! his corpse shifted across the sea of humanity like a cursed pulp of flotsam.  blood dripped from his shattered mouth, ribs caved in on one another, limbs protruded limply from his sides like decaying tree branches.

if Nosraut Probel had been alive, he might have noted the irony in the fact that while he was being posthumously being hailed as the mob’s martyr, he had, in the first place, willingly put himself in harms away and, in the second place, been killed by the very people who had made him into a spontaneous and incendiary god.  he had been, after all, a teacher of secondary school literature, and was, for perhaps even further juxtaposition, currently wearing a visiscript entitled The Men Who Become Suns, a three-thousand-year-old fiction about a team of astronauts who sacrificed themselves to re-ignite their world’s star.  the physics of the tale were pure nonsense, of course, and everyone knew it.  but what rang true in the story, as Probel had told batch after batch of students, was the nobility of selflessness for a goal.  but these were men with a purpose, not victims of carelessness and chance.

Nosraut Probel!  Nosraut Probel!  Nosraut Probel!

Probel’s was the third death that had been accounted for since the riots at the Rockhewn Planetarium had begun.  like the others, Probel had not fallen victim to a deliberate attack or malicious intent.  like the others, he had been crushed to death, trodden underfoot, or perhaps wedged against a concrete barrier, possibly squeezed too long against a lamp post.  but, like the others, Probel was blamed — by the mob — on anything but the mob.  fingers pointed at the Aurorists, certainly; they stabbed at religion in general; but, mainly, they directed their accusatory gesture at vile and ineffectual Caulmenian government.  they’re loved ones were being held hostage, in case no one had noticed.  their brothers, and daughters and neighbors.  sure, a few extra CPD blue-shirts had limped impotently into the chaos, but it was obvious to each and every protester that they had no intention of accomplishing anything of value.  and so it was, mostly, their fault.  certainly, the feet that had trampled Probel were victims themselves.

the teacher’s body lurched towards the planetarium, borne the currents of human hands.  as if Probel was their master and commander, the mass crushed towards him, following his movement as if compelled to do so by a malevolent magnetism.  the mob’s flagship corpse rushed toward the Rockhewn’s minor entrance at an accelerating rate.  the planetarium occupied most of its space below ground, and a large portion of it jutted out into Caulmen’s great lake.  since the riots began, the CPD had maintained a barrier of sorts between the mob and the structure, but the torrent of humanity, with the body of Nosraut Probel as their bow, rushed towards the Aurorist-occupied museum with the force of a tidal wave.

*

the connection crackled and faded for the third time.  Nevert swore under his breath — the satellites must have been having problems again.  it can’t be that fucking complicated, he thought bitterly.  they’re little dishes that float around in orbit.  what’s to go wrong? sadly, this was not the first time that he’d been forced to deal with the flaws of the Dulvernian satellite system.  the last time, it had been a trivial matter: the negotiations of a water transfer deal with a nearby township had taken an extra day, but the deal had been made and he, as police advisor, had been satisfied with the proceedings.  but now, as chief, the effects of satellite malfunction were incalculably more deleterious.

“Tawhn,” Nevert said to his second in command, who had been sitting next to him for the first few minutes of the projection disk conversation with the Aurorist cleric.  “get someone in contact with DSB-one-three.  i want to know what the hell is going on out there!  where are my satellites?”

“sir, i must remind you–”

“what?” Nevert snapped.

Tawhn swallowed, paused, then, knowing he and his commander, his friend, were alone, broke procedure.  “Elmen,” he said with an unusual force that startled Nevert.  “you ordered the retasking of no less than three satellites to monitor the Rockhewn riots.  i’m not an astrophysicist, of course, but don’t you think that maybe, just maybe, tossing satellites around the sky might have caused some degradation in the communications relays?”

“those were spy satellites,” Nevert insisted, unwilling to be wrong.

“their primary function is surveillance,” Tawhn agreed.  “but certainly not their only one.”

Nevert crossed his arms, frowned.  quietly, and with admission, he said, “fuck off,” and turned his chair back to the projection disk.  he tapped a few of the disk’s keys, and watched the static fluctuate in the air above the communication device.  “come on,” he said, rapping the side of the disk with his knuckles.  as if on cue, the static cloud formulated itself into the face of a man.

dark of hair and long of beard, the man on the other connection rasped, “are you there, Nevert?”

