Super: Origins

by Palladian

  “Are you OK here?” she asked, her expression serious.

  “Yeah, I'll be fine. And thanks, Casey. Breakfast was really good.”

  Casey smiled in return and left. When the medical people returned a few minutes later, Lex reviewed the schedule they’d planned for her and negotiated with them. Instead of two full days of tests, she managed to change it to four half-days staggered in the mornings and afternoons on weekdays. She also got them to agree that she didn't have to sleep on the medical floor and that she could have her IV removed that afternoon, as long she could hold down food until then. Before the tests started for the morning, however, Lex also made them agree to give her a short time to go to the martial arts studio to talk to Mr. Chen.

  She made her way down the stairs, clutching the cold metal pole and cursing the IV the whole way down, annoyed that she hadn’t been able to argue the doctors out of any of the tests they’d proposed. Fortunately, the IV pole rolled, so she’d at least been able to walk normally when she got to the right floor. Lex found her pace slowing as she approached the studio, her stomach flopping over, but she shook herself and forced her feet to walk in. She felt glad to see that he’d shown up that day, standing barefoot in the middle of the wooden floor, and she nodded to him.

  “Mr. Chen,” she said nervously, trying not to stumble over her words, “I wanted to apologize for running off on you yesterday-”

  “There is no need,” he replied quickly, shaking his head, “I think I understand. You were having an off day, and I pushed you too hard. It seems it reminded you of your father.”

  “What?” Lex asked, her mouth falling open. Maybe he actually does understand, she thought to herself.

  He sighed. “Many years ago, when I was a young and foolish man still living in China, I fought in a war. I got captured several months after I became a soldier and was put into a prison camp. Fortunately for me, the whole conflict had gotten caught up with World War II, and it was right around the time the war ended, so I only stayed in prison a couple of months. Some of the men with me had not been so lucky and had been there for years.

  “The day the Allies came to break the prison camp up and send us home there was a lot of shouting and shoving. I remember the man I shared a cell with freezing up at one point, and I had to drag him to the trucks they drove us out on. He came back to himself some time later and eventually told me that all the yelling and pushing had taken his mind back to one of the experiences he'd had in the prison camp, and it got stuck there. The look you had on your face the other day reminded me a lot of his expression that day, and also the way you both froze and couldn’t seem to hear or see me.”

  Lex looked down at her feet and felt her eyes start to prickle. “I'm really sorry.”

  “Please don't apologize,” Mr. Chen said in a gentle tone. “You have nothing to be sorry for. I notice you have an IV, however. Did you fall ill?”

  Lex glared at her IV pole, then looked back at Mr. Chen. “Yes, I had a huge migraine that came on very quickly after I left here. It was so painful that I passed out, which is odd, because that’s never happened to me before.”

  Mr. Chen made a thoughtful noise then, looking at her with concern.

  Lex shrugged. “I've talked to the doctors, though, and they want to run a whole bunch of tests, so I asked them to cut it into half days. So, can we work together this afternoon? Tomorrow it would be in the morning, and it would alternate for the rest of the week. Is that OK for you?”

  Mr. Chen looked at her with a raised eyebrow. “Are you actually ready for this, or are you rushing?”

  “I feel just like I always have after any other migraine,” she replied with a sigh. “I slept a lot yesterday, and I was hungry when I woke up, but I feel fine now. Actually, they say keeping up with the same level of physical activity you're used to is a good way to prevent migraines.” She smiled at him hopefully as he gazed at her with serious eyes.

  “And the doctors agreed with you about all of this?” Mr. Chen asked, looking dubious.

  “Yes, but it took a little argument on my part. I'll have the IV off by this afternoon, so don't worry about that, either.”

