Red Star Sheriff

by Timothy Purvis

  “A what now?”

  “An ICC: Integrated Cognition Chip. Likely a proxyswath of some sort. If the interface panel isn’t operating, and we know the waverider is fully charged now, then there can only be an external means to operate it.”

  “Didn’t you say something like that before? I could’ve sworn you did.”

  “Maybe. But I wasn’t thinking about an ICC until now. What we’ll be looking for will be yea big,” he held up his hand and showed her a gap between his index finger and thumb that was no larger than an inch. “That long. Half as wide. Thin too. Maybe a few millimeters. Probably lined in a piece of clothing which is why we haven’t found anything.”

  “An article of clothing?” she furrowed her brows and leaned forward, hands clasping between her knees.

  “Yeah. Maybe a coat. Shirt. Pants even. Something that, when in close proximity to the unit, would permit the user interface to the subsystems. I would guess a helmet, but I haven’t seen any headgear… well, maybe your mom’s hats. That could be an option to look at too.”

  “Uhm, would you say a glove would work as well?”

  Durante was silent for a moment then nodded. “Yeah. Yes, that would work pretty well, I guess. A helmet or a circlet like my Infiltration HUD would be optimal, though.”

  “I haven’t seen anything like that save for my mom’s hats. Why would head-mounted be optimal?”

  “An ICC like a proxyswath would be able to interface directly with mental thought. Which would require a closer interaction with the brain. However, there are replacement limbs out there that act cognitively through nerve interaction, so there’s that…”

  “But you don’t think gloves more likely?”

  “I mean, it’s possible if the interaction is not necessarily via cognitive interface. I suppose if it were merely a proxyswath, then the connection could be motion based, I suppose. Why do you keep asking about gloves, anyhow?”

  Aidele leapt to her feet. “Come with me.”

  “Right now?” Durante stared at her. “I still haven’t finished breakfast…”

  She looked at him aghast. “Seriously? What would you be missing?”

  He looked down at his tray of offered up sufferings and thought it over for a moment. Then stood up shaking his head. “Yeah. Doesn’t really provide a whole lot in the appetizing department, does it?”

  Aidele scoffed and started walking. “Dog food would be more appetizing.”

  He followed after her as they made their way to her parents’ bedroom. “Well, that depends on the dogfood. Some can actually be quite good. Especially some of the stuffed biscuits.”

  Aidele came to a sudden stop and he almost ran into her. She brought a hand to her forehead. “Are you actually telling me you’ve eaten dogfood?”

  Durante shrugged. “I was a very curious child.”

  After a moment she raised her hands in disgust. “Ew. Just ew!”

  “Oh, come on now. It wasn’t that bad.”

  “I don’t want to hear about it! You can keep those recipes to yourself!”

  They continued onward and crossed into the bedroom towards her mother’s dresser. Once there, Aidele knelt down and activated the bottom drawer. It slid open with a subtle whoosh revealing the deluge of gloves she’d seen before. Durante stared at it in stunned silence.

  “I was rummaging through all of this and found these. I just thought my parents had some sort of glove fetish.” She looked up to him. “However, you saying that… ICC or proxywhosit, was it? You said it was in clothing and I immediately thought of all these gloves.”

  Durante knelt down beside her. “That’s a lot of gloves. I still think it would be more reasonable to have the proxyswath in a head display. However, if the professor was pressed for time and had limited resources, the physical variation of the proxyswath would be more than a serviceable ICC to utilize. So, sure, what have we got to lose?”

  She let her eyes narrow only slightly, but not out of anger. “Time, for one thing. However, I’m willing to place my bets on that proxyswath being in one of these gloves. I mean, why else have them all? Spirits… I hope it’s in one of these. Elsewise… shit.”

  “Then, let’s take them down to the garage and give it a shot. Uhm, got a box? Or something? Or do you want to pull the whole drawer out to carry it down?”

  “Oh!” Aidele snapped her fingers and leapt to her feet to rush to the closet. There, she dumped a box full of shoes and hurried back. “Think this will be large enough?”

