Chapter 1

Ice pulled himself up in the chair to look out the port window for the fifth time in the past ten minutes. There was still nothing to see, so he slouched back his chair. The smooth, silent hydraulics tilted it back, reacting to his movement. Ice had no idea where he was. More importantly, he didn’t know why he was here.

Ice had lived in Domest Central all of his life. Ever since he first learned his address it had always been the same. μυρ 447 Street, City of Domest Central, on the planet Domest, in the Argent system, in sector Beta, on the Major arm, in the Galactic Empire, Galactic Spiral 00A. That address was part of him, and unchanging part. That had changed. Twenty-four days ago, 73:156 GE, was a day of cataclysms. He remembered the day the police officer had come to his door with a sorrowful face, though stone hardened from having given this speech before.

"I’m looking for a Barnabus Tinmer."

"That’s me."

"I’ve some news for you son, I’d like it a lot if you could come with me to the station for a while. There are some people who’d like to talk to you."

Ice, expecting that he was in trouble, followed, and was soon seated before another officer who told him the bad news. Against odds of one in a billion, the transport plane carrying his parents had crashed on landing. On top of the troubling scene with Victoria earlier that day, Ice didn’t know what to react to first. The official report of the crash said it was a robotic factory error along with human piloting error. The retro-rockets on the plane had not functioned properly, and the pilot failed to steer the plane away from the main hanger, so the plane had run headlong, and at nearly full speed, into the hangar. 2,682 deaths and 904 injuries due to the one failure of both technology and humanity. Ice kept this report, and all the other information he could find about the crash, along with his parents’ pictures on disk, which he kept on his person at all times. Not even through all the police shuffling had that 6-centimeter circle of clear, iridescent data left his body.

Twenty-two days ago -- 75:156 GE -- the Civil Services department, coupled with the police had started shuffling him around. At first Ice was relieved that someone was out there, looking out for him in this crisis, but the proceedings had soon grown stale. He wasn’t told anything, treated like a child, and been shuffled all around Domest for the next fifteen days, then shipped off in a transport ship to the Guer star system, the Imperial capitol of the Empire for another two days. Then he had been put on this ship. As far as he could tell he was the only life form onboard the ship. He still did not know why he was being moved around, and was beginning to doubt that he was in the hands of the Civil Service any more. At the last few stops, he’d identified more than a few people wearing loose, hooded robes that were either gray or white depending on how you looked at them. Ice recognized the costume as the robes of the Mystics from the outer spiral. He had only seen them in photographs in school; never had he actually seen on in the inner spiral. He also recognized the colored edging on their sleeves, necklines, and hems, that showed the wearer’s status. The Mystics that Ice had noticed were all of the Precious Metals order. They were Bronzes mostly, with a Silver or two; none of the higher Gold or higher still Platinum ranked Mystics, but they were in the upper caste, not those that would commonly be sent on messenger missions. Their continued presence tipped Ice off that something was awry.

That left Ice in his current condition. He’d left Guer five days ago and had been in space since then. He wasn’t shut off in a cell like he was at the previous stops, but it was just the same. The first day onboard he’d determined that he was on a droneship, with no other people, and with no way for him to access any computer network, nor any ship controls, save the basic life support functions of lighting and room temperature. It was a nice ship, as far as drones go; about twenty meters long by five wide, with a stark but comfortable room for him. The bridge housed a titanium column that protected the holograph-lattice brain of the droneship. Aside from the fact that the column, as well as other consoles, were missing the Imperial logo of the galactic double spiral inside a gold octagonal frame, and all but the most rudimentary computer consoles were removed, it was a normal ship. The only basis with which Ice had to judge where he was going was the hyperspace Jumps. The first day there were four, the second day four, the third day three, the fourth day one, and none so far today. It is impossible for the human mind to tell how far and in which direction a Jump was executed, but Ice knew that as the frequency of the jumps was decreasing, he was nearing his destination. He saw none of the familiar constellations that he knew from home on Domest, nor were the stars as densely packed as they were near the center of the galaxy. Ice could see that directly in front of the ship was a dense cloud of stars and behind it and to the starboard was another, much larger cloud of stars, but not much in between. From that visual picture, as well as the presence of the High order Mystics, Ice guessed that the star cloud in front was the smaller outer spiral of the galaxy, and behind him was the major spiral. Therefore, Ice had one guess at his destination, and that was the fringe of the outer spiral. Now if only he knew why.

