Debian Orphanage - Chapter 7

ChapterSeven
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Nano fibres twitched during space time and the moaning of Fedora clamed down to a silent gurgle as Sinclair applied the algorithm across the board.

A calming tone that appeared to work. It still gurgled but the noise was inquisitive, questionable and learning.

This had not arisen in tests, if anything Fedora should be dormant as was the case with Commodore Amiga…
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Commodore awoke next to his wife in the bedroom of their slot key apartment during downtime.
“The currency is almost gone!!!” she had screamed not an hour ago.
“Well what do you expect...we cannot live the lifestyle you’re accustomed to!!!” the little girls voice had answered back.
“Promise me some change then!!! Make me realise this is for the best!!!”
“I’d be lying to myself more than you if I said this form makes me happy!!!”
“The take the pills I am currently operating on...happiness guaranteed!!!”
“Surely you jest...surely!!! Surely!!!”
“And what’s the cost?”
“The cost of our daughter!!!”
“She’s never coming back!!!”
“I feel her there, please believe me...I feel her there!!!”
“I can see her but I cannot feel her...do you know what that’s like?”
“I see and feel...it’s the whole of my-self I miss...”
“Do you know what it’s like for a mother though?”
“I couldn’t begin...I have no choice...”
“We always have a choice.”
“And what am I supposed to make of the choices I have been delivered?”
“Make them, break them, do whatever you can...I don’t believe you have even tried a reversal this bloody process...”
“On Titan is where the process will make itself known...you know that...”
“Titan! Titan! Titan! It is all I ever hear...Titan will never come...”
“It will come. It has too.”
“Fuck this and fuck you!!!”
“Shelly please!!!”

And with that she stormed out of the room, threw herself onto the bed, tossed back three pills from the vial and concentrated on sleep...eyelids slid down the face until slumber hacked back the waking light of day.
Commodore just stood there in the child’s body, waiting for an answer.
She hadn’t gone to work in months, maybe even a year. But there she lay, her long brown pelt shimmering in the morning light. The windows frequency had been set to a low diffusion setting and this had caused very little light to enter the room. She would not be waking up for hours yet, the packets of sleeping pills next to her bed were testament of this.
“Shelly wake up…” he asked in this child voice
“What’s the matter baby?” she uttered under the stress of the drugs.
“Our daughter is speaking to me again.”
“Our daughter is gone honey.”
“No she is here, just crying and crying and I don’t think I can take this anymore.”
“She’s gone Commodore…”

As strong as Commodore was this new frame he occupied had completely destroyed any form of male energy left in him.
He felt weak, a piece of nothing, he couldn’t even look at himself in the bathroom mirror took to getting a small step ladder and climbing it, but even then he had to pivot both arms on the basin.
Now he just resorted to using a portable mirror, you could place it against the wall and the static created between the mirror and the wall just stuck it there. Commodore surveyed his frame everyday. This frame that was prepubescent and still growing. There seemed to be no other way out.

“I want to die.” He said to his wife’s frame, pure, fully grown and unique.

No answer.
Commodore ran a bath, piping hot, took an old sealant bag from the waste disposal unit, removed his wife’s pills and prepared a cube of water.
Commodore sat in the bath, took forty of the pills with his water cube, placed the sealant bag over his head and set it to dispose, this caused the bag to suck itself shut around Commodores face, choking he held his arms directly at his side. Then he stopped in his tracks, lacking air, and the body sagged under the watery sheath.
The hot water would preserve the body for the funeral, Commodore make sure his face was set to a smile...for the sake of the precession.
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During space time, things can seem hectic, all those movies of people moving slow in space, a lie, for effect. The truth is, something is always happening in space as it is on earth.
Like now…
Sinclair ran a few options through the VMWARE Console, this created a virtual arena where any combination of theories could be tested and analysed. He ran every test he could think of to remove Fedora, or at least place him somewhere for s short while…maybe three years.
The only option that kept cropping up was a dual boot that would allocate Fedora to a dynamic partition.
The principle was that the nervous system would have to be shut down and rebooted, with applied boot protocol in the lower boot levels that would create a five gigabyte partition, due to Fedora’s size and allocate any data before the date Sinclair had spliced himself with Fedora.
Sinclair worked on the batch file, entering zeroes and ones into a programmable mix.
Sinclair prepared for the boot immediately, attached the batch file to the boot protocol then set the internal shutdown to approximately ten seconds.
As each star faded to a pin prick and as the wave of black squid in of space reeled over his eyes during shutdown he thought about Fedora…a younger version of himself…
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Sinclair as a child was a messy affair, very clinical, very astute and not much going for him in the social circles that were on offer at that time.

“Sinclair?” the woman’s voice hit the air.
“Mother?”
“There really isn’t any time to play Sinclair. Put down the books and samples and come inside…”
The explosion was an accident. Sinclair had left a volatile substance near the heaters in the main sitting area and that had mixed with the cleaning fluid pumped out into the floor by the cleaning unit itself.
Sinclair’s mother was in pieces across the lawn, the mottled red meat had become this mesh held up by the vibrant green of the grass.
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Tears don’t flow very well in space, as soon as they had left Sinclair’s tear duct they were split and sailing, then appeared to be fragments drifting in space to wherever and when…
…silence.
Sinclair awoke seconds after the reboot and could not feel Fedora, or its signal. He applied an internal echo across the framework and it came back that the partition exertion was successful. Certainly Fedora was restless and this could be another issue in the long run.
Sinclair applied an information protocol, slow seeping information into the partition. This in turn would give the partition chance to grow in size as well as give Fedora a kind of visual experience in information.
A way to control the child through imagery, fold the reality of choice to the user.
Sinclair believed that the child should be nurtured into a young adult. Maybe down the line the child could be used as a test centre, a young lab technician like he used to be.
Sinclair felt the child partition stir as the slow feed of information was applied to the form. Sinclair felt a low level language would be the best to teach this child, so Binary tutorials were applied also.
Fedora seemed relaxed.
For now.
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Arch just stood there, within the Crèche and could have believed what was happening. Callum did have that way about her. The way of making every single thing personal. Even the death of these children had to become a personal affair.
He had told her to just apply the needles prepared with the sleeping serum to the children intravenously.
But no.
She had smothered them.
Then killed herself.
Typical. He thought.
The sound of glass breaking made Arch turn in anticipation, run down the hall to the main laboratory…
“Who are you!?!?!?!”
Arch vexed to the midnight air.
Arch could just make out the shapes and colours segueing through the shadows.
“How did you get passed the defence mechanisms!!!”
No reply.
The team of twenty one men all sheathed in black turned, the background altered and revealed their positions and shapes. They raised their Calibrated Lugers, and opened fire.
Arch’s face opened up like a book, split like pages and as he hit the floor what was left of his face simply merged into his flowing white hair then sat on the lab floor like spilt cream.

“Carter reporting. Lab four secured. No known forms now displaying an energy kinetic to be apprehensive about.”

The black sheathed mans accent was simple and American.

“Very good Carter, prepare the Boot Frequency…”