Chapter 5
Before I left for work the next morning, I called Aimee to set up a meeting with Ernest Lefko. He was the one of the heads of the engineering departments at Summit, which included Primary and Secondary.
Ernest was a consummate company man, which you tended to be when you worked at a place for decades and still haven’t retired at 72-years-old, but he didn’t love the company. He cared for it too much to love it. He was a proud remnant of the “old guard,” grizzled veterans who jingled balls of welded titanium in their pants. While most of his fellow soldiers had since faded away from the onslaught of young hotshots and mandatory retirement policies, Ernest hung on like the stubborn bastard he was. I’ve known him ever since I joined in as a green recruit those many years ago, and I sort of saw him as a father figure. A crude, foul-mouthed father figure who would sooner knock out my jaw than pat me on the shoulder for a job well done, but I wouldn’t have that old relic any other way.
Because he was the product of his time, Ernest seemed to exist in his own dimension, a vacuum where common corporate sense couldn’t exist without imploding on itself. Ernest’s realm lived apart from the quagmire of executives that seemed to serve little purpose other than taking up space on the Tetra payroll and making every decision a bureaucratic nightmare. He says what he wants, and that was that.
Thus, unlike the rest of the cold-hearted motherfuckers the bulk of Summit’s management consisted of, Ernest would actually take the time to talk to his underlings. Amazing, that!
Aimee managed to coax up an appointment with him before the main shifts started, which I could imagine annoyed the man to no end having to wake up and put on good pants. Instead of meeting him at his office (which, last I saw, still was full of brown packing boxes), I was supposed to meet him at a restaurant a few blocks away.
Normally, I wouldn’t have bothered old Ernest with any random bullshit, friend or not. But what I’ve seen over the past days was anything but random bullshit. Giant lizards were one thing. Giant talking lizards were another. Giant talking lizard engineers, that’s a third. But giant talking lizard engineers that worked in Primary Sigma? Right. Okay, this must have been an elaborate office prank.
Primary Sigma was the reigning alpha in Summit’s engineering pack. And it got all the perks that came with being at the top of the food chain: the most qualified staff, the most funding, the best equipment, the most secure location, the most expensive food, you name it. Instead of parking alongside the other lowly engineering departments south of the Spire, Sigma had its own facilities deep inside the campus. It was a hardened fortification with armed guards, automatic sentry turrets and robots, laser tripwires, security cameras, and biometric gates. I’ve honestly seen military stockades with less security than it had. Everything was self-contained with its own power generators, water treatment plants, and even life support.
The site was the home of Tetra’s “black project” developments. Need your top-secret, multi-billion-dollar government military projects done? This was the place to do it. Both Sigma’s projects and budget were guarded secrets, a reality that would’ve made even the Pentagon blush.
I didn’t know how the Isians got involved with Sigma, and I itched for the answers to that mystery. And no one else but Ernest would have the knowledge and desire to give it.
The place Ernest had chosen was a small corner diner off one of the quieter streets a few blocks away from Summit. Brown cobblestone and paper debris decorated the block along with an ambiance of pigeon flocks and trash collectors. The elevated train lines ran uninterrupted over the diner and casted a looming shadow that drowned the area in pale darkness, which helped accentuate the diner’s neon sign. Vertical lettering forming “MICKS” hung along the building’s corner, the “S” sputtering and refusing to wake up. The ground shook when the next train roared through the tracks above, shuttling potential patrons straight to the next espresso shop. Figures Ernest would choose a place like this.
I waited at the diner’s door for a few seconds before I realized I needed to push it in. Inside, a few patrons were enjoying their morning breakfast, probably the faithful regulars, who, I imagined, were the only ones propping this place up. I found Ernest sipping on a cup of coffee on a bar stool at the counter. While most of his colleagues had graduated to three-piece suits, Ernest insisted on wearing just the essentials, like woolen, un-collared shirts and sometimes-matching pants. A few years back, he had migrated from jeans to loose-fitting slacks, saying he was “too old for canvas but not old enough for diapers.” His traditional brown trench coat seemed regal when draped around his stocky body, like a cape. A red-trimmed fedora covered his normally bald head. As a formality for his bosses, he wore a yellow tie around his bare neck.
I sat down next to him in the middle of a gulp of his coffee.
“Hello, Mr. Lefko. Thanks for meeting with me.”
