Touch: Awakening

Part Eight

"What does the human body need to survive?" he asks.

I frown, confused by the question. "Air, warmth, stimulating interaction, food, and water."

"Sort of." He grins. It makes his eyes glint with mischief, and I'm momentarily distracted, imagining what sort of trouble he could get into. "The human body doesn't need to interact with other bodies to survive. The human brain does, just not the part that controls our basic needs.

"The cells provides one thing: warmth. Technically shelter, but we'll call it warmth for now. There were air filtration systems pre-Troubles, so we can assume our oxygen needs are being met by pre-existing technology. We receive food and water through bots programmed and set on tracks to service the cells. The AI provides us with interaction, too, but let's set that aside for the moment. We know not everyone made it into the Realms. Unless there's a massive farm hiding in these structures, where does the food and water come from?"

He has a point. Dammit. "How do you know humans were the ones providing it? The AI runs everything. They could be programmed to run a farm, too."

"They could," he admits. "Sometimes it's easier to think that instead of thinking what life must be like for people on the outside. If they're constantly looking over their shoulders, hoping today isn't the day their life ends. If the incidents of cancer and other deadly diseases increased as the environment around them degraded."

I shudder and dig my fingers into the desk, trying to picture what he's talking about and succeeding in bringing forth stale images of chaos from the Troubles. And Parker wants to see if that world exists. No, thanks.

"I'm worried about her," I say softly, absently, forgetting who I'm talking to for the moment. "Scared. She's going to draw too much attention to herself if she's not careful, and she doesn't even care."

It's frightening not just because she's my friend and I love her, but because her ostracism would be the first in my cohort. If what she says about touch is true, there could be more like her, and not just within my circle.

"They've been cracking down recently." Drew's quiet words bring me back, and I realize I've said too much.

"Cracking down?" I ask, wary.

He nods, his eyes dark. "People who say the wrong thing at the wrong time, who keep saying the wrong thing, heedless of what will happen if they continue to do so. People the Government thinks are going to cause trouble if they're not stopped."

The blood drains from my head. "Like who?"

"A professor at another university was one of the recent ones. I heard something about an author tried to publish something without approval first. A couple of programmers were quarantined for complaining too loudly and too often about the changes mandated for some of the Realms."

I can't believe my head's been buried so deep in the sand I didn't hear any of these mutterings. "How is it that no one's talking about this?" Whenever a woman comes back after the extraction and doesn't seem normal, people talk about nothing else for days. What Drew's talking about is prime gossip fodder.

He shrugs. "It's the Government. If it makes it to the boards, it's buried deep enough it takes them a while to find it, but it makes it hard for the average person to find it, too. The rest of it...they've got ways of suppressing this sort of thing so it doesn't get out. We're not exactly in the best environment for revolution." His smile is sharp and cold. "Confined spaces equal danger when mixed with volatility."

There's a block of ice in my stomach. I don't know when it got there. It must have snuck in a few moments ago. Drew is the one to watch out for. Not Parker. Drew, with the words leaving his mouth, will absolutely end up in quarantine. Yet he's shown almost no caution when speaking with me.