Fifteen. Sixteen. Seventeen.
He was right about that. There's something very satisfying about pushing the weights up and down over my chest until everything aches. It might sound ridiculous, but it's true. The burn cleans.
Eighteen. Nineteen. Twenty.
I thought of the fah'ti. It was out there somewhere, on it's way to where it should have been left all along. I was still a bit confused about the whole thing, even though Marlon gave me a tour of Bradley's lab and tried to explain it all.
"We've got the specs. That's all we actually needed. God, can you believe we wasted so much time on gobbledeegook code when the real puzzle was right in front of us?"
Twenty one. Twenty two. Twenty three.
Apparently the part we needed, they needed...aw hell. The part we needed was the construction. We needed to know how to build the hardware, how to link ourselves to it.
"That's the key, Master Cosworth," said the Bradley bot. "The code, as you succinctly put, is us. Our biorhythms. Our impulses. Our thoughts and heartbeats."
"Our souls," said Lynette.
Both the bot and Marlon took exception to that.
"Souls? Really? Didn't think you were one of those spiritual types, Lynnie."
"The concept of the 'soul', as you referred, is an abstract concept for those who believe there needs to be more than the wonderful world of science guiding beings through the planets, Miss Donnely. Soul?" The bot actually almost laughed in condescension.
Twenty four. Twenty five. Stop? No. Not yet. Twenty six.
They might have had a point, but they didn't have to be so mean about it. Lynette didn't go back down to the lab after their snide remarks. I don't suppose they really wanted her there, anyway.
They got what they needed off the fah'ti, then decided to send it back into place. While I pumped iron, it was on a ship. When they arrived to the proper spot, it would be deployed. And then they were going to activate it. If all went according to plan, it wouldn't take more than a day or two for transmissions to begin. And then, then I could finally talk to Dad.
Twenty seven. Twenty eight. Twenty nine.
One more day, and I should know. How much time had passed for them? For me, really? I could talk to Dad. StarTech could get a mile of data downloaded. That would make all the squeaks happy. I'd be lying if I didn't say I was even looking forward to talking to Mother.
Thirty.
Would I be able to inspeak then? With that connection, would it be possible to...
I put the weigh bar on the rack and stood up quickly, shutting down the swirling thoughts of "what if" that had me on edge all day. The workout wasn't holding them back any longer.
"Everything okay, Jake?" Ralph was getting some test done to him by Dr. Karl in the corner of the room. Lynette looked up from her holo and raised her eyebrow.
"I'm hitting the showers."
"You only did one round on the tread, Mr. Cosworth," said Dr.Karl in a patronizing tone. "Do I need to remind you about the Tuesday schedule?"
"I'm hitting the showers," I repeated, feeling the anxiety threaten to change to anger. I caught Ralph's look to the good doctor before I left the room.
I guess I didn't want to know the answers. The water cascaded over me and I let myself think what I didn't want to be thinking. I was...nervous. Anxious. Tense as hell. I felt like I had a spring wound up tight inside. It was so confusing. I missed them all so terribly that I ached for contact. And yet...
I didn't want to know how much time had passed for them. What if it had been years? What if Dad and Mother were even more gray and wrinkled? Or worse. For me it was only about four months, give or take. I had a birthday, according to my ship clock. But what about theirs? What about their reality? Would I be a freak to them? Would they look on the screen and expect to see a man, grown, bearded or balding with a wife and kids and a career?
I soaped up my hair and tried not to continue the thoughts. Try as I might, I couldn't help them from coming. They'd been ever present in the corners of my mind for the week and a half since I "cracked" the fah'ti. They kept me awake all night. They'd pop into the forefront without any warning when I was trying to test up to the next level through the HuTA. That one was like an extra slap, because I was actually trying to pay attention to lessons for once.
Even if I could reach out, find the connection I've missed, find her...Was she even still alive?
I shut the thought down.
I got out of the shower and dressed quickly. It was time for a trip to the lab. It was a last attempt at a distraction. I thought about letting Ralph know where I was going, but then changed my mind. He'd just send Lynette with me. And she would make me talk about what's bugging me. I needed to be around selfish jerks who didn't pry.
I slipped out and down the now familiar series of twists, turns, lefts and rights that would take me on a three minute elevator ride to the "bowels of the planet", as the Bradley bot put it.
They weren't the bowels. It just took a long time to get there. That's why it felt so deep.
Everyone complained about the long elevator ride.
"It's only seventeen floors. We should have been there like yesterday."
"This is ridiculous."
"Someone needs a shower. Bad."
"I can get all the way to Earth faster!"
"Can't they make an elevator that moves faster than molasses?"
Molasses is a syrup, by the way. I had to look that one up.
I understood the physics of this elevator. Of course StarTech could make fast elevators. They're all over the place above ground. Underground, though, they were not straight shafts. They moved at a slight angle. The Bradley bot explained it to me on my first trip down.
"You see, Master Cosworth..." He always called all the young men "Master" So and So. Ralph said that it's an antiquated form of respect. "The stability of the Martian geology is less than predictable. There are pockets of minerals that have varying degrees of consistency."
"Isn't that the same on Earth?"
"Yes. And that's precisely why construction on that home planet of mine is limited. Buildings have been built the same way for so many generations that most would balk at an angled elevator! Up here, we have no such constraints. While we were as careful as could be in selection the location for building Utopia, we had the foresight to know we knew nothing about the alien terra firma."
When he says "we", he's not using it in the grand sense of the StarTech organization. He actually means "we", as in "theirs and my hands physically built this". He's a bot with uploaded memories. If you really stop and give it too much thought, it'll creep you out.
"So you built the elevators at an angle."
"Yes. A slight one, about a five degree off square pitch. It makes for a slower ride, but it's far more stable. Not to mention the reinforced panels. With this type of shaft, we could build a safe ride through anything as stable as iron, to something as shifting as sand! Of course, if it were through sand, I suppose both the level we traveled to and the one we traveled from would be far too unstable to actually use..."
He babbled on the rest of the ride going off in many different directions in a short time. That's the thing about Bradley. In most people, one idea leads to the next. Or maybe a couple of possibilities. In Justin Bradley, one thought would lead to an entire universe. I like the guy, for all he creeps me out. But if I had to work around him all day, I'd probably go nuts. I wondered how Marlon could put up with him every day.
The doors opened and the security officer waved me through. The next one made me use my pass. The third needed the retinal scan. Same deal. Pain in the butt, but the lab was worth it. Every time those huge doors slid open and all of StarTech's most valuable and most secret projects lined the rows in front of me, I knew all the hassle was worth it.