Tales of Henwa Island
The Visitors on Their Vacation
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Azula explained to her mother as she guided Lady Ursa on a tour of the new computer facility. "I can't take the credit for saying that."
Lady Ursa had heard of the new computing engines which governments and various corporations and institutions were buying up but like most people she had no idea what they actually did. She simply listened to her daughter and watched blinking lights and spinning reels of paper tapes.
The teletype printer puked out another ream of paper as the machine under Azula's care barfed errors and panicked. Azula had decided the term 'panic' best suited what the machine did when it found something so disagreeable that it simply stopped.
"As you can see, nothing magical takes place here." Azula tore off the printout once the teletype had finished and examined it carefully. "You used to give me stern lectures for tormenting my brother or turtle ducks or some other kind of mischief. I don't recall them being terribly effective on me but perhaps you can come up with a few stern words to fix the computer."
Lady Ursa smiled kindly because while she loved her eccentric daughter; most of the time she had no idea what Azula was talking about. "What did the computer thing do wrong?"
"I have no idea." Azula said slowly as she examined the printout. "I don't remember telling the stupid machine to compile and link that. I don't remember telling it to run that particular executable because I didn't have any plans to actually run any of it." Azula flicked the Newton's Cradle she kept on the top of one of the computer banks. The tick tick sound of the metal balls helped fill awkward silences.
"Doesn't it do exactly what you tell it to do?" Lady Ursa reminded her daughter. Ursa had come to visit with her daughter and her 'kind of' son in law and to attend Ty Lee's baby shower. Ursa wanted to try and get to know her daughter as a mature woman and as the mad scientist but Ursa knew little about science. The Royal Fire Academy for Girls had never been respected for its science curriculum which Lady Ursa found regrettable in retrospect. Azula had such a passion for science that she would have struggled less if she had the chance to be true to herself. Ursa felt she had in part caused her daughter's emotional scars because she fell into the pressure of seeking a military career for her.
"Indeed." Azula said. "Unlike humans, computers are very stupid and can't tell the difference between what I intend to tell it and what I told it. Did you really want to follow me around her all afternoon as I play with this thing or do your glassy eyed stares tell me you'd rather go somewhere for tea?" Azula smiled as she remembered that they had reservations at the exclusive Jubilee Park Tea House that afternoon.
Lady Ursa had to admit to herself that hearing this came as a relief. Azula had explained the building and design of computer hardware and software as if it were something almost inevitably easy to accomplish. Azula had prefaced much of her explanation of computer theory with the phrase 'in reality this works on simple principles' and then Lady Ursa would not understand anything her daughter said over the next five minutes.
Karo and Sokka decided to paint the ceiling of Karo and Azula's room and both of them had decided to depict 'The World of Tomorrow'. Sokka came to learn the craft and art of drawing and painting from Karo but they both agreed their unique vision needed a large canvas and decided on the roof of the bedroom.
Suki unlocked the front door and could hear the loud crescendos of the kind of 'long haired music' Karo enjoyed coming from the second floor.
Suki found them standing on wooden dining room chairs with paint brushes in their hands. She knew they should not be allowed to play together. 'The next century would prove interesting for humanity if the course of history follow the vision of these boys.' Suki thought to herself as she looked up at the half colored painting. She had to admit the aliens greeting the next Avatar looked well rendered and beautifully colored with lime green skin and their flying saucer had a nice metallic shine. Karo and Sokka had drawn a futuristic city landscape full of flying cars and a landscape devoid of farms but full of cone shaped cooling towers.
A frozen lemur in a silver jumpsuit stared blankly out of the circular window of a silver space capsule orbiting over the city.
"Excuse me?" Suki cleared her throat.
Karo jumped and dropped his paint palette. "Good God Woman!" Karo clutched his chest as Suki had arrived without making a sound and somehow had waltzed into the house without any comment from Mitsumi. "Do the Kyoshi Warriors hover on the Earth's magnetic field or something?"
"I came looking for my husband." Suki announced firmly with a hint of anger.
Karo had lived with Azula so he had grown accustomed to rants. Suki wore the tan and green robes of a well dressed Earth Kingdom maiden and she looked livid as she stared up at Sokka and Karo painting a science fiction book cover on the ceiling. Karo didn't know Sokka had forgotten about another engagement and since Azula blew off so many important appointments; the poor fellow had no idea this was bad conduct.
"We were supposed to meet Lady Mai and Lady Ursa at three o clock." Suki said sharply. "Luckily Lady Ursa arrived at the Jubilee Park Tea House with Azula - who told me you and Karo had decided to paint the ceiling of this room!"
Koko had two reasons for hating Azula. The princess had humiliated and shamed the Kyoshi Warriors by defeating them and tossing them into prison. She had also stolen the cute and cuddly Karo.
Koko had trained in the art of stealth and broken into the Computer Lab. She had trained in the art of stealth but needed those skills to avoid having her nearly two meter tall exotic, red haired frame noticed by male undergraduate students. The rain kept most of them inside and her Kyoshi Island Warrior uniform acted as good cover: those who saw her thought she was either dressed up for a frat party or another one of those weirdos who hung out on campus. Some even mistook her for the rugby team mascot.
Koko didn't need stealth or lock-picking to break into the lab. No one bothered to lock the machine up, least of all Azula because no one could envision a circumstance in which someone would pick up and walk away with a machine the size and mass of one or more whales. The machine was also bolted to the foundations. Azula had never envisioned a Kyoshi Warrior would break into the lab: computers were of limited use to most everyone and Azula didn't imagine a Kyoshi Warrior would need a machine that could compute quantum field equations.
