Decidedly Odd
This takes place two weeks after "Brainwashed."
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"Attention everyone. We are now
approaching Meridiana International Airport. Please shut off all
electronic devices, raise your trays, and adjust your seats to their upright
position..."
Dr. Anthony Zacharias adjusted his First Class seat and put the tray away into the padded arm. He took one glance at the papers he held in his hand before sighing and stuffing them into his briefcase, which he then shoved under the seat in front of him with a touch more force than necessary. He looked out the window at the view of Meridiana, spread out below him, surrounded by green mountains and framed by the blue sparkling ocean. He picked out the Angel, then Meridiana High School, then his townhouse.
It was hard to believe that a place so peaceful and sleepy looking, a mandatory stop on the itinerary of luxury cruise ships, had become a battleground. Although no one talked about it openly, one could tell from the newspaper and television reports that something unsettling was working its way into the city.
The image of Cybersix, sitting in the chair across from him in his library, sipping at fruit tea and attempting to understand the intricacies of Quantum Mechanics, came unbidden to his mind's eye. He regretted telling that brave woman that he had made little progress in discovering the means of duplicating sustenance during her last two visits.
He had hoped that this trip to a largish Quantum Mechanics conference at Princeton would bear fruit. Or at least plant some seeds. He had presented two papers. The first was one that he had been writing when he met Cybersix: It had been received very well. The second was a more speculative one, broaching the subject of whether the Pauli Exclusion Principle had any foundation in reality. The reception of that paper by the attendees was, to put it mildly, unenthusiastic. They saw no reason to question one of the central pillars of Quantum Mechanics without experimental evidence demonstrating otherwise. Naturally, the younger scientists and the graduate students took the speculation in better stride, but the mathematics proved as intractable to them as it was to him. He went away with almost everyone wanting to explore the implications of his first paper, but no serious takers for the second.
"Can't blame them, I suppose. I wouldn't believe it myself if I hadn't seen the violation with my own eyes." he thought charitably. He was only mildly irritated that he would have to take precious time from sustenance research to address their questions and speculations on QuaNet. Not that he could blame them about that either: He had been excited about the implications of his first paper too, until the even more intriguing puzzle of the green liquid in the vials had presented itself.
"Well, I'll just have to work on the problem by myself," he concluded as the jet shuddered from its landing on the tarmac of Meridiana International. He regretted that, for so much progress was made sharing information, thoughts, and flashes of insight with his fellow researchers. He'd miss working with Jones, Taylor, and especially Tsing, on this particular problem.
And a damned peculiar problem it was indeed. The most likely equations that would apply worked themselves out into an infinite series. Except, with infinite series, the value normally was either infinity or some fixed number This infinite series OSCILLATED. The value rose and fell, depending on how many terms you used in computing the value, instead of settling toward a particular number or shooting off into infinity. Damnedest thing he'd ever come across. So much so, that he had written his discovery up and had sent it to a mathematics journal as a letter in the hope that someone could make sense of it.
Instead, it got turned into a short paper that would be published next week, and the reviewers were raving about it to their colleagues, saying it was the most likely mathematical discovery to not have any real-world applications. "Boy, if they only knew." he thought bemusedly.
He looked out the window as the jet taxied by some air shipping storage warehouses.
Suddenly, something caught his eye. He looked closely at some rather large men moving crates.
He saw the face of one.
"A fixed idea! What are a bunch of them doing here at the airport?" he thought
He gritted his teeth in frustration: he
had had to put his knife into his baggage, and didn't want to be caught
sneaking around with it by the airport police. Everyone was still
antsy about the disappearance of the police chief and the detectives walking
about town in electronic headgear demanding information about Cybersix.
Well, he'd just have to run away if confronted.
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Dr. Zacharias retrieved his luggage and
stuffed it into some secure lockers. He then walked out the airport
and along the exit road to the access road to the air freight section of
the airport. He had debated, and rejected, using the wave suit: It
was still daylight, so wearing it would make him stick out like a sore
thumb. He was dressed in a suit, so he'd just make like a salesman
or a mis-directed business customer.
After verifying the warehouse number, Dr. Zack walked around it. The truck the Fixed Ideas had been loading with crates had left, and there seemed to be no sign of the Fixed Ideas. He jiggled the handle on the office door, but it was locked.
After glancing around and seeing no one, Dr. Zack quickly opened a hole through space and unlocked the door. He stepped inside and closed the door behind him. He listened for a few moments, then went to the desk and looked through the drawers. Nothing. Nothing in the filing cabinets either.
He went to the other door in the office, opened it, and looked inside the main warehouse. It was a maze of wooden crates stacked on top of each other. Glancing one way, then the other, he turned right and walked slowly and as quietly as he could manage. He paused to use his submolecular vision to punch through the wooden crates to see what was inside. Metal, and complex chemical compounds he'd never seen before. He'd never tried to scan explosives, so he concluded that they contained munitions.
