by Randal Sloan
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Zeke, on the other hand, had his own emotions to deal with. When news of the coup had first come across on VR, he had been terrified for Miranda. When they had broadcast the video, and he realized that Miranda wasn't with the others, he had been greatly relieved. He had felt slightly ashamed, with Caitlyn and the others in such obvious danger. Then they had gotten the news that everyone was out safely, and he had been thrilled. But even though he had known that Miranda had special abilities, he had not suspected that she was so capable. After hearing her story, he felt amazement and a little nervousness, wondering what she saw in him. Intellectually he knew she didn't care about any of that kind of stuff, but emotionally he didn't know that. He had no idea how he could tell her any of that. He finally decided that the only solution was to continue spending time with her, and let it work itself out. With that, he was able to get some sleep.
When Zeke knocked lightly on the door the next morning at the agreed time, Miranda met him with two cups of coffee in her hand. "Emily is still asleep," she said quietly. "Let's go down to the common room so we can talk about our plan for the day. Here, I made you coffee."
"That's awesome. I could use a good cup right now." Zeke's response was equally quiet. The coffee Miranda offered smelled great.
Taking the cup from her, Zeke followed her down the hall. Taking a seat beside her, he told her, "All of the parts are in. We should be able to make good progress today, with no classes. If you don't mind, walk me through the changes once more. I think I have updated most of the control code already, but I need to run through it with you first."
"I do need to tell you one thing about the changes I made," Zeke went on. "I have made the code more modular and set up the central processing module to be more of the system manager, with the semi-AI code we discussed earlier. We tell the central processor what to do, and it tells the rest of the system what it wants it to do. That allows us to more easily make changes by only having to submit it to the controller."
Miranda understood immediately the ramifications. "That's awesome. I suspect we will have to tweak things even if we do get it to work, but that will make it much easier. I also want you to put us a big stop button that you can hit on the controller in case something serious goes wrong like last time." She went on to explain the details of the changes. Dropping their coffee cups off in the room, they headed to the lab.
With no interruptions for class, Miranda and Zeke were able to spend almost the entire day at the lab. Since most of the design was very similar to what they had done before, they managed to complete the changes to the design by midday. That meant that they spent a good part of the afternoon checking everything, determined not to have another meltdown. Finally, there was nothing else to check, so they were ready for the next test. With a little flourish, Miranda hit the start button, and they anxiously awaited the results. But, taking both of them completely by surprise, nothing happened. Or more precisely, nothing was produced on the output terminals. What went wrong? She knew that many of the intermediate test points had the readings she expected to see. What could possibly have happened? Finally, she shut it down, telling Zeke, "I guess we should just leave for now. I need to think about it for a while."
As they walked back to the dorm, Zeke told her, "Give it some time. I know you will figure it out. Just let that big brain of yours crunch on it for a while. I'm sure it will give us a complex answer that you will have to simplify for my poor brain."
Miranda tried to smile at Zeke's attempt at humor, but just couldn't laugh at the moment. She had been so sure this was going to work. So instead, she only nodded and went into her room to think about it.
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The issue kept bugging Miranda, because she knew she was missing something. Emily and some of her friends had decided to use their time to work together in a study group, so she was alone. She finally sat cross-legged on her bed and tried meditation to see if she could clear her mind.
Suddenly Miranda bolted up straight. She realized that she had been looking at everything with too much simplicity. Zeke's little quip about simplifying the complex was the key. She had assumed that the subspace fabric only had matter and antimatter on the two sides as if she were looking down on a line on a piece of paper. But what if there was a much larger dimension of particle universes. Each would be slightly out of phase to the other and would have to be considered in the shape of her generated field. Each particle universe would exist separately from all the others, separated by the same subspace fabric she had imagined separating matter and antimatter. That would also explain why her previous math had been flawed; it had not completely accounted for the amount of dark matter/dark energy observed. The complexity of it all boggled the mind.
It wasn't that the experiment was not working at all, it was because they were getting a lot of interfering signals and the net result was that with the configuration she had set up, all of the signals wound up canceling out in the generated result. That was why they didn't have any output.
Miranda immediately VR messaged Zeke, asking him if he could meet her at the lab, even though it was getting late. He reluctantly agreed, replying to her VR message with an electronic pizza image, saying, "You owe me for the pizza the next time" and then his VR icon took a bite out of the pizza.
Miranda couldn't keep from laughing when she saw it. "Zeke, you are such a show-off!" was all she sent back. She finally admitted to herself that she could not keep up with him and his VR skills. Of course, she might have been a little distracted too.
They headed toward the lab, with Miranda still thinking about the design changes. She was so focused on the work to do, she didn't notice a shadowy figure following them at a distance.
