Whispers on an Undying World

Where are you?

“Matt?”

The young Korean man looked over at him from his chair. “Yeah man?”

“This is going to smoothly, the design changes and all.”

Matt stared at him for a minute; a concerned look crossed his face as he sipped some coffee. Matt understood what Thomas was implying. “Man, these devices were planned with multiple outcomes. I can show you the blue prints for fifty variations of this same device. Micha has been working this creation for years. Changing one thing on it is like changing a tire.” Spinning back to face the computer, Matt appeared to lose interest in him. “There’s no way she knew this was coming. So get that thought right out of your head. She’s just smart, man.”

Thomas took a sip of his bitter coffee and turned back to his monitor. The thought had crossed his mind that Micha already knew this event was coming and that was why she was in Sacramento. If she did know and let it happen, there was no way Thomas could trust her.

Another couple of hours passed before Thomas got another alert from Micha’s monitor, getting up to stretch he walked over to a near empty pot of coffee and got a cup ready for her. The others took turns taking naps though they only shut their eyes for no more than a half hour each, neither did any of them have the heart to go and wake Micha up. Chances are she has been up longer than any of them combined.

Walking back to the room, Thomas opened the door to give her the cup but caught her lying there with tears covering her face. She rolled over quick enough that she could wipe them away then sits up in one fluid movement. “Wow I didn’t know a travel trailer came with room service.” Kicking her bare feet off the bed she took the cup from him and smiled. “That was a joke. Thank you; this was exactly what I was wanting. Any news?”

Leaning against the door frame he nodded. “We got video feed set up between each station, it got a little too difficult explaining everything so we were trying to show each other about the intricacies of virus mutation. Sean and Michael were working on setting up a map to track all of the host’s using the cameras; they got it online about an hour ago. Dr. Rosenberg’s been having some of her team to round up or watch any of the other patients that took the drug but so far Sacramento is the only one with adverse effects. But she doesn’t want to chance it so she gave them the opportunity to quarantine themselves, a lot of them agreed so they now have twelve observation hubs in the US.”

Nodding, Micha drank some coffee though it didn’t have enough sugar. “How many more of the heads has Matt been able to make?”

“Two, he wanted to show you them to make sure they were done right.” She looked exhausted still but she didn’t have any more time to rest. “He thought it would be faster to have one of the machines make them so after finishing the second one he started changing some computer things and got it working on the third. You want to go look at it to see if it’s a waste of time?”

Nodding, Micha put her cup down and reached for her bag that they slid beneath the bed. “Yeah, that’s a great idea. The machine’s here are a hell of a lot higher tech than the ones we got our hands on back home. They might be able to manage it.” She pulled the pack on the bed with her, then stopped and looked up at him. “I’m going to get dressed, how much longer until we arrive?”

Stepping back, Thomas reached for the sliding door. “We have just over an hour. When we touch down they’ll want to get you set up in the main camp, they are getting your troupe ready to test out those bullets.” He shut the door before she could answer.

Human trials demanded her complete focus, so she got into the clothes that made her serious although it wasn’t the traditional lab coat. Actually it wasn’t exactly a serious look at all, it made her laugh a little thinking about how the Doctor was going to react when she saw her steam punk inspired attire.

Micha quickly pulled off her borrowed clothes and put on her focus clothes. She had black tights on with shorts with multiple pockets over them; they were rather short so she doubted that anyone would mistake her for an engineer. Then was her leg pouch that she put on her left thigh, the top strap went over her shorts and the bottom just under them. She tightened it so it wouldn’t move, then she pulled her on her tank top that was absurdly purple. After that she put her version of a white lab coat on, it had no sleeves and had two long ties that started at the top and wound around her middle so that it didn’t move anywhere. It had breast pockets and two more pockets on her front that magnetically sealed so she wouldn’t lose anything.

She put on her boots then, they were mid-calf and were leather however they had a mechanism that made them into roller blades, she liked that feature when she went up into the Castle and had to move around quickly. Going through her side pouches she found her lenses that made it so she could see data from the computer without looking at one.

Now she put on the metal bracelets that detected hand movement, they were matching and only looked like bracelets but they were scanning the muscles in her hand so she could use her fingers as a mouse. She put her hear piece in then grabbed a pair of chopsticks out of her bag, it was her favorite part of the gear.

Before putting her hair up she walked out, Matt was about to talk to her when he saw her get up then stopped and stared. That made the others look at her, it wouldn’t be the first time she got that reaction so she continued what she was doing. “Eagle conference with the Lab and the Castle.” The head set called Mike, when he answered he also activated the camera systems on his side. “Castle, on screen four.”

His face popped up on the monitor that wasn’t in use right then, they had been kind enough to label which screen was which. “The Castle has visual. How’s it on your end?”

“Clear on our end, hey Mike I’m launching third eye. Can you set me up with the undertones?”

“Yeah, no problem.” He typed a few things then nodded. “Castle is waiting for the launch.”

Micha crossed her wrist then thrust them down; blue dots appeared in her vision as the contacts reached out for information. A green circle appeared telling her that it was receiving in formation, as it did that Micha made a fist with her left hand then twisted it to the left so the bracelets wouldn’t read what her hands were doing.

