VIXEN - The Legend of the Five Totems

Chapter 12 - Lessons in Futility

The technicians in the underground laboratory of Maksai's palatial compound have been at it for weeks. They were actually quite pleased when Tabu borrowed one of the totems because for those few days, they did not have to worry about trying to figure out their task.

"Make them work," Maksai had told them when he first brought them the silver box containing his totems.

In words, it was an easy task, but in practice, the team of fifteen knew it to be impossible. The lab was high-tech, the kind of place where miniaturized jolt harmonizers and particle regulators rubbed shoulders with machines that went "Ping!" and computers spat out computations faster than the ancient tech of their ancestors. But that was the problem. This was mostly just technology bought or stolen through piracy or barters that would make most sensible people cringe. Yet despite all this tech, the technicians were constantly grumbling among themselves the lack of decent Wi-Fi, and lacking that, the books that they would have needed to figure out such ancient complexities as the totems.

Technology, they were finding, was no substitute for knowledge, nor even wisdom.

While none of the technicians would admit this to their chief administrator, General Maksai, all felt his plan to be sorely short-sighted. In fact, many proposed they actually try the single method that they were told would work: to find someone of stout heart to bind the totems to. But thanks to Maksai's greedy insistence that only he could possess them, there was simply no way to get them working.

It all came back to a simple equation: No honest Keeper, no working totems.

Still, they had their jobs to do, so they switched on all their computers, struggled with the spotty internet connections, tried to arrange the acquisition of some books to help with significant failure, and ran the machines.

They had tried everything. They used electrocution to try and jump start the totemic connection with a slave, but that only resulted in crispy slave and the lingering stench of roast meat. They tried force, but doing so only destroyed the machines that they were pounding the totems with. They tried fire, but the temperatures they were able to reach could not even singe the totems. Besides, Maksai pointed out that the point was to unleash the powers, not destroy the totems. He had one of the junior members of the team beheaded for such poor decision-making.

The only thing they had not tried yet was to strap their prisoner, Buddy Baker, into a harmonizer in the hopes that his powers of the Red would somehow activate the totems in the American's favor.

After requesting that Buddy be beaten senseless (they knew the man's reputation and did not want him coming to with the ferocity of a viper to beat them up), they had him dragged to them. A foreigner that they knew only by the rumors running through the compound, brought the American to them with the look of a cat that had gotten the canary. Animal Man looks a mess. He does not dribble blood everywhere, but his face looks like a stress ball, one of those poofy things that collapses with pressure, and molds back into shape. The only problem with that analogy is that Buddy's face has not returned to its natural state. It is swollen, bloody, and abrasions leak red juice from thick swellings.

A quartet of soldiers armed with machine guns and tranquilizer pistols bring the unconscious man into the uncomfortable metal chair set out in the middle of the room. Once his hands, ankles, and neck are strapped in, they lather up the assessor cups and thuwp them into place on his chest, head, arms and thighs. These assessment cups reach back to the Mountain totem, which Maksai has given to them for the day to use. A series of computer readouts will monitor any kind of personal connection reaching between Baker and the totem. As a current pulses through the machine's conduits, their telemetry screens light up. The technicians wait patiently while they await results.