Embers After Flames, Chapter 8.2

8.2

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Walter and Carla.

A real blast from the past, those two. Sure, I’ve thought about them every now and then over the years, but that’s mostly in the context of other matters, not... the two people themselves.

I knew them. I knew them in more than just the way that a person who plays a game comes to know that game’s characters.

I’d had the opportunity to see them. Watch them. They were both people I kept an eye on, when I could.

The first time I saw Carla, it had been through the lens of a camera that Director Nagai had been using to try and pass data through Coral. A simple test that had been the first of a great deal many experiments, that’s for sure.

It had been him, her, and the third member of the trio, Dornez. All three had looked like they were running on too many stimulants to be entirely healthy, and really, that definitely set the tone for how things were going to continue.

I hadn’t had a microphone, back then. That camera, too, had been an odd one, all wires and plugs rather than neat radio waves and receivers. It had taken me some time to understand how the signals that it had been pumping through the C-Pulse worked, and then more to decipher them into something I could understand.

Director Nagai. The head of the Rubicon Research Institute.

Assistant One, Dornez. Nagai’s right hand man, father of the Augmentation procedures, uncaring butcher that he was.

Assistant Two, Carla. Nagai’s left hand woman, pioneer of Machine-Coral data interfaces, the woman who made it possible for the C-Weapons to be developed.

A frightfully intelligent woman, Carla. She was also just unstable enough to be concerning, with a flair for drama and a wealth of eccentricity.

Hah... One would think that they were very similar, and that wasn’t untrue, but it missed the most important parts.

Unlike Dornez, Carla at least had something resembling morals and ethics to her. Where Dornez had been consumed by his life’s work, Carla had cast hers aside.

The first time I saw Walter, he had been two years old. It had been a few years after the Rubicon Research Institute started integrating Coral into every damned thing. They had started to manufacture Coral-enhanced industrial MTs, which I hadn’t really minded at the time since it gave me more eyes with which to watch the world.

One day, one of those industrial MTs had been constructing a new building, ripping up the ground in order to prepare to lay the foundations. A proximity alert had gone off, and the machine had paused to examine the cause. It had turned to see Carla, accompanying Dornez, and the child being carried by Dornez. Being that it was equipped with an Expert System, it had simply identified them as two high-level personnel, and an entity without clearance. As they were far enough away from its work area to not cause issues, its followed the logic flow and went right back to work.

Walter, over the course of the next few years, became a reasonably common sight in the laboratory. He’d been small. Quiet.

A lot sharper than he looked, too.

...

It feels weird, knowing that was forty six years ago. Somehow, it doesn’t feel that long.

I was able to get a picture of them through my Antigens before they split up. Walter is no longer that small child I remember. He’s fifty four, now. Tall, like his father was, with a short beard, hair that had whitened early, and far, far too much stress for his face. He was the spitting image of Dornez, really. It would be easy to mistake the two of them if not how completely differently they wore their faces.

Dornez had been a madman, and sometimes it seemed like the spark of his madness would leak out and set the world ablaze. Walter was focused, with a severe countenance.

It was, perhaps, the purest of irony. Dornez had been unstable, but safe enough regardless of that. Nagai had been the one to set the world on fire, and now Walter was here to do the same.

And then there’s Carla. Carla was pushing close to ninety by now, but the woman did not look like it. Even back when she’d been Nagai’s assistant, people consistently underestimated her age, but knowing that she was nearly a century old and still seemingly hadn’t aged a day?

Honestly, it beggared belief. Sure, the average length of a Human lifespan had expanded significantly, but she didn’t even have the signs of rejuvenation treatment. She smoked, for fucks sake. How did this woman do it?

They hadn’t come alone, either. Carla had brought in an entire crew. Some of them looked familiar, and some of them I recognized. The latter were the other RRI staff that had joined Carla when she’d taken Walter from the planet. The former were likely descendents of the latter.

Unfortunately, I’d only had a single Antigen on hand when I’d actually located the two of them, so that little split-up meant that I had to pick one or the other. I chose Carla, since Walter was likely to be a bit more obvious in his dealings on account of his profession.

Carla and her crew... Well, best to keep an eye on them. There weren’t enough Dosers left for Reuse and Development to become a thing in the same way it had in canon, and so it made me wonder what Carla was planning to do here. She could set up on her own, but she didn’t have that much manpower here. As for the Dosers... the ones that weren’t dead had suffered through an even worse fate in their minds: prolonged sobriety.

Some of them had even turned to lesser drugs in order to chase the high.

Well, whatever she chose to do, their arrival was a big deal, and that meant that I called Flatwell to make sure he was informed about it. I wasn’t really surprised to see that Dolmayan was also present, since he was often floating between various RLF bases, but that was good.

“Is that Dornez?!” Dolmayan’s voice conveyed both shock and a little bit of fury. It almost surprised me, but, well... One wouldn’t really forget Dornez after living through the horrors of the First Generation Augmentations. “And Carla?”

