Dead Space and their characters are properties of Visceral Games (former EA Redwood Shores) , Mirror´s Edge and their characters are properties of Digital Illusions (DICE). I claim no economic benefit of this story.
Chapter One:
Memories of a forgotten world
¡Oh, memoria, enemiga mortal de mi descanso!
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra.
Olympus City, Mars
Little more than two weeks before the Ishimura Incident...
A tall slim girl with pronounced Asian features, short hair in a bob slightly disheveled at the tips, wearing an impeccable business suit that fit perfectly her slim but shapely body, walked towards the entrance of the building in front of her, balancing a bag of regular size with a carefree attitude. She had just stepped off of a transport that brought her from the spaceport of Olympus City, freshly unpacked from a flight from Earth, where she had spent the last five days.
The New Heaven neighborhood, on the second level of the city, more than two thousand meters above the datum of the cyclopean colossus known as the Olympus Mons, welcomed her. The district was one of the few places in the Sol System that still retained the facades of the old buildings of the twenty-first century Earth. The residential itself was built with a retro style in mind, that some experts - including her- admired, although some people tended to disregard such behavior as mere nostalgia. In her heart, the young woman considered it wasn't really homesickness, but a sincere affection for houses without intruding artificial intelligences, speaking every five minutes to recommend thousands of ways to save energy and looking to control her life at each step.
It was the perfect place for a girl that decided to escape the iron grip of her previous life.
Quickly she went through the threshold of the building and came to an automated guard post, barring access into the building through a reinforced crysteel panel. Across it, the elevators unfolded in the distance, on the far side. On the wall stood a metal plate with a circular groove in a chrome finish, and lightened in clear blue tone. As she approached, a small holographic sign jumped from it:
- "Welcome to the A-35 building of New Heaven Residential Complex. Please stand near the biometric sensor for verification".
The girl stood in front of the plate and it projected a thin blue beam that ran over her body up and down quickly, highlighting her slender and well toned features. The male voice on the machine - sexy!, according to her particular tastes- addressed her.
- "Ribbel Connors: Therapist and Zero Gravity instructor, Training Team, C.E.C. Alpha Unit. Tenant of apartment number eleven twenty. Please proceed to eye and voice pattern check for authentication".
The slim girl positioned her eye off the plate and let the blue, low-intensity laser observe the particularities of her iris, while she repeated the parliament for speech recognition. An old song -old for the standard of what she used to hear- that seemed appropriate because of the nostalgia factor and proved the perfect choice:
- "Oh, I'm still alive, I'm still alive, I can not apologize, no..."
- "Iris recognition test... positive. Speech recognition test... positive. Welcome back, Ribbel Connors!. You have twenty messages in your personal mailbox. Energy consumption in your apartment has been reduced by eighty-five percent. Food stored in your fridge is in a state of decompos..." - said the voice, revealing an incredibly thin opening in the transparent panel, which gave way.
She left behind the guard post, showing great disgust, and as she approached the elevator, thinked only of discarding the suit she had been forced to wear during the last twenty four hours. Overseeing the training of recruits of the Concordance Extraction Corporation on the ISS Hope facilities, for future operations of the company in Mercury, was one of the responsibilities of her rank she couldn' t set aside under any circumstances. Never mind that she had been taken out of her vacation in advance, or that her immediate boss, old Yushchenko, had used that tone of voice so particular when he needed something done without excuse or pretext. She would be having a chat with the chief of special staff for such a violation of the rules, but that would have to wait for a couple of days, when her resting period had officially ended.
Hoped the company would compensate her with three more days of paid rest as promised. But commanding her to visit the Mother Planet, if only from orbit, didn' t bring her any comfort.
Too many pleasant memories, too many that weren't...