He kept going, stopping occasionally to scan a crate and finding either blocks of metal (weapons?) or electronics gear. He finally worked his way through the maze into the relatively open center. A stack of short crates about 10 high was off to the side. He walked up to the stack and punched through.
Green "wind" blew into his subatomic vision.
Sustenance! An eyeball estimate told Dr. Zack there might be over 500 vials in that stack alone.
He debated taking a crate, but decided against weighing himself down. He'd report this to Cybersix, and she could come and get the stuff herself. If they split it 90/10, then he'd have more than enough to experiment with directly.
Feeling very pleased with himself, he turned and tried to backtrack back out. He quickly got lost in the maze, so he paused to figure out how to find the exit door before the Fixed Ideas came back.
"Pardon me, sir!"
Dr. Zack nearly jumped out of his skin at the deep, resonant voice. He whirled around to find himself staring at a Fixed Idea.
The Fixed Idea raised an eyebrow, "Sorry to startle you, sir, but what are you doing here?"
Dr. Zack quickly recovered, "I'm the airport fire inspector, looking for violations." "Which should explain how I got in." he thought. Aloud, he said, "I am seriously concerned about the layout of the shipping crates and storage patterns in this warehouse!"
The Fixed Idea frowned, then glanced around at the stacks.
"Isn't it obvious? If you had someone working within these stacks, and a fire broke out, how could they possibly excape?"
The Fixed Idea opened its mouth, closed it, thought a moment, then looked worried, "I do believe that you are right, sir. Will we be getting a citation?"
"Hmm. A smart one. Fixed Ideas can jump over the crates, but humans can't." Dr. Zack thought. "Ohh, not this time. Just a verbal warning. If I wrote something down, I'd have to account for it, and that'd be a bother. Besides, you ought to be able to get into compliance easily enough. Just arrange everything like a city street map, with the streets being the paths between the stacks, which are the city blocks."
"Straight lines all the way through?" he asked him.
"Correct."
"Thank you sir, for your expert advice, and also for not citing us."
"Of course, to make that non-citation stick, you'd better not mention that I was here, okay?"
"I won't breathe a word to anyone." the Fixed Idea promised, "Let me show you out."
Dr. Zack both marvelled and worried as he followed. A smart Fixed Idea would prove to be a difficult opponent for Cybersix. At the same time, this one was extremely civil, polite, and rather charming. And that voice! So compelling! Dr. Zack was sure he'd never forget it.
"Here you are. Have a nice day, sir!" The Fixed idea said as he opened the outside door for him.
"Thank you!"
Dr. Zack barely got around the corner when a truck skidded up on the other side. He pressed himself against the building to listen.
"OPEN UP!" a young voice howled.
Dr. Zack grinned. No forgetting THAT voice! He pictured Jose running away in terror in the museum, sans the Axe.
"WAS ANYONE HERE?" Jose demanded.
"Uhhh, no one, sir!"
"Wha-? Now this IS a puzzle!!!" he thought, "Why would that Fixed Idea pretend he wasn't smart? Unless-"
He ran away from the building, through some landscaping, and went along the fence that ran alongside the access road until he got back to the terminal. He retrieved his luggage, got a porter, and went to get a taxi. Preferably a fast one.
It would be good to report something interesting
for a change to Cybersix!
----------------------
"Careful Data-7!" Cybersix whispered to
her brother, putting an arm around him and pulling his warm, furry body
to her side.
He nodded, letting out a short rumble from his throat that vibrated through his body into hers.
She bit her lip, regretting for maybe the 100th time her inability to communicate clearly with Data-7, "One day." she vowed.
She looked at the warehouse and verified the number. She had long suspected that Von Richter had agents in other countries, but wondered how they were supplied with sustenance. She smiled a bit lopsidedly: Ship it to them, of course! The jump from the need to ship something to the need for a place to store the stuff during transfers was a very short one, and she berated herself for not thinking of it earlier.
She leaped onto the warehouse roof lightly. Data-7 followed her. They padded softly to the roof access hatch, opened it easily, and slipped inside.
They ran silently along the girders to the center. Looking down, Cybersix counted 6 Fixed Ideas in various attitudes of repose. Her eyes searched for the stack of short crates Dr. Zack had mentioned, but she didn't see it. He DID admit to being a bit disoriented, and from the looks of the maze of crates, she didn't blame him for being a bit confused by the layout. Hopefully, the stuff wouldn't get destroyed in the fight that she was about to start. It would be a difficult one, given the number of opponents. Luckily, they had the element of surprise which, when fixed ideas are involved, would neatly even things out.
