With this segment of Chapter Eight of Repairing the Legacy, we continue the serialization of Repairing the Legacy. This is a rough draft work in progress and may not reflect the final form. Time period: set after the ending of The Martiniere Legacy main trilogy. I’m breaking longer chapters into sections for readability. This is the second part of Chapter Eight. There will be three parts to this chapter.

New to the series? Chapter order:

Return of the Prodigal Son (2 parts)

Conversations and a Dinner (2 parts)

Dancing into Change (2 parts)

Sisterly Compromises (3 parts)

Conspiracies at the Rodeo (3 parts)

Passing the Baton (4 parts)

Research Complications (3 parts)

CHASING AFTER SHADOWS

April, 2064

GABE

July, 2064

Weather conditions distracted them from spending too much time tracking down what was going on with that damn worm. Temperatures skyrocketed in late May and early June, melting snowpack faster than usual and speeding up the first cutting of hay. Irrigation became crucial as the temperatures overwhelmed even the RubyBot-treated grain fields.

Gabe spent most of his time wrestling with bot programming, trying to integrate Ruby’s design ideas for more durable bots into their prototypes. The field work he’d been longing to get back into ever since he seriously started vying to become the Martiniere—and now that it was here, he could barely keep up. Taking time to track down that transient worm in the Guardian bots just wasn’t a priority, especially since the Swaits seemed to make them work—as long as no Martiniere touched the programming.

Frustrating, especially since the Guardians were supposed to be a Barkley-Martiniere-Swait cooperative venture.

Labor was also short that summer. Gabe ran a swather until he got light-headed one day, and Ruby spotted him leaning against the rig, shaking his head, trying to stay upright. Even with an air-conditioned cab it was hot.

Mike puked on the hottest day yet, while raking the hay using one of the older tractors.

Ruby kicked Gabe and Mike out of the hayfields after those incidents. “The two of you have heart problems. You don’t need to be in this heat.”

But it was Ruby who ended up collapsing from heat exhaustion.

Not once, but twice, during the first and second cuttings.

The second time Gabe took her to the ER, over her feeble protests.

“You’re more vulnerable after the first collapse,” Dr. Sheri scolded Ruby. “You have the money to hire help. Do it, damn it.”

The fact that Ruby didn’t immediately snarl back at Dr. Sheri worried Gabe more than anything else.

Oh well. As a Martiniere he had money to pay higher wages to bring in a larger crew and rotate them through on shorter shifts so no one else got sick.

It solved that problem, and Gabe ended up helping out several Thunder County ranchers in a similar position.

But managing harvest and production logistics for the Double R, Moondance, and half-a-dozen other operations meant there wasn’t a hell of a lot of time to dedicate to the issues of whatever the hell that programming worm was.

#

“Gabe! I need you in the labs now!” Ruby screeched into the comm.

The urgency in her voice, coupled with Mike screaming in the background, forced Gabe out of his chair, running from his office, through the house, and out the back door.

“What’s wrong?” he panted as he ran.

“Mike’s having a meltdown! Bad!”

“Be right there!” Gabe switched off his comm and sprinted faster even though it was hotter than hell, the midday sun combined with another heat dome turning Northeastern Oregon into something like the Southwest had been twenty years ago.

He careened into the labs, looking around.

Where the hell are they?

Julie, one of the staff, nodded toward the programming room where Mike spent a lot of his school hours. “In there, Gabe,” she said, her face pale under brown.

Fear.

What the hell had happened? Julie wasn’t easily rattled.

Gabe inhaled sharply, seeking to calm himself before bursting in. Then he opened the door to the programming room.

Ruby and Mike were on the floor, Mike moaning and coiled in a fetal curl, half in Ruby’s lap as she rocked him, murmuring soothing tones. Smudge pressed hard against Mike’s legs.

“What happened?” Gabe dropped to his knees next to them, rubbing Mike’s back. Physical contact had helped bring Mike out of meltdowns when he was younger—hopefully that still worked.

Ruby shook her head. “I have no idea. I was working in Clean Room Four when Julie paged me. I came in to find this—Mike on the floor screaming.” Worry crinkled the skin around her eyes as she looked up at Gabe. “He kept repeating clone and I am Philip. Then he passed out.” She jerked her head toward a projection. “I haven’t dared look at it yet.”