The janitor A.I. kept pestering her with different issues, but when the elevator finally arrived, decided she didn't want to be there, trapped for two long minutes with any of her less than pleasant neighbors. Seeing that none of them were in the elevator, threw her bag to the cab and hit the switch for the fifth floor. As soon as she gave the order, sprinted toward the stairs that were to the left of the elevator tunnel, as the door closed. She entered the emergency stairs like a whirlwind and ran up them two at a time, her body protesting because of the accumulated fatigue, and being ignored in favor of the frenzy of the race. Jumped through the metal railings and giving a pirouette that betrayed her excellent balance, stood over one of them, then took a second leap to the wall defining the cube of stairs. A new impulse and a triangular jump and she had already reached the next floor. A bit of running and had already risen to the third. On the way to the fourth she almost bumps into one of the tenants, who only managed to stick to the wall to avoid being run down by her. Ribbel ignored his protest and kept running, concentrated. Took another leap and then clung to the ledge that defined the fifth floor, using her momentum to raise her fifty-five kilos of weight and hundred-eighty centimeters of stature, and break for the corridor. Opened the back door with a slam and surprised two more of the owners, who were waiting in front of the elevator door.
When the contraption finally came, the Asian girl got her bag back, to their astonished looks and throwing it over her shoulder, made for her apartment.
She could swear there were voices behind her saying things like "crazy girl" or other stuff, but give them little importance.
Once she closed the door of her house, the seemingly endless discourse of the Janitor A.I. was interrupted and peace reigned in her mind for a while. Well... excepting of course for some little -no, not a littlle... a lot!- foul smelling, emanating from somewhere in her kitchen. Maybe that was one of the things the construct wanted to tell her... every thing else seemed to be in order.
Left the bag lying near the door and proceeded to check the refrigerator, terribly regretting the moment she opened the fridge. Food isn't like before anymore. Either that or my refrigerator is broken. Probably the latter... Got rid of the source of odors and proceeded to activate the ventilation system of the apartment. And then, once finished with the source of her displeasure, decided to lie down for a moment in the leather chair. Genuine leather mind you, worth a fortune!, from her austere, minimalist room.
- Finally home! - commented aloud and taking off her shoes, rested a few minutes closing her eyes.
She didn't sleep much during the trip back, but she had still the rest of the afternoon before her superiors called to request a report. She couldn't sleep however. She' d better find out if there was any change in the various projects she had been involved in the last few weeks.
Got up, walking quietly to the window of the spacious place she called home and, with a movement, opened the curtains to let the light of the white city come in. Turned inward and saw the appearance of her apartment change. One hundred and fifty square meters. All that space for herself, in a quiet area of one of t he less populated cities of Mars. One of the advantages of working for humanity 's third largest corporation.
Life on Olympus City was what one would consider living in eden. Other settlements, such as Tharsis, in the plain to the east, or Mariner's Resort to the south -scuttlebutt saying it was the landing site of the old twentieth-century satellite, the Mariner 9-, or the only recently rebuilt Mars Capita -which had suffered extensive damage after the independence revolt eight years ago-, hadn't been sponsored by the company, but EarthGov. She didn't envy the poor bastards who lived there. Overpopulation -primary cause of the Earth being abandoned in favor of other locations - was the norm when it came to the Human race.
Sighed again and watched to the outside. The massive city around her, with its hustle and circumstance, was surpassed only by the Dobrovska-Hellas conglomerate, inside the Hellas crater-plain. It was five times bigger than any of the original settlements of the mother planet, such as the abandoned cities of New York, Tokyo, London and Hong Kong. Of course, when compared to the current "axis- cities ", risen as a result of the Global Warming Epidemic of the twenty-second century, it paled without hesitation. "Paling" was the right word: The huge skyscrapers and other characteristic buildings, reached a minimum of twenty-fiv e stories, and reflected on its walls the alabaster color of the "sanitized" blocks the C.E.C. had used to build them.