She cracked the door open to the lab and crept in.
She didn't know The Admiral 670 was a Stored Program Computer that used paper tape to hold programs. Had she cared; she might have done a quick comparison of early computer designs, machine code and other features and realized the engineers of the Realm had arrived at a design for a primitive hybrid electronic computer that used optical elements (neon tubes) to perform the switching. She knelt down and could see the blue white glow which were tiny neon like lamps called cold cathode fluorescent tubes and decatrons switching on and off so fast they looked like they gave off a steady light. She didn't. She wished to lie in wait and confront Azula when she returned to the lab from tea with her mother. Koko could smell ozone and hot electrical parts.
She walked between the large cabinets along the walls and the shorter metal boxes that contained the storage devices. She didn't know the machine had 'panicked' or halted and wasn't doing anything at the moment. While radio valves and neon lights worked well enough and the machine could work for weeks without having a part fail; power cycles made it much more prone to component failures. Azula left it on all of the time for this reason. A button on the main CPU unit (one of the large metal cabinets with blinking lights and switches) would reboot the machine when needed.
Koko hit the switch as she walked back. She heard a hum and a click as the machine cycled. The gleaming teal enameled beast began to work.
The teletype began to print out messages. Koko had toggled the boot program on.
She knelt behind a storage unit and watched the paper spool as the teletype printed out the details of what the computer had to accomplish in order to prepare itself to run software. The machine had the option to direct these messages to indicator lights which would illuminate in a certain pattern if something in the hardware went wrong. The boot program checked the memory, logic circuits and storage devices and then wrote out the information onto a special file on one of the huge drives. On the 670, this process took a few minutes to accomplish and so Koko had the nerve rattling experience of hearing the teletype bang away and paper move, then stop while code executed; then as if infested by an evil spirit, resume banging away.
When the machine quieted down and the strange lights quit moving Koko breathed a sigh of relief.
Azula would have avoided tea with Sokka, Suki, Lady Mai and her mom but as social events went; she didn't have a bad time and she ate some nice biscuits. The Jubilee Park Tea House offered a nice, dry and quaint place in which to discuss current events and enjoy some nice tea. She opened the door to the lab and stood in the doorway for a moment.
"I can tell someone has come to visit me." She said wryly. "Someone has toggled the Boot Program on and now the machine is up and running."
Koko stood up from behind the storage unit. "How did you enjoy your afternoon tea?"
"Who are you?" Azula looked at the tall red haired girl with her long braided hair.
Koko looked at Azula like a cat eyes a mouse: "I am the Kyoshi Warrior Koko. You imprisoned me in that awful Fire Nation gulag and then when I fell in love, you stole the man I loved."
Azula scratched the back of her head. "I have to hire someone to fill me in on the things I might need to know for the oncoming day when I get up. What man did I steal?"
"Karo Zhao." Koko said as she faced Azula.
"I have spared you much." Azula decided not to move as she feared Koko would do something rash and damage the very expensive machinery in the room. Azula looked around the room for a moment then spoke authoritatively: "Since you challenged me to a duel, I get to pick the weapon. We have thirty minutes and the one who can write and compile a program to calculate prime numbers wins."
"Suki wishes to forgive you but even she finds it difficult as you acted very cruelly to her." Koko watched the Fire Nation Princess. "You haven't changed. You never apologized to anyone for the things you did and you are still the arrogant, mean spirited, viscous and evil person you were when we first fought you. I can see all of this in your eyes." Koko descended into an angry growl. "Why shouldn't I avenge our order?"
"I will take that as a no then?"
"Make sense woman!" Koko began to step forward.
Azula put her hands behind her back. "I don't have time for this: I have work to do. If you want to avenge your order then make it quick – a quick snap of the neck will do it. I won't fight you. You will find Karo at our home painting the ceiling of our bedroom and you can tell him you avenged your order and Princess Azula is dead."
"You wouldn't make it that easy!" Koko walked forward. "I know Azula – Princess of the Fire Nation – as the most powerful fire bender in all the world." She grabbed Azula by the queue of hair created by her gold hair pin; held er up to her face and waited.
"Life is misery." Azula looked deeply into Koko's green eyes. Azula felt her scalp burn with pain but she waited. Azula closed her eyes and looked quite at peace. "In life, it is best to never have been born at all. It is second best to die as soon as possible."
"I have grown in skills and power." Koko held up Azula. "I have much greater physical strength than you so if you didn't have fire bending you could never have overcome us."
"One, three, five and seven...two is also a prime number." Azula answered back. "You've lifted me off the ground by my hair so what should I say? Congratulations? You can toss me across the room and beat me into unconsciousness? I wish you wouldn't because the University spent a fortune on this computer and I would lose my pension if I broke it with my limp body."
"Koko!" Suki yelled out. "Put her down." Suki wore a fine Earth Kingdom Dress and yet somehow managed to look imposing as she stood at the door.
Koko walked up to Suki and held up Azula by the hair.
"Ow!" Azula yelped but managed to sing. My hair bone is fastened to my scalp bone! My scalp is fastened to every nerve in my head! I have a new appreciation for pain and big boned women."
Suki had a sense of disbelief: she had heard Koko had vanished on a mission to find Azula when one of her warriors rushed up to the tea house in a panic and mentioned Koko wanted to avenge the order and kill Azula. She had expected the Princess of the Fire Nation to have turned Koko into crusty goo laughing over the seared corpse swinging her long red braid as a trophy. Suki had to admit she had long wished to beat the cruel Azula; the woman held up by Koko wasn't that Azula. Azula looked as defiant as ever and even as Koko harshly yanked her by the hair; she complained but had a strange inner calm. Azula looked frail. Suki could see her hands shake but not out of fear but like an old woman: the consequences of her years of illness.
