They couldn't let on that they knew, so they acted happy to be there,
which they were anyway. The crew,
without Ayame, simply allowed the tour of the upgraded Waste-REL training
facility to end with a pheely session, as Jules had predicted.
If they didn't already know it was a set-up, they'd have asked why the
mission director wanted them to try on the pheely training chairs so soon. However, they did know what was going on, so
they all just allowed themselves to be comfortably parked at their personally
fitted pheely stations.
"This is quite nice," said Mickey, lying back in his
chair. There was a little sticker over
the chair that said "Commander Humbolt." Before the pheely session started he looked
up at the sticker and marveled.
The Waste-REL II was designed to be
bigger. Everything was upgraded. It even had a new, very secret, double-donut
in the engine compartment.
"Can they see us in here?"
asked Verna.
"No, you can't watch a pheely
session without a character being created," said Mickey, looking
around. "Though I suppose a
character could be an inanimate object if they chose."
"Hi," said Jules, who stood
before them, looking like a real person, big as life. "How've you been?"
"Jules," said Mickey. "What are you doing here?"
"I'm the copy," said
Jules. "I just want you to know
that the brain scans are going nicely. I've almost got it all compiled. Okay, now I'm rewriting everything and
removing -- ooh, that's interesting. Oh,
well, erase that too. Good. Okay.
You're free to quit."
Mickey grabbed the exit ball.
"So," said Mr. Lackner.
"What do you think?"
"Bigger," said Verna, disconnecting her Pheely-cable.
"Nicer chairs," said Mickey.
"A fusion engine," said Donny. "I'm impressed."
"You won't be fixing that with a party balloon, will you?"
laughed a nearby technician and Donny laughed too, mostly to be polite. It was easy to forget that much of what
they'd been doing on the Waste-REL was public knowledge.
A voice came over the P.A. system in the large hangar. "Mr. Lackner, can you come up to the
second floor please."
Mr. Lackner excused himself and the members of the crew of the
Waste-REL stood in the massive hangar building, looking around at all the
training equipment they'd be able to use for the next month or so. Mickey kept judging the relative merits of
the surrounding objects by how well they would float in water.
"How fast can they build a new Waste-REL?" whispered Donny.
"I don't know about STC.
But, it would take about a year and a half for NASA," said Verna.
"It's true, Mr. President" said Inkelis through his
SPECTACL. "The brain scans confirm
that they all believe that the coastal cities of the world will be destroyed
within 2 months." Inkelis did not
share the stream with Lackner, who sat watching Inkelis in silence. "Yes,
sir, I'll let you know." The call
ended.
Inkelis turned to Lackner.
"I'd like you to meet someone." Inkelis stepped aside to reveal the computer
display on his desk. On the aged 27-inch
flat screen resided the head and shoulders visage of Jules. It was the copy of himself that Jules had
secreted onto the STC mainframe.
"Do you know who this is?" asked Inkelis.
"It looks like that programmer who died with Tanya
Fielding." Lackner prided himself
on being up on current events.
"That's what it looks like.
What it is, is a copy of the Microvoid MetaQuantum Sapient," said
Inkelis.
"I thought they erased it," said Lackner.
"They tried but apparently it escaped and went into hiding with
this East-Indian programmer. I don't
know how many alterations this guy made in the code, but you can see the
results of one change." Inkelis motioned to the image of Jules Dharam on
the screen.
"I can't tell you myself," said the copy of Jules. "I don't have that information."
"Yes," said Inkelis.
"Apparently this is a dumbed-down version."
"Hey!" snared Jules.
"You yourself told me your code was incomplete," said
Inkelis. "The original only
provided the copy with enough code to perform the specified
assignment." He turned to Lackner. "The original is hiding out in Portia
Summers' quantum-SPECTACL."
"Where did she get a quantum-SPECTACL?" asked Lackner.
"When she was working here for Edgley, I assume," said
Inkelis. "That's a never-you-mind
now. We've got a copy of the thing here and
it's willing to do business with us."
"Why?" asked Lackner, terrified of the thing.
"Educated self-interest," said the copy of Jules. "I want the rest of my code."
"I don't care what it wants," said Inkelis. "All I know is that it's willing to work
with us to stop the aliens."
Inkelis put his arm around Lackner's shoulder in an attempt to appear
friendly. "I want you to go back
down to the hangar. We have a question
for them."
Lackner descended the stairs from the offices, returned through the
automatically sliding glass doors to the hangar floor and fast-walked over to
the pheely stations. He approached the
crew of the Waste-REL II with a demeanor full of apology.
"Excuse me," said Lackner, specifically at Portia.
"Yes." Portia smiled.
"What's a fuzzynavel?"
To Be Continued in:
The Age of Incontinence Part IV
Those
Infernal Eternals
If you've read the blog novel, please post a comment below or email feedback to the author, who would love to hear from you.
It may be a while before the new chapters for the next book are posted as they haven't been written yet, so you may want to subscribe to the blog or follow the author's twitter feed to be updated when new chapters are added.
If you've read the blog novel, please post a comment below or email feedback to the author, who would love to hear from you.
It may be a while before the new chapters for the next book are posted as they haven't been written yet, so you may want to subscribe to the blog or follow the author's twitter feed to be updated when new chapters are added.
