Panacea genesis, p.1
Panacea Genesis, page 1
PANACEA GENESIS
BOOK 1 OF THE PANACEA TRILOGY
L. Ana Ellis
FIRE-FORGED BOOKS
Alexandria, VA
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Copyright © 2022 by L. Ana Ellis
First edition May 2022
ISBN 979-8-9851474-0-7 (paperback)
ISBN 979-8-9851474-1-4 (hardcover)
ISBN 979-8-9851474-2-1 (large print)
ISBN 979-8-9851474-3-8 (ebook)
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without permission in writing of the author, except where permitted by law or for the use of brief quotes in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Cover design by Jeff Brown Graphics
Editing by Ariel Anderson of Mythcreants
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Published by Fire-Forged Books (an independent publisher of speculative fiction)
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Dedication
To Nicky and Midnight, for all the “assistance” you’ve given me over the years;
And to my beta readers, Brian, Kate, Karen, Grace, and Melissa, who provided me with the support and encouragement that kept me going.
Am I the master of technology,
or is technology the master of me?
—Area 52 Saying
Character list
Amaya—works with legacy computer systems, Nyala’s sister
Amoco—neuroscientist and programmer, Director of Research for Panacea Corp
Bren—the navigator
Cooper—still bitter three years after being dismissed from his position at a university
Dan—sheriff’s deputy in Area 52
Elliat—reporter, blogger
Georgia—designs digital items, especially historical reconstructions and clothing
Grace—in charge of IT support for the entire Five-City Area, thinks she was abducted by aliens
Hank—martial arts instructor who grew up in a res-home
June—missing wife of Panacea Corp’s former CEO, Oscar Stafford
Li—dentist, likes parachuting
Liam—newly promoted CEO of Panacea Corp
LP—highly advanced digital being who is modeled on Liam
Mariela—Vice President of Connectivity for Panacea Corp, adopted into the company’s founding family, June is both her adoptive mother and aunt
Nyala—Amaya’s sister, certifies res-homes, organizes protests against Panacea Corp
Opali—young girl, advanced digital being, Sofi’s daughter
Oscar—Mariela’s father, former head of Panacea Corp
Petra—founder of Area 52, over 100 years old (according to her birth certificate, that is)
Sofi—Mariela’s sister, Opali’s mom, lives in the Panacea metaverse
T-Rock—survivalist, former Zazora player
Part I
Panacea Unrivaled
Chapter 1
22 days until the expedition
Wednesday, March 6, 2115
An alert from Mariela’s chip told her what she already knew—she was late to the meeting. She huddled into her AllWeather coat, pulled the collar up, and pushed her hands deep into the pockets. Everything looked gray, even the color-enhanced trees. It was like no one had told them it was springtime.
She was freezing, but it was worth braving the cold if it kept her soon-to-be boss from finding out about the meeting. She glanced at the advertising mixed with news scrolling on the walls of the high rises surrounding the park. Nothing yet about a change in leadership at Panacea Corp.
Her contact was waiting by a bench in his hover chair. His name was Amoco Cadiz, or at least that was his preferred name. Born Victor Chandler, it wasn’t clear why he had named himself after a downed oil tanker, but he was an odd sort, so it seemed to fit.
She was meeting with him because her father said he was the best coder in the company. Amoco’s specialty in his job at Panacea Corp was neuroscience, but according to her father he was also fluent in several older programming languages—he could write the code that she needed and would do so discreetly.
Hopefully Dad was right. If she wanted to keep her job, this wasn’t a project she could afford to have go wrong.
She slid onto the bench in front of his hover chair. The high desert winds stung her cheeks and twisted her hair. Shivering, she kicked the temperature setting on her coat up a notch. The soft fabric of the coat warmed her and the clenching grip of her muscles relaxed.
Amoco inclined his head toward her. “Greetings, my esteemed colleague. I so rarely have the pleasure of your company outside of the office. What is this matter that necessitated meeting outside in such frigid temperatures?” he asked. “Though please do not be concerned that I am in any way inconvenienced. I find the heater on my hover chair to be quite effective.”
Well, that explained why he didn’t use his prosthetics today. His leather-trimmed vest—with a deep burgundy paisley print—was perfectly complemented by a stovepipe hat, a shirt with a frilly neck that spilled over the vest, and a pocket watch. Even his hover chair, with vintage metal-and-wood trim, had character. He was impeccably tailored, but Mariela would have preferred if today he had chosen something lower profile.
“I need your help.” Her exhaled breath swirled into white wisps.
Amoco tugged his vest down and sat up straight. “Then let us not delay in commencing our conversation.”
“Just a moment.” She reached for the small device in her pocket. “Let me turn on my sound blocker.”
Amoco’s eyes widened. “Speak no more!” He glanced over his shoulder. “If the topic requires such a level of privacy, then you should wear this.” He pulled a headband-like item, with a large plastic flower and bulky clasp, out of a pocket on his chair. “My apologies this does not match your usual style,” he said, “however, I must insist. As you are a woman who sets trends, I have no doubt this will spawn the trend of the hour.”
