by J J Perry
“Hold it right there,” Aulaaona said. “I’m comparing this to some diagrams. It’ll take me a minute.”
“It looks like you are hard at work,” Porliche said.
“Aye, that we are.” Quan spoke with a raspy voice, poorly attempting an accent. He rubbed his arms and shivered from the cold.
“Have you found anything of interest so far?” she asked.
“Not so far. The madam is keeping the pace real slow,” Sparky said. “She needs to check with the Czar every time we want to turn a screw.”
“Is there anything we can do?” she asked.
“Not unless you can light a fire under the guard,” Sparky said. “Or just light a fire. It’s friggin’ freezing down here.”
“You have a translator, right?” Quan asked.
“Yeah.”
“I don’t see anything that looks like a storage device, although it’s hard to be certain,” Aulaaona said. “Can we look at every circuit board?”
NG 7 replied, “You now have permission, but your allotted time for today expires in 4.2 minutes.”
“Then replace this board and show me the one to the left,” Aulaaona directed.
“I want to scan this plate on the back,” Quan said to Porliche. “I have no idea what it means, but it probably has information about the power requirements. Tomorrow we’ll try to power this baby up.”
While the robot was doing as requested, Sparky started stringing some yellow tape around the site, leaving the exits free. Five minutes later everyone was gone, and the area was cordoned off from the cleaning crew, if one existed. The dust on the floor suggested no. Most of their equipment was left in place for a fast start the next morning.
Quan walked close to Porliche. “Did you find any interesting documents?”
“I found a few that I don’t have. It took most of the day to work through the red tape and then locate a server where the documents are likely to be. Just as I started to find stuff, we were locked out.”
“I’d like to have you translate the plate I scanned tonight, if that is OK.”
“Sure. Beam it to me. I’ll have it for you in the morning.”
“I’d like to be there when you look at it,” he said, looking at her as they exited the tunnel. “It’s not a document and will probably have technical abbreviations and code numbers.”
“We’ll look at it when we get to the lodge.”
“Over a glass of wine,” he suggested with a slight and hopeful smile. She did not return his look.
“Sure. Sounds good.”
“Am I invited?” Nin asked.
“The more the merrier,” Porliche responded before Quan could find an excuse to the contrary. “I think I’m going to skip the van and walk back.”
“I’ll join you,” Nin said. “I need the exercise after a day like this.”
Only Sparks rode the van. When they arrived half an hour later, he was waiting in the outdoor section of the lounge, a half glass of clear vodka and ice in his hand and a crumply brown cigarette dangling from his lips. He was still wearing a jacket in anticipation of the evening chill. The three walkers went inside behind a large glass window facing a mountain range. They ordered wine, red for Nin and Quan and white for Porliche. The image from the back of the machine was sent to the handheld translator and rescanned. Voltage, hertz, and amperage settings were found within a couple of minutes with a little technical help from Quan.
He had seated himself next to Porliche and had oriented himself close, very close to her as they examined the translation on her screen. His round head with big lips, round nose, and a sparse black mustache between the two kept appearing close to her face. “Let me see what you look like without those glasses,” he said.
She looked at him, deciding whether to comply. She did, looking at him with her chin pulled down, face tilted downward, and looking at him from under her eyebrows. He placed a hand on her chin and lifted it up, turning her face left and right. She pulled back and replaced her glasses.
“You are pretty,” he said.
“I am pretty disinterested, Quan,” she responded flatly, “and my looks are irrelevant with or without glasses.”
“It seems like a guy like you would have a girlfriend, Quan,” Nin interjected.
“I am,” he responded hesitantly, looking away from Porliche, between relationships.
“Yeah, between his mother and his hamster,” said Sparks. Porliche laughed.
“Tell me about your last relationship,” Nin requested.
Quan looked down, apparently thinking. “It’s complicated,” he finally said.
“Earlier today I believe the young man said he is a virgin,” Sparks said.
Quan said nothing. “If true, that can be fixed,” Nin said. “Is it true, Quan?” She placed her hand on his arm, stroking it gently.
Porliche rolled her eyes and looked away with a disgusted sigh. Quan kept his head down. His short, black hair made him look like fuzzy toy bear. “Of course not.”
“Yeah, right.” Sparky laughed.
“Are you a skilled lover?” Nin asked.
“Oh, come on, Nin. Just leave it alone,” Porliche objected.
“Well, I guess not.”
“Have you seen anyone in France you would like to sleep with?”
“Maybe.”
“I need another smoke,” Sparky said as he left.
“Let’s you and I go work some of your social skills, while Sparky gets stoned and Porliche calls Yucatan,” Nin said, pulling Quan to his feet. Clearly with mixed feelings, he was towed off. Porliche sat nursing her Gewürztraminer, watching curvaceous hips sway beneath a very short and tight tube dress and disappear around a corner, a reticent engineer behind Nin.
15.2
A little after noon, Porliche came to the Bunker. The day was warmer; the walk was pleasant with the sounds of birds and squirrels echoing in the forest. Sparky and Quan were arguing with the NG 7. They had looked at all the circuit boards by ten o’clock. “I’m glad you’re here,” Sparky said. “Do you have your authorization document?”