The ship made one more Jump that day, but such a small one that Ice couldn’t tell from the change in the starfield out his window. The next morning, 98:156 GE; 0830 hours, Ice saw that one star in the cluster in front of the ship was close enough to have a visible disc when viewed through the ship’s telescope, and guessed that his journey was nearing an end. Having no bag to pack, he spent the day in the bridge watching the advancing sun. Ice saw one gas giant with one visible ring as the ship fell sunward, but no other planets. This was not unusual since any inhabitable planets, terraformed or natural, would be much closer to their star, only a few micro parsecs, and would therefore be hidden from view by the naked eye since Ice was at least ten times that distance away. Why the ship was advancing along the planetary plane Ice didn’t know, since it would be much easier to compute the mathematics of the Jumps without the large gravity wells of the planets interfering. Around 1200 hours the ship executed its final jump, bringing a habitable planet into view. The planet appeared off to the right of the sun, its surface hidden by the swirling white of water vapor clouds. There were three satellite docking stations studding the equator of the planet. One was much bigger than the other two, spreading out in a disk that seemed precariously perched on its thin elevator shaft. Ice guessed that he was headed towards the larger station, but since he couldn’t hear any of the tightbeam transmissions, he didn’t know for certain. Ice noted that the larger station was on the morning half of the daylit side of the planet, so he’d be getting a long day, since his body already thought it was noon. Opting for a quick nap, Ice left the droneship to its landing duties.

Ice awoke and returned to the bridge as the ship entered one of the hangars on the top levels of the station. Once inside, the ship smoothly set down in the center of the room. The nice thing about droneships is that they make perfect landings every time. Well, they were supposed to make perfect landings. That brought back strong memories of his parents and Ice pushed them away forcefully. Ice guessed that the ship probably could have put itself on one of the berths that surrounded the hangar by itself without the assistance of the robotic crane that stood by. Actually, as Ice thought about it, he wondered why it didn’t. Both the ship and the crane were roboticized. The crane was there chiefly for the human piloted ships that couldn’t maneuver accurately in the small space. Unless the crane’s robotic brain was much more advanced, there was no logical reason for the ship not to place itself. The answer came to Ice quickly, though. If the ship had settled into it’s berth with Ice still aboard, he would have nowhere to go. The only time a human could get up or down from the berths was in an emergency when the ladders lowered for that purpose. Ice put on his space suit and walked down to the airlock, which cycled on his approach and left him standing on the gangway. As soon as both of Ice’s feet hit the polished floor of the hangar, the droneship took off again, skimming along with its ion thrusters, and settled into a berth five stories up, confirming Ice’s assumption that it was waiting for him to disembark, and that it didn’t need the crane’s help. This hangar was seven stories tall and held one hundred and forty ships in the pigeon-hole berths on the two side walls. A sliver of the planet was visible beyond the outer wall, which was left open to space. Ice looked around as he walked toward the airlock on the inner wall of the hangar. There were a variety of ships in the hangar and since no one had come to collect him yet, Ice took a moment to look around. None of the ships in the hangar were familiar to him, except for his own. Only a few bore the Imperial logo, and they only did because they appeared to be patchwork ships; hand repaired with whatever the owner had handy at the time, and some of the pieces had Imperial logos emblazoned on them. Ice counted fourteen of those ships in the half-full hangar. The others were just plain different. The Imperial ships were stereotypically long and aerodynamic and most of the time, black. These ships varied from white through black and had colored logos on their forward sections that Ice could only surmise to be the monogram of their maker or owner. The one style of ship that Ice did recognize all but confirmed where he was. Ice counted four pearly white ships shaped like the ancient Terran manta ray. Ringing the cockpit dome of each ship was a band of color. One was Emerald, two were Ruby and one was Silver. They were the personal speeders of the Mystics of the outer spiral. Not equipped to hold enough fuel for interstellar voyages, nor withstand the atmosphere to make a terrestrial landing, these speeders were solely for interplanetary voyages; space station to space station. Since there were four in plain sight in this public hangar, and these were mostly members of the lowest caste, Ice guessed that there were dozens more in other hangars also. Ice stepped into the airlock at the end of the hangar and made a little wager with himself. He bet that at least two Mystics -- lesser ranking ones probably -- were waiting for him on the other side of the airlock door right now. And with that he cycled the lock and looked into the anteroom inside the station. He was wrong.

