[CH01- Andrew]
Andrew brooded in the 317 habitation dome and listened to the winds outside howl their mournful dirge. Living in a frozen lightless hellscape was not what he had signed up for. Andrew was second in his graduation class in high school, and when he had won the multi-city high-school science fair for his project in microbiology the Corporation Le CS had offered him a full-ride scholarship to the University of Périgeaux. The recruiter had made it sound like life was going to be one long party. Sure, there were classes during the day and homework, but he had friends to go out with at night and no curfew living in the dorm. In return, when the University let out over the eight week semester vacation he would then work in Le CS’ labs in the southern hemisphere as an assistant in biomedical research. Yes, the labs were on the dark side and about as isolated as they could get and still be on the planet, but that was only for safety and security reasons. Nothing to worry about.
Until the lab accident in Lab 317-A that caused the fire and killed off his mentor and lead researcher, Dr. Thompson and his assistant, Dr. Ramirez. That got Andrew sent back to Périgeaux while the Corporation tried to retool the project, and the next thing you know Agent Smith from Corporate Security kidnapped him and stuck him in a hibernation pod. He learned that he was going to be trafficked off-planet and sold into slavery working for a competitor.
The day after he was rescued, HR decided that for “operational security” he would be working full-time from the habitation on the darkside. He refused. HR said he could refuse, but if he did, then he’d owe Le CS for the tuition, dorm, chow hall, and most damning of all, an immediate and full payment for the debt on the corporate credit card he was issued. That he then used for occasional emergencies. Like pizza, or beer, or maybe buying a round for his buddies, and a few really fancy restaurants when he was trying to impress a girl that was out of his league. So off to the dark side he went. And he hated it here. The lack of sunlight was depressing, you couldn’t breathe outside without special air preheating equipment, and the air was too cold for snow to exist. The other staff here were also miserable as raises had been suspended again and they were being asked to work extra hours for no extra pay. About the only good thing was the illegal distillery making strong moonshine. That and the science itself.
Andrew hadn’t known why his science fair project on a native predatory fungus that hijacked the nervous system of Thabit’s ecological equivalent of ants made such an impression on the Corporation. Technically, they weren’t ants as they were a Thabit native species of insect. But they had six legs, lived in a colony with a single queen, made trails, were a nuisance that invaded people’s houses and got in their food, and filled the ecological role in Thabit’s ecosystem that ants did. So people called them ants. He had found out when he got to the lab that Le CS was investigating the same ants, and some of the ants lived twice as long as they should. Specifically, the Corporation Le CS was very interested in trying to determine why they lived so long and Andrew’s research opened a new avenue of exploration. So far, the longevity effect had only been seen on non-infected ants, and it appeared the fungus was a dead end as far as the Corporation’s research was concerned. But his creativity and new perspective was why he was recruited for the project.The vast majority of the geodesic dome known as lab 317-A, informally called the Ant Lab, was given to rows upon rows of gleaming rectangular glass ant habitats for them to colonize. They’d performed rigorous testing on multiple hypotheses, and as far as Andrew was concerned, the only result was how easily an ant colony would die off. Add fungus? Zombie ants first then a dead colony. Too cold? Dead colony. Too hot? Dead colony. Overpopulation? Second queen born, second queen wants to make a new colony, colonies fight, dead colonies. Not enough of the right food proteins, carbs, or fats? Dead colony. Even something as simple as turning off the artificial sunlight for a few hours? Lost ants everywhere because they depended on light to navigate and then a dead colony. He now knew more ways to kill ants than he thought was humanly possible. But somehow, if you put the ants in conditions that mirrored the heat, light, diet and environment found in Thabit’s badland zone, kept them away from their natural predators and kept them from finding new ways of killing themselves, they thrived and lived twice as long as their neighboring ants in different zones. It was that mystery that Andrew was here to solve when he wasn’t being treated like an unpaid intern. A quiet knock on the door interrupted his funk. He got up from his cot, took the single step required to cross the minuscule room, and opened it. On the other side stood Michelle, the grad student closest to his age. “Hard day at work?” she asked. “Just the usual. Dead colonies, sterilize the ant farm, and set up a new one when we get a queen. Your day?” She shrugged. “The same. There’s only so many ways you can dissect a gerbil to prove it died a natural death of old age.” Andrew chuckled. “And how many ways would that be?” Her eyes flicked upwards and to the left, thinking. “My count? Eight.” She grinned as she looked back at Andrew. “But tomorrow’s a new day, and I may surprise myself.” She then held up a canteen and two mismatched glasses stolen from the cafeteria. “Lab 317-B’s finest potato juice?” “You tempt me with the sweetest things.” He stepped backwards and sat on his pillow at the head of the bed. “Come in and have a seat.” “Thanks.” She took a seat at the other end of the bed and made herself comfortable, one leg off of the cot and the other crossed beneath her. She handed the glasses to Andrew, and he held them as she poured out a double shot into each glass, emptying the bottle and screwing the lid back on. That task done, he handed one glass back to her. He raised his glass in a toast. “To your health.”“ And yours.” With that, they both chugged the fiery vodka as quickly as possible. The rough taste and burning sensation scalded Andrew’s sinuses and throat as it went down, eliciting an unwilling cough and watering eyes. “Gaaah.” He gasped, still choking on the vile yet potent liquid. “Smooth.” She barked a laugh between coughs herself. “Yep. Aged all of five days, I think. Only the good stuff for us.” She handed him back her glass, and without getting up from his seat on the bed reached over to the sink to fill both glasses half full of water, returning it to her. She accepted it and drank. “So,” he said, “what’s the topic of conversation tonight?”
“Today’s rumor is about getting a message back home.” Andrew scoffed. “Right, we all do that already on a daily basis. I sent today’s Ant Farms update just a few minutes ago, and I sent my parents a message as well.” She shook her head in the negative. “No, when we send a video message or call through the Corporation, we record a message, it goes through Corporate IT, they scan it and redact anything they don’t like, and we get messages back the same way.” Andrew shrugged. “What’s the secret sauce in this new rumor?” “Jimmy - Environmental Maintenance slash informal IT guy Jimmy, not Dr. James the Prick, thinks he’s found a way to send unfiltered messages back home.” “You’re kidding.” “Nope. He was working on the computer data relay and found a bug where you can store messages in a memory buffer that’s supposed to be for something else. He started speaking tech-speak and I lost interest. The point is, for the right price, he can send a message back to anyone in Périgeaux without the Corporation knowing.” “BS.” She held up a hand, palm outwards and facing Andrews with a wide eyed earnest expression on her face. “I swear. Well, I swear Jimmy swears it, and I believe he thinks it’s true, anyway.” “What’s the price?” She picked up the empty canteen and wiggled it. “A liter.” Andrew was shocked. “A liter of moonshine? That’s outrageous!” “Hey, don’t shoot the messenger.” They both paused in the conversation, Andrew thinking about what unfiltered message he would send. Something must have shown in his expression, because Michelle said, “Okay, spill it.” “What?” “Whatever you were thinking that made your face scrunch up like you were eating something sour.” “I was just thinking of the message I would send.” “...and that is?” Andrew hesitated, drew a breath to speak, hesitated again, and then said, “Maybe this is the alcohol talking, but there’s this lady named Angelique who was my friend Keven’s cousin. I might ask her for a favor.”