As we approached Apex we saw more and more spurs join the set of tracks we were on. Some just branched into our track and some ran parallel until there were at least five sets of tracks side-by-side. Soon we entered a huge station and the car stopped.
Jet opened the door. "Come on, this will be fun. I know where we are and I can find my way around some. If you want we will take a quick tour before we get down to business."
Toni and I were already impressed. It looked like we were in a large city completely underground. It was well lit and in excellent repair. There was something leading up that, I guess, would be the alien's idea of steps. Huge feet would have no problem.
I turned around and there went Jet nearly dancing off towards something she wanted to see. Her mood was infectious. Toni and I raced off after her happily. Suddenly it was just us girls and we were ready to have a ball. We had crossed over to some kind of shopping mall. It was small but I'm sure it was just for the people riding the rail cars.
I saw a store with several balls in the front window along with some sort of equipment that could only have something to do with some sort of sports activity. I had no idea what game might be played with the equipment. Toni made a funny noise with her throat and I turned to see what had surprised her. It was a store mannequin. Maybe I should say an alienequin--a representation of an alien.
It was big, green, lizard-like, definitely male, and it had a tail. Imagine a tyrannosaurs rex. Now shrink it down to a little over two meters in height. It should be a dark green with a wrinkled skin (not quite scaly). The mouth would be toned down--almost human--maybe ape-like. Put on hands almost like ours except it looked like the pinky could move like our thumb. The finger nails were different. They nearly wrapped all the way around each finger. Hmmm...It had a thumb, two kinda regular fingers, and a small thumb. Each of it's legs were as big around as my waist and it had a tail between them as big and as long as one of my legs. The arms were longer than the rex would have, by scale. They came to about the top of what would be the hip. One last point. A human has a body that is wider than it is thick--in the torso, this is a feature, I think, unique to primates. The alien had a body shape that was thicker front-to-back than side-to-side.
Hmmm...I gotta mention the eyes--they were intelligent looking. I know that even a human mannequin doesn't do justice to our eyes and I'm sure the alienequin didn't fully show the depth of real alien eyes, but there was still something there.
It was big and scared me for a moment until I realized what it was, but I got used to it's looks quickly. I felt like I would have no trouble talking to a real alien--if it didn't make any quick moves or anything. It looked intelligent, not like some dog somebody had dressed up in clothes.
It was dressed...strangely, with the genitals exposed. I thought maybe it was wearing some kind of lingerie but judging from the rest of the items in that store I decided that it must have been sportswear. Maybe they had some kind of sweating problem. Maybe sports and sex were more closely related in ther culture. I don't know. Anyway that's how we were sure it was male.
We found a female representation. She was smaller, less muscular, almost pretty (in an alien kind of way). Her crotch was open-cut too. She had no breasts and her tail was much longer. Neither had hair.
Toni and I tried to examine the figures to get a feel for what the aliens were like. I admit, it felt a little like when you were a kid and you snuck into your parents bedroom for the sole purpose of seeing what was in there, exploring, trying to find out what made them tick. I kept waiting for someone to come in and ask me what I thought I was doing.
We couldn't spend too long in any one place because Jet kept prancing of and we were afraid we'd get lost. Every time Toni and I would find something of interest Jet would stop for a minute and then she'd take off again leaving Toni and me to hurry and catch up with her.
I'm thinking about all the individual discoveries that Toni and I made but I'm forgetting to mention the big picture. It was a beautiful place with lots of glass and shiny metal. There was some kind of finish that was used on the glass as well as the metal that gave them a mottled collection of colors. It was very pretty. The floors were covered in what appeared to be wood. I had never seen strips of natural wood that big before. I remember thinking to myself that the sheds they grew the trees in must have been enormous, but think about it. That was back when there was water on the ground. They probably were able to grow trees right out in the open. The wood was really beautiful.
The clothing stores were what Toni and I related to the best, I believe. At least there we could hazard guesses about what this or that was used for and if we liked it or not.
We went to one store that seemed to specialize in hardware. Most of the hardware we found we could make only the vaguest of guesses about. Every once in awhile we'd find something that we felt sure about what it was. We found pots and pans and things that were probably eating utensils. We found a glass that looked like it might have come from back in Tower city.
Jet tired of the mini-mall and we rode some kind of moving conveyer belt. It was very fresh. Toni and I both liked it. We went past all kinds of stores to some parks. They were gorgeous.
Toni and I were both having a blast. It was like CBs and dweebs and revolting had never been. I never wanted to leave that place. We explored where the aliens lived and where they worked and played, all the while never stopping as Jet kept wanting to show us the next thing or the next place. Finally we insisted that we be allowed to stop long enough to eat.
Jet found us a large table in a well lit park and Toni and I broke into the provisions we had brought with us. Jet watched us for a moment then couldn't stand it any longer and danced off somewhere to find us a sample of alien food we could try if we wanted to. She didn't care if we ate it or not just as long as she was able to run around on her own. She was like a kid.
"If Jet gets any happier we'll have to tie her up and sit on her until she comes back down!" Toni joked after Jet had gone.
