“Even if they do, you’re not killing anyone.”
Vool sighed and then fell back into her chair with a reaction that mimicked the age level of Weez and his friends. “All this ‘not-killing people’ is tiresome.”
If it wasn’t solidified before, it sure as hell was now. There was no way Harr was going to trust this particular Overseer. Frankly, it was unlikely that he’d ever trust any of them.
THE W.A.R.P.E.D. BUILDING
The tram pulled out of the underground and came to a stop at street level, allowing the crew to avoid walking through another subterranean obstacle course.
Harr’s visual map showed that the W.A.R.P.E.D. building was the one with the reflective, green glass windows that sat directly ahead. Where the streets near the landing site were a bustle of activity, these streets were doubly so. Taking a different tact than before, he began walking just as purposefully through the crowd as everyone else did.
They got to the building with little fuss and pushed through the main doors like they owned the place. He walked past the guard desk with a quick wave to the man who was holding the post.
“Excuse me, sir,” the guard called out as Harr walked on by, “I need to see your badge.”
“Hmmm?”
“Your badge, please?”
“Oh, right,” Harr said, holding up the badge that Geezer had fastened for him. “The name is Dr., uh…”—he checked his badge— “…Zep Welder. My crew and I are here to do the final inspection on the warp technology before the big test.”
“The inspection team?” the guard said, sitting up straight. Obviously inspection teams pulled some weight on this planet. “Oh, well, I’ll contact Dr. DeKella straightaway. If you would please take a seat in the lobby over there, sir, I’ll have her down here to meet you as quickly as possible.”
Harr nodded before heading over to the plush leather chairs that sat off the main entrance. It was behind a glass enclosure that gave the crew a bit of privacy. Of course, it could have been bugged. He was going to check the armband that Geezer had made him a few weeks earlier, but he wasn’t sure how. It had all sorts of gadgets built in, one of which was supposedly a surveillance detector. He studied it for a few moments before turning to Ridly.
“Any listening devices in here?”
She paused for a moment and then shook her head. “It’s clear.”
“Okay,” he said to the team, “remember to let me do the talking.”
“You won’t be able to fool them,” Vool said with her disbelieving duck-faced look. “This would all be far simpler if we just…”
“Kill them?” Harr finished, looking at her in disbelief. “Yeah, I know. You’ve made your position clear. Saying it over and over again is not going to change my mind. We’re not killing anyone. Get that through your head already.”
“Unless we have to,” Vool said, not even looking slightly peeved.
“They’re not even paying attention to me,” said Jezden out of the blue. “It’s like I don’t even exist.”
Ridly groaned and rolled her eyes. “You’re worse than Vool, Jezden.”
“His name is Dr. Impotent, Ridly,” Harr said. “We have to stay in character here. No slip-ups.”
“You just called me Ridly,” she replied with a smirk. “It’s Dr. Baloo.”
“Damn,” Harr said. “This is going to be a challenge.”
Jezden sighed. “This is going to be a nightmare.”
Harr saw movement out near the guard. There she was, the woman who had been displayed on the Reluctant’s main screen talking about the warp technology. She was just as stunning in person. He rose to his feet as she walked into the room and reached her hand out in greeting.
“Hello,” she said nervously. “I’m Dr. Rella DeKella. Well, I mean, I’m sure you already knew that. You are the inspectors, right?” She let out an awkward laugh. Was she sweating? “I’m rambling already. I do that when I’m nervous.” Her face registered shock. “Not that I’m nervous. I don’t want you to think that I’m nervous. Even though I just told you that I ramble when I’m nervous, and I’m clearly rambling.” She stopped for a moment, spun away from them and whispered to herself just loudly enough for Harr to hear. “Get yourself together, Rella. This is the big time. Make it happen. Make it happen.” She took a deep breath, squared her shoulders, and turned back to Harr. “Let’s try that again, shall we?” Her voice was slightly calmer now. “As I said, I’m Dr. DeKella. May I ask who is in charge here?”
“Uh,” Harr said, feeling confused, “I thought you were.”