The prevailing architecture was equal parts stone blocks, refined metals and reinforced polymer supermaterials, all of it reinforced with "bucky-carbon" fibers, all compacted and freed from the "ferrous oxide III" that still permeated the entire planet. The area had a whitish appearance that stayed like that, just because it was shielded by the "Aegis", a graviton field with repeaters along the Olympus plateau, which repelled specific particles and served as insulation against "hematite" floating in the air. Occasionally the city was assaulted by scarlet storms bouncing off the shield, reminding people that, were it not for the monstrous cold fusion reactor that powered the graviton field, housed in the basement of the city's tallest building, a giant albino eight kilometers high, called "The Shard", it would have been long since the red Martian dust still prevalent, would have buried them.
Despite that, the light, heat and water resulting from the extensive terraforming of the planet were not sufficient, but Concordance had invested a fortune in the twin city of its headquarters, so systems and services were only the best. Without comparison in all regions of the space inhabited by man.
The slender girl left behind the window, throwing one last sigh and releasing her mind from such depressing thoughts. With elegant and careful movements, she approached a small holographic pedestal located right on the far end of the room :
- Alfides... time to work!, personal mailbox please.
The tube, which harmonized perfectly with the sober furnishings, beamed. The artificial intelligence inhibited within, coming to life and showing activity by illuminating the contours and stylized fretwork recorded in its enclosure. A giant laser-delineated screen appeared before her. The digitized face of the tenant became outlined and cut up in a corner posit ion, leading to a series of intertwined blue rays forming a sober message screen, literally inscribed on thin air. A voice of neutral accent and refined manners began to mention every message accumulated during the last five days of her absence.
Things like recommendations on investment projects of the corporation, unwanted messages trying to sell many things like a trip to New Eden Prime -the most exclusive resting colony in hype- or a civilian RIG -Resources Integrated Device- hidden in something as small as a ring. All of it a waste of her time, even though the RIG didn't sound as such a bad idea. Reflexively, she stretched her arm to touch the electronic device inserted in her spine. There must be a way to make this technology less intrusive.
Made also a mental note to ask one of the technicians for implementing new routines for email filtering. The algorithms of her helpful AI were becoming obsolete . She didn't really hate personal AI' s. No more than one can hate a piece of furniture because of its poor fabrication or being aesthetically unpleasant. Computer intelligences had become a standard in almost all aspects of life, for better or worse, and that wasn't about to change anytime soon. She could and lived with them all the time, and even used them for small purposes, as long as there was a tight grip on what they could and couldn 't do and recommend her.
Went over the content of some communications. There were talks of her friends of the Society of Low Gravity Athletics of Mars -the largest sports club in the city -, to which she was affiliated and had represented in the last zero gravity obstacles rally, where she had won second place from all the globe. Several recommendations for renewal of her subscription to "Interestellar Sports Illustrated" or messages of some of her many friends. There seemed nothing worth while comment.
Something caught her eye though, and making a hand movement, selected a message that her "electronic butler" hadn't yet mentioned. It was a transmission made last night, from the Main Headquarters, received while she was traveling back to Mars:
From: Princo CEC Admin038 Stand054
Sendtime: 07:25 mars day (OSM 00:00)
To: Miss Connors Ribbel
Date: 25XX XX Thalius
Subject: We require your urgent presence
For Your Eyes Only
Please see the attached file and follow protocol CECPER458SDXW
Seeattachment4X53F3ADG8X
Immediately, she gestured for the attached video-fragment, and falling back to her chair, sat down and played it. On the screen appeared, offset by the blue dye laser projection, the face of a Caucasian man, facing thick, maybe in his forties, rugged features and prominent nose. Found him a strangely-attractive typ e -like Earth girls found "interesting" the men of the European-Russian Military Zone, ie mature, seasoned and tough men- despite his corpulence of polar bear and sullen air. The man moved the framing and began:
- Ribbel!, you better check this message first thing in the morning! - his face could hardly explain the emotion that the individual seemed to experience. Held up a data pad, which stirred briefly, while continuing:
- Do you know what this is?... clearance for boarding the USG Ishimura. Yes, I know you're wondering at this very moment: " What's all this about, Polar Bear?!". You don't know to what do we owe all this, do you?. No... surely you have no idea - the type continued while gesturing with his hands nervously. The raven-haired made a grimace of disgust.