“It’s right here,” she said, pulling out her handheld. “What’s the problem?”
“She, the robot, is refusing to allow us to power up the box. That is specifically authorized, right?”
“Yes.” Porliche offered the handheld to the robot.
“The committee has constricted its previous scope of permissions,” it verbalized. “Your current authorization needs to be updated. Please see the curator.”
“Are we permitted to power up any of the other boxes?” Porliche inquired.
After several repetitions of “Accessing,” the computer announced, “You may power up any machine in this room except number 23.”
“OK, I’m going to see the supervisor,” Porliche said. “Why don’t you power up number 22 and make sure that your settings are appropriate and nondestructive? That will help with our negotiations.”
“Where’s Nin?” Quan asked.
“She is at the spa,” she said as she turned and walked away. Over her shoulder, she called out as she exited, “I’m guessing you two wore her out last night.”
In the office, she found the supervisor was at lunch but would be back in twenty minutes. Porliche had not spent any time in the museum, so she wandered around, killing time, looking at exhibits with a few elderly tourists who spoke a language she didn’t understand. There was a large display showing a series of maps depicting how the glaciers grew and receded. There was a different collection showing the political changes of the region over recorded time. She learned that the lodge and the site were not originally in France but in a place named Switzerland. There was a display of a life-sized human from the era of the REAP missions. It was a giant of a man, almost two meters tall with large ears and a barren neck. His skin was remarkably pale despite dar
k-brown hair. He wore a one-piece blue-and-gray cloth uniform with a fabric tool belt and a communicator.
Another room was filled with technology artifacts. It contained relics from the centuries before the missions. There was an abacus, a slide rule, and a screwy-looking keyboard with Latin characters on the keys with a small wire leading to a rectangular box. There was a small display about how memory grew and devices became smaller. There was a thumb-width, thin, and flexible memory card that held ten gigabytes of information. She studied it for a minute and returned to the mannequin in uniform. There were a couple of these memory cards barely visible in the pocket of the tool belt.
She went back to the tech room. She saw a tiny slit, almost invisible, in a couple of the computers, one of which contained a wafer memory card, the tip visible protruding slightly from the surface.
She returned to the office. Supervisor Suzette had just returned.
“Do you have a minute?” Porliche asked.
“Give me five minutes and then we can talk” was her reply.
Porliche killed ten minutes in the museum, finding several more of the memory wafers until Suzette found a free moment to speak. After her terse greeting, Porliche started. “The robot indicated that our scope of work has been changed with some limitation on providing power to the electron storage box 23. What can you tell me about that?”
“Our paleoengineer is afraid that even the correct electrical settings could damage the equipment.”
“What if we powered up a different box, one that belongs to a known failed mission, and see what happens?
“I don’t know. Let me ask.” She tapped two buttons on a small lapel pin that had appeared to be an emblem of the project. She spoke a routing code, and, soon, a male voice with surprising range and clarity came across in Atlantican.
“This is Palf.” Porliche was not sure what he had said.
“This is Suzette,” she announced in Universal. “Our university visitors want to power up a failed mission box to confirm their electrical settings are safe. What do you think?”
“It’s not a bad idea. The ministry has major issues with it, as I’m sure you know. What are the settings?”
Porliche looked at her handheld. “Two hundred thirty volts and fifty hertz.”
“Where did you get those settings?” the voice asked hesitantly.
“They are printed on the back of the machines,” Porliche responded.
“How did you translate that?”
“I scanned it and put it into my translator. Then my engineering guys figured it out.”
There was a pause. “I’ll be over in forty minutes,” the voice said. “Don’t do anything until I get there.”
“It sounds like you are making progress,” Suzette said with a warm smile.
“Not much. The guard prevents the technical crew every time they want to look at something new. This is not what I expected.”
“These are priceless artifacts, incredibly old and fragile. We would be remiss if we allowed anyone to damage them in any way.”
“I have another question for you. Would you mind if we used one of the artifacts from the museum?”
“What artifact?”
“Come with me and I’ll show you. There are several of them on display. Maybe you have others in storage.”
Porliche showed her the memory wafer. They then went through another door marked Staff Only. This opened up into a warehouse of glass-protected shelves filled with tens of thousands of items categorized by alphanumeric labels. Suzette went to a screen, and, soon, an array of pictures of a dozen little gadgets appeared. “Do you see what you want?”
“Not on this page.” Another display appeared, and Porliche pointed at the object she sought. Suzette tapped the image, and alphanumerics appeared. She tapped the code, and a string of tiny lights appeared imbedded in the floor. They followed the trail and opened the glass doors to find a box of dozens of the devices. “May I take three?”
Suzette hesitated for a moment.
“It looks like you have a lot of them, plenty to spare.”
“I should check with the ministry first.”
“How long will that take?”
“You know what, I don’t even know what they’re called. Go ahead. I’ll just need to scan their catalog numbers and send the information on. If they have a gripe, they’ll let me know. And the guard will confiscate them.”
