The Seed of State

Freedom dies quietly: in food stamps; in falsely warm smiles from doctors; in rations given today, but never promised tomorrow. In a world where the air is acrid and trees are a thing of myth, The Continuance controls all. Their weapon of choice is neither blade nor bludgeon; it has no spikes, no sharp edges. Food is the leash used to manipulate the masses. Food for people living below the surface of a world with toxic air. It never dawned on anyone that the air wasn’t the only poison.

“Oxygen signature detected, waking Custodial squad delta,” the mechanical voice of the ship’s artificial intelligence resonated hollowly through the cryobay.

Mika blinked his eyes slowly; the haze of cryosleep hung heavy over him, it always did. The glass-plated sleep chamber he had spent the majority of his life in buzzed and whirred as the front opened. He shielded his eyes against the severe, white fluorescent lights that flooded the room.

Stepping out on uneasy footing, Mika glanced around to see if any other members of his squad were awake yet. Seeing he was the first, he moved to the terminal next to the door.

“Prepare brief,” he spoke to the blinking green and black screen.

“Oxygen signature detected in zone fifty-three. Estimated deviation level: six.” The ship’s AI always sounded mechanical, devoid of intonation and emotion. Mika had grown used to the voice; it was comforting. Calm and calculating, as if it would never lead him astray.

“Suspected ecology?”

“Indeterminate, proceed with caution.” The AI usually knew what was being grown, it was peculiar that it didn’t know this time.

Mika shrugged off the anomaly, and went about checking the system logs.

He heard the other chambers hissing open behind him and Jessie was the next one out.

“Where to this time, boss?” He said, slightly slurring the words.

“Zone fifty-three,” Mika turned to look at Jessie, who was still gathering his bearings.

“The former Mesopotamian basin,” Jessie mumbled.

“The what?”

“That’s what they called it before,” Jessie stepped out of his chamber, and saw the look on Mika’s face, causing him to trail off, “zone fifty-three then, let’s get going.”

Mika’s gaze lingered on the man for a bit longer. Jessie was his best solider after all, but the man had a bad habit of referencing the pre-war name of a thing. A thing that would have been frowned on if uttered by a normal citizen, but coming from a Custodian’s mouth was a summary offense. Luckily for Jessie, Mika never pursued the matter.

After far too long a time, the whole team stood gathered before Mika. Dressed in their black armor, grey reflective visors gleaming Mika’s own reflection back at him, it was hard to tell one apart from the other; the only distinguishing characteristic was their height.

“All right,” he mustered artificial confidence into his voice. He needed to sound firm and in control to lead the men to success. “The AI detected an oxygen signature in zone fifty-three,” he looked down at his wrist-computer, “we’ll be in orbital position in five minutes.”

The rest of the squad looked down at theirs, too.

Another custodian spoke up, “What’s the suspected ecology?”

“Indeterminate,” Mika echoed the AI’s words, then spun on his heel and marched towards the drop pods. The soldiers exchanged glances, with what Mika assumed was puzzled expression hidden behind their visors.

“Toxin level?” Another of their number asked the AI as the six men moved down steel-clad corridors to the launch bay.

“Elevated. Suggestion: set shields to increased output.” Something about the AI’s mechanical drone felt off, slower, like it wasn’t computing as fast as usual.

“System status,” Mika commanded, annoyed at this unusual lack of information from the AI.

“All systems nominal,” came the robotic reply.

He paused for a moment before getting into his drop pod, staring at the black screen, the green blinking dot staring back at him.

Mika spoke into their shared comms channel as the terminal started its countdown.

Five

“Okay, men, it may just be a deviation level six,”

Four

“but that doesn’t mean you can let your guard down.”

Three

“Remember why we do this,”

Two

“to contain and collect,” called Mika.

One

“Continuance preserved,” the other five responded in unison.

One

What the, Mika didn’t have time to reflect on what he thought had been a glitch in the AI. He could have sworn the system counted “one” twice.

He was thrust out of the bottom of the ship at several times the g-force a normal human could survive.

Screaming metal, shearing against the ship, sparks flying, neck and shoulders strained, then… nothing.

The vast emptiness of space seemed to move slowly by as he hurtled out from the bottom of the Custodians’ cruiser. Sinking down into a brief endlessness of nothing. Weightless and floating, no gravity, artificial or otherwise, no AI to lead him, just six men in drop pods. All hurtling through space together. Black horizons to their left, and right, a murky brown and purple haze to their front.

Earth.

