"Where are we going?"
"The test chambers are all in tower zero," Dad said.
"So I guess there's nothing to look at outside?" I said, motioning towards the wall.
"The walls of a pocket universe have unpredictable mental effects on people who see them. It's simply a precaution."
"Like what?"
"I was unaffected. Some people have psychotic breaks. Others have religious experiences. One thought the universe was mocking him. As I said, it's unpredictable."
"So what do they look like?"
"Depends on the person looking at them."
"What did you see?"
"Grey." It was a disappointing answer, but did explain why there hadn't been any effect on him.
"Why is it I can never tell when we pass into tower zero?"
"We're neither psychically nor magically sensitive. To people like us, it's no different than walking down a corridor." The door to the elevator opened and we walked down the corridor it revealed. We stopped at one of the numbered rooms and Dad swiped in. It was a workshop, small and cramped. One wall was dominated by a workbench and masses of tools. The other by piles of discarded scraps and knick-knacks. One occupant grumbled into what appeared to be his third extra-large cup of coffee. The other two cups lay discarded on the workbench next to him. He had blond hair buzzed quite short, and murky green eyes, a crooked nose and weak chin. He was dressed in a wrinkled white labcoat over a stained t-shirt.
The other occupant of the room was Minispell. I was surprised to see her standing at least five feet tall, because she was normally shrunk to twelve to eighteen inches. Her elaborate costume was a dark, royal purple and similarly dark blue. The lining of her cape was a shade of red that reminded me of the couches in Baker's hotel suite at the Leyden Regency. Unlike the blond man, she smiled at our entry.
"Why did you wake me up at such an ungodly hour just to show up late?" the man asked. Dad held up Omicron's remote. "Oh, that damn thing again."
"I'm sorry that traffic got in my way, Doctor Arroyo," Dad said. "But we need to check for anything hidden from previous checks."
"Arroyo?" I asked.
"What?"
"I'm sorry, I mean, you don't look like an Arroyo to me."
"My family's Argentinian, but they didn't like the socialists, so they emigrated, only to have them take root here, too. Or did you think everyone with roots south of Texas was brown and talked like a day laborer with a third grade education?"
"That's not what he meant," Minispell said.
"It's too damn early to pander," Arroyo said. "Why did you drag that thing back here and get me up after five minutes of sleep?"
"It's been having unexpected side effects. We need to see if Omicron disguised a malicious payload in a manner that escaped the previous examination."
"So you're saying we screwed up."
"No. I want to rule out possibilities. First step is to double-check the remote."
"If you're worried about it, there's a hammer right over there."
"Walter's just cranky," Minispell said. "I'll check it out first."
"Thank you," Dad said.
Arroyo looked in his cup and tossed it aside. "I'm going to the bathroom and getting more coffee. I'll be back." As he left, I collected his empties and dropped them in the trash can.
"Walter's normally a lot less confrontational," Minispell said. "But really? Didn't look like an Arroyo to you?" In the corner, Dad shook his head.
"It's... been a bad week," I mumbled.
"Warning," Shiva said. "Malicious presence detected in Node Sixteen."
"What's that mean?" I asked.
"There's an intruder in our computer," Dad said.
"Warning - Malicious presence in Nodes Sixteen, One, Twelve, Four, Eight, Nine... System Error." The lights went dark and the emergency lights kicked in.
"That does not sound good," I said.
"Ohh..." A new voice said over the PA. "I am become death, the destroyer of worlds."
That really didn't sound good.
"Whoah, nice echo," the voice said. I raised a confused eyebrow at the mood whiplash from the PA system's new voice. "Where am I? Looks like Sterling Towers. Is there anyone here I recognize?"
A few moments later, a purple line appeared along the wall, and the hologram of a very generic face in purple and blue appeared. The voice was the same, but no longer broadcast over the PA. "Oh hey, there is someone I recognize. Shadowdemon, how did I get here?"
"Dekker?"
"I was dead. I was trapped in a world of pain, surrounded by dim stars. I saw the light you're supposed to see and moved towards it. Now I'm a building. I don't think you can reincarnate as a building."
"I don't think you actually died."
"I was impaled!"
"I am speculating," I said, "But you were hooked up to the jars that were bleeding off the excess energy you were creating. I can only guess that when your body died, your consciousness was carried along over to the storage containers. We didn't know there was anything but energy in there. The light you saw was probably one of Shiva's nodes, Node Sixteen by the error messages. Umm..." I was spewing bull, but was trying to make it sound plausible.
"So?"
"You know, I would have thought there'd be more... information in this system."
