Chapter 1: Milo

Chapter 1: Milo

Milo didn't think the replacement belt on the #3 air handler for E Section was going to hold for long, but the nearest dead machine to take a replacement from was 16 stories up and over in H Section. He'd take a trip if he had to, but for now he was going to splice a section into the broken belt, wrap the fix in duct tape, and hope for the best.

For the thousandth time he wondered why they called it duck tape. He'd never seen a duck, but he doubted birds needed tape of any kind. It was useful for fixing things though, and there was a warehouse full of it over on B-6. Early on he had moved several thousand rolls up into one of his storage areas. As he used it more and more, he discouraged other looters by welding the warehouse doors shut.

Repair done, he gathered up his precious tools, and retreated into around a corner before turning the air handler back on. Not all machinery liked being put back to work, and sometimes showed their displeasure by shaking themselves apart or exploding. Milo was taking no chances with this one. He picked up a metal rod in his tail, and used the six-foot-long mechanical limb to poke at buttons and switches until the machine shuddered to life. There was a noticeable whine from the belt, but over-all both he and the machine seemed happy with the result. He could go adjust the work load on the other two air handlers in this section and be done with the job. They'd been working harder with this one down which was a sure way to have them go down as well.

No one thought about air when things worked. But when it wasn't circulating in the corridors and residences people got worried. First it smelled stale, and people worried. Calls went in to the maintenance department. Ignored of course because hardly anyone cared about fixing things in the habitats. But once people started dying in their sleep, and the residents moved out to the streets or clogged the common areas in other parts of the hab, suddenly it was an 'emergency' and someone from maintenance showed up.

The clumsy techs would move into Milo's world, tearing up duct work to find the problem and breaking two things for everything they fixed. He hated them. He had to hide his work carefully, shut down any projects, and hide up in his safe room until they left. It was better for everyone if Milo fixed things. The residents got air to breath, the techs could avoid work, and Milo was left alone in his world of broken machinery, unused corridors, and metal tunnels. Which suited Milo just fine.

Work done on the air handler, Milo got on his wheel-board and rolled down the medium sized tunnel. These were about 36" square. Easy for Milo to zoom along as his hands pushed off the walls and he rolled along on the silent, friction-less wheels attached to two-foot square piece of plastic. He'd found the wheels holding up a diagnostic unit for hover-cars in a factory down in the basement of G section. Milo was there to 'borrow' some wrenches and calipers when he saw them. It had only taken an hour to lift the machine with a winch, take off the wheels and drop things back down. They were nice wheels and the diagnostic machine would just have to stay where it was.The initial posting of this chapter occurred via Ñøv€l-B!n.

And Milo was the mechanic that kept things running. Milo stood less than four feet tall. His left leg was missing from above his knee and had been that way since birth. He'd augmented it with a series of better and better prosthetics as he found schematics on the data net and had time to make the parts. The current model was fitted to his upper thigh and controlled from a cable that shared access to his lower port with his tail.

He also had two ports on the back of his neck, and another a foot lower. Not his work, they'd been installed in the first month of his existence. He had trouble with the idea that other people didn't have them and wondered how they managed.

Other than a mechanical leg and tail and cables that ran from his various equipment to his data ports, Milo looked like a thin 12-year-old boy with brown hair and eyes. And maybe he always would. He'd quit growing at the age of 12 and was now somewhere around 24.

An alarm went off. Milo spun from the workbench and pushed his wheeled chair to his desk. His fingers went to his keyboard and his tail plugged into a data socket. Instantly he was tied into cameras and sensors all over E section and a few other parts of the habitat. He looked at what had triggered the alarm.

A large empty area of the adjacent D section had company. Someone had broken the locks he'd put on the doors and torn out the welded doors. They were rapidly setting up equipment and moving in what looked like medical pods into the area. Milo shut down everything else he was doing and put all of his attention to observation and gathering data.

This was the room Milo had been born in. And one of the faces he saw looked familiar.