She laughed again and then caught herself. “Sorry. I mean who is in charge of your group?”
“Oh, that would be me,” Harr replied, “Captain Don Harr.”
“Sir?” Ridly said, knocking him in the arm.
“Idiot,” Vool announced with a smirk.
“Sorry,” DeKella said. “What was that again?”
Harr wanted to punch himself. “Uh, sorry, was just trying to lighten the mood with a joke. Obviously, it failed.”
“Oh, a joke? Haha! That’s great. Most inspectors are so uptight.” She appeared worried again. “Which is completely understandable. I mean, the work you do is very important. I wouldn’t want you to think…”
“It’s okay,” he said, trying to calm her before she began to hyperventilate. “My name is Dr. Zep Welder.”
“Nice to meet you, Dr. Welder,” she said while gathering herself together again.
Harr motioned toward Vool. “This is Dr. Grayle Piffer.”
“If you have made any mistakes,” Vool said, stepping forward, “we will find them.”
“Haha! You guys are great!”
“Actually,” Harr said, “she was being serious. Dr. Piffer has no sense of humor.”
“Oh,” DeKella said after a moment. “My apologies, Dr. Piffer. I thought—”
“No harm done,” Harr interrupted before she started to ramble again, even though he had to admit that he found that personality quirk just as attractive as the rest of her. “These are my other associates,” Harr said with a quick wave toward Ridly and Jezden, “Dr. Fleeka Baloo and Dr. Dangly N. Impotent.”
DeKella stepped over to Ridly and put out her hand. “Nice to meet you, Dr. Impotent.”
“No,” Ridly said, “I’m Dr. Baloo.”
“Ah, right.”
Jezden pushed himself to his feet. “I’m Impotent.”
“That’s too bad,” DeKella said with a look of sympathy. “I understand that there are plenty of medicines on the market that can help with that these days, you know. It’s nothing you have to live with.”
“See?” Jezden said, turning to Harr for a moment. “I told you it meant the same…” He grunted and bit his lip for a moment. “My name is Dr. Impotent. My sexual status is just fine, thank you very much.”
“Oh! I’m sorry. I’m just off my game at the moment. I meant no offense. There’s just so much going on with trying to get all the last-minute preparations squared away. Plus,” she said, “you have that incredibly tiny tail, so I just assumed…” She blanched again. “I’m sorry. I’m rambling again.”
“It’s okay,” Harr said with a genuine smile. “You can relax. We’re only here to make sure that things go the way they should. We’re not your enemy.”
“Really?” DeKella replied with a look of relief. “You mean that?”
“I do.”
“Thank goodness. The last set of inspectors that came through here tried to blow everything up. It was terrible.”
“Blow everything up?”
“Oh, you know what I mean,” she said. “They were taking every little problem and making it seem catastrophic.”
“Ah, yes,” said Harr with a nod. “Well, you know Quality Assurance people. There’s no gray with them…erm, us. We see things in black and white. Misspelling a word to us is just as bad as forgetting to connect a wire that will result in the destruction of a small city.”
“Exactly!”
“That’s why we were selected for our jobs, Dr. DeKella. If we are lax about things, what would be the point of assuring quality at all?”
“I suppose that makes sense,” she answered thoughtfully. “I’d never really considered your side of things before.”
“We get that a lot,” Harr said, remembering his first job in the Segnal Space Marine Corps. He was in charge of finding every single issue with a new computer component that the SSMC was using on remote detonators. He’d spent days poring over tests, documenting things to the tiniest detail, only to hand it in to his commanding officer to watch it get dropped in the trash. The officer then commanded that Harr write up a new report saying that everything was perfect. He had tried to argue, but after being threatened with a month of KP duty, he cleared the project. Two weeks later, eleven of the damn devices went off without provocation, causing damage to three ships and a large chunk of space rail. Harr ended up being blamed, costing him six months of KP duty. “Our job is to find issues,” he continued, “but many QA folks get snippy because the reports we slave over are often ignored. That’s why we tend to take things somewhat personally. The fact is that all we want is to ensure a product to be safe and free of issues.”