"Intrusion countermeasures shut down sensitive components to prevent unauthorized access," Dad said. "While you may be the first to physically enter our computer, you are far from the first to attempt access. I'm afraid you can't stay there."
"Your crappy security got my body killed!" Dekker said.
"We have the parts and expertise to construct a temporary repository while a more permanent solution is found, but relying on manual overrides and stars is going to slow our efforts. Also, the lack of communications will lead those outside the building to attempt to intervene."
"What's that supposed to mean."
"You have to get out of the computer."
"I'm not going back in those jars! There was just my thoughts and my pain! I was certain I'd landed in Hell. I am not going back."
"We need at least some of the system back," I said. "Can you try to move to just part of the computer and let the rest come back online?"
"Five minutes ago I didn't know this was a computer, let alone that I could possess it."
"What does it hurt to try?"
Dekker paused. "All right. I'll see what I can do." The lights flickered and came back on.
Part 21
Arroyo was his usual cheerful self when he got back to the workshop and we told him about the shift in priorities. I swear the man was eighty percent bitterness and twenty percent coffee. Dad was constantly on the phone filling in the various security teams on what they needed to know about the incident. If not for Mini-Uth-sk, I probably would have fallen asleep. Most of the work fell to Arroyo, who declined when I offered to lend a hand. Probably because I could only provide one with my shoulder the way it was. At least he refrained from outright saying so.
You might think that watching Arroyo kludge and curse his way through assembling a robot from whatever parts could be scrounged up on short notice would be more interesting that it actually was. The base chassis looked to be an Omicron bot whose hands had been melted off. After a moment I remembered where I'd seen that particular bot before. Thankfully, Arroyo removed the controller and replaced it with something more compatible with the rest of the hardware. The limbs were reinforced with parts stripped out of a broken exosuit, which also donated the hands. The reason for the extra reinforcement came when he mounted two of the almost-Leiden jars on the back in a manner that reminded me of Arclight's harness.
"Interesting design, Doctor Arroyo," Dekker said.
"Don't mock me
, I'm winging it here. I didn't exactly get a lot of design time."
"Oh, I'm perfectly happy right here," Dekker said.
"You're occupying five of my processing nodes," Shiva said. "This is an unacceptable situation."
"Look, chips for brains, he'll get out of your head once this thing is up and running," Arroyo said. "So find me a power plant, the one Ivan used isn't strong enough for the added load."
"Ivar," I said.
"Who cares."
"Isn't our guest made of energy?" Shiva asked.
"If that thing burns me for fuel, I'm not getting in it," Dekker said.
"Like I said, find me a power plant."
"Your parameters are not very specific."
"Do the math on these components. You are a glorified adding machine. And we're doing this to get what's his name out of you."
"Dekker," I said.
"Shut up."
"The only power plant fitting the parameters is located at Future Products. It is a Model Five Plasma Generator. However, it produces far more output than is required here, and has issues with stability."
"Will it fit in that torso cavity?" Arroyo pointed to the half-built robot. The metallic gray hodgepodge didn't look like something that would be able to stand on its own, and would be incredibly top-heavy if it did manage.
"Yes. Barely."
"Then order it and dispatch a speedster to pick it up before my hangover catches up with me."
"The only speedster in-"
"Do I care?"
"The only speedster in New Port Arthur at the moment is listed as unavailable due to daytime employment."
"What?"
"Blue Streak's at work," I said.
"Fuck it, there's got to be something in this building."
"The devices in secure storage require board authorization to use."
"Well, where's the board?"
"The board has convened at an offsite location."
"Doolittle," Arroyo said, shaking his head. "Fine, order the Model Five and tell those slobs at Future Products it's urgent. I'm going to double-check the integrity of the internal manifold. I don't want this thing exploding when our guest moves in." Chugging what was left in his current coffee cup, Arroyo grabbed a penlight and all but crawled inside the chassis. A few minutes passed accented only by muffled profanities in several languages as Arroyo adjusted the innards of the cobbled together system. "They don't pay me enough for this shit."
"They don't pay you at all," Shiva said.
"Tell that to the IRS." Arroyo struck one wrench with another and grumbled to himself. "Is this what I've been reduced to?" I don't think he meant for me to hear the comment. I was once again wishing I could nod off when the door chimed and opened. Dad directed a workman with a dolly to wheel the crate into the middle of the room. Once it was down, he was quickly led away by security. "Bigger than I thought it was," Arroyo muttered, grabbing a prybar. "Where's my coffee."
"I think you finished it," I said.