- This... - pointed to the gadget in his hands - ...is the wildest dream of the people of twenty worlds. I can't say anything right now, but you are to report early tomorrow to the Alpha C.E.C offices for briefing. Hell!, I can hardly wait! - and just like that he ended the transmission, sporting a smile from ear to ear.
Ribbel raised an eyebrow in surprise. The owner of such enthusiasm was Michael Varsington Tercero, current Chief of Staff of the Alpha Unit, and the most promising of her relationships. She had met him during her recruitment test for the unit three years ago. Their friendship, which was what their colleagues used to say when viewed them together, hid an attraction that every day was harder to conceal. Concordance didn't allow for relationships between co-workers of the Unit, although it would turn a blind eye when it came to engineers, planetary miners or colonists. The slender girl hoped their mutual interest would end in a more formal commitment, even if the company so skip a beat.
There was something she did not like though. Any relevant information should have been referred by her immediate superior, Anton Yushchenko, one of the legends of the department. That wasn't a good sign. Concordance's bureaucracy rarely allowed such protocol violations, and in other circumstances, such a procedure would have led to a severe penalty. She really hoped Mike hadn't got in trouble for such outburst, but it didn't stop her from considering such message an irregular situation.
Decided she didn't want to nurture any more suspicions. Ordered the A.I. to return to standby. Picked her bag, took it to her room and took off her formal suit, revealing her femenine though brief forms. Pulled from the closet one of the corporate suits and synchronizing her RIG, dressed quickly. As she watched her stylized and defined figure, product of years of exercise and hard work, reminded herself that when she was younger, although she was never considered a "great beauty", that didn 't stop some few "malicious boys" -as her father used to call them-, from approaching to woo her, back in her native Alberta.
Having been raised in a region of the American Free Zone -in what was once Canada, more exactly-, where customs were rather relaxed, and social pressure wasn't as stiff, she spent a pleasant childhood. Sometimes she thought with hints of guilt, that luck had smiled too much upon her, when people elsewhere had faced many problems and responsibilities at an early age.
Perhaps all of that tranquility and peace that surrounded her while being raised, compared to the chaos that unfolded elsewhere, was what made her decide to leave home at an early age. Alberta was the exception to the rule of the towns of the American Free Zone -a name that had come with the Global Warming Epidemic and the subsequent Scarlet Plague Pandemic of the twenty-second century-, but she couldn't deny that many other settlements in the region were still overcrowded, despite EarthGov 's efforts to sponsor the establishment of colonies in different worlds in the galaxy, away from home.
While she spent a sweet childhood, surrounded by people who cared for her, the world beyond the borders of her home was falling apart, kept alive only by the gargantuan loads of natural resources that the colonies -up till The Secessionist War- and later the "Planet Cracker" class vessels of Concordia brought to Earth.
She left the house remembering that, last time she'd seen her father, she had shut the door almost in his face, angry be cause he wanted to retain her. Couldn't he understand that the atmosphere at home had become stifling?, that the things she had learned in school, about the collapse of humanity and its subsequent journey to the stars were things that she couldn't take for granted?, that she had to see it all for herself, even though it meant facing a most cruel and disturbing reality than what she always knew?...
Pretexts.
She had left home because she couldn't bear her father trying to control her life. Because she didn't want to be considered a child anymore. Because if she stayed another hour in that little wooden house, with electric heat insulating it from the harsh cold of the morning and the promise of a warm bed and food served strictly at two in the afternoon, she would never get herself to leave...
And would die of grief for not seeing beyond her little world.
Fifteen minutes later, she left the apartment and approaching the sidewalk, gestured some holographic commands on her RIG to call for a vehicle. Within a minute, a public transport stopped. It was equally a cross between a bolt and a chrome-trimed slider aircraft, in which the side door opened automatically. Ribbel entered and quickly adjusting the belt ordered:
- To the northeast trans-center, ASAP!