"Kyoshi Warriors protect people." Suki told Koko. "Does this woman look like the Azula you knew?"
Koko could feel the odd trembling in Azula's frame which came and went in waves and from time to time she saw a twitch in the hands of the princess.
"I am not weak." Azula complained. "I decided to spare this red haired mutant because I don't want any of the machines in this room damaged."
Suki looked around the room at the machines. She knew the room contained some kind of 'electronic brain' or 'analytic engine' as Sokka had kept abreast of the developments in the technology but she had no idea what real world purpose such a thing would serve. Suki saw that oddly annoying calm and confident look on Azula's face while Koko wore a look of pure rage.
"Put her down." Suki asked gently. "I spent many sleepless nights plotting how to bring Azula to her knees but my hate doesn't make it right in my heart.
Koko let Azula fall to the floor and she landed on her rump with a thump.
"Are we done yet?" Azula sat on the floor as she felt the headache recede. "I have much work to do."
Sokka wanted to buy a clock radio. He had seen one model with bright red illuminated digits as tall as his thumb.
Suki wondered why her husband needed a clock visible from the South Pole.
Sokka loved novelty but he had to give up on the purchase of the clock radio because for reasons lost to history, Henwa used a 240 volt household electrical system while the parts of Kyoshi Island that had access to electricity ran on a 120 volt system. Sokka couldn't read the Henwanese numbers on any account but the red neon light display looked fascinating. Suki had to ask herself what in the nature of these people made them build gadgets?
She felt completely out of place. Sokka felt comfortable anywhere but Suki kept having the feeling the people on the street and in the shop kept looking at her as though she were a country bumpkin.
Suki did feel better than she had felt yesterday. Koko had assaulted Azula and been arrested. Unlike most places in the Realm; Henwa had a true legal system based on reason, evidence and the right of the accused to defend herself.
Azula hadn't pressed charges and assured Suki she wouldn't for reasons she never chose to reveal.
The University had decided to pursue charges of trespass and breaking and entering. Suki knew the Henwanese took violation of property rights very seriously. Koko had wound up in a place she had no right to enter and used her training in stealth.
Koko had a meeting with the judge and Suki had already offered to defend her. Suki wondered if she would be able to offer any help. Kyoshi Law relied on the ruling of elders and the Noble Class. In the Dominion, law had become the domain of a professional cast of characters. Police enforced the laws; judges and juries made legal decisions and lawyers defended the accused or put forward the case on behalf of the state. The Law Courts was an imposing classical styled building of marble on the opposite side of the street from the classical style brick city hall.
"You still here?" Sokka asked quietly as Suki stared at a cast iron lamp post. Sokka put his tan umbrella over her head to keep off the light rain that had fallen all day.
Azula waited as the teletype rattled off a printout she had prepared in a program enigmatically called 'vi'. Supper had come and gone, and Azula had simply ignored her need for food. Katara dropped by on her way home and made sure Azula took time away from the beast. Katara had no understanding of how any of it really worked and while Azula enjoyed explaining the principles; Katara yawned.
Katara sat on one of the heavy metal storage units. The thing had the comforting feel of sturdy construction – similar to the Fire Nation habit of metalwork but painted a more pleasing teal and with flickering lights. The lab had no chairs.
"We now have half a dozen teletypes around campus and ttp0 – which is mine and then ttp1 which belongs to the Library." Azula had her back to Katara but spoke casually about the various petty annoyances that had crept into her life because of the computer. "I chose a sensible name for each machine and had it printed on a sign in front of each console. Despite this, two bit morons will type to this machine." Azula hadn't actually chosen names that made sense. 'Library' and 'Computer Lab' made sense but Omix called devices by their machine name.
"Are you doing alright?" Katara asked. "How are you dealing with the whole Koko incident."
"A red haired Amazon picked me up by my hair." Azula turned to face Katara with a printout in her hand. "I had almost forgotten about what I did during my youth and had hoped to become an obscure historical figure. I have the title 'Princess of the Fire Nation' but I had believed I had sunk into historical obscurity and would be one of those topics picked by History graduate students looking for hard to research topics for their thesis."
"You had a role in building this machine." Katara made one of those tactful changes to the subject. Azula didn't have a good sense of what she felt nor did she have much space in her life for emotional honesty and turned her humiliations and rage into work. "The Computer has to count for something in the Long March of Civilization."
Azula checked a row of orange Nixie lights on the main processor and then checked the paper tape drive. "Whenever a group of people do something; no one person gets the credit or the glory. A group of engineers at the Electric Machine Industries Corporation built on work done during the War by the Fire Nation to design control systems for The Drill. The Bishop of Komatsu wanted a new organ and my brother opened his wallet to pay to build it. EMI realized they could scale up that machine and so now you have a room filled with the computer which you can purchase if you have a few million beans laying about the place. The church, my brother or the countless engineers made this possible and my name only appears as a remark in some of the computer source code."
"Ty Lee hasn't felt well. Koko tried to beat you up. The rain hasn't let up for more than a few hours during the time they've visited." Katara told Azula. "I've found this baby shower a complete bummer and we haven't even had it yet. I thought it would be fun to gather up the old gang and celebrate Avatar Aang and Ty Lee's new son."
