Look Up - Part 4

Part 4

P woke to harsh sunlight flooding in through her un-curtained windows and to the shrill trill of the alarm in her ears. 0650HRS blinked the time in her HUD. She shut her eyes and the HUD disappeared, replaced by darkness. With a groan she got up and the alarm switched itself off. She gave herself a minute before getting ready, and she stared out of the window. New Bombay. The Shimmering City. She sighed, breathing in the recycled air of the Sabdis Tower.

What she would give to breathe real air.

Despondent, she set about her daily routine. As she slipped on her dress, today it was a flowy, butter yellow lace dress that reached her ankles, a knock sounded on her door.

“Sir is calling you, ma’am,” said the voice of Sashan Sabdis’s personal assistant. Pandi had been a loyal servant of the Sabdis family for decades now. Many stories had reached her ear about this man, who was well over a hundred years old. Nothing got done without him, they said. RAI, the Sabdis Group’s proprietary AI, was his brainchild they said.

Smiling as brightly as always, she opened the door. Pandi stood there, obsequious as ever. He didn’t look a day over 25. “A little earlier than I thought, but lead the way!” she remarked.

Sashan Sabdis worked in an office that was smaller than P’s bedroom. He liked it that way. Said it reminded him of his dad’s humble beginnings. Kept him down to earth. As it stood, Sashan Sabdis’s office sat in the top-most floors of the tallest megascraper in New Bombay, towering 26 kilometres above the dirt of what was once Mumbai.

“Well?” he asked, without looking up from his work. He was short, unimposing. Fat, unwell. Balding. He stank, more often than not. He’d not left the Sabdis Tower in 40 years, if rumour was to be believed.

“Nothing yet, pa,” P responded quietly, sitting down in the chair opposite him.

“He has my seeds. I need them. Do whatever you have to.” He looked up. “Or I will try. Remember, he’s only there because you took pity on him. But my patience has limits.”

“They’re my seeds,” P responded, looking her father straight in the eye. She sat up straighter in the chair. “And you did try it your way. Remember how that ended up? And, besides, you don’t need to lecture me-”

“Insolent girl,” the old man sighed. He was shorter than P by nearly a foot, and she was only 5 foot 3. She found it hard to believe she was his daughter. She’d often figured that she took after her mother, but P had never seen her mother. “You run my subsidiary; every locked seed you make belongs to me, every free seed you take DNA from belongs to me, every single thing you do, you do for my company.”

“They are my seeds and I will get them back.” Her voice was iron.

“We are running out of time,” he spoke as if he couldn’t care less. “Look, do you understand what free seeds can do? Since the 70s, we have spent trillions, if not quadrillions, convincing the world that last biological seeds were destroyed when the Russians nuked the seedbank.”

“You don’t need to lecture me,” she reiterated, gritting her teeth.

“This little mistake of yours can cost us trillions. All that we need is for these illiterate farmers to get their hands on these seeds and… no more genelocking, no more Pay2Grow. Nothing.”

“I know!”

“And then what? Right now, only the deluded think they can fight us. But give the masses back even an ounce of control, and they will not stop at growing their own food. What do you think will happen when the underclass rises up against us in their holy war, in their doomed crusade? Millions dead. Millions. Only for nothing to change!” He seemed… concerned. Like he bought his own bullshit. But he was right about one thing; the seeds were the key to control. For the world, it meant control over what they ate. For her, it meant freedom.

“I. Know.” She tried to play it cool, and seemed to have succeeded for Sashan launched into another diatribe.

“I don’t think you do,” his tone reeked of disapproval. “My father and many like him cultivated, with great effort, a system that has allowed humanity to colonize the Solar System; a system that has cured cancer; a system that has solved every ill that has ever plagued society. For that to continue, the system needs homeostasis,” he glowered at her. He wasn’t angry though. He was worried. “These seeds will break that system; if they’re sold on the open market, they’ll bring it all crashing down on our heads. Send us back to the stone age.”

“Do you really believe all that?” P final snapped.

Sashan smiled a crooked smile. “Anyway, Taru’s injection has worked. His bio-readings indicate he’s begun to hallucinate. We already have a name: T.H. Whatever that means. Our men are looking into it now.”

“But?” Her heart sank. She’d hoped Arfid would be able to resist, but… why would he?

“But his immune system fought it off. It seems he has some sort of micro-implant that releases synthetic anti-bodies into his bloodstream. Probably what kept him alive when he was living in the U-Levels. Anyway, you’ll need to continue to work him. Find out where the seeds are.”

“Fine.”