----

"Vic, you’re five minutes behind schedule." Vic grabbed the closest object available -- which happened to be a bar of soap -- and threw it at the coy female that stood in the doorway, her deep green eyes teasing from behind her long lashes. The bar passed through her holographic body and hit the gray wall of the hallway behind her with a dull thud. He threw it because he knew she was right, and arguing with her was futile; Vic himself had programmed her to be too intelligent for that. Anita turned and walked back out of the room glancing back over her shoulder at Vic, smug in her self-assuredness. Vic turned back to the sink and his rats’ nest of dark brown hair. There were times when he wondered why he had bothered to give Anita any emotion subroutines at all. He looked at himself in the mirror and smiled as he answered his own ponderance the way that all his friends answered it: "Vic, you’ve got way to much free time." It was only a half-truth. Vic didn’t have any more time than his friends, but he devoted it to having fun with his life. Not having any siblings or parents made it easier to do. Vic never knew his true parents. 132426South was a communal parenting community, so every adult took care of every child, so technically all 1.2 million of the adults in his Coil were his parents.

Vic got out the door five minutes behind, just like Anita had perfectly calculated. Anita was his most advanced project, a complete holograph-lattice AI built from scratch. Most of his time went into refining her, and advancing her. Anita’s last name varied from Hobby to Girlfriend depending on the need at the time, much to his friends’ amusement.

Since he was running behind he pulled his modernized hanglider out of the small stowage compartment outside his dorm. The mass transit rails that ran from the Coil to the nodes were easiest, but slower. The hanglider was small enough to carry under one arm folded up, but unfolded, it took up most of the hallway. After the wings extended and the leg rests unfolded, Vic lay down on top of the glider with his hands slipping around the joysticks to either side and below his ears. The cockpit dome closed over his head and he sped off. The Coils didn’t have any air traffic controllers except for the large ships docking at the spaceport above, so airspace inside the Coil on a bad day could look like pure chaos to a tourist.

Each of the six Coils on 132426 were laid out identically: a metal coil in the proportions of an alpha helix one kilometer high. The metal tubes that made up the Coil were segregated into dorms for the two million inhabitants. Suspended in the middle of the Coil were three spherical nodes; the school, the local government, and the local army barracks. On the top of each Coil were the spreading arms of a spaceport. Since the Coils were above the normal atmosphere of the dying 132426, they had their own atmosphere inside the coil. The most convenient mode of transportation in the Coil was aerial, so most inhabitants had some small flying machine for getting around. The inside edges of the metal coil sported large, glassless windows for fliers to enter and exit the coil, without interfering with the mass transit tubes that cut across the middle of the coil. Unfortunately for Vic, he wasn’t a natural-born flier.

Flying only a little recklessly, Vic broke through the energy bubble that defined the edges of the school node as the first bell was ringing. Projected on the inside of the bubble, a bright blue sky with puffy white clouds basked under a cheery yellow sun. Once inside the node, the school appeared to be no different from any other school on any planet; giving no indication that it was actually suspended in a force bubble hovering hundreds of kilometers above a radioactive husk of a planet.

Vic landed running, folded up his glider and tucked it under his arm as he ran to his locker. Vic pressed his thumb against the sensor contact on his locker as he watched the green light above the door of his first period class ten meters away. "Please stay green." He pleaded as he stowed his glider, grabbed his textbook, spiral, and book, and closed his locker. Vic made it past the door not ten seconds before the light flashed red simultaneously with the second chime of the bell. The door closed noiselessly, signaling the start of class. As soon as the door closed, the viewpanel next to it lit up, displaying the names of all the students. As the students took their seats, their names turned green. The door opened once more to admit a tardy student, and recorded the student’s lateness by tinting their name in red.