When they got to the lab, it took a few minutes to make the changes. Miranda had Zeke apply a filter to the Space Tech wave generator. Instead of a signal with peaks at both ends as she had been using, they wanted as smooth a signal as they could get. They then took their respective positions with Zeke standing in the control room ready to hit the big abort button and Miranda standing in front of the monitoring equipment. Miranda spoke loudly enough for Zeke to hear her, "Be ready to hit the stop button if something goes wrong!"
Miranda reached for the go button and paused one last time, the excitement dancing in her eyes. "Ready?" she asked. Upon hearing Zeke's muffled "Yes!" she tapped the button, gradually ramping up the new input signal from zero. They started to get an output signal! "It's working!" she yelled.
She reached to the controls, pushing the power level up again, but suddenly the output jumped rapidly to a much higher level than what she was expecting to see. She realized it was about to get out of control and tried to pull the levels back down. Zeke saw it too, hitting the big emergency stop button that he was indeed glad they had added this time around.
Zeke stuck his head out the door and asked, "What just happened? It looked like it was out of control so I hit the stop!"
"It's working!", Miranda said breathlessly, "But it's got a log scale to it. I need you to modify the control program to handle that."
"Of course," Zeke said. "We should have known that... Ok, just a few minutes." He moved back into the control room but didn't shut the door completely so that they could hear at least a little. They needed an intercom for that purpose instead of having to yell to understand each other.
Miranda pulled up the VR results from the test and was looking over the full outputs of the test project. Suddenly she heard a noise and turned to see someone come into the lab, shutting and locking the external door. Miranda dropped into a defensive posture, and demanded as he turned toward her, "Who are you and what are you doing in our lab?"
He said, "You can call me the Weasel. I am the guy who knows who you really are." He had a gun in one hand, but he pulled a device out with the other hand, pointed it at her, and said, "But first..." Then he pushed a button on the device. Miranda found herself unable to move anything below her neck as if her limbs were locked into place.
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The grisly little man laughed and spat out, "I am the guy who has been working with your father, and this little toy has full control of your nanites. When your father disappeared, the friends that I have been working with were all upset because they had hoped to grab him to force him to tell them his secrets. I even had some plans to try to help them capture him, but he outsmarted all of us. However, I glimpsed some of the early VR video of you, and after your little adventure the other day and your chit-chat with Doctor Ted that my little bug captured, I hacked the hospital lab. From the information in his system there, I easily figured out who you are. Very clever in fact for you to hide in plain sight, and that is a very good disguise you have. None of the others have a clue about you, and that will make you a very valuable asset to me."
Miranda stared at the man in total confusion. "What do you mean? I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about."
The man said, "I know your name isn't Miranda. It is Julie Randolph! You are the daughter of Doctor Samuel Randolph and have the only fully functioning nanites in the world." Moving across the room toward her, he pressed a device to her arm and gave an evil smile when it beeped its results.
"I now know this for sure because I did a quick DNA test with my other little toy here, and it's telling me exactly who you are. And with the help of my friends, we're gonna use you to figure out how to build our own nanites, and put them to work for our purposes. And they are going to pay me well for it!"
Totally frozen with his device and in shock, Miranda could only stare at him. She did manage to at least speak her defiance. "I'll never help you," she told him. She was desperately running the music through her head, trying to break the control of the device he had used on her. She felt her little finger twitch, the best she seemed to be able to do. She redoubled her efforts.
But he said, "I think you will, because you have no choice." He laughed, not a pleasant sound. He stepped toward the experiment and said, "And maybe I should take this little device with me. I'm sure eventually you will tell me what it does. But for now this will be our little secret."
The whole time the man had been talking, Zeke had remained hidden in the control room trying to figure out what to do. Although he couldn't understand their conversation, the gun the man held in his hand was enough to tell him that he was up to no good. But when the man turned toward the experiment, Zeke had an idea. Knowing he had to act quickly, he turned their test project back on, shoving the controls all the way up. Running out the door, he tackled Miranda to the floor just as the system overloaded and exploded.
Standing in front of the device, the Weasel took the full extent of the blast and was thrown across the room to strike the wall, collapsing to the floor lifelessly. His device also hit the wall, and Miranda was released from its control. However, she was in a complete daze and still unable to move with Zeke lying across her. She heard the sound of emergency vehicles and felt Zeke being pulled off her; she was put on a gurney and then she passed out as they were both rushed to the hospital.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Safe but at What Price
Space Academy has revealed a minor explosion occurred in one of their labs. It appears that two students were injured in the explosion. Their condition has not been released to the public at this time. Also at the scene, a missing lab assistant from Space Tech was killed, and he is suspected of foul play in the incident. We will provide updates as more information becomes available.
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Miranda woke up in the hospital again. The same room she thought, and the same nurse came rushing in, just like before, telling her, "Let me get the doctor." Just like before. And then she realized, it's not quite the same. This time she had her memories as Miranda, although I'm Julie Randolph it appears, not Miranda, she thought but she didn't have time to think about that. Because, even more than that, something else was not the same. Something was going on; all of her senses were suddenly much stronger. The only explanation was that something had happened to her nanites.