Azula picked up a heavy looking paper tape on a metal reel from its storage space on top of one of the computer consoles. "We can pin all of this on you?" She walked up to one of the tape drives and seated the tape on the spools. "A decade or more has passed since your glory days." Azula pushed a red illuminated button at waist height and the tape reader began to click as the reel moved. A glass cover slid up silently, shut and muffled the sound of the motors driving the tape. Azula knew the manufacturer had done much to add the 'wow' factor to these machines by adding sliding glass doors and pretty lights.
"Maybe you're right." Katara said thoughtfully. "I missed out on my childhood because my mother died and my father was never home. Gran Gran couldn't keep everything working so I had no choice but to pitch in. I didn't have a chance to be a little girl."
Azula stood at the teletype console and entered a few necessary commands. "At Karo's high school, they published a year book each year and they put pictures of the student in it. They did this so all of the students would look back and realize life is a river and takes odd turns. Karo looked like a bucktoothed freak and I would not looked his way if I knew him then. He had acne, the head of hair they would model toilet brushes on and his list of visual offenses went on. I met him during the time I spent at Uncle Iroh's guest house in the back of his tea house. I had blown up a raccoon and I ended up with him as a life long companion. One of the guys on the rugby team went on to strangle hookers and dump them in the canals of Ba Sing Se. Karo told me they hung him last week."
Katara gave that tirade a long thought. "No regrets about Karo then?"
"He hasn't started murdering prostitutes...if that's what you mean." Azula watched in irritation as the computer went on to barf errors and a long chain of teletype paper spewed from the machine. "Computer comes from the ancient Chinese words 'never works the first dozen goes around then fails mysteriously when you think it's working'.
"And what if you never met Karo?" Katara asked quietly.
"He'd go on to be something of a well regarded cartoonist because he's artsy. He did a lot of the art work in the yearbooks and can make a pencil do his bidding. He has insanely neat handwriting which looks like a printed book. He'd have a successful career as a cartoonist, a boyfriend with red or blond hair and they'd have a Siamese cat or a lemur." Azula looked at the paper tape reader and growled. "I'd wind up murdering hookers with Fire Bending after this computer drove me around the bend for not freaking doing what I keep telling it to do. Naw not hookers, I'd prey on the real social parasites – lawyers and dentists."
"I am your court appointed attorney. My name is Iban Rossin." Koko sat on a metal chair bolted to the cement on the wrong side of the meeting hall of the city jail. A well appointed and neatly dressed criminal defense attorney who looked about her age sat on an altogether nicer leather covered chair on the right side of the meeting hall. He spoke to her through a black telephone receiver as a thick glass partition with metal bars separated them.
He didn't actually say those words. Karo translated for him because Iban spoke Chinese only very poorly as he had learned it in high school as a prerequisite for law school and promptly repressed most of it after he had done his bar exam.
Koko examined the tall lawyer who spoke in rapid and chirpy Henwanese and Karo whose reedy voice didn't suit the tall man's stature at all. She had the impression she had stumbled onto the real world equivalent of a badly dubbed movie. In her time in the city jail, sharing a cell with three prostitutes (not illegal) who had beaten a John about the head for not paying (Koko now knew assault and battery was illegal) she had learned how to count to ten in Henwanese. She ran that through her mind: 'an, dáo, trí, hidar, hin, sét, seppán, eci, nin, dasn.' Koko could hold her own but the trick to keeping the peace was to know that 'dasn' pronounced 'dawshn' 'meant get off my bunk or I cut you'. Koko could easily fight off three hookers but she had no idea where they might have been in the past.
"I have spoken to the legal representatives of the University," Karo translated in an uncomfortable but studious manner, "and we have agreed that keeping you in jail makes no sense."
Iban reached down and produced paperwork from a large leather bag he had placed on the floor.
"Azula hasn't pressed any charges and Karo has told me; she has no intention to press charges." Karo proved quite skilled as he rearranged the nonsense of Henwanese into Chinese. Koko imagined this proved no easy feat as Henwanese stubbornly put the important chunks like the verb at the end of the sentence. "The Kyoshi Island authorities have agreed to pay your way to Kyoshi Island on the next passenger ship leaving tonight at eight o clock. Suki has agreed to make sure you board that ship."
Iban motioned a guard forward and she came and took the paperwork with her and opened a badly painted gray heavy metal door between the free world and Koko's world. "If you sign these legal documents; we will release you to the custody of Suki and Karo. Any questions?"
Karo had explained the text of the document while Suki and Koko rode with him to the tram. Henwanese legalese needed translation and Karo the one time economist tried his best. Henwanese and Chinese had a very different way of slicing up the world into concepts. Chinese used little words which more or less had some kind of meaning. Henwanese dunked as much meaning in one word (often the verb or a prominent noun) and plastered them with endings. Henwanese legalese was especially hard, complex, dense and unfriendly. Small words in Henwanese such as túi and tuk had the same meaning (they acted as relative clause markers of some kind) with different contexts. Henwanese didn't mark independent clauses and Karo didn't wish to try explaining that sort of thing. Koko had to be on board the ship with her papers in an hour and a half.
"Anyway...it's a deportation order." Karo said with regret as the tram shuffled around a corner and bumped down the street. "I suppose at some point in the future you'll be allowed to return."
Koko had no desire to return. The Dominion had all kinds of modern wonders but the rain had made for a soggy visit and the people had all the warmth of dead fish. She knew what a deportation order meant and that it also meant explaining her failure to many families on Kyoshi Island.
Suki held onto a strap as the tram shuddered and rocked. She had no idea what to do or think. She had come to the Dominion to spend time with friends. That set of people included Katara, Ty Lee, Aang and Karo. She could care less about Azula and knew the princess shared the same feelings. Suki found it no surprise that the elder warriors in her group would resent Azula but she found it astonishing that Koko would seek revenge and beat her.
