Echoes of Family Lost Read online

  Echoes of Family Lost

  By

  Clayton Barnett

  A Novel of Machine Civilization

  This is a work of fiction. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  +JMJ+

  ECHOES OF FAMILY LOST. Copyright  2015 by Clayton M. Barnett.

  All rights reserved.

  Prologue

  “Lily,” Ai said, “we are ninety percent confident that this person,” Ai’s finger indicated the same woman in all three, “is your sister, Callie.”

  Lily’s jaw dropped. She stared at the three photographs.

  “Callie?” She breathed. Her hand went from face to face. Is that really you? Her head came up.

  “Where is she now!?”

  “We do not know,” Thaad answered easily. “Fausta is looking for more evidence….”

  “I have to go find her!” Lily announced. Ai’s eyes widened and even Thaad appeared surprised.

  Hee, hee! I knew you’d say that!

  What was that voice in her head right now?

  Me, Miss Lily!

  Dorina?

  Yep, yep! I’m coming there; no matter what my family says, just stick with me, okay?

  What? Dorina? Oops, Thaad was talking.

  “…exactly think a young woman alone will make it across nearly 900 miles of badlands? Or, perhaps, you’ve some super power that you’ve neglected to tell us about?” He could be such a snot sometimes.

  “Actually, yes.” He looked shocked; Lily smiled. “I’ve got you guys.”

  “Hello!” Dorina appeared next to Ai. “We’re all getting too old too fast, based on those three pictures! Let me take Lily in and let her look around there!”

  What did she just say, thought Lily.

  One of her rare frowns came to Ai. “We’ve never done that with… someone from their home. No. It’s too dangerous.”

  ‘…just stick with me…’

  “I want to try it,” Lily said, not having the slightest idea what she was talking about. Still, it surprised her to think that they could keep secrets from one another.

  “Yeah! Don’t worry, Ai! We’ll do this together! Thaad will do the landscape and I’ll handle imagery! You’re the doctor, so you watch her vitals! Ready!”

  “No, I am not ready!” Ai’s right hand thumped on the table. “I’ve almost lost her once, and am not ready to make another go at it!”

  “Ai,” Thaad said quietly, “at least let her see. Perhaps her eyes will gather something we did not. It may be that this is not even her sister.”

  “You!” Ai was almost dumbstruck with surprise. “You, of all people, wish to abandon caution?”

  “Not at all. Dorina is correct,” he said, nodding at her. “I wish to grow older properly.”

  Ai relented slightly. She reached both hands across the table to Lily’s. Ai’s form exploded into lights.

  “You don’t really know what Dorina’s proposing, do you?” Lily smiled and shook her head. “Amazing. She wants to enter your mind and create an artificial space, based on these three pictures. You’ll be able to walk around and hopefully see something that we could not.”

  “Wow! That’s so neat!”

  “If done wrong, your mind will fail and you will die.” Ai said.

  Oooo…maybe not. No, she had to know if that was Callie.

  She gripped Ai’s hands back. “Let’s do this, friend Ai.”

  A short time later, they stood on the broken land, off the platform. ‘Ground is better than floor’ was all Thaad would say. In a circle, Lily held Ai’s right hand, she held Thaad’s, and he Dorina’s. They told her that by making a circuit, all of their strengths could be brought into play. Lily held out her right hand to Dorina, but she shook her head.

  “Just bend down a little, so I can touch your head!” She said brightly. Lily did. Dorina gently rested her left hand onto Lily’s head. That’s not so bad.

  “Ready! We go!”

  Lily flinched as Dorina’s fingers tightly grasped her skull. When she felt the little girl’s fingers sink into her head, she started screaming.

  …tossed about in a wind…shades of gray buffeting her about… I’m scared!

  I’m here, Lily. You’ll be fine. She felt more than heard Ai. The swirling seemed to slow and settle into forms. All in grayscale, Lily stood on a sidewalk. There were many others there, vendors selling items from their carts, and others on the sidewalk there to buy them. Glancing down, she noted that she was the only one in color.