I laughed to think of us trying to hold her down. She'd still be happy. To her I guess it was like going home again. Walking down all those old streets--except for her it was walking down them for the first time, even the walking was almost like the first time for her.
"What do you think this meeting will be like with the others?" Toni wanted to know.
"I don't know." That much was obvious. "Do you have any ideas?"
"No. This is one time when you ought to have a better idea than me. You're the cerebral one. I was just wondering if you had any ideas on what they will want to talk about."
"Hmmm. They could just want to 'meet' us, in the 'flesh'. Maybe they want to discuss politics, y'know, about us CBs revolting and what the dweebs are really like. Hell, they may want to see what it would be like to join us or maybe they want a voice on the colony Council. There's just no telling until they begin talking."
"I'm worried."
"About what, Toni?" I asked astonished. I looked at her. She looked happier than I had seen her since we had first moved into the complex. "You just want to complain."
"No, I'm enjoying myself and I know we ought to be getting ready for our little meeting. We ought to be more serious!"
"You be serious. I'm just glad for being here and seeing all of this. Let's enjoy it while we can. Like you say, there's no telling what we may get into in the next hour or so. Enjoy will ya'--or at least let me enjoy myself.
"Think about it Cookie, back on the rail car you and I were both upset--especially you. Now look at us! We're so giddy and I don't know why. Could it be the alien computers are drugging us somehow? Are they mixing something in the air or sending electrical pulses through the air to make us happy?"
"I think we are happy because we have seen the splendor this place has to offer. We know we will never be able to take it back with us but it's still nice to see it. Kinda like an amusement park, it's a nice place to visit but who'd want to live here?"
"I guess. Jet's been gone for awhile. D'ya suppose we oughta go find her? As happy as she was when she left she could forget where we are. Where'd she say she was going anyway?"
"Something about getting us some alien food to try, Toni."
"Where would she find some fresh alien food? Supposedly there hasn't been an alien here for 5,000 years. You don't suppose there's some still around? Maybe the others aren't computers after all--maybe they're aliens..."
I swallowed deeply and wondered if I would survive a meeting with an alien or not. Toni was right, they could still be living underground and were waiting in the wings to come out and introduce themselves after we had seen the alienequins and pictures of them in advertisements on the walls here and there. It would be one way to be sure we didn't die of fright when they poked ther heads out. I was scaring myself.
***
It was on his third day in the camp when he spotted Sid. Sid was hanging around with some chic. She was quite pretty but she wasn't Cookie. That's when Ralph realized that he was out there looking for Cookie because he...he..he might..maybe he had feelings for her.
Ralph was tempted to confront Sid and demand to know what had happened to Cookie. He was glad he didn't because on the second day the guy Cookie had been rooming with while Sid was locked up showed up. Ralph felt sure that something was up. He began to have suspicions that either Dick had done something to Cookie or it had been Dick in cahoots with Sid. It didn't add up. Ralph knew there had been a real flame going between Cookie and Sid before he got locked up. He had heard about it from many of his street acquaintances.
There was the other girl that was missing. Toni her name was. She was a bad one. If she had stayed out on the street he felt sure that she would have been going back to jail again.
Ralph decided that it might pay to keep an eye on this new girl. If she disappeared then he knew the two guys were up to no good. The next day Mike showed up. Ralph didn't know what to make of that. He knew he'd have to keep a sharp eye on things. That was something that Dick's and Mike's appearance had made harder. Ralph knew that Sid didn't know who he was, but both Dick and Mike would probably still recognize him, beard and all.
***
"Give us an example how you CBs have been mistreated." the voice asked.
I was in some kind of conference room. Toni and Jet were with me. There were monitors that had been placed on the various chairs. Each monitor represented a different sentient computer. In all there were fourteen 'others' in attendance. On each monitor there was a face to represent each computer. Some were silly faces and some looked like the aliens. There was one that looked almost like Jet, one that looked like a lizard face in chrome (like Jet), one that looked like me (in chrome), and one that looked a little like Toni.
When each computer spoke the appropriate face would move or something. Some of the computers had gone to a lot of trouble to make ther face look lifelike and others had put very little effort into it. I got the impression that they were purposely trying to demonstrate ther individuality. It was almost like they were afraid we would take them as a lump sum instead of separate entities.
Actually we probably would have...
I thought about the question. "I could give lots of examples. I have had many things happen to me because I'm CB. I have seen the police and others abuse CBs many many times. Daily. But the one time--the things that hurt me the most were the times when I saw CBs hurt themselves. I don't mean this CB hurt that CB. I'm talking about CB #123 hurting CB #123.
"I remember one time when I was in a store where they sold food. It was a specialty shop where they sold janku--are you familiar with janku?" I asked the room at large.
The monitor at the other end of the table, the one who seemed to be in charge, responded. "I think we all have an idea of what that is, however it might be a good idea if you define it more precisely if you think it is necessary..."