“I’ll call Dr. Sheri, have her come out.” Oh God. Didn’t Mike already understand that he was Philip’s clone? Oh shit. How could he have not understood that?

It seemed to take forever for Dr. Sheri to arrive instead of the ten minutes it normally would require for someone to drive from her Lakeside office to the Double R.

Mike started moaning as Gabe talked to Dr. Sheri.

“No. Clone. I am Philip.”

“Mike. Stop.” Ruby managed to project some of her strongest vocal tones. Mike stopped groaning, but kept sniffling as she rocked him.

“Clone?” Dr. Sheri frowned. “I thought Mike already knew he was a clone.”

“So did I—”

Mike screamed louder than ever, trying to curl up tighter, quivering hard, as if he’d undergone the harshest possible use of mind control tones.

Oh God.

The word clone seemed to be the trigger.

Somehow, between Gabe and Ruby, they managed to keep Mike still enough for Dr. Sheri to inject him with a sedative.

Gabe gathered Mike into his arms after the sedative took effect, suddenly noticing how light his adopted son was for a boy his age. Had Brandon been this lightweight at ten?

He couldn’t remember.

Gabe didn’t try to mess with that file—not a good time for it. But he eyed the projection to figure out just what file this was, before carrying Mike to a crawler waiting outside.

Subject PJM-M-13-Michael.

And from the quick glance, he saw enough to realize that it contained Mike’s cloning records.

What the fucking hell—where did that come from?

Those records were supposed to be locked away in an archive out of Mike’s access, damn it.

*************************

Like what you’ve read so far? Check out the other stories in The Martiniere Legacy—all links here, both Amazon and other sources.

Justine Fixes Everything: Reflections on Mortality is now available at Amazon, Apple, Barnes and Noble, and Kobo!

What’s it about?

EVEN THE MOST POWERFUL PEOPLE HAVE TO START SOMEWHERE....

Over the years, Justine Martiniere has become the fixer for the Martinieres. Have a problem? Go to Justine to get it remedied.

But it wasn't always that way.

First, Justine needed to escape the abuses of her father, Philip. She didn't expect to fall in love with the man she married, Donald Atwood. But she did–and then she faced the choice between remaining married to Donald, or stopping her sociopathic, megalomaniac father.

Justine Fixes Everything is in part the unusual love story of Justine and Donald–and in part the saga of her rise to power, viewed in retrospect as she tells the history to Philip's clone Mike, as he recovers from surgery. It's about what she sacrificed to become powerful—and, at the same time, how that past comes to haunt the challenges she faces toward the end of her life.

Want more? How about an alternative Martiniere world where Ruby and Gabe meet in a different manner and meet more challenges?

ANOTHER MARTINIERE LEGACY STORY ON KINDLE VELLA—A DIFFERENT LIFE—WHAT IF?

https://www.amazon.com/kindle-vella/story/B09LH72GQG

One of the turning points of the Martiniere Legacy series is the death of Gabriel Martiniere's family in a plane crash when Gabe was twelve. That put Gabe's biological father, Philip, into the leadership of the Martiniere Group and the Martiniere Family, and expedited Philip's megalomaniac ambitions. But what if that crash hadn't happened? What would Gabe's relationship with Ruby, the love of his life, look like?

Billionaire nerd with a conscience, unlucky at love, striving to overcome the shadows of his past while trying to find agritech means to fight climate change.

Former rodeo queen, just trying to get her degree in agricultural robotics and make her mark on the world while trying to find agritech means to fight climate change, also unlucky at love and struggling with a shadowy past.

Can Ruby and Gabe successfully negotiate the complexities of the Martiniere Group and launch Ruby’s world-changing biobots without interference from competitors, while maintaining a relationship?

UPDATES ON A DIFFERENT LIFE HAPPEN EVERY WEDNESDAY, THROUGH DECEMBER, THEN MONDAY-WEDNESDAY-FRIDAY STARTING JANUARY 3, 2022. WORK IS COMPLETED, AND EPISODES CONTINUE UNTIL THE CONCLUSION ON FEBRUARY 16, 2022.