Free Bones of my Father by J.A. Pitts Page B

a punch in the gut. No Dad. Nothing I even recognized. Indicators showed the Cray working within parameters, but something in the way the old workhorse flashed and sang told me I had more to worry about than an info-bomb from one of the Microsoft vigilante groups.
    Dad’s memories had been scrambled. And whatever had done it hadn’t stopped with his memories. It had scrambled the quantum matrixes that held his personality.
    Alarm klaxons sounded through the redoubt, sending my heart-rate soaring. I pounded the footrest down and leapt from the recliner. Sprinting toward the shop, I found the area cut off in a bio-sealant the compound’s defenses had triggered, isolating the entire area. So much for reusing the titanium from Dad’s chassis. I pulled on a data tiara and called up the overhead display. Twelve percent of the compound was compromised. The eastern entry, metal shop, vehicle and weapons storage, as well as a third of the living quarters and the Olympic swimming pool and sauna. The Dyson, food supplies, computing hub, living quarters and entertainment zone remained intact. Even though I had enough room to house five hundred people, the loss of even twelve percent of it really pissed me off.
    “Gramps, you awake?”
    “What in tarnation is going on?” the surly old man asked over the intercom system. “I was having a conversation with that old widow woman on IO again.”
    “We have a problem,” I said, running back toward the main corridor. “I’m sealing off the eastern access tunnel, going to full alert throughout the rest of the joint. I need you to figure out what the hell Dad brought in with him.”
    “Right on it,” Gramps said.
    Once in the main corridor, I called up the schematics of the remaining areas. Whatever was invading my home had only come in the one spot. Had to be something Dad had picked up.
    Then I thought about the pelvis. Stupid triangle of metal and death.
    I spun around and ran back to my private quarters.
    The pelvis sat on the work table, shiny from the decon. Good thing for that. Whatever had hitched a ride into my world had not survived the Rapture. Were the bio-contaminant and the scrambling of Dad a coincidence?
    I flipped to a secondary protocol and set the Cray to begin the download again, hoping that something could be retrieved. Then I set the AI on a DNA scan of the thing that ate my workshop. The video feeds in those areas had blacked out, but several other sensors were available to scan the quarantined areas.
    Something would turn up. We’d mastered many forms of genetic manipulation before we used it to wipe out most of the sentient life on the planet. I just hoped whatever was in my workshop wasn’t sentient.
    “How’s the download going?” Grandpa asked as I jogged the long way around the central hub.
    “Crash and burn,” I said with gritted teeth. “They fragged his long-term memory.”
    “And the short-term?”
    I skidded to a stop. “Short-term?”
    “You know, in his head?” he said. “You did get his head, didn’t you?”
    “Didn’t find it,” I said, starting my feet moving again. “But without the long-term and the personality core, what’s the use?”
    There was a long silence. For a moment I thought the communications grid must have failed.
    “You realize he had knowledge of our whereabouts in his short-term memory, right?”
    “Crap.” I swung around the door frame into my personal quarters. “Double-crud.” Short-term memory...head? What kind of moron was I? “Hey Gramps,” I called as I ransacked my quarters. “That VTOL on Mount Trinity serviceable?”
    “Hang on, let me skip over and see. Haven’t been up there in a decade or more.”
    I grabbed one of the emergency kits I’d built, and rebuilt over the centuries. Each held emergency rations, water and filtration unit, med-kit and an array of communication bots—oh, and trade goods: chocolate and stockings. Grandpa assures me that’s what all the hot chickees are