He choked and sputtered, then forcefully swallowed the mouthful. He slammed his cup onto the counter. “What the hell?” he called out. He looked around and then saw me. He slapped the table. “Lyle, you dumb bastard. I told you a hundred times already. Never call me that!”
“Sorry, Ernest. It’s an old habit.”
“You damn right it’s a habit. A bad habit. Today it’s ‘mister’ this, and then before you know it, it’s all ‘sirs’ and ‘madams’ and ‘your highness’ and all that sort of bullshit. It’s a disease, I tells you. I won’t hear it out from you, got it?”
I chuckled at his decree. He reached for his coffee again. A clean plate sat in front of him along with unused utensils and a fresh cloth napkin.
“So what are you going to have?” I asked.
“I’m having the smells of breakfast, that’s what. My stomach can’t take this kind of food anymore. Too good and too rich.” He patted his belly.
“Then why did you want to meet here if you’re not going to eat anything?”
He leaned in to me and said, “Because the girls here are nice, that’s why.” He nodded to a waitress taking orders from a pudgy-looking patron. The waitress wore a white, medium-cut shirt with a pale history of grease staining one of the shoulders and a nametag reading “Carol” attached to the right breast. I stared at bit at her shapely, hose-encased legs, which disappeared underneath a short black skirt and apron with several wide pockets. She scribbled on a paper ordering pad with mechanical familiarity and, after what seemed like an hour, dropped it in the apron’s pockets when the costumer finished. Earnest politely tipped his hat to her and she came to the counter, and she returned with a red-lipsticked smile.
“I tell you, they don’t have a lot of broads like this, nowadays,” Ernest said as the waitress transposed the paper order onto an electronic terminal. He sighed for the nostalgic memory of a time since dead, sipped his coffee, and wiped his mouth with the napkin. “So anyway, whatcha got that’s so important that you had to wake me up in the morning for?”
“How much do you know about what’s going on in Primary Sigma?”
“Sigma? Now why would a kid like you want to know about a place like Sigma?”
“I have two very good reasons.”
Ernest tilted his head down to his coffee. He mumbled something and shook his head, and he then finished off the cup and flagged down the waitress for more. While waiting, he started rolling up the napkin.
“I see you’ve met our special guests,” he said.
“I’ve more then met them. I even have the scars on my head to prove it.”
He didn’t say anything, but continued fiddling with the napkin. I tapped on the counter in front of him.
“Look, I know they’re working in Sigma. Someway, somehow, they’re doing something in there, and I want to know what the hell’s happening.”
The napkin was in a tight-rolled cylinder now, which Ernest stretched across the plate like a white earthworm. The waitress brought more coffee.
“I don’t manage Sigma, kid,” he said. “I don’t know what’s going on there.”
“Bullshit. I know you, Ernest. You’d make it your business to know.”
Ernest sighed and drew deep sips of his coffee. He bowed his head down and folded his arms on the counter. He sighed again. Then, he started shaking his head and chuckling.
“You damn punk. You know me too well.”
“You bet I do. Now, are you going to give me some answers or what?”
“What do you want to know?”
“Well, for starters, how about where the hell they came from?”
He shook his head. “That, I honestly don’t know. Hell, no one in Summit does, either. Not even the Sigma boys. The things came from some sort of research institute, so they could be from fuckin’ Alpha Centauri for all I know. But Tetra had to put some serious cashola on the table for these things. Had to outbid at least six other major companies. By the time I knew it, I saw a bunch of lizards walking in and out of the place.”
“So they really are involved with Sigma?”
“Yep. They have all the security clearances and everything. And that’s not all.” He leaned in close, put his hand to his mouth, and whispered. “They’re on the payroll too.”
“What? What for?”
“They’re employees, dummy. On the record and above-board, sponsored by Tetra Chromatics Corporation, International.”
“Employees…” I muttered to myself. These damned things probably had better benefits than I did!
“Amazing, isn’t it? Just when you thought Tetra was already batshit enough, they pull this stunt.”
“I’ve seen them, Ernest. They’re incredible. They cleared fifteen units of my work in an hour. I don’t think anyone from Sigma or anywhere else could pull that off.”
“I didn’t mean that. I know the company, and they won’t put any old shmuck in their precious Sigma. I’m sure these things have panache.” He snapped his fingers to punctuate the word. “I’m just pissed that they finally got a young chick in the goddamn place and she’s not even human.”