"I'll get you a new one," Dad said. As Arroyo pried off the wooden casing and shoved the foam blocks out of the way, he revealed the Model Five. It was in itself as large as a human torso and probably weighed one or two hundred pounds. Its base and cap were covered in a heavy duty metal casing, and a stack of six modular dynamos ran up the middle. Down either side looked to be a glass cylinder.
"You said it would fit."
"Yes, it will fit inside the cavity - it just can't be slotted in without cutting the chest plate. You can restore the chest plate to its previous location afterward if you wish."
"It'll be simpler to cut the spine and slot it in from below," Arroyo said. "Then we can reattach the bottom half with some extra struts for stability. It'll need it for the additional load anyway. How heavy are we anyway?"
"Without better metrics, I can only provide an estimate," Shiva said. "Between five and six hundred pounds."
"Okay, can't use chairs, but won't break the pavement."
"This is only a prototype," Dekker said.
"This isn't even that," Arroyo said. "This is me throwing together whatever junk we've got and hoping it runs."
"Will it?" Dekker asked.
"Of course it will work. Who do you think I am, some half baked MBA with more money than brains? No, I will make this damn contraption work." Arroyo looked between the chassis and the Model Five. "I need an exosuit, I'm not going to be able to lift this." He stomped out of the workshop.
"You've shown remarkable patience," Dekker said.
"I do have the patience of the inanimate," Shiva said.
"Not you. Shadowdemon."
"Well, yes, I suppose it is more remarkable for an organic," Shiva said.
"You're mocking me again, aren't you?" I asked.
"Indeed. You accept that I am self-aware, yet you seem to expect me to act like a machine. It is a quite derision-worthy feat of doublethink."
"How did you reach that assessment?" I asked.
"A combination of inductive and deductive reasoning coupled with observation."
"You jumped to a conclusion based on a few offhand remarks. How human."
"There's no need to be mean." Before I could think of an appropriate retort, Arroyo returned, having donned an exosuit based on the same tech as the SRTs. This one was clearly skewed towards strength at the cost of mobility. It was bulkier, and had more yellow and black caution stripes than were strictly needed. He resumed working, manhandling the chassis onto the workbench so he could carve it in two. After attaching some fixtures, he shoved the Model Five as far as it would go into the chest cavity. The way it stuck out the bottom, it was going to run from collar to hips. He tied it in to the spine as best he could and strapped it down before setting about reattaching the lower half.
Arroyo was finishing up a spot weld when Dad returned with a cup of coffee. He disentangled an arm from the exosuit and took the cup. "We should be ready to initialize this power plant and run some bench tests. If it doesn't blow up, you're set. Thanks for wasting my day."
"You're welcome," Dad said flatly. It was the sort of acerbic comment I expected from the depths of my mind. Hearing it from Dad was unusual to say the least. For his part, Arroyo ignored it. Instead, he hooked it into the building mains. Some indicator lights came on, and he toggled the controls. With a series of clicks, an arc struck down the center of each glass tube. At least they looked like glass. For all I knew, it was some sort of crystal. Whatever it was, the initial bright light faded to a more diffuse glow as the gasses within changed state.
"This could take a while. People like these things because they think they're little fusion plants, when they're little more than glorified batteries."
"You mean I'm going to have to keep plugging it in?" Dekker asked.
"Stop whining, we're not stuffing a nuclear reactor into you," Arroyo said, "Besides, it's no different from needing to eat or sleep." Arroyo ran through his tests in grumbling near-silence as we waited to see if this patchwork robot was going to stay in one piece. "It looks like it's holding. We should be good to see if our guest can move in."
I wasn't sure if there was a shower of sparks, or a bolt of lighting, or if both were my imagination. But the lights went out with a crack. Arroyo let out a profane tirade as the emergency lights kicked back in. "What is it now?"
The room was awash in a violet glow from the not quite Leiden jars on the robot's back and the arc between their tops. The robot's optics lit up with the same mix of purple and blue jolts. Pushing off the table, it sat up and looked around.
"You moron," Arroyo said. "I didn't tell you to hop though the mains. I was going to set up a safe transfer that wouldn't fry any more of this building's electrical system." Arroyo unplugged the robot.
"I feel... small," Dekke
r said, his voice more metallic than before.
The day had gone so far off the rails that we almost forgot what had actually dragged us downtown in the first place. Minispell returned the remote with a shrug. Evidently, her re-examination hadn't turned up anything new. Arroyo had stormed off, and we ended up putting the device in Dad's desk. There was a lot of fuss about what to do with Dekker that simply bypassed me. For his part, he was rather quiet. Something told me I didn't want to be there when he stopped being calm. If I'd been able to drive myself, I would not have gone back to the base.
Gruefield 18 (Tarnished Sterling Omnibus) Page 84