That did surprise me, though. I hadn’t been aware that Dolmayan knew Carla enough to recognize her after forty six years without seeing her. “Correct on the second, wrong on the first.” I explained. “Dornez is dead. He was on Rubicon when the Fire was lit, and he was consumed in the blaze.”

“Then, who..?” He wondered. “He certainly looks too much like him to be unrelated.”

“Well, if I had to guess, I’d say that’s Walter.” I hummed. “Dornez’s son.”

Dolmayan blinked. Flatwell blinked. Both spoke at the same time. ““That butcher had a child?””

“Surprisingly, yes.” I shifted the screen, pulling up an old memory. Nagai, standing straight in front of a holotable, manipulating a display. On his left, Dornez leaned on the table, casting his body in a faint glow. Carla stood his right, a smoke at her hip. Little Walter was seated, Carla’s hand running through his hair. “I’m sure this comes as no surprise to you, but he wasn’t exactly a good father, either.”

Dolmayan scoffed. “The man lacked any form of empathy. I have to wonder who thought he would be suitable.”

“As far as I am aware, it wasn’t an expected pregnancy.” I sighed. “As for the mother... Well, let’s just say that Dornez’s work resulted in the loss of her life, and leave it at that.” I paused for a moment, before focusing on Dolmayan. “By the way, how do you know Carla? I can’t say I ever saw you meeting her.”

“I only met her once.” He sighed, leaning back in his seat as he took a breath to calm himself. “After the surgery, after I lived through the surgery, she came to meet me.” This must have been fairly early into the ongoing efforts to convert the city to utilize Coral, then. That would explain why I hadn’t seen it. “I... do not recall what we talked about. The pain of the Augmentations... It is mostly a haze in my mind, now. Carla herself... She was a striking figure.”

Flatwell glanced back at the screen. Carla’s bundled red hair, confident posture, youthful visage, and sharp, curious gaze looked back. “Certainly not wrong there.” He agreed. “She doesn’t look very different.”

I brought both pictures up, then ran the comparisons. There weren’t many differences to be found, save for, maybe, a slightly more wild head of hair that came from the winds pulling it out of place. Considering she used to wear it messy anyway, it really didn’t change that much.

“She has to have a truly excellent skincare routine.” Seria murmured. “If that’s her forty six years ago... How old is she?”

“Well, I don’t actually know her entire life story, but she was born on Rubicon.” The colony had been old enough for two or three generations to have been born before the discovery of Coral. “She had top marks in her classes, specializing in data processing and machine design. RRI snapped her up the moment she graduated, and she ended up climbing the ranks over the course of two decades until she came to Nagai’s attention. She joined him as a direct assistant shortly after the discovery of Coral. So... she’s somewhere between eighty six and eighty eight at the moment.”

“... And she still looks so young?”

“A mystery for another time.” Flatwell shook his head, though I could see that was curious. After all, he was younger but looked older. “The better question is what they want, coming back to Rubicon after all this time.”

“Oh, that’s easy.” I hummed. “They want to set the Coral on fire again.”

There was a moment’s pause. “What?” “What!” “What?!”

Haha, all three of them! “It was this whole thing between Carla and Nagai.” I explained. “When Nagai was preparing to deploy Ibis, he recognized that it was both entirely possible, and even likely, that some supply of Coral would survive the Fires. He regarded the Fires as primarily a delaying measure, though he did hope it would end his perceived ‘threat’ forever. He passed down that legacy to Carla, and since she came here after the news that Coral survived went out... Well, it’s fairly obvious, isn’t it?”

Flatwell frowned. The look in Dolmayan’s eyes went much darker. It was the concern I could feel radiating from my daughter that prompted me to speak up again, though.

“Oh, relax.” I spoke. “That entire decision was made under a lack of knowledge. At no point in time were they ever aware of the truth, nor did they come to the conclusion of its possibility.” Which... admittedly was a different kind of problem, but Nagai had believed he’d been under a time crunch and he wasn’t technically wrong about that. “They’re going to waste an enormous amount of time establishing themselves, then more time searching for the Coral, and then even more time trying to reach it. They’re as unprepared for the realities of Rubicon as everyone else who came here was. They’re not an immediate problem that needs to be dealt with, and to be entirely honest, I’m rather hoping they won’t become a problem at all.”

Dolmayan’s head tilted to the side. “You intend to talk with them?”

“Why not?” He knew me so well. “Again, while the tragedy of the Fires of Ibis was sourced from the fear of Coral’s potential, that fear was born from ignorance. It wasn’t good, but it’s still just ignorance. I intend to judge their character. If they are willing to set aside their goal in response to new information, then that will be quite excellent. If they’re not…” Well. They would hardly be the first people on Rubicon who I’ve killed.

I would feel bad about it, though. Walter and Carla aren’t the PCA, nor Dosers, nor self-interested mercs. They’re here for ideological reasons, with a large helping of guilt on top of that. I didn’t want to kill them, but I also would prefer to not be set on fire again. Another genocide… yeah. No. I had no intention of allowing it to happen.

“Besides… What else am I going to spend the next few years on?”