Shutdown.
ALERTS: FONE - Confirm full shutdown.
Yes.
Shutting down…
Blackout. Her ear module emit a tiny crack as it too powered down.
Stereovision gone. Optics gone. No HUD, no alerts, no apps, no access. She was cut off and helpless—in shock at the reality of being truly disconnected. It felt quiet, dull, unnatural, wrong. What the hell did people do before fones?
Focus on task. Get it over with.
She spread her lids wide, held her breath, and slid in the two circular ends, one on top and one beneath her fone. A gentle, scissoring squeeze, and she tilted her head back while steadily moving the extractor away. The gross (though not all that painful) final popping sensation shot a quick shiver down her spine. She moved the orb in front of her bio eye, giving it a brief inspection. Not too much film built up on the back, but she’d give it a thorough cleaning before reinstalling.
Ish’s fone drew in with the usual slorp Minnie had never grown used to. Her top eyelid folded in with the device and she had to pinch and pull out the flap. Preboot had begun upon contact with her housing, but it halted as expected a few seconds later with a white passcode prompt on a black background. Even with a mated housing, this was a standard safeguard.
Minnie hoped that one of the root accounts would’ve been set on their fones as part of exigency protocols.
?4rT~23eQ|p8
Nope.
She tried all of the others she knew. No access. All she could see in Ish’s fone was station time and batt level. 2% and slowly rising, Minnie’s electrolytes trickling in through her housing.
Such easy access would’ve been nice, albeit unexpected. On to Plan B.
John moaned. His cheeks tightened. It appeared his dreams were unpleasant. Minnie nudged him again.
“Hey, just wake up for a second. One question and you can go back to sleep.”
His chin constricted, mouth set into a grumpy toddler frown. A more assertive protest groan.
She poked his shoulder repeatedly. “I’m not going anywhere, John! One question! It’s your ticket back to dreamland. Wake up. You don’t even have to open your eyes. Okay?”
A quivering sniff like he was going to cry. Finally, a scratchy “What?”
“What’s Ish’s fone passcode?”
“Dunno.”
“Yes, you do.”
“No.”
“Yes. Tell me now. I’ll enter it right in and you go back to sweet, sweet, comforting sleep.”
One eye opened—his bio eye. It wobbled and blinked and found her. “You… you took her fone?”
Minnie smiled and widened her lids around the unmatched fone, cocking her head right for him to catch a glimpse.
Fog appearing to lift, he tried to sit up.
She pressed down on his shoulder. “No, no, no, relax. You’ll hurt yourself. Just give me the passcode. Once I’m in, I’ll dump it all to the EV system and we can both pull it off of there.”
“Minerva, we can’t just… every private moment, journals, pics and vids—”
“Yeah, exactly, all that stuff. Trust me, she’ll never know.”
“We have no proof that she did anything to—”
“Stop!” Her irritation with this man had once more bubbled up over the top of her patience pot. The woman was dead. Everyone was dead. And he was trying to protect, what, the dignity of Ish’s memory? She fought to unclench her jaw. “Give me the damned passcode. Let me grab her last few vids, prove her innocence for you, clear her name, set things right.”
John closed his eyes. “I don’t think she’s innocent.”
“Regardless of what you think, there’s more at stake here than what she did or didn’t do. I guarantee you her entire Hynka wiki is in here. Language and dialects, other villages and concentrations, spiritual beliefs, triggers, behavioral patterns, favorite hunting grounds, geographic research notes. All of which is data we’re supposed to have right now! That’s mission data! For whatever reason, she wiped it all clean. There’s your criminal act—justification for a fone recovery. Right?”
She’d gotten him. He was making the acquiescing face. “S’true. We have to get that data out.”
“Yes, indeed. Passcode me, boss.”
“No.”
“No?”
He shook his head weakly. “I can’t just give you full access to her life. I’ll go in. Copy the wiki and work notes, last week of vids, dump it all in the EV.”
Minnie wanted to punch him in the nose. She needed into that fone! Some of the most important material was surely in non-work files. But she was powerless. No alternatives.
Maybe after they reviewed the vids—vids of dead crewmembers before they were murdered, of Ish effectively pulling the trigger—John might lose a bit of that self-righteous conviction and, finally appropriately outraged, be inspired to delve deeper into the loon cauldron.
She went to fetch the extractor.
3.2
Ishtab Soleymani flung aside the weighty fur blanket, rising from her stately bed of piled skins. Her fingertips parted the dangling curtain of piquant vines. A stand of trussed bones bore her long skin stole. She hung it over her neck, draping the wide, black strips in front.
Flanking her bedchamber’s tall, isosceles doorway, her servants bowed their heads as she approached. She presented a hand to one of the Lessers. He obliged the gesture by gently sandwiching the hand between his four thick fingers. Ishtab rewarded this obedience by stepping behind the servant, peeling open the protective skin pouch, and sliding her arm in, down to her elbow, until she’d found the hidden organ inside. Her servant twisted and squirmed, hissing his gratitude and undying loyalty.
The other would receive only a stroke of the snout this time. He squatted low, hunching down to Ishtab’s raised hand.
“You good,” she said, and walked out into the sunlight.
In the shadow of her great palace stood crushing throngs of her disciples, Lessers and Greaters, all eyes glued to her. She raised her arms in a V, silencing the energized chatter.
“This day!” Ishtab shouted. “Westers join. We make. Strong us.” She allowed a lengthy outburst of approval. “Bring me. Now go.”
The masses cheered. The chests of a thousand Greaters expanded and contracted as they huffed the power breath. Dozens of Lessers fell for the clan, their bodies claimed for vital meat, destinies finally fulfilled. Once their bones had been scraped clean, broken, and drained of marrow, the clan set off to conquer the neighboring village.
Ishtab descended the staircase of short blocks, crafted for her height. Her bare feet reached the compacted dirt ground. She glided across the central court, stepping over bones and overlooked gore, a gentle breeze sending her stole under her arms and fluttering behind her. Lessers with other duties strolled through the village. In passing, Ishtab raised a preemptive hand before these faithful souls could ask if their queen required anything.
In the Greaters’ shades, Ishtab walked among the beleaguered expecting, and weary recent birthers. Newborns, not much smaller than her, nursed from the porous skinfolds in their mothers’ armpits.
“Good,” Ishtab told each mother as she passed. “Good.”
At the end of a row, outside the shades, she spotted a small cluster of birthers, apparently ejected into the harsh sunlight. Ishtab approached.
“Why here?”
One of the three mothers turned her head, regarding Ishtab with respect, and then lifted her arm to expose her nursing newborn. The baby’s small feet and ashen sides answered the question. These Greater mothers had birthed Lessers.