He gave a wry smile. I couldn’t help but chuckle.
“And that’s pretty much it, kid,” he said. “Tetra hired a couple of lizards for Sigma. That’s as deep as it gets.”
I stroked my forehead at the thought. I hit the bruise, but continued rubbing it, perhaps thinking the pain would jolt my ability to understand everything.
“To think,” I said, “all this time, I was worried about robots and smart agents taking over my job.”
“Hey, don’t worry about it too much. These Isians may be smart, but they sure ain’t human. And at the end of the day,” he snapped his fingers and slapped my back, “that’s the only thing that matters in this world.”
“I guess so.”
Ernest took another sip and unrolled his napkin. He spread it over his lap.
“Anyway, enough about that lizard bullshit. Sigma can hire a goddamned moose for its department head for all I care. I only give a damn about my own labs. Speaking of which, how’s that neanderthal boss of yours, anyway?”
“Still kicking like his old self. Actually, I don’t think he likes our guests too much. Had a little run-in with them.”
“I heard.” He grinned and slapped his thigh. “’Bout time someone took that idiot down a few pegs. I swear, back in my day, meatheads like him were sent to the military where they belong. I don’t know how he managed to head SE-2 for so long.”
“He’s sure not having a good time with Tetra keeping the lizards in Secondary.”
“What? They’re not keeping them in SE.”
“I see them hanging around there an awful lot.”
He dismissed me with a wave. “Nah, that’s just the lizards. They seem like it there. I guess they really like the computer you guys have.”
“The Alie? That ancient thing? Why would they bother with that piece of crap when they have Sigma’s equipment?”
“Don’t matter to them at all. They just really like how the thing looks. It’s prettier than those NTX machines. You know how animals love shiny things.”
The wall clock that hung above the counter capped off another hour with a chime. Ernest examined it and drunk the rest of his coffee.
“Well, that’s my cue,” he said. “Sorry about the short meeting. Bum a ride with me?”
“Nah, I think I’ll catch up on some breakfast.”
“Suit yourself.”
He pressed his cash card on counter, then buttoned up his coat and placed his hands in the pockets. He was at the door when he gave me some parting words.
“Oh, I heard some execs from Tetra are showing up at Secondary today. Don’t let ’em rile you up, eh?”
I nodded. “Thanks, Ernest.”
“Later, kid.” He tipped his hat and left.
Hell would freeze over first before Ernest steered me wrong. The suits were already talking to Mark in the arena when I got the lab. I bunkered down into my station and prepared to work, but I discovered my terminal had been administratively locked, and, scanning around, so were all the others. I sat with my colleagues just playing with our thumbs.
An Isian was also in the lab, this time awake and hopping about. Unlike yesterday though, I found it to be rather amusing than uneasy. It’s hard to explain the turnabout. The interactions at the courtyard yesterday helped, but you don’t exactly tame lion to a kitten with just a conversation. There’s this thing about them, that dichotomy of sapient intelligence and primitive animalism, which drew me in. They held a paradox within their scaly hides, and though I was never one to bother with puzzles or philosophy, let alone philosophical puzzles, this one compelled me to explore its secrets.
The longer I observed the Isians, the more difficult it became for me to retain that anger I once had toward them.
Past Mark and the executives, the glow of the holographic platform caught my attention, jarring considering we rarely used it. Running the terminals taxed the Alie-Grommot enough to starve the platform of the resources it needed. Though now, since all the terminals were locked, the mainframe could dedicate enough processing time to drive it.
Information flooded the holograph as an opening dam. I could barely keep up with the deluge, everything from statistical data, to simulation results, to graphics, and to, most noticeably, sets of two- and three-dimensional schematics. The prints displayed in a mess of confusing lines, numbers, and symbols all squashed right on top of the other, like cars crushed into scrap cubes.
The Isian was ticking away at the platform’s control panel near its base. It would occasionally stop the holograph, observe the visual morass for a second, and continue.
Finished with the suits, Mark was now addressing the entire lab, but I didn’t listen. My attention transfixed itself on the Isian at the panel. It stood on its hind legs as it manipulated the controls with its thin foreclaws, like a symphony’s conductor, directing the figures, stats, and images to the rhythm of its floor-thumping tail. One-by-one, the schematics were spread, disassembled, zoomed, rotated, moved, merged, and tilted. I couldn’t keep up with the surge of the composition. Eventually, the flow bogged down enough to mortal speeds for me to take a proper examination of the schematics.