“Huh,” DeKella said with a tilt of her head, “I never really considered your group’s feelings, Dr. Welder.”
“Few do,” he replied as Dr. DeKella began twisting her hair around her finger. “So,” Harr said quickly, “where do we start?”
“Yes, right.” DeKella dropped her hand. “Just follow me and I’ll give you all a tour of our fine facility.”
THE MCCARTHY SNIP-N-TAPE
Dr. DeKella took them back outside. At first this seemed odd to Harr, but when she showed them the antenna arrays, the satellite dishes, the power grid connections, and the sludge runoff collectors, it all made sense. They were supposed to be inspectors, after all.
“Now we’ll just need to get your badges updated here at the front desk,” she said as they approached the guard who had stopped them earlier. “Mr. Ollap,” she said to the uniformed man, “could you please give them full access to the facility?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he replied as they handed over their badges. He typed away at a terminal and swiped the cards a few times, but there appeared to be a problem. “For some reason, I can’t get these badges to connect. That’s really strange. They’re supposed to be universal.”
Harr licked his lips. “Ah, yes,” he said, “those are from the new Inspector’s Line. We just got them last week. My boss said that there would probably be issues with those due to required software upgrades. You’d have thought that our group would QA our own badges, but production schedules ruled that possibility out. Typical. Anyway, you’ll probably have the new updates within a week or so.” By then, thought Harr, Platoon F would either be gone or the entire planet of Kallian would be.
“Got it,” the guard replied. “Happens to us all the time. A cutting-edge facility like this should be on the cusp of this sort of technology, but we’re always a couple of weeks behind.” He fished around the desk for a moment and pulled out a couple of black, thumb-sized objects, typed a few more times on the computer, and started handing them out. “Okay, these fobs will give you full access to the facility, 32/9.”
“32/9?” said Ridly.
“Thirty-two hours a day, nine days a week,” the guard said with a squint.
“Oh, right, of course,” Ridly said, shaking her head. “I’m already in mathematical mode. Thought you were using division…never mind.”
The guard smiled. “The only places you won’t have access to are the upper-levels where the executives and military personnel are stationed.”
“Military?” said Harr, looking at DeKella.
“It’s where the majority of our funding comes from, Dr. Welder,” she said, after she thanked the guard and began leading them toward a set of double-doors down the white hallway. “Having warp technology is a big deal to them. Interstellar travel gives them, well…” She stopped and just shrugged.
What it gave them, Harr knew, was a chance at space battle. Not all military personnel were battle-hungry, but it seemed that most military complexes were. Harr thought back to the numerous commanding officers he’d had over the years. More than one should never have risen in the ranks at all—Admiral Parfait came to mind. Most got to the top because they had no qualms about stepping on the heads of others. Of course that could be said about essentially any industry. Regardless, if the military was stationed in the building, he’d have to stay on his toes.
“Obviously they’d be interested, yes,” Harr said. “Makes total sense.”
“Yes,” said DeKella, touching her badge to the lock plate. A click and buzz sounded and she pushed on through. “Warp technology is still in its infancy, but if our test succeeds we’ll be one step closer to visiting distant galaxies.”
“Yes, I know how it is to…” Harr started and then caught himself. “I mean, who on Kallian doesn’t know about the famous warp test, right?”
“You’re right, of course!” DeKella stopped and looked at Harr. “I didn’t mean to sound patronizing.”
“No, you didn’t,” Harr said quickly. “I was just…I mean, I probably said the wrong…”
“It was clearly my doing,” DeKella said.
“No, really, I…”
“Maybe we should get to work?” Vool interrupted.
“Right,” Harr said with a sigh. “Sorry, Dr. Piffer is a stickler.”
“And you’re an asshole,” Vool stated.
“Wow,” DeKella said. “That was pretty direct.”