“yes, Mr. Devers, i’m here,” Nevert said anxiously.  “can you hear me?”

“i can hear you,” Devers said, leaning back in his seat, wooden cane laid across his lap.

“i’m terribly sorry, cleric,” Nevert said, doing his utmost to mask the disdain in his voice.  “we’re experiencing some technical difficulties with our satellites at the moment.”

Mellor Devers, his face now coming more clearly into focus, grinned.  “i’m not surprised.  you’ve layers and layers of technology on top of technology, Chief Nevert.  all it takes is a little bit of crumbling in any one of the layers, and the whole structure begins to fall apart.”

“very well,” Nevert said with exasperation.  “you’re point is well taken, i’m sure, Devers.  now, before we lost contact, you were about to tell me what exactly it was that you were hoping to gain from this suicide hostage situation.”

“suicide, you say?  interesting choice of words, Nevert.”

the police chief’s face flushed with blood.  he choked back violent and excoriating words.  with a gargantuan effort, he restrained himself.  Devers noted the restraint, and Nevert saw the recognition in the old man’s eyes.  none of it really mattered, though — each knew the other man’s thoughts.

“again,” Nevert rasped, “you were saying…”

“ah, yes,” the cleric responded expansively.  “my demands.  they are reasonable, i believe.”

“your beliefs,” Nevert spat, “are anything but reasonable.”

to Nevert’s surprise, Devers laughed.  “ah, Mr. Nevert.  you trust too completely in your own basis of reason.  i might ask what basis for reason you have, other than your own reason itself.  does that not seem to be a circular argument, Nevert?”

“and your own belief is that you are right for the simple reason that you and your deity are right is not circular?”

“let us not engage in logical debates now, my dear Mr. Nevert, while so much is at stake.”

“i will agree to table the disagreement,” Nevert said, “but i must point out that you were the one who began it.”

Devers laughed heartily.  “no you, no you, no you,” he sang in a childishly mocking cadence.  he laughed again.  “Nevert, if our families weren’t so connected, i would not be giving you such an opportunity.  consider it a favor.”  Nevert attempted to raise a  protest, but Devers cut him off.  “my demands are as follows,” the cleric proclaimed, as if reading from script.  “one starship, flotation-equipped and ribbon drive ready.  a full load of dry.  a three-to-six passenger ship.  one pilot, unarmed and with no tracking devices or cameras, will drop the ship off at the coordinates i will transmit to you.  we have our own pilot, Nevert, and rest assured that we will get off this planet.  now.  we don’t wish to hurt anyone; the pilot will be escorted back to the nearest outpost without even a hint of molestation, so long as we escape the gravitational well of Dulvern unhindered.  and Nevert,” the cleric wheezed, “there’s one more thing.  and i think you know what it is.”

“Leah,” Nevert said icily.

“of course.  she will be on that ship, Nevert, and with us every step of the way.  so a shot across the bow may not be in your best interest.”

Nevert gritted his teeth ferociously.  the scenarios danced through his mind.  he tried to read the bluffs, and the counter-bluffs; the feints masked by feints.  what he would not give for his cognisée at this moment: a long lost monolith of logic and reasoning, personified.  a single man capable of deliberating the thoughts of a thousand men in a instant.  damn the war, Never thought for the ten-thousandth time.  damn the war.

but that war was not in front of him at this moment: the Aurorist cleric Mellor Devers was, and his cognisée was gone.  he was left to confront the enemy with his own logic, his own reasoning, his own intelligence.  and how little he trusted in it.  “why should i let you leave Dulvern with my daughter?” Nevert demanded.

“what choice do you have?” came the quick rejoinder.  “it is within my power to destroy her at any moment.  you must know that; surely your paternal instincts have not blinded you so completely that you would not see that, Nevert.”

“and why should i trust that you won’t kill the hostage before you leave Dulvern or, that once you escape with her, you won’t jettison her into space?”

“other than my word, which you no doubt hold in the lowest of regards, you have no self-evident reason to trust me.  but consider this: my son–”

“yes, yes, i see your point,” Nevert cut in.  “i see i have no choice, Devers.  we will contact you shortly with arrangements.”  with that, he closed contact on the projection disk and terminated the conversation.