  “Hope so, given the bulk of it all…”

  She chuckled as they started dumping the gloves by the handful into the box.

  “So, if this isn’t your standard proxyswath, and it operates through cognitive interface, and supposing we actually find it sewn into one of these gloves, how mental do you think the interface will have to be?”

  “Well, sewing a proxyswath into a glove might qualify as mental to some folk, but I’ve always admired your father’s intellect.” He saw her leaning back glaring at him. “For fuck’s sake, can’t you take a joke?”

  A smile creased her lips as she struggled to contain it. “No.”

  He sighed and shook his head. “To answer your question, if it is a cognitive interface, then it will respond to your unspoken commands through simple focused thoughts of—” he stopped and leaned back, his eyes focused on nothing in particular. “Yes… of course. It wouldn’t be a cognitive interface after all…”

  “It wouldn’t?” She eyed him carefully waiting for him to continue.

  “No. It is a physical connection. Because if your mother was a Red Star Sheriff, then that means when she was, or would have been, flying it, her thoughts would be on whatever her mission was, and not on thinking commands to some computer… No, this proxyswath is a variation of the ICC designed for simple, quick processes. Which implies that the interface panel, that I suspect will project, will have simple selection menus as well. My God! This is exciting!”

  “Glad to hear it. Alright, let’s test your theory out and see what we find.” She grabbed the box and stood up. Durante followed her out the door and to the garage.

  ONCE IN THE garage, they put the box down on the floor near the waverider and began sorting through the gloves.

  “It’ll have to be thick then, right?”

  Durante looked over to her from where he sat on his knees, his legs drawn under him Seiza style. “Not real thick, I shouldn’t think. But not too thin either. This pair of silk wouldn’t have enough material to cover a proxyswath. So, anything like this, toss to the side. It’ll have to be just thick enough for the sewing in of the chip itself.”

  “Gotcha. So, suede, leather… would cotton do it?”

  “I’m not sure it’d be sturdy enough. But put them into one pile just in case. Let’s focus on firmer glove makes for now.” Durante said putting a thin pair of gloves aside.

  “Okay.”

  For ten minutes they sorted the gloves into three different piles: No, maybe, and likely. The ‘likely’ pile ended up being comprised of fancy, though quite sturdy, styles. All were relatively work-related gloves. The fancier ones were more regal designs, but still very solid in their construction. The ‘no’ pile made up the type of gloves Durante just couldn’t imagine Mirra wearing, what with some of them netted and frilly.

  “My god, your parents had a lot of gloves…”

  “Tell me about it…”

  Finally, all the gloves had been sorted and the ‘no’ pile tossed back into the box. Durante stood up having grabbed a pair from the likely pile. “Alright, let’s get to testing.”

  “Do you think we need to be wearing them to make it work?”

  Durante paused and chewed on his lip. “That’s a good question. Better to put them on first, I guess. Just in case the proxyswath requires a direct nerve interaction. Probably not, but I have heard of certain designs not functioning until it detects a heartbeat.”

  “Well, that’s interesting,” Aidele said grabbing another
pair and standing up to pull them on. This pair was a little loose and she figured likely her father’s. She walked over to the vehicle and stood there. “So, uhm, what do I do?”

  Durante walked over. “Try the control panel hub. The hump at the base of the handlebars. This hulking son-of-a-bitch right here. Just wave your hands over it.”

  Aidele did as he instructed but nothing happened. She started walking along the waverider waving her hands across every surface she came to. “Will something just… appear? What are we looking for?”

  Durante had pulled on the pair he had and was waving too. “I would think a projection of some sort.”

  “What if that’s not how it works?”

  “Just keep waving. We’ll deal with that if we have no success.”

  “I suppose.” She pulled off the gloves, went towards the piles of gloves, and started a ‘tested’ pile.

  They spent the next half-hour testing the two piles. After a while, they sat down to take a break and stared at what they’d already gone through and what they had left. They’d gone back and forth between ‘maybe’ and ‘likely’. Durante sighed.