  He sighed then, glancing at her sternly and shaking his head. “All right, Lex, but please relax and rest when we're not working together for at least the next few weeks. You also must promise me that in the future if you're not feeling well you'll tell me.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Chen. I promise I will.” She grinned and nodded at him as she rolled out of the room, then slowly made her way up to the medical floor, staring at the IV pole while carrying it up each step. Lex couldn't decide whether going up or down had been worse.

  When she got back the tests commenced in earnest. She spent part of the morning in a CAT scan tube, but didn't remember most of it, aside from the vague sound of banging on pipes somewhere in the distance, since she'd fallen asleep partway through the test. The rest of the time had been spent with a large number of electrodes pasted to her scalp as they looked at the electrical activity in her brain. Lex had tried to cooperate, but she had gotten bored partway through and had mostly spent the time trying to watch the needles move on the sheets of paper as they measured her brainwaves and trying not to itch her gluey scalp. She felt almost giddy once lunchtime rolled around and they took the electrodes off and the IV out as promised.

  Lex was feeling much more human after a shower and lunch with Casey, and she walked quickly through the door to the martial arts studio, greeting Mr. Chen with a smile. They worked through some new forms that afternoon, and Lex had started to get a feel for them. When she realized after a couple of hours that she was tired, she told Mr. Chen as promised, even though she could hear her father’s voice somewhere in her mind calling her a slacker.

  Mr. Chen, however, nodded to her with a smile on his face. “Please take the rest of the afternoon and relax, Lex. You did a good job today, especially considering everything that happened yesterday.”

  Lex smiled and nodded gratefully at him. “Thanks, Mr. Chen. I think I'll take a bath and then maybe a nap.”

  As she eased herself into the hot tub sometime later, Lex sighed. She closed her eyes and tried to let the bubbles and hot water lift away all of the leftover tension from the events of the previous day. After twenty minutes or so, Lex felt relaxed to the point of near bonelessness and had begun to think about getting out when she heard crackling from a speaker she noticed overhead.

  “Lex, I'm sorry to catch you in the hot tub, but I wanted to talk to you about something. Do you have some time?”

  Lex stared at the speaker for a moment, processing the slightly computer-flattened voice, and then frowned a little. “Riss? Is that you?”

  “Yes.”

  Lex considered the request for a second before responding. “Yes, I have some time right now, but I can't talk for too long because I need to get some other things done this afternoon. Will that work for you?”

  “Sure, that's fine. I'll be in my room when you're ready.”

  Lex sighed deeply as she pulled herself out of the warm water and worried as she dressed that maybe she was being a little silly, but finally just shrugged. She knew it was important for her to keep her word to Mr. Chen, plus she’d started to feel like she wanted a nap anyway, so maybe it made sense to keep her talk with Riss short.

  When she got to the head of the stairs, she paused to consider the brief orientation Casey had given her when she'd arrived. She thought she remembered that Riss' room stood across the hall from the conference room where she’d been interviewed, so Lex walked up to that door and knocked.

  “Come in,” Lex heard, the sound muffled due to barriers and distance.

  She went inside and took a moment to adjust from the afternoon light that had been pouring in through the window at the end of the hall to the dim lighting of the room. She saw no lamps; all the light came from a number of computer monitors throughout the room, several of them displaying windows with information or pure computer code, and a few
with moving screen savers.

  “Can you close the door?” asked a low, confident female voice. Lex noted no accent that she could pick out (unlike Casey’s slight Midwestern twang) and smiled, realizing that made it likely that Riss also came from the area.

  “Sorry,” Lex said, moving to shut it, “My eyes are used to more light right now. It'll take another few minutes before I can see everything in here.”