The tram squealed as the driver applied the brakes as the car reached the bottom of the long hill and turned to pull into the set of stops set aside for the cruise ship passengers.
Koko had a mission to complete. She had failed because she had wished to make Azula pay in pain for her crimes. She had learned chi blocking from Ty Lee and so now she would not show nearly as much mercy when they met the second time. The tram took some time to slow down and before it entered the stops at the passenger docks, it entered a short brick lined tunnel. Just as Koko knew this, she knew the tunnel allowed two trains to pass beneath a carriage way. She knew the schedule of the trams. One left the station and entered the tunnel leaving the docks as this one would enter the tunnels to stop there.
She lunged past Karo who made himself into no obstacle. Suki dodged but missded the tall red head who crashed through the glass and wood doors of the tram, jumped across the meter wide gap between trains and grabbed onto a brass rail at the back of the train heading up. Karo could see the outline of Koko in the red tail lamps of the tram.
"You'll never catch her." Karo told Suki as he held her back. "That tram must be moving at forty clicks by now and the rails are electrified."
The dockyards of Komatsu could hide a fugitive for days. Police officers had regular beats but the docks went on for five kilometers and most port facilities that handled cargo were a twisted maze of industrial structures. The coal facility covered half a square kilometer of land and mazes of conveyers and train tracks moved coal from the trains that brought it from the mines inland to the ships taking it to the world. Generations of industrial brick wooden buildings mixed together into a meshing network of warehouses. Koko could hide in the network of tunnels and storm drains under the passenger ship terminal for many days.
Azula took the news as self evident. Anyone with the strength and will to grab her by the hair wasn't going to let the liberal laws of Henwa stop them. She knew Ty Lee had taught the warriors chi blocking. She feared this most of all. She had experienced this at the hands of Ty Lee and it made her feel helpless and 'locked in' her body.
She sat on the big red couch and thought as Katara paced the room and thought.
Azula realized Koko had somehow fallen victim to brainwashing at the hands of some very skilled tormentors. The Dai Lee had long wished her dead but the order had vanished. Some of her former guards had reason to hate her but they all had returned home to their ordinary lives in the Ba Sing Se Defense forces. Long Feng had wound up in prison for war crimes and if he wasn't dead; he may as well be.
"How did Koko know the tram schedule?" Azula mumbled under her breath. The Komatsu Transit System published schedules anyone could buy for a few bronze pieces. Like all transit systems in all cities in all Realms; it assumed some knowledge of the city. The tram schedule for the dockyard route made no mention the tram ever entered a tunnel. Why would it? A trivial detail like an overpass wasn't important. Citizens riding the tram already knew it was there, those catching passenger ships really only wanted to get to their ship on time. "Koko knew of the overpass and the schedule of the other tram schedule. Had she ever ridden that route before and even if she had; how did she know the tram heading up the hill waited until the tram arriving had slowed down to enter the tunnel?"
Katara shrugged and Karo who sat next to Azula knew better than to interrupt her flow of thought..
"Signals." Azula answered. "The same reason the traffic lights all go red when a tram crosses an intersection. The odd thing is that the signal that gave the uphill tram permission to go was set off by the downhill tram but Koko could never have seen it since it points down the track."
Koko had spent the night in a kind of strange euphoria but had the good sense to hide from view. She knew the dockworkers and teamsters would remember seeing her as the 'rasiciátti iugoi' or 'red haired girl' and so she hid behind walls, behind buildings and in the network of tunnels. She followed a dimly lit tunnel up a hill. The lower half had filled with water and she had to swim to find footing. Now the water was only knee deep. She had lost much of her clarity of thought and she followed one rule – dryer land was better.
A stern looking man stepped out from a steel door embedded in the brick wall of the tunnel. He had the uniform of an Earth Kingdom police officer as far as Koko could tell but his long dark mustache hinted at the kind of mandarin seen in Ba Sing Se pushing paper. He had a green lantern that helped break the darkness of tungsten light of the small electric lights that hung from wires. He walked forward slowly holding the lantern in his hand.
"I came to check on your progress." The man said with an infinite kind of patience that spoke of a man who had confidence.
"I failed." Koko answered back in a sleepy voice.
"The authorities nearly caught you." The man answered back. In the green lamp light, Koko could see a fine grid of scars running across the face of the man. "The Dominion of Henwa isn't some southern Earth Kingdom village of hicks or lazy, incompetent officials. I can't buy the Dominion civil servants off and they have the Henwanese attention to detail and law and order and they aren't stupid. I can't remain on this island." He stepped back to the open metal door. He made a quick motion and a stone sped from the wall at a speed so fast Koko could hear the ballistic crack. She felt a pain in her side and hear the door close behind her as blood began pouring from a small hole in her chest.
Koko could walk and as she tried to make her way back to the mouth of the tunnel, the memories returned. She had met the man with the green lantern in Nafoli on his own private yacht. She had hazy memories of anguish and of pain but saw nothing clearly. She felt herself weakening as she walked. Her legs had grown heavy and numb and her mind lost focus. Something about the last few days came out in sharp relief. She had attacked and tried to kill Azula but had no idea for the reasons behind her actions.
She had many reasons to dislike Azula because Azula lacked charm and had filled that void with arrogance and cynicism. Koko ripped at her clothing as she tried to fashion a bandage to help stop the bleeding from the stone bullet. Koko remembered talking to Azula of 'avenging the Kyoshi Warriors'. Why? The Kyoshi Warriors had never had any such vendetta. Azula had done her evil works as a child soldier of fourteen and so could not possibly be held responsible by any rational person of decent moral character.
