Tunnel Rat

Chapter 366: More Hidden Secrets

Milo was quiet as Belinda opened the storage case and loaded the data disc with the research on Batch Four. She paused for a moment before telling Rusty to start skimming through it. "Are you ok with this? I know you usually plow through all the data instead of sampling the highlights."

Milo blinked, coming up from his thoughts, "It's fine. I'll be going through it several more times, I'm sure. Right now, we need to prepare for our meeting with your stepfather, which means we need the narrative, not the research. And then move past it."

"And find out what he did to me, and whatever the hell John thought he was doing. Ready?"

"Yes. Go ahead and start Rusty."

Both of them sat in the command room, staring at the multiple screens as Rusty sorted through thousands of pages of data detailing the experiments conducted to create Batch Four. Max was in the room with them, and the other Roomba outside. The two humans were showing signs of stress, and their guardians were on high alert.

Milo spent more time reviewing bits of the data, especially interested in the genetics used to create the embryos that became his family. Most of what he knew before came from snippets overheard by the children as their guards and doctors talked. Some of them were under the assumption the children were taken from orphanages or habitats, or bought on the open market where adoption laws were a thing of the past. Those assumptions were incorrect. All of Batch Four were hand-crafted with thousands of embryos discarded before they settled on the group of twenty-five that should develop the mental enhancements and quirks they wanted in them, along with the physical mutations that would slow their maturation.

Behind it all was Vigo's dream of a smarter, better human. Sadly, he didn't see Batch Four as what he wanted. These children were simply a step along the way and useful tools to be used. There were audio files where Vigo talked about his dream, but Milo skipped over those. He skimmed the transcripts and moved further into the process that led to his birth.

Belinda, on the other hand, listened to her Father talk. She'd never known him and barely knew her mother. Here was a chance to hear his voice and listen to him. She found him both interesting and horrifying at the same time. He was passionate about his dream, talking about a better world with better people, and pushing the limits of science and technology without being dependent on AI. If you only listened to this part of her father, he was inspiring, and she was sure that was what her mother and other people had seen. His reputation at the time of his death was untainted by any of this.

But if one side of Vigo Johansson was the tireless genius working for a better world, the other side was an uncaring fanatic who didn't care about the lives he broke in the current world. He had no concerns about his experiments, any more than his father had. All the lives created and discarded by his labs were no more to him than rats or mice. They were useful to him until he'd learned what he needed, and then they were discarded. The end result was all that mattered.

But the end result would take money, and a lot of it. Keeping his labs and activities secret was expensive, and he wanted to keep his ties to major corporations as loose as he could. What the major tech companies got ahold of became theirs, and they dreamed of money, not smarter humans. The solution was to start his own corporation and seek out people with money who also wished to stay unnoticed. That led him to Victor Siemovich.

Victor could care less about Vigo's dreams, but he recognized the potential uses of Batch Four. At just two years old the children could hack into small corporations and bank accounts, moving small amounts of money around as they practiced their skills. It was Victor who took the programming tools used by hackers in the former Soviet block and gave them to Vigo. The combination of these tools, their enhanced links to their machines, and their ability to think and adapt quickly to security measures made Batch Four into highly useful tools that Victor could use to farm millions of dollars a day. Vigo was supplied with the money he needed to proceed, and Batch Four became Victor's property.

Belinda had always believed that her parents met by chance at a Tech Conference where Vigo's charisma and dreams intrigued her mother. They'd begun talking, then meeting up when they could, and finally marrying. The newspapers were filled with articles about the new 'Power Couple' where the Simovich wealth would fund the growing Johansson tech corporation. She saw that was a sham. Whether Victor suggested it, or Vigo went looking for a way to gain even more money, was unclear. But her father hadn't randomly met her mother.

And that led her to other suspicions.

She voiced them to Milo, "I think that either Victor, Vigo, or both were involved in the deaths of my Uncle and Grandfather. Things fall into place too easily. She was suddenly the only one left, heir to a huge fortune. Victor is at the funeral and they get close, then she meets Vigo, who is already working with Victor. And now Vigor had unlimited funds."

"And Wally is copying my changes for the Sections that he leases for Genesis. It's actually starting a migration of people from the outer sections to the floors assigned as residential in ours. I'm having to watch things more carefully. There's more load on the water, waste, food, and electrical systems now. I may need to find a way to open up more of the closed areas and repair them."

"So people can freely move?"

"Nope, you have to request a move from the Section you're in, and then get permission from the new section. Most places never approve anything, since they get paid by the person. In fact, I don't think some of them even pay attention to move requests anymore. They sure don't seem to notice when I go into their files and approve them all."

Belinda ate the sandwich Mama had packed for her, aware that most of the hab would be eating food cubes forever. "We should buy the rest of the hab. All the sections we can. Rhebus owns theirs, and Genesis owns their block, but all the rest. Take it over."

Milo blinked, his mind thinking about all the work, all the building. "I can barely keep one Section running."

"I'll help!!!" Rusty's enthusiastic voice rang out. "Put me in, coach!"

Milo considered if he could copy what he did in Section E, and set up enough surveillance, maybe Rusty could help. "I need to think about that, a lot."

Belinda stood up and moved back to her chair in front of the screens. "Make a note to remind him, Rusty, after I have my trust funds."

Part of Milo's brain was still thinking about the new idea as the next section of data loaded. Or tried to. Rusty's frustrated voice announced, "I can't load it. It's locked and I can't break the security on it. It's asking a question, 'Which duckling won't come home?' I don't know the answer and can't break in. Who set up the security lock on this disc? It's fiendish!"

Belinda looked panicked, worrying Milo. "What's wrong?"

"The grey duckling won't come home. I stepped on it. My mother had gotten me these little ducklings and a mama duck. I was two or three. I remember breaking the grey one and crying because he couldn't get home to the nest. Only my mother would know that."

Rusty called out. "Grey is the answer."

A video appeared. Milo recognized her from pictures and the resemblance to Belinda. "Hello, Belinda, my darling daughter. We should talk."