Nevert’s door buzzed, and he called for the visitor to enter.  Brule entered.  “well?” he asked.  Nevert relayed the conversation briefly, leaving out the details concerning his daughter, of course.  Brule sat back, his left eyebrow cocked high above his right.  “acquiescing?” he asked skeptically, and not without a trace of humor.

“he must act with the belief that he will get what he demands,” Nevert said.  he spoke the words with confidence, but he asked himself what other schemes Devers may have concocted.  Brule voiced one of the possibilities.

“perhaps he does not want the ship at all; the ship may be a diversion, or even an integral part of an alternate plan.”

“i’ve considered this, Brule,” Nevert said, glowering at the mayor’s liaison.  “but, even assuming the ship is a ruse and a cover for some unknown plan, it would certainly not be wise to imply that we are suspicious of him, especially when we have no idea what his alternative plan actually is.  furthermore, Brule, gestures of good faith on our part will, at best, delay the injuring or killing of any hostages and, at worst, have no effect on the lifespan of the hostages.  thus, i see no alternatives other than dispatching the ship at once.”

Brule smiled condescendingly.  “you are putting an official request in to the mayor, then?”

“yes, please,” Nevert hissed.

“very well.  they mayor is pleased with your progress so far, Nevert, and i think he will be equally approving of this decision.”  Nevert did not respond, but instead, turned back to the display that his technicians had set up in the last hour.  it showed live video taken from the helmet-mounted cameras of a few of the CPD officers at the planetarium, switching, and Nevert’s request, between individual feeds.  it was beamed directly to his office from a remote station a few hundred yards from the hostage site, so that the risk of co-option by the media was greatly reduced.  Brule turned in the doorway, regarded the images along with the police chief, and was equally disturbed by them.  despite the grimness of the situation, Brule said, “the mayor feels certain you will navigate this situation to a peaceful and rapid conclusion, Nevert.  and, i must say, i agree with him.”  Brule exited, but Nevert found no comfort in the liaison’s words.

*

Leah gripped Afnen’s hand as he led her down a dank, narrow service corridor.  he had spirited her away from her holding chamber in a flurry of activity, and she was still not entirely certain what was, in fact, happening.  he had deactivated her bonds quickly, and when they had left the room, three unconscious Aurorist guards — the Illtikar, as she had come to know them — had lain strewn about on the floor.  he had given her quiet words of assurance, but she had no way of testing their sincerity.  multiple lines of argument wrestled through her mind.  on the face of it, she had very little choice other than to follow him and, in any case, it was difficult to picture a situation worse than the one from which he had extricated her.  still, she had been utterly duped by him once, and had no interest in repeating the mistake.  and she could not rule out the possibility of more insidious plots under the surface, though she could not detect their presence herself.

she heard a radio on Afnen’s hip crackle.  he had pulled it off one of the Illtikar outside the holding chamber — normally, the communication devices were wired directly into the soldiers’ ears, but, apparently, the radios had a functioning speaker as well.  Afnen stopped and listened carefully.  Leah stopped as well, and their hands fell apart.  she took an imperceptible step away from him.

the radio hissed with static, but she made out the words hostage…escaped…search…Afnen…traitor…kill, among other meaningless or incomprehensible chatter.  she looked at him with wide eyes.  his face was grave, ashen.  he swallowed hard.  Leah knew that this was either the most elaborately concocted scheme starred by an amazing actor in Afnen, or he was indeed trying to free her from the Rockhewn Planetarium.

“where are we going?” she whispered.

“Devers demanded a ship.  it’s for him, so he can escape.  but i think we can get there first.”  their low voices echoed in the corridor, mixed with faint drips of water falling into small puddles on the concrete floor.

“how do you know they’ll bring it?”

“i don’t.  i think they will.  if we fail, get captured, you’ll be fine — they wouldn’t dare hurt you.  but i’ll–”

he trailed off, and Leah looked at him affectionately.  it was obvious that Afnen was anything but stable — a day before, he had been so convinced that the cleric Mellor Devers was worthy of devotion that he had deceived her and kidnapped her against her will.  but he had had some kind of realization since yesterday and, to all appearances, he was now willing to risk his life to save her.

he smiled, sadly, as an admission of guilt.  “come on,” he whispered.  “just a little bit further.”

