The Dangers of Saving a Life

Chapter 3: Chocka

Hock note: While Milo and the newborn languish in a small, dark compression chamber, let's check in with Dr. Chocka. 

Silly boy, thinking he could run from Axion.

Dr. Chocka wore Higgs-filled armor, steel compression gloves, and gravity boots as he stomped down the hallway of the emergency ward. The suit was so heavy he required motor assistance simply to move. Opaque sheets covered the walls, with similar large squares making a pattern on the ceiling. The floor's white tiles held tiny dark speckles. Chocka wanted to stomp all those speckles out of the floor. He would find the sales worker before he spread the disease any further. The silly boy didn't understand what he had done. He broke the law. How would he escape Axion's justice? He wouldn't.

Far into the early morning hours, security nurses rampaged from room to room, searching with yellow eyes glowing from their white skulls, magnetic axionic sensors embedded in their quantum brains, obeying Axion's orders. Chocka clomped behind them surrounded by sirens and commotion.

Axion knew everything. Its particles reached everywhere. Its photonic field formed patterns through an interpreter program molded into the faceplate of his helmet. They were like long squiggly multicolored shapes and dimensional patterns viewed from a three-dimensional apparatus. He couldn't read all of them, but he could read them better than most.

Except there was one he didn't understand—an upside-down, twisted pyramid with concave sides.

"Dark energy baby-"

There it was again. He could read, "Dark energy baby-," but he didn't recognize the strange symbol that followed. It meant something important. He would need to figure it out.

Two security nurses burst into a surgical center. Chocka clomped into the room after them. There, a patient lay on a table at the center of the cleansed white facility, bright lights shining down, and an assortment of probes and instruments hanging down from the ceiling. Androids gathered around the patient with the surgical director.

The surgeon turned around at the intrusion, an elderly man with rounded shoulders. "Get out of my operating room."

The nurses didn't listen, of course. The silly surgeon should know he couldn't command a nurse when Chocka was present. Chocka held axionic jurisdiction. The nurses continued their search.

The surgeon marched up to Chocka, got right into his helmet, and barked, "Get those mechanical goons out of my operating room."

As the surgeon yelled, axionic patterns sprayed through Chocka's vision. There were the characteristic twists and turns of a particular pyramid symbol Chocka had seen many times before. The spiral twist on the pyramid told Chocka that the surgeon was clean. He had nothing to do with the infant.

"Chocka holds axionic jurisdiction over this hospital," Chocka said calmly to the surgeon. He spoke through a speaker system outside the suit. It sounded funny even to Chocka, like the high and low frequencies of his voice had been chopped off. 

Although Chocka spoke calmly, he was furious. Anyone questioning Axion or its representatives made him angry. Nobody had the right to question Axion. 

"Axion will hold Chocka accountable for what happens here. The nurses are searching for a newborn baby, and this baby is a danger to you, your patient, and everyone else in this hospital. This baby is a danger to the entire world. Step out of Chocka's way."

The elderly surgeon's demeanor softened. He obediently moved to the side of the room and allowed Chocka to proceed. Once the search of the emergency department had been completed, Chocka marched back down the hallway and rode a helical escalator up to the next floor. There were thirty levels of the hospital to search, and he would be very methodical. Of course, Axion would assist him. He was doing Axion's work.

Chocka marched down the corridor on the sixth floor, the respiratory care department. He supervised the search of the nurses on that floor. He even joined in the search, rummaging through rooms and wards, overturning tables and beds. He didn't care that he obstructed patient care. Finding the infant was his priority, Axion's priority.

"This is supposed to be a hospital." Sally Berader wasn't wearing a bulky Higgs suit. She could move faster than Chocka. She quickly overtook him, jumping in his path so he couldn't enter the next room, standing in the doorway, tall and firm. "I won't have nurses searching our patients like this."

Axionic symbols flowed through Chocka's vision. Sally supervised the human hospital sales team. This group, mostly part-time students from the college, was there to promote fetus incubation and certain cosmetic procedures. The boy who stole the infant was such a person.

"Chocka has sworn to uphold the law of Axion," he said. "The rule of law still applies to hospitals." He waved a steel-gloved hand in her old face as he spoke through the funny speaker system. "Step out of Chocka's way."

Instead, she stood her ground. "So repeal the law. I want the nurses to help patients, not search them."

"My dear silly lady, dark energy will destroy you, this hospital, this world, and once it's done it will rip apart the universe. Do you think one baby doesn't matter? That baby matters. That baby matters a great deal. That baby is a threat to you, to me, to Axion, and to the entire universe. Step out of Chocka's way."

He waved his thick compression glove again, trying to move her out of his way.

"It's a baby."

"Step out of Chocka's way."

Chocka could see the stubborn obstinacy spreading across that determined old face.

"I will not," she said.

Axionic patterns filled Chocka's field of vision. They spun and twisted, mixing with Sally's tall and weathered features. Chocka focused on one pattern in particular: the upside-down twisted pyramid with concave sides. It was the pattern he hadn't understood earlier. Now he gained an idea of what it might mean. 

Sally had something to do with the dark-energy baby.