The jostle and vibration as they breached the first layer of the atmosphere caused Mika’s teeth to chatter, bringing him back to his senses.

A few more seconds, and they broke through into a mass of poison murk. The toxin was so thick, that even up here, at the edge of the atmosphere, you could hardly see through the stuff.

Down, and down, and down the team hurtled.

“Brace for impact,” Mika said over the comms.

Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

Their drop pods slammed into the earth’s brittle crust, cracking through the top layer of dead ground. They continued their descent, burrowing hundreds of feet below the surface.

Mika watched as a red-orange glow started to appear on the shield of his pod. The friction from clawing down through the dead earth was tremendous. He began to sweat in his suit despite the shields. Deeper and deeper they went, and the pods got hotter and hotter.

A crack formed on the window of Mika’s pod, creeping up towards the edge, where ballistic glass met hardened metal. He watched the crack grow as the black and gray of the rock on the other side sped past. He felt his heart pounding, excitement welling up inside of him, and his breathing became ragged.

“In, out, in, out,” he reminded himself.

Finally, just as Mika thought his pod was about to shatter from the enormous force of breaking through layer after layer of rock, they came to a halt.

They had reached their insertion point.

Vents hissed like angry snakes as the pods released steam from the massive amount of accumulated heat. A half dozen black metal boots stepped out of steaming clouds, looking like death itself had rained down from the heavens.

Maybe it did, thought Mika.

Their insertion point, a tunnel system near the suspected deviation, was three miles west of the oxygen signature.

“Remind me again,” Jessie said over the comms as they began the long trek to the site, “why they can’t drop us closer? We have to do this long walk every time, wouldn’t it be easier to just have us… I don’t know, drop into the site?”

“We can’t collect evidence of deviation if we slam down and blow up the actual evidence now, can we, Jessie?” Mika replied.

Jessie mumbled something unintelligible back, and they continued their march.

The illegal greenhouse was hot, humid, and had condensation dripping off grime-covered walls. Mika looked around at what appeared to have once been a mining site. It wasn’t large, as he had expected; the dome-shaped structure was just big enough to house the few dozen makeshift plant beds they had set up.

The deviants had repurposed the space for the growth of unsanctioned organics. Mika supposed that they might have gotten away with it. Still, most of the mines had microcracks from the explosives used during excavation, and those cracks allowed oxygen to leak to the surface. That was how The Continuity had found them.

With the criminals suppressed, the team began the process of methodically and carefully removing the organic material. They took off their armor and donned personal protective equipment. Surgical gloves, masks, forceps, and specimen bags to extract the organics.

Any one of the strange brown things growing below the surface could be tainted with a deadly neurotoxin from the air above. They had to be handled with extreme caution. Mika and his team had been specially trained by The Continuity to do just that.

“Murderers, cowards, devils,” the shouts of defiance came, just as they always did. Jessie was watching over a handful of restrained deviants while Mika and the rest of the team collected evidence.

“It’s for the collective best interest of our people,” Jessie tried to explain the intrusion into their illegal greenhouse. He always tried to explain it to them. So far, no one had ever listened to his reasoning. This time didn’t prove to be an exception, as one of the thinner-looking prisoners spat on his face shield.

“Come on,” he wiped the spit away, “can’t you see that we need to take the food you’re growing here? It’s too dangerous to cultivate without the supervision of The Continuance. They’re the only ones who can safely oversee food growth and distribution. If we just let everyone go around growing their own food, you’d all be poisoned and dead by next week.”

Mika sighed. He had heard this speech from Jessie on almost every mission, well over a hundred times. He was about to tell Jessie to leave off when something distracted him.

Maniacal laughing came from one of the deviants, “Is that what they tell you?” She scoffed at Jessie, “We’ve been eating this food for months, you see anyone dead or foaming at the mouth?” Her eyes were bulging out of her head in rage and contempt. Jessie seemed at a loss for words; there was, after all, not a sick-looking one among them.

“They don’t want us growing our own food, cause otherwise, how would they control us? They’d be out all the free slave labor they get from us.”

“That’s not true,” Jessie began.

“Simon!” The woman screamed, “My son, my sweet little boy,” she was sobbing now.

“Ma’am, I can assure you, The Continuity will take care of—”

“He’s dead,” the woman slumped down on the ground, a horrible wracking sob filled the cavern, and a tense atmosphere fell over the Custodians.

As the collection wrapped up, The Custodians donned their armor and prepared to call for the exfiltration transit. It would take them back to their ship, and from there they would set course for the Continuance’s research and rehabilitation ship; they would be debriefed, the organic matter would be studied, and, if necessary, destroyed.