*

a click.

that was the only sound it had made when the satellites went down.  a moment had passed when no one was sure quite what had happened.  then the click turned into a single, repeating beep.  the beep had become an alarm.  a voice had been raised.  the alarm multiplied itself across multiple computer terminals and the worried voices spread exponentially.  soon, the CPD office was a din of alarms and distressed men and women.

Nevert stormed out of his office.  “what the hell is going on here?” he roared.  a tech employee whose name Nevert did not remember approached him timidly.

“sir,” he said.

“speak up!” Nevert growled.

“yes, sir,” the man said with only a little more volume.  “sir, the satellite system is down.”

“what do you mean, ‘down’?”

“i mean inoperable, sir.  ninety-two percent of the Dulvern satellite system has been disabled.  all communication has been disabled, both between sites on Dulvern and between us and other worlds.  starship navigation systems have been disabled, as well.”

“my god,” Nevert whispered.  “Devers!”

*

Nosraut Probel!  Nosraut Probel!  Nosraut Probel!

the mob pushed over the CPD police barricade as if it had not been there.  CPD officers stood between the mob and the planetarium but, under orders not to fire their weapons or use excessive force, they simply became part of the stream of humanity.  the Illtikar that surrounded the museum, though, were not under such orders.

Nosraut Probel!  Nosraut Probel!  Nosraut Probel!

the chant was becoming less and less distinct as the rioters increased in volume.  they had whipped themselves into a frenzy, and the name they chanted was less about the man by that name whom they carried on their upraised hands — some had already forgotten who the man was — but his name had entered into a feedback loop of chaos that only angry mobs, devoid of reason and purpose, can generate spontaneously.

as the front edge of the mob approached the planetarium, the Illtikar raised their weapons.  they were ordering the mob to halt, but the mob, intent on its sole mission of expressing rage through violence, did not listen.

the Aurorists opened fire.

*

Afnen kicked open the steel door at the end of the service corridor.  daylight flooded in.  the sound of water greeted Leah as her eyes struggled to adjust to the brightness of the shore.

“we’re underneath the dock,” Afnen said, taking her hand once again.  “follow me.”

they exited the corridor, and Leah’s ankle rolled as they crossed a bed of fist-sized rocks.  she cried out in pain, and Afnen hushed her.  they were first faced with a large concrete retaining wall that held back the lake from their small dugout below the planetarium’s dock.  they looped around the corridor’s entrance and climbed the hill next to the dock and, as they rose above ground level, they saw the ship.  it was small, and floated on the water.  but Afnen recognized it instantly as a ribbon-drive equipped vessel.  a man stood on the dock, alone, hands in pockets. he was dressed like a government officer, but seemed incredibly small and out of place here.

Afnen spoke loudly and with confidence.  “you there!”

the man spun around, startled, held up his hands.  “y-yes!” he stuttered.

“this is our ship?”

“are you M-m-mellor Devers?” the man asked nervously.

“of course i am, you idiot.” Afnen crossed the dock boldly, and Leah followed behind, doing everything she could to hide the fear in her face, to keep the act alive.  “you have the ignition switch, i assume.”

“yes, r-r-right here,” the man said, digging into his pocket. he produced the switch and held it out to Afnen.  before he could relieve the man of the switch, though, a bright purple light shot across the dock from the direction of the planetarium.

a c-ray blaster! Afnen thought with a shock.  the purple ray struck the man in his center mass and carved a hole through him, cauterized the wound instantly.  the man screamed, flung his arms wide, collapsed.  the ignition switch flew across the dock and landed a foot from the edge.  Afnen shot a glance at the source of the c-ray.  up a twisted flight of metal stairs, and perhaps two-hundred yards away, Mellor and two Illtikar had just exited from one of the planetarium’s small, back doors.

“Afnen!” he heard Mellor scream, his voice faint in the distance, masked by the lapping of the lake’s shore.  “come back and we will not hurt you!”

Afnen scoffed and raised a c-ray blaster of his own — another prize he’d taken from a fallen Illtikar outside of Leah’s cell.  Leah regarded him, and time seemed to slow down for a moment.  resolve filled the young man’s face, a reckless confidence in the face of terror.  Afnen Uvnor, Dulvernian, former Aurorist, squeezed the trigger of his c-ray blaster.