She could imagine the headlines now: “Panacea Corp VP of Connectivity Debuts the Ugliest Fashion Accessory Ever, Still Spawns a Trend.” Mariela took the flower contraption from him and let it dangle, pinched between two fingers. “What do I do with it?”
“You fasten it around your head. Position the flower in the front so the buckle is situated over your chip.”
“And will you wear one as well?” He didn’t seem like the sort for the flower-child look.
“I will wear this.” He pulled out an item—where was he getting these things?—that looked like a collapsible metal helmet. “Your sound dampener is of little use if someone has hacked either of our chips. These will block our chips from recording or other unwelcome surveillance.” He replaced the stovepipe hat with the metal helmet.
She didn’t want to use the headband, but Amoco had a point. It was better to be safe than sorry. She slid the headband on and fastened the buckle behind her head. A woman a couple of benches away stared at her and then blinked—a sure sign her picture had been taken. It was an interesting experiment in whether her status as a fashion icon was powerful enough to turn even the ghastly headband into a new trend.
“Press the button on the buckle to activate the chip-disabling feature,” Amoco said. “Once you have verified that your chip is deactivated, please feel free to continue.”
She felt for the button and pushed it, then checked to see if she could access information. Nothing. Her connection to the rest of the Earth was missing. No matter where her mind reached out to, nothing was there. It was disconcerting, but at least it seemed safe to go ahead with the meeting. “You’ve heard of Area 52?”
“Oh yes! I admit I have long pondered the true nature of Area 52.”
“None of the well-known rumors are true.”
“Oh, I have long suspected such a thing!” He shivered and let out a giddy giggle. “Please, continue!”
She brushed aside a strand of hair and tucked her hands under her arms. “Right about the time that embedded chips became possible, about 80 years ago in the mid-2030s, a group of people decided they wanted to escape to an earlier time period when tech was less sophisticated. They chose to use only tech from 2005 or earlier, as in their words, 2005 was ‘the apex of technological innovation.’ For them, social media and smartphones made technology too intrusive.”
Amoco chewed on a knuckle and leaned forward in his chair. “So fascinating. Why don’t we know of them?”
“The irony is that to isolate themselves, they used technology far more advanced than what we have. The technology keeps us out and keeps them in, and both groups are mostly unaware of the existence of the other.”
“I must say, Mariela”—he leaned back and shook his head—“you were quite remiss in not sharing this with me earlier.”
“Sorry about that. The decision was made early on to have at most three people who knew the real story about Area 52. I stumbled on it many years ago during some research I did using my access to Panacea Corp’s restricted corporate account.”
“Indeed?” He raised a skeptical eyebrow. “I have a hard time understanding how you were able to find this information, considering that in all my years of doing research as the Director of Chip Research for Panacea Corp I have never ‘stumbled’ across it.”
She wasn’t ready to tell him that she had found it while trying to figure out where her adoptive mom had disappeared to sixteen years ago. “I was motivated to find it. Let’s just leave it at that for now.” Plus, as a vice president, she had higher levels of access than Amoco. He should know that. “I’m interested in Area 52 because that’s the location of the server farm called Colossal Server Cluster AA, or as I prefer to call it, Server AA. It’s the Panacea legacy backup server farm, and we need to do maintenance on it.”
“Ah, the elusive Server AA.” He nodded and stroked his beard into a point. “It makes sense it should be located in the equally elusive Area 52.”
A young man, probably about twenty-three years old, blinked while staring at Mariela. When she turned her chip back on, what would the fashion critics be saying about her? Would people have copied her hideous headband? She had never been disconnected like this, and she didn’t like it.
They were in the nicest park in the Middle Ring of the city—it actually had grass, unlike most of the parks in the Middle Ring. It wasn’t as nice or as close to the office as the parks in the Inner Ring, but it was less likely she would run into someone she knew. But her plan to fly under the radar had failed once her picture was taken.
She rubbed her scalp under the headband. As soon as her meeting with Amoco was finished, this thing was coming off.
“The servers haven’t ever been maintained in the eighty years since the server farm was created. I need you to write diagnostic code that will run a maintenance program.”
“Of course. I am most honored to help.”
“Thanks, I really appreciate it. Could we meet with my server wrangler in the future? I have someone in mind—if she signs on, then we will be in good shape and I’ll start the other preparations.”
“For our next get-together, may I suggest my place instead? You will see that I have a location that will perfectly suit our needs. It is both warm and secure.” Amoco looked at his pocket watch with the gears showing. “As long as you are willing to make the trip to the Outside, that is.”
It took about half an hour to get past the Outer Ring of the city to the Outside, but then she could visit her father at his estate and Amoco’s place was only fifteen minutes away. Even better, no one would take another picture of her wearing the headband device. “Sure,” she said, “I’m always up for a trip to the Outside.”