I very nearly choked when I read one of their titles: 22-09-64 N-82A K-BLADE PROTOTYPE, SIGMA-1 S5.
A Sigma black project!
God Almighty. None of us here had the security clearance to know even existence of this project, let alone its title. Yet here it was, that plus its associated design schematics, preening proudly for everyone in the lab. The Isian was tacking through the contents of a Sigma government project right here in Secondary without a damn in the world. The most amazing part? None of the suits in the room bothered to stop it.
A nudge on my leg pulled me out from my bewilderment. A white, reptilian snout looked back at me.
“Hey, Ly-lee!” it called out. It was the male.
“Oh hey,” I whispered.
“Did you bring the food for us today?” he asked excitedly, unaware or uncaring of my effort to remain quiet.
“Yeah, yeah I did.” I turned to see if Mark had noticed us. He stopped talking and looked directly at me.
“Oh goody!”
Mark shook his head and continued his speech.
The Isian clicked his tongue and asked, “What kind of food did you pack for us?”
“Two ham sandwiches and two apples for each of you,” I said. He moaned an “mmmm” and licked his lips at the menu. “I also put in some of the French toast I had this morning too.”
“French? Is that like France? Isn’t that a place or something? How do you make toast out of a place?”
“It’s not made out of France, but by people from there.”
“Oooooooh.”
He whistled and clicked his tongue.
I took a look back at the platform. The Sigma project was still in plain view. I decided to bring it up to the Isian, thinking he would be able to talk sense to his partner before any they could get into trouble.
“Hey, I think your friend is doing something that she isn’t supposed to.”
“Hmmm?”
I pointed to the platform. “Is she supposed to be looking at that,” I pointed down, “here?”
With a quizzical expression, he lifted himself on two legs and tiptoed over the partition to the arena, and he shrieked when he looked down. I thought it was an emote of anger or surprise, but no.
“Oh, they finally did it!” he cried while hopping up and down and clapping his claws.
“What?”
“They finally moved our data here! We don’t have to work in that awful Sigma place anymore!”
He whistled and then ran down to the arena to meet his female compatriot.
The terminals were unlocked about half an hour later, finally allowing us to get to work. The tech heads routed in cycles from a spare mainframe in SE-1, a dingy machine even more cantankerous than the Alie. The terminals ran like a sloth dipped in molasses, but as the Isians had commandeered our mainframe, we had little other choice than to suffer through it.
For their part though, the lizards used the Alie to full effect. They would take turns operating, one controlling the platform while the other lay on the sidelines (the floor, the mainframe, or on the platform itself) to watch and offer incomprehensible tips. Animals would be animals however, and they occasionally devolved back to running and playing after an hour straight on the job, but only enough to burn off some energy, and it was back to work after two or three minutes.
In between their stretches of work, I could make out what exactly the Isians were developing. It looked like an aircraft, but it couldn’t tell exactly what kind. I couldn’t grab much more information in the couple minutes before the lizards went back to work.
The suits observed the lab for a few hours and then left. Mark came up to me.
“Now you’re too fucking important to listen to me, Ivano?”
“What, you were talking? I must have confused it with hot air from your ass, my mistake.” I twisted to ease in the mock-punch he gave my shoulder. “I was just preoccupied.”
“That stupid animal? What’d it want, this time?”
“Some barking crazy lizard bullshit. Don’t worry about it.”
“Ha, fine by me.”
Mark filled me in with the abridged version of his announcement. Apparently, the suits moved the Isians to Secondary Engineering as their semi-permanent base of operations (no doubt due to the lizards’ insistence). That meant while the rest of us in SE were toiling away at our usual leftover grunge work, they’d be working here on their Primary Sigma projects. To accommodate this boneheaded and unorthodox arrangement, all of us in Secondary had been given conditional security clearances that had more strings attached to them than a marionette. Suffice to say that if I even thought of telling anyone outside about the clearance, let alone the Sigma project itself, I would feel no small amount of civil and legal pain. Hell, Tetra probably could have ordered its lobbyists to convince the government to try me for treason.
To accommodate the Isians, Tetra was bending over a table to a degree beyond the measurement of man. The company must have believed the lizards were worth all this bullshit. I can’t say I disagreed.