Mr. Davis called the class to attention a moment after the bell sounded. Contrary to what other planets thought about 132426’s level of technology, the teachers were not robots. Mr. Davis was proof of that himself; he made too many mistakes to be a robot. Vic opened the cover of his textbook and ejected the minidisc that contained his history text data, which he had left in since last night’s homework, and got the geometry disc out of his belt caddy. Barely a second after he inserted the disc into the drive, the electric pages shifted from blank to arithmetic. Vic also got out his spiral and the disc that had his homework as Mr. Davis started talking. Mr. Davis started by going over the challenge problems in the previous assignment on the digital whiteboard in the front of the classroom. Vic remembered a few years ago when the school had finally installed a handwriting recognition program for the whiteboards in the school. Mr. Davis’ students appreciated that a lot because when Mr. Davis got excited about corresponding angles, his handwriting got correspondingly worse. Vic watched as the computer fanatically followed Mr. Davis’ rambling equations around the board, straightening and organizing his thoughts like an invisible mother. As Mr. Davis continued, Vic noticed that the student sitting one seat forward and to the left of him, Derek, was surreptitiously writing in his spiral behind his desk so Mr. Davis couldn’t see. Seeing that Derek was finishing last night’s assignment, Vic checked with his own spiral and found that Mr. Davis had forgotten (again) to turn on the write-protect field that kept students from changing their homework once they entered the classroom. Vic took the opportunity to correct one incorrect answer and then reached into one of the inner pockets of his vest. He pulled out a bare circuit board five centimeters by three and put his thumb and forefinger on the sensor pads on one end, closing the contact. From the left side of his vision, a little cartoon of an imp walked across his vision, superimposed on the teacher in the front. The retinal implants were the hardest portion of an internal computer network to get used to. Since normal light still reached the retina normally, the visual data from the internal network was combined with the normal vision. But the slight learning curve was easy enough, compared to the benefits of not having to keep track of various external components. The imp that was the visual manifestation of the program running from the circuit board in Vic’s hand was wearing a belt from which was hung several bags with peculiar bulges, and wore a ratty green vest. "Where’s the loot?" the electronic imp asked Vic through the implanted speakers in his ears. He subvocalized his command and the imp winked and stepped to one side. Another image appeared to the imp’s left; a command window that showed the computer’s operation in the most basic means. Vic put his other hand on the palm-print on his desk to make contact with the school’s computer network and his worm got to work. The imp walked over to a door that had materialized next to it, and began to pick the lock. The window next to it showed the password cracking algorithm’s actual progress in the computer network. Vic closed his eyes for a moment to block out the teacher in front and just watch the scene playing across his retinas and monitor its progress. The math department had changed its password recently, but Mr. Davis had not. The imp wormed its way in, allowing Vic to turn on the write-protect field. Opening his eyes, Vic nonchalantly put the circuit board back in his pocket. Derek suddenly stopped writing, seeing that nothing was changing any more, saw that the teacher had not gone to his desk, so couldn’t have activated the field, then turned backward toward Vic with an anything-but-friendly stare. Vic shrugged and focused back on Mr. Davis.

"Okay kids, discs forward and books away; quiz time." As the class put its books and spirals away, Mr. Davis went over and turned off the write-protect field, not even realizing that he had not turned it on. Mr. Davis went around the room, handing each student a minidisc that was an opaque red, instead of iridescent silver, marking it as a one-time use disc. In addition, the quiz-discs were encrypted, and only the student’s desks new the key. The school had gone to great lengths to make cheating on tests a virtually inconceivable feat. For a ten question quiz like this one, Mr. Davis had created around fifty questions, and the computer had put a random ten on each disc, so very few students had the same ten problems, and no one had the same questions in the same order. And finally, the display screen was scrambled, and only the desk that had decrypted the disc knew the algorithm to descramble it. This whole system not only kept students from looking at each other’s tests or answers, but there was no way for them to share their information with students from a later hour, since they would not have the same tests. Vic thought it all was a bit much, but it was the administration’s call, and he had helped them design it when they asked. Vic loaded the disc into his desk and put on his desk’s descrambling glasses. The holograph screen displayed the disc’s identification number, and then started the test. With one hand Vic started the test, and with the other he started inputting to his internal system. Another character, this time a professor with wiry white hair, took the disc’s identification number and ran off with it to the archives. Using that number, it got the list of all fifty questions and saved it to a normal minidisc. Vic had a few friends that liked to have a little more help, and so Vic usually gave them all fifty questions to study with. Vic saw no problem in this, for if they wanted to memorize fifty problems for a minor, ten-problem quiz, they had every right to make more work for themselves; they might just eventually get it. When Vic was finished with his problems, he was allowed to go back and check over his work, and then he printed out his answers. The printout was similar to the archaic bar codes, but with more possibilities. The index card size printout bore Vic’s name across the top, the disc number along the bottom, and his answers in bar code across the middle. This he delivered to Mr. Davis with a smile.

