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restricted that it required
not only fingerprint I.D., but also an eye scan, voice recognition,
and a DNA sample.
Regina stuck her right index finger on the
button by the entrance to the tube, and a clear door slid upward to
let her into a smaller tube inside the larger one.
Regina walked inside her transport, held in
place by a support platform below it. Once inside, she grabbed a
handle above her, realizing now how people got hurt in them, with a
metal bar just above to bash your head against if things went
wrong.
A sign above the controls told Regina that
there was a four person maximum. She saw this as a disaster waiting
to happen. Granted, with only vertical movement, people shouldn’t
slam into one another. Who was she to judge the engineering
experience that went into this thing? Not many things made her
nervous, yet she could not deny using the tube gave her pause.
She looked at the console inside the tube,
like a normal elevator, with floor descriptions instead of numbers.
She considered the shuttle bay, but that would not get her closer
to the control room. She pressed the button reading:
Observation.
The door slammed down.
Jesus! Regina
exhaled heavily.
The tube support platform below released just
as the magnets kicked in. The smaller tube dropped slightly, and
then hovered inside the larger one.
And then, without warning, the smaller tube
flew upwards at an incredible rate, faster than any magnetic
elevator she had ever been on.
The area surrounding the tube blurred as she
whipped upward. Even if she did have a clear view, the jump up four
levels took a fraction of a second and viewing anything would have
been impossible at that speed.
The tube shot past its mark by five feet, and
then quickly came down to the exit for the Observation Level so
quick that Regina’s stomach rose with an uneasy feeling.
Thank Christ! Regina waited for the tube door to open, her gun in hand down
by her side.
She came out of the tube onto a narrow,
gravel pathway, which connected to an intersection with three
choices. Two paths ran along a beautiful forest of lush pine trees
over fifty feet high, and the third ran directly into the forest. A
simulated sky of gray, misty clouds moved slowly over her. The
illusion was incredible as the clouds seemed to be miles in the
sky, but she knew that was not possible. The area seemed immense.
The wall opposite the forest had moving images projected onto it,
or from behind, adding to the overall effect. Even more incredible
to her was a simulated wind, soft and warm, blowing in the same
direction the clouds were going. As the tops of the pines gently
swayed in the wind, the images on the wall matched them with the
direction of the sway. Her trench coat flapped slightly in the
breeze. Regina could hear a stream in the near distance.
Regina walked straight, taking the path into
the forest. Through the trees and then forward, ever forward, was
the plan, ultimately getting to the control room eight floors down
at the front of the ship.
She walked slowly through the trees, taking
her time, keeping a watchful eye and an open ear for any strange
sight or sound. She did not stick to any path, winding around the
trees, moving towards the front of the ship. Darkness spread in the
trees, the gray clouds above not allowing much of the simulated
sunlight through. Regina kept close to the outer edge of the forest
in case she needed to get off the level quickly.
As she walked, her thoughts wandered to her
father. When younger, she thought him a cruel man. Just days after
Regina’s sixth birthday, her mother, a planet realtor, had been
killed showing the amenities of a small, lush planet, with no
industrial or chemical plants or large cities. She was in a
village, showing a quaint cottage to a man who had many names, none
of them real. He raped her and then slit her throat on the front
porch, and nobody saw a thing.
Regina’s father lost his job as a SPARS
officer trying to hunt the man down,
Damien Broderick, Paul di Filippo