Chapter 4

Fen opened his eyes with some difficulty to find himself in a small room with pitch black walls. The floors and ceiling were curved at the edges, creating the impression that he was inside an oddly square tar bubble. A single light panel directly above him bathed the space in dim blue.

Slowly becoming aware of his body, he tried to stand up but couldn’t seem to make his legs work. He tried his arms, also to no avail, then found that his neck was at least still functional. He strained to look down and realized that he couldn’t move because his limbs were tightly encased in black material that extended out from the wall and floor, adding further credence to his tar bubble impression. Trying to quell the panic rising in him, Fen closed his eyes, breathed deeply and listened.

Presently a door that he had not noticed opened on the opposite corner of the room and two men entered. They were both wearing long, blue-gray coats that signified to Fen that they were government, though the coats and the plain indoor shoes they wore made them look like chemists.

“Let’s get started,” said the taller of the two, a solid-looking man with mousey hair. “I haven’t heard a sound out of this one, is that by choice?”

“No,” said the shorter man, his long gash of a mouth forming the words with a subtle accent. “He’s mute. When we did the scans this one showed significant scarring on the vocal chords. Esmer thinks it might’ve been a botched modification attempt when the guy was a kid.”

“Ouch,” replied the tall man, looking at Fen with something close to sympathy. He took a step closer, then crouched down, bringing his face closer to Fen’s. Fen blinked once, noting the man’s dull grey eyes and slightly upturned nose. “So,” said the man. “We confiscated the wetware that you and your people had in storage, as well as your computers.”

Fen kept his face stiff as the man continued to talk. “I must say, these programs are quite advanced. They could make for some very well-nuanced personas if they were to be installed. How long had you and your people been working on them?”

Fen kept his mouth clamped shut. Why were they asking him these questions? They knew he couldn’t answer them. He let his gaze wander to the edges of the tall man’s face, back to the shorter man, who he noticed was holding a tablet of some sort in one hand. In his other hand, a stylus. Three times, the man lowered the stylus to the tab screen, making a short mark with a single stroke.

Brainwaves! They were recording his thoughts. Probably his pulse, too. Fen now understood the nature of the odd tar bubble room – his restraints doubled as monitors and they were reading his heartbeat, his body temperature, brainwaves and gods knew what else.

He had to control himself. Had to remain calm.

He breathed deeply and returned his gaze to the tall man.

“No answer, huh?” So they were playing dumb. “Now, Mr. Forrester - Fenwick, if you don’t mind – I know you can’t answer me with words. But any indication that we’re on the right track here would be helpful. A nod, a smile – anything like that will help you get out of here faster. So, I’m going to free one of your hands – then you have another option. A thumbs up, maybe?” The man gave Fen the briefest hint of a smile, which Fen returned after a second of deliberation. He wasn’t going to give them what they wanted, but he didn’t want to spend the rest of his life in this room, either.

“Excellent,” said the tall man.  The plastic-like substance that had encased Fen’s right hand retracted to midway up his forearm. He flexed his fingers. The man was still talking. “My name is Nate. I work for government intelligence, as you’ve probably guessed. Now, we think that given the size of your operation, and some of the existing code we found on your computers, you’re probably putting out some pretty high-quality wetware. And that’s great! See, what we’re really concerned about here is public safety. Which is why we have to crack down on unregulated factories like yours. We can’t know for sure about the quality of the stuff being produced there, so we have to treat everyone the same – from the big established producers, to the little guys holed up in basements. Make sense?”

Fen gave a slight nod. Of course it made sense. Public safety was the reason muzzles were invented.

“Good. Now, so that you aren’t trying to hide anything in the name of protecting them, you should know that we have your cohorts in our custody as well. They’re in this building, in fact.”

Fen breathed deeply to keep his pulse from racing, focusing on himself, in this room. Don’t think about the others.

The shorter man’s tab emitted a small beep. Nate looked back and the shorter man nodded at him briefly. Fen felt the dampness of his free palm in the slight coolness of the room’s air.

“I’m going to ask you again, Fen, in a manner that works for you. So – how long had your team been working in this location? Was it more than a year?”

Fen nodded, slowly. They had been in that abandoned storehouse for 27 months, to be exact, and he was counting on everyone else to give up this information freely. It didn’t much matter, at this point. The entity they had rented it from, a structurer who went by the name Kor, was deep in hiding. The only records of the rental were in Kor’s digitally augmented head.

 “More than a year. Okay. I want you to show me with your hand how many months you had been in the space.”

Twisting his wrist, Fen first held up two fingers, then flashed five, then two in quick succession. There was no space for confusion, and he didn’t expect Nate to pretend. The shorter man’s tab would display the number Fen was picturing. The fingers were only part of the show.

“Twenty-seven. Excellent. Thank you for your cooperation, Fen. I just have one more thing that I’d like to know. Where were these wetware packages going to be shipped?”

Fen gritted his teeth, trying not smile. He didn’t know the answer. As Taba had taught him so many months ago, he closed his eyes and pictured a farming shack, attempting, in his mind, to make it look slightly derelict. He had never seen a shack in real life, but Taba had shown him, Sean and Maril a pic of one, from a calendar. It was white and shiny, the late morning sun cutting through the drone-induced mist and glinting off the top dome.

The shorter man’s tab beeped again and Fen bit his lip as the man leaned in closer, squinting slightly to see the approximation that had appeared before him.

“Nate,” he voiced. “Check this out.”

The tall man turned away from Fen to look at the shorter man’s tab. “…is that a farm shack?”

“I think so.”

“Anything distinguishable that you can make out?”

The shorter man pursed his lips, scanned the image for another moment. “Usually the only thing that distinguishes the shacks is the crop growing around them – but either it’s too misty to tell in this picture, or the kid only got to see the place in Month K so nothing would have been growing.”

Nate grimaced. “Shit. These guys are smarter than we give ‘em credit for.”

“Well… we can take this to Esmer and see if he can refine it at all, but… yeah I think this might be a dead end.”

The tall man took a moment to compose himself, then turned back to Fen. The man looked the other dead in the eye for a moment, as if somehow his own intuition was going to be more accurate than the monitoring room and his partner’s tab. “Well, it’s a start. Thank you for all your help, Fen. That’s all we can ask of you for now. Seth here will escort you to the lobby so you can claim your belongings, and then you’ll catch a car off the premises.”

Fen nodded, trying not to smile. It would have been immodest, in such a situation.