Vic drifted through his morning classes and soon found himself on his way to the cafeteria.

"Hey Vic! I’ve got my database finished for Anita." Vic turned to face his multiple personalitied friend, Dode. Dode presented a minidisc in a case that bore the label "Puns." Dode was one of the few people helping Vic design subroutines for Anita. Dode’s many personalities that specialized in one subject or another helped Vic define parameters for that emotion quite effectively. This disc was just an archive of many, many puns that Andy, Dode’s slightly nerdy personality, had created and Vic would incorporate into Anita’s memory.

"Thanks Dode, I’ve almost got the program that accesses it finished. I’ve just got to decide how often I want her to be punny, or how to decide the situation deserves it." As he talked he sat down at a table and took the disc out of its case. Because his electronic books could only open one file at a time, he had to plug the disc into his own personal computer. The five hundred and forty-two puns that Dode had created in the past ten days scrolled past Vic’s eyes as he scanned them quickly and appended them into the program he had saved. After the two files were combined into one file, he ejected the disc and put it in his spiral where Dode could view it too. "How do you come up with some of these?" As Vic talked, he had his head bent over his book, carefully integrating the pun index in to the memory sub-program. He alternately wrote the code and flipped the page to where the book displayed the program graphically. The index of puns was displayed as a large green cube and the program codes little white wires with metal clasps interfacing with the sides of the cube.

"I dunno’. I just sat for a while and got my mind in a rut and they all just came."

"You mean you got all of these in one sitting?"

"Yeah, last night."

"You are a wonder." Seeing by the witty half-smile that Dode was currently George, one personality that didn’t especially care for schooling, Vic appended, "Ever think of setting that mind of yours in a rut devoted to schooling?"

"You can’t scare me that easily Vic; that’s what Andy’s for, it’ll never happen to me." Three more people emerged from the throng of eating teenagers to approach Vic and Dode’s table. Claire, Amy, and Cassy detached themselves from the crowd and sat down around the two guys.

"Hey Dode, Hi Vic," Claire greeted the two boys as she separated herself from the writhing mass of students. Close behind her were Amy and Cassy. Amy was the most expressive of the group and also the official Social Coordinator. "Oh Cassy, did you get the, um..." Amy cast a sudden sideways glance at Vic, as if suddenly realizing that he was there, and that she must continue to appear normal. She did continue, but it was in another language. Vic quickly subvocalized a command that turned on the audio transcriber on his computer, so what was said around him was converted to text and displayed across his retinas. Unfortunately for Amy, the program also translated what was said and printed the Galactic Standard version too. "...for Vic." the program didn’t kick in fast enough to catch the whole phrase this time, but there were several times in the past where Vic had known more than he let on, since none of the group knew that he had modified the program to translate as well. His birthday was coming up in a month, so he guessed it was probably best that he didn’t want to know what she said anyway. Once Amy and Claire fell into talking in the old Guerran language they found amusing, they continued, and since they were no longer talking about matters important to Vic, he turned off his transcriber and turned back to Dode, but found that he was engaged in a conversation with Cassy. Vic noticed by the minute tic in his left eye – the one that Cassy couldn’t see – that Dode had switched to his romantic personality, Jean. Leaving Dode to his flirting, Vic turned back to his spiral, when a series of concentric red rectangles flashed a border around his vision. After they cleared, a three dimensional compass appeared in the center of his vision, pointing roughly behind Vic and to his left. Vic knew by the number in the corner before he turned who would be there, and he was right. Enter Jessica. With all five foot six of her dancer’s body. Vic could appreciate, and often did, how her constant exercise through dance kept her figure lean and firm, and the best part about that was she didn’t think she was out of the ordinary. If only Vic could get her attention, his day would be perfect. He smiled toward her and started to raise his hand, but she had already been engulfed into the student body.

"Vic? Hello Vic!" Vic snapped back around, finally realizing that Claire was calling him. "Are we having troubles paying attention, Vic? Or was that Jessica over there?" Vic felt his neck flush and looked down at his spiral, which was still open on the table. "I was wondering if you’d seen Kirstin lately. She was at school earlier, but I can’t find here." Vic didn’t even look up as he subvocalized another command to his computer. Another set of rectangles and a compass, this time white, spread across his eyes. He read the numbers that were below the new tri-d arrow telling how far in that direction the target was and made a guess.