Porliche waited by wandering around the museum. About thirty minutes later, a handsome man with luxurious long, white hair and a sparse mane wearing a skintight royal-blue-and-gray uni-suit cut deep in front walked into Suzette’s office. The suit fit individually around each of his toes and formed a padded and silent underfoot. His arms were bare from mid forearm down. Porliche pulled her eyes up from his genital region, the suit providing a custom fit to a generous and arguably augmented man. “Hi. I’m Palf, the engineer.” He carried a small bright-pink pack slung over one shoulder.
“I’m Porliche.” They shook hands.
15.3
They found Sparky and Quan sitting on the ground, backs against the wall, facing the box in bay 22. Madam Antoinette was between them and the machine. Their power transformer was lit, and a cord snaked to the back of 22. After curt introductions, Palf looked at the settings. He then looked at the scanned image of the plate on the back and at the translation. “That’s pretty good,” he said at length. “I would use 220 volts instead of 230. Most of the time, the voltage supplied was a bit lower than the label to avoid damage from minor upward variations.”
Sparky made the change, while Quan got Aulaaona on screen. Without waiting, Quan flipped the switch, and, within twenty seconds, the machine’s LED lights came on. “Let the power run for an hour or so, just to see of something heats up.”
In the adjacent bay, Porliche was going over the machine in 23 thoroughly. She found a series of five otherwise unnoticeable small slits on the left side of the machine a little below her waist level and toward the back. These appeared to be the size that would fit the wafer. She removed one from her pocket and tried to put it in. The first slit she tried would not allow it in. It fit nicely into all the other slots.
She left the bay and rejoined the group. The machine that now had power had an almost undetectable low hum. Several of the LED lights did not function. She held up one of the wafers in front of Aulaaona’s camera and Palf and asked, “Does anyone know what this is?”
“Memory chip of that era,” said Palf without hesitation.
“Sounds reasonable,” said Aulaaona.
“What is the chance that the activity of these machines could be loaded onto one of these chips?” she asked.
“I have no idea,” said Palf.
“Same here,” Aulaaona said. “Do you know if it fits into the machine?”
“It does,” she said. All eyes went to her. “Around on the left side toward the back.”
Palf took the chip and squeezed into the narrow space. He placed the end with tiny gold teeth into the slot. The chip disappeared. The slot began to glow in a regular slow, pulsating rhythm.
“A message has appeared on the front of the box,” Quan almost yelled in excitement. “‘D-A-T-A space T-X-F-R.’ What does it mean?”
Porliche scanned it and engaged the translator as everyone else looked on.
“That is very sweet,” he said. “Where do you get those?”
The LED lights went off. The translator said, “Data followed by an unknown letter sequence, probably an abbreviation.” It then displayed a short list of options.
Almost simultaneously, everyone picked the same word and spoke it aloud: “Transfer.”
“Data transfer. I bet it shows what the machine was doing or receiving,” said Aulaaona.
“We may never know unless we find a way of getting the data from the chip into a machine we can use,” sai
d Sparky.
“I can do that,” said Palf. “We have done it on other chips.”
As he stepped to the side of the box to retrieve the memory chip, Nin walked in wearing a new outfit. It was pure white and skintight as usual. It plunged deep in front to just below her navel. It plunged even deeper in the back, held together with tiny gold cords. It had pant legs solid down to the thighs and then cross-hatched down to her feet with increasing spaces as it ended in very scant sandals. Her hair had been recoiffed. Her sweet and bitter scent preceded her. She said nothing, trying to discern what was happening.
“When can we power up 23?” Porliche asked.
“Ministry will not permit it,” Palf said. “I wonder how we retrieve the card.” After fifteen minutes of random efforts, Sparky placed a finger below the slit and a thumb above. The chip ejected.
He handed it to Palfrey, who held the chip up into the light. “Very nice. I’ll be back at about two thirty. Hopefully, I can get permission from the bureaucrats by then. Quan, why don’t you come with me?” he said, pointing. “We can see if there is anything readable on this thing.” Quan and Palf left, Palf walking dangerously close to Nin as he walked to the exit.
When they were gone, Nin exhaled. “Oh my god. What an Adonis! Who is he?”
“He is Palf, the paleoengineer that is affiliated with the site,” said Porliche.
“Palf? Do you know what palf means in Australian? It means ‘vomit.’ How could someone so absolutely gorgeous be named vomit? I have got to change his name. Oh my god!”
An hour later, everyone was back in the Bunker. “We could not get a readout from the chip,” Quan said, “but we think we’ll be able to eventually.” Quan and Palfrey nodded to Sparks. He disconnected power to box 22 and pulled the power cable to 23.
“Permission has not been granted,” Antoinette intoned.
“I spoke with an undersecretary a few minutes ago,” Palfrey said.
“A bloke named Schmuthren,” Quan added.
“Quite right,” Palfrey said. “He said we could power it up as long as I was in charge and guaranteed the integrity of the artifact and the safety of the operation.”