  She stayed in place, since she'd noticed with the door open that power, computer, and network cables snaked all over the floor. As Lex's eyes became accustomed to the low light, she could see that the layout of the room was similar to hers, with a closed bathroom door to the left, but beyond that, she could see two large tables set up parallel to one another with a number of laptops, desktops, and maybe some servers piled closely on and underneath them. The narrow space between the tables looked just wide enough for one or two people to sit, and Lex finally spotted a woman sitting near the end of one table on a rolling office chair, one foot hooked under the opposite knee. The computer screen in front of her lit her face with a bluish glow, showing off her midnight-dark skin and dark eyes. Lex thought Riss looked to be about her height, but the other woman seemed much slighter, if the slim, graceful arm reaching for the coffee cup on her desk was any indication. As Riss turned to look at her visitor, she fixed Lex with an intelligent, somewhat skeptical gaze and ran a hand over her curly, close-cropped hair.

  “Thanks for coming up,” Riss said.

  Lex nodded. “No problem. And, I'm sorry if I disturbed you yesterday,” she quickly added, looking down at her hands. “It’s not anything that ever happened before, so hopefully it won’t happen again.”

  She looked up to find Riss gazing back at her. “Did something happen?” Riss asked, her face impassive except for one quirked eyebrow.

  Lex sighed, tired of talking about it, but finally sure it wasn’t why Riss had called in the first place. “Unfortunately, I had a massive migraine and passed out. Casey found me on the floor of my room and took me downstairs.”

  “So, you never usually get migraines that severe?” Riss’ expression hadn’t changed, but somehow Lex felt the woman’s gaze had become more intense.

  Lex shook her head. “No, that was the first time. I hope it’s the last.”

  Riss nodded. “Sorry to hear about it. Are you feeling better?”

  “I should be 100% by tomorrow, but I’m a little tired today. So, what’s up?”

  This time, Riss sighed. “I've been trying to put together a plan to secure the computers in the building here. I know how it should be done, but our keepers want something in writing to show how it’ll work. Plus, they keep adding things to the network and taking things out, and there are things here that aren't connected to other things…” she trailed off, one hand on her forehead as if she had a headache.

  Lex nodded, feeling more at ease now that she had an idea of why she’d been summoned. “So, you need help with the documentation and with creating a catalog of the computer resources here? Also maybe with putting together a plan to register new resources?”

  Riss gave her an almost nonexistent smile. “Exactly. Have you done this sort of thing before?”

  “Not really, but I've done things that were similar enough so that I can probably figure something out pretty quickly. Did anyone tell you when they want this done?”

  “They wanted it a few weeks ago but they didn't like what I gave them. I'm not sure when they want it, now.”

  “Could you find out? Let's assume at this point that they want the documentation in a couple months, and if we find out differently, we can adjust. I think I'll have a couple of half-days a week to work on this, but I won't be able to start until the week after next. However, we could begin over the weekends, if you're going to be here.”

  Riss nodded, a flash of something Lex couldn’t read in her eyes. “Oh, I'll be here.”

  “What time would you like to start on Saturday?”

  “Any time after noon; I'm not an early riser.”

  “How about we plan to start at one Saturday afternoon? I can get some more information about what our sponsors want to see, and we can start figuring out how to identify everything here.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Riss said, nodding her head and giving another tiny grin. “Thanks, Lex.”

  Lex waved as she made her way out the door and across the hall. She yawned as she opened her door and quickly shucked off most of her clothes before crawling under the covers and curling up for a nap. Smiling to herself, Lex drifted off, feeling deliciously warm and comfortable.

  Chapter 12: Mysteries and Meetings

  The next day Lex met with Mr. Chen in the morning, feeling fully recovered after a good night's rest. She sensed a change in the way the two of them worked together that day, however. It seemed that Mr. Chen had become more careful in the way he treated Lex, and she asked him about it as he watched her in the studio mirrors, reminding him that she felt fully recovered. He looked away for a moment and then sighed.

  “Lex, this is the way we should have been learning together all along. I assumed some things about you that aren't true, and was impatient and unkind with you as a result.”

  “What do you mean,” Lex asked, looking at him with puzzlement. Mentally comparing training under Mr. Chen with her father's teaching methods, Lex had always found him to be kind and gentle.