*

Nevert gaped at the screens in his office.  the direct feed from the CPD officers’ head-mounted cameras had not been affected by the deactivation of the satellite system, though his ability to communicate with his men had been.

what he saw mortified him.  the mob had rushed the planetarium, and the Illtikar had opened fire.  purple c-rays had cut down the first wave of rioters but, if anything, this only fed the mob’s rage.  Nevert’s men, having been cut off from communication, and thus having no orders to go on, had entered the fray as well, firing their own c-ray cannons at the Illtikar.

Dulvernian citizens fell by the score.

“goddam it, Tawhn!” Nevert raged.  “get them to stop firing!  i need to speak to my men!”

“sir, we have no way of–”

“FUCK!” Nevert screamed.  he lifted a large wooden chair and smashed it violently against a mirror that hung above his desk, shattering both.  he repeated the curse several times, spittle flying from his lips.  he was utterly helpless, completely impotent.  he put his hands to his head, panting heavily.  his rage slowly melted into desperation.  “Tawhn,” he whispered, “what are we going to do?”

on the screen, they saw a purple ray flash just next to the camera, mounted on a CPD officer’s helmet.  the image turned away from the battle and focused on the bloody stump that used to be the man’s left arm.

Tawhn puked into a trash can.

*

Afnen’s shot was no where near Devers or either of the Illtikar.  clearly, the young Dulvernian was not trained in the military arts.  the Illtikar, though, were highly trained, and a shot from one of their c-ray blasters missed Afnen by mere inches, ripping through the dock as if it were butter.  Afnen lunged for the ignition switch, grasped it, and turned to Leah, who had frozen into position in terror.  he tossed it to her, ordered her to get in to the ship.  another purple ray streaked passed Afnen as Leah turned towards the small ship.  instinctively, she placed the switch in what seemed to be an appropriate port on the ship’s hull, and the door slid open.  she turned back to Afnen.  a c-ray streaked once again from an onrushing Illtikar and caught Afnen in the calf of his right leg.  he fell forward, face twisted in agony.  Leah lunged for him, caught him under the arms just before he hit the ground.  she collapsed under his weight, and they lay on the ground a foot outside the open door.  with all the strength she could muster, she clawed the twelve inches between her and the ship, stood, and dragged a screaming Afnen into the ship.  a purple ray cut through the air next to her head, entered the ship, destroyed a panel on the ship’s bulkhead.

Afnen gestured to a conspicuous button, Leah hit it, and the door slid shut.  “shields,” he coughed.

Leah just stared at him.

“help me into the cockpit,” he said.

she lifted him, and with his one good leg, he hobbled into the cockpit.  through the glass, they could see the Illtikar, now perhaps only fifty yards away.  Afnen plopped into the pilot’s chair, and punched a few buttons.  a quiet hum told him that the ship was now surrounded by energy shields — they would be protected from the handheld c-rays of the Illtikar.

“are we safe?”  she asked, voice trembling.

“for now,” he said.  “i’ve only piloted one of these once before, and that was with an instructor.”  he saw the uneasiness on her face, and forced a smile.  “he said i had a lot of natural talent, though.”

an hour later, Afnen and Leah were safely in orbit around Dulvern.  the absence of the satellite network had made flying the craft more difficult for Afnen, but it had almost certainly saved them; without the satellites, the authorities had no way of tracking a ship as small as this one.  that had undoubtedly been Devers’ plan from the beginning.  now, they just had to cruise far enough to get to wormhole distance, though neither had any idea where they were going.  they had discussed returning to Caulmen, and that was still a possibility.  for now, they were relieved to be safe and alone.

“oh,” Afnen said after a moment of silence.  he nursed his leg, which Leah had cleaned and bandaged.  they had found some painkillers in the ship’s tiny sickbay, and Afnen was tolerably comfortable.  “i almost forgot.  this is yours,” he held out her communication disk, which had been confiscated when she had been taken captive.

“will it work?” she asked.

“it can’t send or receive signals without the satellites,” he said, “but if anything’s stored on there, you can still see it.”

she activated it.  the disk bleeped: one new message, hyperwave text. she opened it.  for a moment, she could not fathom why someone would send her a non-video message via hyperwave of all things.  then it hit her.

Issac.

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