It wasn't very far a distance, but she needed to go down near the spaceport again. It was a journey of almost ten minut es in which her attention was kept busy, watching the quiet streets of the city. Noticed how there was almost no municipal officials to public view. And it was true, the real strength of Olympus City was their contingent of public AI's.
Whoever said the Concordance planners were an unimaginative bunch, was right. The municipal artificial constructs created by them, and named like the twelve Olympians, were the entities that jointly handled the thousands of cases of Ol ympus City. For example, Apollo was in charge of health issues, Hermes was all about communications. Athena was responsible for organizing the various issues of culture and omnipotent Zeus sitting on its hyper-technological throne in the heights of "The Shard", managed the cold-fusion reactor and controlled the "Aegis".
They and other minor constructs were literally the city government, practically taking care of the life support systems that kept the city going. The "general public" took it as a joke at first, the fact that a few bits and bytes were efficient enough to manage a settlement as large as this. Fifteen years after it s founding, however, the number of complaints had been almost minimal for a population of over three million people, and residents no longer considered it laughable, but something they took for granted with great gratitude.
So cybernetics had condemned to oblivion of one of the handiest human trades in history.
All hail the anti-bureaucracy!
The shuttle arrived soon to the transit station. From there one could travel to different parts of the world, etiher in vehicles or on an air-vacuum train, which connected the city with its closest partners in the Hellas Planitia. The train was a magneto-dynamic levitation machine, ultra-fast and perfectly designed to get around the giant vacuum tube located in the bowels of Olympus Mons. If one wanted to go to farther places like Port Lowell or Umbra, on the other side of the planet, air transport was cheaper. The vacuum train was cheap and efficient for local operations only.
Unhurriedly, she entered the boarding area. This bore little resemblance to the giant hangars addressed in past centuries, when modern transport centers were just beginning. Instead of the typical structure with lockers, walkways and lugagge services, the picture revealed an open area, located at the far end of the spaceport but well within the area of influence of the force field that shielded the city. It featured a series of metal plate s with rivets and gates, outlined like giant runways separated by strips of slabs of sturdy Concrete-V.
At the near end, there were sorting machines -one for each lane, indicating the destinations available-, embedded in medium-large size cylinders with a "hard- tech" appearance, so common in the contraptions of humanity. Standing next to each structure, was a representative of the Land Transport Company of Mars. The officer -a woman in most cases-, was there to welcome the traveler. A human courtesy in a fully automated process, and to put an electronic mark on the traveler's RIG. Then deposited their bags in the cylindrical machine which had a rectangular opening where different sizes of luggage fit. Once done, a holographic signal indicated the user where his or her place on the train was. If the way to the seat was too long -some trains used to have lengths in excess of one kilometer- a moving belt would help to get to the correct place along the metal plate. Arriving where the position indicator ordered, an armchair came through the gates on the floor and waited for the passengers to sit, then sank and deposited him directly into his cabin or reserved seat. As a result of this, the passenger never saw the carriage but when he came down, as it was housed in a shielded underground enclosure.
The brunette walked into the corridor announcing travels every ten minutes to the slopes of Olympus Mons. It had a laser marquee showing, gigantic size, the symbol of the C.E.C. Instead of the cylindrical container of other corridors, it had only a metal arc pedestal, which passengers must pass . By walking through it, the device in question read the RIG of the travelers -both personal computer and identification- and assigned locations, stops and routes, according to the hierarchy of each person. Concordance boasted to maintain strict controls on the information provided to the public, and the thing was no different when it came to its employees. It really took very seriously its role of "benevolent Big Brother".
At other times, the word "totalitarianism" and its meaning, used in relation to the Concordance Corporation, would have been a well known thing.
Ribbel boarded the train and soon started the journey. Seven minutes later her RIG told her that she was coming near the main corporate building. She didn' t go there very often. Her place of work was the Low Gravity Training Complex "C.E.C. Alpha Zero", which was five minutes ahead on the plateau, west of the Martian volcano. However Varsington ordered her to go to the headquarters of the Alpha Unit, and all employees knew those facilities were in the main settlement.