Harr was staring laser-beams at Vool, though she didn’t seem to care. “Don’t mind Dr. Piffer,” he said tightly, “she has issues with saying things aloud. Can’t be helped. Sometimes she even suggests to people that she has a desire to kill them. One can only assume it to be a medical condition of some sort.”
“Oh, I see,” DeKella said gently as she focused on Vool. “That’s very sad. Is there nothing that would help with your situation?”
“Killing you might help,” Vool suggested.
“See what I mean?” said Harr, grabbing DeKella by the elbow. “Maybe we should just move along. She only gets worse if you keep pressing the issue.”
DeKella glanced down at her elbow and then gave Harr an interested look. He immediately let go, feeling a fool. She smiled and then continued walking down the corridor.
“Right, well, this is the main floor for the W.A.R.P.E.D. building. As the guard had said, there are floors upstairs that we won’t be covering, but everything you’ll be interested in is on the lower levels anyway.” She motioned toward a number of pictures that hung on the wall. Each had names of doctors stenciled underneath. “We’ve been doing research on the current project for roughly twenty years here. These are the past heads of the project. This last one is me, obviously. I’ve been in charge here for five years now. That happened because I found the key to the Garvel Paradox.” She peered back over her shoulder. “I’m assuming you know about this paradox?”
“No,” Ridly chimed in before Harr could answer.
DeKella turned toward Ridly and seemed to glow.
“It’s quite fascinating,” she said excitedly. “Dr. Blathe Garvel, a renowned physicist, suggested that if we were to fold space and travel in an instant from one location to another, we would likely leave traces of ourselves on both sides. This would mean that we would never be fully present in either location, meaning that we would simultaneously perish in both locations. The famous example that he used was to take a fountain pen and draw a smiley face at the top of a piece of paper. Then, without waiting for the ink to dry, he folded the paper in two and rubbed it around a bit. When he unfolded it, there were two face-like smudges on each side. This, Dr. Garvel decided, proved his theory.”
“Ah,” said a confused-looking Ridly.
“That makes very little sense,” Vool stated with a grunt, “and it’s not even a paradox.�
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“That’s precisely what I thought,” DeKella replied with a nod. “You have to understand, though, that back in Dr. Garvel’s day, there weren’t many physicists, so people tended to believe just about anything they said. Anyway,” she continued, “after doing much research I stumbled upon another scientist of the day, a Dr. Paul McCarthy, who said that Dr. Garvel’s theory was complete idiocy. The problem was that Dr. McCarthy was a psychologist, not a physicist, so they discounted his ideas as being mental poppycock.” She giggled a little at this. “Well, it turns out that Dr. McCarthy’s ideas on the subject were fascinating. He showed that by using a ballpoint pen that has no smear qualities, and by placing a film of thin plastic over the page prior to bending it, one could fold the paper and smudge all they want with zero impact or trace elements.”
“Interesting,” Ridly said after a few moments, “but that doesn’t get the image from one side of the page to the other.”
“Well done, Dr. Baloo,” DeKella declared with a clap of her hands. “But, you see, Dr. McCarthy didn’t stop there. He decided that if the goal was to move the image from one folded half of the page to the other, all one would need to do is cut the image out and tape it to the other side.” She let that sink in. “It’s a brilliant solution to the problem. So much so that I ended up pushing for it to be recognized by the scientific community. After much convincing, my fellow physicists began to see the merit in Dr. McCarthy’s work. The theory was adopted, named the McCarthy Snip-n-Tape Equation, and an award was given to his descendants in his memory. Since I was the one who discovered this amazing work, and brought it to the next level, I was asked to run the warp test.”
Harr scanned the rest of the crew. Their faces all held the same gaze he was certain his face held: confusion.
“I don’t get it,” he said. “How does the McCarthy Cut-n-Paste…”
“Snip-n-Tape,” DeKella corrected.
“Right, sorry, so how does the McCarthy Snip-n-Tape, which was supposed to be used for folding space-time, play a role in warp technology?”
Platoon F: Quadology: Missions 6, 7, 8, and 9 (Platoon F eBook Bundle 2) Page 9