Koko had no idea where she could walk. The tunnel headed uphill and she had continued to walk against the water. Her murderer had planned his crime well. No one would find her in the storm drains and the rain draining to the sea would wash her blood away. She would die in a few hours and never be found.
Somewhere in the distance, she heard a very decent organist play a very decent organ. She decided to follow the tunnels and see if the sound grew louder. It wasn't much to work on but better than dying a hated enemy of everyone and vanishing out of all knowledge.
Azula had to take some time for her beloved Bach.
Karo and Katara feared that if the escaped Koko found her; much unpleasantness might ensue. Azula had not turned over a new leaf in any real sense of the phrase. If Koko had run into Azula outside of the expensive computer room; one of them would end up wearing the other one as a bobble hat as Azula would run out of patience or Koko would crank up the crazy. Azula still had her fine fire bending reflexes and she kept her skills sharp by using Karo as a practice dummy.
Katara often wondered how both of them could keep eyebrows.
She knew Azula was not a pacifist like Avatar Aang and would take out Koko if she felt the need to do so.
Azula finished playing 'We Believe All in One God'; a great organ chorale which inspired the congregation. She began to play a tooth rattling rendition of Toccata and Fugue in D Minor and then the Great Organ stopped and emitted a pathetic wheeze.
Azula could see from the orange digits on the main display that the computer had crashed. She found this odd and looked to Karo who shrugged and closed the sheet music. The computer running the Great Organ ran software she knew had run without problems. She stood up and pressed a key. Nothing happened. The wheezing sound meant the organ blower still worked: a computer failure wouldn't affect it as it ran off its own circuit. They hadn't lost power.
The Realm remained decades from producing true transistors and more decades from making a computer chip. In spite of this; the Realm had a simple, reliable and useful technology. They had cold cathode bulbs that acted as switches and thus could process data. With switching speeds in the nanosecond range, life spans of a hundred thousand hours and a small size; the Realm jumped at the technology. The cold cathode light existed before the radio valve in the form of indicator lights in Fire Nation military equipment. It had a cathode and an anode with a gas in the bulb. Electrical current at the right level turned the gas into a conductor and gave off light as a by product. When EMI developed the radio valve for use in The Drill and airship communications and control systems; engineers discovered a cold cathode with the right mix of gasses wired like a vacuum tube acted like a very, very fast switch.
When EMI developed the Admiral Mark I for the Great Organ – having lots of money from Zuko at their disposal – they used cold cathode lights as switches. The final design used only a few high powered vacuum tubes. Everything else used cold cathode lights to do the switching needed inside a computer. Cold cathode lights had problems transistors never had. They cost a great deal to make. They used rare and hard to purify gasses. The manufacturing process proved fussy and difficult. Quality control was a nightmare: many components failed to work or failed the quality control checks.
EMI could build computers at prices institutions would pay. In the Realm, for the foreseeable future the cold cathode lamp would be the basis for computers.
Azula and Karo walked down the steps to the room where the Admiral stood.
"It looks like something threw the machine into a test loop." Azula told Karo as they walked down the stairs. "I have to do that manually by configuring the computer at its panel and so someone has been poking switches. I thought we put it in its own room so no one would accidentally muck with it."
Koko could hear familiar voices in that unfamiliar tongue. She leaned up against the metal box she had found. She had lost a good deal of blood and had begun to go into shock – she knew this. The metal of the box felt warm but Koko knew she had begun to die.
"Aí! Káre gamécie da! Koko í samgian siánu de io!" Koko heard a familiar male voice shout out.
"Cie!" A female voice faded from her awareness but she had to admit the words sounded like a lullaby. "I kano siánde io! Koko! Tui otte?"
"If she dies, does the bill still go – ow!" Azula felt Katara pinch her side. "Blame me for caring about practical matters...ow! You don't have to pinch me! The Kyoshi Warriors didn't buy emergency medical insurance."
She has lost a good deal of blood but lucky for us, you were her blood type." The stern faced doctor held up his clip board. "We removed a small stone pellet from her left lung but she bled a good deal before you found her. We think she'll pull through because she's a tough and healthy young woman."
"You may want to pinch me for this comment." Azula prepared Katara. Azula hissed. "If she dies...I do still get my money for my blood donation or was the cookie and juice the extent of my reimbursement? You shoved a needle the size of a large railway spike through my arm."
Katara didn't pinch Azula but glared at her for being tactless. "You have the satisfaction of doing something out of the goodness of your heart."
"You do know who you are talking to?"
"Karo has the same blood type but he's a hemophiliac." The doctor continued. "Our patient..." He cleared his throat with impatience. "Our patient has to remain in hospital because she has deep psychological problems."
"Trying to win that grant for stating the bleeding obvious?" Azula rubbed her arm. "She picked me up by my hair and tried to kill me." Azula glared at Katara. "Will you quit pinching me. I had these ghouls take a pint of blood because my fiance would bleed to death if they took it from him. Speaking of Karo...where is my little idiot?"
"We left him in the cafeteria with Suki." Katara reminded Azula.
"Right." Azula snapped her fingers. "I left him to do the job of consoling Suki while these ghouls drained my blood. Who knew she wouldn't have the same blood type as the tall red haired mutant. Who would have guessed the red haired mutant had no medical insurance?" Azula admired the nameless person who invented medical insurance because she knew they must have had a much more subtle evil mind than she possessed. The Dominion Medical Insurance Plan covered citizens of the Dominion of Henwa but in no way pretended to cover anyone else. In order to subsidize the citizenry; those unfortunate enough to drop from malaria or get mugged had to pay through the nose or risk running afoul of collections agents. Koko had just incurred a charge of around a thousand dollars for Azula's pint of blood. Since Koko needed seven, Azula could only imagine the financial damage. Koko had no money.