Lunchtime rolled in, and the Isians didn’t waste any time in seizing their entitlements from me. I had barely taken the lunch sacks out from my bag when they snatched them out of my hands and ran out the doors on all fours, their lunches carried in their mouths. I followed them to the cafeteria.
I rarely ate at the employee cafeteria. The Isians were actually right; the food was pretty terrible, the products of an unholy mating between airline and hospital food, garnished with junk from the corner liquor store. Summit did offer quality dining on the premises, but they were meant for the management types. Given their ability to fuck the company’s ass, surely the Isians would be able to patronize these restaurants, but they chose not to for whatever reason.
The lizards were lying on the cafeteria’s tile floor in the process of ravaging their lunches. Entire tables adjacent to them remained empty despite the cafeteria crowding to near capacity. I took a seat on a table next to them.
The floor around them became a refuge for crumbs, skin, bits of meat, and saliva as their meal progressed, proof that you could have all the mental brilliance in the world, but it will never teach you good table manners. Or floor manners.
“You know,” I said to them, “you guys should really eat on a table.”
“Hmmph?” one of them groaned with a mouthful of food.
“Tables.” I tapped on the tabletop. “You guys should eat here.”
The lizard swallowed his mouthful with an audible gulp and asked why.
“Because, it’s cleaner, it’s better, and that’s what we do.”
“But it’s too weird,” he said.
“Too weird and too awkward,” said his companion.
“But don’t you see?” I said. “When you guys do something like this, everyone thinks you’re just a bunch of stupid animals, when you’re obviously not.”
“Really?” said the male. He perked up. “That’s great! I like animals!”
“Do you like animals?” asked the female.
“Well, I do, but—”
“Yay! Then I like being an animal!”
The male bobbed his head in agreement. They then proceeded to lick the large scraps off the floor. Oh well, at least I tried.
An alien sound pierced through the bustle and noise of the cafeteria. It stood out because you seldom heard its kind in Summit, at least in the engineering wing. Heels. I pivoted in my seat and saw a woman approaching us.
“Ar-lene!” the lizards called when they saw her. They leapt at the poor woman and lapped at her face and neck.
“Good to see you guys too,” she said, trying to fend off their affections with an amused smile. She finally patted them off her body. The Isians sat down with canine obedience in front of her, complete with wagging tails that slapped on the table legs. She took notice of their food on the floor.
“I thought you guys didn’t like to eat here.”
“Ly-lee brought us food,” the male said.
“It was good!” said his partner.
“He even brought toast made from French people or something.”
Arlene frowned. “Ly-lee? Who’s that?” The Isians pointed to me, and she seemed surprised at the sight.
“Arlene, can we go get some more food?” one of them asked. Arlene nodded, and they scampered off.
She stepped over the mess on the floor and came to my table. She sat on the opposite side from me with a sort of rumpled, undecided smile. Her hand waved to me. “Lyle, right?”
“That’s me,” I replied. “Or Ly-lee, if you want.”
Her smiled broadened and became genuine. “I see you’ve already made friends with our Isians.”
“Yeah. I think we’ve come to quite a rapport, actually. You give them food, and they won’t try to eat you. Works out great.”
“You must have learned that from that oh-so-wonderful boss of yours.”
“I learned everything from him. Man, I must have fed him an entire cow before he stopped gnawing on me.”
We shared a laugh.
There were a few moments of silence after we ran out of things to say. We stared past each other like an awkward morning-after. Arlene twirled her hair on her finger while I tried to keep busy by wiping my clean mouth with the collar of my shirt. Eventually, she spoke first.
“About the last time, when we talked in the lab.”
“Oh, don’t worry about that.”
“No, no, really. I’m sorry for losing it. I didn’t mean what I said about you and your colleagues.”
“Hey, it’s no problem. I wasn’t exactly innocent with my comments either.”
“I guess we both just got stressed with things the past few days, eh?”
“Yes, two things,” I said, bringing up two fingers and then pointing them to the Isians.
They stood atop the counter at the lunch line and curved over the plastic median to nose directly into the food, much to the dismay of the bewildered attendant behind them. He stood there clutching on a dirty spatula as if wanting to shoo off the creatures, but he was too visibly frightened to do so. The line of patrons, meanwhile, created a wide detour around them.