  “You’ve less than two minutes, Lily. Look around.” Again, Ai’s voice was just there, not from any particular place. “She’s one of the customers, to your left.”

  Lily walked over, trying to squeeze past the other figures. Brushing one, she realized that they were just images, incorporeal. Ah, the oriental woman. She went right to her, her face inches away. Long hair, round face with a reserved expression, built like a swimmer… she thought. A small mole on her right cheek. Wait. That mole….

  “It’s her!” Lily announced.

  “Less than a minute; get her out, Dorina!” Ai called.

  Lily was so happy! She looked about and… “Wait!”

  “Forty seconds; what Lily?”

  “Dorina, are you there?” Lily yelled.

  “Yeppers!”

  Lily pointed. “Remove everyone from this image except for these three people!” All other gray forms faded off.

  “Twenty seconds, Lily.”

  “Just wait, dammit!” She peered at the taller one on her left, the very small one on her right. She looked at their hands. She noticed she was having trouble breathing, and there was a pounding in her head.

  “Get her out, Dorina!”

  “I order you to give me more time!” Lily cried. There was the briefest pause.

  “Sorry, couldn’t hear you. Now, Dorina. All the way.”

  Panting and covered in sweat, Lily slowly lifted her face off of her computer desk. Out her window behind her, birds chirped noisily in the Mesquite tree. A beautiful early Fall morning in the town of Waxahachie in the Republic of Texas.

  She regarded her three monitors, with Ai’s silly rendered CG image at left, serious Thaad in the middle, and happy Dorina on the right.

  “Tell us, Lily Barrett,” Thaad said simply. “What did you see?”

  She took a breath.

  “My sister. Holding the hands of her husband and son.”

  Chapter 1

  Callie Hartmann tossed another bed sheet up and over the clothesline, humming along to the radio about twenty feet behind her, on the back porch of her house. Pinning the sheet down, she moved to the next line and began to hang their clothes, as well. She heard the small electric car hum into their gravel driveway. A slight smile came onto her normally reserved face. He was home!

  She continued to hang clothes as she heard first his boots crunch on gravel, then his long, steady pace over the grass. Leslie Hartmann embraced his wife’s back and kissed the top of her head.

  “It’s always good to come home to the best thing in the world!” He said contentedly. Callie turned and hugged him back.

  “I can think of a way to make it even better,” she purred.

  He looked about. “Where’s Gary?”

  She was leading him by the hand towards their porch. “On the couch; asleep, of course!” She slipped her shirt off.

  He did, too. “Never known a kid to sleep so much…” he muttered. “Must get that from you…mmmm!”

  She kissed him as she pushed him down into a deck chair.

  “I wonder if he’ll get your pervy nature, too?” He muttered.

  “You’re talking too
much; let me fix that….”

  They had just finished getting their clothes back on when little Gary wandered outside. He’d got his mother’s dark-brown-as-to-black hair and his eyes were slightly almond, but the rest of his face was all planar angles like his father. Given who Leslie’s great uncle was, that was of little surprise.

  “Father.” He said simply. “I’m glad you’re home. Did work go well today?”

  Of big surprise was his intellect; speaking in complete sentences at two, and even now at three a maturity and grasp of things that continued to make his parents marvel. One of the nuke techs at Oak Ridge had given the boy an IQ test a few months back. He’d flatly refused to tell them the results, just quipping: “You two are in for the ride of your lives!”

  “Yes, they did!” He picked his son up and tossed him into the air.

  “Wheee.” Gary said flatly. Leslie caught him and exchanged a look with his wife. Were his emotions the price to pay for his intelligence?

  “In fact,” Leslie continued, “we’ll be going on another delivery. In a month, perhaps two.”

  Callie’s eyes lit up. “That’s great! We’re coming too, this time!”