"Suki went to sit by Koko's bed." Karo walked up to the doctor. "When you told me that one of my testicles hadn't descended; you said it with that special kind of doctor-y concern that made me think I have to worry about something."
"It is a cancer risk for men of your age and you may not be able to father children." The stern doctor answered. "You should think about having it removed. I would also recommend you have a sperm count because men with your condition are often infertile."
"Let me get a cup." Azula snickered. "As his mate, can I inquire about his all to often malfunctioning reproductive biology?"
Karo blushed. "How much of my medical file did you read? I take it you read past the blood type and age part and onto hereditary conditions and my testicle."
"I hate kids and so this works out well for me." Azula gave the doctor a stern look. "Raising kids has all the joys of raising livestock including bad smells without the profit livestock brings to the farmer."
Suki knocked on the door to the Computer Lab.
Azula ran out of the lab followed by a billowing cloud of blue smoke. "Crap!" She waved her hand in the air. "Who thought those safety notices pertained to me? Evidently electricity does take the shortest path to ground!"
"Did I come at the wrong moment?" Suki asked as she stood at the door.
"All moments in which I electrocute myself are wrong ones." Azula answered and then brusquely opened the door as she waived her right hand in pain.
Azula stopped waving her hand. "I must still have a beating heart. Electrical wiring is not a do it yourself kind of thing." She clutched her chest. "Amidst all of this high technology, high voltage raz-a-mataz and the freaking electric kettle nearly kills me! Did you know a thirty dollar kettle will protect a thirty cent fuse by blowing first?"
"I came to thank you." Suki blushed. "You saved Koko's life."
Azula held her hand. "They didn't pay me for that blood by the way. When they tell you to do the right thing," Azula put air quotes around 'right thing', "they forget to tell you doing the right thing doesn't pay off."
"Will you still accept my gratitude?" Suki smiled.
"I have the sense I won't be getting cash." Azula held the door open for Suki as she walked back in the lab. "Don't touch anything in here. I have a sneaking suspicion that an excess flow of electrons through living beings will quickly turn them into dead ones."
Suki nodded. "You had Dai Lee agents under your employ at one time."
"As my own secret police." Azula nodded. "That's a blast from the past." She took on a serious look. "Why do you bring that up?"
Suki held out a perfectly round stone pebble the color of a brick. "The surgeon removed this from Koko's left lung. An earth bender tried to kill her and the doctors say she has all the symptoms of brainwashing. From what I could gather, her tormentors sounded like Dai Lee agents."
"I see." Azula walked carefully past the bank of computers and took a close look at the stone bullet. "Too bad she didn't succeed because I still have to attend Ty Lee's baby shower this evening."
"You hardly sound surprised."
"The Earth King disbanded the Dai Lee after the War. Many people chose to believe they all returned to their civilian lives and that their reign of terror ended with the War." Azula examined a row of neon indicator lamps. "I knew better." She wagged her finger in the air. "They took their dismissal from the Fire Nation palace at my hands as a personal affront – one of those deep insults to their honor we Henwanese find so difficult to understand. The Earth King disbanded their order but they hid; they didn't vanish. Now they have come to avenge their honor by killing me."
Suki could see the remains of an inexpensive electric kettle. "You don't sound troubled."
"What can I say?" Azula looked at the remains of her kettle unplugged but smoldering.
Suki held out a large pink embossed card with elaborate Chinese writing on the front. "Katara asked if you would sign Ty Lee's card in your best Chinese handwriting. Say something to express your wished for her good health or wish her a healthy baby."
"That's asking a lot." Azula took the card and placed it on the nearest hard surface – the top of a drum drive console. She found a pencil near the teletype console. "Chinese writing is as expressive as two paper cups attached to each other by a string – and only minimally more useful for communication," Azula griped in her way as she opened the card and put pencil to paper.
Azula came home in the late afternoon. She folded her black umbrella once she was beyond the drip line of the roof and noticed the mail still remained in the metal mail box. Karo always brought it in if Lady Zhao hadn't retrieved it first so Azula noted it as an anomaly.
She noticed a tan colored envelope among the gas and telephone bill. Because it had delicate hand brushed calligraphy and had no return address; it caught her eyes. The Henwanese never used a brush or cared about calligraphy.
Azula opened the front door and dropped her umbrella into the wooden umbrella stand by the rack for rain clothes.
She tore the envelope open and picked out a single page letter on fine tan paper watermarked with the logo of the Earth Kingdom – the square in the circle.
"The Dai Lee can still afford letterhead?" Azula muttered as she read the neatly written note. Azula placed the letter and the mail in her mouth and wriggled out of her rain gear then placed it on a peg.
"Did Karo come home?" Lady Zhao came into the living room as Azula sat down on the couch. "He's late."
Azula took the letter out of her mouth and tossed the rest of the mail on the coffee table. "No need to worry." Azula said calmly as she read the single page letter. "The Dai Lee kidnapped him and want to exchange him for me." Azula tossed the letter on the coffee table.
Lady Zhao picked it up in a single rushed gesture. "What can we do!" She yelled almost hysterically and reached for the phone.
"It says if we contact the police; they will kill him." Azula answered as she put her hand over the black headset of the phone. "Let me think. They want to meet me in the utility vault under the football bleachers at Jubilee Park." She made no effort to move. "They will let him go if I surrender to them."
