Johnny Winger and the Europa Quandary

by Philip Bosshardt

  ***Executing configuration C-2 breakdown now…spinning up all effectors…bond disrupters primed…memory field enabled…here goes, General…wish me luck…***

  Winger had only thoughts of Dana and Rene and Liam as he let Doc III swarm over his suit. In seconds, he was fully enveloped and he could already hear the high keening buzz as the bots chewed into the laminate of the outer shell.

  “I hope to hell this doesn’t hurt too much,” he said to himself. “Dana, I promised you I’d come home from this…even if I do look a little different.”

  The entire process took about five minutes. Just as the final phase of dematerializing was done, the fiery sphere of the Keeper swelled outward and swept up the incline, consuming every remaining atom that had once been Johnny Winger.

  Now, only the memory field remained. The Doc III swarm compressed the field and hid it in a small file labeled ‘Configuration Buffer Status Check,’ adding a few extra bytes to a seemingly innocuous file, hoping that the Keeper would never notice the extra bytes.

  All that had once been Johnny Winger was now contained in this file.

  And Doc III knew that somehow, some way, this file would have to be maintained, if there was to be any chance of defeating the Keeper.

  Strong configuration fields tore and buffeted Doc III as it began to be fully absorbed into the greater swarm of the Keeper. Bonds and links were broken down, atoms were rearranged and new geometries were formed as new patterns and configs were quickly imposed.

  But Doc III knew a few tricks of his own.