"My fine sense of intuition says that she’s directly beneath us, so she must be down in the physics room retaking the lab she missed, unless she’s kneeling under the table right now."

"Oh, if you see her could you remind her that she still has my address book disc."

"Sure." Vic put a warning flag on Kirstin’s locator, so it would alert him of her presence, just like it had told him that Jessica was near.

"Oh, and Vic?" Amy inquired, looking only slightly coy. "Would you have your eMail Key on you?" Vic knew she was referring to his circuit board creature that traced any electronic message back to its source. He dug out the board and ran a test to make sure the postman character was in operating order and then asked,

"What’s the problem?"

"I keep getting bombed by an anonymous caller and I’d like to have them all bounce back at them, if you wouldn’t mind."

"That’s a pretty worthy cause," and Vic handed over the eMail Key. Vic knew that many of his Keys could be used for other-than-legal purposes, and so was relatively strict about letting them out of his possession.

Later that day he passed Kirstin in the halls. Not having time to stop and talk, Vic quickly dictated the message onto his screen, looked Kirstin in the eye and transmitted it via tightbeam laser to her. If Amy was the official Social Coordinator, he must be the official Helper for the group. With all his gadgets, he usually could handle most minor emergencies, and he didn’t mind that much.

The rest of the day passed mostly uneventfully, and soon Vic found himself gliding back out of the school’s force bubble. He always liked the sensation of apparently flying towards a solid wall that just happened to look like the sky and just happened to give way before you as you broke through. The airspace inside was not as crowded as it normally was, which was fortunate, since Vic was going over some algorithms for integrating Anita’s new personality subroutine into her main logic circuits in his head and wasn’t really paying attention to his flying. And if I put it in the theta-alph sub-circuit with a feeler connection to the main theta circuit that will cut down on relay time to the – heads up! Vic veered sharply downward; avoiding the boxy speeder he was heading toward. Surprisingly, below the first black speeder was a second. Vic slowed down enough to avoid a collision and started to make his way around the two, but they moved to intercept him. Looking back over his shoulder, Vic saw four more black speeders fan out to cover his escape that way, as well as top and bottom. Shortly he was completely boxed in. Vic tried several times to break out of the box they formed, but they expertly herded him back to the center. Letting go of one joystick for a moment, he reached into another inner pocket and pulled out a unique object shaped like a star with six slender arms about six centimeters across. He pushed a contact in the center of the star and threw it back behind him. If he was going to get mugged, he might as well get it on tape. The star unit split into two, or rather, the star ejected another unit. The ejected unit was no bigger than a Terran fruit fly and had taken Vic a month of hard work under a microscope to complete. It found Vic and hovered nearby, taping everything around him and relaying it to the star-shaped recorder. The fly cam’s small size was to not alert the stars of the tape that they were being monitored. The star piece flashed and then shot off toward Vic’s dorm with a one-time burst of speed. The burst shot it out past the speeders, but they noticed it leave, and one dropped back to follow it instantly. Vic hoped that it would be able to avoid the speeder and return to his dorm unmolested. The star was the weakest link in this security system, since miniature motors give up a lot of speed for their size. Maneuverability was the star’s only advantage, and camouflage was the fly cam’s. As the one speeder disappeared, Vic caught sight of the logo on the back of the small craft. It was the shield over crossed swords logo of the police force of 132426. Vic looked quickly at the other speeders and saw that they all bore police logos, but had no lights or sirens. They were doing nothing that would alert the other citizens of the Coil that they were apprehending someone, but why? Vic knew what the normal police speeders looked like, and these were not it. For one thing they were faster and more agile than the scooters the normal police drove. Vic’s heart sunk lower in his chest as he pondered why the police had pulled out a squadron of special vehicles just to chase him down. Vic was glad then that he had not put up much of a fight. Vic couldn’t see the little fly the star had left, but trusted it was there, and it’s miniature camera was recording everything.