"Go for the ones in the striped shirts." She whispered to Data 7, "Not the ones in solids, as Dr. Zack said." They'd sort it out in the heat of battle.
Data 7 didn't say anything, but padded softly onto a different girder to get into position.
They descended like two shadows of death, striking. Two flares of green light signalled their presence to the others, who leaped to their feet and began scrambling for weapons.
One tried attacking Cybersix, swinging wildly as she easily dodged him, "Not him." She thought, grabbing him by the shirt, yanking, and throwing him over her shoulder into a stack of crates. The top two crates fell on him. She shot a glance across the clear center and saw Data 7 clawing at one on the ground, "DATA 7!" she shouted, leaping, when she saw a Fixed Idea sneaking up behind him with a crowbar.
Her foot hit the base of his neck, her highheel penetrating and crushing the neck bones, "Not you either." she thought, flipping and watching it vanish in a puff of green light.
"Raaaaahhhhh!" This came from Cybersix's left. She glanced that way, and saw four Fixed Ideas pour into the central clearing to their left.
"Raaaahhhhhh!" She shot a glance over to her right. FIVE Fixed Ideas!
Nine was NOT her lucky number!
"RRRRAAAAAHHHHH!!!"
"Uh oh!" She muttered, glancing straight ahead to see a Fixed Idea emerge from the stacks and lifting a quad grenade launcher to his shoulder, "A bit too much for us, Data 7!" She said to him, tensing, getting ready to leap.
The fixed idea with the grenade launcher stumbled and fired wildly.
Two gas grenades exploded to her right and to her left.
"Dooohhhhh!" he moaned, watching as his companions fell to the ground, knocked out by the sleepy gas.
"Well! That was convenient!" She replied brightly, "I shouldn't punch your lights out, I suppose, in gratitude!"
The Fixed Idea suddenly grinned, straightened, and pointed the grenade launcher toward the cieling, holding it behind his back easily with one hand, "My! The young bud I knew has become a beautiful rose indeed."
Her mouth dropped open. After all these years... "FI-4?" she asked, shaking and almost unbelieving.
In a slow, graceful movement, so totally unlike the Fixed Ideas she had known, Fixed Idea-4 carefully laid the grenade launcher on the ground, "Cybersix." he replied, smiling. He turned his head slightly, "Data 7. Or should I say, Cyber 29? Nice to see you again."
"You knew?" Cybersix asked him, after throwing a glance at Data 7, who had huffed back a greeting..
He made a face, "Not until long after you left. Von Richter left his notes out on his desk one day, and I was able to sneak a look at them." He looked at Data 7, "The other Datas were failures, so why was number 7 a success? Because he had a Cyber brain, of course." he shrugged, "Von Richter still judges all his creations by how well they stack up against the Cybers. In death, they still haunt him."
She walked up to him, "After all these years. Now I know you're alive, my friend!"
The massive arms wrapped gently around her as she leaned in and gave him a hug. The few but happy memories of them playing alone in the jungle, he so large and she so small, flooded back.
"I suppose you came for the sustenance, right?" he asked, patting her on the back.
"Yes." she replied, marvelling at the flood of memories that came up unbidden from where she had hidden them.
He looked sorrowful, "It was shipped out this afternoon. We only have about a quarter of a crate in the back office," He waved behind her, "Mostly for the workers. It's in the refrigerator." He looked around worriedly, "Better get going before everyone revives!"
"Thank you." she said expressively, smiling up at him, "I'll get it and be on my way."
He coughed politely after she turned and took a few steps toward the back office, "What?" she asked, glancing back.
"You need to knock me out."
"WHAT?" the request shocked her. "I-I-can't do THAT!" she stammered.
"They'll suspect something if I'm still awake and unscratched when they come around." he pointed out.
Cybersix stood stone still, her thoughts fighting in her head like two alley cats. He was right, of course, but what he was asking was too unpleasant and her friends were so few...
FI-4's eyes went to Data 7. The panther looked at him and bobbed his head slightly. The Fixed Idea nodded back.
Before Cybersix could say anything, Data 7 leaped and knocked him off his feet and into a stack of crates, which fell down on top of him.
"NO!" She ran up to the pile of crates and began lifting them and tossing them aside.
He lay unconscious under the pile. She put her hand on his leg, feeling, making sure he hadn't vanished in green light.
"Goodbye, my friend." She murmured softly,
patting his leg, "I hope to see you again."
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"Twenty three! Not a bad haul for
a night's work!" Dr. Zack remarked, gloating over the case of glowing vials,
"Did you meet that intelligent fixed idea?"
"Yes. He was-is-a friend of mine!" Cybersix said. She sounded like someone who had won the lottery twice in a row.