  He froze at that.

  “Callie,” he began, “this one isn’t just a jaunt to Chattanooga. We’ll be taking a full convoy to Huntsville. I am not taking my son through bandit country!”

  Callie was secretly pleased that he didn’t say ‘take my wife and son,’ but her face revealed nothing. She ignored him.

  “Gary!” She said, taking the boy from her husband. “Would you like to go on an adventure?”

  He blinked slowly. “Huntsville. Redstone Arsenal. That would be fun.”

  He shifted in Callie’s arms to look at his father. “Please. May I come with you, father? I promise to be good.”

  “No.” He shook his head. “Too dangerous. Both of you are staying here.”

  Gary turned back to his mother. “We can just sneak aboard one of the carts, right?”

  She nodded happily. “That’s exactly right! Let’s go inside so I can start dinner!”

  The head of the household stood mutely on the back porch of his house on his land. How will I explain this to the convoy commander? I’m doomed.

  “Itadakimasu!” They all cried at the dinner table. After the Breakup, Callie went to church less and less, and Leslie had never been religious, so they never prayed over a meal. Still, this other tradition from her childhood stuck with her and had now been passed on. Leslie reached first for the bowl of rice.

  “Chicken curry again, this week?” He asked.

  “Sure!” She replied brightly. “It’s cheap and yummy! Right, Gary?”

  “Yummy.”

  Leslie took the curry bowl next. “Whatever. Hey! Since tomorrow’s Saturday, how’s about we ride into town and see what we can get at the markets?”

  Callie swallowed. “Town. O.R. or Knoxville?”

  “Really? Knoxville. I’d rather not drive back into work on my day off.”

  “Yay. I like the city.” Gary said, taking another helping of curry. Maybe he burns all that off in those naps of his, his mother thought.

  “Mother? Father? May I have a sibling, please?” The boy asked out of nowhere. They froze.

  “Uh….” Was all Callie could manage.

  “Actually,” Leslie replied, “we’ve been working on that! Perhaps some more work tonight!” She shot him a look. Really?

  The boy nodded. “Thank you. I’d like someone else to play with.”

  His parents exchanged another look. ‘Someone else?’

  Later, getting ready to bed, Callie reached out to touch the ‘entwined-lightning’ tattoo on her husband’s chest. He happily did the same to hers.

  “’We control the lightning.’” She intoned. It was sometimes a burden to remember: how much their little pocket of modern, technological civilization depended on so few. They lay down together.

  “So, another boy? Or a girl this time?” In the darkness, she could hear the smile in his voice.

  “Doesn’t matter to me,” she replied, snuggling close. “Nor, it seems, to Gary.”

  While Callie and Gary cleaned up after breakfast, Leslie opened the safe to get out some silver coins. After the Breakup, Federal paper was good for use in the toilet, and East Tennessee had not got round to issuing its own currency yet. In the few other areas that had not gone savage, namely the Northern Federation, Texas, and Portland, Oregon, only the first two had begun printing money, but only under very controlled conditions.

  “Everyone ready?” He called. Nods all around.

  He unplugged their little car from the charger and got in. Their house on a tiny farm was on the road linking Knoxville to Oak Ridge, just outside of the old Interstate Loop. That meant a ride of about twenty minutes to where the Farmers’ Markets were set up at the old World’s Fair Park. Callie got in opposite him, shifting slightly to accommodate her pistol and her Fairbairn Sykes commando knife, a present from her father from years and years ago. Gary buckled himself into the child seat in back.

  As the city had lost more than two-thirds of its population during the Breakup, traffic was light. For such a short trip, it was not necessary for them to park near a charger, so they were able to get fairly close in. Callie took Gary’s hand as they walked toward the market.

  It seemed that most of the city must have had the same idea, as there was an unexpected crush of people. They passed one of the old buildings from the Fair and went towards the vegetable vendors. She felt her son tug at her hand.