She seemed to have enhanced control over all her body. She only had to think about her hearing, and she could hear the bees outside her window. She thought about her sense of smell, and the rose across the room suddenly smelled like she was holding it under her nose. When she moved her arm, she realized she was going to have to completely relearn how to control her body, because her arm moved in a blur. Wisely, she decided to remain very still.
And she decided, For now, I am Miranda. Maybe later I can think of myself as Julie but not right now. Really, I've just gotten used to being Miranda.
Uncle Ted came into the room (and, he really is her Uncle Ted, she realized suddenly), and he said quietly, "We have to talk. Wait one minute while I check you. Your nanites, they have me completely puzzled because they are giving off unusual readings. At least your basic scan looks ok."
She answered quietly, "I think I can help with that, but first, how is Zeke? He knocked me to the floor and took most of the blast instead of me."
The doctor nodded and said, "He saved your life, but at a tremendous cost. He's alive, but the doctors have him in an induced coma because of his many injuries. He was very severely injured in the explosion, and I must warn you the prognosis is not very good. We have the very best experts in the hospital working to help him, so don't give up hope just yet."
Miranda didn't like the sound of that, but she had to have some answers. She told him, "That man, he was a very bad person, but he told me some things. It appears that I am not Miranda Summerlin, but actually Julie Randolph. Is that true?" When he reluctantly nodded, she glared at him. "That means, you really are my uncle."
When he nodded again, she continued. "He said that I have what he called the only fully functioning nanites in the world, and that my father, who is the only one who knows what he did to build them, is missing."
Doctor Ted sat beside her bed and looked at her. "All of that is pretty much correct. We did not want to have you use your real name because of exactly what just happened. Although a few of us on the team, including myself obviously, know a tremendous amount about your nanites, it was your father that finalized the design. We really don't have any more. If he has them stored somewhere, we don't know where."
"Ok, what about that device that man used on me? That was absolutely terrifying to be totally unable to move."
"Yes, we definitely need to talk about it later. I have taken it apart and I think I know how it works. And I should be able to program your nanites to protect you from it in the future."
Miranda asked, "Ok, the most important question first. Can you take some of my nanites and give them to Zeke?"
The doctor thought for a minute and looked at her. "Yes, I believe so, but you need to know the potential cost. We don't know a lot, but we think your nanites can only be copied a limited number of times before they become corrupted. Sort of like making a copy of a copy of a copy on an old-time copy machine. And we do not know if we can ever duplicate your father's work. So you need to think about your future. Will this somehow affect what you might decide to do in the future? I can't tell you what to do and I won't; it is entirely your decision. What I can do is to extract some of them and put them in a protected storage device. If you decide to use them for Zeke, you will have them available. If you decide not to, I will store them for your future usage."
Miranda told him, "Yes, please do the extraction. I will think about the rest and let you know. I need to see Zeke and his family too before I make any decisions. Right now I just don't know what to do."
Uncle Ted looked at her for a moment. He seemed to make a decision. "I'm going to tell you a story of something that happened to me. I don't know if it will help you, but I don't want you to have to regret a decision you make now in the future like a decision I made in the past that I very much regret."
"A number of years ago, I was working as a military doctor in a base near some minor conflict at the time. We had a young lady brought in with a rather severe leg injury. I
was able to treat her in a way that guaranteed complete use of the limb in the future, but she had a long and difficult recovery in our hospital. But she never complained. Instead, she had one of the most positive attitudes I have ever seen. I believe we both fell in love, but we kept it completely professional, not wanting to violate the doctor-patient relationship rule. After she left, I wrote her a long polite letter asking her if she wanted to see me. I waited a week for a response and in sadness moved on. I always will wonder, if I had put my true feelings into that letter, would she have responded? I never tried to find her again, and I should have. I have always regretted that."
"Thank you for telling me that." Miranda said. "I guess I still have to make the decision, but that helps to put it into perspective."
Doctor Ted nodded. He struggled with what he needed to talk about next. He wished he could avoid it, but he knew he couldn't. "I know this is not a good time, but there are some other things that we need to discuss. You are correct that you are Julie and your father is Sam Randolph. I'm very sorry we didn't tell you to start with. Your father really is missing, and has been for nearly a month. The man that attacked you was your father's lab assistant, and we had hoped he could tell us something about where he is, because they both went missing at the same time. Since he was killed in the explosion, not that I'm sorry about that, that means now we can't question him."
"He said," Miranda told him, "That he had nothing to do with my father's disappearance, and that he and his friends were looking for him. I believe that he was telling the truth, because he had no reason to lie. He thought that he had everything under control, and he would have, if not for Zeke hiding in the control room." She broke down into sobs with that last statement.