"His voice is something else! Sort of reminds me of James Earl Jones, but that big chest of his makes his voice even deeper." Dr. Zack looked at the vials again, "I'll take three for experimentation, and you can have the rest."
"Ummm, no. Let's split it fifty-fifty, but you keep it here for me. I'll come by if pickings are slim."
"Okay, but do take one with you," Dr. Zack insisted. He felt that three vials was sufficient for his needs at the moment, and would reserve the rest for her. At the same time, he felt pleased and privileged to have earned her trust enough for her to rely on him to literally keep what amounted to her "life" savings secure for her.
"Sounds good to me." she said, selecting one and slipping it into the little pouch in her leather top, "Thanks for the tip, Dr. Zack. We got ourselves a good supply of sustenance, and I hooked back up with an old friend of mine. This was a good night."
"Indeed it was, Cybersix. Good night!"
"Good night! Coming with me, Data 7?"
Data 7 looked at the door leading out of the library.
"Staying for supper? Don't eat so much, that you can't jump over his electrified wall!" she taunted him playfully as she stepped onto the window sill.
He snorted.
The next moment, she was gone.
Dr. Zack closed and locked the window,
marvelling, as he usually did, at that woman's speed, "Let's get down to
the kitchen. I feel a headache coming on, and I have a yen for a
Snickers bar." he told Data 7.
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The following occurs one week after the
above events.
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Data 7 awoke from his nap. He stretched
himself on the bed in the abandoned subway room, rear and tail high in
the air, front paws extended forward, mouth opening wide in a long, lolling
yawn that showed a large pink tounge and long rows of sharp, yellow teeth.
"Ahhh! Another day! Another night with Six." he thought idly, his spirits rising at the thought of being with Cybersix that night, "I shall stop by the Townhouse and see what the good Doctor Zacharias has on the menu for tonight."
He leaped off the bed and walked out of the room. After listening carefully and mentally noting the location of all the trains within a kilometer from the sounds that came down the tunnel, he turned and ran down to a ventilation shaft.
For the longest time, he had lived as if he had his head in a cloud, clearing only when a fight was expected. Data 7 liked having a clear head, and so fought a lot during the training Von Richter had laid out, rising to the top of the Data Series, then of all the Specials. He had fought with one particularly impressive Special to earn the right to eliminate Cybersix. It had been an extremely exhausting fight that had been his first real challenge in a year, so his head had been especially clear when he had noted the photo of him and Cybersix as children.
Ever since, his head had been out of that cloud, as if the blanking of the past had been like a black velvet mask with no holes to look out through to clearly see the world. But once the mask was gone, he rapidly remembered more and more, with the most pleasant and happy memories being those of his time with Cybersix before his accident.
"Is it possible for a man to go mad because he is unable to say 'I love you'?" he wondered as he slipped out of the subway system and took to the roofs.
He arrived at the Townhouse and slipped into what looked like a drainage tunnel. At a red light in the tunnel, he gazed into a light sensor, disabling the security system for several seconds. He then dashed through the now de-electrified portion to an automatic door. Another light sensor attuned to the unique glow coming from his eyes activated the motor that opened the door into a small storeroom on the first floor. He shoved the door open with his head and padded around to the kitchen.
Suddenly, a muffled explosion made the floor shake. Something burst up through the floor a meter to his right and shot through the cieling, creating matching holes. Data 7 leaped up a meter and came down in a fighting stance.
"Ahhh! Something is wrong downstairs! Not up here, silly!" he thought to himself as he made a dash to the stairway that led down to the basement.
The entire basement was full of swirling dust clouds. Out of the clouds came a man dressed in (now dust brown) thermal underwear.
"Hmm. Perhaps I should water down the concentration another order of magnitude?" He muttered to himself. He threw a glance over his shoulder at the destruction behind him, "Maybe two orders to be safe." He caught sight of Data 7, "Oh, hi Data 7! You caught me in the middle of an experiment."
"What on earth happened here, Doctor?" Data 7 looked at him, hoping the thought would translate into a sufficiently puzzled look on his face to convey his thoughts.
It worked, "Oh, ah, I was trying to run a lawnmower engine on sustenance."
"Sustenance does THAT?" Data 7 glanced at the demolished workbench that was becoming visible through the rapidly settling dust clouds, "And my sister DRINKS it?"
"Impressive, isn't it?" he enthused as he led the way out of the basement, "This is great-Oh WOW!" he gasped when he entered the kitchen and saw the hole in the floor. He noted the one in the cieling and craned his neck to look through it, "All the way through the roof! That is just WONDERFUL!"
"I suppose so, if you're into blowing
things up. Probably not if you were intending to mow the lawn instead."
Data 7 thought, "Oh, by the way, feed me."