Vic paused his glider in mid-air and took his hands off the joysticks. The five speeders closed in around him, then seeing that he wasn’t struggling any more, herded him down, toward the Administrative Bubble. To specifically which office he was going, Vic didn’t know, but he guessed that he was in big trouble for something. With all the password cracking programs, network worms, static fields, and other gadgets he had used in the past, and had on his body, the authorities could probably find enough evidence to try him as an adult and put him behind bars for a quite few years without a whole lot of effort.

Vic waited for two hours in a blank room somewhere in the Administrative Bubble. He knew he might have looked a bit odd coming in, holding doors open a bit longer than he needed to, but he didn’t want the little fly cam to get left behind. Finding the little robot was hard enough even when he had a fix on it’s radio signal, but if it got trapped inside the Administrative complex, Vic would never again be able to get clearance to retrieve it. The tape wouldn’t do much good now, but he did want the cam back. Eventually a police officer came in, bearing a plastic bag and a small test tube with a snap top that was used for storing microliters of evidence. The officer was wearing his official uniform with the Galactic Empire logo on the right sleeve and the 132426 police logo on the left breast. His epaulettes marked him as a minor chief, not the regular officer Vic had hoped he would be talking to. The fact that a higher officer was interrogating him was not heartening at all. Before the door closed, Vic could see another figure standing in the hallway. He couldn’t see the figure’s face because it wore a loose, gray, hooded robe that put the entire face in shadow. Bronze colored edging rimed the sleeves, neck, and hem of the robe, but other than that Vic could see no more ornamentation. The officer closed the door behind him, cutting off Vic’s view of the hooded figure. Vic could see that all of his circuit board Keys were in the plastic bag, and he hoped he didn’t know what was in the test tube.

"Care to explain these?" The officer tossed the plastic bag onto the table in front of Vic. Each Key in the bag was sealed in a plastic box with a seal of the Galactic Empire on them. Another ingenious invention from the engineers down on Guer. Those boxes wouldn’t open again unless the fingerprint of the person trying to open it had the same fingerprints as the person who sealed it to begin with. Not to mention, they couldn’t be destroyed without destroying the contents.

"They’re my projects." Vic didn’t expect him to take that as a whole explanation, but it did for the time being.

"And this?" The officer handed the test tube to Vic. Vic held it up to the light and peered through it. In the bottom he could see a small black smudge with two small antennae that he recognized to be the transmitting antennas of his fly cam. The delicate robot had been burnt to a cinder, and was barely recognizable.

"A security measure." Vic wondered idly why they’d protected his circuit boards and fried the fly cam when the boards were the more dangerous of the two.

"For a young man who could potentially be in big trouble, you seem a little too cocky. I don’t know what’s going on with you but I don’t like it. Why are there three Mystics out there fighting for you when they were the ones who wanted you brought in?" Vic had to dredge up from his schooling who the Mystics were, and managed to correctly identify the figure he had seen earlier as one of them.

"I do not know sir, I have no idea why I’ve been brought in."

"Do you know that in that bag is enough evidence to put you behind bars for the rest of your life? Those devices are illegal viruses and network worms that could damage the entire mainframe system! Do you think that the authorities are going to go easy on you just because they’re your ’projects?’ "

"What about the bug?" Vic carefully avoided giving the officer a convicting statement.

"That little fella’ wandered through our electronics detector and got zapped because it wasn’t authorized. That’s probably the most beneficial gadget you had on you. The fact that we had such misguided geniuses as you living here is a burden to all the adults trying to raise you properly." The officer paused for a moment, gauging Vic’s reaction, and seeing no shift in Vic’s stoic expression, the officer suddenly leaned forward and put both hands on the table.

"What do you have that the Mystics want? One of your circuit board gadgets? A spy cam?" He whispered confidentially.

"I don’t know sir."

"Come now, you must know. They don’t have that much technology; what are you, their spy? Benefiting from this system’s technology?"

"I don’t know sir." The officer watched Vic for a moment, and then stood up and left the room. The Mystic was still standing outside the door, and Vic saw the officer bend down to talk to them as the door shut again.

----

The Copper Mystic’s bare feet padded along the carpeted walkway as they approached the Imperial Police Captain and the Bronze Mystic who were engaged in a strained debate in whispers in the hallway.

"I’m sorry sir," the Mystic was explaining, "but we come at the request of the Double Platinum, and the Compromise of 73GE ranks him as equal to your Emperor, so his summons must be obeyed. If you insist..."