  “One of the first things I was taught when I began training many years ago as a young boy was the Chinese name of the skills we know. If you translate the words roughly into English, they are 'stop fighting.’ My teacher explained that learning what we call martial arts would be learning the skill of how to stop or prevent fighting. Of course, as a young man I sometimes forgot this and misused my training, but the older I got, the truer I understood those words to be. So, when we first met, I didn't want to teach you, since I guessed you were a martial artist who did not know this truth. But as I learned about you, I understood that you are not that way.” He sighed again. “I should have listened to Casey about you to begin with.”

  Lex looked at the wooden floor for a moment, smiling but feeling a stinging in her eyes. “Thanks, Mr. Chen,” she said, swallowing the lump in her throat before they started work again.

  The rest of the week rushed by in a blur of training, strange medical tests, and trying to incorporate her belongings from the condo into her room. Lex had still been working on setting her new things up when she had to move the rest of her old things in, but by the end of the week most everything had either been incorporated or discarded. She looked around in satisfaction Thursday night before she went to bed, happy with the small sleeping, study, and sitting areas she’d created.

  Lex didn’t feel as great after she saw Casey off on Friday afternoon, mentally preparing for a long weekend in. Casey would be spending the weekend with some visiting cousins, and she'd grilled Lex at dinner for the past couple of days about fun things to do in the area. Later Lex had to turn down an invitation from Serena to go clubbing, reminding her that she couldn't leave the facilities that weekend.

  Serena growled at the unfairness of it. “I wish you could come. I had so much fun the last time we went out.”

  “Sorry, Serena. Maybe next weekend?” Lex suggested, trying to smile.

  “Let's plan on it! There's this new club that just opened that I hear has the hottest guys,” Serena told Lex with a grin, just before she left for the evening.

  At about ten that night Lex gave up and got ready for bed. The loneliness and darkness had gotten to her, and the feeling that no one was waiting for her and wouldn't be next weekend, either.

  She felt a little better when she woke up Saturday morning, and after breakfast and a good workout she studied her strategy books until the time she’d agreed to meet with Riss. Grabbing a new notebook and a pen, she headed over to the other woman's room and knocked.

  “Come in,” she heard Riss’ muffled voice sound out, and Lex entered the darkened room.
<
br />   Riss sat in nearly the same place as when Lex had seen her last, but she wore different clothes now, a faded black t-shirt and grey leggings.

  “So,” Lex asked, sitting in an office chair nearby, “where should we start?”

  Riss gave one of her almost-there smiles. “Well, first I should get dressed and have some coffee and then we can figure out what to do next. Make yourself at home while I finish waking up.”

  “OK,” Lex agreed. “Do you mind if I start by having a look at the computers here?”

  “Help yourself.” Riss worked on starting a pot of coffee at a coffeemaker perched on the edge of one of her computer tables while Lex began to examine the computers in the room. She'd brought a tiny flashlight to look up their serial numbers and maker's marks in Riss’ dimly lit room when she realized what she’d originally found strange about the setup.

  “Riss, where are the keyboards? And mice?”

  “Look under the left hand table, I think,” Riss replied, a considering tone in her voice. “There should be a wireless mouse and keyboard there. If you want to move it to any computer, just use the USB key that should be in the Dell desktop, the last one on the table on the right.”

  So saying, she disappeared into the bathroom and shut the door. Lex found herself left with the sound of coffee brewing and her own confusion. By the time Riss came out, however, Lex had examined some of the computers and had begun to take a few notes, buoyed by the smell of strong coffee. She looked up at Riss as the woman poured a cup, her curiosity nearly boiling over and not willing to hold her tongue any longer.

  “Riss, why aren't there any input devices connected to any of these computers?”

  Slowly stirring sugar into her coffee, Riss fixed Lex with a gaze. “I don't really need anything like that when I use computers. That's why they want me here, I guess. I can communicate with computers directly.”