A monitor on the wall behind the Chief Optimizer showed the interior of the Central City jail. A new felon, a female with a multicolored hairdo, was being placed in a cell that already contained two other convicts. It appeared as if the newcomer were complaining about the crowded conditions, but the policeman just pushed her into the cell and laughed. When the policeman returned to his desk, the
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video revealed two photographs on the wall behind him, one of Richard and the other of Nicole, under both of which the word REWARD was written in large block letters.
The octospiders waited patiently as the humans’ eyes moved from screen to screen. “How in the world?” Richard kept asking, shaking his head. Then the screens went suddenly blank.
“We have put together a total of forty-eight segments to show you today,” the Chief Optimizer said, “all taken from observations made the last eight days in New Eden. The optimizer you call Archie will have a catalog of the segments, which have been classified according to location, time, and event description. You may spend as much time here as you like, looking at the segments, talking among yourselves, and asking questions of the two octospiders who accompanied you here. I, unfortunately, have other tasks to perform. If, at the end of your viewing, you wish to communicate with me again, I will make myself available.”
The Chief Optimizer then departed, followed by her two assistants. Nicole sat down in one of the chairs. She looked pale and weak. Ellie walked over beside her.
“Are you ail right, Mother?” Ellie asked.
“I think so,” Nicole replied. “Right after the videos began to play, I felt a sharp pain in my chest—probably from the surprise and excitement—but it has subsided now.”
“Do you want to go home and rest?” Richard asked.
“Are you kidding?” said Nicole with her characteristic smile. “I wouldn’t miss seeing this show even if there was a chance that I would drop dead in the middle.”
They watched the silent movies for almost three hours. It was clear from the videos both that there was no longer any individual freedom in New Eden and that most of the colonists were struggling to sustain even a meager existence. Nakamura had consolidated his hold on the colony and crushed all the opposition. But the colony he ruled was peopled mostly by gloomy and unhappy citizens.
At first all the humans watched the same segment
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together, but after three or four had been played, Richard suggested that it was terribly inefficient for them to watch the segments one at a time. “Spoken like a true optimizer,” said Max, who nevertheless agreed with Richard.
There was one segment in which Katie briefly appeared. It was a late-night scene from Vegas. The street prostitutes were plying their trade outside one of the clubs. Katie approached one of the women, had a brief conversation about some unknown subject, and then disappeared from view. Richard and Nicole couldn’t help but notice that Katie looked terribly thin, even gaunt. They asked Archie to rerun the segment several times.
Another sequence was entirely devoted to the hospital in Central City. No words were needed for the viewers to understand that there were shortages of critical medicines, not enough staff members, and problems with equipment falling into disrepair. One particularly poignant scene snowed a young woman of Mediterranean extraction, possibly Greek, dying after a painful breech childbirth. Her delivery room was lit with candles while the monitoring equipment that might have identified her difficulties and saved her life lay inexplicably unpowered beside the bed.
Robert Turner was everywhere in the hospital segment. The first time Ellie saw him walking through the halls, she burst into tears. She sobbed throughout the segment and then immediately requested a replay. Only when she was watching for a third time did she make any comment. “He looks haggard,” she said, “and overworked. He has never learned to take care of himself.”
When they were all emotionally exhausted and nobody requested the replay of another segment, Archie asked the humans if they wished to visit again with the Chief Optimizer. “Not now,” Nicole said, reflecting everyone’s opinion. “We haven’t had time to digest what we’ve seen.”
Nai asked if perhaps they could take some of the segments back to their homes in the Emerald City. “I would like to see them again,” she said, “at a more leisurelv^pace. And it would be great if we could show them to Patrick and Eponine.” Archie replied that he was sorry, but the segments
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could only be viewed in one of the octospider communication centers.
On the ride back to their zone, Richard showed Archie how well his real-time translator was working. Richard had just finished his final tests the day prior to the meeting with the Chief Optimizer. The translator could translate either the octospiders’ natural dialect or the language specifically tailored to the visual spectrum of the humans. Archie acknowledged that he was impressed.
“By the way,” Richard added in a louder voice, so mat all his compatriots could hear him, “I guess there’s not much chance that you’d tell us how you managed to obtain all those video segments from New Eden, is there?”
Archie did not hesitate to answer. “Flying image quad-roids,” he said. “More advanced genus. Much smaller.”
Nicole translated for Max and Nai. “Fuck me,” Max muttered under his breath. He rose and walked to the opposite end of the transport, shaking his head vigorously.
“I have never seen Max so solemn or so tense,” Richard said to Nicole.
“Nor have I,” she answered. They were taking an exercise walk an hour after having finished dinner wim their family and friends. A lone firefly kept pace above Richard and Nicole as they repeated multiple times the walk from the end of their cul-de-sac to the plaza at the other end of the street.
“Do you think Max will change his mind about leaving?” Richard asked as they circled the fountain again.
“I don’t know,” Nicole replied. “I think he’s still in shock, in a way. He detests the fact that the octospiders are able to watch everything we do. That’s why he insists that he and his family will return to New Eden, even if everyone else stays here.”
“Have you had a chance to talk with Eponine alone?”
“The day before yesterday she brought Marius over just after naptime. While I was putting some medication on his diaper rash, she asked me if I had mentioned to Archie that they wanted to leave. She seemed frightened.”
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They marched briskly into the plaza. Without stopping, Richard pulled out a small cloth and wiped the sweat from his brow. “Everything has changed,” he said, as much to himself as to Nicole.
“I’m certain it’s all part of the octospider plan,” Nicole replied. “They didn’t show us those videos only to demonstrate that all is not well in New Eden. They knew how we would react after we had had time to assess the real significance of what we had seen.”
The pair walked silently back in the direction of their temporary home. On the next swing around the fountain, Richard said, “So do they observe everything we do, including even this conversation?”
“Of course,” Nicole replied. “That was the primary message the octospiders transmitted to us by allowing us to see the videos. We can have no secrets. Escape is out of the question. We are completely in their power. I may be the only one, but 1 still do not believe that they intend to harm us. And they might even allow us to return to New Eden. . . . Eventually.”
“It will never happen,” Richard said. ‘Then they would have wasted a lot of resources for no measurable return, a decidedly nonoptimal situation. No, I’m certain the octospiders are still trying to figure out our proper placement in their overall system.”
Richard and Nicole walked at top speed on their final lap. They finished at the fountain and both of them drank some water. “How do you feel?” Richard asked.
“Fine,” Nicole answered. “No pains, no shortness of breath. When Dr. Blue examined me yesterday, she found no new pathology. My heart is just old and weak. I should expect intermittent problems.”
“I wonder what niche we’ll occupy in the octospider world,” Richard said a few moments later when they were washing their faces.
Nicole glanced at her husband. “Aren’t you the^one,” she said, “who laughed at me some months ago for making inferences about their motives? How can you be so certain
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now that you understand what the octospiders are trying to accomplish?”
“I’m not.” Richard grinned. “But it’s natural to assume that a superior species would at least be logical.”
Richard woke Nicole up in the middle of the night, “I’m sorry to bother you, darling, but I have a problem.”