Got off the train and looked around, searching the tunnels of the station. The cavities, cold and impersonal, lead up to the main lobby of the building. If she could look at it from the Martian surface, she would see a barrier of cyclopean stone walls and plasteel, in a very light brown tone, with panoramic windows of crysteel, arranged so that it could pass as a small town. Office towers at the ends and gardens and recreational areas in sealed domes amidst buildings. Undoubt edly the C.E.C. considered carefully the appearance of its offices. The hint of nostalgia for the old corporate image of the earth companies of the twentieth century was more than evident.
Once at the entrance of the building, she approached the reception module. An electronic construct, its features defined by a pale light and dressed like a Greek god, misshapen, and yet with powerful muscles, appeared before her. With a deep, well-modulated voice it said:
- Ribbel Connors, Alpha Unit, Rehabilitation and Physical Therapy Specialist and Zero-G Trainer. You are being waited for in the offices of your department. Deadline in five minutes. Proceed as directed by your RIG situational cues and please report to Delegate Michael Varsington Tercero...
She said nothing. There was no need to. Besides Hephaestus, the program that controlled the affairs of the building, wasn't particularly friendly.
The girl went on, following a holographic beam coming out of her business suit telling her where to go. It was easy to get lost in the corporate building, among many offices. People running to and fro, following their own "guiding lines", receiving instructions by video or scrutinizing data over their RIGs. Each head t here was a world literally and she couldn't trust anyone becoming distracted from his activities to indicate her the route. She moved properly, following the signs, which led her to an elevator. There, along twenty other people, went up to the seventeenth floor and left. Each of them turned to a different corridor.
She was about to check her instructions for the umpteenth time, when the voice of her superior got her out of her reverie:
- Ribbel!... Quick, the information meeting is about to start!.
He waved from the door of a meeting room. Ribbel ran as fast as her suit allowed her, stumbling due to the rigidity of the formal attire, as the doors closed. She didn't imagine what could be so important that Hephaestus decided to isolate the boardroom, something out of the ordinary in the building.
Looked around while coming in. In the large room with padded chairs, whose wall sported the symbol of the Alpha Unit, a stylized Greek letter superimposed over the symbol of Concordance, were at least a dozen people who turned to her. By their looks they seemed midrange executives, but the decals, indicators and suit patches of Obsidian and Elite Engineering class of some of them, and Scorpion Planetary Extraction of others, said there weren't all "cannon fodder". Excepting Michael, she didn't knew any of them and, judging by appearances, few of those present had ever worked together.
Hephaestus reappeared, its silhouette protruding from one of the stands reserved for the A.I. and decreasing the power of light in the room, enlarged its figure to human size. The crowd made no move, accustomed to the surly and condescending demeanor of the construct. None of them, however, failed to react when the contorted figure, making a sort of sleight of hand in open mockery of a dramatic effect, produced a small figure that everyone in that place knew. One that was in all the history books of the Earth and the colonies.
The image was of a type of striated stone, with a wide base made of two pieces stacked on each other and helical-shaped, decreasing amplitude as it curved up, and then separated. At the end of both curves the lines were so narrow and separated, that looked like a pair of horns. On the body of the monolith were ancient inscriptions, alien hieroglyphs that humanity hasn't been able to decipher so far.
The simulacra standing before them said a few sentences, and then all of those present felt the weight of history on their shoulders:
- Prospectors of the colony at Aegis VII, in the Cygnus constellation, found an anomaly, identified as an A-1 class object, according to the Schtranzs-Berdiger-Altman scale. For those not familiar with this classification, it is a device similar to the specimen known as the "Black Marker", found on Earth, and in power of EarthGov... - There was a rumor and gasps of surprise. The buzz lasted a few seconds and then the A.I. launched an immortal phrase, that would determine the fate of all those gathered in that room:
- This object was found on the surface o f the planet, three kilometers away from the main settlement. Because of the six-months rotation of personnel, you have been selected by the company to embark on the USG Ishimura. The length of your trip will be a month and a half. You are to do whatever necessary to bring the relic back home...