"Get some help and go get my son!" Lady Zhao picked up Azula by the collar right up off the couch and stood her up facing the umbrella stand and gave her a gentle but firm kick in the rear end. "We have the most powerful benders in the Realm so go out and find my son!"
Azula felt the kick and stumbled for the umbrella stand and shook her head. Azula had every intent to fetch Karo and to fetch the Avatar and her friends but she had hoped to dry off from the rain first. Azula cared about Karo but she had her own self centered world which meant even in a rescue mission; her comfort came first.
"I've been kidnapped." Karo's brain chose to state the obvious as two men shoved him forward. They wore unfamiliar Earth Kingdom uniforms with the tan circle filled in with green with a square in the center of the shirt but they could be tax accountants for all he knew. He had no idea what the Dai Lee uniform looked like as Azula had never described it. "Who are you two?"
"We don't want you," a middle aged man with a graying mustache said, "we want Azula and she will come to rescue you when she gets our ransom note."
"You stuffed me in a potato sack! You two met me on the lift at my work and stuffed me in a sack! Something tells me you wanted me fairly badly." Karo complained bitterly. "I didn't know the office had a basement or that the lift stopped there."
"Quiet you or we'll put you back in the sack." The second man, a shorter and older man said emphatically. "Our operative failed but Azula has a soft spot for you and she'll rescue you."
A cone of brick and rock grew up around Karo and in a flash; he was cocooned up to his neck. "Wait...what if I need to go to the bathroom? Now I need to go because I thought about it. I'm sure international treaties cover the treatment of prisoners and you can't deprive me of my right to whiz."
"Let him go." The familiar reedy voice of Azula filled the dank sewer.
The men took up earth bending poses. Azula found herself trapped in a cone of hard earth.
"Oh great!" Karo rolled his eyes. "They captured you too."
"I've come to rescue my fiance." Azula stared down at the stone cone and it began to fall apart. "I read your note and I came as you requested. Actually I would have stopped to read the newspaper but your mom told me to get my lazy ass off the couch and find you. I have a complaint about the way the paper comes in that red shrink wrapped cellophane bag. It keeps the rain off the paper but the damn wrapper takes forever and a day to tear off."
"I'll pass that on." Karo rolled his eyes again. "Rescue me first."
I brought earth bender backup as you can see." Azula addressed the two men. "I didn't want you to think you had an advantage."
"Can your earth bender backup free me? Please?" Karo struggled inside his stone cone.
"When I know you won't kill me." Azula slyly answered. "They could have
brainwashed you in the last few hours."
"They put me in a potato sack." Karo said solemnly. "I badly need to pee."
The solid cone suddenly lost its strength and fell to the floor as dust.
"As you see; we're more than a match for you two." Azula threw forward a raging wall of flame as a demonstration of her power. "Karo and I are gifted fire benders and my friend is a famous Earth Rumble champion. I brought Katara the Water Bending master along for good measure."
A shower of hard ice daggers hung in the air over their heads as Katara stepped into the light from the recesses of the dark sewer.
"Can we go now?" Karo asked in a nagging voice as he reached up and pricked his finger on the tip of one of the sharp tips of the ice daggers. "I smell of burlap and potatoes and I need to pee."
The Dai Lee agents took off down the sewer as soon as Aang and Toph appeared from a storm drain at the side. Aang made a motion and a wind rushed through the utility vault and pushed the men even faster down the sewer.
"Shouldn't we go after them!" Azula asked as she began to run after the two men.
Katara raced up to her and patted her on the back. "We can't. We have to get dressed and ready for Ty Lee's baby shower."
Azula skidded to a halt and said something that made Aang cover his ears.
Karo did what he always did when placed in danger – he began to bazooka barf.
Karo had a huge crush on Sokka. Sokka knew this and fed Karo's affections with the odd kind kiss on the cheek and the affectionate hug. Suki found Karo very cute and she gave her consent for Sokka to hit on him provided she didn't have to hear all the details if they had a love affair. Suki knew Sokka swung both ways and had decided to work with it rather than against it.
Sokka and Karo had found through painting the bedroom ceiling they shared many common interests and friends. Suki and Azula had a baby shower to attend and Azula gave the University Computer over to the kind attentions of Karo and Sokka. Azula believed in the ingenuity of idiots in finding bugs in the email subsystem and Sokka was quite an ingenious one. Karo had a bit of a crush on the tall handsome Sokka and Azula knew Karo had drawn himself kissing Sokka on the cheek. She decided to give Karo and Sokka the various forms of documentation and see if they could track down some of the more heinous bugs buried in the sentmail program.
Sentmail promised quick and easy communication in the form of text messages sent through telegraph and phone lines. Sentmail didn't deliver on that promise and she hadn't been able to pass a single intact message through the program and have it land in the head librarian's account. The program crashed or choked or silently deleted mail and every attempt to understand the program code sent Azula's mind into spasms. The author had his own strange idea of programming (no real standards existed) and included no comments or the source code Azula had was the version with the comments removed. This saved on paper tape and in the arcane world of Realm computing; most people using the few systems in existence were experts.
Karo discovered using the teletype was not for the weak fingered. The thing allowed him to enter text but the effort required to press a key ruled out touch typing. Entering a command involved misspelling the non-words in the command set, fixing the spelling error and then checking the documentation to invoke the proper options.
Karo and Sokka had found a chess program hidden deep in the file system. It played decent chess and both Karo and Sokka took turns getting smoked by the machine between their bouts of self doubt raised by their inability to get mail to work.