“Link is secured and processing.” He let the machine do its thing then smiled. “You look serious today. Are you that close to ground zero?”

Matt sheepishly raised his hand, looking over at him Micha chuckled. “Yes Matt?”

“Third eye?”

Smiling Micha pointed at Mike. “That is not my baby, its Mike’s. It’s a computer program that lets you see into a mainframe using a third party portal. Its usually best to use preprogramed glasses but Mike was testing out some contacts which is what I’m using right now.”

The excited look on Matts face when he spun to face Mike was everything. That joy in technology was part of the reason so many of them invented. “Man, how did you even get that to work? We gotta have a sit down.”

Seeing the excitement from Mike was wonderful but they were nearing the closest camp and they needed to focus on the task. “Mike, I can’t wait until you two can talk about you endeavors but we kind of need to focus for a little while.”

Through the camera they could see that Mike was pointing at them while seated in what looked like the main tech hub. “Dude we are defiantly sitting down later but sis is right.”

“Deal!”

Micha took a chopstick and wound her hair up then used the second one to keep it in place. “An hour out, can you guys catch me up?”

It was that remark that got the guys in the Lab snapped out of their surprise. Matt got up and raised his eye brows. “That looks good on you, if you know what I mean.”

Turning around Micha grabbed her cup of coffee then walked out and started looking at all of the screens. The contacts started filling in the information she was missing, now that they were starting to warm up it summed up all the information she needed. “Focus Matt. Show me your idea.” She followed him to the machine that was assembling machine.

It took him a few times but he was able to show her the algorithm he used to get the assembling machine, after a few tweaks she approved. “We will just have to manually put them in the sheaths then it should be good. Were you able to print out some shafts?”

“Did I make any shafts?” He laughed and looked at her like she asked a stupid questions then he looked at her with a straight face. “Yes, I made the shafts. Mike, did you finish the map yet?”

“Give me a minute to finish color coding it, the system doesn’t like having to go through all the different feeds so we are having a delay. It should be up in a few minutes though.”

Matt nodded then handed her one of the fore-arm length arrows, it had a little slot for the head to slide into so Micha went over to the sleeve that held the heads and grabbed one. It clicked into place perfectly. The perfect thing about the arrow is that the fletching’s were designed to twist out at the last few feet to slow down the speed enough that it does less damage. It was different than the close range, if she had more time she could make an actual gun for the long ranged one but she didn’t so she had to use cross bows. The short range gun was only powerful enough to shoot up to fifteen feet.

Behind Micha Michael was humming a song, off in his own world while looking at the computer. Either he was completely uninterested in what she was doing or thoroughly enjoying what he was doing.

Now the tip was covered in a clear shell that was the baby of Sean. He was able to infuse the numbing agent into a liquid that would hold until it made contact with blood, and then it would dissolve and spread the numbing agent. What it was made of Micha wasn’t privy to know, but it worked. “Sean are you sure that the tip will dissolve?”

Looking away from the computer he almost glared at her. “Yes.” Then he turned away and started chattering with Mike, she tuned them out until Mike called her name.

“What’s up?”

“The maps up, just warning there is a ten second delay.”

Sighing Micha set the arrow down then walked up behind Sean and looked at his screen. “Send it please.” The map of Sacramento seemed so small when they looked at it like this, but now they were covered in colored dots. “What do the colors represent?”

“Red is the aggressive, orange the agitated but not physically aggressive to the environment, green the calmest but are wanders. The blue are the soldiers.”

“So there are three distinct types, that’s good I’ll tell the Doctor to get some tags in each of the groups.” She looked at the map for a minute and immediately notice that there was a huge patch of red and orange right next to each other but the less orange there was there was immediately less red. It was in a kind of circle and the very center was the greens. “It’s going to be really hard to get to the greens. Is there anything different that they are doing but the others aren’t?”

In response Sean pulled up a camera that held a picture of what had to be the very center of town. “That’s the best we have right now.”

Looking at the screen a while longer the one thing that stood out was the gray areas. “Sean?”

“Yeah?”

Micha pointed at the buildings that had no data. “Does the blank spots mean there are not infected there?”

“Some, I can put a filter on those spots to make it clearer. Although that might bog down the system if I put too many filters on it.” After a few clicks some of the empty areas were still empty and others had diagonal lines. “Empty areas are the non-lined, the lined are lacking conformation.”

“That means no visuals?”

“No visuals.”

“Ok.” Micha spent some more time looking over his shoulders, this time he was clicking through locations and pulling up the camera feeds. A theme was emerging as she saw more, she started requesting key areas. By the end it was confirmed.

They were in fact calm, despite walking in a way that made them look stiff; they could almost be mistaken for normal people. Sean flipped through a few screens before Micha took over, reaching over his shoulder to flip through faster. “Why haven’t I seen any kids? You’d think with a city this big there would be kids everywhere.”

“Good question, I’ll put a search out.” Sean took back over the controls, letting her watch as he put in a few commands but knew it was far too soon when it started taking a while to load.

Patting him on the shoulder, Micha started to walk away. “Tell me when you find any.”