"As a show of compassion; that he means no ill will to your subjects," the Copper Mystic delicately interrupted the Bronze with a firm tone, one that betrayed her femininity, before the Bronze ruined the delicate diplomatic moment with anger. She could see his anger radiating from him as he tried to control it again, and so she intervened. The Captain shifted his focus to the Copper with remembered prejudice. This was the woman -- no, the girl! he reminded himself savagely, that was in charge of this little acquisition, and was as stubborn as females twice her age. "He is being most kind in allowing your Emperor to ascertain that his subject will be well cared for in their journey, but we must insist on taking him." She finished.

"I tell you again that there’s nothing that you could want with this boy. He’s wanted as a suspect for several minor computer crimes, and probably several more major ones we don’t even know about. One slip by him and we’re about to put him away for life even if he is underage. I cannot allow such a person to be handed over to you, especially since he could be used against us."

The Copper internally sighed, but nevertheless kept up the soothing aura of logical thinking she was trying to impress upon this Captain. Eventually she got through to him, and he realized that he was dealing with powers above his rank and handed them off to his superior. Probably to go through the same discussion again, the Copper thought to herself as she and the Bronze walked off. Vic was the hardest one yet to get away from the Empire, and it may not even be worth it.

----

The blank interrogation room became routine, as Vic was shuttled first to 132426Up, the capitol of 132426, and then to Guer, and then out to the fringes of the galaxy. His sealed circuit boards and the remains of his bug cam stayed with him, but his text and spiral disappeared somewhere in 132426Up. Fortunately, he kept his data discs on his person. Everywhere he went he caught glimpses of the Mystics, usually arguing with the authorities keeping him. On the week long trip to the outer fringe of the galaxy, Vic tried in vain to open the boxes containing his Keys. If only he could use the password-cracking imp he could probably open up the computer consoles and take control of the ship, or at least figure out for certain where he was. The droneship finally landed at a planet orbiting station somewhere in the fringes of the galaxy. The ship deposited him in a comfortable lounge where he’d waited for half an hour. It was nicer than the stark rooms he’d been in, so he didn’t mind. When he heard the outer door start to open, Vic stood up, expecting a Mystic, or at least another official. Instead, the first civilian he’d seen in two weeks walked in. He was similar in height and age to Vic, but had sandy blonde hair with only a slight wave and bright blue eyes that shone like brilliant steel. His clothes betrayed that he wasn’t from the fringe, nor was he from 132426. The boy wore simple khaki pants with cargo pockets on the sides of the legs, and a loose, long sleeved shirt of tightly knit blue. Vic could tell from his outfit that he wasn’t from 132426, or any system near his, but couldn’t be more accurate. Draped across one arm was a simple space suit, identical to Vic’s, which lay on the couch behind him. The boy seemed as startled to see Vic as Vic was of him.

"Sorry to disturb you, I was actually expecting to find a Mystic here." The boy apologized and started for the door again.

Vic jumped up quickly. "No, no, come on in." Vic was sure that his captors didn’t intend for him to have any visitors, nor information about what was going on, so he wanted to try to get something out of this slip before it was corrected. "What brings you here?" Vic made a vague gesture with his hand that encompassed the whole station.

"Honestly, I don’t know. I’ve been shipped here without much flourish. I was expecting a Mystic because I think that’s who I’m supposed to find here, but I’m not sure." Vic’s hopes of gaining more information melted, for it seemed that the boy was in the same position he was, and it was no mistake that they were put together. If his disappointment showed on his face, the other probably took it as being fed up with his situation.

"Same. It seems that we’ve been allowed to meet because we’re both in the same situation, whatever that may be. Did they tell you anything extra in your journey here?"

"No, they’ve all been very hush-hush. I thought this was because of my parent’s deaths, but I wonder more and more. I know the Mystics are involved somehow; they’ve been at every stop I visited."

"I know they’re involved. They’re protecting me." Vic relayed the conversation he’d had with the officer the first day he was taken, which was also the most informative conversation he’d had the entire journey. "I forgot to start with introductions, though. I’m Victor, but call me Vic."

"Ice."

"Nickname?"

"Yes, it comes with the eyes. My given name is Barnabus."

"I can see why you choose to go by a nickname." Vic and Ice laughed together, so they didn’t hear the door open, nor notice the three Mystics that walked in until they greeted the two boys.