  “Holy fuck…” he grumbled, “we’ve only gone through half the stock.”

  Aidele shook her head. “What if we’re doing it wrong? What if it isn’t even the gloves?”

  “It has to be direct interface. I haven’t seen any indication it’d be cognitive. So, stop second-guessing yourself, alright. I think you were right to check the gloves first. Besides, if it isn’t one of these pair, then we’ll go through all of the clothes. Vests, shirts, pants, hats, jackets, dusters, kerchiefs, socks, boots, shoes, knickers, and underwear. Hell, even the atmosuits if we have to.”

  “And if it’s none of those?” The tone of her voice was one of deep frustration. Eagerness to get going to the city, in fact, he figured.

  “Let’s not worry about ‘what ifs’, right now,” he waved his hand through the air. “Let’s focus on the current endeavor. If we get to exhausting all of our options, then we’ll hit the kitchen, grab a drink, and piss and moan about it until we’re blue in the face and red in the ass. However, we’re not there yet.”

  Aidele clapped her palms on the top of her thighs and nodded with a renewed determined look. “You’re right. Let’s get to it then.”

  He agreed and put on another pair of gloves. Roughly twenty minutes later, with both piles nearly gone through, Durante stood above the waverider control panel staring at a display hovering in the air just above the handlebars. It showed a variety of readouts and icons related to the vehicle’s operations. His hand hovered over the projections as he brought his left hand up. He was satisfied to discover that both gloves operated the display interactions.

  “Finally…” he muttered.

  “About fucking time,” Aidele exhaled and smiled. “So, these icons, what, shift with hand movements? I saw those two exchange positions when you waved over them.”

  “I would say so, yes. Whichever hand is free from moment to moment can interact with all the functions. Whichever function is currently being addressed, comes forward to replace the previous icon shifting it off to the side or a corner while still indicating its operational capacities.”

  Durante looked at the gloves on his hands. They were tan and fit fairly snugly. Obviously designed for Mirra, he figured, which meant they would likely fit Aidele perfectly. Aidele, meanwhile, was staring at the gloves too. As Durante sampled the interface icons on the hovering screen, she noticed rectangular nodes on the knuckles at the very center of the glove backs. They were noticeable as they had started glowing the very second he interfaced with the subsystems on the waverider. The node in the center had little wiry lines running to each knuckle that were glowing a soldering red just beneath the surface.

  “Just like everything else, Aidele. These were your mom’s.”

  “I know it…” she said after a quiet reflection. “I guess we shouldn’t be surprised. You know, we should have thought of that.”

  “What?”

  His eyes found hers as she tilted her head subtly. “Women’s gloves. It should have been our first thought. It would have spared us a good half-hour. Because we know that all of this was for mom.

  Durante lowered his hands to his sides and stared at her with a great deal of sympathy. “Aidele… they’ll be chasing us regardless of how much time it takes us.”

  “We’re running out of time, though,” her face looked sullen, “I can feel it and have no doubt they’re closing in even as we speak. Please, is the core in this or not? We have got to get moving before it’s too late.”

  He nodded. “Let me check. These should access any enclosure harboring the core. Let’s see…”

  He went about hovering his left hand over the hull looking for any interface panel outside of the main control interface. It took less than thirty seconds to find it at the rear. A panel slid into the hull on the lower cone of the back section and they knelt down. Inside, they saw a glowing blue ball of energy humming contentedly from where it was housed in a titanium casing. It looked like the whole thing could slide outward. He tapped an icon on a display screen hovering beside the left side of the vehicle’s butt and the whole unit slid out on a skeletal rack. The tray itself was three feet long and two feet wide making the energy core itself roughly one-and-a-half-feet at its circumference. The whole thing thrummed with power, low and persistent. A buzz in the back of the mind. Several thick cables connected the tray to the thick wall of plating just behind the blue ball.