He adjusted his hover chair to face her more directly and tugged on his pointy beard. “If I may ask you a question of some importance before we part…” Amoco paused and stared off into the distance, his head slightly tilted, while he appeared to wrestle with some strong emotions she didn’t bother trying to understand.
“What is it?” she asked. It was too cold to be patient.
Amoco took a deep breath. “May I inquire as to your father’s recovery following the chip burn?”
“He’s healing fine. Thankfully Cooper was there and managed to remove his chip.” She shivered. Was it the cold or the memory? “But it was terrifying when it happened.”
“Terrifying indeed!” Amoco clenched a hand to his chest.
She shouldn’t have been short with Amoco. He obviously cared for her father, and she didn’t have cause to be rude to him. She mentally added “be nicer to Amoco” to her to-do list. She never looked at her list, so it wouldn’t make much of a difference, but adding it felt like progress.
“If only my research efforts on chip replacement were further along.” Amoco sniffed. “It pains me that as a consequence of what I accept is my shortcoming in identifying a way to implant new chips in persons older than six months, I am unable to remedy the harm that has come to your father. Please send him my best wishes and my regrets that I cannot do more for him.”
She perched on the edge of her seat waiting for him to finish talking. “I’m sure he will be happy to receive your well wishes,” she said. “That is, if I don’t die from the cold first.” Did that count as not being nice to Amoco? It was kind of sarcastic. She made another mental note to try harder.
“Speaking of your family,” Amoco said, “I felt much joy upon receiving the invitation from your sister for her virtual daughter’s birthday party.”
“Opali’s birthday?” Mariela rolled her eyes. Her sister, Sofi, a pod-lifer living solely in the Panacea metaverse, refused to let her digital ghost daughter age. Opali had been celebrating her fifth birthday every year for the last ten years. The young girl had a pleasant enough personality and had become increasing humanlike in the time since Mariela’s sister had purchased her, but it was annoying that her sister treated the ghost like a human child and expected her to do so as well. In fact, it irked her whenever anyone wanted her to treat some digital ghost they had created to be their lover, friend, exercise partner, or whatever else, as a real human. “Opali’s cute, and to be fair, it’s getting harder to tell ghost from human, but I just don’t see the point in holding a birthday party for a kid who wasn’t born and who doesn’t age.”
A leaf skittered by, pushed along haphazardly by the wind. She stood up, her body stiff from the cold. “Sorry to run, but I need to get back to the office soon.” It wasn’t true, but she wanted to end the meeting and turn her chip back on. She took the headband off and tossed it to Amoco.
“Mariela, look.” Amoco pointed to the news scrolling across the digital exterior of the Business Today building. “The news feed is about Panacea Corp.”
There it was—the news she had been dreading ever since her father’s chip had failed: “Liam Price Named CEO of Panacea Corp.”
She had a new boss. The metaverse business her great-great-grandparents had founded almost a century ago, the business she had hoped to run someday, was now under the control of a self-serving asshole.
“On second thought,” she said, “let me keep that.” She stretched out a hand for the flowered headband. “I may have a use for it.”
~~~~~
The gray dismalness of the damp late-winter day sank deep into her gut as Mariela headed back to her office. Like the trees in the park, even the digitally modified exteriors of the buildings seemed to have lost their colors. She considered staying aboveground instead of using the underground tunnels. It would be good for her to breathe fresh air. She spent far too much time inside the office. And the tunnels would be darker and damper than being outside.
In the end, warming her numb hands and feet won out. The main tunnels, with their glass-block ceilings, at least allowed daylight in. Mariela stepped onto the moving walkway and checked her notifications. There were tons of new pictures of her wearing the flowered headband, a couple of posts about it as the new fashion “must-have,” more than a handful of captures showing people wearing the new headbands, and one post criticizing the flowered headband as “the throwback to the twentieth century that nobody wanted.” She flipped past all those until she found the post about Liam and told the interface to show her the entire article.
Business Today
“All the business news you need to know”
Wednesday, March 6, 2115
Liam Price Named CEO of Panacea Corporation
Today Panacea Corp announced that Liam Price, formerly Vice President of Operations, is now its new CEO. The company has not returned repeated requests for comment on the departure of their previous CEO, Oscar Stafford, who stepped down unexpectedly a week ago. There is speculation that Stafford may have suffered catastrophic chip failure.
Business Today got that right. The Panacea Corp board of directors hadn’t even waited to find out if there was any brain damage before they decided to boot her father. Not to mention sending the corporation’s lawyer to Dad’s bedside to remind him of his non-disclosure agreement. It didn’t look good for a senior leader of a metaverse company to have chip failure. Even if his chip was old gen compared to the ones the company made now. Mariela took a deep breath. There was no point in getting angry with the board of directors. This was just how things were done. She knew it and her father knew it.