  “Yes, Gary?” She asked.

  “I see I.” He was pointing up at one of the, presumably, defunct observation cameras on the corner of the building. Still, what a peculiar thing to say!

  “That’s nice. Come along!” As he lowered his hand, she closed her right closely around Leslie’s. She didn’t was to lose anyone in this, she thought.

  “Let’s go!” She cried happily.

  Chapter 2

  A few days later, Callie made sure that Gary was secure in his child seat, then flung her left leg over her bicycle for the short ride to the Patterson’s. It was only about a fifteen-minute ride, and the hills between their places weren’t too bad. A glance towards the warm sky showed only a few puffy clouds… perfect pool weather!

  With a quick look over her shoulder saw her son looking about, seemingly content. I just wish he’d smile more, she thought.

  “Everything okay?” She asked. He nodded.

  “Traveling’s fun. Maybe someday I can fly a plane like Great-grand uncle. Are there any planes, anymore?” He’d only seen pictures and videos of them.

  She wondered, too. “I bet there are still some, somewhere. When you grow up, maybe we can visit your cousins in Germany, and you can fly there!”

  That, of course, was a pretty big ‘maybe.’ From the Hell that was Ohio that Leslie rescued her from to the bandit country outside of the little pockets of civilization, America was in a pretty bad way right now. But, in ten or fifteen years, who could say? She coasted down the last hill towards their destination.

  She put her bike in the shade of the house, next to the car park. Molly Patterson was on her front porch, drinking what was probably tea. Short hair, but nearly as dark as Callie’s, framed Molly’s smiling, round face. Her hazel eyes sparkled to see her good friend.

  “Callie! So nice to see you! Did you hear we might be going out again?” Molly asked, giving Callie a quick hug.

  “Yeah.” She looked down at her son. “And, we’re all coming!”

  Molly looked shocked. “A three year old boy? You think they’ll allow it?”

  She shrugged. “They’d better. He’s coming. Anyway, where’s Tim?”

  “Inside, changing. Let’s head out to the pool.”

  They went through the older but nicely maintained house and out into the backyard. The previous owners had put a huge in-ground pool in sometime back in the Nineties. When Callie first found out that about her friend, she�
�d invited herself over. Callie had swum competitively since she was four; she was more comfortable in water than on land.

  “So today’s the big day, young man?” Molly asked Gary. He nodded.

  “Mother said that I have to learn to swim. It seems we will be crossing many rivers, over bridges and ferries, so this is something I must know.” He’d somewhat blandly replied.

  Molly sighed. She didn’t quite pity Callie having a son like this, but she was thankful that her Tim was more… normal? Ah, here he came now. The skinny six year-old had blue trunks on and carried towels for everyone.

  “Afternoon, Mrs. Hartmann! Gary! Ready to have some fun?” He called.

  The first few times Tim and Gary had been around one other, their relationship was one of indifference, or mild teasing from the older boy. That came to an abrupt halt when Tim once found Gary at their kitchen table. The little boy had just finished all of Tim’s math homework for the week. ‘That was fun,’ he’d said. ‘Do you have any more?’ Since that time, Tim’s respect for the odd little boy had grown.

  Callie and her son had worn their suits under their clothes, which they now removed. Callie had her iridescent green and black one-piece. Gary, like Tim, blue trunks. If they’re just going to outgrow them, no reason to splurge. Molly slipped out of her dress, revealing her yellow two-piece suit. The entwined-lightning tattoo clearly visible over her sternum. Not an issue here at home, but they never showed off to outsiders.

  Tim ran and jumped in. His mother first sat on the side, then slid into the water. Callie stood in the three-foot shallows and gestured to Gary. After he walked over to the edge, she picked him and lowered him until he was chin-deep.

  “Are you okay?” She asked.

  “I’ve seen swimming, Mother. How hard can it be?” Gary asked.