"Yea, I suppose I'd better just to be on the safe side. It's a type of meat--or it has meat in it. There are layers of many things, cheeses, and onions, lots of spices, 'veggies' like lettuce, olives, different kinks of peppers, tomatoes. There's lots of meat and the inside part is marinated in various sauces then served on special baked bread. It's quite good and because of all the 'veggies' it's good health food. It's not something I would want to eat at every meal it too special and too spicy for that--like pizza.
"Am I describing it well enough? I hope so. It's important that you have a good idea what it is.
"Anyway I'm in this shop getting one of these things when in comes some lady that had evidently already been in and gotten one. She must have gone outside and started to eat it. I don't think she had had many jankus before because she was complaining because it wasn't hot. Well, no self respecting fan of janku would ever dream of eating one hot. That's one of the things that makes them so good. Anyway, the clerk in the store went ahead and apologized that the lady didn't like her janku and offered to heat it up in the store's hot slot (which would normally be used for other food items). Well, the lady got the impression that janku was supposed to be served cold/cool and just left."
"So? I don't get your point?" the head honcho complained.
"Don't you see? This poor lady was all upset and ready to raise a fuss because her sandwich wasn't hot but when she found out it should have been served like it had been, she was willing to accept it like that. On the one hand she had come back into the store with the attitude that she wouldn't be taken advantage of and was ready to fight to get good service. Then when she was told that it was usually served cold she was willing to accept that and just accept being wrong. The point is: she had no direct will of her own; it made no difference what she thought; if the majority consensus said the sandwich should have been hot then she wanted it hot; when she was told it was normally served cold but they were willing to heat it up for her then she put her own preferences aside and accepted it the way she thought everyone else accepted it; she had no will of her own. I mean, look at it--she had come back in the store upset because her sandwich was cold and didn't taste good to her and suddenly she was willing to tolerate it the way it was because she had been told that it was supposed to be like that. It would still taste bad to her. The clerk had offered to heat it up and she was willing to suffer through it because she thought she was supposed to.
"That to me is what I call downtrodden and it scares the hell out of me because I know that when I get to be her age I will probably be just like her--willing to accept whatever anyone tells me I should!
"Somewhere along the line that lady's life, her will, her self, her uniqueness has been stolen from her and she doesn't even know it. Do you get it now? That's what segregation does to people. It kills ther spirit!" I finished agitated.
Nobody said anything. I wasn't sure if I had made my point or not. Could these computers appreciate what I had said? Maybe I should have gone for the random violence inflicted on us by the police. That was easier to understand. The silence grew.
"Say something!" Toni demanded. "Cookie just explained something to you! It obviously hurt her very much to have seen that. Do you understand what she was getting at?" Toni could be quite militant when she wanted to.
"It is difficult to extract the meaning." Honcho replied. "It is not the sandwich or if it was served hot or cold. What Cookie is saying is that that woman had been told how to think so many times in her life that she no longer was capable of thinking for herself. I am analyzing if the problem could have been related to the woman's age..."
"It could have." Toni admitted. "I have seen other cases like the one she described. I knew this kid. He was nice and likable but he acted weird. He wanted attention and he did everything he could to make you like him. Well, he did everything he thought you might like to make you like him. Most of the time when he'd start this he'd be way off base. He'd talk about at night when instead of going to bed this hover car would come and get him and all this stuff would happen to him. You could tell he was just making up shit to try and impress you. He'd tell these stories all the time. He told them so much that he lived in a dream world of his own making. He did this because he couldn't stand living in the real world with the rest of us. You see he had come home from school one day to see the cops shoot his old man. He never cried about it--he just let it drive him slowly bananas."
"Bananas?" Honcho asked.
"It's slang. It means the poor little guy went crazy, off the deep end."
Silence.
Finally: "Could this child you describe have been ready to go 'bananas' anyway? He may have been too sensitive."
Toni's face turned about two shades redder than normal.
"I think it is obvious that they are trying to bring up the fine points. The point is the 'dweebs' do segregate against the CB population as a whole." Jet told the room. "On the trip here today they told me that the root of the problem seems to be that the dweebs claim to be better than the CBs because the CBs don't have souls."
"What do you mean the CBs don't have souls?" Honcho wanted to know.
"That is the part that they think lives on after the body quits--their consciousness. The CBs have been made to believe that they are inferior and will have no afterlife."
"These are CBs here, aren't they? The ones that call themselves Cookie and Toni?"
"Yes."
"Cookie," Honcho asked me, "don't you think you have a soul?"
"No, of course not! I'm a CB. That's why I am a CB!"
"Do you believe that way too, Toni?"
"Yes. That's the way it is."
"How sweet!" Honcho remarked.
Suddenly there was a furor of comments between the computers. Then the screens went blank.
"What happened?" I demanded of Jet as Toni asked her the same question from where she was standing on the other side of her.
"They are in conference." Jet informed us.
"I want to hear what they are saying." Toni demanded.
"You couldn't keep up with them. You humans communicate at a very slow pace. They can communicate back and forth at the same rate you humans can think. It is much more efficient."
"Well, what are they talking about? Can you hear them?"
"No. But I still know what has upset them so. They can't believe you two don't think you have souls. They probably think you said that to get ther sympathy or something."
I laughed--bitterly.
The whole book in zipfile format.
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