Trident Trials: The Glimmer

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty

As soon as the video log was uploaded, I immediately started running down the hallway towards the simulation training. I was dead serious about getting there early and trying to pester people for information. The people who were to gather all this information knew something. They were going to tell me, eventually. The hard part was going to be figuring out how to trick them into telling me. I was going to let much of anything get in my way there, either. I ran past Rex and Maya who were training and didn't even stop to do more than wave at them as I ran past. They knew what was up and what I was after. I tried this strategy every time that I took part in simulation training, to no avail yet, but I was determined to keep trying. Eventually, I would wear someone down, probably.

I bumped into Torsten during my sprint down the hallway and about knocked the both of us over. I honestly hadn't seen him there, but to be even more honest, even though we had grown slightly closer over the last couple of months, we still didn't spend an extensive amount of time talking. He wasn't someone that I looked out for on purpose, unlike Rose, Maya, Rex, and Jax. Not that I didn't like Torsten, he could annoy me. I just had spent as little time bonding with him as I did the other four from the beginning of the program. I should do more to make sure he's included, I thought, realizing that I was thinking this right after I just blew through him running through the halls. Shit.

"Shit, sorry Torsten. I didn't see you there, honestly. I was just trying to get to my simulation training as fast as possible. Are you hurt?" I said. I was still trying to still move quickly without drawing attention to me, not caring much that I had knocked him over, rushing to something I cared more about. "No, I'm fine James. Honestly, that was partially my fault. I was in my own little world." I noticed he looked a little more stressed out than normal. "Is something wrong Torsten?" I asked. I found my curiosity peaking slightly. "Nothing for certain yet, just a little confusion over at the communication center. We keep getting all these weird transmissions and can't trace where they are coming from. We can't hear what they are saying because of the poor quality of them so we aren't even sure what they are trying to communicate." He said. I could see the wheels in his head were clearly still churning.

This was a strange bit of information because Trident only ever got transmissions from Eden and the different countries on it. They were all the same territory as Eden though because the land was never fully divided and Trident was the company, organization, meta-government type thing that "Ruled" over all the people on Eden. We provided all service, food, communication, research, and protection for the whole of the planet. This being the case, it meant that all communication came from other Trident buildings and substations around the planet. Nobody had heard of a transmission coming from a non-Trident source since before anyone currently had been alive.

"Where do you think it came from?" I asked. "I suggested that maybe the transmission came from Osiris, but I was immediately laughed off and brushed to the side. There were a couple of people that thought it was a viable reason, but even with all of us, they still dismissed it. I know we don't know about any life on the planet, but no one has been there in almost fifteen years, and they only explored a small portion of the planet." Torsten said. "Wait, I thought no one had been there in about a hundred years? What do you mean? Someone has been on the surface in the last two decades? Who?" I asked. I was finding my urgency to get to the simulation training fading with each little piece of information he was giving me. I'm sure that he wasn't allowed to talk about it, but I would continue to soak it up as long as he didn't recognize it.

Could it be that there was life in Osiris? I mentioned to Mr. Evergreen that I thought it was possible and that when I became a soldier; I wanted to take a research team there and see if we could find any signs of life there. Getting an expedition out there certainly wouldn't be easy, but I want to try. I would take Torsten with me and probably Rex and Maya as well. Mr. Evergreen had the same reaction that Torsten's fellow trainees had with him. He denied much, possibly that it could be the case. He had told me it would be a boring trip. With the exclusion of the scientist, apparently there was a lot of scientific data to be collected there.