The Transport

Chapter 1 - HERBERT

Herbert Frommer was nervous. He knew this was a natural reaction many people had to endure, at least once in a while. Like before a big exam. When asking a girl out. Or on the morning of an important day that literally meant life or death, not only for him but for the Community. Herbert considered himself cool under pressure; it was one of the reasons he had been assigned to his current job. Diligently, he had managed his duties for a long time. Year after year. Both of his jobs. His day job as facility manager at Legion Analytics and his night job. But he had done it, and today, as it all came together, suddenly his body had the shakes, and he was nervous. Racing heart, butterfly stomach, sweaty palms, dry mouth, the whole ten yards.

Like asking a girl out.

Not that any girl would prefer to go out with him. Thin brown hair, round face and a beer belly made him definitely a swipe-left in the Tinderverse. Tinder didn't have much of a critical mass here in Veracity, in the middle of New Mexico's nowhere, of course. Nor did it help being a mid-forties guy who drove a fifteen-year old Toyota Camry.

"Dr. Carling, you got a minute?" Herbert knocked on the office door of his boss. Geoff Carling was the founder and CEO of Legion Analytics, a highly-esteemed startup leading in bio-chem analysis and synthesis. A tech jewel in the New Mexico desert. Herbert was as far away from Carling's pay grade as you can get in a company full of chemists, bioengineers, doctoral degree holders, and other brainiacs. But they were a small company with an open-door policy, and it was common to approach senior management without appointments.

Carling emitted an energy befitting a dynamic, gray-haired marathon enthusiast. He had just arrived at work, a venti Starbucks coffee still in hand, and was about to start with the onslaught of e-mails and meeting preps. "Herb, what can I do for you?"

"I found something...strange in the basement." Herbert wrung his hands and did not even need to act nervous.

Carling gave him a smile. "Define strange."

"A mystery."

"We scientists love mysteries! What's up?"

"I think you'll need to see to understand. It's...unexpected, and I need your guidance," Herbert explained.

"Now you have my interest. Lead the way." Carling glanced at his watch. "I have my first meeting at eight; let's make it quick." He ushered his facility manager out of the office.

Senior Management resided on the upper fifth floor of a converted old factory brick building and the two had to ride the elevator down to the basement. Floors three and four hosted most of the bio-labs, doing their on-demand genetic and bio-marker research and molecule production that presented the majority of Legion's business. The lower floor hosted non-lab scientists and administration.

"I've never been down here, like, ever," Carling said when they stepped out of the elevator and found themselves in a corridor with concrete walls, painted in a light green. "So clean! And I don't say this because it's your area of responsibility."

Herbert was slightly out of breath, as he could not walk as fast as his boss. "We keep it spotless to meet any spontaneous inspection. No messy corners in this company." He took out a key from his pocket.

"Now, a door with a key-lock," Carling mused. "Must be unique by now, in an otherwise fully digital company. No bio-metric scanners down here."

"Yeah, it's kind of a legacy anachronism."

Carling gave Herbert a curious look. Maybe the choice of words had given him away? Usually, their small talk circled around baseball or hockey.

Herbert unlocked the door that featured a prominent yellow plastic 'Danger: High Voltage' sign. He swung the door inward and switched on the light.

The room was about six hundred square feet and mostly offered sturdy metal shelves placed in neat rows that held various analytics and monitoring equipment, similar to what could be found upstairs in the regular labs. Thick cables and tubes collected under the ceiling and ran into the depth of the room, vanishing into a hole in the wall.

"What?" Carling was a bit confused. "A lab?"

"I told you, a mystery," Herbert said.

"Is this our lab equipment storage?" Carling shook his head as if to clear it. Most of the equipment was switched on and appeared to be in various stages of processing. "Is this a backup site to something?"

"I was wondering if you could tell me, Sir?" Herbert asked and wished Carling would be more curious and wander around.

"No, I am as confounded as you." Carling peered at some of the monitors whose curves and data columns made no real sense to him. "What is this equipment measuring? Sucrose levels? Of what? We have no diabetes investigations..." His voice trailed. Then he noticed another door behind the third row of shelves. "What's behind here?"

"Something you definitely should see, too," Herbert said and led the way.

The second basement room was even bigger than the first one. Instead of lab equipment this one was filled with shelves full of large glass tube containers with metal tops and bottoms. Each of the pods was about three feet long and a foot thick, standing upright, polished and clean, row after row after row, all filled with the same white milky fluid. The cables and tubes spread out into this room and connected to the glass tube tops. It was warm and the air held a slight pungent smell, like in a greenhouse with rotten plants.

"I... I..." Carling just stared. "How many containers? Hundreds? They all look the same." He stepped closer and peered at the milky foggy fluid inside, tapped against the solid glass with a finger. The fluid appeared to move gently within.

"No idea, didn't count yet," Herbert lied. "But there's more. Check this out." In the middle of the room stood a large old-style metal bathtub. In it the same foggy liquid. The pungent smell grew more intensive.

"Let's call security, we need to find out what's going on here. Definitely nothing under my watch. Maybe Darryl knows." Darryl Grant was Legion's R&D head. "This looks expensive, too. If this turns out to be a secret side project of someone, there will be hell to pay! What's this tub for?"

"It's for the same purpose as these here," Herbert stood beside a table on the left where a long row of loaded small syringes were laid out on white sterile cotton cloth.

Carling's eyes roamed the room, coming back to the glass containers. For a second, he thought that he detected movement inside the glass tube, inside the fluid.

"How do you know?" Carling asked, while he still explored. In one corner of the room lay a large stack of folded towels and packs of diapers for seniors. Diapers?

"You are my first Convert in a long time," Herbert said, and with a smooth motion stuck a syringe into Carling's upper arm and pressed the plunger.

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There, you had it. Never go down into a basement with a nervous guy! Could be a madman, for all you know.