One of them liberated a half-empty meatloaf tray and proceeded to gnaw on the remains. The other was more fickle, sniffing through each offering and grimacing when they failed to satisfy its appetite. It finally settled on globs of “peach cobbler” (which I was sure was neither peach nor cobbler) scooped in its claws.
Arlene sighed. “Oh, there they go again. They keep saying how they don’t like the food here, yet they always want more of it.”
“Well, at least one of them has actual taste.”
“Oh? Which one?”
“That one, with the cobbler. He… I mean, she… erm…” I squinted at the lizard to determine the correct pronoun. Arlene looked nonplussed.
“Name?” she asked.
“You know what? All this time, I don’t know. They’ve given me a name and everything already, and it never occurred to me to ask for theirs.”
“Ah!” She tapped the table and pointed to me, then the lizards. “Well, it’s never too late to make an introduction, don’t you think?”
She pointed to the meatloaf-feeder, who had finished the loaf and was polishing the tray of greasy residue with its tongue. “That’s our handsome drake. His name is Basil.”
I tongued the name in my mouth a few times. Basil, really? A strong, mighty creature like that was named Basil? Ha, wow. I had to stifle in a laugh.
“Basil huh? Isn’t that a pretty wimpy name for a predator?”
“It’s actually short for Basilisk, the legendary monster that left a trail of poison wherever it went and could kill with its poisonous stare.”
“Oh.”
Arlene pointed to other Isian, the female, curled up and napping on the counter with bits of peach glaze glistening on her claw-tips. “And that lovely lady over there is his twin sister, Tiamat.”
“I know that’s got to mean something, but I’ll be damned if I know it.”
“Tiamat is from ancient Babylonian mythology. She was the great primeval chaos personified as a huge sea serpent, who created all manner of terrible creatures in order to destroy her children,” she explained as I looked at her in disbelief. “We mostly just call her Tia, for short.”
“Poisonous monsters? Primeval chaos? Who the heck gave them these names?”
She shrugged. “They got them before I even worked at Wyvern. Apparently, there was some sort of theme naming going on back then.”
Both of the terrible, mythic creatures were now snoring, to the relief of the cafeteria patrons.
“I don’t know how much knowing their names will help me, anyway,” I said. “How can you even tell twins apart?”
“They’re fraternal twins, not identical. They’re of different sexes, for one thing. They may look the same, but there are ways of telling them apart.”
“Such as?”
“Well, for starters, you can check the flare of their tails. The flanges on the male are wider while the female’s are sharper. Also, their frills are a little bit different. Female frills tend to have thinner spines. You can also tell by their talons. On average, female claws are three millimeters longer than the male’s. When in doubt, you could always examine the anterior of the body, right underneath the tail. The male genitalia is—”
I called out and waved for her to stop. “Woah, woah, woah! That’s enough of that! I think I have enough information now, thank you.”
Arlene smirked at my discomfort. “Don’t like biology, Lyle?”
“Not that sort.”
“But that’s the best kind!”
That got another laugh from both of us.
“Well then,” she said, “anything else you’d like to know about?”
“Yeah, how about everything else?”
“‘Everything’ is a pretty big topic. Something smaller perhaps?”
“Okay, then how about where they came from? And don’t give me that ‘if I told you, I’d have to kill you’ bullshit, either, unless my death involves something awesome like rockets and big explosions and strippers. Lots of ’em.”
“I’m pretty sure we won’t have to resort to that just quite yet.”
“Damn. I was looking forward to the strippers.”
She chuckled. “Well to be honest, I’m not exactly sure where they came from either. The government gave them to Wyvern, but it was under classified circumstances.”
“So the government just handed them to you out of the blue?”
“More or less.”
Right then, I vowed that, in my lifetime, I would become a redneck.
“So the Isians could be mutant aliens for all you know, right?”
“Oh, don’t be silly. There are only a handful of places they could have come from, and we know them all. But our liaison won’t tell us which exact one ours came from.”
“And what places are these?”
“Well, there’s the G—” She cut herself off and shook her head. “No, I’m sorry. That’s not for me to say.”
“Why not?”
“Government secrets. I know only enough to do my job, Lyle. And unfortunately, that means you can only know even less.”
I shook my head. “I don’t like it. They’re hiding something about the Isians, and I don’t like it.”