  Durante smiled and turned to look at Aidele. Then he couldn’t stop the laugh wracking his body. She wore a forced frown on her face and was trying very hard not to smile. Her hair flowed upward and out. Durante’s short hair was less impressive but doing quite the same thing. It was as if they were touching a Tesla Coil and all the static was driving their hair away from their bodies. Only they both knew it wasn’t static and they could feel the low-level gravitational force pushing outward, as if being turned off made it a negative force.

  “Our hair… is trying to escape our heads,” she said looking very much like the Bride of Frankenstein. “It feels like my hair is being softly yanked back. And my face feels funny. Like it’s being buffeted by sonic waves.”

  “Yeah. It’s… well, unexpected.” Durante rubbed a hand across his chin. “It’s exuding a negative polarity in its resting state. Not one that you can feel when it’s rested in its cradle, of course. It’s like the designs. But so much more advanced. I wish he’d left a manual around somewhere. Would’ve been helpful in figuring out how it functions.”

  Aidele shook her head. “If it’s giving off a negative force, how could anyone ride it? Wouldn’t they get pushed off the second they turned it on?”

  “I don’t think so. I’m guessing this resting state prevents whatever process that is engaged from tearing apart the core due to planetary gravitational fields. But, without the details at hand, I can only speculate.”

  “Can I try those gloves on? Show me how to close this.” Aidele said as Durante peeled the gloves off. He noted the display still hovering in the air.

  “Hold on a sec,” he said stepping up and away. Aidele stood with him. The gloves he held a foot away and the display vanished, but the core’s enclosure remained open. “Okay. So, mystery solved on that. You don’t need to be wearing the gloves to initiate the subsystems.”

  “Yet, it would probably be easier,” she replied taking the gloves from him and pulling them on.

  “You’re probably right. Okay, see this icon here that just popped up? Just tap it.”

  She tapped on the reappeared display an icon that looked like a horseshoe surrounding a ring and the sphere slid back within and the panel closed. The second the panel swished shut, their hair returned to normal.

  “Okay. Now, show me how to ride this thing.”

  Durante was taken aback. “Show you how…? Aidele, I know just about as much about this damn thing as you do!”

  “You’r
e quick on your feet. Come on. I’ll drive, you take the rear.” She walked around to the driver’s seat and mounted up. Durante stood for a moment in shock.

  “I thought we’d just be taking the core? Not trying to… fly this thing!?”

  “Quit yer fussin’ an’ hop on up! Sheesh!”

  Durante frowned. “Alright. But nothing crazy. Just get a feel for it.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hurry up.”

  As Durante took his seat, Aidele waved her hands to bring up the projection. The waverider wasn’t Mesmerize, she reflected sourly, but at least it was comfortable. The waverider shifted subtly as Durante adjusted himself in the seat. He could see over her head and got a good view of the crystal-clear control panel. An icon displayed the resting craft on its charge station with a curved bar projected around it.

  “That must be the waverider’s charge. Damn. Looks like it has an operational term of two-hundred hours. That’s really good for a craft this size.”

  “And this?” Aidele pointed to an icon projecting a circle of lines in varying colors and degrees.

  “Looks like some sort of altimeter. Probably has vector displays too. Gives an overlay of geographical features, I’d imagine.”

  “Alright. We’re getting somewhere. See, you’re a useful mammal, after all.”

  “Ha ha. It’s only because these are the most basic instrumentation interfaces you’d find in any shuttle. That there,” he pointed towards a visual icon to Aidele’s far left. It was a blue sphere in an outlined cube. “I have no idea what that could be.”

  “Well. let’s turn this nelly on and see what does what.”

  “With caution, please. I don’t want to die in a garage suicide run because someone got accelerator happy.”

  “Spoil sport.”

  “Better that than a wall pastry,” Durante grumbled looking at the displays. He couldn’t see an ignition switch but did see an icon on the far right that was full of vehicle diagnostics. He held a finger up towards the display. “Bring that up.”

  Aidele swiped her finger over it and the details grew slightly larger. He read a line reading ‘Plasmic Output’.