“Prepare the prisoners for the wardens,” Mika ordered his team.

The wardens were responsible for processing, judging, and sentencing deviants. They travelled in grey cart wagons, creeping slowly from the main cities, out to these remote and often abandoned criminal hotbeds. The Custodial teams would send the coordinates of the site, and several hours later, the wardens would arrive to take them off for processing. It was a crude system, but a necessary one, since the wardens wouldn’t arrive in time to arrest people, and couldn’t detect oxygen signatures anyway. They also didn’t have the qualifications to handle dangerous organics—they had to rely on the Custodians to detain the criminals and deal with the hazardous materials first.

As Mika finished up putting his armor back on, he stopped to stare into the grey, glassy surface of his helmet. Hollow eyes looked back at him; they looked tired, so tired.

Is that me? Is that what I look like?

He saw something move behind him in the reflection.

Mika turned, but there was nothing behind him.

That’s odd, I could have sworn…

Squinting, he spotted a small crack in the wall at the far back of the cavern.

“Everything alright, boss?” Jessie asked.

“Yeah, I’m just going to check on something, continue preparing for transit.”

Mika moved away from the rest of his team. When he reached the crack, he saw that it was big enough for a person to slide through if they squeezed sideways.

Mika placed his helmet gingerly on the ground and slid through.

Nothing could have prepared him for what was inside.

He couldn’t be sure at first; he thought they weren’t real, that they were a thing of myth.

Still, the sinking in his stomach told him that what he was looking at wasn’t a thing of myth; it was real.

A whimper from behind the thing caused him to jump. Peering behind the large leafy mass, he saw several small children. Dirty and emaciated, a woman was shielding them with her arms. Her eyes were full of tears.

“Is that…” Mika couldn’t believe it, wouldn’t believe it.

The woman finished his sentence, “…a tree.”

He fell to the ground.

One of the smaller children let out a squeak.

“Everything good in there?” Came Jessie's voice from back in the main cavern.

Mika looked around, mind racing.

He looked at the woman. He looked at the children. He looked at the tree.

“The…tree, what are those, those red things?” He asked in barely a whisper.

“Apples,” the woman replied.

“Apples,” he mouthed back.

The fruit said to represent all evil, apples. The Continuance warned against referencing them. They said apples were just a vile myth, the symbol used by the rebellion. A made-up thing to try to destabilize the government.

Maybe something snapped inside of him, maybe he had just had enough. He didn’t know, but he suddenly felt like laughing.

He composed himself and yelled back at Jessie, “Yeah, just finished scanning.”

Mika stood back up, placed one finger over his mouth, and made a shushing gesture towards the children. He placed his other hand on his hip, fingertips brushing against the cold metal of his sidearm.

He could see the horror on the woman’s face, the dread and finality of it welling up inside of her.

Mika felt giddy, the excitement causing a smile to break out across his face. The woman turned away and tried desperately to protect the children from Mika.

Seconds passed as the woman clutched her charges, then the first gunshot came.

Jessie had been the only one to see things Mika’s way. Having to dispose of the rest of his team had been a hard thing to do, almost too hard, but the revelation that apples were real, never mind trees, well, it had been enough to sway both him and Jessie.

Killing wasn’t something Mika enjoyed; he tried to avoid it if he could. But the four team members had all been in various states of drawing weapons, or about to radio back to The Continuance to report his breach of protocol.

Mika had been left with no choice.

He told Jessie to go back with the woman and children and to take care of them. To see that they were safe and help them avoid future detection.

Mika had hope now, hope that people wouldn’t be forced to eat nutrient paste, wouldn’t be forced to starve if the government didn’t allocate them enough rations.

He just had one last bit of cleanup to do before his spontaneous plan was seen through. Mika boarded the exfiltration transit vehicle and headed back to the ship.

When the gate of the transit vehicle opened back up into the cold, lifeless metal ship, Mika simply stood there. He looked into the ship, the hollow, soundless void didn’t seem to echo back as strongly now.

His eyes found the terminal on the wall, a black screen with that blinking green light.

Mika smiled to himself as he headed towards the reactor core. It was the engine that powered the whole ship. The place where the AI was housed. A delicate, fragile thing, where one small miscalculation in cooling or pressure could send the whole ship into nuclear meltdown.

It would kill Mika, he knew that, but it would also kill the evidence of the oxygen signature, keeping the children and, more importantly, the tree with the apples, safe.

Maybe it would even be a start to destroying the poison that was The Continuance.

Mika hoped.