“You don’t have to like it. This is just how things are, and we all have to deal with it. Frankly, all that I think about are these twins, right there.” She pointed to the Isians. “The government and its secrets can go to hell for all I care.”
She had a look of resentment on her face.
“Fair enough,” I said. “Then, can you tell me why you sold them to my stupid company?”
“I don’t know, why did your parents sell you to Tetra?”
“What? They did no such thing.”
“Then neither did we.” She rolled her eyes. “Pets are sold, Lyle. So are robots. And so are slaves. But in the civilized world, we don’t sell intelligent, feeling beings, and we haven’t for centuries. That’s barbarism. Tetra didn’t buy the Isians, they hired them just like you and everyone else.”
“You say ‘hired,’ I say ‘bought.’ You say ‘po-tay-toh,’ I say ‘po-tah-toh.’ You assume Tetra makes a distinction.”
Arlene leered at me. “You sure love your company, don’t you?”
“Sure do. And I’d love you too if you’d answered my question.”
“What’s there to answer? I know you’ve seen them in the labs. Do you really need me to tell you all the reasons why?”
“Maybe not.” I slumped into my seat and thought of the ferocity of the work they’ve done in the labs. It still seemed surreal. “I guess I haven’t yet come to terms with it all yet.”
“Believe me, it took me a while too. Even now, I sometimes forget they aren’t children anymore and that they’re able to choose their own future.” She sighed. “Even if I don’t necessarily agree with it.”
“Hey now, there are far worst places to work than Tetra, especially if you’re in Sigma.”
“It’s nothing against the company. I just rather they stay home and not work anywhere at all.” She chuckled and shook her head. “Maybe I just have a hard time letting go.”
“I don’t blame you, considering how they are.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, I mean, well… just look at them.” I pointed to their sleeping forms on the lunch counter. “Would you think these guys are intelligent? They look like dumb animals.”
“Looks aren’t everything, Lyle.”
“Okay then, they don’t look like animals, they act like them. Have you met anyone that runs and plays around naked while they work on their top-secret engineering projects? I sure as hell haven’t. Things that aren’t animals usually don’t sleep on a countertop at an employee cafeteria, either. And look at this,” I waved to the pile of crumbs and remains the Isians left earlier, “they eat like mutts. Hell, even my dog used a bowl. How do you square that away? How can something this smart be so… so dumb?”
I slumped in my seat. My mouth yapped faster than I could think, and I didn’t consider how Arlene might take it until after I finished. And considering my previous encounter with her, I suddenly regretted my choice of words. I began to prepare an apology when she spoke.
“Yeah, you’re right.”
Huh. Surprise?
She said, “I’ve never actually seen Isian society in the wild, not first-hand at least. But many of my colleagues have, and apparently, Isians aren’t that much different there. Individuals are intelligent, very much so, and they have great potential aptitude. But that’s just all it is, potential. They never seem to use it and never apply it. They live like pack animals.”
“So how did you guys get engineers from pack animals?”
“Start them young. We got the twins when they were just babies, way before I even came to Wyvern. It goes a long way. They’re only fifteen-years-old, did you know that? That’s adulthood in Isian years, but I challenge you to finish the education they went through in the same amount of time.”
“I didn’t need to go to school to learn that you eat at a table and sleep in a bed.”
“Training only gets you so far, Lyle. Really, at the end of the day, their work here in Summit is more or less a game to them. That urge to live how they do, well… it’s instinct.”
“It doesn’t make any sense,” I said. “The two of them finished work in one hour that would take me an entire day to do. It’s crazy. You’d think they’d be able to create the most advanced civilization in the world. What the hell went wrong with them?”
Arlene sighed in a way that suggested she knew that answer but was hesitant to say it. “They have the smarts to do it, but I don’t think they really care to. Sometimes, I think, the simplest life is the one that makes you the happiest.”
I opened my mouth to refute the statement, but it turned out I couldn’t think of anything to say. The lunch hour ticked out with a chime from the PA system and saved me from another incident of awkwardness.
“Shoot,” I said. “I’m going to be late for my shift. Again.”
I looked around, and the cafeteria, besides a few stragglers, was empty. Isians too. I got up and pulled my unopened lunch from the table. Maybe I’ll save it for the twins for tomorrow, I thought.
“Better get going then,” Arlene said.
“See you sometime later?”
“Will the Isians still be here?”
“Probably.”
She smiled and said, “Then I’ll be around.”