The porter feebly shook his head at her words. “But you’ve not been given the answers yet. And even if you spend years studying this tar I’ve brought you, we’re all doomed to die before you ever understand anything.” The porter stood up, followed by EV. “Promise me if you do find anything out about that tar, EV, that you’ll tell me.”
EV wanted him to wait. She understood what he was saying, but she wanted him to know that she was determined to find the clues that would help them sidestep extinction. But before she could open her mouth, the porter had disappeared. The hologram equipment that the pair used to converse had been switched off, but he should still have been physically present nearby. EV hurried up to the ground level entrance. As the doors to ground level opened, she was enveloped in the light pouring in from outside. She squinted in the brightness.
“Wait!” she screamed. But the porter had already left her shelter and was walking away. All she could see was his back. “Wait!” she shouted again. But the porter didn’t do so much as even turn his head.
A few days later, reports of a terrorist attack came through from a colony outside of Mountain Knot City. A voidout had killed Heartman’s wife and daughter, and left Heartman himself wandering the border between life and death.
EV carried on with her work. It had been two years since that conversation with the porter, but she still hadn’t managed to fulfil her promise to him. Not because she hadn’t seen him, but because she hadn’t uncovered a single thing.
EV’s job wasn’t just to analyze the tar, but when she thought about it, that jet-black substance had been the only thing on her mind for some time now.
Now that Sam Porter had embarked on his quest to connect the Chiral Network, and the scientists in the east had been able to gradually restore some of the archives, EV had sent away for any data pertaining to Extinction Entities and the tar.
But since her area hadn’t been connected yet, she had to rely upon the meagre telecommunications systems she was currently equipped with, and she was getting impatient. Forget movies, she couldn’t even receive large images. All she could do was rely on a network of waystations to receive text data. But even when she received data in text format, she had lost count of the number of times it had arrived broken or with bits missing.
There was also the issue of the tar. The tar that had been bubbling up in the west had been more active recently, but she didn’t know why. She hadn’t even managed to find out where the tar was coming from in the first place, so there was nothing she could do.
Not only had the scattered bubbling springs of tar begun to increase in number, they were also getting larger and now formed a line that ran north to south. The points where the tar was bubbling forth had started to form a small river, and the area had become known as the tar belt. It continued to expand and had even swallowed up some nearby waystations that were supposed to be used for the Chiral Network. It was impossible to predict what the tar would do next, so they couldn’t get too close.
To EV, Sam Porter was the messiah who would restore the waystation and finally connect her up to the Chiral Network. And he was due any day now.
Then the day finally arrived.
When she thought about it, it had indeed been quite a while since she had last received a visitor. It was because once EV found out that Fragile Express, the porter company that her porter friend had worked for, had effectively come under the control of Higgs, she had no choice but to rely on the few porters from Bridges or freelancers instead. When people did drop by it made her feel less nervous. But not this time. Sam was bringing the Q-pid and EV couldn’t contain her excitement.
As soon as Sam entered the shelter, the delivery terminal activated and a hologram was projected into the air.
The projection showed the silhouette of a slender girl. She was a scientist named EV. He noticed her expression stiffen. Sam wasn’t surprised, he hardly had the easiest face to look at. He hadn’t looked in the mirror lately, but he assumed he was covered in blood, sweat, and mud like usual. Sam wasn’t in the mood for greetings or explaining himself. The woman should have been notified that Sam was on his way, since even though this was a shelter, it was still under the control of Bridges. He was a visiting colleague, after all. Sam cleared security, but the woman’s face was still stiff.
When Sam traced her gaze, he noticed that her attention was fixed on Lou.
“It is you, isn’t it, Sam?” The woman’s voice was trembling slightly. It looked like she was scared of the pod.
“I was instructed to come here by Heartman and Bridges. My name is Sam Porter Bridges. I’d like you to let me activate the Chiral Network here. Do you have a problem with that?”
The woman shook her head, but her expression didn’t change in the slightest and she continued staring at Lou. Not bothering to ask her why, Sam took out the Q-pid and held it up. That was when the woman’s face finally relaxed.
“Go ahead, Sam, I’ve been waiting for you. Please connect me right away.”
EV thanked Sam and he connected her shelter to the UCA.
“I’m sorry, Sam, but can I ask you something? That thing on your chest… what is it for?”
Sam faltered for a second at the abrupt question. Did she mean in the practical sense, or the theoretical sense? Sam supposed he could sum it up by explaining that the BB was used for sensing BT, but he knew the BB was more than just that. Still, did he need to explain so much to this scientist who was seeing a BB for the first time?
EV watched Sam try to come up with an answer and seemed to accept it when he couldn’t. It was like she had guessed that there wasn’t really an answer either way.
“I used to know a porter who carried one of those things,” she told him.
Sam felt his own face stiffen this time, as he remembered the terrorist group he had encountered on his way here.
“He told me that when he used it, he could see all kinds of things. He said it had told him that humanity was destined for extinction. Does yours do the same, Sam?”
“No. This little one is my partner. Lou tells me when I’m in danger. If I didn’t have this BB, I would never have made it all the way here alone,” Sam answered.
If what the woman said was true, it meant that the thing attached to the porter’s chest was no BB, it just happened to look like one. Then it struck him. The equipment that Higgs and the other terrorists had strapped to their chests might not have been BBs either. Or at the very least, they weren’t the same as Lou. Maybe that was why Lou was so upset when they had encountered them.
“The porter I knew cried,” EV recalled. “He said he was scared. He said that he was having dreams of extinction and had become unable to resist them any longer. He confessed that to me… then he never came back.”
Lou gave a cry. It wasn’t out of fear, but out of sadness. This had never happened before. Lou was looking up at Sam from inside the pod. Sam looked into Lou’s eyes, but he couldn’t tell where Lou’s sadness was coming from.
When Sam looked back up, EV’s hologram had disappeared. Perhaps she had finally given up on getting any answers at all out of him. Maybe she was just satisfied now she was hooked up to the Chiral Network. In any case, Sam’s work here was done. It didn’t matter how EV felt about things. Sam was worried about his crying BB and turned to leave. Something Sam couldn’t put his finger on lingered in this place. Harsh noise echoed around the room. Sam turned back around to see the image of an unfamiliar man projected where EV’s hologram had once stood. He was wearing a hood low over his eyes, so Sam couldn’t really tell what the man looked like. He wasn’t so tall, but Sam could tell that he was made from lean muscle. It was a body that looked like it had been honed through daily labor. The worn and faded suit the man was wearing bore the name “Fragile Express.” On his left shoulder was an Odradek and on his chest was a BB. Both were slightly different to the ones that Sam used, but matched the ones the terrorists possessed. That meant that a terrorist was lurking in the basement. Was this a setup? Sam instinctively grabbed for the ID strand around his waist. It was the only thing he had to hand that could be used as a weapon.